Open Circuit

Latitude Media
  • 5.0 (143)
  • NEWS COMMENTARY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

The energy transition, decoded. Every week, three industry veterans explore the tech breakthroughs, market shakeups, and policy shifts that are driving the biggest industrial transformation in history.

  1. 2D AGO

    Grab bag: the affordability crisis, a VPP tipping point, and solar’s moment

    This week, we’re doing something a little different: we’re turning to Jigar’s social media feeds and listener questions to guide our conversation on the latest news in clean energy. First, we tackle the affordability crisis. President Trump recently posted on Truth Social calling renewables "the scam of the century" and blaming them for rising prices. We look at how his policies are making the crisis worse, and why Trump now owns the problem. Then, we look at how VPPs are hitting a tipping point, explaining how companies in the space are now selling "pain medication" instead of "vitamin pills." We also look at some big stories in solar. New tax guidance is making utility-scale harder to finance, but it gives small systems under 1.5 MW a safe harbor. Could that unlock more commercial rooftop capacity? Plus, we look at Pakistan’s DIY solar revolution, and the barriers to $2/watt solar. Finally, we talk about building real political power. Jigar outlines an idea for creating a community trust for the clean energy industry that will strengthen local connections and increase the industry’s clout. Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

    1 hr

  2. AUG 20

    The Latitude stage: How AI changes our digital energy footprint

    We're witnessing a profound shift from discrete AI tools to always-on AI companions — systems that provide constant feedback, conversation, and support. Sound familiar? It's the 2013 movie "Her" becoming reality.  In this episode of Open Circuit, we have a conversation with MIT’s Vijay Gadepally from our Transition-AI conference about how the spread of artificial intelligence is reshaping our digital energy footprint.  As a senior scientist at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and CTO of cloud computing company Radium Cloud, Gadepally has an inside view on the energy intensity of reasoning models, AI agents, and chatbots. He details how simple tasks are now becoming energy-intensive computing events. Gadepally also explains how operations per watt have improved dramatically, why better software can dramatically reduce emissions, and what it will take for computing innovations to keep pace with our growing appetite for AI. Registration is now open for the Power Resilience Forum in Houston, Texas next January. Power Resilience Forum 2026 is the premier event on grid resiliency, bringing together leaders from across the power sector to address the new realities of planning and operating the grid in an era of extreme weather and wildfires. Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

    35 min

  3. AUG 13

    The Latitude stage: Solving the AI load growth puzzle

    In the last two quarters, capital spending on AI has blown past all U.S. consumer spending. Investments in AI infrastructure have already eclipsed the telecom and dot-com booms. The top tech companies are pouring so much money into computing power that they may be single-handedly propping up an economy wobbling under chaotic tariff policy. Gigawatts of new data center requests are flooding utility interconnection queues. And while the numbers are big, the uncertainty is even bigger. Which projects are real? Which are just phantom projects? And how do you plan a grid for a future where half of all new U.S. load could come from data centers by the end of the decade? In this episode, recorded live at Latitude Media’s Transition-AI conference in Boston, Stephen Lacey talks with two experts watching the boom from different angles: Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies; and Anuja Ratnayake, an emerging technologies executive at the Electric Power Research Institute.They break down the scale of the AI-driven demand surge, the challenges of forecasting in a speculative market, and the implications for utility planning. Registration is now open for the Power Resilience Forum in Houston, Texas next January. Power Resilience Forum 2026 is the premier event on grid resiliency, bringing together leaders from across the power sector to address the new realities of planning and operating the grid in an era of extreme weather and wildfires. Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

    39 min

  4. AUG 1

    Is America giving up on clean energy manufacturing?

    Over the last four years, the U.S. clean energy manufacturing sector saw a historic boom. Factory construction doubled, foreign firms opened production in dozens of states, and federal policy spurred over $150 billion in manufacturing plans. But a swirl of conflicting policies — from chaotic tariff threats to complex foreign sourcing rules — is freezing planned investments, spooking some manufacturers, and prompting some firms to halt growth plans. Core incentives like the 45X manufacturing tax credit remain intact. But new sourcing regulations are complicating those incentives. In this episode of Open Circuit, MJ Shiao, VP of supply chain and manufacturing at the American Clean Power Association, breaks down the recalibration now underway for companies making equipment in the U.S. We explore the rise and stall of the manufacturing boom, dig into ACP’s latest data on where facilities are being built, and unpack the cascading uncertainty created by new FEOC rules and tariffs. We also ask whether the U.S. can rebalance its industrial strategy to move beyond final assembly and build a more resilient, upstream supply chain.  Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

    1h 1m

  5. JUL 29

    The great divergence: Can the grid catch up to transportation innovation? [partner content]

    Why can your phone instantly reroute you around traffic, but your utility can't tell you when to charge your car for maximum savings? Why can Uber optimize thousands of drivers in real-time, while the electrical grid struggles to optimize distributed resources? Both transportation and electricity systems emerged during the Victorian era with remarkably similar infrastructure: central hubs connected by sprawling networks. Train stations and power plants. Main lines and transmission lines. Local roads and distribution networks. But over the next century and a half, these parallel systems took radically different paths. Transportation embraced real-time telemetry, dynamic pricing, and consumer-centric innovation. But electricity remained fundamentally unchanged — still moving electrons through the same basic infrastructure with minimal visibility into what's happening at the distribution level. Devrim Celal, chief flexibility and marketing officer at Kraken, has been studying this divergence. And he believes we're finally at a point where electricity systems can catch up. "We've just left the Victorian era and we've got a long way to go," says Celal. "But we're seeing incredible results that consumers are willing to participate." In this episode, produced in partnership with Kraken, Stephen Lacey talks with Devrim about why utilities are finally ready to embrace the same consumer-centric innovation that transformed transportation decades ago. The conversation reveals how historical innovation patterns in transportation offer a roadmap for electricity's next phase — and why the convergence of these systems through electric vehicles might finally force the grid into the modern era. This is a partner episode, brought to you by Kraken.  Kraken removes the outdated, siloed tech that's holding back most utilities. Their unified operating system streamlines and enhances operations, meaning happier teams and happier customers for a fraction of the cost. Join leading utilities across the globe and redefine the sector with Kraken. Go to kraken.tech to learn more.

