Energy Gang

As federal support for climate action in the US is cut back, a difficult question is coming into focus: what happens to clean-energy projects that still make economic sense, but no longer have Washington behind them? For low-income communities in particular, this is not just a policy story. It is about electricity bills, resilience during storms and heatwaves, access to financing, and whether practical projects such as solar, storage, and efficiency upgrades can still get built.
Host Ed Crooks is joined by Amir Kirkwood, Chief Executive of the Justice Climate Fund, and Melanie Allen, Chief Executive of the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice. Together, they explain how a network of community lenders, philanthropies, green banks and local partners is trying to keep momentum alive even as federal climate funding is frozen, litigated or wound back.
A central theme of the conversation is that the real constraint is not just ideology or even demand for clean energy, but the structure of finance. Amir argues that many community projects do not need breakthrough technology so much as access to affordable capital and better risk sharing. His case is that catalytic tools such as credit enhancements, loan-loss reserves and blended capital can still unlock much larger pools of private investment, even if they cannot fully replace the scale of federal support that the Inflation Reduction Act was meant to provide.
Melanie brings that argument down to ground level with examples of what those projects look like in practice. In Texas, local “hub homes” equipped with solar panels and batteries are giving neighbourhoods places to charge phones, run medical devices and stay cool during outages. In North Carolina, a stalled solar project for a wastewater facility was revived through a mix of local partnership and creative financing. In Georgia, a church cut its monthly energy bill sharply after installing solar, storage and EV charging. Across those examples, the point is the same: in many communities, clean energy is advancing less as an abstract climate commitment than as a practical answer to affordability, reliability and local resilience.
That tension between climate ambition and kitchen-table economics runs through the entire discussion. Both guests argue that people move first for pocketbook reasons, and that the strongest case for these investments is often lower bills, stronger community institutions and better protection against system shocks. The politics may have changed in Washington, but the local need for cheaper, more reliable energy has not. In that sense, the conversation suggests that the next phase of US climate action may be driven less by federal grants and more by the ability to assemble credible local deals that solve several problems at once.
But Melanie and Amir are also clear-eyed about the limits of that approach. Philanthropy can be catalytic, not substitutive. Tax-credit changes, direct-pay deadlines and higher supply-chain costs are all making projects harder to close. The question, then, is whether this emerging blend of community finance and private capital can keep enough projects moving to prove the model at scale. What is at stake is not only the pace of decarbonisation, but whether the benefits of the energy transition will still reach the communities that need them most.
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Electricity markets are under renewed pressure. Surging demand forecasts from data centres and other large loads are colliding with anxiety over reliability, rising consumer bills, and the pace of new investment. In markets such as PJM and ERCOT, those tensions are turning an arcane debate about market design into a live political question: can competitive power markets still deliver affordable, reliable electricity in a period of rapid growth?

Host Ed Crooks and regular contributor Amy Myers Jaffe are joined by Stacey Doré, Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer and Executive Vice President for Public Affairs at Vistra, one of the largest competitive power producers and retailers in the US. Drawing on Vistra’s growth from Texas utility successor to multi-state owner of gas, nuclear, coal, solar and battery assets, Stacey makes the case for competitive markets as the best way to drive efficient investment, innovation and customer value.

The discussion starts with a challenge to the dominant narrative around load growth. Stacey argues that some of the most eye-catching forecasts for new demand are overstated by speculative projects and duplicative queue requests, and that the grid already has enough existing generation to serve most near-term growth for the vast majority of hours in the year. In her view, the real bottleneck is not an absolute lack of power, but the failure to connect new load to the grid quickly enough, alongside delays in transmission, distribution and interconnection processes.

Are competitive markets sending the right signals to build what is needed next? Stacey says yes, pointing to rising capacity and energy prices in PJM, bilateral contracts with large customers, and a wave of announced investment in new and upgraded generation. She argues that the better near-term solution is not to force every new large load to wait for one-for-one new generation, but to connect customers faster, use co-location where possible, and rely on demand flexibility, backup generation and storage to manage the system’s few true peak-stress hours.

