912: How Energy Narratives Shape Capital -A Former WSJ Reporter’s Perspective | Russell Gold

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This giant scramble for whatever kind of megawatt or gigawatt you can get, right?

Let's restart nuclear. Great. We restart all the nuclear you can.

Let's buy a coal plant and bring it here. Let's disassemble it.

Let's take some Rolls Royce engines designed to fly a supersonic jet

and strap them onto the ground and use them to create megawatts.

I mean, you've got to be impressed with the capital idea that's sort of flowing out there,

like all these crazy ideas. Right.

You know, but at the end of the day, technology is going to win.

And the good technology out there, as far as I can see,

is natural gas and solar and solar power storage.

For years, Russell Gold helped shape how the Wall Street Journal understood

the energy transition from inside the newsroom at the Wall Street Journal.

He helped cover Wall Street. Today, he's inside one of the companies

trying to execute that transition at scale.

So I'm looking to see what changes when the person explaining the story becomes

responsible for delivering it.

Russell's the former senior energy and climate reporter.

As I mentioned, he covered fracking, deep water horizon, PG&E,

and the campfire two-time Pulitzer finalist author of two books,

The Boom and Superpower.

Now is EBP of strategic comms at T1 Energy.

You must have seen T1 at some of your previous trade shows

because they've been very splashy with ads on large screens.

How I learned who T1 was and had the ask the question,

why do I not know this company yet?

It worked. It's the advertising work.

It did. That's good to know, really did.

So you've covered energy's biggest turning points on the outside.

Now you're on the inside.

Let's frame this up.

How fast is the energy transition actually moving right now,

versus how it was perceived in the media in capital markets?

I actually think it's moving a lot faster than people realize.

From the inside, watching just how much demand there is,

even for a brand new company like T1, we've got five gigawatts of modules.

We're building solar cell, a solar cell fab right now.

It's really remarkable.

And from the outside, there was always this narrative

that solar wasn't ready for prime time,

or batteries weren't going to be there, and they're too short.

There were always reasons why it wasn't going to work.

And it just kept, over the last really four, five, six years,

it just kept proving the narrative wrong,

and just getting further and further along.

And then you probably know, in the US,

if you look at what generating assets are being put on the grid,

80 plus percent over the last two years has been solar and storage.

It is just dominating.

It is adding to the grid.

It's really efficient, and it really matters.

It's what's keeping, frankly, the grid running right these days.

Well, Wall Street's job is to price risk.

Your job is to write about things such that Wall Street can do their job.

What does Wall Street still miss or read about the industry?

That's a good question.

I don't want to poke Wall Street in the eye.

The last thing you want to do when you're a public company,

and you're doing equity raises every once in a while,

which we did at the end of last year.

Congratulations.

But thanks.

What does Wall Street get wrong?

I think Wall Street is underpricing and underappreciating

just how powerful this trend is, and that there's just,

we have long ago passed the no-turnback time.

And there are just a lot, frankly, of zombie facilities still out there on the fossil fuel side.

That have been built.

Capital has been put in.

Stranded assets.

Basically stranded assets at the point.

And I'm not talking about climate.

I'm not, you know, that there was this big push a few years ago about all these zombies.

No, I just, I think there's zombies just because they're not competitive anymore.

So one of the things I wanted to be able to get from you is the perspective, the difference

now that you're on the inside versus when you're on the outside.

If you were still at the journal knowing what you know now,

would you frame the moment we're in differently now?

So here's what I would do.

I would write a contrarian story.

Yeah.

Because there have been a couple stories recently about how the federal, the Trump administration

is doing everything it can to tie up wind and solar and red tape and bureaucracy, slow it down,

and that's going to, you know, it's going to be a massive break on development.

I don't see that at all.

Contrarian story is things are actually going very fast.

There is a lot of focus right now on building on private lands,

it's had a public lands, which, you know, for obvious reasons, I would draw a big distinction

between wind and solar.

Yeah.

The fate of those two technologies is vastly different.

And, you know, just to put a very clear point on it, solar is ascended.

Wind is bumping along.

I don't see a huge amount of growth.

And I just, I don't think Wall Street is fully appreciating all that right now.

Yeah.

So what do you think Wall Street consistently underestimates?

So, I mean, what's the hardest part of building energy infrastructure at scale that,

Wall Street really underestimates?

Look, I mean, I wrote a whole book about the difficulty of building transmission.

Yeah.

And that was, I, you know, I keep being proved correct about that book time and time again.

You just can't build transmission in this country.

Yeah.

Too much an MBA, blah, blah.

But guess what?

That's not stopping anything.

Now all of a sudden, we have the entire new push is to build behind the meter.

Well, why are you building behind the meter?

You're building behind the meter so you don't have to do the transmission upgrades.

You don't have to wait for the transmission studies.

Yeah.

You don't have to wait for the interconnection cues, which have, you know,

ballooned out to six, seven, eight years.

Right.

You build behind the meter and you don't have to do any of that.

I didn't see any of that coming.

Yeah.

I didn't see any of that coming.

And, you know, and that was the result of some very smart people solving for the problem

of we cannot build as quickly as capital wanted to be deployed.

Yeah.

And so the answer was, oh, we'll just, we'll just net out behind the meter.

And that alleviates that.

So, you know, that's been, you know, that's been the big development in the last couple of years.

And then, you know, other people have talked about this.

This is not going to happen to any surprise to your listeners.

This giant scramble for whatever kind of megawatt or gigawatt you can get, right?

Let's restart nuclear.

Great.

Restart all the nuclear you can.

Let's buy a coal plant and bring it here.

Let's buy, let's disassemble it.

Let's take some Rolls-Royce engines designed to fly a supersonic jet

and strap them onto the ground and use them to create megawatts.

I mean, there have been some, you've got to be impressed with the capital idea

that's sort of flowing out there, like all these crazy ideas.

Right.

You know, but at the end of the day,

technology is going to win.

And the good technology out there as far as I can see is natural gas and solar and solar

paper storage.

I can curve.

Okay.

Do you...

Shouldn't we be disagreeing?

Is that make sense?

I can disagree with you on certain things.

I wonder if capital look investors also and Wall Street or otherwise are looking for

the best return, but the lowest risk best return.

And I'm wondering if capital has the patience for what we're seeing that this kind of

infrastructure requires.

No.

Absolutely not.

I mean, that was one of the lessons of the transmission built out.

Yeah.

If there was no capital patient enough to stick around for the transmission,

to stick around for a 10-year cycle.

Yeah.

You know, you'd be laughed out of the room if you go into any kind of infrastructure shop

and say, I got this great idea, billion dollar idea.

Every flow battery company I've ever seen.

You're just going to have to wait five to 10 years before I'll even know if it's a success or not.

Yeah.

There's just...

There's not that kind of patient capital out there.

So, you know, and that's, you know, you asked me before, what is Wall Street not understand?

Sometimes Wall Street falls in love with this new narrative, right?

It's a human instinct to kind of chase what's new and be excited about what's new.

Well, as it turns out, there's not a lot new under the sun.

Yeah.

And we kind of know what the technologies are that are winning right now.

You know, maybe Seoul is not the sexiest, it's not the newest thing.

It's not, you know, geothermal into 500 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that.

But guess what?

It's winning because it's really low cost good technology.

And it's been perfected and continues to be perfected.

And sometimes, sometimes that's what wins at the end of the day.

Well, let's talk about winning across your house.

I'm curious where the transition is accelerating most decisively.

And you all are servicing the industry from the perspective of an OEM.

You have 30,000 foot signal.

What conditions make it possible for certain areas to move more quickly?

All right. So I think you can break down pretty, pretty easily.

So we are for right now, mostly a U.S. market.

Yeah, we sell to U.S. markets.

So I want to, like, let's just talk about U.S.

Talk about U.S. East of the Mississippi.

There's not, there's solar pockets.

There's some opportunity for solar.

But it's not the best weather.

West of the Mississippi, you have enormous areas

which are phenomenal for solar.

300 plus days of clear blue skies.

So first of all, we're seeing a lot of development.

West of the Mississippi Plains area, which are very dry,

which tend to have large plots of land, large landowners.

And then, really, private land tends to be

advantaged.

You can develop in private land.

So if I were putting together money to go build solar,

I would look for private land, west of the Mississippi,

somewhat, if possible, close to transmission,

or a substation with capacity, you'd definitely need grid readiness.

