Powerstack: Energy hoarding is the new strategy

As of Wednesday, the Iran War is in ceasefire. 

But the effects continue to ripple across global energy and power markets.

So we sat down with Jeff Currie, Chief Strategy Officer of Energy Pathways at Carlyle, and formerly Global Head of Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs, to get his outlook. He’s widely credited for calling the commodity supercycle of the early 2000s, and more recently ‘the revenge of the old economy’ thesis, including The New Joule Order. 

The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity, so read on for that and takeaways below, but you can watch the full interview on YouTube here.

All that, plus Meter Reading, what’s On the Docket, and more. 

Not a Sightline Climate client yet?

The bargain that trades US security for dollar dominance is breaking down, according to Jeff. That triggers a capital rotation back into physical industries, energy strategy shifts from cooperation to hoarding, and batteries’ new security premium because local, non-portable power is hardest to disrupt. That’s structural regime change, and it’s happening now.

Sightline: You've been writing about the ‘security premium’ for a long time, and Hormuz just stress-tested it in real time. You compared it to a mirror of 2020, when COVID broke oil prices to negative $36 a barrel. Where does the mirror image take us? Where do things go from here?

Jeff Currie: Pulling demand out of the fabric of the economy is going to be a lot more painful than shutting-in a well, on the supply side. The cost of taking barrels out of the system, you're already seeing it. Today, people are starting to go uh oh, we're in trouble. And WTI, dated Brent, these markets are starting to move now. The math on this says mid-April to end of April, you're out of inventory. Once you're out of inventory, then you gotta ration demand.

How high can this go? We're in the middle of a repricing of the physical world. And when we think about repricing, whether it's copper, oil, gas, all the raw materials for all these different entities, the upside here is I don't think anybody has an idea.

What we're gonna do is we're gonna pull trillions of dollars out of the new economy and put it into the old economy [‘asset-heavy’], and it hasn't had money since 2013, 2014, and it's not prepared for it. It'll create cost inflation, which will drive up the underlying cost structure of the industries.

Sightline: If we're going back to the old economy, obviously energy and energy security are more important than ever. In your mind, what are the realistic options on the table that fit this Joule order? 

Jeff: Well, France has the lowest carbon footprint of any industrialized country in the world. 

It didn't get there because it wanted to save the planet. It got there because Charles de Gaulle forecasted exactly what is happening today. And that's why he got to 90% nukes. 

And I think it goes back to the point about the portability and storability. The more portable, the more storable it is, the less secure it is. And the dirtier it is 'cause it has to be organic. Because really, what is oil? It's solar. All oil is is solar energy stored in a natural battery that took, what, a million years to create the battery. All of that, the hydrocarbons are just simply batteries for solar energy.

So, by thinking about that secure dynamic of energy, by definition it has to be the cleaner versions, cleaner tech. You know, I'm a big subscriber. I mean, clean tech has had a great run since 2024. And I think it's gonna just go to the moon.

Sightline: Where within that new energy landscape do you see there being more of that security premium, really helping to bring those into the competitive landscape?

Jeff: If I were to put all my money into one thing and try to develop it and own it, it would be batteries.

One thing out of all of this war is, you can't have a tanker refueler. I learned this the other day from an ex-general. You got only like six of 'em in the world. They're easy to target, easy to find. You need portable battery packs, mobile … batteries that you can put in the back of a helicopter and move around the world, that starts to become strategically so powerful. And most of those drones and everything all operate off electricity, not on fuel. 

So starting there, batteries are gonna be the focal point of the military. Then, when you think about solar and wind, our problem is not the production of solar and wind, it's the battery.

Sightline: The big elephant in the room is the role China plays. How do you see this playing out on the world stage? 

Jeff: I don't think people are giving enough lip service to how it's not the developed markets. 

The difference between COVID, the emerging markets were unscathed, and the developed markets got whacked. Now it's the other way around. The developed markets will probably be relatively unscathed. The emerging markets are getting whacked and they're gonna be the ones who look at this, ‘Hey, I really did invest in this whole oil thing to begin with. Let's just go straight to the electrostate that China's proposing.’

