Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

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Data-center power

50 notes · Catalyst 38 · Critical Capital 2 · Steel For Fuel 10

  1. Steel For Fuel · 21 Sep 2026 For AI, energy is nothing, and energy is everything (reprise) by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How much could an AI data center pay for electricity before the computing stops being worth doing?
  2. Catalyst · 17 Sep 2026 Fuel cells, geopolitics, and the solar growth curve with No outside guest; producer Max Savage Levenson interviews host Shayle Kann, early-stage investor, Energy Impact Partners Looking back at 2026 so far and forward to what comes next, what has surprised Shayle Kann, and what is he watching?
  3. Catalyst · 10 Sep 2026 Do data centers really increase electricity prices? with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Are data centers making your electricity bill go up?
  4. Catalyst · 3 Sep 2026 What comes after the data center backlash? with Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer, Cloverleaf Infrastructure Is the backlash against data centers something developers can actually fix, and if it is not, where does the buildout go instead?
  5. Catalyst · 27 Aug 2026 The rise of metal fuels with Richard Wang, co-founder and CEO, Voya Energy Diesel generators are universally disliked and nobody has managed to replace them. Could aluminum do it?
  6. Catalyst · 20 Aug 2026 Can AI revolutionize grid operations? with Josh Wong, CEO and founder, ThinkLabs AI What actually happens inside a utility’s planning and operations functions, and where could AI change it?
  7. Catalyst · 6 Aug 2026 The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom with Raymond Hawkins, chief customer officer, Compass Datacenters How much is the shortage of electricians actually holding back data center construction, and what can anyone do about it?
  8. Steel For Fuel · 5 Aug 2026 On data centers and energy “affordability” by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Are data centers the reason American electricity bills are going up, and is the country facing an affordability crisis?
  9. Catalyst · 30 Jul 2026 Why C&I storage is finally taking off with Tim Hade, senior vice president, Voltus; previously co-founder and CEO, Brightfield Infrastructure Commercial and industrial storage, meaning batteries installed at a business’s own site, has never gone anywhere. Is that actually changing, and why would this time be different?
  10. Critical Capital · 21 Jul 2026 The unprecedented opportunity for infrastructure investors with Jessica Bailey, Global Head of Infrastructure, Nuveen; previously co-founder of Greenworks Lending, and before that at the Connecticut Green Bank and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund What is actually driving the current infrastructure boom, and if capital is abundant, what will end up limiting it?
  11. Catalyst · 9 Jul 2026 Inside the AI power wars with Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, leads infrastructure and power research, SemiAnalysis Everyone can describe how the AI companies differ on chips. How do they differ on power?
  12. Steel For Fuel · 6 Jul 2026 Data centers need the grid — so we have to make the grid better by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If the grid cannot connect AI data centers fast enough, is building a power plant next to each one the way out?
  13. Catalyst · 25 Jun 2026 How data centers are complicating transmission expansion with Maeve Allsup, senior reporter, Latitude Media Why is a transmission line that the AI boom made more necessary getting harder to build because of the AI boom?
  14. Critical Capital · 23 Jun 2026 The trillion-dollar collision between AI and the grid with Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO, Emerald AI; previously an executive at two clean energy developers and a senior advisor at the US State Department Can the grid absorb the data centers that AI wants to build, and if the answer is no, what is the cheapest thing to change?
  15. Catalyst · 18 Jun 2026 Enter the electric supercycle with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Electricity demand is surging while everything needed to supply it is scarce and expensive. Is that a temporary crunch, or the start of a long expansion, and what would stop it?
  16. Steel For Fuel · 18 Jun 2026 The next industrial revolution and the “art of life itself” by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If AI is the next industrial revolution, will it be one that makes existing work more efficient, or one that gives us capabilities we did not have?
  17. Catalyst · 28 May 2026 Building inference data centers on the high seas with Garth Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO, Panthalassa Could you power AI compute by putting the generator and the servers together on untethered steel structures bobbing in the deep ocean, and would it pencil?
