Aired Jun 2, 2026 · 42 min

Listen on: YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

California has long been the proving ground for America’s energy transition, and it’s also where the politics, culture, and storytelling around that transition are being tested in real time. Messaging comes from all corners of the public landscape, including movies, sports, and video games, in addition to the institutions like utilities. Where is there potential to do more with that storytelling?

In this episode, host Kinsey Grant Baker sits down with Sammy Roth, former climate columnist at the Los Angeles Times and voice behind the Climate-Colored Goggles substack, to explore how renewable industries are selling their story in a fraught political moment, why affordability and reliability are increasingly central to the climate conversation, and how rising demand is reshaping the debate around clean energy. Sammy argues that the energy transition is not just about economics, technology, and regulation, it’s also about culture.

The conversation digs into how utilities, policymakers, and clean energy advocates talk about tradeoffs, where messaging often falls short, and what successful storytelling looks like when the public is skeptical. From climate framing to the role of movies, sports, and media, the episode examines why clean energy progress may depend as much on narrative as on infrastructure. The discussion also looks at California as a case study for broader national politics. With energy and climate increasingly shaping elections and policy debates, Sammy shares what the state’s governor’s race reveals about voter priorities, how data centers are changing the conversation, and what lessons utilities and candidates should take into 2026.

Register for Energy Central’s live happy hour in DC on June 23: https://luma.com/hw57eoea

Climate-Colored Goggles: https://www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/

The obvious choice for California governor: https://www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/california-governor-climate

Vattenfall commercial with Samuel L. Jackson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uEpdIKzspA

Sammy Roth: If you want to make progress on the clean energy transition, you need politicians who champion this stuff, right? Voters and stakeholders of all kinds who push for policies and push for progress.

Kinsey Grant Baker: We're having this conversation at a time when people are starting to care in the mainstream a lot more about energy than they have previously.

Sammy Roth: Information ecosystems have broken down is that it's so hard to know if like reality and the events that are happening around us will then translate into people getting good information, understanding what's actually happening.

Kinsey Grant Baker: The story around affordability. We know that the cheapest new generation to add to the grid is wind solar batteries.

Sammy Roth: Folks need to take marketing and advertising much more seriously. If you're in the business of electrification, which the utility business is in, capture the imagination of the public.

Kinsey Grant Baker: You've got to talk the talk if you want people to know you can walk the walk. But do utilities working to build a clean, reliable power grid of the future recognize that? Let's get to the bottom of it. I'm Kinsey Grant Baker, and this is Power Perspectives. Welcome back. So I'm not really envious of the position the renewable energy industry is in right now. It has to market itself in a, let's call it fraught, political moment, one marked by a White House so combative it'll spend some $1 billion to stop a single offshore wind project from happening.

Plus, affordability is one of the biggest concerns this energy industry has ever contended with. And sometimes renewables don't always come out on top in the affordability versus climate debate. Add that to demand growth's impact on policy and the role culture plays in determining our power mix of the future, and things are complicated for renewables and utility leaders who want to implement them. So how is progress still happening? And what role does perception play in furthering the clean part of the clean, reliable, affordable energy future that we want to build?

That's what we're unpacking today with Sammy Roth, former climate columnist for the Los Angeles Times, author of Climate-Colored Goggles, a newsletter about climate and culture. Sammy, welcome to Power Perspectives. How are you today?

Sammy Roth: I'm good, Kinsey. Thanks for having me on.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Of course, I'm thrilled. And by the way, isn't it another nearly billion dollars to cancel two more wind farms now?

Sammy Roth: It sure is. Sure is.

Kinsey Grant Baker: It's so funny. I write these introductions a couple days before we have these conversations, and you just never know what's going to come up.

Sammy Roth: I know. By the time this comes out, who knows if there's going to be more. I mean, And Angie was talking about another one.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, Angie. Anyway. Yeah, it's just that kind of industry right now. So I think it's a good point to start with here that we have a lot of moving parts. We've got a lot to unpack in this conversation. And we're going to get into how storytelling kind of factors into all of this as we're looking ahead to what that future of renewables and clean energy might look like. Before we get into that, though, Sammy, I am so excited to have you on the show. You're somebody the team has really admired for quite some time. I would love if you don't mind just kind of walking the audience through some of your experience and energy and climate reporting.

You've been in this game for several years now. What was sort of your origin story and how did that get you to where you are today writing Climate-Colored Goggles?

Sammy Roth: Sure, happy to. I mean, I had a very traditional print journalism background. I mean, I did high school newspaper, college newspaper, studied sustainable development in college, which is how I got into climate and environment type stuff. My first job was at a newspaper in Palm Springs, California, in the desert called The Desert Sun. I was the energy reporter there. I was from LA, so that was not too far away. And I kind of got in on the ground floor of the large-scale solar boom, the first utility-scale solar projects on public lands at a really big scale were getting built not too far from Palm Springs with Obama-era stimulus funds.

