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Some people can't wait for the NFL draft. Some people can't wait until Apple rolls out its latest product. But for Jane Flagle, it's permitting reform. I feel I'm feeling good. I got to say, I'm feeling I'm feeling pretty good. This is maybe more for me, my Super Bowl halftime show, you know. But we're not in the Super Bowl yet, right? We've only won the AFL championship game. And now, like, we're in the two weeks, like, that you have to wait for the Super Bowl to start. And we're in the commentary section of, like, who's going to win? Which quarterback is more successful? Is the kicker capable of kicking for the 50-yard line? I don't know about the defense. You know what? Stop asking questions and just root for the team. Just hope that they don't have a power outage during the Super Bowl. That's right. That's right. That's right. From Latitude Media, this is OKC. For years, we've been having a national conversation about how hard it is to build big things in America. For the last two decades, we've been consumed by debates over tax credits and arguments over which industries the government should back. And we've seen presidents using their power to favor or strangle energy infrastructure. But we have never been able to get to the root of the problem, a deeply broken federal permitting process that adds years to timelines and can drive up costs 30 percent. And at a time of immense load growth. And rampant inflation, we are finally at a breaking point. So that's why it is so important that a bipartisan group of senators finally reached a deal on a bill that would streamline federal permitting and hopefully get us to a place of sanity and reason in how we approve energy infrastructure. For builders and clean energy, it's a deal they've been anticipating for years. For many green groups, it's a deal with the devil that will overwhelmingly benefit fossil fuels. So this week, we're going to look at how permitting reform is taking shape. We're going to explore the details, the debates, the trends. Tradeoffs and the hope that we're about to get to a more rational place. Plus, how's that ratepayer protection going, Mr. Trump? Tech companies and utilities signed on to the White House's pledge with great fanfare. But it's not really surviving contact with the real world. We'll look at why a toothless pledge is, well, creating the results you'd expect. That's coming right up. Open Circuit is brought to you by Energy Hub. The flexibility program. The platform for the modern grid. More than 230 utilities trust Energy Hub to build and operate virtual power plants, delivering 3.6 gigawatts of flexible capacity. As the resources grow, okay, this is really great. This is an amazing resource. I can use it. It's really valuable. But here's what I really need to do to make it as good as or better than my existing conventional capacity. Paul Hines is the chief scientist at Energy Hub. Where his team develops the algorithms that turn millions of DERs into flexible capacity, utilities can stay. And they can take their grid planning on. My team is working on the algorithms that allow us to meet the utility's goals for shaping these virtual power plants. Machine learning keeps raising the ceiling on what VPPs can deliver. Energy Hub's platform is trained on years of data from millions of devices. Optimized for utility needs across every season and every grid condition. We're working with utilities not to just enable that capacity, but also make it more flexible so that utilities can use it, you know, more times per year for longer events, in ways that are not so flexible. We're working with utilities not to just enable that capacity, but also make it more flexible so that utilities can use it, you know, more times per year for longer events in ways that are more flexible. valuable to both customer and utility. Later in the show, Paul explains how Energy Hub's platform helps utilities scale VPPs for their unique needs as grid demands evolve. Learn more at energyhub.com. OpenCircuit is supported by Everyday Electric. You might know them by their former name, Renew Home. We are at a pivotal moment. Energy demand is growing faster than the grid was designed for. Everyday Electric believes we need to start at home with savings before jumping to new expensive infrastructure. They already run the country's largest residential VPP, coordinating over 6 gigawatts of capacity. And now they're expanding partnerships with energy providers and OEMs so that products like thermostats, EVs, and batteries can help households save money and support the grid. That's home energy as it should be. Learn more at everydayelectric.com. What if you gave your climate donations the same due diligence you gave your investments? That's what Giving Green does. Giving Green researches the strategies and nonprofits best positioned to improve the lives of people with disabilities. to unlock the next big climate breakthrough and sends 100% of every dollar donated to the Giving Green Fund directly to them. Maximize your impact per dollar, no cuts or guesswork. Make your first gift before the new year and it will be matched up to $500. Go to givinggreen.earth slash circuit. Welcome to the show. I'm Stephen Lacey. I'm the executive editor of Latitude Media. I am here this week with Jigar Shah and Jane Flagle. Jigar is the co-managing partner of Multiplier. Hello, sir. Hello. Are you and Jane in a battle to see who can do more podcasts over permitting reform? No, because I would never win. I'll dom that one. It's my time. You can have VPPs. Oh my gosh, always. I'm sorry I missed your fake birthday party at Climate Week, Jigar. It sounds like it was quite the time. It was pretty awesome. Yeah. Like, you know, it's one of those things with Climate Week where you go and then you never see any of the people you actually want to see. Yeah. He's saying that because we didn't hang out. Well, you were invited. That's true. I thought you were there, Jane. I wasn't. I don't have, I think I learned about myself during this Climate Week is that I'm too old and I have no stamina and I like, I don't know how anyone does this. I can't like- Me on the other hand, I'm still a young chicken. Yeah, apparently. Apparently. I can't do like when you do, when you're running around all day and then