Data center opposition has gone from nonexistent to organized in about two years, roughly 120 moratoriums across 38 states, and it does not track proximity: Gallup finds 70% of Americans oppose a data center near them, while only 8% of opponents live near one. On this episode of Volts, David Roberts joins Energy Empire hosts Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan, along with Arnab Pal of Deploy Action, for a crossover conversation, and his argument is that everyone is solving the wrong problem. The hyperscalers could buy their way to consent for a rounding error, batteries in basements, solar on roofs, funded schools, lower bills, and they refuse, which David reads as a symptom of low social trust that no amount of better modeling touches. “This is not a technocratic problem that you can just solve with a few switches,” he says. Thirty-six governors go to the ballot this fall having to answer for it.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro: a Volts and Energy Empire crossover

01:25 Has the AI case been made? Energy vs. AI as the real revolution

04:23 The backlash by the numbers, and hyperscalers' botched PR

08:20 Animal spirits, low social trust, and the information environment

12:46 Enshittification, lost jobs, and why governors still want data centers

15:50 The local playbook: schools, bioswales, batteries in basements

17:18 Bespoke industrial rates without setting a bad precedent

22:33 How utilities earn: spend-to-earn, the distribution black box, efficiency

30:11 Gendering the grid: gas as firm, renewables as soft

37:57 NERC's level-three alert and the case for more batteries

39:29 Both/and: distributed capacity as serious supply

45:33 Abundance's missing half: state capacity, staffing, NEPA

48:55 The midterms: 36 governors and the politics of affordability

53:33 Hope vs. fear: the Mamdani lesson and the information environment

Most of the energy decisions that touch daily life in America get made in state legislatures, and the people making them are increasingly new to the job. In smaller states, a freshly elected lawmaker gets a pad of paper, no staff, and about 150 lobbyists at the door, then votes on billion-dollar energy budgets in a landscape where the technology changes faster than anyone can track. On this episode of Volts, David Roberts talks with Hawaii state Senator Chris Lee, co-founder of the Electric Innovation Initiative, a bipartisan network betting that education moves electrification faster than mandates: put lawmakers in front of working technology, connect them across state lines, and let affordability carry the argument where climate framing will not. As Lee puts it, "nine times out of ten, people just don't know what they don't know."

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:39 How electrification clicked: the 2008 iPhone moment

06:10 The education gap: why the initiative exists

11:35 Proxy staff and cross-state validation

15:44 What lands on the tours: eVTOL to the data-center win-win

20:51 Plain 'electrification': the bipartisan framing bet

26:28 Climate hushing and Hawaii's two-track proof

30:17 Policy that spreads: e-buses, heat pumps, RFPs

37:37 Utility business-model reform: Hawaii's PBR law

42:03 Affordability after the federal subsidies

45:22 Hawaii under pressure: LNG and the Lahaina grid

51:53 State power against federal hostility

55:19 The ten-year vision and the closing advice

Property taxes are two taxes stapled together: one on the land, one on whatever gets built on it. Put up an apartment building and the bill goes up. Pave the lot for parking and it stays low. It discourages building and rewards land speculation. The answer? Tax the buildings less and the land more. The idea of a “land value tax” goes back 150 years, but implementing it today involves navigating tricky constitutional issues. In this episode, I talk with Greg Miller of the Center for Land economics about the rationale for such taxes, and with Kitty Klitzke, a Spokane, Washington council member, about the difficulties of putting it in practice in a real city.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:22 Henry George and the case for taxing land

08:12 How property taxes work now, and what a split rate changes

11:26 Land value taxes and upzoning as complements

15:18 The Pennsylvania record and the reassessment problem

18:51 Vancouver, and why homeowners outlast the policy

24:03 Estonia, Singapore, and the Scottish Islands

26:53 Washington's uniformity clause and the building exemption

33:18 Kitty Klitzke on twenty years of Spokane infill

43:27 What Spokane needs from the state legislature

45:25 Single family homeowners and the Division corridor

48:34 The assessor objection

52:45 What the Spokane modeling shows

59:31 The plan for next session

1:01:44 Virginia, Kentucky, and cross-partisan momentum