Volts

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He helped Uruguay decarbonize. Can he help other countries do the same? Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

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Ramón Méndez Galain helped Uruguay decarbonize its grid (today it’s 98% fossil-free) while keeping the utility public and letting private capital foot the bill. Now he’s trying to export the same playbook across the global South. We talk through how Uruguay pulled it off — the hydro “battery” for wind & solar “baseload,” the cross-party political deal, the market redesign — and what actually transfers to countries without the same advantages. We also discuss why, seven years on, no other country has followed Uruguay’s path.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:09 – From particle physics to a nuclear proposal

05:46 – Taking the job as energy secretary

07:00 – The 2008 crisis: drought, expensive oil, blackouts

09:26 – Getting every party to sign the same plan

12:51 – Why climate was not the lead argument

15:42 – Attracting private capital without privatizing

20:22 – What a public utility made possible

23:06 – Planning a grid where wind and solar are the base load

29:26 – Thermal plants as insurance, and the last 2 percent

32:36 – EVs, smart meters, and building an electrostate

37:33 – Why bills fell less than generation costs

39:46 – What transfers to other countries

44:15 – Optimum curtailment, Colombia, and Haiti

50:51 – The political work, and the argument against the dominant narrative

56:36 – The Global South and the NDC as development catalyst

Can public EV chargers be as reliable as gas stations? Aug 14, 2026

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As the U.S. EV market slows and federal charging support recedes, IONNA, a fast-charging network backed by eight major automakers, is still expanding. On Volts, CEO Seth Cutler makes the case that public charging is entering a new phase focused on reliability and customer experience, but the economics remain difficult, with low utilization and demand charges squeezing margins. With roughly 1,300 bays live and a target of 30,000, IONNA is testing whether a multi-brand network can offer a Tesla-like charging experience while building a sustainable business.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction: can public EV charging be as reliable as a gas station?

02:30 – Public charging’s four phases, and IONNA’s phase-four bet

08:17 – IONNA’s origin story

09:55 – Scale, footprint & site strategy

11:52 – Rechargery @ vs. freestanding: the two site formats

18:45 – Can DC fast charging make money? Unit economics

21:29 – Demand charges & why fast charging is expensive

23:57 – Getting power: permitting, interconnection & utilities

29:18 – Site design, amenities & the monetization question

34:14 – Regional site customization: the gas station turned bakery

36:35 – The charging experience: apps & Plug&Charge

39:03 – Reliability strategy & metrics

42:47 – Headwinds: the EV market downturn & policy risk

46:54 – Business model, profitability & the IONITY comparison

50:09 – Geographic rollout: the chicken-and-egg problem

54:07 – Competitive position vs. Tesla

56:37 – Closing: vision, fears & timeline

Another bipartisan housing miracle, this time in Idaho Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Last year I did a pod on Montana’s surprising burst of bipartisan housing legislation. Turns out Idaho was watching. This year its legislature passed six housing bills of its own (two others failed). Republican state Sen. Ben Toews and Democratic state Rep. Megan Egbert join me to walk through what passed, what didn’t, and what they gave away to get it done — plus the property tax cap that quietly works against all of it, and why duplexes turned out to be the red line.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction and the Idaho housing package

02:43 – How each guest came to the housing issue

06:39 – Inside the interim housing study committee

09:05 – SB 1354, ADUs by right, and Dillon’s Rule

12:52 – The 5,000 to 10,000 compromise, and HOAs

15:03 – SB 1352 starter homes, manufactured homes, lot splits

16:28 – HB 706 and single-stair buildings

18:11 – The permitting shot clock and the 6-day rule

19:48 – Living with the compromises, and why counties were left out

22:54 – The two bills that died: duplexes and YIGBY

28:41 – HB 389, the property tax cap, and the growth undertow

34:41 – What the public understands about growth

37:23 – Regulatory reform on supply side vs. incentives for housing

43:59 – The February deadline and city resistance

48:52 – Horizontal vs. vertical density

56:03 – What comes next for the committee & Idaho housing

Grid cybersecurity: how big is the threat & what should we do about it? Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Could the US grid be brought down by Chinese hackers? To find out, I talked with Patrick Miller, who helped write the cybersecurity rules for the bulk power system and became the first person with federal authority to enforce them. We get into what's actually been hacked, why those "rogue devices" in Chinese inverters are less sinister than they sound, and why squirrels still do more damage than hackers.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:47 – What state utility commissioners get wrong about cyber risk

