The hyperscalers are racing to secure power, pouring billions into new plants, nuclear, even fusion. But interconnection queues still run for years. This week's guest can cut that wait to six to twelve months without building a single transmission line or power plant.Amit Narayan is the founder and CEO of GridCARE. His thesis: America doesn't have a power shortage, it has a visibility problem. The grid runs at only about a third of its capacity, and GridCARE uses AI to scan it the way an MRI scans a body, finding power utilities simply cannot see with planning tools built decades ago. The company has unlocked more than a gigawatt in the last six months and is actively analyzing over ten. Narayan's bet: 300 gigawatts are reachable on existing infrastructure within three to five years.Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan dig into why the grid sits so underused, and the detail that captures the whole problem: hyperscalers are so power-starved they're eyeing data centers in space, when the power they need is already on the grid at home.Links:Get Energy Empire merch: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

Data centers have become one of the most charged political issues in the country, and it cuts across both parties. Electricity bills are climbing, 36 states are electing governors who will have to answer for it, and the question is the same in red states and blue: how do you welcome the investment without handing residents the bill?Few people are better placed to answer than Jennifer Granholm, two-term governor of Michigan and the 16th Secretary of Energy, who oversaw the largest expansion of energy manufacturing in a generation and now advises governors on this exact problem. Jigar and Jamie talk with her about the playbook every governor needs, the energy sovereignty lesson the world drew from the Strait of Hormuz, and who is actually driving up your electricity bill.Along the way: why a data center should buy your neighborhood batteries and pay you to use them, the acronym BYONCE, the utility business model that rewards building things nobody needs, and the Puerto Rico story she can't shake.Links:Get Energy Empire merch: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faasPowering the AI Economy report from the Centre for Net Zero: https://poweringai.centrefornetzero.org

Four generations of Daniel Dus's family have worked in American energy. His great-grandfather was a coal-mine engineer who became president of Michigan Tech; his grandfather built power transformers at General Electric. Daniel pivoted into renewables — and now runs Cleantech Industry Resources, the company he founded after running the US arm of one of the world's largest renewable energy firms.Jigar and Jamie talk with Daniel about how he built one of the quietest, most efficient operations in clean energy, why he refuses to charge what the market would pay, what AI is doing to the people who used to do this work, and the boxing-themed fundraiser he runs every year for the industry.Along the way: how a Vermont team plus AI agents can deliver solar work for a tenth of what consulting firms charge. Why cheaper energy means more jobs, not fewer. And the new platform Daniel started to push back on what he refuses to call "misinformation."Links:Learn more about CIR: https://cleantechir.com/products Clean Tech Fact Check: https://cleantechfactcheck.org/factcheckSubmit a question to Ask Jigar: ⁠https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar⁠S2G Investments: ⁠https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-order Octopus Energy: ⁠https://octopusenergy.com/faas⁠

Kathy Castor has represented Tampa in Congress for 20 years — four of them chairing the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the policy engine behind the Inflation Reduction Act. Now Florida's new congressional map has carved her district into five pieces, turning a seat Democrats won by 12 into one Trump carried by 11.Jigar and Jamie talk with the congresswoman about why the Sunshine State gets 75% of its electricity from gas, the Thriving Economy Project — the next climate bill, drafted before Democrats have the votes to pass it, with 1,200 policy proposals already in — and where permitting reform could move with Trump still in the White House.Along the way: the congressman who entered a battery into the committee record, electric bills burned in a garbage can, and why MacDill Air Force Base relocates every time a storm approaches.Plus, Ask Jigar: where one person's effort actually counts, whether AI changes the value of a college degree, the case for 50 climate tech IPOs, and which states pay you for the battery in your EV.Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