Right when I started there in 2014, the first big ones were opening, so I was on the ground floor of that. And the wind industry was really born in the U.S. in the Palm Springs area. So, you know, that was convenient. And also one of the best geothermal hotspots in the world is not too far from Palm Springs as well down in the Salton Sea area. So that's why there was an energy beat at that paper to begin with at a local paper. So that was, you know, ideal conditions for me to, you know, to sort of be a renewable energy reporter and to get into larger climate reporting from that and public land and water issues.

So I was at the Desert Sun for four years. Then I got the energy reporter job at the LA Times, and I was at the LA Times for seven years and transitioned from sort of straight energy reporting to the LA Times climate columnist, which is a role they created for me. I did that the last couple of years there. And that was just something that kind of developed naturally. I had been writing newsletters for a long time. I kind of got in early on the email newsletter game. And so I was sort of naturally using first person voice and doing more analysis and adding kind of color commentary.

And so becoming a columnist just kind of was a natural progression from that. And so, yeah, after 11 years of doing energy and climate reporting and analysis and commentary, decided to branch out on my own, started Climate-Colored Goggles, which you can sign up for at climatecoloredgoggles.com. We've got to get the pitch in. That was last October. I started that. So continuing to do some of the traditional energy and climate policy and politics reporting, But mixing that with climate and culture is sort of my main focus now. So sort of trying to delve beneath policy and politics and get at how do people form the ideas they do about this stuff?

How is climate and clean energy, how is it portrayed in films and television and in music and in video games? And how does it affect sports and how does the media portray these issues? What are the cultural forces and institutions that affect how people think about this stuff? And then how does that ultimately, you know, sort of trickle into policy and politics? So trying to go sort of one level beneath and affect, you know, affect longer term change through those venues. But, you know, still following state houses and still, you know, following utilities and all that because it's all connected.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, it certainly is all connected. And I think that is something that we have hit on a lot in this show and in recent episodes is this idea that the decisions of, you know, one agency, one regulator, one state house, They have a lot of effects that kind of have tentacles throughout this entire industry when we're looking at renewables and how those renewables scale. I think there's an interesting conversation to be had here, which is why we wanted to have you on the show so much, is that there is more than just policy. We can dig deeper. we can understand some of the motivations and the impetus behind a lot of these moves that have long-ranging impacts on renewables and on the energy industry more broadly, which is a great way to start talking about this role of storytelling that you bring up here.

Economics, technology, all important things, physics, when we're thinking about how we power the future, what that power mix looks like. But you have put it as follows. If we want climate progress in energy, transportation, and agriculture. We also need progress in pop culture, media, and sports. As those last three, pop culture, media, and sports, might pertain to energy, tell me a little bit about that connection, how those two might kind of feed into one another when we're looking at this climate progress and with regard to energy specifically, renewables progress.

What's the overlap?

Sammy Roth: If you want to make progress on the clean energy transition, you ultimately, I mean, you need politicians who champion this stuff, right? But you ultimately need voters and stakeholders of all kinds who care about this and are willing to push for policies and push for progress. And right now, if you just look at polling in general, I mean, I'm a climate focused person. I know this is an energy podcast, but I think about energy through the lens of climate. And when you look at polling, what you see is most people care about climate. I mean, maybe not a majority of Republicans, but a strong two-thirds-ish majority of Americans as a whole will say, oh, yeah, I care about climate.

I want more action on this. I'm worried about this. And then you look at, you know, what issues are most important to people, climate ranks really, really low relative to like almost every other issues that voters poll on. And so why is that? It's because the, you know, the leaders and the cultural institutions that people are taking their cues on are just not focused on climate. It's not something that people hear about when they, you know, when they watch the news, when they're scrolling social media, when they're flipping through Instagram and TikTok.

It's not something they're hearing about from athletes. Sports is probably the most profoundly influential cultural institution in America. You know, just the people and the institutions that people are taking their cues from are not climate focused right now. I mean, that's true of politics as well. It's not something that politicians are super focused on. So that's, you know, that's why I'm trying to, you know, to get at it through this sort of cultural climate overlap thing. You know, just to give a few examples of that, you know, sports right now is being profoundly affected by climate change.

You know, we've got the 2028 Olympics that are coming up. And we just had the 2026 Olympics in Italy, and it's getting harder and harder to host Winter Olympics. Places with cold enough weather to provide enough snow, that was a serious problem they were having in Italy. They had to generate a lot of artificial snow, which is less safe for athletes. I mean, it's just getting harder to play ice hockey outdoors in a lot of places. There's a lot of fears with 2034 in Salt Lake City that they're just not going to have the conditions to even host those Olympics in the way that we're used to.

We've got the 2026 World Cup coming up, you know, all across North America. And for the first time, FIFA is mandating heat breaks, which is just not a thing they've done in soccer before because there's worries about players getting hurt. Meanwhile, you've got baseball teams, football teams, basketball teams, soccer all over the country and all over the world that have oil industry sponsors, including FIFA, by the way. Saudi Aramco is one of the major sponsors of FIFA. You know, while they're doing these mandatory, you know, climate exacerbated heat breaks that they've got to take.

Do you have athletes that are talking about this in Europe? Yes. In the United States, not so much. So that's an interesting story to me. And, you know, entertainment, one that was on my mind just last night. I just started the, this is an energy one that maybe is more relevant to this podcast. I just started the new season of Hacks. I don't know if you watch Hacks or anyone else. I'm a huge fan. Great show. Just watched the season five premiere. I'm a couple episodes behind. There's a scene taking place in the desert in California on their drive back from Vegas to LA.

And there were a bunch of shots of Ivanpah in the background. I don't know if you know Ivanpah, that big solar power tower project, you know, with the big glaring towers that looks nothing like, you know, most solar PV. Ivanpah has been like a hobby horse of mine for a long time from a solar storytelling perspective, because a lot of people really hate Ivanpah because it's way more expensive than other solar projects. It's had all these problems with birds getting fried as they fly between the mirrors and the tops of the towers. It hasn't worked the technology as well as expected.

A bunch of money was expended. Government funds were expended to build this thing in the late 2010s. And then the technology didn't take off and solar PV became the thing. And meanwhile, Ivanpah has become this like visual motif that still gets used everywhere for, you know, here's what solar looks like because it's so visually striking. Even I've been to like, you know, office buildings of utilities where they still have pictures of Ivanpah. And I'm like, what is this doing here? Like, this is not what, you know, even the utility, you know, the solar that you're procuring doesn't look like this.

Why do you still have pictures of Ivanpah on your walls? and news editors will just put Ivanpah pictures on stories about solar that, you know, even the stories are all about PV because they don't know the difference. Anyway, so I just like, man, like get some, you know, like good landscape art for your, you know, for hacks of like, you know, just regular PV solar, because that's 90%, 99% of what's blanketing the desert these days. And if people want to be offended by regular solar, have an argument about that, that's fine. But like, please, like stop trying to tell people that, you know, Ivanpah is what solar looks like, like that's not what solar looks like.

So anyway, that's the kind of stuff that like animates me and just makes me think about what is the story we're telling folks about the energy transition. I don't know if that answered your question or not, but it was just on my mind because I was just watching this last night.

Kinsey Grant Baker: It totally does answer my question. I think it really digs to the root of what this is all about, which is messaging, whether obvious, whether not obvious, whether subliminal or not.

Sammy Roth: Whether it's shots of a solar plant in the background of a TV show or oil advertising at a baseball stadium or, you know, the fact that newspapers are just telling fewer and fewer climate stories. I mean, there are ways to approach this besides, you know, in addition to advocating for good policies or, you know, trying to get costs down on the grid and showing that clean energy is cheaper. I mean, that's all important. But if people are still, you know, like hearing from, you know, bad faith sources that like, you know, Solyndra was a debacle and therefore government shouldn't, you know, pick winners and losers in the energy market and, you know, believing that, you know, there just need to be better stories that, you know, are showing up in cultural spaces where people are not like immediately tuning it out and saying, oh, that's just, that's just politics.

That's just, you know, a Democrat, or that's just, you know, a solar, you know, executive trying to sell me something like, you know, you need to get into these more politically neutral cultural spaces and be able to tell stories there. You need to win at advertising. You need to win, you know, in Hollywood, you need to win with sports, you need to win with video games. You know, otherwise you're going to keep losing to oil and gas in the long run.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is really the crux of this conversation is this idea of the sort of domino effect from, let's say, your favorite baseball player playing for a team that's not sponsored by an O&G giant, but instead someone else. It's not necessarily that that is going to directly influence the decisions that are made in a utility boardroom, but it will influence the way that people think about the world around them, the way that people kind of understand renewables or even oil and gas itself. And I think that really is the core of this, is this idea of what people care about, how we can understand what people care about, how that changes the what of what they care about, I think is really interesting too.

And I think this is all happening. We're having this conversation at a time when people are starting to care in the mainstream a lot more about energy than they have previously. And a lot of this is obviously driven by inflation and the increase in prices for energy for most everyday people. But I think a lot of it is also driven by data centers and the idea that people don't want to look out their kitchen window and see a giant rectangle of cement in their neighborhood. That has pushed these energy conversations a lot more into the mainstream, regardless of where you are in the United States.

