In short
The Energy Gang looks ahead to 2026, focusing first on Venezuela after the U.S. captured President Nicolás Maduro (drug trafficking charges tied to oil leverage). It then turns to U.S. Gulf Coast LNG expansion, U.S. electricity regulation for AI/data centers, and technology bets for 2026 (energy storage, humanoid robots), plus personal “free electrons.”
Guests (backgrounds)
- Melissa Lott: Partner for Energy Technologies at Microsoft (speaks personally).
- Amy Myers-Jaffe: Director, NYU Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab; former oil-focused international relations career.
Key claims
- Venezuela’s oil problems are deeper than Iraq’s 2003 case due to looting, damaged surface infrastructure, power/fuel shortages, and ultra-heavy crude constraints; some fields may be unrecoverable.
- U.S. LNG exports could roughly double by 2030 and triple by ~2035, pressuring global gas prices and affecting renewables competitiveness.
- FERC’s interconnection control for large AI loads is a major regulatory challenge for Chair Laura (Sweat).
- China’s AI strategy emphasizes compute architecture; U.S. emphasizes scaling.
Notable examples
- Venezuela–Guyana escalation (drones/ships; Russian warship presence) as a hidden driver of U.S. action.
- Form Energy’s 100-hour iron-air battery first commercial installation in Minnesota (Cambridge Energy Storage Project).
- Hyundai’s humanoid robots in Georgia; China’s reported ~$90k robots.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOPost-Holiday Reflections
0:46 to 4:08
Hosts share their holiday experiences and discuss the importance of snow for California's water supply.
“a discussion show from Wood Mackenzie about the fast-changing world of energy.”
Venezuela's Current Situation
4:09 to 8:02
Discussion on the political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and its implications for energy.
“about Venezuela and the United States capturing President Nicolas Maduro.”
Comparing Iraq and Venezuela
8:03 to 12:40
Insights on the parallels between the U.S. invasion of Iraq and current issues in Venezuela regarding oil.
“But then if you don't have diesel, that's also a problem, right?”
U.S. Oil Interests and Venezuela
12:41 to 14:05
Exploration of U.S. interests in Venezuelan oil production amidst changing global dynamics.
“their production may be in decline and oil demand globally is still growing.”
Venezuela's Oil and Military Tensions
14:05 to 17:10
Discussion on Venezuela's oil production and its geopolitical implications.
“And so that actually can't be really run in some of these heavy crude refineries.”
US Gulf Coast LNG Expansion
17:11 to 19:04
Exploration of the ongoing investment boom in LNG terminals along the US Gulf Coast.
“I think we could clearly talk about it for the whole of the rest of the show, but there's various other issues that we're going to be talking about that I do want to get to.”
Global Natural Gas Market Dynamics
19:05 to 21:42
Analysis of how US LNG exports influence global gas prices and the market.
“and four countenance and counting, We're talking about Europe, Asia, the U.S.”
Pipeline Gas vs. LNG
21:43 to 24:08
Comparative discussion on the advantages of pipeline gas versus LNG.
“Low-cost gas very much undermines the competitive position of renewable power generation.”
Key Figures in US Energy Policy
24:09 to 28:00
Identifying influential figures in US energy policy and their impacts.
“Ed, I'm not going to spoil who yours is because I do know it.”
Challenges for FERC and State Regulators
28:00 to 28:51
Explore the tensions between FERC and state regulators in managing energy capacity.
“It does seem to be a totally legitimate thing to be worried about even if you think the general principle of what Chris Wright is trying to do is correct.”
Show all 17 chapters
China's AI Ambitions and Geopolitical Implications
28:51 to 31:45
Discuss Xi Jinping's focus on AI and its potential effects on U.S.-China relations.
“So my person to watch in 2026 is Xi Jinping, the president of China.”
Energy Storage Technologies: Trends and Insights
31:45 to 37:16
Examine the evolution and commercialization of energy storage technologies.
“Certainly going to be very important to watch what happens in AI, such a fast moving area with such huge implications for energy.”
The Rise of Humanoid Robots in Industry
37:16 to 42:00
Investigate the advancements in humanoid robots and their industrial applications.
“Certainly, it's an exciting technology as it does have bags of potential.”
Exploring Humanoid Robots and Their Future
42:00 to 43:50
Discussion on the potential and challenges of humanoid robots and machine learning.
“So there are just some things they're not going to be able to do.”
Impact of Blackouts on Technology Design
43:50 to 45:11
Analyzing the recent blackout in San Francisco and its implications for tech design.
“And you're now reminding me how much I miss my shark because it didn't come to this new place.”
Innovations in Energy Storage and Generation
45:11 to 48:58
Exploring advancements in energy storage and hybrid energy systems in Texas.
“about what we have to do to design for resilience.”
Podcast Recommendations and Future Insights
48:58 to 50:31
Sharing podcast recommendations and discussing future energy trends.
“Y 'all may have crossed paths with him, but he accepted a job at Google two months ago.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Ed Crooks:Even massive increases in export capacity doesn't make it boring. It doesn't make it boring when it comes to the price. Highlighting that whatever energy you sell, you should watch this topic. When the Chinese think about winning an AI, they're looking at innovating the architecture of how to actually do the compute. Whereas in the United States, the big focus is on scaling. because the United States is taking a scaling approach. We're talking about big money. I know it's two years ago. It was like April, 2023. Oh my gosh, that's almost three years ago. Now it's 2026. What happened? I know. 2030 is around the corner, y 'all.
0:41Ed Crooks:I'm just saying.
0:45Amy Myers Jaffe:Hello and welcome to The Energy Gang, a discussion show from Wood Mackenzie about the fast-changing world of energy. I'm Ed Crooks. And on this show, which is the first one we're recording in 2026, we're going to be looking ahead at the year to come. We're going to be talking about the places, the people and the technologies that we think will shape 2026. To talk about what's already been a highly eventful year in energy just a week in, it's a pleasure to be joined by the Energy Gang top team. Melissa Lott is a partner for Energy Technologies at Microsoft. Of course, always the standard disclaimer, you're speaking strictly in a personal capacity, not expressing the use of an Microsoft Corporation or anything like that.
1:23Ed Crooks:I'm really curious how y 'all's holidays were. It's been a few weeks. But do you guys know Irving Berlin, White Christmas, the song Snow being Cosme? Oh, we got snow, snow, snow right before the holidays. And it was so fantastic. A lot of the kind of Sierra's ski resort world were really struggling. And so it was great to get a good dump. Plus, for precipitation for the year, this is critical timing right now, people. Like, we need the snow so it can melt later. So I'm all smiles.
1:54Amy Myers Jaffe:Fantastic. And that is, I have to admit, I did not know about your singing voice. Very good. Keep wondering if we should have energy gang karaoke. Now I know what a great singer you are. 100%. We should definitely pursue it.
2:07Ed Crooks:Not a show I'm on. Cannot like this. karaoke does not involve tone or knowing anything about music. It involves enthusiasm, like enthusiasm.
2:18Amy Myers Jaffe:Which certainly is what I've got. But Amy, apparently you don't. It's my cue to introduce Amy Myers-Jaffe. Amy is the director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University. Hi, Amy. How are you?
2:32Ed Crooks:Happy 2026, Ed.
2:35Amy Myers Jaffe:Yes, absolutely. Happy 2026. Have a good holiday.
2:37Ed Crooks:I did. I had the opposite experience of Melissa. I managed to get out of New York City the day before the 10 inches of snowfall and hit sunny California, where basically after we had this whole rain event, the weather has been beautiful. I'm a little tan and it's been a great holiday, not in the snow that is surrounding my house.
3:01Amy Myers Jaffe:Indeed. Although, as Melissa was saying, I guess getting snow at this time of year is going to be very important for California through the year, right? Because that's where a lot of the state's water ultimately comes from, isn't it?
3:12Ed Crooks:Snow in the Rockies and these rain things. I remember growing up in California on the military bases. We had like the month, like February was when we got rain, you know. And then the rest of the year, you were just, you know, taking your four minute shower with your little, you know, low flow nozzle on your shower head. Plus the little on off switch. People think I'm crazy when I talk about the little switch you could just knock to keep the water warm. but be able to use less water in your shower. This was like normal for a California kid growing up. So yeah, when you get the rain, it's really good.
3:39Ed Crooks:You don't want it all at once though. So yeah, Amy, it's nice when it trickles in as opposed to comes in all at once. It did not trickle this year. No, I saw the pictures. It was a heck of a thing and all the radar looked really intense. So glad y 'all are doing well and glad you're enjoying it and getting a little bit of tan. That's fantastic.
3:56Amy Myers Jaffe:So all of our kind of transition back to the world of work from the holidays has been not exactly quiet and relaxing because of the very dramatic news that we had over the weekend about Venezuela and the United States capturing President Nicolas Maduro. So the format we planned for this show, and I think still what we're going to do is to talk about the places and the people and the technologies that we think are going to be important in 2026. But obviously, the first place that everyone's thinking about right now is Venezuela, and it's clearly going to continue to be a very important place for energy through 2026 and indeed beyond.
4:38Amy Myers Jaffe:The charges that President Maduro is facing are related to drugs trafficking. But of course, President Trump and other members of his administration have made it very clear that, as well as drugs, the other big issue in their move against him has been oil. So I think, Amy, you were choosing Venezuela as your place to watch in 2026. Do you want to talk about it? What's your view on what's been happening?
5:04Ed Crooks:I felt a little deja vu, as I kind of indicated in the Houston Chronicle, because for the listeners, you know, I began my career not in the tech side, which I love and teach and enjoy now. I began my career in sort of international relations with a specialty on oil. And so therefore, back when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, I was the foremost expert on the oil fields of Iraq. And so spent a lot of time on that issue, unpleasant time, I would add, trying to explain how the Iraqi system was run, how difficult it would be to privatize it, what the pathway would be to have the state oil company refurbish its own fields, what condition those fields were in after years and years of sanctions.
6:03Ed Crooks:So one of the interesting things about Iraq is because they did have this bureaucracy, they used to rotate their fields to prevent field damage, even though they could only produce like, you know, one tenth of what their potential was. They rotated all the fields that were still online, even with sanctions. And so the fields didn't get all that damaged. I mean, there was some damage because they injected fuel oil because they had no way of getting rid of their fuel oil because they didn't have an export market for it. But the interesting thing is that did not happen in Venezuela. In Venezuela, people forget around 2018 and 2019, there was terrible chaos in the country.
6:47Vast humanitarian crisis with food shortages and medical shortages.
6:53Ed Crooks:is people were in a desperate state. And at that time, not only was the Venezuelan oil industry suffering from mismanagement because Hugo Chavez, when he came in, had fired the top 20 ,000 leaders of the state national oil company, but you had looting all across the country. People would grab anything that had value in the black market, and that included all the computerized equipment that was in the oil fields, all the copper in all the wiring and surface equipment, other kinds of metals and things in the pipes. And so you had this combination of no money for maintenance, no people in some places to do the technical work.
7:39Ed Crooks:The surface equipment in Venezuela was highly damaged. Right. And so even though they have the same other problems that Iraq had, which is, you know, spotty electricity, lots of blackouts, because, you know, people forget you need electricity to produce oil, but also no fuel. Like they have fuel shortages there as well. So like if you don't have electricity, you could run a diesel generator. But then if you don't have diesel, that's also a problem, right? So Venezuela has a very complex set of problems that, in my opinion, are deeper than the problems that people faced in Iraq. And Iraq had these giant oil fields.
8:19Ed Crooks:So if you damage one part, you might be able to refurbish some other section and re-drill, right, or do infill drilling or do some kind of remediation. In Venezuela, there were some fields I hear that were so depressurized, it's unclear whether they can be repaired or not. And they're smaller, more complicated fields. A lot of the stuff that's actually still operating, like Chevron's facility, is ultra-heavy. You know, think asphalt-heavy, tar-heavy oil that has to be upgraded. It's expensive. So Chevron's still there to do that part, but no one else, the other ventures that were doing that also have been pretty much shut down.
