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Energy Empire Podcast

@energyempire.bsky.social
132 followers 2 following 70 posts

Welcome to the Age of Energy Abundance. A behind-the-scenes look at the people, money, and power driving the biggest economic shift of our generation.

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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"A ginormous money pump extracting billions from American families through their electric bills." Senator Whitehouse on why blocking cheap clean energy isn't an accident — it forces grids onto pricier fossil units, and the priciest unit sets the price for every electron. You pay the gap.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Google offered to pay outright for the data center infrastructure upgrades. The utility said no, because that would keep it out of the rate base, and pushed for a prepayment structure instead so they could still rate base it.⁣ ⁣ Result: everyone's bill went up $5.77 a month.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
"We're the Sudafed of the grid." — Nate Walkingshaw, founder and CEO of Torus⁣ ⁣ This week, he joins Jigar and Jamie on Energy Empire to talk about the 33 gigawatts of congested capacity he says we could free up tomorrow and the argument with a utility CEO that redirected his company.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
How can clean energy genuinely be a conservative issue? There’s perhaps no one better to ask that question than Heather Reams—who spent nearly a decade in DC selling Republicans on clean energy. ⁣ ⁣ Heather shares the “secret sauce” from her time on the Hill with Jigar and Jamie.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Data centers, batteries, zoning, school boards — the decisions that actually shape your life happen at the local level, not DC. Adam Met's ask: find your next local election and bring 10 friends.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
American energy is clean energy. Clean energy is American energy. Not a slogan—just how it's done.⁣ ⁣ New ep of Energy Empire out now.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
AJR's Adam Met on why climate messaging keeps failing: people love the story, share it, feel good — then never leave the couch. Sound familiar? He says the fix is stolen straight from how bands build fandoms.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
How do you build support for solar and wind on old oil fields? Buy people beer first, pitch policy second.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
18 million acres of oil and gas leases already sit disturbed and drilled. Adam Met's pitch: slap wind and solar on top, pay off fossil fuel interests, cut costs for nearby communities, and skip the fight over virgin land entirely.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Adam Met's "secret plan" out loud on a podcast: use a categorical exclusion for renewables on oil and gas leases, then run new transmission along those same rights of way. Cut years off approvals without touching a single new acre.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Jigar Shah says there's gigawatts of backup generators sitting idle that could help the grid — instead DOE is issuing emergency rulings because nobody in government wants to run a real one-year EPA process.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Sheldon Kimber bet that long-term power contracts were underpriced garbage before anyone else would say it out loud — then took on the personal and business risk to prove it. Jigar Shah says that's exactly why he wanted him on the podcast.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Most European "hybrid" generators just peak-shave — engine and battery both push the load. Jigar Shah's EVOS runs on battery alone and only fires the engine to recharge at peak efficiency. That's why Europe's diesel prices and emissions rules made this a no-brainer.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Nobody buys backup power because they care about your carbon footprint — they buy it because the lights stay on and the fuel bill drops. Jigar Shah on why climate progress is just better products winning on the merits.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Old hydro dams could double their output overnight with a software upgrade. Instead they sit stuck in a five-year FERC approval line while 80-year-old owners refuse to sell — so builders just give up and go work on geothermal instead.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Sheldon Kimber's plan: build a multi-gigawatt "energy Disneyland" of wind, solar, batteries, and gas — and let the grid come begging to interconnect. Forget policy. Just build something too valuable to ignore.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Sheldon Kimber says every entrepreneur is swinging vine to vine — you never get any closer, so you'd better let go at the top and bet everything on yourself.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Sheldon Kimber says the "safe" PPAs everyone signed were quietly bleeding margin and eating curtailment risk the whole time — and the "risky" merchant case still won on a risk-adjusted basis. Doesn't fit on a t-shirt, but it's the right answer.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Sheldon Kimber doesn't hire for gigawatts. He hires people with a chip on their shoulder who still need to prove something — even after they've already won.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Six data centers in Portland took a flexible connection deal instead of cutting the line — and they're already energized. Amit's pitch to utilities: bring us your worst grid problem, we'll have an answer in 90 days.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Sheldon Kimber says you can't write a business plan without a vision first — the plan just comes later. His bet: load chases generation, not the other way around. Clean steel, clean hydrogen, data centers — all of it has to come find the power.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Amit Narayan says America doesn't have a power shortage — it has a visibility problem, and software can unlock more grid capacity in months than new transmission lines can in years.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Amit Narayan says every megawatt of flexibility a data center adds is worth $25-30 million in new economic value — which is why six data centers in Portland skipped an 8 year wait and got connected right now instead.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Amit Narayan says the grid is running at 30% utilization. Double it to 60% and you unlock 300+ gigawatts — no new tech required, just three to five years.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