I'm curious if that has any impact on this broader conversation about caring about renewables or understanding where your energy comes from. I think that there might be some overlap here, but I'm curious what you think, if there is any.

Sammy Roth: I think the answer is yes. For sure, the affordability conversation and electric prices getting so high everywhere, gas prices because of what's going on in Iran, for sure. That's fueling a greater desire to understand and seeking information. Data centers, absolutely. I wish more people had gone to see, did you see Eddington, the movie?

Kinsey Grant Baker: I did not, no.

Sammy Roth: Eddington was great. It was very similar to One Battle After Another, for those who hadn't seen it, and kind of tone and theme, but weirdly like darker and creepier even than One Battle After Another. But it was about, tangentially about a data center development in a small town in New Mexico, and kind of the ripple effects of how that affected the politics of the small town. And there were some references to, you know, renewable energy powering the data center and not so positive, honestly, but it was understandable why people felt the way they did.

I think there's going to be more stories like that. But yeah, so the answer to your question is, I think people would want to want to understand more, you know, how that how that is then, if and how that is then going to translate into like people understanding that, you know, solar and wind are, you know, cheaper, and that with batteries, they, you know, are, you know, can be reliable. Iran is the volatility of, you know, relying on oil and gas. You know, it's one of the difficult things with the media environment we live in and with the sort of way that information ecosystems is broken down is that it's so hard to, it's so hard to know if like reality and the events that are happening around us will then translate into people getting good information and like understanding what's actually happening.

Like if this were all 50 years ago and most people were getting information from a couple in like a local newspaper and a national newspaper and like a broadcast network and maybe one cable network, that would be one thing. Then you'd say, okay, like the sort of obvious outcome of all of this is we probably develop a national energy policy that shifts us away from fossil and towards renewable for energy security and affordability reasons because people are going to understand that that makes sense and they're going to demand that from policymakers.

In reality, it's not really so simple because of the incentives that are governing our politicians and the fact that most people are just not getting good information and are getting fed bad information. And there's a million reasons for that, which probably we don't need to get into because the people listening to this understand what they are. The data center one is interesting, though, because that seems to be a little bit cross-partisan, where there's just you know, anger and frustration with these kind of scary industrial forces coming into our communities, and people just don't like it almost no matter what.

And it's also interesting because they're also, you know, at the same time seems to be, there are some politicians who are skeptical, who are skeptical of data centers, but a lot of politicians of both parties who want to accommodate them no matter what. So I, that could scramble the equation a little bit. I mean, it's been interesting to see, you know, even some Democrats who are trying to figure out, okay, like, can we use these as grid assets? Can we get them to help, you know, solve some of our affordability problems? I don't know how that's going to work out.

I think it'll be interesting, you know, in, I mean, California is not like a data center, you know, a data center, you know, it's not like a gold rush here, like it is in, you know, Arizona or Virginia or some other places. But there's some interesting stuff happening in the legislature to try to figure out, like, cost containment structures and way to funnel revenues back into lowering the electric rate base or whatever. The thing that I am most interested in from a climate perspective, which I have not seen getting a lot of discussion, is just like if the tech people ultimately are going to try to get a lot of zero carbon energy infrastructure built to power these things, which we'll see, but it seems like they're going to have to because there's such a big gas turbine backlog.

But if they do, is that just going to displace a lot of the renewables and grid infrastructure that would otherwise go towards displacing fossil? And if so, is that going to make it a lot harder to meet climate goals? And on the face of it, I think the answer is yes. I don't see how the answer would not be yes to that, because there's just a limited supply of infrastructure and capital to go towards building renewables and building lines and substations. So I'm pretty freaked out about that. I'm straying away from answering your question right now, but that's something that's on my mind.

Kinsey Grant Baker: No, I think it's relevant for this conversation. This idea that the stories that are told, the narratives that emerge and that find their way to the top and that really seem to resonate with people the most, those have a lot of impacts on the ways that the economics of energy work as well. I think there's also something interesting here that I'd love to kind of dig into your perspective on too that you mentioned that I think is very related here, this idea of the story around affordability, that one seems to be one that resonates with average everyday rate payers a little bit more than supply chain, the gas turbines that are backed up for a decade.

When we're talking about the story around affordability, we know that the cheapest new generation to add to the grid is wind solar batteries. How do utility execs, or perhaps what would be some of your advice, given that you have experience in kind of understanding what storytelling works and what doesn't, What would you say to utility decision makers or leaders who might kind of be wondering how to tell that story around affordability when so often affordable energy and renewable energy are kind of put at odds with one another in the national conversation around, you know, what a clean energy future looks like?

