Have we run out of big ideas to fix the grid?

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Apr 3, 2026

Jane Flegal, a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute and author on aligning data center buildouts with grid policy, discusses using hyperscaler demand to fund coordinated grid upgrades. She explains a grid infrastructure fund, why moratoria miss leverage opportunities, and how federal and state reforms could align private capital with long-term planning.

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INSIGHT

Coordination Not Equipment Is The Real Grid Constraint

The biggest constraint on U.S. grid expansion is coordination, not just equipment or land shortages.
Jane Flegal argues hyperscalers' urgent demand exposes planning failures and offers leverage to align private capital with public infrastructure needs.

INSIGHT

Both Left And Right React To The Same Planning Failure

Political responses to load growth split: left favors demand limits and moratoria, right pushes generation and ratepayer protections without long-term planning.
Both reactions stem from the same failure to coordinate planning, permitting, and financing at scale.

ANECDOTE

Frontier Convening Turned Private Buyers Into Policy Advocates

Jane recounts work at Frontier where convening tech companies revealed policy barriers were the main scaling constraint.
That led firms to form the Carbon Removal Alliance and push fixes like 45Q changes.

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America’s grid problems are often framed as physical constraints: equipment shortages, interconnection backlogs, and a lack of powered land.

But are we missing an opportunity to bring bigger ideas to the table as we reindustrialize and electrify the economy?

This week, Jane Flegal, a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute, joins the show to talk about why our biggest constraint is an inability to plan, coordinate, and build at the scale this moment demands.

On the left, there’s a growing push to limit demand through data center moratoriums and price controls. On the right, there’s a lot of talk about ratepayer protections and off-grid data centers without much thought to big-picture system planning.

We don’t have a system that can align private capital, public priorities, and long-term infrastructure needs. So what would real coordination look like?

We’ll talk about Jane’s new proposal seizing the data center buildout to support a grid infrastructure fund. We’ll talk about why the current debate about “utilization vs expansion” misses the point, and what it would take to coordinate a data center buildout for public benefit.

Then, we’ll turn specifically to green groups. After spending years playing up electrification, why is the climate movement struggling to bring big deals to the table? And what does it mean to build durable political coalitions around climate?

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

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