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0:28They told us to expect change. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions. Not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Sonesta Travel Pass makes traveling more rewarding, designed to help you get more out of every stay.

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1:47For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments with expertise, personal attention, and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions. The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at CINFIN.com. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, the queue for power intensive customers looking to tap into New York's energy grid has surged as the boom for AI and growth in large scale manufacturing has driven demand for electricity.

2:34You remember earlier this week, Carol, National Grid New York President Sally Libera was on with us. That was a great chat. It was. She said that so-called large load connection requests over the next five years has jumped 10 gigawatts, tripling in just a year. Here's what she told us on Monday. New York is also very attractive to manufacturing and large-scale manufacturing, particularly some of the modern manufacturing we see around semiconductors and computer components. It's very energy intensive and companies with big power needs are drawn to New York. and we are working to make sure that they have the power that they need, not just today, but well into the future.

3:11That was National Grid, New York President Sayulah Libreira on our show on Monday. Curious what Neil Chatterjee is seeing. He's the chief of governmental affairs over at Palmetto. It calls itself a, quote, energy marketplace dedicated to accelerating the transition to a clean energy future. He's also a former commissioner and chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That was during the first Trump term, but you also remember it went into Biden's term as well. just for a few months. That's when you're... I mean, just for clarification, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner, FERC, is an independent agency.

3:42Its commissioners are appointed to staggered five-year terms. The idea being you can outlast the president. Well, there are a lot of independent agencies right now that are looking less and less independent, I think is fair to say. Yeah, FERC's been pretty good. Has it? And I think it's actually been a beacon of stability in an otherwise volatile regulatory landscape. Why? Okay, so we're going to talk about what you're doing at Palmetto in just a minute. But first, I want to talk about the affordability issue here, because for so many years, we thought that in the US, power demand would kind of just be stable.

4:17And then this whole AI thing happened. Data centers started getting built. People started buying EVs. Now demand is just going up and up, and it's hitting customers' wallets, and affordability is becoming a big issue. How do you view it? Yeah, no question. So we have been the beneficiaries in the U.S. of a period of relatively flat demand for about two decades. And unfortunately, what happened was during the course of that two decades, we allowed politics to interfere with what otherwise had been the dominion of engineers and economists. How so? What do you mean? So suddenly, complex decisions around plant retirements and things like resource adequacy that used to be made by engineers were being made by politicians.

5:04And you had celebrities weighing in on their preferred sources of fuel, whether it's Billy Bob Thornton for Landman or, I mean, obviously that's more recent, but I'm using that to be illustrative. Or others who were saying, we want to see the retirement of fossil generation. And nuclear, too, was a few years ago you had celebrities, a lot of celebrities weighing in on nuclear energy. One way or the other. Right. And so to me, we need to get back to a place where we focus on what will it take to make sure that the lights stay on and they're affordable for America. Yeah. But, you know, to that point, I mean, I want to throw in climate change is a real thing.

5:44And so you've got to think about what are the best energy policies while making sure that Mother Earth is here in 50 years. And we've all seen the fires, the climate adjustments that we're making. We're living increasingly in a tougher environment. So I do wonder how if we just go to the lowest power source, that's not necessarily going to be good for life on Earth. So what is the balance? How do we move forward? Because we have an administration that's turning its back in a big way on renewables. And so I just do wonder, how do we find the right policy going forward? Yeah, I love that question.

6:24And I want to be clear from the onset. I'm a Republican from Kentucky who worked for Mitch McConnell and was appointed chairman of FERC by Donald Trump. I made very clear from the moment I had a platform of my own that I believed that climate change was real, that man had a significant impact, and then we needed to take steps to mitigate emissions. And so why I am actually optimistic about the current scenario that we are in is we've got kind of locked into this antiquated notion the last 15, 20 years or so that if you're for fossil fuels, you're the political right. And if you're for clean energy and climate solutions, you're the political left.

7:04AI, data centers, streaming services, crypto, Bitcoin mining, vehicle electrification, building electrification, all these things that are going to put intense pressure on the grid. It's going to require every available electron. Even wind? Wind, solar, storage, geothermal, nuclear. Beyond that, negawatts. Have you all ever heard this term? Negawatts. No, but I'm guessing it's big. Demand response, energy efficiency, virtual power plants, grid enhancing technologies. I don't want to bore your listeners to death, but things like dynamic line ratings, which enable us to get maximum efficiency for existing clean energy infrastructure.