If you hit all three of those, you're done.

And that's why Texas, Arizona, Nevada,

all are growing pretty quickly.

I'm actually surprised we haven't seen more growth in Colorado,

because I think that also fits the definition.

I think we're seeing a lot more growth,

not announced, but there's definitely growth in Colorado.

Michael Catellas differently.

I wonder though, we're seeing some movement

in the western part of the United States with California

and their neighbors saying, well, maybe we should operate as a region

and try to incentivize us in different ways

and different capital structures.

Is the next decade going to be one on a state-based

California versus New York versus Illinois versus Texas?

Or are we going to see more regions coordinated cross-border?

I think you'll see coordination once states realize that

having large, abundant power is a key to economic development.

And if you want to grow, if you want to attract jobs,

then you need abundant, reliable, low-cost energy.

And if they feel like it's best to combine up,

then you'll see that.

If not, I mean, Texas is, I'm sort of a Texas homeboy.

I've been there for 30 years now, not a Texas in my birth,

but obviously Texas goes its own way,

and that's worked well for it.

It's been able to speed up and eliminate a lot of bureaucracy,

create this business around the climate.

That's worked for them.

I think others will probably try to take what works from that

and copy it as best they can.

You've done a tremendous job over three decades of crafting a narrative

that really helps folks understand what's happening in the industry

from a capital allocation perspective,

but also the nuance of what pulls or what threads can be pulled

in what stalls or ignites the market.

How much does the narrative actually influence

capital allocation and energy,

and can companies intentionally shape that narrative

to accelerate deployment?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's the same more.

So I think that was really important.

Look, I used to tell this joke,

like everyone says, what's the oldest profession?

It's storytelling, right?

It's not what you think it's storytelling.

We tell stories,

and it's part of a human urge to that's how we take

all this information that's coming at us.

If you can give a narrative, if you can craft a story

to help you understand it,

that's when all of a sudden you get comfortable with it

and things start integrating.

So, I think the AI has done a great job of storytelling.

That's why there are billions of dollars.

Energy.

And also done a great job of job creation.

Not so sure I agree with that.

What job creation is AI generating right now?

Building data centers?

Billions of, I would say hundreds of billionaires.

Oh, yeah, that I guess.

So if we think that as an industry,

the tech oligarchs are going to be altruistic,

then I think that we are going to see

a more benevolent future for...

To protect future Russell, I have no comment on that.

But let's talk about technology for sure.

This is really important.

There's something we say at T1 Energy.

I think it's really a great insight.

It used to be that technology was the governor of energy.

In order to get more energy,

you needed better technology.

That's what the exploration of the Gulf of Mexico

was all about.

We needed that technological breakthrough

to be able to see use 3D seismic

to see where the oil and gas was.

So when you drill these massively expensive wells,

you had a higher hit rate.

Technology was the governor of energy.

That has flipped now.

Energy is now the governor of technology.

You can't have AI.

You can have AI growth.

You can't have technology without energy.

Without energy.

If you can get a few gigawatts,

you can get AGI, or you can get close to it.

It's a totally new phenomena that we're seeing right now.

And that's why these tech oligarchs,

you said, have been hiring some of the smartest people in energy,

building up energy teams,

trying to understand it.

And then ultimately coming up with some interesting solutions

like, let's go behind the meter.

Let's figure out, you know,

and I don't think we haven't even seen the beginning

of sort of how tech is solving for energy.

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I would argue that back to my original point,

I think the AI is going to do tremendous

amount for job creation.

And I think it is because-

I hope you're right.

Yeah, I think it is because it's going to enable more

more of a focus on either A,

the things that you can do with your hands.

And we'll need more of them as Dean and his company

to create often talk about.

Or B, it will liberate folks to do more jobs that they like.

And therefore we will have a renaissance of folks

actually doing work that they enjoy.

Or if Elon's right,

and we have AGI in 2026,

then we'll eventually all have salaries

that are coming to us like Alaskans, right?

Like Alaskans, yeah.

That's a topic that I would

I will touch on in a future interview with you

because I think that-

Alaska?

No, no, not Alaska.

Maybe Texas.

Yeah.

