Volts

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Back in 2011, I wrote that fossil fuel interests had a much better media game than clean energy. My example was Frank Maisano, a media relations guy for coal utilities and the natural gas industry. Thirty years on, he’s still at it — still writing his newsletter, still connecting reporters to sources, still better at it than anyone on the clean side (sigh). So I’m finally talking to him about it: clean energy trade groups nobody in Washington fears, Trump’s daft efforts to kill renewables, the PAC picking off dirty-energy Republicans, permitting and data center fights, and the climate denial shop he worked for in the ‘90s. Spoiler: he regrets nothing.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:46 – What a DC media strategist actually does
09:50 – Republicans, Trump, and a narrow House majority
15:29 – Why tax cuts beat energy in the OBBBA fight
18:54 – Competing with China on AI without the electric stack
21:15 – Paying $4 billion to hand back offshore wind leases
28:07 – Red-state wind and the orders keeping coal plants open
32:52 – Clean energy trade groups and the building trades
38:41 – Gas as a bridge, and what longer term means
44:55 – Whether a half-gas trade group can serve clean energy
48:43 – A coherent clean vision against an incoherent coalition
51:14 – Do the green groups still scare anyone
55:18 – Permitting reform and the Whitehouse-Capito path
59:46 – Data centers, animal spirits, and the midterms
1:06:48 – The revenge PAC, and whether it is working
1:12:31 – Congress, the courts, and what Democrats could do
1:18:53 – COP, climate change, and the client he would turn down

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Verrus is building data centers designed to address every objection the public has raised: they use batteries instead of diesel generators, which makes them grid assets that help hold down power prices; they use closed-loop cooling, which uses a tiny fraction of the water; their equipment is quieter; and as a bonus, they squeeze more servers into the same grid connection. Yet both of Verrus’s proposed sites, in Michigan and Oregon, are mired in fierce local opposition. In this episode, CEO Nelson Abramson walks through the engineering — and the politics that the engineering hasn’t quite solved.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
02:43 – Three decades in data centers
05:05 – What a Verrus data center looks like
07:39 – The medium voltage power plane
12:13 – UPS batteries vs. the big LFP battery
17:27 – Priority aware capping and provisioned utility capacity
22:31 – Why not buy the pieces off the shelf?
25:42 – Duration: what happens when four hours runs out
34:28 – Diesel backup and what customers ask for
37:15 – How flexible is compute, really?
42:37 – Noise, fans, and the sound studies
48:42 – Water use and the 12 million gallon question
52:19 – Industrial land and by-right zoning
56:07 – Public opposition, recall petitions, and community benefits
1:00:07 – Oregon, Salem, and the moratorium
1:03:56 – Ride-through, NERC, and losing the moat
1:07:11 – What V2 looks like

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Jane Flegal has worked inside philanthropy at the Hewlett Foundation, industrial emissions policy at the Biden White House, and carbon-removal market development at Frontier; she's now a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute, writing some of the smartest climate policy analysis around. We cover a lot of ground: industrial policy versus market approaches, what the IRA got right and wrong, philanthropy's proper role, data centers and the case for an infrastructure fund, and behind-the-meter gas, among other things. This is a long one, and spicy!
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:11 – Flegal's thesis: building a clean grid fast enough to power growth
06:29 – Why she rejects degrowth
09:27 – The Roosevelt essay: climate as more than a market failure
13:30 – Why clean energy underuses its political muscle
15:24 – Industrial policy and the green spiral theory of change
20:40 – Was IRA the right approach?
22:12 – Lily Bermel's paper and the fight over what survived
23:21 – What she would have done differently under IRA
30:11 – Philanthropy, Silicon Valley, and what government is for
33:29 – The epistemic crisis inside environmental NGOs
39:09 – The abundance movement and what each faction misses
44:16 – What establishment Democrats get wrong on climate
46:06 – Why issue polling misleads
50:34 – Republicans and the Cold War analogy
52:47 – Data centers and the American Grid Infrastructure Fund
59:13 – Affordability politics and who pays for the grid
1:08:14 – Emissions, behind-the-meter gas, and flexible load
1:13:57 – The clean firm debate: storage plus transmission?
1:20:14 – Capacity markets, ERCOT, and the case for planning
1:24:32 – Utility incentives, public power, and affordability fixes
1:35:55 – Permitting reform and the land footprint asymmetry
1:41:05 – NEPA reform and the political window
1:48:21 – Where fresh policy thinking comes from

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Zanskar argues that the US is badly underestimating its conventional geothermal resources — that there are far more undiscovered hydrothermal systems, and that each one can produce far more power, than people think. They think AI can help find those resources, and they have drilled three sites to back it up, including a “blind” discovery in Nevada with no surface signs and no prior exploratory wells. If they're right, terawatts of firm, carbon-free power are reachable with off-the-shelf drilling technology. Co-founders Carl Hoiland and Joel Edwards make the case.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:29 – Heat, permeability, and how resources have been found
04:49 – Why conventional geothermal stalled, and why the estimate is stale
09:22 – Applying AI to old exploration data
11:10 – The data Zanskar works with
13:09 – Models, field testing, and the feedback loop
15:02 – How much more resource is really out there
20:22 – Lightning Dock: reviving a written-off field
22:14 – What has changed in drilling technology
28:37 – Pumpernickel and the permeability question
31:08 – Natural permeability vs. enhanced geothermal
34:21 – Big Blind, the first blind discovery in 30 years
37:09 – Improving the models to keep getting better
40:51 – Financing exploration: the development capital facility
44:38 – The NV Energy PPA and data center demand
47:42 – The skeptical case and geographic limits
54:20 – Policy dependence and public lands
58:11 – What's next for Zanskar

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Volts published eight conversations in August — with two Idaho state legislators, a grid cybersecurity expert, the architect of Uruguay's energy transition, an EV charging exec, and more — which is a lot for anyone to listen to. We've rounded up the highlights into a single hour. Enjoy!
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction and how the best-of series works
01:59 – Saleem Chapman on why every market design fails ratepayers the same way
07:51 – Patrick Miller on Chinese inverters and commodity boards
12:22 – Ben Toews and Megan Egbert on how Idaho's housing bills happened
18:34 – Seth Cutler on why an IONNA site is technically a bakery
22:52 – Ramón Méndez Galain on getting every Uruguayan party to sign one plan
28:00 – Quinn Nakayama on why a utility would adopt something that saves money
34:16 – Varun Sivaram on workload tiers and who pays when flexing goes wrong
38:44 – Todd Tucker on the Defense Production Act precedent
44:20 – Closing note and what to send in