Energy Empire

After an accident totaled his Tesla, Philippe Dunsky forgot to remove it from the app. A year later, his 18-year-old daughter texted him: "Papa, what is Georgia doing in Ukraine?"Their old car — named Georgia — was charging in a rural town in western Ukraine near the Polish border. Someone had salvaged the 90-kilowatt-hour battery and repurposed it to keep homes warm and lights on during Russian bombardments of the electricity grid.In this episode, Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan sit down with Philippe Dunsky — one of Canada's top energy consultants — to follow Georgia's journey and ask a bigger question: why are millions of EV batteries sitting unused in American driveways when they could be powering homes, backing up the grid, and saving consumers money?They dig into why utilities would rather spend $50 million upgrading a substation than give you $10,000 in free equipment, why bi-directional chargers are only now reaching the U.S. when other countries have had them for years, and what it would take to turn a million EVs a year into the largest distributed power plant the country has ever seen.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at energyempire.fm.

Electric semi trucks that go 500 miles on a single charge and fully recharge in 30 minutes. That's what the Tesla Semi is promising — and trucking companies are already placing orders by the hundreds.In this episode, Jigar and Jamie sit down with Adam Browning to dig into what's actually happening with zero-emission freight — what he saw inside the massive Tesla Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada last week, why legacy truck manufacturers are falling behind, and what it takes to get real electric trucks on real roads today. They also tackle the hard questions: What does this mean for refrigerated trucks? What are the real economics? And how does a trucker who averages seven to eight miles per gallon on diesel feel about all of this?Jamie brings questions directly from her dad — a working long-haul trucker — and the answers might surprise him.Adam is a leader at Forum Mobility, the company building charging depots for electric freight. He previously founded Vote Solar, where he helped grow the U.S. solar industry over two decades. He sees the same playbook unfolding in trucking — and he's betting his trucker hat on it.Learn more at energyempire.fm

Trump promised to cut energy bills in half. Instead, he started a war that pushed oil past $100 a barrel, shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and sent every oil-importing nation on earth scrambling for solar panels and batteries — mostly from China.James Gutman returns to Energy Empire with a provocative argument: Donald Trump has inadvertently done more to accelerate the global clean energy transition than any climate policy in history. Not because he wanted to — but because when you blow up the global energy order, countries don't wait around. They build something new.Jigar Shah, Jamie Nolan, and Gutman trace how the Iran war is rewiring global energy in real time — from Pakistan's 41 GW solar boom to China's $250 billion clean energy Marshall Plan to the fertilizer plants shutting down because of gas prices.

Your utility bill keeps going up. But the problem isn't that we need to build more — it's that we're barely using what we already have. Arnab Pal, founder of clean energy advocacy group Deploy Action and co-author of a new grid affordability playbook, joins Jigar and Jamie to make the case for grid utilization: the unglamorous, cost-cutting strategy that governors, regulators, and utilities are finally starting to pay attention to.They get into why blue states like California and New York have struggled to actually build clean energy despite ambitious goals, what virtual power plants can do for your electricity bill, and why the debate over whether to say the word "climate" is more complicated than either side admits.Read the white paper: Grid Growth, Utilization, and Affordability — A Playbook for States https://www.deploy-action.org/post/grid-growth-utilization-and-affordability-a-playbook-for-states

The US bombed Iran on Saturday. We threw out our planned episode and called James Gutman, Strategist & co-author of The New Joule Order at the Carlyle Group, to make sense of what comes next. James explains why the US has no incentive to protect global energy supply chains, how Venezuela and Iran are reshaping China's energy calculus, and why every oil-importing nation on earth is now rethinking its energy strategy. Plus, Jigar and Jamie break down what this means for American consumers — from gas prices to natural gas bills — and why the case for solar, batteries, and electrification just got a whole lot stronger.

