The energy transition calls for more electrification. As transportation, heating, industry, and now power demand from data centers all crowd the interconnection queues, the US needs more transmission than it has built in generations. Even energy transition skeptics can agree on the wires.
But agreement on the need for more transmission has never been enough to get lines up and running. In 2019, journalist Russell Gold joined us to tell the story of Michael Skelly, who tried harder than anyone. His company, Clean Line Energy, spent a decade developing five major transmission lines to move wind power from the Midwest to the cities that needed it. His flagship line, the 700-mile Plains & Eastern, was fully permitted and offered the Tennessee Valley Authority twenty years of wind power at $18.50 per megawatt-hour, a price even the cheapest coal can’t match. But economics aside, TVA walked away and not one of the five lines got built. Gold’s book Superpower explains why engineering or economics weren’t able to overcome the rules written state by state that build “regulatory moats” around the incumbents and keep the outsiders out.
Seven years since then, and those moats are where the race to tackle growing power demand is backing up. Recently ERCOT froze approvals of new data-center connections while the state audits an interconnection queue that has swelled to roughly 474 gigawatts of requested power capacity, more than five times the all-time peak power demand on the Texas grid. In Washington, FERC ordered the six regional grid operators it oversees to explain where the transmission for loads like that will come from. The specific fights are new but the overall mechanism is the one Russell Gold mapped with our host Chris Nelder back in <a href="https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-98-why-building-transmission-is-so-hard/">Episode #98</a>.
Since then, Grain Belt Express, the line Skelly had to sell on the way down, has grown into an $11 billion, 800-mile project with $1.7 billion in construction contracts signed. And Skelly has a new company working on the first large-scale connection between America’s two big grids, a step toward the concept of Superpower that would tie the country’s balkanized regional grids into one that could more readily support the energy transition’s future.

The energy transition calls for more electrification. As transportation, heating, industry, and now power demand from data centers all crowd the interconnection queues, the US needs more transmission than it has built in generations. Even energy transition skeptics can agree on the wires. But agreement on the need for more transmission has never been enough to get lines up and running. In 2019, journalist Russell Gold joined us to tell the story of Michael Skelly, who tried harder than anyone. His company, Clean Line Energy, spent a decade developing five major transmission lines to move wind power from the Midwest to the cities that needed it. His flagship line, the 700-mile Plains & Eastern, was fully permitted and offered the Tennessee Valley Authority twenty years of wind power at $18.50 per megawatt-hour, a price even the cheapest coal can’t match. But economics aside, TVA walked away and not one of the five lines got built. Gold’s book Superpower explains why engineering or economics weren’t able to overcome the rules written state by state that build “regulatory moats” around the incumbents and keep the outsiders out. Seven years since then, and those moats are where the race to tackle growing power demand is backing up. Recently ERCOT froze approvals of new data-center connections while the state audits an interconnection queue that has swelled to roughly 474 gigawatts of requested power capacity, more than five times the all-time peak power demand on the Texas grid. In Washington, FERC ordered the six regional grid operators it oversees to explain where the transmission for loads like that will come from. The specific fights are new but the overall mechanism is the one Russell Gold mapped with our host Chris Nelder back in Episode #98. Since then, Grain Belt Express, the line Skelly had to sell on the way down, has grown into an $11 billion, 800-mile project with $1.7 billion in construction contracts signed. And Skelly has a new company working on the first large-scale connection between America’s two big grids, a step toward the concept of Superpower that would tie the country’s balkanized regional grids into one that could more readily support the energy transition’s future.

