The story of climate change is usually told through fossil fuels — pipelines, coal plants, oil companies. But there's another story that accounts for nearly a third of global emissions: agriculture. And we've barely begun to grapple with it.

In this episode of Open Circuit, we're joined by Michael Grunwald, longtime journalist and author of the new book "We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate." Grunwald spent years investigating why agriculture lags decades behind energy in decarbonization, and what it would take to catch up.

First, we tackle food-based fuels. Grunwald profiles researcher Tim Searchinger, who discovered that biofuels accounting ignored land use. While ethanol was hailed as a homegrown climate solution, it was actually worse than gasoline once you factored in the "carbon opportunity cost" of using land for fuel instead of food. Why did it take so long to recognize?

This land use blindness persists today. Despite the science showing the climate impact of biofuels, the government is backing a sustainable aviation fuel program with tens of billions in new biofuel subsidies — including explicit language preventing regulators from considering land use impacts.

Then, we tackle feel-good agricultural solutions like regenerative agriculture, vertical farms, and local food systems that may have ethical benefits, but often don’t have meaningful emissions impacts. 

Finally, we ask what ag tech can learn from energy's scaling playbook: How do we deploy high-yield agriculture and synthetic biology solutions in a rapid, ethical way? 

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com. 

Learn more about 38 North Solutions’ Policy Pulse, providing highly curated, actionable snapshots of the political developments shaping the clean tech landscape.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

America is choosing obstruction over abundance. While AI, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing require massive infrastructure investments, we're trapped in a permitting system designed for a different era — and a political system that rewards blocking over building.

In this episode of Open Circuit, we're joined by Brian Deese, former director of the National Economic Council and current MIT innovation fellow, to unpack why America's building capacity has become our biggest competitive bottleneck. 

Drawing from his Foreign Affairs piece, "Why America Struggles to Build," Deese explains why breaking down physical infrastructure constraints could drive the next wave of economic growth.

Deese argues that 80% of project delays stem from state and local regulations, not federal policy. Using a "zero-based budgeting" approach to permitting, states could dramatically accelerate deployment of projects. Meanwhile, AI could slash the time and cost of environmental reviews from months to weeks, if regulators allow it.

We also explore the outcome of the recent GOP’s tax and spending bill, and examine why the Inflation Reduction Act's messaging failed to create political durability. Deese argues that winning on infrastructure requires both economic arguments — jobs, wealth, and lower costs — and visceral arguments about strength, reliability, and energy security.

As Deese explains, we're at a "unique economic moment" where AI, clean energy, and geopolitical fragmentation are converging to create unprecedented infrastructure demands. Can America overcome the politics of obstruction to build it?

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com. 

Learn more about 38 North Solutions’ Policy Pulse, providing highly curated, actionable snapshots of the political developments shaping the clean tech landscape.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

When 47 million people across Spain and Portugal lost power for nearly half a day in April, the finger-pointing began immediately. "Too much renewable energy," declared the critics. Even U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright piled on: "When you hitch your wagon to the weather, it's a risky endeavor.”

There's just one problem with this blame-renewables narrative: it's completely wrong.

In this crossover episode with the Redefining Energy podcast, we examine the official Spanish grid operator report that reveals a complex web of failures. 

While the blackout began with a solar plant sending frequency oscillations through the grid, what followed was a cascade of problems: conventional generators that failed to provide required voltage control, inadequate battery storage to balance massive solar capacity, weak interconnections to neighboring grids, and ultimately, poor system management by grid operators themselves.

Our guests, Laurent Segalen of Megawatt-X and Gerard Reid of Alexa Capital — co-hosts of Redefining Energy — help us decode what went wrong and what Spain needs to fix. 

"Spain has installed 30 gigawatts of solar in the past 10 years and there's hardly any batteries and there's hardly any connection with the rest of the continent,” explained Segalen. “The system has become more fragile." 