And let's remember the whole reason the US dominated the world. It was the petrostate that it pushed. So China, of course, they're gonna push the electrostate. And I think that their first candidates are gonna be all those emerging markets that are suffering. 

Sightline: And where does the US fit? Is it endless gas? Is it endless turbines? Are there bottlenecks that are lurking? 

Jeff: Bottlenecks - it's the copper and the turbines. It's, going back, asset-heavy. The more asset-heavy it is, the less we've invested in it, because everybody just subscribed to that view. ‘We'll never need commodities again. We don't need heavy asset industries. We just do software infinitely scalable at zero marginal cost. Everything's free.’

And that mentality has brought us to this point where we are now. By the way, the Chinese and the Russians, they know this. China has such a dominant position with manufacturing and everything. They're not gonna let this go. They now control the oil. They now control the world's chips, and they now control the world's metals. Metals, chips, and oil. 

Sightline: What would you be looking for if you were a utility in the US or an investor or a developer? Anyone who's like sitting in the US trying to think about where power's going?

Jeff: Diversify your energy sources. 

I mean, that's why the hybrid car is the best-selling car. It can run off of any energy source out there, and your grid should look the same, whether it is solar, wind, coal, nukes, gas, oil, you name it.

Mark’s take:

The past several decades, each global crisis has reshaped our relationship with energy. As Jeff points out, the oil embargo of the 1970s brought about the nuclear build-out in France. And to a much smaller degree, led to the first noticeable construction wave of geothermal in the US. Or you could argue that the renewables and shale that started to gain pace in the 2000s, turned into a wave and a revolution following the 2008 financial crisis – a push for energy independence, China diversifying its economy, stimulus spending.

As Jeff makes it clear, we’re entering a long security phase, accompanied by structural change. In the past, the response was build more, to increase domestic supply. But broken structures are making that hard to do.

And on top of that, as Kim pointed out and Jeff agreed – everyone’s tired of the back and forth and back and forth, and new drumbeat of power demand steadily increasing. It’s all exhausting, and puts everyone in a rushed, anxious state. 

The result: energy hoarding.

That’s the new posture. It’s not procurement or cooperation anymore, it’s competition. And it’s showing up at the national level, at the states, and especially in the strategies of the hyperscalers using regulatory capture, BYOC, and whatever else they can to go grab the power before someone else does.

It’s the new gold rush.

(Which, incidentally, has been my Twitter handle since 2010 🤓)

Watch the full interview on YouTube here.

A quick read on the numbers shaping the market. The capex, the contracts, the regs, all anchored in the so-what.

$50,000/MW // Proposed upfront security for large-load interconnection in ERCOT, the highest in the nation. A proposed Texas PUC rulemaking would require large loads to provide proof of site control, $50k/MW in upfront security, and detailed project maturity data, before any study. (Then even more non-refundable costs.) Adding in hundreds of millions to any big data center, any deal that penciled six months ago could find itself underwater. This proposal seems to benefit the hyperscalers that can absorb the cost, and potentially devastating to smaller developers wanting to build in Texas.

933MW // planned on-site gas plant at Google and Crusoe's Texas data center campus. Crusoe filed a permit in January to build a 933MW natural gas power plant at the "Goodnight" campus in Armstrong County, Texas. It would be off-grid, powering two buildings, with no carbon capture technology. It shows how hard it is to reconcile AI's insatiable power appetite with corporate climate commitments, like Google’s carbon-free energy pledge by 2030. See above – it’s the new gold rush. 

$350m // Texas' new state-level nuclear grant program, which will cover advanced nuclear project planning and construction costs. With Texas facing a serious electricity demand crunch (ERCOT's annual electricity load is forecast to grow ~10% between 2025 and 2027), the state is betting that advanced nuclear could help. Among early movers: Blue Energy, working with Crusoe on 1.5GW gas-to-nuclear, and Zetta Joule, developing a helium-cooled reactor with Texas A&M. Still, timelines for advanced nuclear projects will stretch well into the 2030s.

