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Volts guests have argued that data centers can be good for the grid if they’re built right. Here I hear the case against, from Ketan Joshi, a former wind-industry analyst who now tracks Big Tech’s climate claims. He sees data centers as the wrong kind of demand growth: lumpy, concentrated, unwanted by neighbors, and largely met with gas. Underneath it all is the worry that the backlash against data centers will become a backlash against electrification itself.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
02:14 – How Ketan became a big tech critic
06:01 – The case against data centers
07:39 – What data centers add to emissions
11:57 – Isn’t more electricity demand good?
20:12 – Backlash and the NEXTDC power-pole protest
24:21 – AI claims 1: will AI help the climate?
27:53 – AI claims 2: machine learning vs. generative AI
33:47 – AI claims 3: inflated climate wins
36:51 – The gas rush: how much gets built?
44:49 – Would easier renewables fix it?
49:14 – Can data centers be flexible load?
55:41 – Do we actually want AI data centers?
59:39 – What should data centers do to plug in?
1:05:31 – Fake crackdowns and the risk to renewables
1:09:24 – What if AI is a bubble?

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Clean energy is the cheapest, fastest-growing source of power in the country, yet politically it barely registers. Republicans gutted its tax credits last year without fearing any consequences. The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, a super PAC backed by clean energy investors, is trying to change that the old-fashioned way: by punishing the industry’s enemies. It went six for six in this year’s primaries; it’s now spending at least $15 million against seven Republican House candidates in the midterms. Its chair, Tom Matzzie, makes the case for fear as a political asset, explains why the industry has been so slow to throw elbows, and describes what it would take for clean energy to become a lion instead of a gazelle.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
02:55 - How the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition started
06:23 - Why a super PAC, and the idea of mythic power
09:50 - Punishing opponents to send a message to Congress
12:55 - Proving impact, and the permitting bill
17:13 - How ITC picks its general election races
21:41 - Does knocking out extremists help Republicans?
24:53 - Free riders and barriers to industry politics
28:58 - Who funds ITC, and why the industry underinvests
32:44 - Why clean power stays politically weak
38:28 - Did the IRA’s red-state investments pay off?
40:35 - Fear of Trump’s retaliation
45:05 - Avoiding the Democratic PAC label
49:30 - Presidential primaries and the ethanol playbook
53:20 - Gas inside the clean power trade groups
58:37 - Where ITC goes after November

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Collectively, the electric stack (batteries, motors, chips, power electronics) has gotten about 99% cheaper since 1990. It is quietly remaking every machine that turns electricity into motion, heat, or work. Problem is, China makes most of it. Sam D’Amico, co-author of “The Electric Slide” and founder of Impulse Labs, is betting the US can still claim a piece of that stack. He’s starting with a battery-powered induction cooktop. We talk about why domestic manufacturing matters, what America would actually have to build to compete, and how Silicon Valley’s founder world really thinks about climate change, geoengineering included.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
02:52 – From VR headsets to kitchen appliances
07:07 – How a pizza oven inspired a battery stove
10:07 – Peak demand, at home and on the grid
13:25 – Which appliances could use a built-in battery
16:46 – Electric stack 1: the four technologies
20:28 – Electric stack 2: power electronics and motors
25:21 – China bets on hardware, the US bets on AI
30:08 – Why not just buy it all from China?
33:51 – Why engineers need to be near the factory
38:39 – How much does the US need to make at home?
45:19 – US EV policy and letting Chinese cars in
47:49 – Batteries in appliances vs. one home battery
52:04 – Impulse’s plan: its tech in other brands’ stoves
55:17 – What’s next after the stove
57:14 – Has Silicon Valley stopped caring about climate?

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American homes are filling up with batteries, EVs, and smart thermostats that could be coordinated to make the grid cheaper and more reliable — but almost none of them are. To understand why, it helps to watch what happens when the company best in the world at this tries to do it here. In Britain, Octopus Energy has built a giant virtual power plant out of its customers' devices. In the US, it has spent six years running into walls. Now it’s bought Uplight, which runs customer programs for 85 utilities. I talked with Nick Chaset, who runs both, about what's in the way and whether distributed energy can ever scale with US utilities … the way they are.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
02:02 – Octopus’s past year and the Uplight investment
05:18 – What makes the UK market work for Octopus
11:12 – Texas: fast growth, flattened volatility
14:57 – Will flexibility put itself out of business?
19:16 – Why Octopus stays out of Pennsylvania and New York
22:17 – Does residential retail competition have a future?
24:41 – Why utility programs trail Octopus on participation
32:17 – The demand stack and what planners can count on
39:11 – Kraken, Uplight and the overlap
46:04 – Consumer protection and the aggregator model
51:17 – Data centers and the social license to operate
55:11 – Do we need dynamic pricing?
58:30 – Five years out

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Denmark gets a large share of its power from wind and other renewables and has cut its emissions roughly in half since 1990, but independent analysts doubt it will hit its 70 percent target for 2030. Kristian Jensen, CEO of Green Power Denmark and a former Danish minister of taxation, foreign affairs, and finance, argues the next stage is electrifying how Denmark uses energy: heat, transport, and industry. I talk with him about district heating and heat pumps, EVs and vehicle-to-grid, municipally owned grid companies and hourly power prices, biomass, carbon capture, power-to-X, solar’s “fields of iron” backlash, a grid oversubscribed with data center requests (an October 1 agreement has since put most data centers at the back of the queue), and whether the country’s political consensus will hold.

Chapters
00:00 – Introduction: Denmark and industrial symbiosis
02:44 – Is the 70% target for 2030 out of reach?
06:24 – Carbon capture and storage, and the peatlands lag
09:57 – Why electrification has lagged: biomass and wood pellets
14:45 – Few batteries, many interconnectors
16:48 – Data centers and the grid-connection prioritization bill
21:34 – Municipally owned grid companies
24:32 – Smart meters, hourly prices, and thermal batteries
28:40 – The solar backlash and local ownership
35:04 – Agrivoltaics and biodiversity
37:24 – District heating: heat pumps, geothermal, and finance
43:24 – The EV transition and vehicle-to-grid
47:45 – Road pricing and fiscal room
50:07 – Power-to-X and eSAF
54:21 – Can Denmark build enough clean power?
57:12 – Will the political consensus hold?