Tim Hade, Air Force veteran and founder of Scale Microgrids, joins Jigar and Jamie to make the case that the rush to build off-grid data centers is solving the wrong problem. With 56 gigawatts of co-located data centers in the pipeline, Tim explains why most won't get built — and why the real answer is batteries, load flexibility, and making the grid work for data centers, not around them. From his journey building microgrids for cannabis facilities to pioneering distributed energy solutions, Tim breaks down the power electronics challenges that most developers are ignoring, why 10,000 batteries beat one giant power plant, and how communities can actually benefit from the data center boom instead of getting trampled by it.Don't miss Tim Hade's new Substack and his must-read companion piece to this episode: "The Fastest Way to Ramp Compute Isn't a Power Plant Next to Every Data Center" — https://timhade.substack.com/p/the-fastest-way-to-ramp-compute-isntEnergy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

Oil shocks once defined the global economy. But even as conflict returns to major energy regions, prices remain relatively stable.In this episode, Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan speak with Kevin Book about how electrification, energy efficiency, and avoided oil demand are reshaping global markets — and what it means for energy security in a world less dependent on the barrel. Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

Abby Hopper spent nearly a decade as CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), representing one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S. economy at the center of Washington’s biggest political fights. In this episode of Energy Empire, she joins Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan to talk about what it’s really like to lead solar through culture wars, trade battles, and rising scrutiny from policymakers — even as it becomes the dominant source of new electricity.They discuss the reputational risks facing rooftop solar, why the industry still struggles to build political power, and what the next CEO of SEIA will need to do differently as energy demand surges and projects stall.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

Dean Solon went from carrying his dad’s HVAC toolbox as a kid to building Shoals—and becoming one of solar’s rare self-made billionaires. Dean breaks down how he thinks, how he sells, and why he’s allergic to corporate nonsense. We talk tariffs, solar factories, microgrids, Disney, and the hard truth about what it takes to make clean energy in the U.S. without getting crushed.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

He’s helped finance billions in clean energy and served as one of the U.S. government’s top energy officials—but Jigar Shah rarely talks about himself. In this episode, Phil Radford, CEO of Consumer Reports and Jigar's best friend, joins to change that. Jigar shares the personal story behind SunEdison, the early days of third-party solar finance, and the setbacks that came with building companies in a then-nascent industry.From watching his hometown lose major employers to putting SunEdison’s first projects on his own credit card, Jigar reflects on the early risks, personal losses, and unlikely breaks that shaped his path from solar entrepreneur to public servant. It’s an inside look at the experiences—and people—that influenced a career spent helping scale clean energy worldwide.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

Across the United States, clean energy now makes up more than 90% of new electricity added to the grid — not because of politics or ideology, but because these technologies simply work better. They’re cheaper to build, faster to deploy, and easier to scale than anything that came before.The technology is ready. Now the race is on to build it…everywhere.Energy Empire is a podcast about the people and ideas driving this transformation. We explore how abundant, affordable energy is reshaping the global economy, creating new industries, and unlocking what may be the greatest wealth-creation opportunity of our generation.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

A once-in-a-generation shift is underway in how the world is powered.Across the United States, clean energy now makes up more than 90% of new electricity added to the grid — not because of politics or ideology, but because these technologies simply work better. They’re cheaper to build, faster to deploy, and easier to scale than anything that came before.The technology is ready. Now the race is on to build it…everywhere.Energy Empire is a podcast about the people and ideas driving this transformation. We explore how abundant, affordable energy is reshaping the global economy, creating new industries, and unlocking what may be the greatest wealth-creation opportunity of our generation.Hosted by Jigar Shah — TIME100 honoree, serial entrepreneur, investor, and former U.S. Department of Energy leader — the show pulls back the curtain on the decisions, innovations, and power struggles shaping the future of energy.Whether you’re curious about where the economy is headed, how energy affects your daily life, or who’s really building the future behind the scenes, Energy Empire is your guide to what comes next.Listen to this teaser episode to hear what Energy Empire is all about—and where the show is headed.Learn more at energyempire.fmEnergy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm