Planning the grid to meet future energy demand | A discussion on the future of the grid, AI, energy innovation, and delivering the electricity supply we will need in the coming decades
Energy Gang
Wood Mackenzie
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2025
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The grid “is designed for the core components - supplying electricity - but we are definitely pushing it to its limits,” says Melissa Lott, Partner for energy technologies at Microsoft*.
The electricity grid has been described as one of the greatest achievements of human civilisation, because of its complexity, scale, and essential role in our societies. But it’s been around for over century, and in some places its components are many decades old. Whatever you think about the future of energy, it seems clear that we need a modernized grid to meet the new challenges we are facing, including growing demand and increased reliance on variable renewables.
So how do we build the right things in the right places? Joining Melissa and host Ed Crooks is first-time Energy Gang guest Alice Jackson. She’s a VP of Grid Modeling at the think-tank and cleantech investment firm Breakthrough Energy*.
Alice shares how Breakthrough Energy is working to help develop a grid that will meet future needs, around the world. Among other work, they are building open-source, open-access tools for grid planners, to shorten the time needed to secure regulatory approvals and start building. With rising energy needs driven by data centers for AI and new gigafactories, and new types of load such as EV charging, the grid requires radically different system planning to meet demand.
On top of that, the physical infrastructure that makes up the grid is aging and badly in need of renewal in many developed countries. Alice, Ed and Melissa discuss the challenge of balancing the need to replace old and crumbling infrastructure with the need to scale up capacity to match demand.
The gang also assess a recent paper from the US Department of Energy, which warns that “the status quo is unsustainable” for the nation’s grid. And they debate cutting-edge approaches that are being proposed to help boost flexibility in electricity systems and minimise the need for more fossil fuel generation.
The US energy department report discussed in this episode can be found here: https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-releases-report-evaluating-us-grid-reliability-and-security
*Melissa and Alice are appearing in this episode in a personal capacity; their views do not necessarily represent those of Microsoft or Breakthrough Energy.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The investment in these grids is a long-term investment. |
| 0:06.0 | It is a 50-60-year investment in these types of assets. |
| 0:09.0 | Some other assets may be 20 to 30 years, but generally 50 to 60 years. |
| 0:13.0 | So that means we have to make a decision and to look at what does the grid need to support |
| 0:18.0 | when we're at, I'll call it the end goal. |
| 0:21.1 | The same time we're having a changing climate, additional stress on the grid, which is changing our demand patterns and also changing our peaks. So when you look at emergency orders that have been issued in the past and how many of them are related to heat waves, and this isn't just in the US, but the equivalence in other place around the world, you look at Europe and summer heat waves the stress it's putting on the system. |
| 0:18.5 | This is a very real issue. |
| 0:20.4 | So we're looking at, okay, let's make this |
| 0:42.0 | challenge even more. Alice, you have a really interesting job. I'll just say that. |
| 0:48.8 | Hello and welcome to the energy gang, a discussion show from Wood McKenzie about the fast |
| 0:53.9 | changing world of energy. |
| 0:55.6 | I'm Ed Crooks. I'm an analyst who follows the energy industry for the research and consulting firm Wood |
| 1:00.4 | McKenzie. And in today's show, we're going to be talking about planning the power grid. |
| 1:05.0 | What needs to be done to make sure that the electricity system is able to meet the demands we're going to be putting on it in the coming decades. It's an issue that's been in the news quite a bit recently because of a new paper that |
| 1:15.3 | the US Department of Energy has just published, giving its assessment of the reliability and |
| 1:19.5 | security of the grid. To talk about that and related issues, it's a great pleasure to welcome back |
| 1:24.0 | Melissa Lott, who's a partner at Microsoft focused on energy technology. Hi, Melissa, great to see you again. How have you been? I'm doing well, Ed. It's a beautiful summer day. You know, enjoying the sunshine and looking forward to this conversation. It's great to see you. It's also a great pleasure to welcome for the first time. A new guest on the energy gang. Alice Jackson is the vice president for grid modeling at Breakthrough Energy. |
| 1:45.8 | Hi, Alice. Welcome to the Energy Gang. Good morning. Glad to be here. I want to talk a little bit |
| 1:50.1 | about your career, about how you got to the role you know hold, how you got interested in energy |
| 1:54.9 | the first place. That's something we always like to do with new guests on the show. Also, |
| 1:58.8 | just perhaps you could tell us a little bit about breakthrough energy, because it does quite a few things, doesn't it? And I sometimes think of it as a think tank, but it's more than that. It's also an investment firm and so on. Do you want to talk a bit about what it is you do there and, as I say, what breakthrough does in general? Yeah, absolutely. Ed. I'd love to dig into all of that. Where would you like me to start? Sorry, that was a lot of questions. Yeah, well, let's, okay, let's talk about breakthrough for a start. What do you do and what does breakthrough do? And then we'll go back and talk about how you got that. Absolutely. So at Breakthrough Energy, my role is a VP of the Grids team. The Grids team has been put together to look at the process that we go through in order to put together a plan for our electric systems. |
| 2:42.0 | That plan takes, as we all know, a very long period of time, has a lot of critical and complex details in it, but it doesn't end with just having a plan. |
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