More Power that's Faster and Fairer — Roundtable Discussion

Texas is not short on energy.

Texas is short on time.

New load is arriving faster than the grid can plan, permit, and build, raising a question that will shape our state’s future: can Texas grow without sacrificing reliability or pushing costs onto the wrong people?

That was the backdrop for our first Energy Capital roundtable with Matt Boms, Joshua Rhodes, and Micalah Spenrath.

The Defining Story of 2025

When we talked about the biggest energy story of 2025, everything circled back to load. Not just more demand, but uncertain demand.

Planning gets harder when projections keep shifting. Transmission, interconnection, and long-term investments all depend on forecasts, and those forecasts suddenly feel less stable.

And yes, data centers are at the center of it.

As Josh put it, you almost cannot talk about energy anymore without talking about data centers. They are reshaping how fast demand shows up and where reliability pressure lands.

Markets still matter, but speed does too

Texas remains an energy-only market. Resources still need to compete on cost, reliability, and performance.

But markets only work if the system underneath them can move fast enough.

ERCOT and the PUC are working to plan for the future, but compressed timelines make responsible planning harder. Speed is no longer just a project challenge. It is becoming a grid constraint.

What constraints unlock

This is about more than just generation — ERCOT’s transmission system also is racing to keep up with rising load. Given such constraints, Texas needs to embrace fast, close-to-home energy strategies, including:

* Distributed energy resources (DERs)

* Demand response

* Backup power

* Energy waste reduction

As Josh noted, constraints force innovation. When the old approach cannot keep pace, the economics for flexibility get much clearer.

What we’re watching in 2026

Looking ahead, Micalah, Matt, and Josh kept returning to a few basic themes:

* Clean, firm power that can scale

* Backup power and resilience

* The untapped potential of DERs

These policy solutions sit at the intersection of reliability, affordability, and speed, which is exactly where the grid debate is heading.

Texas is going to build a lot of infrastructure in coming years. That brings real benefits, especially to rural communities, but also real impacts.

Micalah framed it simply: this is about balance and fairness. Growth works best when communities understand the trade-offs — and they trust that costs and benefits are being shared responsibly.

Closing Thoughts

Texas is entering a build-fast era where speed itself becomes a grid resource.

That does not mean cutting corners. It means prioritizing the highest-value infrastructure, being honest about who pays for what, and using every available tool to maintain reliability and affordability.

Moving forward, we’ll keep these conversations grounded, curious, and practical. If you have thoughts on what Texas should prioritize next, jump into the comments.

Timestamps:

* 00:06 – Welcome, roundtable kickoff

* 01:49 – Micalah origin story, policy path

* 03:54 – Josh background, technical roots

* 04:08 – Host reactions, early framing

* 13:19 – SB 6, PUC, building infrastructure

* 15:27 – Data centers, speed-to-power reality

* 18:58 – Siting, community benefits and burdens

* 20:37 – Pushback, bad actors, headlines

* 22:03 – AI hype, narratives, who shapes perception

* 24:12 – ADER, DER potential, batteries

Resources:

Guest & Company

* Matt Boms - LinkedIn

* Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance - LinkedIn

* Joshua Rhodes - LinkedIn

* Webber Energy Group

* IdeaSmiths

* Micalah Spenrath - LinkedIn

Transcript:

Matt Boms (00:05.966)

Hi everybody, welcome to the Energy Capital podcast. I’m Matt Boms and I’m here for our first round table today with Dr. Josh Rhodes and Michaelis Benrath. I’m gonna ask each of you to introduce themselves and then we’ll get started. Josh, you wanna kick us off?

Joshua Rhodes (00:22.894)

Sure, sounds good. Hey everybody, my name is Joshua Rhodes. I wear a bunch of different hats. I’m research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin where I study electricity system, the grid, just energy writ large, CTO of Ideasmus, as well as commissioner for Austin Energy. And yeah, just excited to be here.

