Recorded 21st June. Lucy joins from a sweltering London, while Charlotte records from Lake Tahoe after racing the Broken Arrow Skyrace with The North Face team. We cover three stories spanning UK energy politics, FERC 2222, and rare-earth supply chains: Andy Burnham, Labour and the Future of UK Energy PolicyLucy looks at Andy Burnham’s election to Parliament in Makerfield and what it could mean for the future direction of Labour’s energy and infrastructure agenda. The discussion covers: why Burnham’s victory is being viewed as more than a routine by-electionwhat a more devolved approach to energy policy could meanthe debate around public ownership, public control and essential infrastructurewhether nationalisation would reduce energy bills, or whether market design is the bigger issuehow locational pricing and planning reform could affect where clean energy gets builtthe trade-off between local decision-making and a national energy strategywhy affordability may become more politically important than net-zero targetsFERC 2222, Data Centres and Virtual Power PlantsCharlotte turns to the US, where FERC has ordered six major grid operators to explain whether data-centre interconnection costs are being shifted onto existing electricity customers. The discussion covers: how FERC Order 2222 opened wholesale electricity markets to aggregated DERs, including batteries, EVs, rooftop solar and flexible loadswhy the debate has intensified as hyperscale AI campuses seek hundreds of megawatts to gigawatts of new power demandwhy capacity is becoming one of the most valuable resources in the electricity systemhow 10,000 residential batteries can form a virtual power plant, while 100,000 batteries could provide roughly 1–1.5 GW of dispatchable capacityhow VPPs can unlock value from existing infrastructure rather than waiting years for new transmission and substationswhy capacity payments, demand response and ancillary services are creating new revenue streams for distributed assetshow community batteries and resilience hubs could provide backup power during outages while supporting grid reliabilityPhoenix Tailings and Rare-Earth Supply ChainsCharlotte discusses Phoenix Tailings, the US rare-earth processing company that secured $500 million of financing from the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital. The discussion covers: how rare-earth magnets underpin EVs, wind turbines, robotics, defence systems, data centres and industrial automationwhy China’s dominance of refining and magnet production has become a strategic concernthe difference between mining rare earths and processing them into usable oxides, metals and magnetshow Phoenix Tailings uses mine tailings, industrial waste streams and secondary feedstockswhy rare-earth separation is one of the most technically challenging parts of the supply chainhow advanced separation chemistry and electrochemical processing could reduce waste, emissions and reagent usethe key scale-up challenges around yield, recovery, reliability, offtake and commercial executionAcross the episode, the common theme is infrastructure: who pays for it, who controls it, and how governments, markets and technology shape the systems needed for the energy transition.