everyone wants to like go to happy hour. Yeah. Did you see that my shoes were featured in Axios? No. What shoes? I had custom made Energy Empire shoes. I saw the shoes, but I didn't realize they made Axios. Was that like the, uh, the, the, the, the scene somewhere column or like, what, how are they featured? The Axios Energy Newsletter. Celebrities, they're real people too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the Axios Energy Newsletter. I was the, uh, CODA at the bottom. Nice. That's incredible. I'll have to go look so I can either make fun of you or compliment you, depending. Well, one of our favorites is back. It's Jane Flagle. She's a senior fellow at the States Forum and the Searchlight Institute. And she has been heavily involved in and consumed by this permitting conversation. Uh, Jane, you were in Washington when the bill was unveiled meeting with lawmakers. Uh, how did you come out of those meetings feeling about this long awaited bill? Like incredibly energized. And I think like, sort of surprisingly optimistic. Um, I think, you know, we were in this period where everyone was sort of like, should we release text? Should we not release text? When are we voting? Are we voting? Do we have text? Do we even have text? Like what's happening? And I just feel like the vibe shift when the text was released was like palpable. I think there's a lot of momentum here and people really want to do the right thing. So I was, I felt, I felt. Great about it. And then I took a nap. We can't extend them over many years, as is the case now, and it prevents the federal government from weaponizing the federal review process. It seems to be particularly helpful to geothermal and hydro, which both face a labyrinth of permitting. It tackles the grid. FERC gets more power to push interstate power lines. It opens up regional market access to aggregated distributed resources, i.e. virtual power plants. It pushes FERC to even use AI to analyze transmission, which is interesting. So it opens up more data for transmission planning. It requires hyperscalers to report their data center energy use to the federal government, and it prevents data centers of 20 megawatts or more from cost-shifting grid upgrades to ratepayers. So I want to jump through each of these. And as you said, Jane, I think generally the reaction among folks who have supported this has been very positive. So does this bill match your hopes and expectations and work on this, Jane? I'm really not just saying this. It's because I'm like a blind cheerleader, but it exceeds them on almost every measure. Like, I was really, really quite shocked when I saw the text, actually. And maybe at the highest level, like, you laid out a bunch of stuff that's in the bill, Stephen. If you asked a normal person, like, what's in a permitting bill, I think they would probably not describe, like, 75% of what you just outlined. Like, it's a really ambitious bill. And also, I think we tend to assume when there's a bipartisan deal on something, it's going to be super low as common denominator. And this is not that. This is, like, ambition on all sides, which I think is really interesting. And maybe the last thing I'll say is I kind of felt like, you know, we sort of knew as the negotiations were evolving that there were three buckets. There was the, like, transmission title. There was going to be stuff on kind of traditional environmental review, litigation, et cetera. And then there was this bucket on permit certainty. But the kind of, like, all of the stuff on data centers is pretty novel, I think. And I did not imagine would be in the bill. And then some of the technology-specific stuff on everything from VPPs to geothermal to hydro was also a surprise to me. A happy surprise. surprise. Yeah, I think I saw someone on Twitter say that usually when you have a bipartisan bill, stuff starts coming out, you make compromises, but for whatever reason, everybody threw everything into the mix and it just worked. So Jigar, you interviewed Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico on your podcast, Energy Empire, one of the co-sponsors of the bill. How did he characterize the balance of the bill and how it came together? Well, I think, I mean, Jane, I think summarized it wonderfully. I think we're in a situation where optimism exceeds pessimism, right? And I think that for so long, people just want to think the worst of everybody and I get it, right? Because we sort of live in today. But in general, really, we do have this ability to do big things, right? Whether it's, you know, make up for all of the shut-in capacity that Qatar has on the Strait of Hormuz with our LNG exports to, you know, figuring out how to build data centers and, you know, other loads at scale here in this country, whether it's new manufacturing or EVs and that kind of stuff. And what was happening is that many different people were weaponizing what was routine processes within the federal government. It was never intended to be the case that, like, these things were weaponized. It was supposed to be that all of these things were, you know, done by the book. Like, you really actually figure out whether there's an environmental harm, right? And you characterize what that environmental harm is. You give people the chance to participate in an open process, right? None of those things were taken away by this bill. But once that process is done and the experts have done their work and published their findings, like, it has to be settled, right? It can't be that that then gets manipulated for other purposes. And I remember you and me and, you know, Katherine Hamilton talked about this when Obama, I think, made the critical mistake of, you know, of taking away the permit for the XL pipeline when, you know, a lot of the fracking, you know, stuff was happening. And I think we predicted then that a lot of those things would be used against solar and wind, right? And it is exactly happening, right? And I just think that for those people who are characterizing this as eviscerating the NEPA or whatever it is, it's not. Like, Senator Heinrich worked his butt off to try to, you know, maintain the spirit of what those laws were and taking away the ability to weaponize them. Yeah, Jane, I gave a brief rundown of what's in the bill. Do you have any favorite or underappreciated