The energy transition calls for more electrification. As transportation, heating, industry, and now power demand from data centers all crowd the interconnection queues, the US needs more transmission than it has built in generations. Even energy transition skeptics can agree on the wires.
But agreement on the need for more transmission has never been enough to get lines up and running. In 2019, journalist Russell Gold joined us to tell the story of Michael Skelly, who tried harder than anyone. His company, Clean Line Energy, spent a decade developing five major transmission lines to move wind power from the Midwest to the cities that needed it. His flagship line, the 700-mile Plains &amp; Eastern, was fully permitted and offered the Tennessee Valley Authority twenty years of wind power at $18.50 per megawatt-hour, a price even the cheapest coal can’t match. But economics aside, TVA walked away and not one of the five lines got built. Gold’s book Superpower explains why engineering or economics weren’t able to overcome the rules written state by state that build “regulatory moats” around the incumbents and keep the outsiders out.
Seven years since then, and those moats are where the race to tackle growing power demand is backing up. Recently ERCOT froze approvals of new data-center connections while the state audits an interconnection queue that has swelled to roughly 474 gigawatts of requested power capacity, more than five times the all-time peak power demand on the Texas grid. In Washington, FERC ordered the six regional grid operators it oversees to explain where the transmission for loads like that will come from. The specific fights are new but the overall mechanism is the one Russell Gold mapped with our host Chris Nelder back in <a href="https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-98-why-building-transmission-is-so-hard/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Episode #98</a>.
Since then, Grain Belt Express, the line Skelly had to sell on the way down, has grown into an $11 billion, 800-mile project with $1.7 billion in construction contracts signed. And Skelly has a new company working on the first large-scale connection between America’s two big grids, a step toward the concept of Superpower that would tie the country’s balkanized regional grids into one that could more readily support the energy transition’s future.

[Episode #282] – Regulatory Moats Around Transmission

Transportation continues to electrify, as a quarter of the world’s new car market in 2025 was electric, both battery and plug-in hybrids. And this area of the energy transition is already showing up in metrics that matter for the climate. Recent data shows that running a battery electric car on Europe’s grid cuts lifetime emissions by more than 70% against a comparable combustion car.
But even as progress on electrifying transportation continues, many other factors are holding back the deeper decarbonization we need. A switch to EVs won’t remove traffic congestion on its own, or change how much of the street a passenger car consumes at the expense of smaller and lighter options. Vehicles turn over far faster than the streets they run on.
What can make our mobility system sustainable beyond the fuel? This is exactly the tension we were getting at in <a href="https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-96-sustainable-mobility/">Episode #96</a>. In this episode we return to our host Chris Nelder’s 2019 conversation with Debbie Hopkins, now Professor of the Human Geographies of Mobility at the University of Oxford, who warned everyone working on the technology side. Swap the engine or change the fuel and you end up with the same unsustainable system.
When Chris and Debbie spoke, electric cars were about one in forty sold worldwide. Even though now it’s one in four, that still won’t get the job done as the energy transition’s final answer. Transportation remains the single largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions, and it will take more than decisions about engines to tackle that.

Transportation continues to electrify, as a quarter of the world’s new car market in 2025 was electric, both battery and plug-in hybrids. And this area of the energy transition is already showing up in metrics that matter for the climate. Recent data shows that running a battery electric car on Europe’s grid cuts lifetime emissions by more than 70% against a comparable combustion car. But even as progress on electrifying transportation continues, many other factors are holding back the deeper decarbonization we need. A switch to EVs won’t remove traffic congestion on its own, or change how much of the street a passenger car consumes at the expense of smaller and lighter options. Vehicles turn over far faster than the streets they run on. What can make our mobility system sustainable beyond the fuel? This is exactly the tension we were getting at in Episode #96. In this episode we return to our host Chris Nelder’s 2019 conversation with Debbie Hopkins, now Professor of the Human Geographies of Mobility at the University of Oxford, who warned everyone working on the technology side. Swap the engine or change the fuel and you end up with the same unsustainable system. When Chris and Debbie spoke, electric cars were about one in forty sold worldwide. Even though now it’s one in four, that still won’t get the job done as the energy transition’s final answer. Transportation remains the single largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions, and it will take more than decisions about engines to tackle that.

Transportation continues to electrify, as a quarter of the world’s new car market in 2025 was electric, both battery and plug-in hybrids. And this area of the energy transition is already showing up in metrics that matter for the climate. Recent data shows that running a battery electric car on Europe’s grid cuts lifetime emissions by more than 70% against a comparable combustion car.
But even as progress on electrifying transportation continues, many other factors are holding back the deeper decarbonization we need. A switch to EVs won’t remove traffic congestion on its own, or change how much of the street a passenger car consumes at the expense of smaller and lighter options. Vehicles turn over far faster than the streets they run on.
What can make our mobility system sustainable beyond the fuel? This is exactly the tension we were getting at in <a href="https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-96-sustainable-mobility/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Episode #96</a>. In this episode we return to our host Chris Nelder’s 2019 conversation with Debbie Hopkins, now Professor of the Human Geographies of Mobility at the University of Oxford, who warned everyone working on the technology side. Swap the engine or change the fuel and you end up with the same unsustainable system.
When Chris and Debbie spoke, electric cars were about one in forty sold worldwide. Even though now it’s one in four, that still won’t get the job done as the energy transition’s final answer. Transportation remains the single largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions, and it will take more than decisions about engines to tackle that.

