Open Circuit

Everyone has a strong opinion on energy right now. If you’ve followed energy for a while, none of this is new. There have always been strong opinions — renewables versus fossil fuels, subsidies versus markets, activists versus infrastructure. But the intensity feels different right now.

People are arguing about everything: the speed of the transition, how to fix broken electricity markets, whether renewables raise or lower power prices, whether AI data centers are about to break the grid.

So who’s actually right?

This week, JP Morgan’s Michael Cembalest joins the show to weigh in on some of the top fights in energy. Michael is the chairman of market and investment strategy at JP Morgan Asset and Wealth Management. He writes the “Eye on the Market” newsletter, and every year he publishes a deep dive on energy market trends. This year’s report is called “Fighting Words.”

We talk with Michael about the fallout from the war with Iran and why the global economy may absorb it differently than past crises. We also dig into gas markets, electricity prices, data centers, CCS, green hydrogen, and sustainable aviation fuels — and what they all reveal about the reality of today’s energy system.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Anne Bailey, Sean Marquand, and Stephen Lacey.

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Ready to accelerate your career in clean energy? Yale’s Financing and Deploying Clean Energy Certificate is a fully online, 10-month program built for working professionals. It delivers real-world skills in clean energy policy, technology, project finance, and innovation — all in just five hours a week. Enroll here and use the discount code OpenCircuit26 on your application to save $500 on tuition. Applications close April 20, 2026.

Explore the new era of AI innovation in the fifth season of Where the Internet Lives, an award-winning podcast from Google and Latitude Studios. Follow and listen to Where the Internet Lives on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.Join Latitude Media on April 13-14, in San Francisco for Transition-AI 2026, a two-day, in-person conference on the digital and energy infrastructure buildout needed to support AI load growth. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code PODS10. ⁠Register today here⁠!

President Trump’s war with Iran has rattled global energy markets. Oil prices have surged, LNG markets are tightening, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint that carries roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply — has been severely disrupted.

Tankers are stalled, shipping costs are soaring, and energy markets are bracing for one of the largest oil supply disruptions in history.

The result: higher fuel prices, rising electricity costs, and a reminder of how vulnerable modern economies still are to fossil-fuel geopolitics.

This week, we look at the wide-ranging impacts of the shock, from global oil and LNG markets to electricity prices and grid security. We’ll also ask the question: will this accelerate the shift toward clean, distributed energy or just push countries toward more coal? Or both?

That leads us to a big idea that is getting a lot of attention: the “bring your own distributed capacity” model where large electricity customers help unlock grid headroom through demand response, efficiency, batteries, and other distributed resources.

Guest co-host Julia Hamm joins us to talk about how the concept works, why it’s gaining traction among utilities and hyperscalers, and the pathway for distributed capacity to become a real solution to the grid’s growing constraints.

Want to watch this episode? Subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

Ready to accelerate your career in clean energy? Yale’s Financing and Deploying Clean Energy Certificate is a fully online, 10-month program built for working professionals. It delivers real-world skills in clean energy policy, technology, project finance, and innovation — all in just five hours a week. Enroll here and use the discount code OpenCircuit26 on your application to save $500 on tuition. Applications close April 20, 2026.

Explore the new era of AI innovation in the fifth season of Where the Internet Lives, an award-winning podcast from Google and Latitude Studios. Follow and listen to Where the Internet Lives on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Join Latitude Media on April 13-14, in San Francisco for Transition-AI 2026, a two-day, in-person conference on the digital and energy infrastructure buildout needed to support AI load growth. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code PODS10. ⁠Register today here⁠!

The politics of AI and electricity came to the White House this week.

On Wednesday, the biggest tech companies in the world — Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle — gathered in Washington to sign what the administration is calling a “ratepayer protection pledge.” The promise: data centers will pay for their own power and grid integration costs.

But is anything actually changing? Or is it just political theater?

This week, we’ll look at the politics and intention of the announcement, along with some real-world models emerging for powering the AI economy.

In Minnesota, Google is pulling together a package of renewables, long-duration storage, and distributed batteries for a planned data center. 

In Mississippi, xAI continues to build unpermitted gas engines and explicitly flouting air quality regulations.