pieces of this legislation? Yeah, okay. Maybe just, like, to talk a minute about the data center stuff, which I think has been underappreciated. Rob Meyer had a great piece on it yesterday. But, you know, I think this is, the bill is incredibly ambitious when it comes to these questions of how do you make sure data centers pay their fair share. And in fact, as I have been pushing, goes beyond fair share. So the way that I've been describing what the bill does to people is that if you think of the grid like a toll road where everyone pays a toll to use the highway that's already been built, when a data center needs a new on-ramp, the old rules, like the existing rules under the FPA, said that it could pay for the ramp or the toll, whichever would cost more. And this bill requires that they pay for both. It's like a really big deal, actually. And so that, I think, is really important. I also think there are provisions in here that should encourage more flexibility and non-firm interconnection, which is really important. They basically get, you know, there are kind of like now non-firm services that are recognized as their own tariff category, which is a really big deal. It allows states to give large loads queue priority in competitive open seasons, which I think is really important. Like, that's all very good for emissions, like incredibly good for emissions and costs. And then maybe one more thing I'll say that I think is underappreciated is, and you know, look at me, not shilling for utilities, but I'll just say, it is true that if you look at the studies of what's driving a lot of the price increases in states, much of it is local transmission and distribution spending, right? And there's like lots of arguments about how much of that is or is not gold plating. And I think one of the things that the bill does that's interesting is establishes a federal role in overseeing local transmission and distribution spending. So a state can refer a utility to FERC if they think that the utility is spending imprudently. That's like a huge deal. Like, this is such a good bill. It's shocking to me how good the bill is. And then of course, like, I love all of the transmission provisions, which I think most people in our community are enthusiastic about. But the data center stuff, I think is, and the local transmission distribution oversight thing, I think is particularly compelling. Yeah. Jigar, what's your read on the data center stuff? So you have these changes to how we revise transmission pricing policy. So data centers pay for both the embedded and incremental costs of new transmission. And then it essentially, as Jane said, creates this like federal national connect and manage policy to bring in more data center flexibility. What do you make of these pieces? So first of all, I just want to say the staff in the Senate is ridiculously talented. Like, just so talented. Like, I love Senators Whitehouse and Heinrich and Capito and maybe Lee. But like, but in general, like, they're not doing this work. It's the staff that does the work. And I just think when you think about just how particular they are on these things, whether it's grid utilization or VPPs or others, or exactly what the failure mechanisms are and how one might remedy these things through FERC, et cetera. These are things that we've been talking about for a long time around reopening the Federal Power Act, reopening some of these other things, which were sacrosanct. Like, you could never reopen them. And I'm still a little bit concerned that, you know, that the utilities will go through a manager's amendment to try to like, try to close some of these things that we've been able to open up. But I just, the thing about the data centers that I find weird is that people are characterizing this as good for the data centers. Some of them are characterizing as it's bad for the data centers. It's neither, right? Like, ultimately, this is good for doing big things in America, right? And people are holding the data centers accountable to paying, which, by the way, was never the data center's fault. Like, when you look at, like, what was happening at Entergy Arkansas or what's been happening in Duke's territory or other, or Dominion or other places, this was the utilities taking a good faith effort by the data centers and saying, we would rather you not actually pay for all of this stuff because we don't want you to pay for them. We want to rate base it. And this is giving the data center companies a mechanism by, you know, like, holding the utilities accountable so that when they make these offers, they can force the utilities to do what's right for the rate payers. I just think that the complexity around which the staff understood this and put it and codified it here. The other thing I would say is, you know, I did a big podcast with Chris Shelton at AES and the Grid 2.0 task force. And the whole point of that was moving away from this firm capacity obligation to serve, right? And that is wholeheartedly endorsed within this bill, right? They're basically saying that, like, it doesn't make any sense for the utilities to rate base this stuff for 26 hours a year of peak, right? And, like, we can use words like gold plating or platinum plating or whatever it is, but it's not really that. It's more that the utilities deliberately use this as a way to build more infrastructure that we don't always need. Now, sometimes we do need it, to be clear, because we're going to double the size of the grid over the next, you know, 15 years. But sometimes we don't need it, right? And this bill provides a mechanism by which we can thoughtfully figure out whether we are in a place where we need it or whether we don't need it, and it's gold plating. It's also just like, yeah, so many of the arguments we've been having, you know, this should really help take care of the, like, is it or is it not a gold plating argument? Do we need this investment or not? And even the requirements on, like, forward-looking transmission planning and, like, this should all help our country get out of a situation of artificial electricity scarcity, which is what is happening. And that is actually the core of the problem when it comes to prices and the reliability of the grid right now. One of the other provisions that I think people didn't spend a lot of time