AI is why the grid is maxed out. Amit Narayan says AI is also how you squeeze 300 more gigawatts out of it without building a single new plant.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Amit Narayan spent years writing software to speed up chip demand. Now he's writing software to make sure the grid can actually keep up with it. He calls it the "time to energize" problem — and says the fix is already sitting on the grid, hiding in plain sight.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Amit Narayan swore he'd never be a startup CEO again. Then he did the math on AI's next three to five years and came back anyway.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Grid operators plan for the worst case, always — which means there's 100,000 MW of capacity just sitting there unused. Amit Narayan found 450 of it in Portland General's territory alone, and rates dropped 5%.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Utilities get paid like airlines that only fly on Thanksgiving — max planes, max price, all year round. Amit's got the fix: push utilization from 30% to 40% and rates drop for everyone, not just the data centers.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Amit Narayan's point on Energy Empire: data centers don't have to mean higher bills. Use existing grid infrastructure more effectively, bring large loads online faster, and you amortize fixed costs over more electrons. GridCARE's white paper shows this can cut rates by 5% for all ratepayers.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Amit Narayan says the grid is only running at 30% utilization — get it to 60% and you've unlocked 300+ gigawatts with zero new technology, just software and visibility. Why are we still talking about new transmission lines?
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Jennifer Granholm's take: forcing uneconomical coal plants to stay open while demanding lower energy prices makes zero sense — especially when solar, wind, and batteries are basically everything getting added to the grid right now.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
$870 billion to subsidize energy so citizens didn't feel the price spike. And it barely moved the needle on demand. The lesson Granholm says should be "etched in stone": diversify your suppliers and grow your own.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
A billion-dollar program designed to keep ventilator-dependent kids alive during outages — canceled. The equipment was sitting on the roof. The grant got yanked.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Granholm's message to governors: data centers are a golden ticket, but only if you're tough enough to set the guardrails before they walk in the door.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
950 announcements. Millions of jobs. And Granholm had the map to prove it.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
36 states elect a governor this year. Every candidate gets the same question: why is my electric bill so high?⁣ ⁣ Jennifer Granholm's answer: data centers done right lower your bill, not raise it. The whole game is the guardrails.⁣ ⁣ New Energy Empire episode out now. 🗽🔌
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Energy nepo baby who skipped soccer camp for mechanical engineering camp — and somehow that's the origin story for building the next generation of the grid.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
An engineer refused to show his boss a quote because it would make him look bad for overspending. That's the problem. Jevons Paradox says cheaper solar means more solar — more work, not less.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
AI has more data and better answers than ever. It still needs factories, sales teams, and electricians to make any of it real. That's not a threat to jobs — that's the job.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Jigar Shah built his vacation home from scratch — all-electric, 16kW of solar, induction, heat pumps, EV chargers. His words: "if the end of days comes, I'm gonna be a prepper." That's one way to future-proof a lake house.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
AI can automate 95% of project work. The other 5%? Convincing Bob the fire marshal to pick up the phone — and making sure a licensed human is on the hook when things go wrong.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Daniel Deuce is done calling them "misinformation." They're lies. And the clean energy industry — too moral to fight dirty — finally has a database of responses ready to go. ⚡
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Jigar Shah has 16 kW of solar, two EV chargers, and a fully electric vacation house — and he's already told his neighbors it's the apocalypse bunker. This is what living the electrification thesis actually looks like.⁣ ⁣ Another great question from: octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Rep. Castor says AI, EVs, and heat pumps are hitting the grid all at once — and the IRA had the roadmap. The question is whether we get back to it before the opportunity closes.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Solar recycling is ready — the market just hasn't caught up.⁣ ⁣ Replacing 14% panels with 23% is too good to pass up forever. When owners move, recycling demand follows.⁣ ⁣ Got an energy question? Submit it to Ask Jigar: octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Most U.S. investors think they know emerging markets because they've bought the ETF. Mike Silvestrini says that's not the same thing and the foreign exchange tailwind alone tells a different story.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
With a yieldco, your return depends on when you bought the stock. Own the project directly and you're at NAV — you get what the project actually earns. That's the difference between investing in solar and investing in a stock that happens to own solar.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Florida is the Sunshine State. 75% of its electricity comes from gas.⁣ ⁣ Rep. Kathy Castor says utility monopolies and state politicians have a stranglehold on cheaper, cleaner energy — and Floridians are paying for it.
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Energy Empire Podcast @energyempire.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
After Helene and Milton, Rep. Castor's message is simple: stop rebuilding the same way and start building smarter. Bipartisan FEMA reforms are already on the table — so why are we waiting?
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