And the Energy Department is also backing a grid modernization project that includes gas, nuclear, batteries, hydropower, and transmission upgrades. 

Three models. Three very different bets on what the future of AI power looks like. Which one wins out? And more importantly, who pays?

Want to watch this episode? Subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

Ready to accelerate your career in clean energy? Yale’s Financing and Deploying Clean Energy Certificate is a fully online, 10-month program built for working professionals. It delivers real-world skills in clean energy policy, technology, project finance, and innovation — all in just five hours a week. Enroll here and use the discount code OpenCircuit26 on your application to save $500 on tuition. Applications close April 20, 2026.

Explore the new era of AI innovation in the fifth season of Where the Internet Lives, an award-winning podcast from Google and Latitude Studios. Follow and listen to Where the Internet Lives on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Join Latitude Media on April 13-14, in San Francisco for Transition-AI 2026, a two-day, in-person conference on the digital and energy infrastructure buildout needed to support AI load growth. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code PODS10. ⁠Register today here⁠!

When President Trump kicked off an aggressive trade war, a lot of people predicted economic doom. But it didn’t happen.

We’re seeing something similar in clean energy right now with ever-shifting tariffs, half-written rules on foreign sourcing, and the weaponization of permitting. But capital hasn’t fled. In fact, it increased last year. So what is happening here?

According to new market intelligence from the clean energy finance platform Crux, project finance, construction lending, and bridge lending all grew at a modest rate – with renewable electricity and batteries accounting for 80% of activity.

This week, we’re going to take a look at where capital is leaning in, where it’s pulling back, and how new changes to tariffs and foreign sourcing rules will influence the market. 

And then we’ll turn to solar and batteries, which are weathering the storm of uncertainty, but still facing plenty of turbulence. What’s driving that resilience?

Want to watch this episode? Subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

Ready to accelerate your career in clean energy? Yale’s Financing and Deploying Clean Energy Certificate is a fully online, 10-month program built for working professionals. It delivers real-world skills in clean energy policy, technology, project finance, and innovation — all in just five hours a week. Enroll here and use the discount code OpenCircuit26 on your application to save $500 on tuition. Applications close April 20, 2026.

Explore the new era of AI innovation in the fifth season of Where the Internet Lives, an award-winning podcast from Google and Latitude Studios. Follow and listen to Where the Internet Lives on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Join Latitude Media on April 13-14, in San Francisco for Transition-AI 2026, a two-day, in-person conference on the digital and energy infrastructure buildout needed to support AI load growth. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code PODS10. ⁠Register today here⁠!

This week, we’re featuring an episode of The Green Blueprint. 

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems.

Cindy and her team at Sage Geosystems are developing geothermal technology that could revolutionize energy storage. Instead of pumping water up a mountain, they pump it deep into the earth, providing cost-effective, long-term storage for intermittent renewable sources. 

They’re piloting this technology at a new commercial facility in partnership with  San Miguel Electric Cooperative, a rural Texas electric cooperative that is transitioning from coal to solar and battery storage thanks to a USDA grant. 

Lara and Cindy talk about Sage’s groundbreaking new technology, its first commercial facility, and upcoming partnerships with geothermal giant Ormat Technologies. 

If you are looking for more Open Circuit episodes to consume, subscribe to Latitude’s YouTube page. 

Explore the new era of AI innovation in the fifth season of Where the Internet Lives, an award-winning podcast from Google and Latitude Studios. Follow and listen to Where the Internet Lives on ⁠Apple⁠, ⁠Spotify⁠, ⁠Google⁠, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ready to accelerate your career in clean energy? Yale’s Financing and Deploying Clean Energy Certificate is a fully online, 10-month program built for working professionals. It delivers real-world skills in clean energy policy, technology, project finance, and innovation — all in just five hours a week. Enroll here and use the discount code OpenCircuit26 on your application to save $500 on tuition. Applications close April 20, 2026.

Join Latitude Media on April 13-14, in San Francisco for Transition-AI 2026, a two-day, in-person conference on the digital and energy infrastructure buildout needed to support AI load growth. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code PODS10. ⁠Register today here⁠!