Energy Empire

In the first half of this year, 86% of U.S. venture money went to AI. Climate venture funds have raised less than $1 billion, down from more than $10 billion in 2021.

This week’s guest, Andrew Beebe, is more optimistic than those numbers suggest. The generalist funds that piled into climate a few years ago drove up the price of startups, and now they’ve left. The investors and founders still here understand the market, and he thinks that makes this one of the best times yet to invest.

Andrew is a managing director at Obvious Ventures, which Twitter co-founder Ev Williams helped start in 2014. The firm has raised more than $1.3 billion across five main funds. Before joining, Andrew spent more than a decade in solar: his team built the array at Google’s headquarters, and he went on to become chief commercial officer at Suntech, then the world’s largest solar manufacturer.

In this episode:

Andrew’s don’t-go-there list: battery chemistry, fusion, hydrogen, and sustainable aviation fuel

Container ships that could cross the Pacific on battery alone, and how Maersk changed its mind

Why a $200 million business is too small for a venture fund like Obvious

What Andrew would have told Sheldon Kimber about Google’s offer for Intersect

Solar robots that take a four-person crew from 200 panels a day to 900

The board that told Andrew he was doing great when he asked to be replaced as CEO

Links
Our website: https://www.energyempire.fm
Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar
S2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/report-illusion-of-crowds
Octopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas
Our merch store: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/collection/all-products

About one in three homes and businesses in Australia have solar on the roof. The state governments there made it simple, with incentives, certified installers, and quick approvals. In the U.S., permits and inspections can add weeks or months before a system is switched on.

This episode’s guest, Audrey Zibelman, has held top energy jobs in both countries. She chaired New York’s Public Service Commission, then ran Australia’s power grid as CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Now she’s back in New York as its energy czar, chairing the board of NYSERDA, the state energy authority. The job comes with some of the highest home electricity prices in the country and a freeze on the biggest new data centers.

In this episode:

The conservative prime minister who backed Australia’s grid plan with three words: “Electrons don’t vote”

How Australia got homeowners to trust a government website to find a solar installer

The adoption rate at which Australia’s government could stop pushing solar

What Texas figured out about grid connections while other states keep running pilots

Why utilities build the grid around its 25 worst hours a year

The case for data centers small enough to fit on the grid

Links:
Our website: https://www.energyempire.fm

Pew’s distributed energy playbook: https://www.pew.org/-/media/assets/2026/04/distributed-energy-can-unleash-the-resilient-affordable-grid-of-the-future.pdf

New York’s data center Community Investment Framework: https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-strongest-community-investment-framework-nation-protect-communities

Gov. Spanberger on Making Data Centers Pay Their Fair Share: https://www.energyempire.fm/episodes/gov-spanberger-on-making-data-centers-pay-their-fair-share-energy-on-the-ballot

Balcony Solar Costs $285. Why Is It Still So Hard to Get?: https://www.energyempire.fm/episodes/balcony-solar-costs-285-why-is-it-still-so-hard-to-get

Demand on ComEd’s grid barely moved from 2009 to 2022. Now the utility expects about 10 gigawatts of data centers to connect by around 2030, against an all-time peak of 23 gigawatts.

ComEd’s CEO, Gil Quiniones, wants to connect those data centers without raising everyone else’s bills. Rooftop solar and batteries, which many utilities have fought, are part of his plan.

Gil spent 16 years at Con Edison and more than a decade running the New York Power Authority. While he ran the Power Authority, he and Jigar worked on the state’s push to build the grid around energy that customers make and store at home.

In Chicago, he’s starting with the families who can least afford their bills. A pilot this winter will put solar and batteries in about 50 of their homes with no money down.

Gil thinks the setup could take about $70 off a monthly bill that typically runs $100 to $120.

Recorded live at Future Currence during Climate Week NYC.

In this episode:
How deposits and letters of credit shrank ComEd’s list of serious data center requests from about 18 gigawatts to 10

Why Jigar says a data center’s voluntary promise to power down in an emergency isn’t good enough

What ComEd has to prove to regulators before it can build a new substation

The 100 hours a year the grid is built for, and what using the rest of the year could do for bills

Whether other utilities need a new state law to do what ComEd is doing

Links:
Future Currence: https://future.currence.ai

ComEd: https://www.comed.com

The Untapped Grid (Brattle Group): https://www.brattle.com/the-untapped-grid/

Illinois Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act: https://gov-pritzker-newsroom.prezly.com/gov-pritzker-signs-historic-clean-and-reliable-grid-affordability-act

More from Energy Empire:
The Cheapest Grid Is the One We Already Paid For: https://www.energyempire.fm/episodes/the-cheapest-grid-is-the-one-we-already-paid-for

Inside California’s Plan to Fix the Utility Business Model with Senator Josh Becker: https://www.energyempire.fm/episodes/inside-california-s-plan-to-fix-the-utility-business-model-with-senator-josh-becker

NVIDIA on Whether AI Can Fix Its Own Power Problem: https://www.energyempire.fm/episodes/nvidia-on-whether-ai-can-fix-its-own-power-problem-recorded-live-at-climate-week-nyc

Our merch store: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/collection/all-products

Ukraine has learned how to keep a power grid running while someone is trying to destroy it. Every country that imports oil now needs the same lessons.

Last winter Russia blew up power plants and substations, and Kyiv lost power every day. The fixes were concrete bunkers that let a substation take a direct hit, home batteries, a nuclear fleet kept running, and new wind and solar built in the middle of a war.

The Iran war has since shown every oil importer the same vulnerability. Countries won’t go back to sleep after this, and the map of who buys energy from whom is being redrawn.

Tim McDonnell is Semafor’s climate and energy editor and writes Semafor Energy, its twice-weekly newsletter. He lives in Kyiv, where the sirens go off all the time and some nights are spent in the metro. Getting out to report starts with an overnight train to Poland, because Ukraine still has no working airport.

The interview was recorded at Climate Week NYC on September 21. The intro and outro were recorded before the energy ceasefire Trump announced on October 11.

In this episode:

The sirens, the metro at night, and why the air war over Kyiv is back to early-2022 levels

How a substation wrapped in concrete takes a cruise missile and keeps working

Why the free flow of oil through Hormuz that existed before February is probably gone for good

The case that oil importers won’t “go back to sleep” once the Iran war ends

Egypt’s six-month sprint into wind and solar after Iran sent gas prices up

The “tourists” arriving in cleantech funding rounds, and whether that’s a bubble

Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar

S2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/report-illusion-of-crowds

Octopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

Our merch store: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/collection/all-products

Northern Virginia is the biggest data center market in the world, and pushback is growing.

So are power bills. A typical Dominion bill is now about $180 a month, $20 more than a year ago.

Rising bills put energy on the ballot in Virginia’s 2025 governor’s race. Abigail Spanberger won it by 15 points, and now she wants data centers to pay for the grid built to serve them.

Recorded live at the Virginia Clean Energy Summit in Richmond for Energy on the Ballot, our series on energy and the midterms.

In this episode:
The breakfast in Norton, Virginia, where nearly everyone in the room wanted to talk about their power bill

Why Virginia’s new energy plan puts a price on asthma and rising seas

A proposal to make new data centers in Virginia face a local vote

How everyone’s bill changes when data centers choose batteries over gas generators

Virginia’s first-of-its-kind tax on data center electricity, and the case for the industry’s sales tax break

What candidates should run on this November, and why state and federal races need different answers

Links:
https://energy.virginia.gov/connect/
www.energyempire.fm