“We've had, in the UK, an interconnector going down, 1.4 gigawatts. Well, guess what? There was no blackout. Why? Because batteries came in straight away,” said Reid.

We’ll discuss the many factors behind the outage, and explore why Spain’s grid operator is trying to avoid blame.

Then, we’ll look at how security is reshaping European energy investment. As America leans into its role as a dominant petrostate and pulls back from post-World War II security commitments, Europe is being forced to reconsider how to structure clean energy supply chains. 

We also explore the emerging split between "petrostates" and "electrostates" — countries that control energy through scarcity versus those that build abundance through manufacturing and technology. While America doubles down on fossil fuel dominance, can Europe position itself alongside China as a leading electrostate?

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com. 

Learn more about 38 North Solutions’ Policy Pulse, providing highly curated, actionable snapshots of the political developments shaping the clean tech landscape.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

The climate tech investment landscape is undergoing a major recalibration. After a period of rapid growth and inflated valuations, investors and startups are now navigating a complex environment shaped by tariffs, shifting incentives, and economic clouds.

In this episode of Open Circuit, we examine the latest data and investor sentiment trends with Kim Zou, CEO of Sightline Climate. 

Sightline’s data shows climate tech investment declined 19% in the first half of 2025, reflecting both macroeconomic pressures and sector-specific challenges. 

The firm’s recent investor survey reveals how the sector is grappling with extreme policy whiplash, with tariffs leading the list of worries. The ongoing reconciliation bill debate adds another layer of uncertainty around IRA tax credits, leading investors to search for “policy proof” business models. 

Startups are also facing a growing funding gap. Companies developing first-of-a-kind projects face a particular hurdle: they need infrastructure-scale capital but still carry venture-level risk, creating a mismatch that "most private investors aren't really willing to accept," said Zou.

That gap — what Zou calls "the missing middle within the missing middle" — is heavily weighing on companies ready to build their first commercial facilities.

Despite the headwinds, new opportunities are emerging: grid-enhancing technologies had their best quarter ever, driven by the growing power demands of AI; companies focused on cost savings rather than green premiums are attracting more attention; and innovative financing structures are evolving beyond traditional equity models.

Acquisitions doubled in the first half of the year, driven by bargain-hunting “where corporates and strategics are buying up companies at more opportunistic costs,” said Zou.

We also explore how U.S. investors and companies are increasingly looking to European markets, the practical challenges of scaling hardware-intensive technologies, and why some sectors are better positioned to navigate the current environment than others.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com. 

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

The grid faces a mismatch: the system is getting smarter, but we're not getting smarter about how we use it.

Utilities have installed 130 million advanced meters. Millions of homes have smart thermostats, water heaters, and batteries that could work in concert. Data centers could unlock over 100 gigawatts of new capacity without major infrastructure expansion.

Yet most smart devices aren't coordinated, advanced meter data sits unused, and there's no standard way to plan for or pay flexible loads. 

In this episode of Open Circuit, we examine what is holding back grid flexibility — and what it would take to unlock the resources we've already paid for.

We’re joined by Arushi Sharma Frank, the founder of Luminary Strategies, and former markets policy lead for Tesla, who explains the imperative for flexibility: "We have a massive opportunity to leverage this for the whole grid. Why would you not want to leverage the opportunity that is staring at you in the face?"

Sharma Frank, who is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has long been on the front lines of DER policy. We examine the barriers to deploying VPPs, AMI, and flexible data centers. Utilities want these services, but why don’t planners and regulators trust them?

The fix isn't complicated: align state agencies with regulators, make sure all customers benefit from flexibility programs, and bring tech companies into the grid planning process. As Sharma Frank puts it: "If we're going to procure a grid asset, it needs to be in a procurement process for a grid asset, period."

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com. 

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

The exponential growth of AI is colliding with the linear reality of building energy infrastructure — forcing a rethink of how tech companies power their ambitions. 