Amy pushes on the consumer side of the equation. Even if competition can work, who pays when prices rise, and are current cost-allocation rules fair to households? The conversation digs into the distinction between wholesale generation costs and the rapidly rising transmission and distribution portion of electricity bills, with Stacey arguing that getting more large loads onto the grid would help spread fixed system costs more broadly. Amy counters that cost allocation may be the first reform policymakers need to tackle if they want to protect residential customers while accommodating a new wave of industrial and data-centre demand.

What emerges is less a simple argument for or against deregulation than a sharper question about what the grid actually needs now: faster interconnection, better load forecasting, clearer price signals, and a more honest debate about who should bear system costs. Whether policymakers double down on competition, let regulated utilities build more rate-based generation, or rethink cost allocation altogether, the stakes are clear: keeping the grid reliable while bringing on new demand without pushing affordability further out of reach.
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AI is turning compute into a strategic resource, and the scramble to secure GPU capacity is starting to look a lot more like a commodity market than a traditional cloud-services business. As data-centre developers, lenders and energy companies try to price the next wave of AI demand, a new question is coming into focus: Can the industry build the kind of benchmark and hedging tools that already exist for oil, gas and power?
Host Ed Crooks is joined by Peter Keavey, Global Head of Energy and Environmental Products at CME Group, and Carmen Li, Founder and CEO of Silicon Data. Together, they explore the case for a futures market in GPU compute: a financial product designed to bring more transparency, liquidity and risk management to one of the fastest-growing corners of the AI economy.
Carmen explains how the market works today. Most users are not buying chips outright; they are renting access to GPU capacity by the hour, often through longer-term agreements with hyperscalers, neo-cloud providers and data-centre operators. That market is already large, global and increasingly active, but it remains fragmented and opaque, with prices varying by provider, chip type and contract structure, and much of the trading still happening through bilateral deals and requests for quotes.
Peter sets out the logic for moving from that over-the-counter world to an exchange-traded one. In his view, a GPU futures contract could do three things at once: reduce counterparty risk through central clearing, concentrate liquidity in a transparent order book, and create forward benchmark prices the wider market can use. The proposed product is financially settled against an index of spot prices, translating an hourly rental market into a standardised monthly contract that could eventually extend several years forward.
The bigger issue, though, is energy. Power is not the whole cost of GPU compute, but it is the most volatile variable input, which means a GPU hedge could eventually sit alongside gas and power hedges for data-centre operators, lenders and infrastructure investors. The discussion keeps returning to what that means for markets such as Texas and Virginia, where the AI build-out is already shaping decisions on generation, grid access and where capital should go next.
Both guests stress that this is still a young market, but already a volatile one. Rental rates have swung sharply as chip scarcity eases and then tightens again, while banks, traders and developers are trying to make long-dated decisions without a reliable forward curve. If this market develops the way Keavey and Li expect, GPU futures would not just serve traders: they could become an important signal for anyone trying to judge how durable the AI boom really is, and how much energy the system will need to support it.
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In the AI revolution, one of the critical constraints is how much additional electricity can be made available to power new data centers. And it is often argued that one of the key constraints on the growth of electricity supply is capacity in the equipment supply industry. The rate at which electricity supply can grow is determined in part by how fast the equipment industry can supply new turbines, transformers, switchgear and circuit breakers.
In this episode Roger Martella, Chief Corporate Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer at GE Vernova, one of the world’s largest suppliers of electrical equipment, joins the show to explain how the company is meeting the challenge of soaring demand. Roger talks to host Ed Crooks and regular contributor Melissa Lott, Partner for Energy at Microsoft, about his route from industrial Pennsylvania to the leadership team at GE, via the Environmental Protection Agency. And he explains why, when the old conglomerate GE broke up, he chose to go with the energy business. The company is driven by a sense of purpose, he says: bringing electricity to the world both raises living standards and supports decarbonization.
Electricity demand growth created by new data centers for AI is one driver for GE Vernova's rapidly growing order book, but not the only one. The company is also responding to other sources of growing demand around the world, including the need to strengthen energy security in Europe and to support economic growth and development in emerging Asia.
In the US, GE Vernova has announced $1.3 billion in investment and 1,800 new manufacturing jobs, to support expanded production of switchgear, circuit breakers and turbines. It plans to increase its turbine manufacturing capacity from 18 gigawatts a year to 30 gigawatts a year by 2030.
Roger rejects the idea that equipment supplies are the main bottleneck restricting electricity supply growth. Other issues, including permitting and grid interconnections, are more fundamental difficulties for project developers. If anyone has built a turbine stand, but doesn’t have a turbine to out on it, he says, he will find a turbine. Ed raises the issue of the industry's cyclicality. The gas turbine market has been through boom and bust in the past, and the uncertainty over the future of AI naturally raises the question of whether we are in another bubble today. Roger’s answer is that the company is looking at the range of needs that are driving electrification, not making a bet solely on AI.
As its production increases, GE Vernova needs to hire more workers. Roger, Ed and Melissa discuss the familiar consensus around skilled trades. Just about everyone agrees that America and other countries need more electricians, plumbers and welders to deloiver the build-out of infrastructure. But skills shortages persist. So what are the solutions that would actually increase the workforce in these sectors to meet demand? Are pay, job security, training and the status of industrial work being addressed in the right ways?
One of the more exciting technologies for meeting electricity demand in the 2030s and beyond is the new generation of nuclear plants using small modular reactors (SMRs). GE Vernova has a new nuclear plant using SMRs under construction at Darlington in Ontario, and is targeting commercial operation by 2030. Ed pushes on the key question: can SMRs move from a promising concept to a repeatable, cost-competitive business? Roger says the first project has to be a proof point. The nuclear business cannot be run as a hobby, he says. The lessons from the first-of-a-kind Darlington plant must be used to drive down costs for subsequent units.
The discussion also covers High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission and cutting-edge technologies for grid management, including uses for drones and AI. Roger ends with a message to policymakers: the missing ingredient is policy durability. If the industry is to invest enough to meet long-term needs, it has to have policy frameworks that survive political cycles, court challenges and changes of administration.