9:00Ed Crooks:And so Venezuela's production is low, and there's a lot of damage to clean up to get it back to any kind of state of normal operation. Yeah, I don't know about y 'all. I'm thinking about, so we were going to talk about places that we're watching, and we can go down a long list, I mean, Venezuela is the focus right now in terms of discussions and the knock on effects from what's going on right now. And so I don't know about y 'all, but I'm thinking about it in three buckets that are mostly around time. When I'm thinking about the near term and by that, I mean like the next six months. It's like geopolitics, humanitarian concerns.
9:35Ed Crooks:I'll just use that word. It's broad and there's a lot going on there that go way beyond oil. And then prices, like what is this going to do to markets and the impacts that those are going to have both within the country and outside of the country. And so those are my three that I'm watching when it comes to the near term, like what's being decided today, tomorrow, next week, next month that is going to affect things here in the short term. And then there's this near medium term, which is in all eventualities that I can see. There's questions about investments in supply chains, investments in equipment within Venezuela, but in other places.
10:05Ed Crooks:What's going to happen there? To me, like those decisions really start to gain momentum in like one to three years. Like what are we talking about there? And then there's a longer term to your point, Amy. So longer term, let's go three to 10. So that 10 year, I'm going to grab that one that you just highlighted. What does this mean in terms of energy infrastructure investments in different technologies? And what does it mean for the energy transition? And what does it mean specifically within Venezuela, but in the broader market? So it's like, in my mind, it's those three timestamps. Right.
10:34Amy Myers Jaffe:And I think that's really interesting, then, your point, Melissa, about that long term perspective, because that's where I think there is an interesting analogy that can be drawn with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And Amy, I'm interested in your thoughts on this, whether you think this parallel holds up, that clearly when the George W. Bush administration looked at the world and looked at the position for oil in the early 2000s, they thought that US production was in inevitable long-term decline. They didn't predict the shale revolution, the tight oil revolution. They couldn't see that coming.
11:13Amy Myers Jaffe:They thought U.S. oil consumption was only going to grow and its production was only going to decline. And therefore, imports were going to rise and rise and rise inextricably without limit. And that led to a lot of decisions in terms of U.S. energy policy in the 2000s to Energy Policy Acts, the massive growth of corn, ethanol and so on. and it seems very likely and obviously there's still a lot of arguing even now 22 years later about exactly sorry 23 years later now still a lot of arguing about exactly what the US motives were for invading Iraq but it seems to me highly plausible that at least one of those motives was thinking that the United States is going to be increasingly dependent on oil imports and therefore it needs regime change to create in Iraq, a friendly country that has a lot of potential for oil production growth, and can act as a supplier to the United States in the long term.
12:09Question, is there anything like that in the current situation with Venezuela, where obviously,
12:16Amy Myers Jaffe:the position of the US is vastly different? The US is the world's largest oil producer by a long way. The US is absolutely not reliant on oil imports right now. But if you look at the projections, It is not impossible that U.S. oil production will level off, flatten out sometime in the early 2030s. The real kind of go-go years of growth in the U.S. have gone. And at the same time, other countries with production, with oil production that are, broadly speaking, friendly to the United States, their production may be in decline and oil demand globally is still growing. And again, that's probably going to hit a plateau sometime in the 2030s.
12:57Amy Myers Jaffe:but certainly at least for a while it's continuing to grow. And so is it the case that despite being an oil superpower now, the United States still has an interest in encouraging increased production from other parts of the world, and in particular, broadly speaking, friendly countries such as Venezuela? And that is a key motivation behind the action against President Maduro. Do you think there's anything in that, Amy?
13:25Ed Crooks:I mean, let me just try to deconstruct that. It's so challenging. Now I'm going to make a nerdy comment. There are different kinds of oil, believe it or not. Some oil is like alcohol and it's just like gasoline. It's almost like an alcohol liquid when it's produced. And some oil, like in Venezuela, is very heavy and some of it's so heavy, it's like tar and they have to do things to loosen it up and heat it even to ship it. Right. So it happens that we have some refineries in the United States, like Chevron's Pascagoula refinery that were specifically built to refine very heavy oil. And the oil that gets produced in North Dakota and in the Permian bases in Texas is more like the alcohol kind of fuel.
14:13Ed Crooks:And so that actually can't be really run in some of these heavy crude refineries. And so one could argue that the Venezuelan oil could be very useful, though now it's all going to China because of sanctions. So I think the thing that never made the news and was really a critically dangerous issue was two things that never get discussed. The Biden administration did military operations around this and it just never hit the news. So Venezuela threatened their neighboring country, Guyana. And they said that the territory where Guiana has become a very big oil producer and they're an important part of the market.
14:55Ed Crooks:You know, the Venezuelans kind of said, hey, you know, we got this border dispute and this Guyana oil isn't theirs. It's our oil.
15:03Amy Myers Jaffe:And a border dispute, you know, history fans will know it's a border dispute going back to the early 20th century into the 19th century. That was some of the earliest kind of discussions about the Monroe Doctrine and what that meant in terms of U.S. influence go back 120 years and more. It's fascinating the way history kind of repeats itself.
15:22Ed Crooks:And let me just be clear for the listeners, because it's just kind of interesting because it never hit the news. I mean, like it was in the Miami Herald one week.
15:31Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, but it was not a big deal.
15:32Ed Crooks:The Venezuelans built up a tremendous military buildup of drones and ships and all kinds of things to attack Yana. The United States military had to threaten them to back down. Then we started doing military flyovers. Then the Russians sent a warship, which was spotted from the coast of Miami. Wow. I didn't remember that. There was just this minute of high escalation, which eventually resulted in sort of a de-escalation, you know, through diplomacy and through military. You know, the United States Air Force really engaged on the problem in a way that, again, never hit the news because no shots had to be fired.