15% // Electrical grid equipment’s new tariff rate. The Trump administration announced carve-outs for "certain metal-insensitive industrial equipment and electrical grid equipment" through the end of 2027, after which it bumps up to the standard 25% tier. (Raw or near-raw metal products like steel coils, aluminum sheets, copper wire rod, and similar items face a 50% rate.) The grid equipment carve-out helps at the margins, but it doesn't solve the core tension of the generation and grid buildout. 

200MW // Xcel's just-approved Capacity*Connect program to deploy energy storage systems across its distribution grid by 2028 for $430m. Xcel will install, own, and rate-base the distributed batteries (1-3MW each), which will operate similar to a VPP of behind-the-meter assets. Unlike VPP programs that are run by third-party aggregators using customer-owned resources, Xcel gets to rate-base these projects. Utilities could use distributed storage to expand capacity faster than VPPs can alone, but programs like this could also replace VPPs if regulators allow it.

20 years // NRC licensing extension for California’s Diablo Canyon's two units. The plant provides nearly 9% of California's electricity, and was slated for shutdown because of the state’s politics. But it’s a test with the grid's need for firm clean power, especially during extreme weather events.

Explore more Signals on Sightline here.

The policies, rulings, and company moves worth watching.

OPG applies for the first SMR operating license in an OECD country. Ontario Power Generation has formally submitted its application, marking a milestone for small modular reactor deployment in the developed world. 

FERC's large load interconnection rule. DOE has directed FERC to finalize rules by April 30 standardizing how large loads over 20MW (aka mainly data centers) connect at the transmission level, replacing the current patchwork of state-level approaches. The goal is speed and predictability, but states and utilities want protection if speculative load falls short. 

PJM's Cycle 1 application window. It’s the first application window under the RTO's overhauled interconnection queue, replacing the old backlogged first-come-first-served system with batched study cycles, and it opens April 27. With FERC’s rules, it could be the on-ramp for the next wave of data center and generation projects trying to connect to the largest and most demand-heavy grid in the country.

Maine’s proposed blanket moratorium on large data centers. The state House passed HB 307 blocking data center projects over 20MW, and the governor has signaled support. A sharp contrast to the federal push to accelerate load interconnection, and a sign that state-level resistance is hardening, not softening.

PJM's market monitor flagging data center-linked generation deals. It’s pushing back on both Talen's $3.5bn gas plant acquisition and TeraWulf's Morgantown purchase, given market power and disclosure concerns. The monitor explicitly flagged the risk that capacity could leave PJM's market to serve data centers behind the meter, threatening affordability.

The latest research, features, and data drops on the Sightline Climate platform.

Our derisked data center pipeline is coming soon to the platform. Clients can find out which projects in the 102GW announced pipeline are most likely to stall, and why 2026 is still a record year for power equipment, EPC services, and electricity demand, even if 40% of them never come online.

Where the market is meeting, and where to find us

📅 Europe Energy Tech Summit // Bilbao, Spain, 15-16 April, 2026 // Europe's premier energy innovation event, hosted at the Euskalduna Conference Centre. Join me, Charles Bondu, and other Sightliners on-site. (Powerstack subscribers get 15% discount with the code: SIGHTLINECLIMATE)

📅 SF Climate Week // San Francisco, CA, 18-26 April, 2026 // California's premier climate solutions summit, a decentralized gathering with 700+ events across the Bay Area. We’ll be hosting some events, so let us know if you’ll be in town to join our team on site.

📅 Columbia Global Energy Summit 2026 // New York City // April 21, 2026 // Columbia SIPA's annual gathering of industry leaders, policymakers, and researchers for discourse on energy, security, and geopolitics in a shifting world order.

Attending an event? Connect with our team.

Interested in diving deeper? Talk to our team and leverage the tactical intelligence that hundreds of energy and investment decision-makers like Southern Company, Tokyo Gas, Jefferies, Galvanize, B Capital and others use to stay ahead in the energy transition.