on is this backstop authority, where, you know, for a lot of long transmission lines, right, you've got, you know, sufficient generation capacity here, you have sufficient load on the other side of the transmission line, and then you've got states that have to accommodate the transmission line through their state, right? And then they use that as a way to kill a transmission line. This provides a mechanism by which to overrule states that want a transmission line to go through, right? It gives them a shot clock, and it, like, gives them a process by which they can complain, They can reroute the transmission line. They can do the things that they need to do, but they can't do it in a way that actually prevents the project from being built. And this is something that we've been arguing over since the 2005 and 2007 Energy Policy Acts have passed. And so it was fantastic to see that methodology in here and expect that to be one of the biggest things that the utilities fight. And maybe just, sorry, just one thing on Jigar's point about how amazing the staff is. I also just want to say, one of the sources of opposition or pushback I hear right now from Democrats is like, let's wait till after the election so we can negotiate a better deal. Stephen's looking at me like he was going to ask this later. God damn it, Jade. Just let me ask you the question. Keep rolling. I'll just say, let me just say, you cannot say enough about how incredible these negotiators have been and Heinrich and Whitehouse in particular and their teams and the notion that like there are going to be, there are going to be major substantive or negotiated improvements with other people, I think is quite frankly, like facially ridiculous. But I will stop there so that Stephen can tee it up later. You brought us perfectly into the questions and criticisms that we're hearing on the left. So this is a good time to address some of those. A couple of reactions to those who oppose it. Again, like you said, some are saying, why don't we just wait to get a better deal after the midterms when the Democrats could maybe take both houses of Congress, get a better deal. Many enviro groups are staunchly opposed saying that anything that speeds up fossil fuel permitting makes the whole deal a disaster. So Jane, how would you characterize the left's opposition right now? I think there's this argument about like, you know, an imagined counterfactual world where we might be able to get more stuff. So that's like one thing. So let's put that aside. I think the other is genuine anxiety about the, I actually think no one is really fighting about the relative ambition of the transmission title, which I think everyone has been correctly, positively surprised about. I think, you know, the truth is that like, there have been groups who have been using the tools that Jigar elaborated to block fossil infrastructure. And there's a lot of anxiety about, there's a lot of anxiety about a bill that constrains some of the, particularly the judicial review processes around these laws. Now I should say, there's not, there are not changes, there are not big substantive changes to the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act in this bill. I mean, there are changes to the Clean Water Act, but they're more procedural in nature. Like everyone is still going to have to obey the letter of substantive environmental laws. But I think what makes people nervous is deadlines for the bill. Is for litigation. And now if you sue a project for something that was wrong in their NEPA process or some error, it will be much harder to do that, to stop the project forever. Like what's going to happen now is that the project will get remanded back to the agencies who have an opportunity to fix the issue at hand. So like at some level, at the very heart of this is just this disagreement about whether the primary strategy that the environmental movement should be pursuing in light of climate change, right now is stopping fossil or enabling clean. And the third criticism I've seen, to put it crudely from one commentator, what's to stop the administration from just wiping their ass with this, right? Like, are they really going to follow it in the first place? And so I've seen some skepticism. This I also have very low tolerance for because, and it's also, this especially comes up in the permitting certainty discussions. And again, I just think it's really important to be honest about the counterfactual here, which is that he is wiping his ass, but like it already, it is bad. Like what is currently happening is bad. The notion that legislating constraints is somehow going to make it worse makes no sense to me. Yeah, this is, I actually don't even understand it logically as an argument, frankly. Jigar, how do you read the critiques and criticisms? Well, first you forever ruined my day while thinking about Trump's ass. So like, you know, let's stop doing that. Look, I think when you think about, some of the pushbacks, like I want to make sure that we're acknowledging them a little bit, right? One is, is that when we did the 2015 compromise on oil exports, I mean, it really did increase the amount of investment in the fossil fuel industry, right? And so, and you know, I think that's a good thing. Like, I don't think that we should have wanted gasoline to be at $5 a gallon or diesel to be at $7 a gallon. So like, I think that in general, we need to, provide affordable solutions to Americans. So like, I think it's fine. But like, I can see why environmental groups think that these kinds of things are going to increase the amount of fossil fuel production, right? I think the second piece of it though for them is that you have this ability to issue permits that cannot be revoked, right? And so if the EPA issues many, many, many, many permits for natural gas power plants, for coal power plants, for whatever, you can imagine there being a trading mechanism in the future of those permits that were issued under the Trump administration being not able to be revoked and just constantly like sold in the marketplace between parties that want to like, you know, pollute more in the future, right? And so I think that there is some like, you know, concern over the way in which that was structured. But look, I think that the bottom line with the environmental groups, and