16:16Ed Crooks:And the Russians moved their warship back from its routine mission in the Americas. So there was like a week or two where the rest of you were all doing what you were doing. And I was in the world thinking Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis. And then it kind of dissipated. So if you're the Trump administration and you come in and you saw that the Biden administration had to deal with that and you're negotiating these very tricky negotiations over Ukraine and so forth, then making sure that the Russians and the Venezuelans don't attack Guiana in your hemisphere is an important thing to eliminate.
16:59Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, that is a great point. It's not just about the outlook for Venezuela's old production. It's also about Venezuela not seizing control of Guiana's production, which, as you say, is becoming increasingly important to global markets. So we ought to move on from Venezuela. I think we could clearly talk about it for the whole of the rest of the show, but there's various other issues that we're going to be talking about that I do want to get to. Before we do, I just wanted to flag up one other place to watch, which I do think is important and I think people should be thinking about, which is the US Gulf Coast, the Gulf of America, Gulf of Mexico, whatever you want to call it, and very specifically the LNG terminals along that coast.
17:38Amy Myers Jaffe:There's a huge investment boom going on there right now, a lot of construction happening which is adding massively to US gas export capacity. The US is already the world's largest LNG exporter by some distance. Over the next few years it's going to extend its lead. We've got forecasts at Wood Mackenzie showing that US LNG exports will roughly double from 2023 levels by about 2030 and that increase by about the same amount again so tripling from their 2023 levels by 2035 or so. And there is a real question about who's going to buy all of that extra gas. It's clearly going to be downward pressure on international gas prices over the years to come.
18:27Amy Myers Jaffe:And it's a big question, I think, of how low prices will go and what the consequences of that will be. Will it start to cause financial strain? Will we see some of those LNG exporters starting to get into real difficulties. And so I think that's going to be another big story to watch. May not fully play out actually this year. It may be something more for 27, 28, 29 and so on. But definitely over the next few years, that's going to be a really important trend to keep an eye on. So that's something else I would like to flag up for people.
Read the full transcript
19:00Ed Crooks:Yeah, and just to flag on that one really quick around the price consideration. As someone who's paid utility bills and four countenance and counting, We're talking about Europe, Asia, the U.S. These are going to be very diverse impacts, I think it is fair to say. And so I'm very curious how that's all going to play out and what other geopolitical things are still going to be going on. Well, and indeed, if we could hope that we would see an end to the Ukraine war in 2026, that would unleash more investment potentially in Russian gas. And so that would make the oversupply situation in natural gas 10 times worse.
19:42Ed Crooks:And so it's a very interesting dynamic to think about what the global natural gas picture is going to look like in the next five years.
19:52Amy Myers Jaffe:Yes, absolutely. And this is something you'll know, Melissa, as you say, if you pay energy bills in different parts of the world. For the past 20 years or so since the shale gas boom started in the US, the US has enjoyed this massive advantage of significantly lower gas prices than many other parts of the world, but most other parts of the world. The US has essentially been a gas island, wasn't connected to global gas markets. Because you've built all this new export capacity and more coming on all the time, the US is increasingly becoming connected to global gas markets. And so you're seeing more arbitrage opportunities.
20:33Amy Myers Jaffe:And so that price differential is under pressure. And I think it's quite possible one of the things we'll see is that you'll see gas prices in Europe fall as gas prices in the U.S. rise and that differential between the two markets gets arbitraged away. And so that's going to be a very interesting kind of new world, as I say, that we haven't really been in for the past 20 years or so as that gap closes. And so that's another important trend to watch, I think.
21:02Ed Crooks:And for our clean tech listeners, like, you know, if there is a peace agreement in Europe, then you have this really interesting question because you have a lot of countries in the world that looked at this highly volatile, very expensive LNG global market and switched to solar. If LNG becomes inexpensive, does that slow down China's electrostate strategy or not? I mean, it could be a very interesting competitive market for different fuels and technologies going forward. If we get both this surge from the United States and a peace agreement in Europe, it could be a very interesting dynamic where technologies will really have to compete price by price by price.
21:49Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, that is a great point. Low-cost gas very much undermines the competitive position of renewable power generation.
21:56Ed Crooks:Well, and here's just a comment. to make though within all this for those who don't study don't know how the technologies work as you go through lng when you talk about ed the pressure on prices um just to be very clear though i mean there's still a a huge advantage to not having to liquefy your gas ship it across an ocean and gasify it again and then get it to you so so it's not a we're all going to be paying the same And the U.S. is where it would get shut in because it's so expensive to liquefy and ship from the United States that, you know, but it could have the opposite effect in the sense that if all those people wind up losing money because they can't sell all their LNG because the price internationally is too low, how that feeds back into the United States is that the domestic U.S.
22:46Ed Crooks:natural gas price would be low. and that again would be make it more competitive with clean tech at least there in the united states exactly so just highlighting that uh even massive increases in export capacity doesn't make it boring doesn't make it boring when it comes to the price that whatever energy you sell
23:02Amy Myers Jaffe:yeah you should watch this topic yeah yeah that's that is a great point yeah and i'll just say
23:08Ed Crooks:your place and spoiler alert and my person that i'm going to be watching this year amongst others are very related. So when we want to get into that, let me know. Yeah, well, let's do that in just a moment.
23:19Amy Myers Jaffe:Just before we get to that, because I have such a lovely image for your point, Melissa, about, as you say, the difference between gas that comes in a pipeline and gas you have to liquefy and ship in a tank and then re-gas again. I heard a Chinese gas company executive talking about this. He said, the difference between pipeline gas and LNG is like the difference between tap water and bottled water. It's a tap water. If you can get it, it's better quality. It's cheaper. It's super convenient. Bottled water is a pain. It's more expensive. There's so much hassle attached to it. But if you can't get the tap water, bottled water is okay.
24:03Amy Myers Jaffe:You know, you can make do with that. But if you can possibly get tap water, that's what you should have. And that's a great analogy. I think that makes that point really clearly. person of the year. Melissa, who is that and why?