04:50 – Real attacks on the grid so far: Ukraine, Poland, and the US

06:57 – IT versus OT, and why grid devices are hard to protect

10:30 – The NERC CIP standards: scope, requirements, enforcement

17:40 – Distributed resources outside the CIP perimeter

20:54 – Dropping the threshold to 20 MVA, and federal jurisdiction

29:12 – Chinese inverters and the commodity board

36:09 – Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, and China's intent

39:26 – Data centers as a new attack surface

43:19 – The trade-off between security and speed

47:44 – Cyber-informed engineering and analog safeguards

54:05 – AI on offense and defense

1:02:21 – Squirrels, balloons, and physical threats

1:04:24 – CISA cuts, CIRCIA, and harmonizing the rules

What should state policymakers do about data centers? Aug 05, 2026

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State legislatures are writing data center rules faster than they can verify the demand forecasts underneath them. Fifteen states accounted for 80 percent of data center electricity demand in 2023, a single hyperscale campus can arrive as 15 to 20 percent of a utility's demand, and the transmission to serve it takes five to 15 years to build. On this episode of Volts, David Roberts works through Climate Cabinet's Taming Data Center Turmoil series with Saleem Chapman, who leads the group's electricity affordability policy work, on why Georgia's regulated utility, PJM's capacity market, and ERCOT's competitive market each left ratepayers holding the risk, and what a state can require before it approves a project, while the facility operates, and after the deal is done.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:49 – How Climate Cabinet came to the data center fight

03:58 – Three things that make hyperscalers unlike past industrial loads

07:51 – Warning signals: forecast opacity, gas dependency, unconditional subsidies

13:44 – Siting near overburdened communities and the Memphis case

15:34 – State preemption versus local control

18:31 – The same failure pattern in Georgia, PJM, and ERCOT

23:52 – Why not just ban data centers outright

28:07 – The framework, and what to require before approval

34:54 – While operating: real cost pricing and on-call load flexibility

37:39 – Scenario-based planning and the utility incentive problem

39:37 – After the deal: new and matched clean energy

43:48 – Siting standards and performance-tied incentives

50:27 – Existing facilities and the threat to build elsewhere

55:41 – Which states are ahead, and step one for lawmakers

Best of July 2026 Aug 02, 2026

Show notes

Volts published eight conversations in July on subjects with nothing obvious in common: an Arizona utility board election, Minnesota smart meters, land value taxes in Spokane, silicon battery anodes. Yet six of them arrived at the same constraint. What stops energy infrastructure from getting built in the United States is more often written into law than into physics. On this episode, David Roberts pulls one stretch from each July conversation into a single hour, with two Minnesota utility regulators, a Spokane city council member, a Hawaii state senator, a co-founder of a battery materials company, and more.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction: a new format for Volts

01:22 Arizona: winning the utility elections nobody watches

07:04 Minnesota: the smart meter data nobody uses

12:40 Spokane: how property taxes reward empty lots

17:31 Hawaii: the education gap in state energy policy

22:13 The data center backlash is a politics story

27:41 Why America can't build transit: procurement

32:41 Clean energy after the IRA: the glass debate

38:26 Silicon anodes: the other half of the battery

44:47 Closing: tell me if this worked

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Silicon anodes for batteries unlock greater energy density and faster charging times Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Materials in lithium-ion battery cathodes have continuously evolved since the 1990s, but anodes have stubbornly remained graphite. Now, finally, there’s some innovation on that side: silicon anodes, which engineers have struggled to master for a decade, are finally coming into wide commercialization. They enable up to five times the energy density of graphite anodes, charge many times faster, and are poised to revolutionize the battery market. In this episode, I talk with Rick Costantino, co-founder and CTO of Group14, which is selling a silicon-carbon composite material for anodes. They’re already selling to dozens of large battery manufacturers and expect silicon anodes to completely take over the market by 2030.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction and the graphite anode problem

01:54 – Why silicon, and why it kept failing

06:26 – From pharma to batteries: Rick's path

09:24 – How SCC55 works: silicon in a carbon scaffold

14:38 – The payoff: energy density and charge speed

18:59 – A drop-in material, and scaling in South Korea

21:11 – Where the batteries go: phones, EVs, drones

24:29 – Cost versus graphite

26:20 – Cycle life, calendar life, and safety

31:26 – Supply chain and the silane bottleneck

36:26 – Pairing with LFP, DOE support, and phones

40:30 – Bringing the cost down, and competitors

43:27 – The five-year outlook

Should we feel good about the trajectory of clean energy post-Trump? Jul 29, 2026

Show notes

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) established substantial tax credits for wind and solar power. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) eliminated those tax credits. How much damage did that do to the overall trajectory of clean energy in the post-Trump world? A new research commentary argues that the damage was less than many had feared and that the road forward for clean energy is less about restoring those credits than about easing the permitting and interconnection constraints inhibiting renewable energy. Today I talk with author Lily Bermel about the modeling her commentary is based on and the somewhat controversial conclusions she draws from it.