[Episode #283] – Transportation Beyond Electrification

The Statistical Review of World Energy 2026 is out, offering the first complete look at global energy data for 2025. The report’s 75th edition, now presented in partnership with the energy think tank Ember, reveals a year in which demand for every form of energy hit a new record high.
But growing overall demand, even for fossil fuels, doesn’t mean the energy transition isn’t happening. Renewables grew more than any other form of energy for the first time outside of a recession, with solar power accounting for 72% of the increase. And global electrification reached a tipping point, with electricity demand growing 3%, faster than energy supply overall. China alone added the equivalent of Germany’s entire annual electricity consumption in a single year. These are just a few of the indications that the future of global energy use is increasingly electric, even as regional paths differ.
In 2025, rising electricity demand was met entirely by low-carbon sources, with renewables and hydro overtaking coal as the largest source of generation. Fossil generation fell overall, demonstrating that fossil fuels are being substituted rather than supplemented.
Solar and storage are clearly taking the lead in the global energy system, and they’re not looking back, as global battery storage capacity grew 66% last year alone. Solar already produces more electricity than gas in major parts of the world, and its lead in power generation will only grow.
In this episode, we are joined by Aditya Lolla, Interim Managing Director at Ember, and Euan Graham, Senior Electricity and Data Analyst at Ember and a lead author of the report, to share the key findings from this new update on all the energy data that matters.
We’ll dig into the report’s new total energy supply measure, which we explored in <a href="https://energytransition.show/259">Episode #259</a>. We’ll hear how China’s road fuel demand is now falling, redefining the assumed long tai

The Statistical Review of World Energy 2026 is out, offering the first complete look at global energy data for 2025. The report’s 75th edition, now presented in partnership with the energy think tank Ember, reveals a year in which demand for every form of energy hit a new record high. But growing overall demand, even for fossil fuels, doesn’t mean the energy transition isn’t happening. Renewables grew more than any other form of energy for the first time outside of a recession, with solar power accounting for 72% of the increase. And global electrification reached a tipping point, with electricity demand growing 3%, faster than energy supply overall. China alone added the equivalent of Germany’s entire annual electricity consumption in a single year. These are just a few of the indications that the future of global energy use is increasingly electric, even as regional paths differ. In 2025, rising electricity demand was met entirely by low-carbon sources, with renewables and hydro overtaking coal as the largest source of generation. Fossil generation fell overall, demonstrating that fossil fuels are being substituted rather than supplemented. Solar and storage are clearly taking the lead in the global energy system, and they’re not looking back, as global battery storage capacity grew 66% last year alone. Solar already produces more electricity than gas in major parts of the world, and its lead in power generation will only grow. In this episode, we are joined by Aditya Lolla, Interim Managing Director at Ember, and Euan Graham, Senior Electricity and Data Analyst at Ember and a lead author of the report, to share the key findings from this new update on all the energy data that matters. We’ll dig into the report’s new total energy supply measure, which we explored in Episode #259. We’ll hear how China’s road fuel demand is now falling, redefining the assumed long tai