Tell me a little bit more about about what that storytelling could be for utility pros.

Sammy Roth: Yeah, I mean, I think the so it's not like I haven't exactly talked to like, you know, than a comprehensive survey of utility executives. So I don't want to generalize so much that I think I know everything here. But in based on the folks that I've talked with and what I've seen from the utility industry, I think that, you know, right now folks are trying really hard to like avoid. I mean, this is true across corporate America. Like folks are trying really hard to avoid stepping on too many tripwires with Trump and with all of Trump's people. Like, you know, what you just said is true.

Like, they all know that solar and wind and batteries are cheaper. Like, to the extent that there's still investment in, you know, the gas fleet, it's, you know, really geared towards, you know, reliability of, you know, like hardcore reliability scenarios. I mean, in California, it's really geared towards, like, maintaining the existing gas fleet as, like, a backup. You know, it's not a lot of new—there's no new investment. in gas in California. And I know there's some new gas getting built elsewhere in the country that honestly seems more political than anything.

Like I sometimes wonder the utilities like, you know, utilities and some of the independent power producers like proposing this stuff now in hopes that by the time they actually have to sign the contracts for the turbines, like someone new will be in office and they can just, you know, slough it off and go to, you know, go do renewables instead. Like it's speculation. But I think there's a lot of, you know, trying really hard to navigate the political atmosphere. And who knows, maybe some of the regulated utilities are just thinking they can rate base it anyway.

So who cares what the cost is? Like, I mean, some states are really bad where they, you know, the PUCs will let them do anything. So I don't know what the dynamic looks like everywhere. But to actually try to answer your question, I mean, I think the answer is that folks need to take marketing and advertising much more seriously. I mean, I've had conversations with utility executives about this, you know, just about PR problems in general where I've asked questions like, you know, what are you doing to manage this, you know, crisis? What are you doing to manage that crisis?

And like the answer is freaking, oh, well, we're, you know, we're going to, you know, work really hard to show people, you know, how we're working to make this cheaper. And we're going to work really hard to, you know, show how we're, you know, getting better at managing this problem. And it's like, yes, that's all good. Like you should be doing that. Like facts matter and doing a better job matters. But also it's like people really don't like utilities. And I get it. I've written plenty of negative stories about utilities. It's like, I really wish you guys would stop fighting rooftop solar when it's so popular and when it's necessary from a climate standpoint and from an energy transition standpoint.

Like, I get it. It's not good for your business model, but you're not doing yourselves any favors here in the short or the long term. But, you know, you have a real image problem. You're important for electrification. You're needed partners from a climate perspective. It's like, I think about this with liberal and progressive and climate policies all the time. Like, look at what the oil and gas industry has done. It's like, it's been known for decades now, and they knew for decades longer that they were selling a, you know, destructive product that was going to need to be phased out.

And they've lasted this long, and they've captured the American political system by, I mean, one, by investing in politicians, but two, and just as importantly, if not more so, by capturing the imagination of the public. I mean, if you're in the business of electrification, which the utility business is in, capture the imagination of the public. Like, I don't know, I've never seen an ad for an electric utility on a streaming service, as far as I can remember. Like, I mean, I think I've seen some, I live in Sacramento now, and I, you know, which is a state capital.

So I see ads for electric utilities at the airport when I, you know, fly in and out of Sacramento, because they're trying to get the legislators, you know, why, why are they not trying to get members of the public? It's not like this is an industry with no money. I don't think it's that complicated. I mean, you've got to get good creative minds behind this. You've got to be willing to invest some serious money with the understanding that it won't show up on quarterly earnings reports. But my God, I mean, Exxon and Chevron and Shell and BP and whoever are not thinking about the next quarter's earning when they're plugging billions of dollars every year into marketing and advertising.

And they're succeeding. One story I wrote recently was Veloz is doing some really interesting stuff. I don't know if you know Veloz, but they, you know, they're a consortium of groups that, you know, they've got auto company funding and some state agencies promoting vehicle electrification. And they did a really fun thing. They did a sketch with them late night with Seth Meyers, where they got him and one of his writers to do this sketch on the program where, you know, was basically an ad for an EV except you know it was written by a comedy writer so it was you know it was funny and unique and it went on for about five minutes on the program I think it might have aired in the after after midnight half hour there's Seth Meyers starts at 12:35 you see I don't I don't actually have um you know cables I don't remember but I watched it online which is how most people watch late night um you know and it was a you know it was a paid partnership that they have with um with Comcast and but you know Seth Meyers seemed excited about it his writer John Lutz seemed excited about it.