Why not if Texas is harvesting all of the sun falling on the soil,

can't they have a payment scheme that pays the neighbors

that are not benefiting from it

because the data center is taking it all?

Okay, well, so first of all, let's just look at Alaska.

Sure.

Much of the oil and gas development Alaska

was going on in state or federal land,

so the government was a prime beneficiary of it.

In Texas, so we're developing-

Right at land.

Private land, some ranchers got 10,000 acres

and says, you know what, these 1,000 acres

are really not good for my cattle.

Let me do a winter crop of solar,

you know, solar modules there.

So, you know, what you're basically asking is,

could the state legislature of Texas pass a bill

that taxes energy production?

That's right.

And it's a good question.

My initial reaction was, have you met

the state legislature of Texas?

But that said, we do have an excise tax.

You know, we do tax oil and gas production,

but once again, as a state with no income tax,

it seems like it needs a, this is an opportunity.

Well, I digress.

Okay, okay.

There's more important questions.

How do media cycles particularly distort

the necessary long duration stories of infrastructure?

The media often gets really enamored

with the next big thing.

Are you familiar with Beverage's Law?

Beverage's Law?

Beverage's Laws, named after a British editor.

Not a physics law.

Beverage's Law, basically, says,

if you write a headline that ends in a question,

such as, will this new hot company solve climate change?

The law states that the answer is no.

Yeah.

And once you know that law and you start looking at

all these kind of stories that are really kind of hypey.

Yeah.

And it's like, no.

Like, you know, the number, at least once a week,

I'll be reading an article.

We'll not name the different publications

because I have some last publications.

And we'll say, hey, has this new company,

is he going to be able to use AI to solve an unlock power

on the grid so we have more gigawatts?

No.

The answer is always no.

So, there can be a real disservice.

And I used to use, that's a Wall Street Journal,

against these kind of articles.

And I think we're really doing a disservice

by promoting something that's not ready for prime time.

Right.

And the media essentially, I said,

wait, so maybe I'm still part of the media.

But the media needs to a better job

of focusing on what's really working,

even if it's not new and flashy and exciting.

So, you've had an opportunity now

to, from the inside,

look at the various narratives and stories

that are or are not being told.

What story does clean energy in particular

still struggle to tell clearly?

Hmm, I think what the biggest story

that needs to be told is this reliability story.

Is the reliability story?

There's still too many people who are think,

well, solar can't be, wind can't be

because the wind stops blowing.

And it's like, guys, that's not how modern grids work.

Yeah.

You know, it's a portfolio approach

and grids are just getting so much better

and so much better at managing the portfolio.

So, I think that's part of the story.

Like, you know, we talk about solar being scalable,

low cost, and reliable.

Yeah.

And that's very intentional.

And it's sort of counter-intuitive.

People say, wait a second,

solar is not reliable.

The sun goes down.

It's like, you know, actually it is.

It really is reliable.

We know when the sun comes up every morning,

we know if there's going to be cloud cover.

It is a very valuable addition to two modern grids.

Yeah, I was talking with someone yesterday

who does a lot of YouTube videos around this topic

and he said that he had a fantastic comment

for someone else that was a nace here, right?

No, so there's an intermittent,

and there's a lot of sort of religious construct

around some of these arguments.

And he said, the commenter said,

for God so love the world

that he gave us a giant fusion reactor in the sky.

Well, I mean, that's Jesse Pelton's line, right?

He said, if we weren't supposed to be a civilization

that runs on solar and batteries,

why do we have a giant fusion reactor up in the sky?

And why does like 90% of the mantle

of the earth be made out of these materials

that we can very easily turn into batteries?

Like, wait a second, there's something going on here.

You know, when we could credit God

or we could credit human ingenuity

that took what was abundant around us

and is figuring out how to use it.

I wonder, as we look out over the next 16 to 18 months, 24, perhaps,

is there a strategic discipline

in particular around narrative messaging,

storytelling that developers and investors,

asset owners here at the show

or otherwise need to harness?

I would say, yeah, the narrative that we need to be telling

is that there is no reason why domestic solar

and domestic manufacturing of solar

cannot be competitive with anyone else anywhere in the world.

Okay, so that's, you know, people,

their immediate reaction would be like, wait a second.

I'm always here in China's cheaper.