The Statistical Review of World Energy 2026 is out, offering the first complete look at global energy data for 2025. The report’s 75th edition, now presented in partnership with the energy think tank Ember, reveals a year in which demand for every form of energy hit a new record high.
But growing overall demand, even for fossil fuels, doesn’t mean the energy transition isn’t happening. Renewables grew more than any other form of energy for the first time outside of a recession, with solar power accounting for 72% of the increase. And global electrification reached a tipping point, with electricity demand growing 3%, faster than energy supply overall. China alone added the equivalent of Germany’s entire annual electricity consumption in a single year. These are just a few of the indications that the future of global energy use is increasingly electric, even as regional paths differ.
In 2025, rising electricity demand was met entirely by low-carbon sources, with renewables and hydro overtaking coal as the largest source of generation. Fossil generation fell overall, demonstrating that fossil fuels are being substituted rather than supplemented.
Solar and storage are clearly taking the lead in the global energy system, and they’re not looking back, as global battery storage capacity grew 66% last year alone. Solar already produces more electricity than gas in major parts of the world, and its lead in power generation will only grow.
In this episode, we are joined by Aditya Lolla, Interim Managing Director at Ember, and Euan Graham, Senior Electricity and Data Analyst at Ember and a lead author of the report, to share the key findings from this new update on all the energy data that matters.
We’ll dig into the report’s new total energy supply measure, which we explored in <a href="https://energytransition.show/259" rel="noopener noreferrer">Episode #259</a>. We’ll hear how China’s road fuel demand is now falling, redefining the assumed long tai

[Episode #280] – Statistical Review of World Energy 2026

Millions of Americans are sweltering under heat domes this summer, with temperatures soaring to record highs when weather systems stall. The grid feels the strain of these events too.
This extreme heat often creates a precarious situation that pushes electricity demand to levels never seen before, while forcing generation out of service. But why does summer weather get stuck like this in the first place? And is climate change making it happen more often?
For answers we can look to the North Atlantic jet stream, the high-altitude wind steering weather across North America and Europe. Our guest visualizes this as a ski-slope, where a steep gradient between temperatures keeps the jet racing fast and weather moving. Though, as the Arctic warms faster than the rest of the planet, the slope flattens, slowing the jet stream, which has it meandering in bigger waves. Slow weather becomes stuck weather. Whatever comes along, heat, rain, or drought, can then sit around for longer. Our host Chris Nelder dug into this mechanism in <a href="https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-65-climate-science-part-9-jet-stream/">Episode #65</a>, the ninth part of <a href="https://energytransition.show/climate-science-miniseries">our climate science miniseries</a>. That was back in 2018, years before “heat dome” became a household phrase.
In this conversation, recorded February 2018, Valerie Trouet, of the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, explains how she reconstructed the jet’s summer position back to 1725 from the density of tree rings in the British Isles and the Balkans. As the planet warmed, the jet lunged north and south far more often. Jet stream excursions like this have increased sharply since the 1960s, looking nothing like the natural climate variability of the three-century record.
Valerie Trouet shares with us how a five-millimeter core from a living tree reveals the climate’s history. She also covers why the jet’s slowdown makes more of an impact than how far it swings. Valerie’s lab has continued publishing on this topic, and in a 2024 paper in Nature, her group took the reconstruction back to 1300 CE, reading jet behavior in seven hundred years of European harvest dates, grain markets, and mortality. Her former postdoc went even longer in a 2025 study tracing hemisphere-wide jet patterns across a full millennium, and so far, their frequency looks essentially unchanged on that extended timescale. Today’s episode is one of our lagniappe releases, so the complete original conversation can be freely available for the entire Energy Transition Show audience.

Millions of Americans are sweltering under heat domes this summer, with temperatures soaring to record highs when weather systems stall. The grid feels the strain of these events too. This extreme heat often creates a precarious situation that pushes electricity demand to levels never seen before, while forcing generation out of service. But why does summer weather get stuck like this in the first place? And is climate change making it happen more often? For answers we can look to the North Atlantic jet stream, the high-altitude wind steering weather across North America and Europe. Our guest visualizes this as a ski-slope, where a steep gradient between temperatures keeps the jet racing fast and weather moving. Though, as the Arctic warms faster than the rest of the planet, the slope flattens, slowing the jet stream, which has it meandering in bigger waves. Slow weather becomes stuck weather. Whatever comes along, heat, rain, or drought, can then sit around for longer. Our host Chris Nelder dug into this mechanism in Episode #65, the ninth part of our climate science miniseries. That was back in 2018, years before “heat dome” became a household phrase. In this conversation, recorded February 2018, Valerie Trouet, of the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, explains how she reconstructed the jet’s summer position back to 1725 from the density of tree rings in the British Isles and the Balkans. As the planet warmed, the jet lunged north and south far more often. Jet stream excursions like this have increased sharply since the 1960s, looking nothing like the natural climate variability of the three-century record. Valerie Trouet shares with us how a five-millimeter core from a living tree reveals the climate’s history. She also covers why the jet’s slowdown makes more of an impact than how far it swings. Valerie’s lab has continued publishing on this topic, and in a 2024 paper in Nature, her group took the reconstruction back to 1300 CE, reading jet behavior in seven hundred years of European harvest dates, grain markets, and mortality. Her former postdoc went even longer in a 2025 study tracing hemisphere-wide jet patterns across a full millennium, and so far, their frequency looks essentially unchanged on that extended timescale. Today’s episode is one of our lagniappe releases, so the complete original conversation can be freely available for the entire Energy Transition Show audience.