24:14Ed Crooks:Ed, I'm not going to spoil who yours is because I do know it. However, there's a reason why we're focused on people in the US for this particular conversation right now, because there's lots going on internationally. I debated between Doug Burgum over at Interior and Chris Wright at Energy. Chris Wright won out. And a lot of it has to do with our places that we're following and who's in the middle of those conversations. So I was leaning towards It's Burgum. And I'll still follow all the stuff coming out of Interior because, again, thinking about supply chains, thinking about how we're diversifying, thinking about where investments are happening.
24:45Ed Crooks:Where might we see more like up the supply chain mines and refining and all of that? But Chris Wright, I mean, is at the heart this last year. It's so many conversations at office about how we think about energy investment at the federal level in the U.S., how we invest in clean tech, how we think about LNG. And now we're talking about oil and investment in different countries. And I won't open up Venezuela again, but it's just at the heart of all of it. And DOE is always relevant. But oh, man, I'm going to be reading all those releases and following it this year. I mean, I do, but I'm not going to be waiting for the summary on Fridays.
25:22Ed Crooks:I'm going to be going through it as it comes in. That's where I'm at in terms of my person. It happens to be at the federal level. I know in previous shows, we've talked about people I follow at the state and local level, local, regional level, that. But to me, it's D.C., what's happening at DOE? What are we doing? Yeah. Where are we going?
25:39Amy Myers Jaffe:No, absolutely. Absolutely. Clearly, it's a very big year there. And that is a good segue into my person to watch in 2026, who is Laura Sweat, who is the new, well, newish chairman of FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. She was appointed in October. And really, the reason I'm picking her very much connects to what Melissa has just been saying, that this is a very exciting, fluid and challenging also time in US energy because of electricity demand growth, all of the issues around the development of AI and data centers to support it that we've talked about so many times on the show. And this is going to create a whole new set of challenges for regulators of all kinds and probably FERC, the federal regulator in particular.
26:34Amy Myers Jaffe:and the big reason for choosing Laura Sweat is she has a big issue to contend with early in her chairmanship which is coming from Chris Wright this initiative to give FERC more control of the interconnection process for large loads such as data centers and this really is pretty radical change to the way that that interconnection process has been done in the past, been very much handled at a state level. Chris Wright, as we've discussed many times, sees AI as a national security priority, really wants to accelerate the development of AI in the US as rapidly as he possibly can, and sees marshalling energy infrastructure to support that as the top priority a top priority certainly for his department and so he's proposed this shake-up which I have to say I think probably makes a lot of sense it does seem like a good idea to treat some of these investments which are nationally significant as areas of federal responsibility rather than state responsibility but it's undeniable also that there are a lot of concerns about this plan and Mark Christie was not the most recent previous FERC chair but the one before he said he's worried about whether reliable power service got a quote from his is would reliable power service could be threatened by FERC mandated interconnection of large load customers without sufficient generation capacity available to the grid operator in other words you get this mismatch between FERC approving the large loads while the state regulators are handling and state planners are handling investment in generation.
28:25Amy Myers Jaffe:It does seem to be a totally legitimate thing to be worried about even if you think the general principle of what Chris Wright is trying to do is correct. So as I say I think that's a big challenge for FERC, big challenge for Laura Sweat. It's going to be very interesting to see how in this new role she's just taken on she manages that over the months to come. Amy, what's yours?
28:52Ed Crooks:So my person to watch in 2026 is Xi Jinping, the president of China. He gave a very rousing New Year's message to the population of China, where he highlighted China's advances in artificial intelligence that please us into your people of the year because we're all talking about AI. He interestingly talked about the bond between Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait as being a trend that is unstoppable, which was sort of interesting post Venezuela. A little bit of a interpretation has to be made there about what's the thinking of China about the United States action in Venezuela and what it means for their own geopolitical responses globally.
29:46Ed Crooks:Definitely something to watch. And the Chinese are moving, making some progress in their work on AI. And Bloomberg, in its 2026 wildcards, suggested that China surpassing the U.S. on AI models could be a top wildcard in 2026. So, of course, the U.S. currently seems to be very ahead. But some people are saying because China has focused on an open source policy, whereas the U.S. companies are working in a very proprietary fashion, could give China an advantage. Other people say, well, on the other hand, the censorship that goes into working on AI in China is a real hindrance to China being able to make progress.
30:41Ed Crooks:And then the financial numbers are really different. When the Chinese think about winning an AI, they're looking at innovating the architecture of how to actually do the compute. whereas in the United States, the big focus is on scaling. So in terms of the billions of dollars being spent, because the United States is taking a scaling approach, we're talking about big money. Venture capital investing$193 billion, big tech investing$370 billion over the last year, whereas the Chinese numbers are smaller. The government's put in$56 billion, and their private sector big tech is put in 24 billion. But there's still this idea.
31:30Ed Crooks:What's going to be very significant and why I'm picking Xi Jinping is that this is the year that China does its next five-year plan and that is going to be something to watch.
31:41Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, that's really interesting. That would also be a very good contender for technologies to watch in 2026. Certainly going to be very important to watch what happens in AI, such a fast moving area with such huge implications for energy. But what else have we got? Who wants to pick their technology to watch? Melissa, what's yours?
32:03Ed Crooks:So talk about a segue. You didn't know this because I didn't tell you all before this. Amy and I chatted briefly. But for me, I'm looking across energy storage technologies. I'm looking at it from two different ways. One, where are we seeing different technologies get off the learning bench and go into commercialization? And two, where are we seeing for kind of like already commercialized, I'm focusing on the whole thing, but already commercialized technologies, investments in developing a more diverse supply chain. Like where are we seeing that? And also just a deeper supply chain. Where are we seeing more capacity period and then more capacity in different geographic locations?
32:39Ed Crooks:And I am following what happens in the US and what investments happen there, but I'm looking globally, like who's stepping up and who's digging in the dirt and pouring the steel down. So it's battery chemistries at that really launch into full commercialization, demo to commercialization, and then also who's investing in the supply chain. That's what I'm looking at. Yeah.
