Energy Unplugged by Aurora

This week on Energy Unplugged, Oliver Kerr, Managing Director for North America at Aurora Energy Research, is joined by Peter Lake, former Senior Director of Power, National Energy Dominance Council - The White House, for a candid fireside conversation recorded live at Aurora’s Energy Transition Forum New York. 

For decades, US electricity demand was relatively predictable. That era is over. 

AI and data centers are creating extraordinary new demand for power, colliding with infrastructure, regulation and investment models designed for a very different pace of growth. What was once largely an energy-sector challenge is increasingly becoming a question of economic competitiveness and national security. 

Drawing on his experience leading the Texas power grid through the aftermath of Storm Uri and helping shape the federal power agenda from the White House, Peter argues that the US has reached an inflection point. The opportunity is enormous, but capturing it will require faster infrastructure delivery, greater flexibility and a willingness to rethink how power markets respond to growth. 

The demand is arriving. The investment opportunity is clear. The question is whether America’s power system can move fast enough. 

Main topics include: 

Can America’s power system keep pace with the AI boom? 

What can the US learn from Texas’s transformation after Storm Uri? 

Who should pay for the infrastructure behind data centre growth? 

When power markets stop delivering, how far should policymakers intervene?

This week on Energy Unplugged, Oliver Kerr, Managing Director for North America at Aurora Energy Research, is joined by Peter Lake, former Senior Director of Power, National Energy Dominance Council - The White House, for a candid fireside conversation recorded live at Aurora’s Energy Transition Forum New York. 

For decades, US electricity demand was relatively predictable. That era is over. 

AI and data centers are creating extraordinary new demand for power, colliding with infrastructure, regulation and investment models designed for a very different pace of growth. What was once largely an energy-sector challenge is increasingly becoming a question of economic competitiveness and national security. 

Drawing on his experience leading the Texas power grid through the aftermath of Storm Uri and helping shape the federal power agenda from the White House, Peter argues that the US has reached an inflection point. The opportunity is enormous, but capturing it will require faster infrastructure delivery, greater flexibility and a willingness to rethink how power markets respond to growth. 

The demand is arriving. The investment opportunity is clear. The question is whether America’s power system can move fast enough. 

Main topics include: 

Can America’s power system keep pace with the AI boom? 

What can the US learn from Texas’s transformation after Storm Uri? 

Who should pay for the infrastructure behind data centre growth? 

When power markets stop delivering, how far should policymakers intervene?

Recorded live at Aurora’s Energy Transition Summit London 2025, this special episode of Energy Unplugged brings together Caroline Still, then Advisory Project Leader at Aurora Energy Research, Ben Guest, Managing Director, Energy Transition at Gresham House, Christopher Dalley, Director of Wholesale Market at EDF Energy, Graham Richmond, Partner at Dentons, and Rebecca Beresford, Director of Markets at NESO.

Britain’s need for flexibility is accelerating. Flexible capacity is expected to nearly double over the next five years, but renewable deployment is moving even faster while traditional baseload generation declines.

That creates a growing tension. Flexibility is becoming increasingly valuable to the power system, yet capturing that value as an investor remains far from straightforward.

The panel examined whether the balancing needs of a renewable-rich system are still being underestimated, where the strongest opportunities are emerging, and what needs to change to close the gap between system value and investor returns.

The system increasingly needs flexibility. The question is whether the market is rewarding it properly.

Main topics include:

Are we underestimating how much flexibility a renewable-rich system will need?

Where could the biggest winners and losers emerge as flexibility scales?

How should investors position for the next phase of the market?

Can policy close the gap between system value and investor value?

This week on Energy Unplugged, Richard Howard, Global Research Director at Aurora Energy Research, is joined by Sara Vaughan, Chair of Elexon. 

For years, the energy transition was largely a race to build renewables. Now, a different challenge is emerging: how do you run a power system increasingly shaped by millions of smaller, flexible assets? 

EVs, heat pumps, batteries and smart meters are creating enormous flexibility across the electricity system. Yet much of that potential remains difficult to see, value and coordinate. Without the right data and market rules, flexibility risks becoming a bottleneck rather than a solution. 

At the heart of the discussion is a bigger question about how Britain's future power system should work. Does the system operator need ever greater visibility and control, or can better price signals allow consumers, suppliers and distributed assets to do more of the work themselves? 

Britain already has much of the technology it needs. The next challenge is building a market capable of making millions of individual assets behave like one flexible system. 

Main topics include: 

Why the energy transition could eventually grind to a halt without more flexibility 

How half-hourly settlement could transform the role of consumers in the power market 

Does the system operator need to see everything, or can markets do more of the work? 

Could unlocking flexibility save billions in future system costs?

This week on Energy Unplugged, Richard Howard, Global Research Director at Aurora Energy Research, is joined by Sara Vaughan, Chair of Elexon. 

For years, the energy transition was largely a race to build renewables. Now, a different challenge is emerging: how do you run a power system increasingly shaped by millions of smaller, flexible assets? 

EVs, heat pumps, batteries and smart meters are creating enormous flexibility across the electricity system. Yet much of that potential remains difficult to see, value and coordinate. Without the right data and market rules, flexibility risks becoming a bottleneck rather than a solution. 

At the heart of the discussion is a bigger question about how Britain's future power system should work. Does the system operator need ever greater visibility and control, or can better price signals allow consumers, suppliers and distributed assets to do more of the work themselves? 

Britain already has much of the technology it needs. The next challenge is building a market capable of making millions of individual assets behave like one flexible system. 

Main topics include: 

Why the energy transition could eventually grind to a halt without more flexibility 

How half-hourly settlement could transform the role of consumers in the power market 

Does the system operator need to see everything, or can markets do more of the work? 

Could unlocking flexibility save billions in future system costs?