Millions of Americans are sweltering under heat domes this summer, with temperatures soaring to record highs when weather systems stall. The grid feels the strain of these events too.
This extreme heat often creates a precarious situation that pushes electricity demand to levels never seen before, while forcing generation out of service. But why does summer weather get stuck like this in the first place? And is climate change making it happen more often?
For answers we can look to the North Atlantic jet stream, the high-altitude wind steering weather across North America and Europe. Our guest visualizes this as a ski-slope, where a steep gradient between temperatures keeps the jet racing fast and weather moving. Though, as the Arctic warms faster than the rest of the planet, the slope flattens, slowing the jet stream, which has it meandering in bigger waves. Slow weather becomes stuck weather. Whatever comes along, heat, rain, or drought, can then sit around for longer. Our host Chris Nelder dug into this mechanism in <a href="https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-65-climate-science-part-9-jet-stream/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Episode #65</a>, the ninth part of <a href="https://energytransition.show/climate-science-miniseries" rel="noopener noreferrer">our climate science miniseries</a>. That was back in 2018, years before “heat dome” became a household phrase.
In this conversation, recorded February 2018, Valerie Trouet, of the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, explains how she reconstructed the jet’s summer position back to 1725 from the density of tree rings in the British Isles and the Balkans. As the planet warmed, the jet lunged north and south far more often. Jet stream excursions like this have increased sharply since the 1960s, looking nothing like the natural climate variability of the three-century record.
Valerie Trouet shares with us how a five-millimeter core from a living tree reveals the climate’s history. She also covers why the jet’s slowdown makes more of an impact than how far it swings. Valerie’s lab has continued publishing on this topic, and in a 2024 paper in Nature, her group took the reconstruction back to 1300 CE, reading jet behavior in seven hundred years of European harvest dates, grain markets, and mortality. Her former postdoc went even longer in a 2025 study tracing hemisphere-wide jet patterns across a full millennium, and so far, their frequency looks essentially unchanged on that extended timescale. Today’s episode is one of our lagniappe releases, so the complete original conversation can be freely available for the entire Energy Transition Show audience.

[Episode #281] – Revisiting the Jet Stream

Can solar and batteries power the world cost-effectively? A new model says yes.

[Episode #273] – Solar and Batteries Can Power the World

The damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has thrown the world into a global energy crisis.

[Episode #272] – Global Energy Crisis 2026

Why have China’s total CO2 emissions been slowly falling for two years even as it’s building more coal-fired power plants than ever?

[Episode #271] – China Update 2026

Lord Adair Turner shares his global perspective on the state of the energy transition, as seen from the Energy Transitions Commission.

[Episode #270] – View from the Energy Transitions Commission

Can the energy transition in the US survive President Trump’s attacks on it?

[Episode #269] – Trump’s War on the Energy Transition

What do aspiring energy transition advocates need to know to become effective changemakers in their communities?

[Episode #268] – Activism 101

As one of the most energy vulnerable countries on earth, Japan faces a difficult choice: join the petrostates, or the electrostates?

[Episode #267] – Japan: Petrostate or Electrostate?

Global carbon emissions from the power sector may be close to peaking thanks to an accelerating energy transition.

[Episode #266] – Global Electricity Review 2025 (Lagniappe edition)

Chris returns to Paris to interview co-lead Tim Gould about the new World Energy Outlook 2025 report, and to explore the futures it contemplates.

[Episode #265] – IEA World Energy Outlook 2025

A history of South Africa’s energy transition in the power sector kicks off a new Energy Transition Show miniseries on the African country.

[Episode #264] – History of the Transition in South Africa

Straight talk about the world’s transition from fossil fuels to renewables with energy expert Chris Nelder

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