33:01Amy Myers Jaffe:So I think I should go next because my technology is also about energy storage and actually one specific issue there, which is ion air batteries. The ion air batteries produced by Form Energy. I'm sure you know, Melissa, I know you've been following the story. So their first commercial installation. Absolutely, yeah. So been working on it for years. It's now kind of coming to fruition in the sense that their first commercial installation, the Cambridge Energy Storage Project in Minnesota, it's expected to be fully operational this year. Huge interest in long duration energy storage, tremendous excitement over form.
33:41Amy Myers Jaffe:Still, I think, some big questions over that technology. There have clearly been some significant challenges that they've been facing in scaling up their manufacturing. And now they're going to need to scale the capacity again very significantly if they're going to meet all the future demand. Great piece I would recommend to people if you're interested in reading more about form energy. Latitude Media had a good piece in October of last year. They quoted the CEO, Matteo Jaramillo, as saying there had been immense learnings, as he put it, over the past year about how to manufacture those batteries at scale.
34:16Amy Myers Jaffe:As I say, it's clear they've had some issues in terms of what they've been doing and I think will have further issues as the company grows. I think there's also interesting questions about actually where their particular technology fits into the market. So they talk about these storage batteries for 100 hours. 100 hours is quite odd as a duration for storage in the sense that it's kind of too long to be useful for just time shifting between day and night for a system dependent on solar power. Now you don't need 100 hours for that and does look increasingly likely that that time shifting can be done by lithium ion batteries, which are, of course, the technology that's absolutely dominant in terms of energy storage installations today.
35:09Amy Myers Jaffe:But on the other hand, 100 hours is also not really long enough for what they call the dunkelflouter. If you're thinking about the dark doldrums where you have very dark conditions and the wind isn't blowing. So wind and solar generation is very low. That kind of weather can go on for two weeks at a time, three weeks sometimes. And so 100 hours doesn't really cover you for that. So I think we're going to learn about exactly how these systems perform, where the market for them is going to be. As I say, don't want to take anything away from what they're doing. It's a very exciting company, a very exciting product they've got there.
35:45Amy Myers Jaffe:But I think we're going to learn a lot more this year about what it really amounts to, what the issues are with manufacturing at scale. and what its commercial and technical place on the grid is actually going to be.
35:58Ed Crooks:And can I say two quick things before we go to Amy's technology around form? One, form was actually part of that. Do you guys remember when I did that PBS Nova thing with Miles O 'Brien and we did like a whole, okay, transitions and pathways? So form was profiled in it. And so for those who aren't familiar with form, I know it's two years ago. It was like April, 2023. Oh my gosh, that's almost three years ago. Now it's 2026. What happened? I know 2030 is around the corner, y 'all. I'm just saying. But it gives you a breakdown of what kind of things. But to your point, what kind of things form has developed, where they were, and you can kind of see the trajectory and it breaks down the basics on it.
36:34But to your point, Ed, I'm all about caveats.
36:38Ed Crooks:But I would just say, man, if I had a one-size-fits-all perfect solution for all situations, including multi-week drops in energy, I don't know what I'd be doing. probably what I'm doing today, but it would be great. When stuff goes wrong, I want lots of tools in my toolbox. And so I would just focus on all these different chemistries when I'm thinking about them. It's like, what are their best applications? Because back to the diversity standpoint, the supply chains, geopolitics, like that diversity is really good from a resilience standpoint, but that's resilience supply chain and resilience in operation.
37:12Ed Crooks:You have different things that are meant for different things. So they're not trying to do a job. They're just not trained for ready for ideally situated for and this is a big industry it's not a we need one solution we need lots of stuff in lots of places so i just would bring that out so it doesn't sound too dark that they're not capable of everything it's like they've got some interesting a hundred hour battery a one hour battery they both have different value propositions that are very interesting and great tools to have in your toolbox depending on what you're facing yeah no
37:41Amy Myers Jaffe:A great point. Certainly, it's an exciting technology as it does have bags of potential. I certainly really hope they succeed. Let's see how they go because definitely, as you say, there is a real need for that as part of the toolkit. Amy, what's your technology?
37:59Ed Crooks:Well, I'm going to take a slightly different turn here. So my technology of 2026, because the year started out with a little bit of news on it, are humanoid robots. So in the past, we've used algorithms to train robots, and it hasn't been all that successful. For those of you, I got a beautiful Roomba vacuum from my daughter for one Christmas, and I can attest that the thing did not work. So I'm not surprised that they went bankrupt and are now being taken over by the Chinese manufacturer that was making it. but that said you have a lot of money going into robotics Goldman Sachs is estimating that the market will be 38 billion over the next 10 years and you have Hyundai making a big investment they've bought and you've mentioned on a past show Boston Dynamics so Hyundai now owns 88 percent of that.
39:03Ed Crooks:They're saying they're going to commit to that field and put a lot of money in to have, they want to be able to produce thousands of humanoid robots by 2028. They're starting to test them in their car manufacturing plant in Georgia. And the Chinese really want to dominate this space as well. You know, the idea in the U.S. is they're putting NVIDIA chips in the head of these robots and they're teaching it the way you would actually teach a person so some person that you puts on virtual reality set and controls the robot and teaches it over and over and over again to do some repetitive thing or there's some body suit that you put on apparently and you do some motion that you want the robot to do and then it learns from watching that repetitive movement of this special suit.
39:59Ed Crooks:So it's a totally different paradigm. So maybe it's come to its time. I'm not sure from my experience with the vacuum, I'm definitely not going to be an early adopter. And in China, the ones they have that supposedly work cost like$90 ,000 a robot. So not a cheap technology anytime soon, but definitely a space to watch this year.