I think that's the kind of, you know, approach that, you know, would be really good at a mass scale. But it just, you know, it doesn't really seem like folks in the utility space and the renewable energy space are thinking like that at a, you know, at a really big picture level, at least so far as I've been able to discover. They seem a lot more focused on, you know, how do I survive the next, you know, couple months of Trump disaster? And, you know, maybe I can beg the administration to be nicer to me for a few minutes.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, yeah. And I mean to to their credit too like I will be a utility apologist for an audience of utility pros I think it is a lot to balance right they are are regulated in pretty funky ways they're different across the board and in terms of what that business model even looks like and I would love to see a utility you know sponsor of a baseball team right I think the idea of getting to that point though seems like something that will take some time will take quite some time There's not a lot of cash hanging around the way that there is for, you know, a publicly traded oil and gas company.

Sammy Roth: So, you know, obviously it would need to be shareholder shareholder funds, of course, like nobody's going to let them do this with, you know, with ratepayer money.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, exactly. And your point is well taken.

Sammy Roth: I'm being I'm being harsh because I care.

Kinsey Grant Baker: No, I agree. And I appreciate it. I think it's it's a good it's a good conversation to be in. But, you know, I think this is one of those things where in the utility industry, it feels like every dollar that is spent is really interrogated in a way that it might not be in other sectors of our economy. You know, if you're an Apple shareholder, you expect that Apple is going to spend X number of dollars on R&D per year. And you don't really care to know too much about that, right? But if you are a utility ratepayer, it's a totally different ballgame, right?

If you see a data center going up, you wonder what impact that's going to have on your bill. If you see, you know, your power mix changing, you wonder what kind of impact that's going to have on your bill. So I think there's certainly a difficulty in the storytelling there just because people seem to, you know, just be a little bit more invested in it because they are getting that bill at the end of every month or the beginning of every month. So, yeah, I mean, I guess I bring it up to say there is so much opportunity here to kind of rejigger what storytelling looks like.

I think there's also a lot of opportunity, too, from some of the more innovator types of this industry, the more startup ecosystem side of the electric utility industry. You know, when we're talking about some of these really cool, innovative startups that are going to partner with utilities in the future with really cool and interesting tech, those kinds of companies that have, you know, VC backing and probably a little bit more cash on hand to spend. And I think there's a really cool way that those kind of companies could determine what that future of renewable storytelling looks like.

I can't remember it off the top of my head, but there was an ad for, I think, like a wind, offshore wind, I think in Europe somewhere. They did it with Samuel L. Jackson.

Sammy Roth: Oh, yeah. He was talking about the kelp chips.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Oh, that was so great. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Sammy Roth: Yeah, I wrote about this a little bit. And I, God, I wish I could remember what the company was. But yeah, that was fantastic. Motherfucking wind farms. That's what he said. Am I allowed to curse on here? I'm sorry.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Oh, yeah. If you're quoting Samuel L. Jackson, of course, of course.

Sammy Roth: Yeah. Oh, that was so good.

Kinsey Grant Baker: It was.

Sammy Roth: Yeah, I'm looking at Vattenfall. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong. But yeah.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah. We'll we'll put the link in the description for anybody who wants to check it out. But I think things like that, you know, these these culturally relevant kinds of conversation starter pieces of marketing really feels like where there is a lot of opportunity. and perhaps there is some element of responsibility or opportunity for those kinds of companies that do have a marketing budget that looks a little different than the marketing budget of, say, a regulated utility in the US.

Sammy Roth: I mean, I'm just saying, if they're willing to spend shareholder money, if there's some visionary CEO out there who can convince the shareholders it's a good idea, like the regulators can't do anything about that.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, yeah. I think it'd be really cool to see. I would love it. I would love it. And I'm sure too, for the utility pros who are listening to this, you know, if you have perspective on kind of what those conversations look like in a marketing department, in a boardroom, I personally am very curious to hear about it. You know, we have talked a lot on this show about the importance of storytelling for utilities and the challenge of storytelling. But for all that, I have to admit, I don't really know what it actually looks like when you're trying to kind of sit down and put pen to paper on what are we going to say?

How are we going to say it? I'm not totally sure. I imagine it's complicated.

Sammy Roth: You know what one of my favorite examples is? I'm just going to go way back here. So I'm a big Disney fan. I'm a big Disney Parks fan. I grew up with Disneyland. There was an attraction that premiered at the New York World's Fair in 1964 called the Carousel of Progress that was then migrated. Have you heard of this?

Kinsey Grant Baker: No.

Sammy Roth: Migrated to Disney World. It's still there at the Magic Kingdom. It was originally sponsored by General Electric. It's basically just a giant ad for home electrification, you know, way ahead of its time. And GE is no longer the sponsor, but it's this like carousel that you sit in that rotates that takes you like through time, through like the American home from like, I think sometime in the late 1800s, it's been a while since I've done it, through them into the future and shows you how like home life has been improved by the growing prevalence of like high-tech electric appliances.