Chapters:

00:00 The IRA, the OBBBA, and the case for optimism

03:25 OBBBA - Why Bermel ran the analysis

05:50 The headline numbers: 74, 71, 67

08:07 Decomposing clean: solar and batteries hold, wind takes the hit

12:14 The lag analysis, and the 'glass half full' perspective

15:27 2.8 gigatons, and losses you can't get back

18:01 The third scenario, and Trump I versus Trump II

21:49 What the model leaves out: manufacturing, LPO, loans

23:07 Interior's permitting campaign against wind and solar

27:22 The demand surge and behind-the-meter gas

32:15 Nuclear restarts, geothermal, and clean firm

35:31 Booms, busts, and the electrification wave

42:22Transmission, interconnection, and the ceiling

46:41 Tax credits versus permitting reform

51:46 Durability, polarization, and preemptive surrender

60:01 Can enough storage make renewables firm?

66:48 Grid utilization versus building new grid

70:52 Final reflections: 2021, and what Bermel would do with a trifecta

The US is terrible at building public transit. Here's how to get better. Jul 22, 2026

Show notes

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

America once led the world in building transit and now leads the world in what transit costs, roughly three times the international average per mile, measured not against authoritarian megaprojects but against Italy, Spain, and Japan. On this episode of Volts, David Roberts talks with Will Poff-Webster of the Institute for Progress, who put together the new Transit Abundance Playbook, and Stephanie Pollack, former head of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and former acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. Their argument is that the costs are a policy choice: federal funding rules teach transit agencies to plan on a napkin and do the real work years later, to hire the lowest bidder over the one they know will deliver, and to defer to anyone holding a veto, while highways operate under looser versions of the same rules. As Pollack puts it, "if you hate transit, you should spend less on it." A surface transportation reauthorization bill is coming, and two of the playbook's proposals have already reached the House version.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction: why cars work against cities

03:25 Agency culture or federal law: where does the fix come from

11:31 Planning: how federal funding enforces bad habits

20:10 Overdesign: the Green Line stations and the frequency-first test

23:40 Buses: why every agency orders a custom fleet

26:53 Procurement: lowest bid versus best value

32:56 Veto points and Italy’s conference of services

39:56 Permitting: environmental review as a NIMBY tool

45:28 State capacity: why consultant brain took over

51:46 Labor costs, automation, and Section 13(c)

56:19 Is any of this politically achievable?

1:03:28 Final question: one reform each

Making sense of the data center backlash Jul 20, 2026

Show notes

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Data center opposition has gone from nonexistent to organized in about two years, roughly 120 moratoriums across 38 states, and it does not track proximity: Gallup finds 70% of Americans oppose a data center near them, while only 8% of opponents live near one. On this episode of Volts, David Roberts joins Energy Empire hosts Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan, along with Arnab Pal of Deploy Action, for a crossover conversation, and his argument is that everyone is solving the wrong problem. The hyperscalers could buy their way to consent for a rounding error, batteries in basements, solar on roofs, funded schools, lower bills, and they refuse, which David reads as a symptom of low social trust that no amount of better modeling touches. “This is not a technocratic problem that you can just solve with a few switches,” he says. Thirty-six governors go to the ballot this fall having to answer for it.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro: a Volts and Energy Empire crossover

01:25 Has the AI case been made? Energy vs. AI as the real revolution

04:23 The backlash by the numbers, and hyperscalers' botched PR

08:20 Animal spirits, low social trust, and the information environment

12:46 Enshittification, lost jobs, and why governors still want data centers

15:50 The local playbook: schools, bioswales, batteries in basements

17:18 Bespoke industrial rates without setting a bad precedent

22:33 How utilities earn: spend-to-earn, the distribution black box, efficiency

30:11 Gendering the grid: gas as firm, renewables as soft

37:57 NERC's level-three alert and the case for more batteries

39:29 Both/and: distributed capacity as serious supply