Open Circuit

With electricity now the limiting factor in the race to build superintelligence, the tech industry's response has been very Silicon Valley: move fast, break things, and relentlessly scale.

The result? An overtaxed grid, a wave of community pushback, and an obsession with jet engines, ship turbines, and small modular reactors that don’t solve today’s problems.

In this live episode, recorded at the Transition-AI conference in San Francisco, we stress test three Silicon Valley mantras against the reality of what's happening to the grid. 

First, “move fast and break things”: data center bans are spreading, communities are organizing, and the backlash is bipartisan. Is it too late to rebuild trust?

Then, “first principles” thinking: data centers are going off-grid, jet engines are being bolted to trailers, and the grid is being treated as a hurdle to avoid. Why is this approach shortsighted?

Finally, “10x better, not 10% better”: every hyperscaler has a moonshot, but very few have planning cycles that extend past three years. So are we missing a critical window to get creative?

We’ll close with some audience ideas for creative solutions to the AI energy bottleneck.

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

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Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.

For a long time, natural gas was considered a bridge fuel. Even the gas industry called it a bridge, working hand in hand with environmental groups to push coal off the grid. 

Then came the pushback over methane leaks, air quality in homes, and residential gas connections. The industry got so rattled it started hiring influencers to win back public opinion.

Well, all that has changed radically. Who needs influencers when you have the tech companies who run the platforms?

This month, Meta announced it would fund 10 natural gas power plants for a single AI campus in Louisiana totaling 7.5 gigawatts. Microsoft, Google, and Crusoe are all investing in gigawatts of new gas capacity. Utilities and independent power producers have tens of gigawatts more in their development pipelines. 

Suddenly, this once-called bridge fuel is suddenly looking like a four-lane highway.

This week, we dig into what's behind all these gas deals, what they mean for the power mix and emissions targets, and what an off-ramp could look like. We’ll look at the internal logic of the hyperscalers, the possible impacts on rates, and how the turbine crunch may impact development.

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

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

Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.

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!

America’s grid problems are often framed as physical constraints: equipment shortages, interconnection backlogs, and a lack of powered land.

But are we missing an opportunity to bring bigger ideas to the table as we reindustrialize and electrify the economy?

This week, Jane Flegal, a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute, joins the show to talk about why our biggest constraint is an inability to plan, coordinate, and build at the scale this moment demands.

On the left, there’s a growing push to limit demand through data center moratoriums and price controls. On the right, there’s a lot of talk about ratepayer protections and off-grid data centers without much thought to big-picture system planning.

We don’t have a system that can align private capital, public priorities, and long-term infrastructure needs. So what would real coordination look like?

We’ll talk about Jane’s new proposal seizing the data center buildout to support a grid infrastructure fund. We’ll talk about why the current debate about “utilization vs expansion” misses the point, and what it would take to coordinate a data center buildout for public benefit.

Then, we’ll turn specifically to green groups. After spending years playing up electrification, why is the climate movement struggling to bring big deals to the table? And what does it mean to build durable political coalitions around climate?

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

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

Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.

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!

For years, demand-side programs like energy efficiency and demand response were treated as compliance, not real resources. 

Now, that’s changing.

As electricity demand surges, utilities are facing a new reality: they can’t build infrastructure fast enough or affordably enough. So they’re starting to look in a different place for capacity: inside homes and businesses.

In this episode, Stephen Lacey speaks with Hannah Bascom, chief growth officer at Uplight, about the rise of the “demand stack” — a framework for combining efficiency, dynamic pricing, and demand response into a coordinated resource for the grid.

They also explore a new case study from Evergy, developed with the Brattle Group, which shows how integrating demand-side strategies can significantly expand peak reduction through better enrollment, forecasting, and customer engagement.

Hannah traces how the industry evolved from compliance-driven efficiency programs to a world where distributed energy resources can deliver real, planning-grade capacity. And she explains why utilities are starting to take these resources more seriously as pressure on the grid intensifies.

Learn more about how Uplight helps utilities unlock flexibility from distributed energy resources.

We’re entering an electricity supercycle that is reshaping how power gets built, where it gets built, and who controls it.

Across the U.S., developers are scrambling to lock up land with access to electricity. And the century-old grid is being pushed in ways it wasn’t designed for. It’s also sparking a new debate about how exactly to modernize the grid.

For all the talk of capacity scarcity, the system sits idle for much of the time. A new report from The Brattle Group suggests that better utilization of the existing system could unlock 100 gigawatts of capacity, while saving ratepayers tens of billions of dollars.

But some are skeptical, saying the focus on utilization and distributed resources isn’t ambitious enough, and doesn’t solve the right problems.

So, do we build our way out of this moment with more steel in the ground? Or do we use what we already have more efficiently and more flexibly?

This week, Brian Janous of Cloverleaf Infrastructure joins the show to unpack the debate over grid utilization vs grid expansion.

Plus, we do a vibes check on the most popular narratives in energy right now — from the revival of coal, to the promise of nuclear, to America’s ability to build.

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

Read our new white paper from Latitude Intelligence analyzing data center tariffs.

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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!