I'm always here in China's cheaper with, you know,

what's going on here?

When you go into a module factory,

like the one we operate,

it is the same setup,

often the same production line equipment,

the same ABB robotic arms.

US has a bun and affordable electricity, et cetera.

There are a number of ways we compete.

We've got a great labor force.

Don't undersell us.

Where there is a difference is

that US manufacturers are still facing

just massive dumping of materials

and components into the US market to depress it.

There's an unfairness going on there.

If we eliminate that unfairness,

the US will be and can be not just

as good a manufacturer as anywhere else in the world,

but I'm not ready to stop there.

Like, wait a second.

We're not just going to be content

to build a panel as good as a Chinese panel

or a panel from Southeast Asia.

We're going to build a better panel.

I'm confident we're going to build a better panel

because that's what we tend to do in the United States.

You start throwing a competitive market

and you're trying to get ahead,

well, you're going to figure out a way

to build a better master out.

That's a narrative I would love to see

emerge and people talk about.

It's not, there's this sort of this defensiveness

and I don't even understand where it's coming from.

Domestic solar, US solar,

is going to be globally competitive within the next few years.

I said it, I'm Mark Mike.

It's globally competitive, exporting the product.

Why not?

Why not?

Why not?

Seven cents a watt solar panels in Australia,

coming out of China.

Uh huh, coming out of China.

And you don't think there's, you don't think there's market

that there's, you know, dumping going on

from China into Australia?

I don't, I, I would question that you

or any of your investors have the stomach to outlast them.

That's another discussion.

I have the stomach.

I hope my investors do as well because, you know,

I love to believe, I would love to believe you,

but I'm seeing 10 cents a watt, 11 cents a watt.

I remember, I remember in my lifetime this narrative,

I remember Alan Greenspan, the former federal,

the famous federal reserve chairman going before Congress

and saying, we need to be massive importers of natural gas.

Yeah.

We need to build as many LNG import terminals as we can.

That was about 2005, 20 years later,

the United States is setting records for the largest export.

So why, you know, so then you say to me,

well, we can't be, well, I mean, in 2005,

it was not yet the shale revolution, right?

And so what you're suggesting is that we're going to have

a technology revolution that allows us to effectively leapfrog.

I would not bet against that.

I would not bet against that because my point is,

I can point to within the last 20 years,

R&D capital deployment, capital allocation response

to a market problem that was incredibly successful.

Yeah.

So you're going to tell me that we can't do the same in solar?

No, I'm not.

So you've lived through and covered some of the biggest

inflection points, fracking, deep water horizon,

PG&E's, the laps and restructuring.

Now you're helping build what is the next chapter

of our energy future.

Are there some hard lessons one from those cycles

that today's clean energy leaders would be well served

to remember?

Technology wins at the end of the day, technology wins.

We are a technology industry and technology will win.

If you build a better way to get natural gas molecules

out of the ground, that will change everything.

If you build a better way to harness the sun's rays

to generate electricity and then distribute it,

that also will.

I mean, I'm so incredibly bullish on distributed power,

distributed solar, the use of millions of batteries

all across the country, commercial solar.

I just, that is a, there have been changes in technology

and lower cost of technology in all fairness,

but that's manufacturing.

That's what's going to win at the end of the day.

Forget policy, forget anything else,

technology will to me wins.

Prices, you can't fight low prices

and you can't fight gravity.

Well, I for one have been waiting a long time

to see the facility that T1 is bringing online.

When can we have a visit to Texas?

So you're talking about G2?

Sure.

G2 Austin, so we started building it.

This is a, it's going to be a two point.

It's also going to be a 5.3 gigawatt.

So we're self-ab top-con.

The first phase, two point one is under construction.

We started in December.

We plan to have the first top-con cells coming off the lines

by the end of this year.

So, you know, if you're not getting in the way

of those finishing touches, we can have you in December.

If not, we'll come on out in January, February.

Fantastic.

Look, Texas is a great place to be in January, February.

No doubt, no doubt whatsoever.

Russell Gold is an acclaimed author, writer, journalist,

and now energy communicator

as executive vice president of strategic comms

at T1 Energy.

Thank you for joining us.

Thanks a lot.

Appreciate it.

G2 Austin, the warrior.