The Gist

While the pitchforks are out for new data centers in some jurisdictions, creative approaches are emerging to facilitate speed to power without unreasonably burdening ratepayers.

In this month’s Gist, my colleague Annie Gilleo writes about the new “bring your own distributed capacity” concept that is getting the attention of hyperscalers, utilities, and regulators. It asks a simple question: Can we unlock capacity faster and more affordably by investing in new energy technology in people’s homes so that they benefit from the data center boom while also enabling it?

After a thought-provoking dinner conversation at last month’s Power Resilience Forum with Mari McClure, the CEO of Green Mountain Power in Vermont and Rudy Garza, the CEO of CPS Energy in Texas, that we asked them to do it all again for this month’s Gist.

In our interview, they break down the overly simplified narratives that have emerged about clean energy, resilience, data centers, and affordability. And they share what it’s really like to run utilities in two very different parts of the country right now; it turns out it’s neither monolithic nor simple.

The grid is reaching a breaking point. Utilities say they need a trillion dollars for upgrades by 2030. Regulators say: prove it. Somewhere between California’s wildfire zones and Florida’s hurricane corridors, we’re entering a period where every investment decision carries real political and economic consequences.

The core question is no longer whether we need a more resilient grid. It’s how much resilience is enough and who pays?

Itron recently announced its $325 million acquisition of Urbint, marking a significant exit in the climate resilience software space. The deal comes at an interesting time. Climate tech M&A exits are down 25% year over year, yet acquisitions now represent 92% of all exits in the sector.

We sat down with Urbint founder and CEO, Corey Capasso, one of AHG’s first clients, to discuss what this exit signals for founders selling to utilities and how the utility market has transformed from a graveyard for startups into fertile ground.

Weather forecasting is undergoing a period of rapid transformation driven by AI and surging demand for more precise, local, and actionable information. In an age of increasingly destructive extreme weather, the right weather intelligence can be the difference between safety and calamity.

In this month’s Gist, we spoke with meteorologist Sunny Wescott and Matt Stein, CEO of Salient Predictions, about why utilities still get caught off-guard by predictable storms, how AI is reshaping risk assessment and complementing physics-based models, and what it really takes to embed weather intelligence into daily operations.

Data centers. They are the inescapable energy topic of the moment. Can we build them fast enough to meet surging AI demand? Do we have the power and grid infrastructure to support them? What will they do to customer bills?

In this month’s Gist, my colleague Matt Anderson explains why some of the assumptions around data center demand are likely wrong and how a combination of new technology and creative regulation could make data center demand more flexible and drive down costs significantly.

Now that Congress has gutted much of the Inflation Reduction Act, attention turns back to the states that have historically provided a “climate firewall” when the federal government backslides.

In 2016 when Trump was first elected, climate-forward states united in common cause to flex the power that the federalist system gave them to continue to drive the energy transition forward.

In this month’s Gist, we interview Will Toor, who leads Colorado Governor Polis’ energy office, to find out if states will step up again and what’s different about 2025.

Utilities have struggled to adopt new technologies quickly and are known to pilot tech startups out of business. As a result, investors often avoid investing in startups that sell to utilities.

But utilities need to innovate now more than ever. There is no way to achieve the goals of the energy transition, meet rising electricity demand from AI, and address the threats posed by climate change without significant innovation in the utility sector.

In this month’s Gist, we interviewed Larry Bekkedahl, senior vice president of advanced energy delivery at Portland General Electric (PGE), Oregon’s largest utility, which has gone from last to first in utility innovation. We discussed how PGE did it, and why it has been an imperative for the company.