    28 min

  6. JUL 25

    A post-OBBB market recalibration

    As America faces a surge in electricity demand, the federal government is working hard to slow the very resources needed to meet it. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” is expected to slash clean energy deployment by as much as 60% over the next decade — bringing back hard tax credit sunsets, introducing tight construction deadlines, and imposing strict foreign entity restrictions.  Meanwhile, a DOE reliability report warns of a 100-fold increase in blackout risk in high-renewables scenarios. And a new permitting order now puts decisions on fencing, road construction, and land grading under the direct authority of the Interior Secretary. It’s a moment of cognitive dissonance in Washington, as policymakers talk about building energy faster, while quietly dismantling the tools to do so. In this episode of Open Circuit, we’re joined by Costa Samaras, director of the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon and former White House climate and energy advisor, to make sense of the moment. We unpack the contradictions at the heart of the GOP’s energy agenda, explain why the post-IRA tax landscape is still favorable for some sectors, and explore how the politics of permitting could shape developer decisions for years to come. Later in the episode, we dive into the DOE's blackout modeling, and explain why the report’s assumptions are so misaligned with the on-the-ground reality. Finally, Costa lays out his vision for a Grid New Deal, explaining why AI fast lanes, public investment, and smarter grid interconnection rules are essential to meeting this demand surge with clean energy. Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Learn more about 38 North Solutions’ Policy Pulse, providing highly curated, actionable snapshots of the political developments shaping the clean tech landscape. Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

    1h 2m

  7. JUL 18

    What can ag tech learn from clean energy?

    The story of climate change is usually told through fossil fuels — pipelines, coal plants, oil companies. But there's another story that accounts for nearly a third of global emissions: agriculture. And we've barely begun to grapple with it. In this episode of Open Circuit, we're joined by Michael Grunwald, longtime journalist and author of the new book "We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate." Grunwald spent years investigating why agriculture lags decades behind energy in decarbonization, and what it would take to catch up. First, we tackle food-based fuels. Grunwald profiles researcher Tim Searchinger, who discovered that biofuels accounting ignored land use. While ethanol was hailed as a homegrown climate solution, it was actually worse than gasoline once you factored in the "carbon opportunity cost" of using land for fuel instead of food. Why did it take so long to recognize? This land use blindness persists today. Despite the science showing the climate impact of biofuels, the government is backing a sustainable aviation fuel program with tens of billions in new biofuel subsidies — including explicit language preventing regulators from considering land use impacts. Then, we tackle feel-good agricultural solutions like regenerative agriculture, vertical farms, and local food systems that may have ethical benefits, but often don’t have meaningful emissions impacts.  Finally, we ask what ag tech can learn from energy's scaling playbook: How do we deploy high-yield agriculture and synthetic biology solutions in a rapid, ethical way?  Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Learn more about 38 North Solutions’ Policy Pulse, providing highly curated, actionable snapshots of the political developments shaping the clean tech landscape. Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

    1h 3m

  8. JUL 14

    America’s building bottleneck

    America is choosing obstruction over abundance. While AI, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing require massive infrastructure investments, we're trapped in a permitting system designed for a different era — and a political system that rewards blocking over building. In this episode of Open Circuit, we're joined by Brian Deese, former director of the National Economic Council and current MIT innovation fellow, to unpack why America's building capacity has become our biggest competitive bottleneck.  Drawing from his Foreign Affairs piece, "Why America Struggles to Build," Deese explains why breaking down physical infrastructure constraints could drive the next wave of economic growth. Deese argues that 80% of project delays stem from state and local regulations, not federal policy. Using a "zero-based budgeting" approach to permitting, states could dramatically accelerate deployment of projects. Meanwhile, AI could slash the time and cost of environmental reviews from months to weeks, if regulators allow it. We also explore the outcome of the recent GOP’s tax and spending bill, and examine why the Inflation Reduction Act's messaging failed to create political durability. Deese argues that winning on infrastructure requires both economic arguments — jobs, wealth, and lower costs — and visceral arguments about strength, reliability, and energy security. As Deese explains, we're at a "unique economic moment" where AI, clean energy, and geopolitical fragmentation are converging to create unprecedented infrastructure demands. Can America overcome the politics of obstruction to build it? Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Learn more about 38 North Solutions’ Policy Pulse, providing highly curated, actionable snapshots of the political developments shaping the clean tech landscape. Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

    57 min
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The energy transition, decoded. Every week, three industry veterans explore the tech breakthroughs, market shakeups, and policy shifts that are driving the biggest industrial transformation in history.

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  • Creator
    Latitude Media
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    29
  • Copyright
    © Latitude Media
  • Show Website
    Open Circuit

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