Micalah Spenrath (00:40.0)

All right. Hi, everybody. My name is Micalah Spenrath. I also wear lot of hats, but my main and biggest hat is that I am a Deputy Director of Policy and Energy at the Houston Advanced Research Center, where I spearhead our legislative and regulatory engagement, specializing in energy policy. So happy to be here.

Matt Boms (00:56.824)

Well, I’m really excited to be with you both. And we’ve been tasked with this enormous responsibility of co-hosting this podcast. And I’m happy that we all have the chance today to talk. And I want to get into each of your backgrounds and ask each of you to just explain kind of how you got into the energy world, what inspired you to get into this topic and kind of how did it all start? What’s your origin story? Josh, Micalah, whoever wants to kick us off.

Micalah Spenrath (01:21.758)

Mine was actually already previewed on LinkedIn. So I’ll give you the Spark Notes version. I actually did not intend to get into energy policy. It just happened kind of serendipitously. I went to grad school for engineering, dabbled in some law and policy courses and was really inspired. And then I got some guidance from a mentor who said you should really look into getting into policy. He didn’t specify which kind, but

Micalah Spenrath (01:48.888)

Considering I’m very interested in climate action and things like that, I figured energy would be a great place to plug in. So yeah, I got a job with Matt. And then that was years ago now, and I’ve just been getting such positive feedback from the community and the work is so rewarding and intellectually challenging. And yeah, why mess with a good thing? I think I’m going to keep this going for a while.

Joshua Rhodes (02:16.376)

Yeah, so I didn’t start out with the idea of getting into energy. Like I like science, I like STEM. My undergrad and master’s are actually in mathematics. It’s Stephen F. Austin in Texas A And really every time I kept getting out of school was like during an economic recession. And so there was like no jobs to be had. And it was kind of like, well, I’m pretty good at the school thing. So I guess I’ll just keep going. Cause I found that if you keep going to school, you don’t have to pay your loans back. Like they just keep going.

Joshua Rhodes (02:44.332)

And so I just kept going and going and going, but after I got to like the masters in math, was like, well, I just don’t want to do this for like the math stake anymore. So I switched to engineering to try to be a bit more applied when I came to the University of Texas. One of the first classes I took was a thermodynamics course. And it took the math that I had learned and like knew, and it put it in terms of real systems, how systems use energy, like how nothing’s a hundred percent efficient. There are no perpetual motion machines. Just kind of made it all make sense.

Joshua Rhodes (03:13.638)

And from then I started working with Dr. Michael Weber at the University of Texas who does a bunch of energy stuff and first got into like how buildings consume energy. Did my dissertation work, you know, based on that topic from like American recovery and reinvestment funds from ARA funds. And then when I graduated, kind of switched more to the supply side. So I’ve been doing more grid modeling and other types of stuff, but it’s just like, I’ve just always been fascinated with just how

Joshua Rhodes (03:40.898)

we do things and it’s like the energy side of things let me kind of put my interest in kind of how things work and the math side into like doing something good, doing something good for people, for society and all that. Here we are.

Micalah Spenrath (03:54.296)

sounds very similar to my story as well. And actually thermodynamics was one of my favorite classes in college. So I double click on thermodynamics, but we won’t dive too much into that.

Joshua Rhodes (03:56.632)

Yeah, absolutely.

Joshua Rhodes (04:07.608)

would love to actually, but we won’t. Man, that’s a rarity to hear to be honest with you. Matt Renison.

Micalah Spenrath (04:12.238)

All right, pitching it to Matt.

Matt Boms (04:15.534)

Well, it’s fun to hear how everyone kind of gets into energy through the back door. Like a lot of us didn’t necessarily intend to work in this industry, but here we are and we’re kind of neat in energy issues. came into it through economics, like trying to study local economic development and understand how some communities are left behind while others seem to thrive. And I think energy plays a huge role in that. think, you know, working in Texas, we have a first row seat to

Matt Boms (04:44.856)

kind of how the state has undergone this amazing development over the past few decades. And a lot of that is really, you can draw a straight line between that and energy, right? Just the abundance of energy that we have in Texas. So I wanted to ask both of you, in your experience, the way that people think about energy in Texas, what is the most common misperception or how do you think about energy and how is that different from how the average person thinks about energy in Texas?

