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Energy Changemakers Podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Energy Changemakers
As the energy grid faces unprecedented changes, local energy solutions are increasingly needed. Hosted by Elisa Wood, an experienced energy journalist, The Energy Changemakers Podcast brings you into the heart of these transformations. Each episode features in-depth discussions with industry leaders pioneering the move toward a decentralized grid. From technological innovations to policy changes — discover actionable insights to help your company leverage emerging opportunities. Join us at The Energy Changemakers Podcast and be part of the conversation that shapes our energy future.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 1 weeks ago26 min
Why the Microgrid Community Needs to Come Together Now
Produced in partnership with Xendee, this podcast explores the market dynamics that led the company to create a free, non-commercial gathering for the microgrid industry. In their conversation, Elisa Wood and Xendee CTO Michael Stadler discuss what's been holding microgrids back from achieving their full market potential, how utilities treat them, and why data centers are opening up opportunities that are reconfiguring what microgrids look like.Called University Week, the virtual event will be held June 8-10, 2026. Sessions will focus on:—Misperceptions and limited knowledge about microgrids and DERs—Macro market challenges—Older centralized technologies and grid limitations—Fragmented market with no common voice for the industryRegistration is free: https://xendee.com/xendee-university-week?.
- 1 weeks ago32 min
The Big Wide Door Opening for Biofuels
What does it take to build a billion-dollar biofuels company from inside one of energy’s most durable entrepreneurial firms?Michael Bakas has spent 25 years at Ameresco — and now he’s leading Neogenyx Fuels, a new $1.8 billion joint venture with HASI. Elisa Wood of Energy Changemakers gets the full story: the cocktail-napkin founding of Ameresco, the dual energy crisis (geopolitics + AI demand), and why RNG’s global moment has arrived.Whether you work in energy development, finance, policy, or utilities — or you’re simply watching the clean energy transition unfold — this conversation is a rare look at how one company has been building the infrastructure for what now appears to be America’s biofuel moment.
- 1 weeks ago26 min
Why the Microgrid Community Needs to Come Together Now
Produced in partnership with Xendee, this podcast explores the market dynamics that led the company to create a free, non-commercial educational gathering for the microgrid industry.In their conversation, Elisa Wood and Xendee CTO Michael Stadler discuss what’s been holding microgrids back from achieving their full market potential, how utilities treat them, and why data centers are opening up opportunities that are reconfiguring what microgrids look like.For more information, join Xendee and Energy Changemakers at University Week, a virtual event that will be held June 8-10, 2026.Sessions will focus on:Misperceptions and limited knowledge about microgrids and DERsMacro market challengesOlder centralized technologies and grid limitationsFragmented market with no common voice for the industryRegistration is free. https://xendee.com/xendee-university-week?utm_source=ecm
- 2 weeks ago1h 1m
Energy Abundance From the Bottom Up
This episode revisits one of the most-listened-to conversations in Energy Changemakers history—a three-way dialogue between Kay Aikin (CEO of Dynamic Grid, Maine), Lorenzo Kristov (independent grid market architect and formerly of California ISO), and Mark Paterson (Principal and Lead Systems Architect, Energy Catalyst, Australia). The original episode aired in 2024; this return engagement goes deeper, reexamining the concept of energy abundance through a more refined and urgent lens.The conversation takes direct aim at the dominant political narrative of “generate, generate, generate”—the idea that energy problems are simply solved by producing more power. The guests argue that this approach confuses quantity with quality, and supply with access. They introduce the concept of “smart abundance” versus “dumb abundance,” and make the case that a truly abundant energy future must be planned from the bottom up, starting closest to the user, not at the distant bulk power system.Ranging across economics, physics, regulatory law, and systems theory—and drawing analogies from photosynthesis to mycelial forest networks to Windows 97—the three guests explain why the current grid architecture is structurally incapable of delivering on the promise of energy abundance, and what reforms in planning, regulation, and market design would make the transformation possible. Australia’s experience with surplus renewables and minimum system demand serves as a real-world case study of what happens when abundance arrives without the right operating system to manage it.