Is the corporate clean energy playbook becoming obsolete?

In this live episode from Transition-AI in Boston, we dive deep into the infrastructure challenges of the AI era. We’re joined by Caroline Golin, who spent eight years building Google's energy strategy before leaving earlier this year.

We examine how tech companies moved from a buyer's market with abundant resources to a seller's market with serious capacity constraints. 

"The vast majority of procurement in this country looks like single-source renewable PPAs, and that's what it's been for years," Golin explained. "That wasn't going to get us to where we needed to go."

Then we turn to a financing puzzle. We need to see more than $5 trillion in capex spending on data center infrastructure by 2030 to keep pace with computing demands from AI. But even with many different types of capital trying to solve the infrastructure challenge, they all want completely different things. How do we align them?

The just-in-time procurement model that served the hyperscalers for a decade must evolve into global-scale, integrated infrastructure development. Can regulators, utilities, and policymakers keep up?

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com. 

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

This week, we’re featuring an episode of The Green Blueprint featuring Drew Baglino, a former SVP at Tesla. Subscribe here. 

In 2014, Drew Baglino was helping build Tesla's energy division with a passionate, scrappy team. Using parts from Tesla's vehicles, they created the first Powerwall home battery. But as demand grew, they hit a critical bottleneck: cell shortages.

Customers across multiple markets were already excited about the Powerwall, but Drew’s team struggled to keep up with demand. With Powerwall 2 already announced, pressure mounted while the supply chain faltered. And with Tesla prioritizing vehicles, the energy team was left to "get the scraps and figure it out.”

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Drew Baglino, former senior vice president of powertrain and energy at Tesla, about building a new product category through bootstrapping and creative resource sharing. Drew shares how a couple dozen "Swiss Army knife" engineers created a residential battery system that would ultimately define the market.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at ⁠sungrowpower.com⁠. 

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

The Green Blueprint is hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

America is facing an uncomfortable question: do we know how to build anymore? 

House Republicans just passed a reconciliation bill that would repeal much of the Inflation Reduction Act while adding up to $5 trillion to the national debt. The legislation doesn't just gut clean energy incentives — it hinders the most realistic path to meeting exploding electricity demand.

After leveraging hundreds of billions in clean energy investments, 80% flowing to Republican districts, every GOP House member who promised to protect these programs voted to eliminate them anyway. 

"Who wants this?" asked Costa Samaras, former White House energy advisor and current director of Carnegie Mellon's Scott Institute for Energy Innovation. "Who wants to have more expensive energy and less manufacturing in the United States?"

This week, Samaras joins Open Circuit to talk about the potential impact of the legislation, lessons learned from the IRA, and whether the abundance framework offers a viable alternative for scaling the clean energy economy.

As the country faces 150 gigawatts of new electricity demand by 2030, the reconciliation bill would make deploying and manufacturing a wide range of clean resources more expensive — likely forcing investment overseas.

This sets up a direct collision with the "abundance agenda," which argues that America has become too good at stopping things and not good enough at building them. The abundance solution: make it easier to build infrastructure, accept some messiness in exchange for progress, and focus relentlessly on outputs rather than process.

But can abundance thinking survive an era of deep political instability? We explore what an "IRA 2.0" might look like — one that pays for performance, builds government capacity, and creates durable coalitions for getting big things done.

Get tickets for Transition-AI: Boston to see Open Circuit live, with Google’s Caroline Golin.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at ⁠sungrowpower.com⁠.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

Texans take pride in their competitive electricity market, a system designed to let the cheapest resources win. And that market is increasingly choosing clean energy, with wind, solar, and batteries dominating new generation. Nearly 40 gigawatts have been added in just four years, equivalent to the capacity of a mid-sized European country.

This market-driven boom has unequivocally lowered costs and improved reliability. But now, in a major ideological reversal, some Texas lawmakers are trying to stop it. Bills advancing through the legislature would override market signals, impose unprecedented restrictions on renewables, and cap economic growth in the eighth-largest economy in the world.