Micalah Spenrath (05:14.54)

I can start with that because I used to just be an average person not too long ago. And quite frankly, I just didn’t even think about it. Outside of thinking about emissions and cost, of course, because we all paid utility bills, I really did not consider utility regulation. I did not think about reliability. I didn’t think about ERCOT, except when they were asking me to voluntarily conserve multiple times a year, which was fun.

Micalah Spenrath (05:43.64)

Having that frame of reference is completely a 180 to have, think, about energy now. In fact, I think it’s one of the most integral aspects that we can focus on to provide better futures for communities, for individuals, and for the planet if we really wanted to tackle decarbonization. So it’s right up there with transportation, if I recall correctly, in terms of sector emissions.

Micalah Spenrath (06:07.328)

If you really want to plug in to climate, the environment, and community wellbeing, it’s hard not to see how energy isn’t a player in that. So I think about it from a regulatory standpoint now. I think about it in terms of affordability and also legislation. So seeing how, you know, our lawmakers are basically setting the ground rules when it comes to how our energy system works. And that impacts my bill at the end of the day.

Micalah Spenrath (06:36.108)

So it really does behoove us to keep an eye on what’s happening. yeah, that’s pretty much where I’m at now, which never really appeared in my mind prior to getting into energy policy, but it is so important.

Joshua Rhodes (06:50.06)

I think most people used to really only to consider energy like gasoline because it’s the big number that’s kind of on billboards everywhere as you’re driving around. really in Texas, I think since, you know, when winter storm Uri hit, really shoved the electricity sector like front and center. I used to have to explain what ERCOT was, what the grid was. And then, you know, after that didn’t really have to. Sometimes when I said that I’ve worked on that, I’d have to duck afterwards. You know, energy is really kind of in the Texas psyche now.

Joshua Rhodes (07:19.298)

We’ve always been the energy state. mean, we produce and consume pretty much the most of all forms of energy. And we’d be in top 10, you know, if we were a country. But like, it’s so much more to the average Texan than it is to other, other folks. You’re just given, you how many people work in the industry, whether it’s the oil and gas industry or electricity or renewables or all these other kinds of things. Like, I think it’s probably more front and center.

Joshua Rhodes (07:41.28)

nowadays and it has been in the past and now even more so with things like all the data centers and electricity growth and like affordability, like it’s even becoming even more kind of front and center.

Matt Boms (07:51.416)

Yeah, you raised that Josh and I wanted to ask you both about as this year comes to an end and you know, what really was the top story in 2025 when it comes to energy? it, to me at least it feels like a lot has changed from this time last year and we’re in a completely different energy paradigm than we were a year ago. So for you both, what was the big story of 2025?

Micalah Spenrath (08:16.512)

Well, the biggest story for me was certainly the changes to federal policy related to a lot of different energy technologies, particularly wind, solar, but also batteries, looking at some of these large programs like the Solar for All program, which was intended to deploy distributed solar and storage in communities that were really energy burdened. And unfortunately, that has been a very bumpy road.

Micalah Spenrath (08:44.946)

And a lot of changes that aren’t necessarily positive have occurred based on the changes that we saw in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. So that’s the biggest story for me is that federal policy does actually make a difference. And having an all of the above energy strategy within the state is of course advantageous. But having that mirrored on the federal level, we can achieve so much more.

Micalah Spenrath (09:09.762)

So I think for moving forward over the next few years, I’m really hoping that we can align those two visions between our state and the federal level and really make progress on a diversified energy strategy that brings down cost and enhances reliability and affordability. Cause I think both are important. So that was the biggest story for me. And even though the changes were fairly negative from a lot of the renewable side, I’m optimistic that, you know, markets will continue to work.