these are all friends of mine that I've worked with, I've talked to over the last 24 hours, is that when we had the first Earth Day, 10% of the entirety of the United States of America came out for the first Earth Day. It is unclear whether 10% of the American public today would come out for any issue on the environmental side of the ledger, right? And so this esoteric blocking of projects using NEPA or using, you know, these sort of environmental rules is not actually causing them to have real American support for their positions. And a lot of what I've been counseling my friends on is to say, you need to get back to a place where 10% of Americans actually believe your point of view. And so whether that means you have to soften your point of view, whether that means you have to explain it to them more carefully, you can't just win in esoteric like court decisions like the Center for Biological Diversity does or some of these other people do. Like you actually have to like, win them over to your side. And, you know, and that I think is the next phase of what this bill does, is it tells the environmental groups, go shore up American support for your positions. Earlier, we met Paul Hines, Energy Hub's chief scientist. His team develops a machine learning that orchestrates 3.6 gigawatts of virtual power plants. When you see a utility using algorithms that we wrote on the whiteboard, running 250 megawatt events, I think that's pretty amazing. Utilities need capacity they can deploy now, and they're finding it in virtual power plants, which are precise and configurable. I've got customers that have time of use rates. We need to make sure we respect that. I need to pre-cool during these hours. Maybe there's some hours that have a lot of solar power, so let's make sure that we soak up as much of that solar as we can. But I need to really manage my peak during this other period of time. And so figuring out how do we take all those goals and then come up with a solution and come up with schedules for all the resources, whether it's batteries, thermostats, electric vehicles. Energy Hub maps that evolution through a four-level maturity curve. Level one looks like traditional demand response. At levels three and four, a VPP is a real-time resource that can meet many different needs on the system. It's actually better than a power plant because you're able to solve problems in the distribution network, which is where a lot of the cost is right now. You're able to solve problems in an automated way, whereas power plants actually are fairly slow to respond to issues. It's the future of how the grid operates, and we just need to connect them in the right ways, give them the right algorithms, and make that happen. Energy Hub's GridAware DERMS is the flexibility platform trusted by 230 utilities across North America. OpenCircuit is brought to you by Everyday Electric. After years proving the market was ready, they're delivering a new kind of VPP. So how does it work? Starting with a VPP, you can start with features built into the products people already own and use. Things like smart thermostats, electric vehicles, and home batteries adjust automatically based on everyday routines, helping lower bills and add capacity. People can get meaningful savings and earn rewards from the grid, and this contributes to a reliable, resilient system that lowers costs for everyone across the grid. That is Everyday Electric's vision. It's the next great addition to your program portfolio. You can learn more at everydayelectric.com. What if you gave your climate donations the same due diligence you give your investments? Giving Green researches the strategies and non-profits best positioned to unlock the next climate breakthrough. Climate impact is difficult to quantify, but Giving Green's research suggests a donation to one of their top climate non-profits is roughly 10 times more effective than a high-quality carbon offset. And the Giving Green fund sends 100% of every dollar straight to them. Maximized impact per dollar, no cuts. That's their guesswork. Make a first gift before the new year. and it will be matched up to $500. Go to givinggreen.earth slash circuit to claim it. One thing I was really struck by was the White House getting behind this. And Senator Heinrich talked about this in your interview, Jigar. He explained how this really started coming together when the White House moved with more urgency. What do you think is going on here? Is this that the reality of obstructionism is just not going to meet the moment that that was finally hitting them? Do any of you have any insight into what you think the White House's motivations were here? I'm curious what Jigar thinks, but maybe I'll just say, like, look, anyone trying to posit that they know anything about the White House's motivations or thought processes probably needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But this goes to, like, again, why I think there's a real urgency of this moment to get this done is like, you know, Jigar rightly points out, all of the ways that monopoly utilities are going to have issues with this bill. And it's not like we've ever tried to fix this stuff before. But right now, these utilities are on the back foot in lots of ways, in part because their influence is counteracted by other actors in the economy who are consumers of electricity and are like, what the hell? Like, we have to be able to build energy in this country and connect to the grid. And I think, you know, in this moment, so much of the administration's, to the extent they have any theory of the economy, is bound up with, like, the success of Americans' support for artificial intelligence. And that's going to require a lot of electricity. And, like, I think they're getting a lot of pressure from those folks to, like, fix the status quo. But again, to me, that just means, you know, move with swiftness to get this bill passed, because the opposition is going to get stronger, not weaker. I guess I'd ask Jane a follow-up question, which is that, like, what I don't understand is, I'm not an expert at all on politics. But, like, as I understand it, like, this is something that you would want to have passed before the election, right? Because then the president could say, hey, you know, like, I'm doing stuff here. What the hell? And the fact