A Conservative Case for Clean Energy with John Szoka

For this episode, I talked with former North Carolina Representative and CEO of the Conservative Energy Network John Szoka. John’s a veteran, a conservative Republican, and businessman. He’s committed to clean energy not despite his conservative principles, but because of them.

John is focused on helping policymakers and business leaders understand the economic and national security benefits of clean energy. John talks about renewable energy, batteries, and distributed energy resources in terms of competition, innovation, affordability, security, and local empowerment.

We talked about how the United States needs to learn to build again. One major obstacle we kept coming back to was permitting reform. While often overlooked, it’s one of the biggest barriers to building the energy infrastructure we need.

Even when there’s alignment on transmission planning and market coordination, projects still get stuck in years-long approval processes. Szoka makes a compelling case that these delays hurt both the economy and the environment—and that streamlining permitting can, and should, be a bipartisan priority.

Szoka also shared his perspective on how the U.S. can lead globally by accelerating the deployment of advanced technologies—like next-generation nuclear and high-voltage transmission—while supporting domestic manufacturing and workforce development. It’s a vision grounded in John’s conservative values, aimed at national competitiveness and long-term reliability.

We also touched on the Inflation Reduction Act, the growing demand from data centers, and how America can maintain and extend its energy leadership while bolstering its commitment to resilience and innovation. John brings a clear-eyed view of what it means to balance innovation with practicality and how conservative leadership can play a key role in making the energy transition work.

At a time when energy debates often get stuck in zero-sum framing, this conversation is a reminder that clean, reliable, and affordable energy isn’t a partisan goal—it’s a national one. We need more people like John: grounded in experience, open to evidence, and focused on what works.

As always, thank you for listening, and please share the episode and/or leave us a 5-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you!

Timestamps

* 00:00 – Introduction

* 02:54 – Szoka’s energy journey

* 07:10 – Conservative principles and energy policy

* 09:08 – Senate Bill 819 & private property rights

* 17:57 – Fighting misinformation in energy policy

* 24:07 – Texas vs. other states

* 27:30 – All-of-the-above strategy: gas, nuclear, geothermal

* 30:45 – Transmission as a national priority

* 31:39 - Are we still a nation of builders?

* 37:16 – The demand side and energy efficiency

* 42:04 – Energy policy & national security overlap

* 45:15 – Microgrids & resilience for military bases

* 48:35 – Texas’ unique energy landscape

* 50:29 – Bipartisanship in action: North Carolina House Bill 951

* 57:16 – The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA): a conservative take

* 1:03:25 – Final thoughts

Shownotes

Guest Background

* John Szoka – LinkedIn

* CEO of Conservative Energy Network

* Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation

* NC General Assembly - Bills introduced as a Representative

Key Legislation & Governance Structures

* House Bill 951 (NC): Passed in 2021, this bipartisan legislation required Duke Energy to reduce carbon emissions 70% by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. Read the full text of HB 951.

Military’s Role in Energy Innovation

* Military Microgrids. Microgrid Knowledge.

* Joint Base San Antonio: Assuring Energy Security at the Largest Base Organization in the Department of Defense. Ameresco.

* U.S. Army Improves Resilience at Fort Cavazos with New Microgrid. Microgrid Knowledge.

* Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty) was cited by Szoka as a leader in adopting energy efficiency and microgrid solutions. Read more about Fort Liberty’s Energy Security Initiatives.

* Army’s Net Zero Initiative

Books and Reports

* SUN SHIELD: How Clean Tech & America’s Energy Expansion Can Stop Chinese Cyber Threats. Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology

* Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy by Russell Gold

* Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship by David Spence

* Podcast: How to Overcome Ideological Divides and the Climate of Contempt

Transcript

Doug Lewin (00:00.0)

Welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Lewin. Today, I'm joined by someone who brings both deep policy and political experience to the energy conversation, the CEO of the conservative energy network, John Soka. He's a rare voice in today's political landscape, committed to clean energy, not in spite of his conservative principles and values, but because of them. John served 10 years in the North Carolina House of Representatives,

Doug Lewin (00:35.726)

In many different leadership positions, including as the House Republican Conference Leader, Chairman of the Energy and Public Utilities Committee, Chairman of the Joint Legislative Commission on Energy Policy, he sponsored a number of major bills that passed and became law to take advantage of low cost clean energy and help rate payers. John is also a veteran, graduated from the United States Military Academy, served for 20 years, and after he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel from Fort

Doug Lewin (01:03.234)

Bragg, he has owned several businesses, including a manufacturing business, has two US patents. I would be remiss if I didn't say he earned his master's degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Hook'em. John is now leading the conservative energy network, which is active in 25 states, including Texas, operating as the conservative Texans for energy innovation. They see firsthand what happens when bills like Senate Bill 819, which I've been covering a lot at the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter,

Doug Lewin (01:32.472)

get enacted in other states. What happens when the heavy hand of government starts to regulate private property rights, limit the ability of rural landowners and communities to earn revenues from renewable energy and battery storage? We talked about all those things. We talked also critically about how the ability to build things in the United States. John called us a nation of builders, has kind of gotten away from us a little bit recently in the United States and how we need to get it back.