40:22Amy Myers Jaffe:Wow, that is quite something. I have to say, I feel instinctively, deeply skeptical about these. It just sounds like science fiction and not something that's going to be practical. But I have to admit, I felt rather the same about autonomous vehicles. And they're clearly working very effectively right now. And that industry is becoming a real business with real products in a way that I didn't quite expect to. would, I've been somewhat the same with AI as well, actually, I have to admit, where I was a bit of a skeptic originally about LLMs, but now I totally rely on them. And I was just having to do a client presentation this morning and relied very heavily on LLMs, working through our data with McKinsey to kind of give me all the information I needed for that.
41:13Amy Myers Jaffe:And now it's sort of unimaginable to think how we would operate without them. So maybe this is something else where it's going to be a real thing. What are the first use cases going to be, do you think? Where are we really going to see these humanoid robots being deployed? I mean, do you think, I mean, in factories, is that going to be?
41:32Ed Crooks:Yeah, I mean, Hyundai is saying that they're going to try to train them to do simple processes along the assembly line. So I think the first thing they're doing is roof racks in Georgia. So I think that's probably the first application. Repetitive tasks seems to be kind of what they're good at. I mean, the Internet has all these funny videos of the fact that they don't have dexterity, so they can't pour you a cup of coffee without spilling it. Right, right. So there are just some things they're not going to be able to do. You know, it's hard for me to know. I mean, the Roomba, you could spill like a bunch of Cheerios on the floor if you were serving some young person, some very little tiny person.
42:15Ed Crooks:And the Roomba would sweep everything in the room but the Cheerios. I would have to pick it up and put it in front of the Cheerios to get it to sweep those up. Do you know what I mean? So we're not there. We weren't there yet with however they with the algorithm technology. But this sort of, you know, chip training, machine learning, I think has more legs.
42:36Amy Myers Jaffe:It is a different thing, yeah. Right, but let's see. Yeah, let's see. What do you think, Melissa? You skeptical about humanoid robots, or do you think they're going to be a thing?
42:48Ed Crooks:Oh, man. I'm not going to tell the whole story, but for those who have not read any of Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel, iRobot, like all those books, there's one called The Naked Sun, which is based on this planet called Solaria. And there's like way more robots than humans. Every human's living on tens of thousands, maybe it was hundreds of thousands of acres i'm gonna go reread this book this weekend it's coming off the shelf um but it's that whole idea of when you go through the different planets in that book i think there's a parallel here i'm getting nerdy i know but it's like you saw the evolution of each planet as humanoid robots evolved and solaria was an extreme version of this so coming back to reality i had a shark and not a roomba and it worked great i still had to touch up sometimes That sucker cleaned everything.
43:33Ed Crooks:It mapped out my house. Issue, when I tried to go to a new house and I followed the instructions to like reprogram it. No, no, that was not going to work. It was too much. The whole thing just kind of gave up the ghost. And so there it was. But I think there's a lot of potential in it. I'm with you, Emmy. I will not be an early adopter, but I'm a nerdy following it type person. And you're now reminding me how much I miss my shark because it didn't come to this new place. because, you know, couldn't reprogram it. It got donated. Somebody at the Goodwill got to pick it up.
44:05Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, that is very interesting. And yeah, certainly a lesson there for the future of robotics, I think, in terms of flexibility being important. Thanks also for the reading recommendation. It wouldn't be a proper edition of the Energy Gang if we didn't give people a recommendation to take away. But unfortunately, we do have to leave it there. Before we do, though, free electrons, personal things we've brought in. Who wants to go first? Amy, what's yours?
44:35Ed Crooks:So mine is the blackout in San Francisco. You know, people in Silicon Valley design against their own personal experiences. And so the blackout in San Francisco really shocked everyone. And one of the things that happened is that the AVs, now that you praise them, Ed, the AVs stopped dead and then blocked traffic because they couldn't operate. And so the question is, you know, what does that send back to the drawing board? What different things are now going to have to be incorporated into designs? The word resilience is a big trending word now in the Valley and in the United States in general about what we have to do to design for resilience.
45:20Ed Crooks:Now that all these people in San Francisco had a really horrendous evening, I think that might be an influence on, you know, the tech sector. So throwing that out is my free electron.
45:32Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, that is really fascinating and very much goes back to that discussion we were having earlier about the importance of energy storage and also the importance of flexibility in complex systems, particularly in a system as critical as the power grid. So, Melissa, what's your free electron?
45:49Ed Crooks:Did you notice I got a book recommendation out? I'm just saying early so I can make my free electron something else. Um, okay. So if I say this phrase to y 'all, do you know what I'm talking about? Less talk, more steel.
46:01Amy Myers Jaffe:No, it's not Zoolander or anything else.
46:03Ed Crooks:The blue steel. Um, so it's the, whoever did marketing for this company intersect, which is what I'll talk about in a minute. I like you. It's like practical pathways forward. Less talk, more steel, whoever you are. Good job. You're not in my field, but you're in by the energy field. So we'll, we'll, we'll just, uh, we'll just celebrate that tagline. So this company has a project portfolio that is like a bunch of different projects for like on-site, near-site generation in Texas. So we're going back to my home state. In Haskell County, they've got this big one that's, was it solar PV plus best battery energy storage systems is in construction.
46:40Ed Crooks:They've got another one in Texas as well that's like solar plus wind to like, you know, complement each other, start to fill in some of the gaps. But the big announcement that came out is that they are being acquired by Google. I guess it's Alphabet, but, you know, that world. And so their technology is really interesting. A bunch of it's in construction. I followed them for a while. So that was just something, one of the many announcements that people snuck in over the holidays. I was like, why are we announcing stuff, you know, right over the holidays, y 'all? But, I mean, the news reels were full.
47:12Ed Crooks:It was really hard to pick a free electron. But I just, their technology is cool. It's really interesting. They're building it. And I thought that was fun for people who haven't followed it.
47:21Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, that is fascinating. So how does it work then? What is it exactly they do?
47:24Ed Crooks:Yeah. So what they talk about is essentially how do we build these combination? Like they do fossil fuels plus storage for carbon capture and energy storage and other things. They talk about that. But I've been focused more and I know a lot more about their renewables plus batteries, which if we hark back to my days at Columbia University, we did a lot of studies on, including in Texas, how much storage would you need to fully fill the gap for 24-7 power? So I do have questions for how the systems are being constructed, but they build these combinations. Okay, we have co-located solar and storage, solar wind, solar wind and storage, to get closer to a firm power dispatchable system.