that it's going into lame duck bothers me, because I just think the president's going to be like, you know, this election was stolen from me. The Chinese, like, interfered with the election. And then, you know, like, I just don't know whether he's still going to, like, care about forcing Mike Johnson to run for president. To get this done. Yeah, it's not my preferred timing. Let me just say, and I think it would have been great if this had happened a few weeks earlier, and we had the opportunity to have a vote before the election. And I don't, you know, I have lots of questions about the strategy here on all sides. But I think at the moment, as I said, we have text, we have momentum, we have, I think the key thing for me is between now and then, how do we get as many commitments as possible? Yeah, I mean, the one other thing I'd say, Stephen, on this is that having talked to a lot of folks in the last 24 hours, I'd say that our industry is at a turning point. And I don't quite understand that they really understand it. Like, I just think that we are dominated by risk managers now in our industry, right? So, like, when you look at the whole board of ACP or some of these other folks, right, they're like European utilities or they're NextEra or whatever, right? And so, the number of people who look like Sheldon Kimber or Dan Sugar or those kind of people is a much smaller group of people now, right? And so, when you look at the oil and gas side of the ledger, it looks like they're still willing to take more risk than our side of the ledger. And so, part of the challenge in this moment, whether it's, you know, the work that Tom Matz, he's doing on, you know, holding Freedom Caucus members accountable or whether it's, you know, now that you have this law, if it passes, like, are we going to take a whole lot more risk to make sure that the cost advantages that we have are fully realized in this moment? Are we going to deploy VPPs at scale? Are we going to deploy grid enhancing technologies at scale? Are we going to take it to governors and take it to state legislatures to actually finish the work, right? And I think that there's a lot of people in the White House and other places who are betting against our industry rising to the occasion. It's part of what makes the whole deal possible, right? Like, is that we're just betting against each other. And as I said earlier, like, we'll win because I always win. I mean, the oil, gas, mining provisions take effect pretty quickly, you know, almost immediately. You know, the transmission and market reforms are much longer term. Is this better for fossil fuels in the short term with the benefits for clean energy coming much later? No. I mean, again, like, I think we need to be clear about the counterfactual. Which is that, like, what's happening is that a lot of off-grid gas is getting built, among other things. And so I'm just like, the things that determine whether or not any given fossil or mining projects get built are going to be far broader than the specific changes that are relevant to those technologies in this bill. So I'm not worried about some, like, huge flood of, in fact, I think even leaving outside, leaving transmission aside, I think all of these changes are structurally likely to benefit clean energy, which goes to Jigar's point about who you're betting on here. It is true that the law takes time to implement, but let me say again, that is why we have to do it now. Like, let's be clear, it's going to take a couple of years for this to work itself through with the system, particularly the judicial review provisions. And if a Democratic president comes into office in 2029, and we haven't cleared the decks on this stuff, and we don't have the fiscal space to do the kind of spending we want with public money, like, we're in a real, we're in real trouble. Like, we have to get this done before 2028, in my view. Um, uh, so that's what, that's what I would say there. I guess I just also would encourage everyone to take a big step back. I think sometimes in the climate movement, we get a little bogged down in this, like, draw a boundary around a given geography, and then, like, stop as many fossil projects in that geography as you can as a way to measure climate ambition. And to Jigar's point, that's just, like, not, doesn't make sense in terms of physics. That's, like, not how climate change works. Like, these are often global markets. Um, even if it were the case that, like, a few more natural gas pipelines get built to the Northeast as a consequence of this bill, I think that will pale in comparison to the clean energy deployment upside. Um, and what matters for the climate is global emissions. And we still have Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act protections for local impacts of this stuff. So, I don't know. Let's dig into the data center portion one more time. And I actually want to do that in the context of a related story, which is the president's rate payer protection pledge. It's been seven months since Trump unveiled that voluntary protection pledge with executives from all the big tech companies. All the hyperscalers have signed on. The White House says that 200 other utilities, cooperatives, and data center developers have signed on as well. And the White House claims that this now covers 80% of all power users. If you look at the website, it's filled with gushing quotes from utility executives saying how proud they are to work with the president on this. So, we're seeing why that matters. And I think that brings us to why this, the data center portions of this permitting bill matters. Before we talk a little bit about the permitting bill again, which does have teeth, I want to unpack the rate payer protection pledge. Jigar, you've been talking about this a little bit. You mentioned Duke and Entergy earlier. One of the big criticisms is that this is non-binding, of course, and it does nothing to address the natural position of utilities, which is, you know, they want to build as much as possible and rate base it. So, where are we seeing that contradiction play out? Well, across the country. I think that, you know, there is a, you know, a huge body of law, basically, in the United States around customers paying for their own upgrades, right? Whether it's the steel industry or the aluminum industry or their people. And there is a process by which they can put that money in and offset rate base from the utilities. And the utilities hate it. Like, they're just like, we are in the business of putting capital out the door. We are not in the business of basically being a contractor for a data center. And so, we don't want to make these upgrades unless they actually hit our balance sheet. And, you know, like, a very high-profile case just occurred in Dominion's territory, where Microsoft, for example, just offered to pay for a lot of upgrades. And Dominion said, hells no, and went to the SEC and said no. And, you know, to the credit of the regulator there, they ruled against Dominion and said, no, you will take this money and you will, like, you know, help rate payers. Regulators, sometimes good at their jobs. Yes, indeed. Yeah. Now, Entergy has a law in place in Arkansas that sort of allows the utilities to sort of go through this process without really getting regulatory approval. I think we have, have shamed Entergy so much in the last two weeks that they are now rediscovering the fact that they shouldn't hate their ratepayers as much. And so in that case, Google paid for part of the cost of a new solar project, but not all of the cost of a new solar project. And Entergy is like, well, because Google didn't pay for all of it and only part of it, because some of it was for normal load growth in Arkansas, we're going to view Google's payment as a prepayment of services in the future and rate-based all of it. And then as a result, they got an increase of $5.77 a month for every 1,000 kilowatt hours you use, which is basically an average monthly utilization for a homeowner. And so I think everybody from the Cato Institute to AEI to others was up in arms over this. And so I think you're seeing, like in real time, people recognizing that this is not the case. And so I think you're seeing, like in real time, people recognizing that this is not working, right? That the data center companies, in my opinion, and obviously, I'm sure that there are exceptions to this rule, are trying their best to meet the pledge just because why not? And everyone hates them. And so they don't want to give them more reasons to hate them. But the utility companies are doing everything in their power to stop them and getting away with it. Like most of the polling data shows that the voters are blaming the data over the utilities. And so part of, I think, the calculus here from the utilities is that they're going to be able to hide underneath the hatred of the data centers. But, you know, as I keep reminding my utility CEO friends, I'm like, that is only going to last so long. Like at some point, the data center companies will actually hire real marketing and comms people, and they are going to put it right in your lap. I don't see how this is going to last forever. And there are 36 governors running for election this fall, and every one of them actually is promising to solve the problem. And so villainizing data centers when it's not their fault, eventually they're going to get smart on the fact that it's their monopoly utility companies that have been screwing them all along. I also just think so, like, honestly, if we take a big step back, like, so much of the fight on affordability and whatever, like, we really are living in a country that is in an electricity scarcity environment, which makes no sense given our industries and our technologies. And, like, anything we can do to fix that is going to put downward pressure on the politics of affordability and the actual affordability crisis. Yeah, it's all about plug-in solar. Do you see the utilities lobbying against this or trying to lobby for major changes? They already are. But is there, I mean, obviously their power, lobbying power is diminished a little bit because everyone sees utilities as more toxic. But, like, do you think that, that their lobbying power has diminished enough that they may not have the power to make these changes, whatever changes they want? I just want to put on, like, a flagleton hat and suggest something here, which is that these people aren't stupid and they're going to try to lobby through other venues. And, like, whether that's, you know, whether that's NGOs or unions or whatever, like, we all just need to be very clear-eyed about the various strategies they're going to try to deploy. And it's just, we're not going to control it, which is why we just need to be out there as loud. This is not a moment for people to sit on their hands and be like, I don't know, maybe we'll get a better deal later. Like, are we, I don't know, like, the bill's really long. I haven't had time to read it yet. Like, it's unacceptable. If you care about climate change, if you care about clean electricity, everyone's going to have to get off their asses and fight for this bill. Yeah, no, look, I agree with you completely. And I think this is where Senator Heinrich was very clear on the podcast, which was that, you know, he's like, this is going to create a huge problem. And I think that's what's going to happen. And so, you know, old habits die hard, and we are moving in that direction. But I totally agree with Jane that, like, they have so many ways to impact these things. And the way that you will see this impacted, I guarantee you, is through a manager's amendment. It is not going to be through, like, an amendment on the floor of the House or the Senate. It is going to be through the package of amendments that go through Senator Whitehouse directly or some of the other managers. I just don't have a handle on this. Congressional calendar or politics right now, like, what are the big uphill battles right now after the midterms? You talked about that there are some risks if Trump gets sidetracked or if priorities change. Like, how big are the potential risks? And do we actually think that there are good chances that this will pass? Look, like, there are risks. And in the face of risks, you do everything you can to mitigate them, knowing that there's uncertainty and it's kind of unknowable. So I think what we really need to see now and over the next couple of years is that we're going to have to make sure that we're going to have to make sure that we're going to have to make sure that we're going to have to make several weeks is very loud public statements of support of the bill as it is written from everyone with political power who wants to make it happen. And I think we should all be pushing for that. That, I think, is, like, anything we can do to build momentum going into the lame duck is really crucial. I think what is going to matter here is continuing to make this a priority. The lame duck is, like, very short. It's, like, quite—even if there was not this risk that, like, the president would be distracted by other things after a midterm defeat, the lame duck is just really short. So anything we can do to say, like, this has to get done, this has to get done fast, do not get distracted by false promises of some imagined future better deal. Like, Democrats need this in 2029. We need it today to constrain the president's attacks on renewables. Like, we need it now. And we just need to keep saying that. Just 10x whatever Jane just said. Like, I just think, like, we are in a place right now where there's a lot of people who are going to be like, oh, we're going to have to do this. We're going to who think that this bill is likely to pass. It is not likely to pass, to be crystal clear, right? Like, when you think about just how uphill the climb is, to just get it passed through the Senate and then let alone the House taking it up and Trump getting distracted by Iran and all these other things, it is unlikely, actually, to pass. But it is our very best chance we have ever had to solve these issues, right? And so if you are not 100% all in on passing this bill, then you might as well be against the bill. So anybody who, like, gives me hedging milk toast language is against the bill. And I think everyone should view everybody who is hedging or is careful or is not crystal clear that they are 110% behind the bill passing is against the bill. And can I just say also, like, surely there are things that could be strengthened and improved and whatever. Like, this is just how it is. But, if the argument for not doing it is that Democrats are going to win all of the elections and be able to do something, quote unquote, better, let the better thing be improvements to a bill we've already passed. So final question on this. Assume this does pass in, say, 2035. What do you think is built more because of it? Is it transmission lines? Is it renewables? Is it pipelines and mines? Like, what do you think the balance of infrastructure looks like? I think that in general, we are in a place where transmission has been extraordinarily difficult politically. Like, I think that there actually was a lot of authorities that the Biden administration had from the 2005-2007 Energy Policy Acts, et cetera, that it took way too long to fully implement and all of those things. But the reason that that was the case is that it's politically just really difficult to go up against state rights. And all these other things. This permitting bill basically gives the next administration a mandate to fix all of it, right? And it also gives it a mandate to get large loads online faster. It gives large loads a mandate to be flexible grid assets to help the rest of the grid operate. These are all things that Texas, frankly, has done extraordinarily well. And all of the rest of the independent system are probably going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be doing a lot of the work that the state and the state operators across the country have done a horrible job of, right? And so if this bill passes, that will be a very clear signal to everybody in the country that you need to be a lot more like Texas, right? And that includes base power and residential battery storage. It includes grid enhancing technologies and advanced conductors. It includes everything that you possibly wanted to do, but forgot that it was your time to do. top priority. Like, all of it is going to be helped by this. And I think that the thing that people, I think, just have such a hard time understanding is just how beat up a lot of the entrepreneurs in our country are, right? For all of the craziness around the re-industrialized conference and this and that and whatever else, we absolutely have this broken system where we invent everything in this country and then don't systematically have people that are supposed to help you deploy them at scale. And I think this permitting bill sends a signal that we're supposed to actually care about America doing big things again. And that matters. The vibes matter. All of that matters. Yeah, I think I totally agree with Jigar. At the highest level, we do need as a country, not just for climate, but for all sorts of reasons, much more robust investment going into energy. And there's a thing here about capital allocation, which is that today, if you're deciding where to put a dollar, you may put it in energy infrastructure, but you may put it someplace else. And the biggest cost in a lot of these projects isn't bits of kit or steel or whatever, it's time. And every year a project is just waiting, investors are paying. So if you cut the wait time and the risk and the uncertainty, all these projects are going to be much cheaper to finance. And we're going to just get a lot more capital into, building, not just faster, just in general, in building. Jane Flagle is a senior fellow at the States Forum and the Searchlight Institute. I know it's been a really busy week or a couple of weeks for you, Jane. So grateful you could come on. Love having you here. Good to see you. Thanks so much for having me, you guys. Great to see you both. Jigar, you're pretty good yourself too. He's the best. Well, I am not a PhD. And honestly, Jane, I think that the work you did to get the permitting bill to this point right now is nothing short of heroic. And so I appreciate everything that you did to make us successful here. Thank you, Jigar. Absolutely. dot com for our coverage on permitting reform. We've got a lot of pieces there. And of course, check out our newsletters and our industry coverage across the board. We also have our AI Energy Nexus newsletter for those following AI and energy. And of course, subscribe to us on YouTube. Latitude Media has both our podcast Catalyst with Shail Khan and Open Circuit. And you can find years of our episodes on YouTube. So thanks so much for being here. I'm Stephen Lacey. I'll catch you next week.