This episode of Energy Gang is brought to you by ENGIE, the smarter energy supplier. ENGIE doesn't just provide the power to run your business — they supply the energy to move it forward, with reliable, flexible solutions built for what's next. Learn more at engieresources.com.
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As the renewable energy and storage industries grow, and enter more hostile geographies, asset resilience is becoming an increasingly pressing concern. Developers, owners and lenders want to know how solar, storage and other facilities can increase their resilience to the growing risks of physical threats such as hailstorms and wildfires. The rush to add capacity to meet surging demand from new data centres is adding to the pressure, making calculations about the value of asset reliability increasingly complex.
In this special episode, host Ed Crooks speaks with Mike Perron, Renewable Energy Market Lead at FM, and Cassian Walker, Operations Vice President and Renewables Engineering Manager at FM, one of the world’s largest commercial property insurers. They explain how insurers are starting to build resilience into renewable project design far earlier in the development process, and why that has become a financing issue as much as a technical one.
For solar power, that means understanding the inherent physical risks such as hail, then deciding what combination of tracker systems, stowing technology and panels is right for the location. The same equipment that performs adequately in California or New Jersey can become a major liability in Texas or Arizona.
Cassian explains how modern trackers can tilt panels away from an incoming storm to turn a direct hit into a glancing blow. Mike contrasts a devastating nine-figure loss at one Texas site with a far smaller loss at another facility that successfully stowed. Those resilience strategies can work only if the system is designed for the local wind and hail conditions, and the performance of the equipment has been tested and verified.
From there, the conversation broadens to the economics. Insurance can account for a large share of a project’s operating costs, and lenders are asking harder questions about resilience before they finance new builds. FM’s case is that better engineering, better hazard modelling and earlier involvement from insurers and independent engineers can lower lifetime risk and improve financial performance, even if they raise up-front costs.
Today, renewable developers still often treat insurance as a late-stage procurement exercise, after key technology decisions have already been locked in. Mike and Cassian argue that that is changing, but the industry is still early in that learning curve. As renewables become more important to the power system, those questions will only get harder to avoid.

This episode of Energy Gang is sponsored by FM. As one of the world's leading commercial property insurers, FM combines engineering expertise, scientific research, and data-driven insights to help organizations understand, mitigate, and prevent loss before it occurs. From utility-scale solar and battery storage projects to thermal power generation, manufacturing operations, and other critical infrastructure, FM helps organizations build stronger, more resilient businesses.
To learn more about FM's engineering-based approach to resilience, visit FM.com. For additional insights on risk, resilience, and business continuity, subscribe to FM's Sound Policy podcast.
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