Brazil: 14% returns. South Africa: 9.8%. United States: 7.1%. That's not a typo. Mike Silvestrini has deployed $476 million in solar projects overseas and at home. The US is his riskiest market.Silvestrini is the co-founder of Energea — a platform that lets anyone invest directly in real solar projects, not solar stocks, for as little as $100. Jigar and Jamie talk with Mike about where the capital is missing, why the returns are where they are, and what it actually means when electricity arrives somewhere it's never been before.Along the way: why Mike has been skeptical about batteries for 20 years and still is. How he first heard of Jigar. 250,000 homes in Colombia with no electricity. And why he had to start quacking more like a duck to attract the right investors — and whether it cost him.Learn more about Energea here: https://www.energea.com?utm_campaign=45660715-Energy%20Empire%20Podcast%202026&utm_source=energyempirepodcast&utm_medium=podcastSubmit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

Electric utilities are on track to spend $1.4 trillion on the power grid by 2030. Hyperscalers keep asking for gigawatt-scale data centers. Nobody is required to show the math.Katherine Blunt covered PG&E's bankruptcy and the Camp Fire for The Wall Street Journal and wrote California Burning, the book PG&E CEO Patti Poppe made mandatory reading for all her employees when she took over. Now, Blunt covers Alphabet, where she is watching the AI buildout collide with the same regulatory machinery that produced PG&E.Jigar and Katherine get into PJM's white paper conceding the market needs to be redesigned, what Google figured out in its Xcel Minnesota deal that other hyperscalers haven't, and what trust looks like when utilities ask for a record-setting decade of spending.Plus: the one thing Katherine would mandate if she could — and it isn't interruptible service.Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

Solar on the roof. Battery in the garage. You can run your house yourself now. The question is what that does to the grid we all share.This week on Ask Jigar: what local clean-energy leaders should do now that the feds have pulled back. Whether virtual power plants will hurt utility valuations. Why nuclear supporters should love cheap battery storage. And whether mass defection from the California grid is real — or if NEM 3.0 already changed the math.Four questions. One answer: use the grid we already paid for.Submit your question: octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar

California built the one of the cleanest grids in the country and wholesale prices have never been lower — but utility bills keep going up. One reason: utilities make more money by spending more. California State Senator Josh Becker is writing the bills to change that. Before politics, Becker was in venture capital — he seeded Opower and worked on EPA's first Clean Air Marketplace Conference in 1992. Now he runs much of California's energy policy from Sacramento.Jigar and Arnab Pal (in for Jamie) talk with Becker about tying utility executive bonuses to keeping rates down, the metrics regulators should use to measure utility performance, why your home battery should count toward grid reliability, and how to use the grid we've already paid for before building more.Along the way: why the grid is like a Walmart parking lot built for Christmas Eve, the plan to take wildfire costs off your electricity bill, and Becker's blunt verdict that "hope is not a strategy."Plus: listener questions on virtual power plants, nuclear, and what happens when everyone goes off the grid — in this week's Ask Jigar.Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

A lot of people are walking around with energy questions and not getting straight answers. That changes now.Ask Jigar is a new weekly segment on Energy Empire. Three listener questions per episode. Jigar answers them on air. No hedging, no "it depends" non-answers.Should you sign a long-term electricity contract? Is your utility actually serious about clean energy? What separates the startups that make it from the ones that don't? Send it in.In this teaser: where do you actually start when you want to electrify your life?Submit your question: octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarAsk Jigar is supported by Octopus Energy.

The backlash against data centers is, in many places, a backlash against rising electricity bills. Nick Chaset, CEO of Octopus Energy US, thinks the solution isn’t to stop building — it’s to change who benefits.In this episode, Nick explains why the way data centers currently connect to the American power system puts the costs on nearby communities while sending the upside elsewhere. He breaks down how Octopus Energy flipped that dynamic in the UK by giving communities a direct financial stake in local wind energy through discounted bills — and how the same model could reshape the data center boom now unfolding across the US.Jigar, Jamie, and Nick get into what virtual power plants actually are, why networks of home batteries, EVs, and smart thermostats can function like power plants, why Texas is moving faster than California on clean energy deployment, and what it would take for homeowners in places like Loudoun County to get paid instead of squeezed. Plus: whether 160 gigawatts of virtual power plant capacity by 2030 is realistic — or wildly optimistic.Links:Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: ⁠https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-order⁠Octopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas