Energy Empire

The Utilities Want $1.4 Trillion. The Hyperscalers Want a Gigawatt. Nobody Did the Math.

May 28, 2026·54 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

Electric utilities are on track to spend $1.4 trillion on the power grid by 2030. Hyperscalers keep asking for gigawatt-scale data centers. Nobody is required to show the math.Katherine Blunt covered PG&E's bankruptcy and the Camp Fire for The Wall Street Journal and wrote California Burning, the book PG&E CEO Patti Poppe made mandatory reading for all her employees when she took over. Now, Blunt covers Alphabet, where she is watching the AI buildout collide with the same regulatory machinery that produced PG&E.Jigar and Katherine get into PJM's white paper conceding the market needs to be redesigned, what Google figured out in its Xcel Minnesota deal that other hyperscalers haven't, and what trust looks like when utilities ask for a record-setting decade of spending.Plus: the one thing Katherine would mandate if she could — and it isn't interruptible service.Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

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