- Apr 28, 202633 min
Chaos, Meet the DER Playbook
The Pew Charitable Trusts has released a long-awaited policy playbook for scaling distributed energy resources (DERs) across the United States. In this episode, host Elisa Wood sits down with the two co-chairs of the Pew DER Advisory Council — Audrey Zibelman and Pat Wood III — to unpack what the playbook says, why DER deployment has stalled despite a clear business case, and what policymakers can do right now to change the trajectory.The conversation moves from high-level regulatory philosophy to the practical mechanics of utility incentive design, FERC jurisdiction, virtual power plants, and the pros and cons of America's 50-state laboratory approach to energy regulation. Both guests bring decades of first-hand experience reshaping the grid — Zibelman from New York's REV framework and Australia's national DER strategy, Wood from opening the Texas and wholesale power markets.
- Apr 20, 202624 min
Microgrids Are a Goldmine for Grid Operators — They Just Don't Know It Yet
The US grid is under pressure — surging demand from data centers, EVs, and industrial expansion is forcing expensive infrastructure upgrades. But what if a significant share of that relief could come for free? In this bonus episode, Elisa Wood sits down with Vincent Petit, SVP of Climate and Energy Transition Research at the Schneider Electric Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), to explore a provocative finding from the institute's latest research: when building owners invest in microgrids to optimize their own financial returns, the grid benefits as a byproduct — at zero marginal cost to grid operators.The research, spanning five commercial building types and 13 geographies worldwide, finds that microgrids can deliver 20–40% power headroom recovery on average, with some configurations reaching 60%. And in 80% of modeled scenarios, the building owner achieves payback in under ten years — meaning the grid gets relief without spending a dollar.This conversation reframes microgrids not as niche resilience tools, but as a scalable, privately financed mechanism for managing the coming demand surge — if the price signals are right.
- Apr 15, 202640 min
Inside America’s Most Forward-Thinking Energy County
Montgomery County, Maryland — located just outside Washington, D.C. — has emerged as one of the most ambitious local governments in the United States when it comes to distributed energy, microgrids, and clean power resilience. Since its first microgrid went online in 2018, the county has built out a portfolio of advanced installations at public safety facilities, a correctional facility, electric bus depots, and smaller community sites. Now, with 23 “resilient hub” microgrids under development and plans to produce on-site green hydrogen for its transit fleet, Montgomery County is redefining what local energy leadership looks like.In this conversation, host Elisa Wood sits down with two key architects of this vision: Michael Yambrach, Chief of Montgomery County’s Office of Energy and Sustainability, who has overseen the county’s energy evolution since 2014; and Khaled Fakhuri, Senior Vice President of Schneider Electric’s Microgrid Business, the county’s long-term development partner. Together, they unpack how the county got here, how the public-private partnership model works, and what the future of microgrids looks like at local, national, and even data-center scale
- Apr 1, 202632 min
Utilities Are Warming to DERs. Thank Data Centers.
For years, utilities and the distributed energy industry fought bitter battles over net metering, revenue erosion, and who controls the grid. Now, something has shifted. In this episode of the Energy Changemakers Podcast, host Elisa Wood sits down with Marco Krapels, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Enphase Energy, to explore a striking reversal: utilities that once viewed rooftop solar as a threat are now actively seeking out DER companies as partners.The catalyst? Data centers. The explosive growth of AI and digital infrastructure is driving electricity demand at a scale that centralized generation simply cannot meet fast enough — and utilities are starting to realize that 80 million untapped American rooftops may be part of the answer.Krapels brings both battle scars and optimism to this conversation. A former investment banker turned clean energy executive, he helped build SolarCity into the country's largest solar company and fought landmark net-metering wars in Nevada. Now, from Enphase — which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year — he describes a world where bundled, flexible distributed energy resources (solar + battery + bidirectional EV charger + smart home management) form dispatchable virtual power plants that utilities can actually rely on. And he argues it's not a future scenario. It's already happening.
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About Energy Changemakers Podcast
As the energy grid faces unprecedented changes, local energy solutions are increasingly needed. Hosted by Elisa Wood, an experienced energy journalist, The Energy Changemakers Podcast brings you into the heart of these transformations. Each episode features in-depth discussions with industry leaders pioneering the move toward a decentralized grid. From technological innovations to policy changes — discover actionable insights to help your company leverage emerging opportunities. Join us at The Energy Changemakers Podcast and be part of the conversation that shapes our energy future.
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