Micalah Spenrath (09:39.0)

consumers will continue to be heard and say that we want what we’re paying for essentially and we don’t want to have prices rising for ideological reasons, for example.

Joshua Rhodes (09:52.75)

absolutely. I mean, so much happened in Texas this year around energy. mean, I think one of the big ones for me, for sure, and this has been for everyone else is like, just watching the graph for the number of large loads and data centers just continued to like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, like up faster and faster and faster. I mean, I didn’t even think the numbers last year were reasonable and now they’ve even just gotten more unreasonable. Right. And so just like how that’s going to impact everything that we are doing. It makes it hard to plan.

Joshua Rhodes (10:21.422)

It makes it hard to figure out where the system needs to grow. Our peak demand is 85 and a half gigawatts, but there’s 225 gigawatts of large load in the cube by 2030. And given the pace at which the utilities move and all this kind of stuff, there’s just no way we can triple the grid in five years. But at the same time, like we’re building stuff, right? Like we approve like these 765 KVA lines, these huge power lines to go out into far west Texas to electrify oil and gas operations.

Joshua Rhodes (10:48.334)

This kind of reminds me of the Cres lines that we built to like go get the wind out in West Texas. I mean, it gets a lot of things up in the air, but it’s a lot of big numbers and like a lot of us pointing towards good stuff, I think.

Micalah Spenrath (11:01.132)

Yeah, I do want to double click on that. Like in Texas, we are still building things and you cannot point to every single state and have that same perspective. So I think even with the uncertainty, even with the changes that we’re seeing, it seems that Texas by design is quite resilient. And I’m really optimistic that we’re going to continue our energy leadership and really show what we can achieve when you are tech neutral, when you are an energy only market, when you allow resources to compete.

Micalah Spenrath (11:31.45)

on cost and showing up and reliability and affordability, not necessarily if you’re a fuel-based resource or if you’re intermittent and things like that. So I think, yeah, I’m a bit optimistic about it.

Matt Boms (11:46.146)

Yeah, I agree with both of you. And I think, you know, when Josh was mentioning Winter Storm URI and you think about how far we’ve come in the last four years, right? Almost five years now. I want to hear if you both agree with me on this, but I think ERCOT deserves a little more credit than it normally gets. And the reason I say that is because a lot of the projections that came out of it was house bill 5066 that was allowing the utilities to essentially inflate the

Matt Boms (12:15.2)

load projections and ERCOT came in and adjusted those projections and took a serious look at how much of this load is legitimate. Like how many of these data centers are really coming to do business in Texas because just from an operations standpoint, they need a number to work off of and that determines how much generation we need to build out. And it also determines how much transmission we need to build out, which again, I think ERCOT and the PUC deserve a lot of credit for a more forward thinking.

Matt Boms (12:42.838)

mindset than we’ve had traditionally in Texas, at least over the past decade or so, trying to work with all this load growth, figure out how much of it is really coming to Texas and then what do we need in order to meet the new demand that’s coming.

Joshua Rhodes (12:55.182)

So you’re sticking with the transmission lines. I think to the state’s credit, these are economic enablers, right? There’s no one individual project or group of projects that would justify this, but you basically make the sandbox bigger for everyone to work. Again, if you build this infrastructure, it is going to benefit all kinds of energy across the state, from oil and gas to renewables and et cetera.

Micalah Spenrath (13:18.794)

Yeah,

Micalah Spenrath (13:19.164)

so my perspective is that we really have started to lay the foundation to integrate large loads in a much more sustainable fashion with Senate Bill 6. And the PUC is doing a lot of great work on that. They have several projects that are dockets that are open and they really are taking it seriously and they’re making progress with the capacity that they have available. So I definitely think the PUC does deserve some kudos, but ERCOT as well, because even before we had

Micalah Spenrath (13:46.048)

a finalized Senate Bill 6. They were already looking at the interconnection process for large loads. I forget the number of the MPRR, but yeah, so they were all really considering this and then getting the legislative direction just added fuel to that fire. And I think we are moving in a very positive way. There are things that we still need to hash out, right? So making sure that data center...

