00:03Washington can often seem like a split screen,
00:05with one party or administration simply taking the other side in endless debates.
00:10We've seen this with energy policy and the back and forth over fossil fuels versus so-called green energy.
00:16But on this one, could they both be right?
00:20I signed the most significant climate and clean energy law ever, ever in the history of the world.
00:26Do you know what it is? We have a policy. It's called Drill Baby Drill. That's our policy.
00:35Two visions now bound by the same reality, an industry under pressure.
00:40We expect demand for electricity in the United States to grow by about 25 percent.
00:45Racing to power our ever-growing digital appetite.
00:49What we know now is that the nation, the country, is short of electrons.
00:54While millions of Americans are already feeling the strain.
00:59And they just said, Mary, you sold us peace of mind.
01:03When you look at the last few decades, electricity demand in the U.S. is a three-part story.
01:09From the early 1990s through about 2005, demand rose steadily as the economy grew and the grid expanded with it.
01:18Then, from 2005 to 2020, the trend flattened, efficiency improved, and industries modernized.
01:25But starting around 2020, the pattern shifted again.
01:29For the first time in more than a decade, electricity demand renewed its upward march.
01:34And the projections for the future only climb from there.
01:38AI is affecting really everything across the board in the electricity generation sector at the moment.
01:45Ethan Zindler is the head of country and policy research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance,
01:50having served as climate counselor to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
01:54He sees efforts by the Trump administration to cut back on green energy as running up against the overall demand for more energy.
02:01When it comes to the zero-carbon or lower-carbon energy technology companies, in some ways, it's the best of times and worst of times.
02:09Worst of times in the sense that some major important subsidies have been removed or are in the process of being removed through actions from Congress.
02:18The bill as amended is passed.
02:21But the best of times aspect of it is the demand for electricity, after essentially being flat for about two decades, is now quite quickly rising.
02:30So this is a real substantial change and something that is providing a good deal of uplift to the industry.
02:38Markets are voting with their wallets, as they always do, betting on anything that can build fastest and connect first, green or not.
02:46The S&P's main gauge tracking clean energy is up about 50 percent this year.
02:51But behind the boom, most of the power supporting that AI growth still comes from gas and coal,
02:57as they are set to shoulder much of the next decade's growth in electricity demand.
03:02We've largely solved the production side of energy.
03:05We know how to produce natural gas. We know how to produce oil. We know how to produce electrons.
03:10Our challenge in America today has become getting that product to market.
03:13A challenge Dan Briette knows well. He led the Energy Department in President Trump's first administration.
03:20So it wasn't that long ago all the talk was about energy independence.
03:23And now it seems to be energy sufficiency from whatever source it comes.
03:28What are we doing to make sure we have sufficient energy?
03:32Beginning with at the federal level, what they're looking at are things like permitting.
03:37One of the challenges to building projects here in America has been the permitting process.
03:41We have a dear mutual friend and, you know, he's the CEO of a major pipeline company.
03:46He has said quite bluntly, he said, it takes me longer to get the permit than it does to build the pipeline.
03:51And that's a problem.
03:53When President Trump returned to office, he said some things that some people interpreted as saying,
03:57we want to go back to favoring fossil fuels more.
04:00Has there been a shift back toward fossil fuels?
04:02You know, there's been a shift toward the realism that is necessary in energy production.
04:07I think for years and years and years, you know, perhaps as many as 10 years,
04:11the United States looked at energy policy almost exclusively through the lens of environmental policy or environmental science.
04:18We're going to put the miners back to work.
04:20But when you think about energy and its importance to our economy,
04:24you cannot look at it exclusively through this environmental science lens.
04:28You mentioned oil and natural gas.
04:30There are also alternative sources of energy, some call it renewables or green energy.
04:35What is that balance looking like and is it shifting?
04:38It's not shifting very much.
04:39I mean, what we're seeing are more and more renewables being put onto the grid.
04:42That's certainly true.
04:44But that's largely capacity.
04:46You know, the capacity, the ability to make energy.
04:48It's not the production of energy.
04:50Those are two different concepts.
04:52You know, although we see a lot of renewable technologies like solar and wind being put onto the grid,
04:56it's important to remember that they only produce the energy about 30 to 35, maybe 40 percent of the time.