And it hasn't been updated in, you know, forever. I, maybe they updated it 10 years ago, but it wasn't with an electric sponsor. So the appliances aren't like up to date, but, you know, it's this cool way to think about, okay, like if you did something like that today and, you know, with, you know, with heat pumps and with, you know, with a cool induction stove and, you know, it's an innovative style of storytelling partnering with Disney to show people like, hey, here's how your life could be made better by, you know, getting gas out of your home and putting electric in.

I mean, you know, I was always very impressed by that. And GE was thinking like that in the 1960s. And, you know, I doubt that was something that, you know, started showing up in significant ways on their quarterly earnings reports. But man, GE has done pretty well for itself.

Kinsey Grant Baker: I've certainly heard of it. Yeah. I think it's an interesting point, too. And I think, you know, the real takeaway that I'm having from this conversation in sort of the general sense about what storytelling can look like for renewables to accomplish that clean grid of the future. I think there is just so much white space in front of a lot of these utilities to get creative with what it looks like to tell your story. And there also is, I think, some interesting responsibility and sort of like the other side of this equation for policymakers, lawmakers, elected officials as well to kind of understand the story that they want to tell too.

I want to use that as a bit of a segue to talk about the work that you have done in covering California specifically. I understand you have covered the governor's race in the state quite a lot. I think in a lot of ways, California kind of serves as for the energy industry. It's one of those big ones. It's a bit of a test tube for a lot of energy trends across the country.

Sammy Roth: Very large test tube.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, very large. But Texas, California, Virginia, when we're talking about some of the big players here, from your experience covering what's happening in California, how policymakers are are talking about renewables and admittedly in a renewables friendly state. I would love to hear a little bit more about maybe some of the storytelling that has worked, some that has been interesting. You know, what would have been some of your learnings there?

Sammy Roth: Well, I mean, I guess the first thing I would say is that affordability is still the name of the game in California, just like anywhere else. I mean, you know, all of the all of the candidates, the leading candidates for governor in California want to, you know, want people to believe they're the ones who are going to make electricity and gas cheaper. Electricity in particular. I mean, gas has been expensive in California forever, so that's not new. But yeah, electric rates are a big thing here. The candidates are differentiating themselves in interesting ways.

I mean, Tom Steyer has kind of really leaned into the climate lane and the sort of harder core utility regulation lane, which is not super surprising. I mean, climate has been his thing forever. He's the billionaire former hedge fund manager who's been basically sort of a public climate advocate slash activist using his vast wealth for the last 15 years or so. So he's been talking about, you know, he keeps using the phrase bust up the utilities, by which he seems to mean force them to allow a lot more, support a lot more rooftop solar and distributed energy resources on the grid, probably rehaul or revamp the Public Utilities Commission, its membership.

He claims to want to reduce electric rates or bills by 25%. It's a nice number. Remains to be seen if that's something that he could actually accomplish or not. But he's been going pretty hardcore at that. Xavier Becerra, one of the other leading Democrats, I think he would probably be fairly similar to Gavin Newsom in how he approaches energy and utilities. He was the attorney general of the state of California for a while, including during Trump's first term, and he's touted all the lawsuits he filed defending California's climate policies the first time around.

So I think he would definitely defend a lot of the climate and clean energy progress California has made thus far. Unclear to me if he would do anything that much differently than Newsom has done, for better or for worse. If you like Newsom's approach, I think that you would probably like Becerra's approach. I asked him about rooftop solar, for instance, during a gubernatorial forum a few months ago, and his answer was basically, well, it's important, but we should be careful not to subsidize it so much that it drives people's rates up. So he seems to be more of the opinion that it's really a cost driver, which people have different feelings about.

There's a debate right now about whether it's a good thing or not or acceptable or not to take oil industry money. He's the only leading Democrat who's taken oil industry money at this point. He took a big Chevron donation recently. And so is Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, has also been taking oil money, but he's very low in the polls and doesn't seem to have a chance right now. Katie Porter is also very interesting. She's been, I think, a bit behind Steyer and Becerra in the polls, but is right there within the margin of error.

I think she would be, she's taken somewhat similar stances to Steyer, but with a little more moderation or nuance. She also talked during that forum I moderated about losing faith in the Public Utilities Commission and wanting to, I think she alluded to wanting to replace some of its members, which was interesting. She's talked about wanting to invest in more renewable energy development and speed up large-scale solar and wind. She also seems more favorable towards rooftop solar than Becerra. She has concern over gas prices and I think was a little bit more concerned about how the cap-and-invest program, formerly cap-and-trade, is affecting gas prices in California.