48:06Ed Crooks:And there's lots of cool pictures on their website. They do have operating systems in Texas, so you can read about it. They also operate, I think it's in California and a few others. people can fact check me on their website. But that announcement was one of the ones that I was reading over the holidays with a bunch of other ones before, you know, other things we've already talked about on the show have happened.
48:27Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, that is really interesting. A very, very important area to be working in. So tell me, and the name of the company again is?
48:34Ed Crooks:Intersect. And I put a link that maybe we can throw up in the show notes or something, but it's interesting. And I was just looking at, again, back to supply chains, companies where investments are happening, who's getting acquired, What are they being used for? What's going on? So that was an interesting one to me. And I will say part of how I found it was shout out to my friend Doug Lewin, University of Texas Longhorn Days. He is a fellow podcaster. Y 'all may have crossed paths with him, but he accepted a job at Google two months ago. And so I celebrated his stuff going on. I've been kind of like watching, you know, what he and his colleagues are doing as they talk about he does markets in Texas.
49:12Ed Crooks:So Doug, if you're listening, congrats on the gig. I hope you're having a great time. Yeah, absolutely.
49:17Amy Myers Jaffe:So, yeah, so my Free Electron then is a podcast recommendation. I just wanted to give a plug to the Energy Gang sibling podcast, The Interchange Recharged, also produced by Wood Mackenzie, just because, well, I suppose partly because I'm going to be on it. and also because it has a new temporary presenter, Sylvia Lever-Martinez, who you may well know if you listen to that podcast, has taken a break for a short while. And while she's gone, the chairing hosting duties are going to be handled by another colleague of mine called Bridget Van Dorsten, who is a very brilliant energy analyst that we've got.
49:58Amy Myers Jaffe:That will certainly be a terrific podcast with her in charge of it. and I'm very much looking forward to talking to her. We've got a conversation I always enjoy by conversation with Sylvia where we did the sort of the cross podcasting. Well, there's a technical term for that, isn't there? The cross promotion of the two podcasts. Anyway, going to be doing that again with Bridget and I'm very much looking forward to doing that in a few days. So do look out for that when that gets published because hopefully that should be a really great and interesting discussion. So we do now have to leave it there.
50:31Amy Myers Jaffe:It's been great talking to you both, though. Fantastic conversation. Fantastic look ahead to what we can expect. All the things we're going to be talking about in 2026. And no doubt, a whole lot more things are going to come up that we haven't thought about. We're not even dreaming of right now as the way of the world and the way of this energy sector. But it's been great to kind of think about a few of the things we're going to be thinking about. Amy, thank you very much indeed for joining us for this.
51:00Ed Crooks:Thanks for having us here.
51:02Amy Myers Jaffe:Melissa, thank you very much.
51:03Ed Crooks:Yeah, thanks for having us. Thanks for the conversation. Happy 2026.
51:07Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, thank you very much, Melissa. It's been great talking to you both. Happy 2026 to you too. Look forward to many more great conversations as the year goes on. Thanks to our producers, Toby Biggins-Gilchrist, Stuart Duffy, and Dan Cottrell. And above all, many thanks to all of you for listening. We really do value your feedback, so please do keep that coming. and we'll be back very soon with all the latest news and views on the future of energy. Until then, goodbye.
From the publisher
The new year has only just begun, and already we have seen an event with massive significance for the world of energy. The US operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro opens a new era for a country that holds – according to some definitions – the world’s largest oil reserves.
So far there has been little impact on oil markets. But what are the implications going to be for energy in the months and years to come? To discuss how this volatile situation might evolve, host Ed Crooks is joined by regular guest Amy Myers Jaffe, Director of NYU’s Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab, and an expert on oil earlier in her career.
History never repeats itself, the saying goes, but sometimes it rhymes. Amy draws a parallel between Venezuela today, and Iraq after the US-led invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. There are some similarities in the position of the two oil-rich countries, which were both dragged down by mismanagement and sanctions. But Amy argues that Venezuela’s oil system is in far worse shape, with looted equipment, chronic power and fuel shortages, and damage that may not be reversible.
Melissa Lott, another Energy Gang regular, also joins the show, and raises the question of what regime change in Venezuela might mean for the energy transition. Melissa is a partner at Microsoft, but appearing on the show in her usual role as an independent commentator and energy expert.
Then it’s on to the other places, people and technologies that are likely to make a big impact on energy this year. Ed is watching the Gulf Coast buildout of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants. It is a boom so big that Wood Mackenzie expects US LNG exports to roughly double from 2023 levels by around 2030, with more growth beyond.
The gang assesses the likely consequences of surging LNG supplies: downward pressure on global gas prices, and potential financial strain for exporters. There is also the possibility that a peace deal in Ukraine could make the oversupply even worse, by allowing more Russian gas to flow west into European markets.
Next up, it’s people to watch in 2026. Melissa names the US energy secretary Chris Wright, and Ed picks new FERC chairman Laura Swett. As the US power grid, and its energy system more generally, face mounting challenges because of the growth in data centers needed for AI, effective policy and regulation will be critical. Amy chooses China’s President Xi Jinping: the country’s next five-year plan could reshape the global competition for energy dominance.
On technologies to watch, battery storage is a hot topic. Melissa and Ed discuss the supply chains needed to meet growing demand, and innovative products such as Form Energy’s iron-air batteries, which are being deployed in a first-ever commercial project that will be fully operational this year. Amy’s choice is humanoid robots. They’re expensive and still imperfect, but are they going to rule the future? They are already being trialled for repetitive factory tasks. Amy says her Roomba can’t cope with a spilt bowl of cereal. But will new flexible AI-guided robots be able to do the job properly?
Follow the show so you don’t miss an episode this year – it’s going to be a busy one.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.