  18. Catalyst · 23 Apr 2026 Live from Transition-AI 2026: Inside Google’s massive AI capex with Amin Vahdat, chief technologist for AI infrastructure, Google As AI shifts from training models to serving them, does that change the size, the reliability and the power profile of what Google builds with the $175 to $185 billion of capital expenditure it has planned for this year?
  19. Catalyst · 9 Apr 2026 The rise of flexible data centers with Varun Sivaram, CEO, Emerald AI Almost everyone now agrees data centers should be flexible grid assets. What is actually stopping it from happening at scale?
  20. Catalyst · 12 Mar 2026 AI scaling pathways: On grid, on edge, off grid, off planet with Jake Elder, senior vice president of research and innovation, Energy Impact Partners If demand for compute keeps climbing, which ways of siting and powering data centers can actually scale: large grid-connected sites, small sites at the edge, off-grid sites, or data centers in orbit?
  21. Catalyst · 25 Feb 2026 Volts crossover: Six big energy questions with David Roberts, host of the Volts podcast (co-hosted episode; both speakers pose and answer questions) What are the big open questions in energy and climate that we might actually get an answer to within the next five to ten years?
  22. Catalyst · 19 Feb 2026 The rise of grid power electronics with Drew Baglino with Drew Baglino, founder and CEO, Heron Power What changes if the grid’s transformers stop being passive lumps of steel and become controllable power electronics, and why is that finally possible now?
  23. Catalyst · 12 Feb 2026 PJM and ERCOT are navigating a capacity rollercoaster with Paul Segal, CEO, LS Power What is actually happening in the two most-watched US power markets, and is either one getting the capacity it needs in time?
  24. Catalyst · 18 Dec 2025 Will inference move to the edge? with Dr. Ben Lee, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of Pennsylvania; visiting researcher, Google How much AI inference will move out of giant centralized data centers into smaller local ones or onto personal devices, and what would that do to the energy picture?
  25. Catalyst · 11 Dec 2025 Can AI revolutionize EPC? with Alex Modon, co-founder and CEO, Unlimited Industries Big capital projects are chronically late and over budget. Can AI change that, and is engineering even where the leverage is?
  26. Catalyst · 4 Dec 2025 Who benefits from the AI power bottleneck? with Shanu Mathew, senior vice president and portfolio manager-analyst for US sustainable equity, Lazard Everyone in the AI and energy business says power is the bottleneck. Whose interests does that story serve, and how should you discount what you hear?
  27. Catalyst · 20 Nov 2025 Looking for a turnaround in transmission with Rob Gramlich, founder and president, Grid Strategies A year after a bleak assessment of US transmission, has anything actually turned around?
  28. Catalyst · 30 Oct 2025 Unpacking DOE’s proposal to transform data center interconnection with Allison Clements, FERC commissioner 2020-2024, now partner at ASG and principal of 804 Advisory; and Tyler Norris, doctoral student, Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment The US Secretary of Energy has told federal regulators to rewrite how large electricity loads connect to the grid. What does the proposal actually do, and would it work?
  29. Catalyst · 2 Oct 2025 The new wave of DERs with Dana Guernsey, co-founder and CEO, Voltus How did demand response get from emergency phone calls to an everyday grid resource, and what can it now do about load growth?
  30. Catalyst · 12 Sep 2025 When to colocate data centers with generation with Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer, Cloverleaf Infrastructure When does it actually make sense to build generation on site at a data center, and when has the idea simply become fashionable?
  31. Catalyst · 28 Aug 2025 The mechanics of data center flexibility with Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO, Emerald AI What does it actually take to make an AI data center flexible, and how much flexibility is really there?
  32. Catalyst · 31 Jul 2025 PJM and the capacity crunch with Steve Piper, research director for North American power and renewables, S&P Global PJM’s capacity auction cleared at a record again. What does that say about whether enough generation gets built, and about what consumers will pay?
  33. Catalyst · 3 Jul 2025 Fresh intel from state utility regulatory filings with Nat Bullard, co-founder, Halcyon What do state utility regulatory filings actually reveal right now about how utilities are absorbing data center load, and about where costs are heading?