Micalah Spenrath (14:10.25)

load is met with sustainable outcomes, right? So we don’t necessarily want all data centers to just have their own natural gas plant. That would not necessarily be the best thing for air quality and community well-being for the communities that are located near these data centers. We do want them to be good neighbors. I think that there’s a lot of work to be done in terms of making sure the policies at the state and local level align to make sure that that can happen.

Micalah Spenrath (14:38.9)

And yeah, if we can encourage like using solar and storage to meet that load, I think that that would be a real significant movement in the right direction. You’ve seen other states like Oregon, they’ve passed a bill that does actually aim to have sustainable or renewable fuels, I should say, renewable technologies provide the energy for these data centers. And that’s something that Texas can certainly replicate if we wanted to.

Matt Boms (15:09.25)

Yeah. Then they’re the cheapest megawatts out there. And it feels like a lot of these data center companies are because of their own internal corporate goals. They’re going out there and trying to procure renewables and storage as the market is currently structured. Right. I wanted to ask you both. sorry, Josh, go ahead.

Joshua Rhodes (15:27.374)

You know, heard something mentioned the other day, a comment that like, you know, right now with data centers, it’s kind of speed to power. And so it’s kind of like whatever we can do to get the megawatts the fastest, but eventually they’re going to have to compete with each other once they get it. Right. And so like, they’re going to want that, you know, unit costs of energy to go down. Like such that they’re, you know, dollar per token, know, dollar per my students cheating on their homework goes down. Right. So, I mean, I think we’ll get there. is a weird time right now with like how fast things are moving and how, how much they’re willing to throw at it, but.

Joshua Rhodes (15:57.196)

I think long-term equilibrium, yeah, I think we do end up kind of with that lowest cost energy, which yeah, like you said, when solar in storage right now.

Micalah Spenrath (16:05.87)

But to your point, Josh, you mentioned something that was really interesting, which is what’s unique about this particular load is that they do move so fast and they are of such a great magnitude, right? We typically have not seen that before and it creates a lot of challenges when it comes to energy planning to a previous point. So I think that if there’s an opportunity to align how these loads actually materialize on the grid with our planning processes, we’ll be in a much better place. And I think that

Micalah Spenrath (16:35.33)

the acknowledgement that that’s needed is already there.

Joshua Rhodes (16:39.342)

I mean, that’s like where the, crux of like the affordability argument hits. We’re trying to build so much infrastructure so fast right now, but it’s also the fact that that infrastructure is really expensive right now, right? It’s like the top of the market for transformers and for poles and for power plants. Like with my commissioner had on like, know that, you know, natural gas power plants are two and a half times what they cost a few years ago. Transformers are, you know, double what they cost a few years ago. Lines, the wires cost way more than they did. And it’s just like, you buy your house at the top of the market.

Joshua Rhodes (17:07.48)

when the market corrects, like you don’t get to readjust that principle, right? If we buy a bunch of expensive stuff right now, we’re gonna pay for it for a long time. So we’ve got to look into like, how do we cost share this thing or how do we do this differently than we have in the past? It’s a big deal.

Matt Boms (17:23.0)

Yeah, it feels like unprecedented times. I wonder listening to you both, like, I agree with you, Josh, that we’re, building out the sandbox for everyone. However, this stuff has to get built somewhere and communities are already starting to push back against some of the 765 transmission build out. We’ve seen legislation the last three sessions in Texas against renewable siting. So.

Matt Boms (17:50.082)

My question would be for both of you, how much do you worry about that? And I think what can be done to make communities feel like this is the right thing to do for economic development in Texas?

Joshua Rhodes (18:01.646)

That’s a good question. So, I mean, I’ve done quite a bit of work on like the impact of renewables, renewables and storage. Someone, know, a wind farm is built in a certain community. What does that mean for like landowner payments and taxes? And generally it can be, you know, quite large. In fact, if you look at like the sum total of landowner payments and taxes that the existing and soon to be built fleet are looking to pay, it’s like $50 billion. It’s not a small amount of money. It’s a lot of money. A lot of that flows to rural parts of the state, right? And so it’s areas that don’t...