7:50This is all cool stuff. So negawatts is the idea to shift the focus from producing more energy to using less. To using it more efficiently. Or using less. Or using. So sorry, I want to be very clear. Yeah, we're going to need a tremendous amount of energy to meet this coming surge in demand. We need every available electron. I was frustrated with the Biden administration, because I thought they took steps, including my former colleagues at FERC to suppress capacity prices, to accelerate the retirement of certain older forms of fossil generation. I thought that was bad policy. I am not happy that the Trump administration is blocking clean energy deployment.

8:37Both strategies frustrate me. We need all the electrons and to preserve the ones. Okay, don't judge me. Coal? So, look, in the grand scheme of things, and I'm from Kentucky, right? I grew up in Kentucky. I understand the pain that people in coal communities feel. There may be steps that the administration is taking, and they are taking, to keep existing coal-fired generation online a little bit longer than it otherwise would have, but it's not additive. It's just keeping... It doesn't get us the new electrons. The new electrons, I'm telling you right now, if I could tattoo it under my arm, I would.

9:20Solar plus storage with gas peakers to balance the grid. Why not wind also? Wind is there. I just don't think it's as deployable as solar. So you mentioned at the onset, I'm at this residential rooftop clean tech company, Palmetto now. Now, I think there's a huge opportunity in residential rooftop solar because we offer the alternative to folks who are concerned about higher electricity bills. It's quicker. It's easier to deploy. It's financeable. Wind is expensive. And that's the challenge. Well, let's talk about Palmetto because my understanding is that it's much more than just rooftop solar.

9:59It's this whole platform for clean energy. And I think people have a hard time understanding even where their energy comes from. and the grid versus the two, you know, the delivery charge versus the actual electricity charge on a bill. How does Palmetto fit into all this? Yeah, look, nobody thinks about this, right? Well, we do now. We do now. When we get the bills every month. We hit the switch and the lights come on. What attracted me to Palmetto as a conservative from Kentucky, as I mentioned, was this is the future, in my view. You've got your phone right there. There's so much information available through software and platforms and the ability to track our energy consumption and utilization by moving to solar plus storage and smart plugs and HVAC and other clean energy advances that enable us to not just bring down the cost of our bills, but to enhance our quality of living.

10:56And oh, by the way, it happens to benefit the environment, but that's not the selling point. The selling point is quite frankly, the economic one. We save you money. Yeah, we help the environment in the long run. But the bottom line is, the reason I went to Palmetto is the business case, not the environmental. So make the business case. Tell us about, like, give us some, you know, we're Bloomberg. So give us some of the financials in terms of people you've signed up, people that, you know, just give us some idea of the growth, the interest. I think generally, as an American, I don't like high electricity prices.

11:34I don't. It's uncomfortable. As a regulator who is responsible for monitoring the reliability of the grid, it was hard for me when prices went up because I had to balance the interest between maintaining reliability and controlling consumer costs. I love the idea that consumers now have an alternative option, that they can turn to residential rooftop solar and storage and smart plugs and these alternatives. And I do think, unfortunately, because of this coming surge in demand that the country is going to see from all of the variables that I laid out earlier, prices are going to continue to tick up.

12:14And I think more and more you're going to see consumers saying, hey, I don't want to be paying a bill to my monopoly. They said that in November. Yeah, listen. In terms of affordable. I mean, we've made some adjustments because we had an$800 a month power bill, and it was kind of crazy. What did you do? Did it work, though? Turned off a heated floor. We made some changes because it was ridiculous. And it came down? I think we're working on it. Yeah, but it's hard to control that. So, again, your company, give us an idea. Customers, growth, profitability. All of the above because the demand is there.

12:54What's the growth? What's the growth of customer? and your top line? You know, I'm the policy guy. So there are others who are smarter about this kind of thing and should be on this program. What I can say is that there was a existential threat to the business in the OBBBA, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And we were able to beat it back. And we had conservatives. If you had asked me at the beginning of this process to rank 100 United States senators on who might come to the rescue of residential rooftop solar, I would have probably, at the onset, put Ted Cruz of Texas in the bottom five. Ted Cruz stepped up and fought for the industry.

13:39He saw what happened to Texas' grid a few years ago. And he understood it. And he understood this as populist. Neil, we gotta run. Come back soon. Neil Chatterjee.

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