"People aren't choosing renewables out of any ideology or just because they like it better or it's clean or anything like that. It's low cost and that matters a lot to the business community," said Doug Lewin, who runs the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter and hosts the Energy Capital podcast.

Lewin joined Open Circuit to explain the high stakes in the Lone Star State. He describes how the oil and gas industry is increasingly inking power purchase agreements with wind and solar as they electrify operations. Data centers are flocking to Texas because of the attractive energy picture. And distributed energy is poised for explosive growth as virtual power plants come online.

So why are some lawmakers trying to slam the brakes on this economic engine? According to Lewin, it's a mix of well-funded disinformation campaigns and social media algorithms that keep feeding anti-renewable content.

"There are people out there that are clearly not acting in good faith and are putting information out there that is really misinformation and they know it," said Lewin.

Bills like SB 715 and SB 388 would require solar and wind to have backup and exclude batteries from being counted as dispatchable resources. Lewin calls this an attempt to tie Texas' economic growth to gas turbine availability, "which just seems like a spectacularly bad idea."

Modeling shows these bills could cause blackouts and add billions in costs for consumers. With the legislative session in its final weeks, the business community is pushing back — but Lewin says anything could happen.

Get tickets for Transition-AI: Boston to see Open Circuit live, with Google’s Caroline Golin.

Open Circuit is supported by Kraken, the only proven, AI-powered operating system for utilities. Learn how Kraken helps unlock excellent customer experiences, increased innovation and reduced operational costs at kraken.tech.

Open Circuit is brought to you by On.Energy. As one of the fastest-growing battery storage IPPs, On.Energy delivers turnkey resiliency solutions for utilities and enterprise customers. Whether you’re managing data centers or local grids, we help bring storage to your fleet. Learn more at on.energy.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

When Elon Musk canceled Tesla's affordable Model 2 last year to go all-in on Robotaxis, he may have made the most consequential decision in the company's history. As Chinese automaker BYD captures global market share with lower-cost vehicles and superior charging technology, has Tesla prematurely surrendered the market it created?

"In his mind, I think he ushered in the EV revolution for the world, and that problem is solved, and now he wants to move on to AI and robotics," said Bloomberg reporter Dana Hull.

This pivot comes as Tesla's growth story has fundamentally changed, with the company abandoning its promise of 50% year-over-year growth and its target of making 20 million cars annually by 2030. Meanwhile, the political transformation of Musk has created massive challenges for Tesla's brand. 

The departure of key executives has also left critical initiatives like virtual power plants and grid services without clear leadership, despite Tesla Energy showing promising growth.

This week, Dana Hull, veteran auto and tech reporter at Bloomberg who has covered Elon Musk's companies since 2009, joins us to discuss Tesla's strategic pivot and uncertain future in an increasingly competitive EV landscape. Dana is a regular contributor to the Elon, Inc. podcast.

"The company's product lineup is very murky right now," said Hull. Tesla's refreshed Model Y isn't selling as well as expected, and more consumers are refusing to buy from a company whose CEO has become so closely aligned with Donald Trump.  

With the Cybertruck underperforming and no affordable model in sight, is Tesla setting itself up for a painful reckoning? Or will AI and robotics justify the company’s trillion dollar valuation?

Get tickets for Transition-AI: Boston to see Open Circuit live, with Google’s Caroline Golin.

Open Circuit is supported by Kraken, the only proven, AI-powered operating system for utilities. Learn how Kraken helps unlock excellent customer experiences, increased innovation and reduced operational costs at kraken.tech.

Open Circuit is brought to you by On.Energy. As one of the fastest-growing battery storage IPPs, On.Energy delivers turnkey resiliency solutions for utilities and enterprise customers. Whether you’re managing data centers or local grids, we help bring storage to your fleet. Learn more at on.energy.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.