Open Circuit

Data center opposition is now being called “the most bipartisan issue since beer.” In Indiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, voters across the political spectrum are turning sharply against the large campuses powering AI. At least 28 of the 38 states that currently offer tax incentives are weighing whether to roll them back.

On this episode of Open Circuit, we dig into what's actually driving the revolt, and why it's more complicated than simple NIMBYism. 

Utilities are at the center of the backlash. Governors are increasingly targeting them as anger grows over opaque deals and rising rates.

Last week, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro sent a letter to his state's utilities declaring that "the 20th century utility model is broken." We break down what he's actually proposing and what it says about the impossible position governors now find themselves in.

Later in the show, Latitude Media senior reporter Maeve Allsup to talk about her reporting on the backlash from Indiana, where a $5 billion data center has run headfirst into decades of broken promises and soaring utility bills.

We’ll also take a quick look at PJM's reformed interconnection queue, open for the first time in four years. We’ll look at the dominance of gas, the pullback of renewables, and what it tells us about where grid buildout is actually headed.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Want to watch this episode? Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.

Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts.

As the oil crisis persists, the world is running on borrowed time and borrowed oil. Inventories are draining, and the pain that started in Asian petrochemical plants and Indian cooking fuel shipments is now spreading west. 

Now, the traders who move the world's oil are saying there's a reckoning coming for the rest of the world.

This week, we dive into what happens if this keeps going. Does a shock this big finally weaken the world's oil addiction? Or do we just go right back to where we started?

We also get into the emerging clean energy storylines: Countries are dusting off their transition plans, Chinese cleantech exports are surging, and Gulf states may pull back on climate tech investing.

Then we turn to the world's most hyped data center developer, Fermi America, which raised nearly $750 million promising to build the largest campus ever. The company is now in freefall with no anchor tenant, a departed CEO, and a construction site that looks unchanged from six months ago. What went wrong?

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Want to watch this episode? Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.

Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts.

What actually kills a clean energy project?

It’s not always interconnection delays, permitting, or supply chains. Sometimes, it’s the deal itself.

Even after years of development, hundreds of documents, and months of diligence, projects still fall apart late in the process — sometimes just days before closing. Often, it’s because risks aren’t surfaced early enough.

The result: capital gets tied up in deals that don’t move forward, developers spend years advancing projects that can’t get financed, and critical information only emerges when it’s almost too late to act on it.

In a market defined by policy uncertainty, investors are more selective than ever, and there’s much less tolerance for surprises late in the process. So how do we fix it?

In this Frontier Forum, Stephen Lacey talks with Rich Deming, founder of CEARTscore and CEO of East Energy Renewables, about why diligence still breaks down, and what it would take to fix it.

They discuss how risks get buried across fragmented data rooms, what prevents teams from fully understanding a project, and how better visibility earlier in the process could change how capital flows through the market.

This episode is partner content. The conversation was recorded live as part of Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum with CEARTscore. You can access the full video here.

CEARTscore is building a platform to structure project data, surface risks earlier, and help developers, investors, and insurers make faster, more informed decisions. Learn more at ceart.io.

With electricity now the limiting factor in the race to build superintelligence, the tech industry's response has been very Silicon Valley: move fast, break things, and relentlessly scale.

The result? An overtaxed grid, a wave of community pushback, and an obsession with jet engines, ship turbines, and small modular reactors that don’t solve today’s problems.

In this live episode, recorded at the Transition-AI conference in San Francisco, we stress test three Silicon Valley mantras against the reality of what's happening to the grid. 

First, “move fast and break things”: data center bans are spreading, communities are organizing, and the backlash is bipartisan. Is it too late to rebuild trust?

Then, “first principles” thinking: data centers are going off-grid, jet engines are being bolted to trailers, and the grid is being treated as a hurdle to avoid. Why is this approach shortsighted?

Finally, “10x better, not 10% better”: every hyperscaler has a moonshot, but very few have planning cycles that extend past three years. So are we missing a critical window to get creative?

We’ll close with some audience ideas for creative solutions to the AI energy bottleneck.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Want to watch this episode? Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.

For a long time, natural gas was considered a bridge fuel. Even the gas industry called it a bridge, working hand in hand with environmental groups to push coal off the grid. 

Then came the pushback over methane leaks, air quality in homes, and residential gas connections. The industry got so rattled it started hiring influencers to win back public opinion.

Well, all that has changed radically. Who needs influencers when you have the tech companies who run the platforms?

This month, Meta announced it would fund 10 natural gas power plants for a single AI campus in Louisiana totaling 7.5 gigawatts. Microsoft, Google, and Crusoe are all investing in gigawatts of new gas capacity. Utilities and independent power producers have tens of gigawatts more in their development pipelines. 

Suddenly, this once-called bridge fuel is suddenly looking like a four-lane highway.

This week, we dig into what's behind all these gas deals, what they mean for the power mix and emissions targets, and what an off-ramp could look like. We’ll look at the internal logic of the hyperscalers, the possible impacts on rates, and how the turbine crunch may impact development.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Want to watch this episode? Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.

Join Latitude Media on April 13-14, in San Francisco for Transition-AI 2026, a two-day, in-person conference on the digital and energy infrastructure buildout needed to support AI load growth. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code PODS10. ⁠Register today here⁠!