Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

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Load growth

34 notes · Catalyst 20 · Critical Capital 2 · Steel For Fuel 12

  1. Critical Capital · 18 Aug 2026 AI is disrupting services. What does that mean for power demand? with Jake Saper, partner, Emergence Capital; enterprise software and AI infrastructure investor who began his career developing solar in India. The transcript renders his surname as both “Saper” and “Saber”; this note uses the dominant rendering. If AI starts to change how services such as law, accounting and insurance are actually delivered, what does that imply for how much compute, and how much power, the economy will end up needing?
  2. 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?
  3. 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?
  4. 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?
  5. 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?
  6. Steel For Fuel · 1 Jun 2026 Riding the Electric Supercycle by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If every input to the power system is getting more expensive at once, why is that the setup for a durable investment opportunity rather than a squeeze?
  7. Catalyst · 30 Apr 2026 How AI is modernizing EPCs with George Hershman, CEO, SOLV Energy What actually limits how fast a large solar and storage contractor can put projects in the ground, and where does AI change that?
  8. Steel For Fuel · 21 Apr 2026 Be greedy (for electrons) when others are fearful by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners With American electric vehicle sales falling sharply after the federal tax credits expired, is this the moment to retreat from the electric vehicle supply chain and from charging?
  9. 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?
  10. Catalyst · 15 Jan 2026 2026 trends: Gas turbines, Texas’ load queue, and China electrifies with Nat Bullard, co-founder, Halcyon; energy and climate analyst and writer There isn’t one. This is the annual walk through Bullard’s 200-slide data deck, part one of two, with Kann picking favorite slides rather than building a thesis. The loose through-line: how much new demand is coming, and is anyone positioned to serve it?
  11. 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?
  12. Catalyst · 23 Oct 2025 Five big questions about the future of energy with Andy Lubershane, head of research and partner, Energy Impact Partners Five separate questions about where the AI-driven electricity boom goes next: when could today’s shortage turn into a glut, who wins and loses from it, and what should we expect from nuclear, enhanced geothermal and grid-enhancing technologies?
  13. Catalyst · 16 Oct 2025 Calibrating hype with Akshat Rathi with Akshat Rathi, senior reporter for climate, Bloomberg News, and host of the Zero podcast Which of the energy transition’s hot topics are overhyped, which are underhyped, and how would you tell the difference?
  14. Catalyst · 18 Sep 2025 Is now the time for DERs to scale? with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Distributed energy resources were hyped a decade ago and mostly did not happen. Is this time actually different?
  15. Steel For Fuel · 11 Sep 2025 Finally, the right time for Distributed Energy Resources by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Why did distributed energy resources underdeliver for a decade, and what has changed enough to make this time different?
  16. 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?
  17. 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?
  18. 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?
  19. 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?
  20. Catalyst · 1 May 2025 Catalyst Live at SF Climate Week with Nick Chaset, chief executive, Octopus Energy US; Mike Schroepfer, founder and partner, Gigascale Capital (former chief technology officer of Meta) What is climate tech over-hyping and under-hyping right now, and why does Kann think consumer products account for so many of its few big wins?
  21. 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?
  22. 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?
  23. 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?
  24. Catalyst · 6 Feb 2025 Catalyst: 2025 Climate Tech Trends with Nat Bullard, co-founder, Halcyon; former chief content officer, BloombergNEF Entering 2025, what do the underlying data actually show about where energy and climate stand, and does a sudden jump in AI model efficiency break the load-growth story?
  25. 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?
  26. 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?
  27. Steel For Fuel · 29 Oct 2024 The US is a natural gas superpower by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What does American natural gas at this scale buy, abroad and at home?
  28. 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?
  29. Steel For Fuel · 30 Aug 2024 HVAC: the next frontier by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Where does the next big block of building energy efficiency come from, as the stock of light bulbs left to swap out for LEDs begins to dwindle?
  30. 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?
  31. 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?
  32. Catalyst · 28 Mar 2024 The electricity gauntlet has arrived with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Everyone has suddenly woken up to the fact that electricity demand is outrunning our ability to supply it. Now that the problem is mainstream, what actually happens next, and is the alarm overdone?
  33. 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?
  34. Steel For Fuel · 23 Aug 2023 How will we keep warm in the winter? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How do we keep buildings warm in winter without burning fossil fuel?