Joshua Rhodes (18:30.934)

normally get economic development and it can be helpful in terms of having longer term sources of energy. But transmission is harder, I will say. Transmission is harder, it’s more diffuse, it’s spread over more areas, it can be more visible. Yeah, I know there were fights during CREZ and I’m not surprised that there are gonna be fights during this one as well. It’s just compensating people for bearing the burden, right? It’s like we do that via the tax.

Joshua Rhodes (18:57.602)

benefits that communities get for like hosting this infrastructure and the landowner payments. and just making sure that those are commiserate.

Micalah Spenrath (19:05.582)

So when it comes to siting, the main thing that I think about is balance. So, and compensation, of course. So it’s very Texan to say, you know, let’s go ahead and do something, but compensate me fairly for it. And I think that that is very fair. Also risk management. So if we’re asking them to host this infrastructure and these projects, we want to make sure that they’re safe and secure. I think that’s absolutely valid as well. For me, it’s also a conversation about

Micalah Spenrath (19:32.692)

sustainable outcomes. So we do need to build a lot of things. And that’s no surprise to many people. But we need to do it in a way that preserves our natural resources to the extent possible. And I actually think a lot of rural stakeholders would agree. I mean, if you’re raised in the country, you know it’s a beautiful place to be. And there’s a relationship to the land that you may want to preserve. And I think that that should be honored and respected as well when we’re having these conversations.

Micalah Spenrath (20:00.268)

So I think that it’s all about balance, it’s all about trade-offs, and it’s all about optimizing emissions reductions with natural resource stewardship and community fairness and compensation.

Matt Boms (20:12.064)

I agree and it’s highlighting the positive stories because I think for every negative story out there, there’s a hundred positive ones that maybe aren’t spoken about as much. So some of this really has to do with communications and I think how some of these projects are interacting with communities, maybe highlighting the good actors as much as those bad actors get highlighted in the news. You know, we can always find out your positive examples for every bad one, but Josh, you were going to say something?

Joshua Rhodes (20:36.642)

Well, Matt, what do you think has been the biggest energy story this year?

Matt Boms (20:40.366)

I mean, this year’s got to be data centers. Like it’s unavoidable. And I think it’s not just a Texas issue. It’s all over the country, right? Like there’s no energy conversation now without talking about data centers. And I think it’s interrelated with everything else we talk about in energy. Like the whole conversation around the 765 lines, it did come from the Permian originally as far as oil and gas and electrifying those operations. But at the same time, you can’t really accommodate all this new load if you don’t have a

Matt Boms (21:09.196)

know, sufficient transmission infrastructure. And Micalah and I have worked on this in the past at the Capitol, at the PUC, at ERCOT, trying to push for transmission build out, but it didn’t quite happen until the load was really clear that this, this is this huge tsunami that’s going to hit us very quickly in Texas. And if we don’t build out transmission quickly enough, then we’re not going to be able to meet that demand. So for me, that was definitely the number one story in 2025. And then all the flexibility around like DERs, demand response, reducing energy waste.

Matt Boms (21:39.116)

All of that is now very much on the table in a way that it wasn’t this time last year. And I think that’s because of the AI data center growth.

Joshua Rhodes (21:48.232)

I’ve got a joke going around that like, can’t talk about energy for more than five minutes in this state without talking about data centers and all my energy newsletters have become AI newsletters. Yeah. I’m sure it’s vice versa on the other side. All the AI newsletters have become energy newsletters, et cetera, et cetera.

Micalah Spenrath (22:03.154)

Yeah. Matt, I have a follow-up question for you. So you work with a lot of advanced energy companies, some of which are solar and storage organizations. So what gives you the most optimism when it comes to renewable growth in the next year?