05:02But it's going to take all forms of energy.
05:04That much we do know.
05:06According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, data centers could consume about 4.4 percent of global electricity by 2035.
05:16And companies representing both sides of the debate race to increase energy production.
05:21There's another build out taking place, one that doesn't depend on the grid for distribution,
05:25one that is closer to home.
05:29We have a big increase in the demand for energy.
05:31What is your company doing to help with that?
05:34Oh, we do have an incredible demand, increasing demand for energy.
05:38And what I love about what Sunrun is doing is we are providing for Americans an avenue for energy independence
05:45so they can generate their own energy, they can store their own energy.
05:49Mary Powell is the CEO of Sunrun, the nation's largest residential solar and battery company.
05:56She says Americans are not waiting around for Washington to resolve policy differences.
06:01We really pivoted very hard to what I call the storage-first company.
06:05We did that a couple of years ago.
06:07We started as a more traditional solar company.
06:10So we were about, for Americans who wanted solar energy on their home, we provided that.
06:15And then we really pivoted hard to being storage-first.
06:18So we put storage in homes and we pair it with solar so that they have a form of generation for storing in their home.
06:27That's not exclusive.
06:28You know, once you have a storage device in your home, you can be using grid energy as well
06:33to build up your storage capacity so that you as a consumer don't have to experience grid outages,
06:40which, as I think we all know, are increasing rapidly around much of the country.
06:45And at the same time, rates have gone way up.
06:48So it gives consumers a way to generate, store, and control their energy cost.
06:55Just this year, we have dispatched 700 times back to the grid.
07:00And at the same time, when we do that, we provide some value back to that consumer
07:05because, of course, as we should, we get compensated for that capacity.
07:10So some of that goes for increased value for Sunrun, and it gets shared with the customers.
07:16And the markets have taken notice.
07:18Sunrun's stock surged this year on strong cash flow and record installation.
07:23You've talked about residential.
07:25Do you also have commercial applications, or are you residential-specific?
07:28No, we are all about residential.
07:29I feel like for 10 years, I've talked about one of the greatest hopes I have
07:35for America's grid in terms of affordability is, you know,
07:39being the tip of the spear on a consumer-led revolution.
07:42That's really how I see it.
07:43Like, there's innovation now.
07:45There's new technologies available that consumers are going to want to rapidly adopt.
07:50And then what's really cool is we can use those resources
07:53to help make the grid more affordable for all.
07:56But making power more affordable is growing more difficult.
08:01A Bloomberg analysis shows wholesale electricity prices in some U.S. regions
08:05have surged as much as 267 percent over the past five years,
08:10mostly in areas dominated by data center growth.
08:13Running a utility is really hard work.
08:15And it's really hard, even when people agree, regulators, politicians, et cetera,
08:21that you need more resources.
08:23As a country, we really went from NIMBY, you know, not in my backyard, to Banana,
08:29which is, you know, build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.
08:32So, you know, again, this is capacity that's being built because consumers are deciding
08:39that they want to take more control of their energy.
08:42The same impulse driving consumers to take control of their energy supply
08:46is now shaping national policy as the U.S. races to compete in a global energy race,
08:52a race with national security as well as economic stakes.
08:56Particularly for the market for batteries,
08:58the U.S. has really heavily relied on China to provide the large-scale batteries
09:05that are used for so-called utility-scale projects.
09:08The new One Big Beautiful Bill includes a provision
09:12that specifically attempts to turn the market away from foreign-made batteries.
09:17If you want to qualify for tax credits in a couple of years,
09:21you will need to be using American-made equipment,
09:24or at least not Chinese-made equipment.
09:27I think many of the countries around the world are beginning to understand
09:30the importance of energy, not only to their economic security,
09:32but their national security.
09:33And that's why you're starting to see, in many cases,
09:36the policy shift in the way that they are.
09:39From nations to homes.
09:41I don't see this consumer-led revolution as the solution.
09:45Whether it's green or not.
09:47I see us being a really critical resource
09:50for flexible, resilient solutions for utilities.
09:56In the end, it's about power in every sense of the word.
10:00This is a real, substantial change.
10:02And one reality cuts through every debate.
10:06We're going to need all of it in order to meet the demand curve.
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