So I think that's the best I can do in terms of a summary right now. The thing is that there's definitely going to be one Republican who emerges from the pack, which is going to be Steve Hilton, who President Trump endorsed, who doesn't care about any of this stuff and doesn't think that climate change is a problem. And it's kind of a question right now of which of the Democrats, if any, can make second place in the primary in June 2nd and make it to the runoff with Steve Hilton. And there is still a chance that a second Republican, Chad Bianco, could best all of the Democrats and end up with two Republicans making the runoff, which would lead to a very different direction for energy policy in California.

Kinsey Grant Baker: You know, it certainly seems like a very, very interesting race. And that final outcome that you suggested could potentially be a possibility would be a total wildcard. You know, when we're talking about California, I think there are certain assumptions made for the energy industry. what California is like, what energy policy is like there, what renewables policy is like there. And it could be interesting to see some of that potentially get flipped, right?

Sammy Roth: No, definitely. If a Republican won, I mean, it would be seismic for a lot of reasons, including energy and climate. You know, assuming a Democrat gets through, who would then no doubt win in November. For utilities, I think Steyer and Porter would both represent a pretty sharp break with the status quo, you know, as relatively speaking, as things go in California, they both Newsom has had a pretty cozy relationship, I would say, with the utility industry and with, you know, organized labor, you know, IBEW, you know, from the utility side of things.

Again, for better or worse, and Steyer and Porter seem like they might have, if not a more adversarial stance, then certainly be more willing to buck the utility industry on their priorities. So that's something to look for. I think Becerra would take some more chances to do some more likely. I mean, you never know. It's like people sometimes govern differently than they campaign. But that's my read thus far. And I'm planning to write more about the race next week. So we'll see by the time this airs if that's come out yet.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah, I'm eager to read it. Well, we'll definitely include it in the description of the episode as well. Sammy, we have covered so much today. All of this has been really, really insightful and interesting. And I think certainly serves as some inspiration, I'm sure, for a lot of our utility listeners as to what the kind of next phase of storytelling and marketing and communications can look like for them. So now it is time to get into our lightning round really quickly to close things out. So we are going to have a quick rapid fire, three questions.

If you could keep your answers to a sentence or so, a couple words, that would be awesome. So my first question for you here, do you have a recommendation for a read? Could be short form, could be long form, could be newsletter, could be anything. for people who might want to dig into some of these cultural aspects of energy and climate that we have talked about today.

Sammy Roth: You mean besides my own newsletter?

Kinsey Grant Baker: Of course, we will include that in the description as well. What else are you reading?

Sammy Roth: That's a great question. I've read a bunch of good books recently. Which one should I recommend? The Guardian just started a newsletter on climate change and sports called The Hotspot, which I'm enjoying so far. So if you're looking for a new newsletter, I would say that one.

Kinsey Grant Baker: We love a hyper-specific niche. It's the best. Okay. Next question for you. What gives you optimism when you're thinking about the energy and climate debate these days? What's a reason to kind of feel inspired or optimistic or have those rose-colored climate-colored goggles?

Sammy Roth: The obvious one is something that everyone on this podcast already listening to this already knows, which is just seeing how many batteries are getting deployed. I mean, man, every time I see the new numbers just for California and for like Texas. It's like, oh my God. So that's awesome.

Kinsey Grant Baker: Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. It's really cool stuff. All right. My final question for you. Do you have three words that would sum up your career covering energy and climate so far?

Sammy Roth: Interesting question. Fun. I'm definitely having fun. Rapid. Things just move fast all the time. And productive. I feel like I've gotten a lot done.

Kinsey Grant Baker: All right. I agree. I think you have gotten a lot done. All right. Well, Sammy, thank you so much. What a great way to kind of wrap a bow around this one. We started with talking about your very interesting career so far and finished the same way. I appreciate you coming to Power Perspectives and sharing all of your wonderful insights with our audience. It's been such a treat to hear from you. And I really appreciate your time.

Sammy Roth: Thanks, Kinsey. Good to be here.

Kinsey Grant Baker: All right. And thank you to all of our listeners for once again, tuning into another episode of Power Perspectives. I'm Kinsey Grant Baker, and I will see you next time.

What are you doing on June 23rd? If you're a utility professional who wants to, one, meet and network with other big thinkers, and two, get leadership perspectives on the future of energy business strategy from affordability to AI, there's only one place to be. Energy Central is hosting a happy hour in Washington, D.C. on the evening of June 23rd. You might ask why. And it's because we think the very future of our energy industry depends a whole lot on how things shake out in data center alley. And we think it's high time that the smartest people solving the biggest utility challenges got together to share some good ideas.

So join us on June 23rd in DC for connections, conversations, and cocktails in partnership with our friends at IFS Copperleaf. Save your spot by RSVPing at the link in the show notes, and we'll see you there.