Matt Boms (22:18.69)

think it’s those private power purchase agreements that are happening. A lot of this stuff is happening in the private sector and doesn’t need the government to interfere. And I think that’s why a lot of these data centers are coming to Texas because they have deep pockets. And like you said, Micalah, the number one issue for them is not how much the energy is going to cost. It’s how quickly they can get their energy, right? So that flips the whole thing on its head. We actually do have cheap, abundant energy in Texas, but the key

Matt Boms (22:47.596)

factor here is the speed. I think they’re seeing that, you know, Google can come in and partner with any number of renewable companies that can get them up and running relatively quickly by building that co-located array of solar and batteries, right? In a way that you can’t really build it as quickly in other states. So that’s what I’m excited about. Like, I feel like we’re best positioned to meet the load quicker than any other state is, but I want to bounce that back to you and Josh and see what you both think about that.

Micalah Spenrath (23:13.086)

just look at our interconnection queue. You’ll get happy real fast. Well, that’s simplifying it, but I certainly find reasons for optimism when looking at our interconnection queue and also just how readily deployable solar and storage and some of these renewable technologies can be to meet load. Because speed is going to matter. Scalability is going to matter. And so I think that those are great assets of these resources and we should really lean into that.

Micalah Spenrath (23:42.158)

That’s my perspective, but you also mentioned DERs and circling back to my comment about balance, not every renewable project has to occur on a greenfield site on undeveloped land. It can actually be a parking garage roof. It can be commercial building roofs. And so I really am excited to see like how much we can do in that landscape when it comes to distributed energy, because I think there’s so much potential there if we could just tap into it. Josh?

Joshua Rhodes (24:12.418)

I think the thing that I’ve been really kind of excited about is like the distributed battery space with, you know, announcements from the ADER program with like the base and Tesla and Bandera that are finally kind of getting these, you know, more dispatchable assets at the grid edge. Like it’s been, there’s been a lot of movement really quickly. I feel like in the past year, year and a half or so, I’m really excited about that too. Cause like, you know, as we run into constraints on getting

Joshua Rhodes (24:40.494)

know, large loads and generation and all this stuff, you know, in greenfield sites, like we do have a lot of points of interconnection that could take small stuff. And finally, it seems like people are starting to get that business case to work out. And that’s really exciting for me.

Matt Boms (24:55.498)

Awesome. Maybe to close this episode, we can give one area of like one item that we’re looking forward to in 2026, whether it’s a policy, just an issue that you’re interested in, but like one thing you’re looking forward to next year.

Joshua Rhodes (25:08.866)

Yeah, so real quick, this year has also been a big year for Texas and critical minerals in the East, the lithium in the smack over to uranium in the panhandle, critical minerals, Brewster County, all these other places like all around the state. I just think that bodes well, bodes good for like Texas and our country as a whole. And so I’m excited to see where that goes kind of in the future.

Micalah Spenrath (25:29.048)

Clean, firm power. I want to see that grow and scale, and there’s a lot of positive indicators for it. So I’m really excited where it’s going to go in 2026.

Matt Boms (25:39.19)

Awesome. And I think I’ll go with backup power because I hope that that program will get off the ground next year. And I’m looking forward to that because that should be really fun to see how these technologies can play a role in backing up our critical facilities. So that’s something I’m looking forward to, but thank you both so much. This has been a really great conversation and I’m really looking forward to seeing the guests that you bring on the podcast next year and listening to those amazing conversations. And we’re definitely going to get together more frequently and do these roundtables next year.

Matt Boms (26:08.558)

And this has been the Energy Capital Podcast. I’m Matt.

Micalah Spenrath (26:12.386)

I’m Mikayla.

Joshua Rhodes (26:13.921)

I’m Josh.

Matt Boms (26:15.246)

See you time.

Matt Boms (26:44.77)

We’re also on LinkedIn, X, and YouTube, where we post clips, insights, and ongoing commentary. Big thanks to Nate Peavey, our producer. I’m Matt Bombs, and I’ll see you next time. Stay curious, stay engaged, and let’s keep building a stronger, smarter, energy future.

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