  34. Steel For Fuel · 16 Jun 2025 Why does nobody know how much energy AI will consume? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Why do the analysts watching data centers disagree so widely about how much electricity those data centers will consume, even a few years out?
  35. Catalyst · 12 Jun 2025 The state of play of data center development with Chris Sharp, chief technology officer, Digital Realty Is the AI buildout spreading data centers out to wherever cheap power happens to be, or concentrating them further into the regions that are already full?
  36. Catalyst · 5 Jun 2025 The gas turbine crunch with Anthony (Tony) Brough, president, Dora Partners Gas turbines are suddenly impossible to get and increasingly expensive. What is actually causing the bottleneck?
  37. Catalyst · 8 May 2025 The US nuclear groundswell with Chris Colbert, co-founder and CEO, Elementl Power The US nuclear market is clearly stirring again. Does a groundswell like this one turn into an actual wave, or into another 2007-style mirage?
  38. Catalyst · 17 Apr 2025 Serving data center load with carbon capture with Julio Friedmann, chief scientist, Carbon Direct Hyperscalers are driving a large gas buildout while holding real decarbonization commitments. Can carbon capture square that circle, or is “capture ready” the same empty promise “hydrogen ready” turned out to be?
  39. Catalyst · 27 Mar 2025 The potential for flexible data centers | Catalyst with Tyler Norris, PhD candidate, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University How much additional data center load could the existing US grid absorb if that load agreed to be a little bit flexible?
  40. Catalyst · 6 Mar 2025 A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth with Jonathan Koomey, founder and president, Koomey Analytics How much electricity will AI data centers actually use, and how much weight should anyone put on the forecasts saying the answer is enormous?
  41. Catalyst · 13 Feb 2025 The case for colocating data centers and generation with Sheldon Kimber, founder and CEO, Intersect Power Why build generation on a data center’s own site instead of connecting the data center to the grid, and does that logic run all the way to going off grid?
  42. Steel For Fuel · 10 Jan 2025 Is the future of low-carbon industry off grid? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If off-grid solar can already power a data center at grid prices, does the same logic put the future of low-carbon manufacturing off the grid too?
  43. Catalyst · 9 Jan 2025 Making DERs work for load growth with Pier LaFarge, co-founder and CEO, Sparkfund Load growth is being answered almost entirely with big centralized projects. Can distributed energy carry a real share of it, and how would a utility actually buy it?
  44. Catalyst · 5 Dec 2024 Explaining the ‘Watt-Bit Spread’ with Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer, Cloverleaf Infrastructure; previously vice president of energy at Microsoft Why can data centers not get power, when the companies that want it are willing to pay almost anything for it?
  45. Steel For Fuel · 20 Nov 2024 For AI, energy is nothing, and energy is everything by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If energy is only a small part of what computing costs, why is the AI industry suddenly worried about power, and what should the power sector do with that?
  46. Catalyst · 22 Oct 2024 Inside Crusoe’s energy-first approach to data centers with Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO, Crusoe If you site computing around energy instead of siting energy around computing, what changes?
  47. Steel For Fuel · 26 Jul 2024 AI versus computing efficiency by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is computing hardware getting efficient fast enough to offset how fast AI is adding electricity demand?
  48. Catalyst · 13 Jun 2024 Under the hood of data center power demand with Brian Janous, co-founder, Cloverleaf Infrastructure; former vice president of energy, Microsoft Granting that AI will pull a large amount of new load onto the grid, how do we actually serve it, and what does serving it do to the grid and to the tech companies’ climate commitments?
  49. Steel For Fuel · 27 Feb 2024 The electricity gauntlet by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What happens to the electric power system when demand growth returns at the same moment that firm capacity becomes harder to add?
  50. Steel For Fuel · 6 Jul 2023 Some “complete bullshit” about AI and energy by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Would pursuing human-level AI break the energy system, and does the energy industry actually need models that big?