Doug Lewin (02:00.504)

We need to build new generating sources, new transmission, and much, much more. We talked about what it looks like when Republicans take the lead on clean energy. What's the conservative vision for an energy future that includes renewables, batteries, energy efficiency, gas, nuclear, a true all of the above vision? This is a timely conversation with everything happening in the United States. We talked about the Inflation Reduction Act and what to expect out of Congress. We talked about what's happening in Texas right now.

Doug Lewin (02:30.146)

Very timely conversation. hope you enjoy it. And as always, please like, rate, and review the Energy Capital Podcast. Please send a note to friends and colleagues to listen to the Energy Capital Podcast. Your word of mouth is really making a difference. This podcast is really catching on and your support is absolutely vital for that. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy the show. John Soka, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.

John Szoka (02:52.558)

Well, thanks for having me.

Doug Lewin (02:54.478)

It's great to be talking with you today. I've been looking forward to this. Obviously CEO of conservative energy network. I have so many questions for you, John, but let's, let's just go ahead and start with just a brief bit of your background to start the conversation. I want to start with your, your time in the North Carolina legislature. You were an elected official, obviously Republican elected official and shared the energy and public utilities committee, the joint legislative commission on energy policy.

Doug Lewin (03:23.736)

Can you talk about that experience, what you learned there that you bring to this position in the conservative energy network? It probably helps also to help our listeners just understand what the conservative energy network is real briefly, if you don't mind.

John Szoka (03:36.382)

Absolutely. Well, briefly, the conservative energy network is a network of state organizations under the umbrella of CEN. We operate in 26 states and we do two major things. One, we have people that work in each one of the 26 state capitals that mainly educate state legislators on energy issues, solar, entre-wind, batteries, nuke, geothermal.

John Szoka (04:02.028)

Any kind energy you can think of, they educate them on it. And one of the main things that's needed is education, because there's a lot of miss and disinformation. And let me use myself as an example, kind of tying into how I became the energy chair in North Carolina. When I first got to North Carolina legislature, here's what I knew about energy. When you go to the wall switch and you flick the switch up, lights go on, and when you push it down, the lights go off. And I had a lobbyist come to my...

John Szoka (04:30.286)

office who represented North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. She asked me, what do you think about solar? And I said, it's just a bunch of garbage and it wouldn't exist without massive solar or federal subsidies. And she said, oh, that's interesting. We have a different viewpoint. And I go, oh, what's that? So she told me what their viewpoint was. And the two points here was one, I knew that she was a Republican representing this solar association. So she was already kind of the trusted

John Szoka (04:58.86)

messenger of information. And then two, she told me something that went against what I thought I knew. And because it was from a trusted messenger, thought maybe I need to examine what I'm thinking. Long story short, I did went on this six month journey of investigating solar and onshore wind and found out that what I thought was true was not true. So I went from being a skeptic of renewable energy to the champion of it in the legislature.

John Szoka (05:28.498)

And second term there, I did a lot of things and really got involved. And eventually I was the chair of the energy committee, the co-chair.

Doug Lewin (05:38.232)

John, real quick, what year was that when you had that conversation with?

John Szoka (05:42.222)

That was

John Szoka (05:42.682)

in 2013. I was elected in 2012, took office 2013. So it's a little bit different today. There's a lot more people who know more about renewable, but there's still a lot of folks who go on to public service with the same attitude I did when I was first elected.

Doug Lewin (05:57.792)

No, look, and I think that that perspective of like, you know, what I know is when you flip to switch the lights come on, like that is the vast majority of people, right? I mean, I, you know, I haven't worked on energy forever. And there's just certain thing is kind of what do they say about a technology you don't understand? It's like magic. It's electricity still a little bit like magic to me. Right. And I think it's really important to understand that people, particularly policymakers, but it's true for the general public if they want to get involved in public policy, which which I'm hopeful.

Doug Lewin (06:27.136)

a large number of people do, they may just not understand that. I think, really anything about energy, and that's okay, right? As long as you know you don't know and you ask questions, right? You learned, you became an expert over your years there.

John Szoka (06:41.614)

And you're absolutely right. It's okay not to know. And it's okay to have wrong ideas that you firmly believe in. What's not okay is to be so secure in your ignorance that you make bad decisions. That's not okay.

Doug Lewin (06:57.89)

Yep. Yep. So, so talk to me about, mean, as you're going through that process and like you said, you come in with this perspective that solar is just heavily subsidized. It's not really worth that much. You, you obviously have enough of an open mind that you can, you can learn about this stuff, but you also have conservative principles, right? That, that can you talk about how conservative principles, overlap with this area of

Doug Lewin (07:27.778)

you sort of clean energy, energy, you know, it's called a lot of different things, energy expansion, a lot of people in Texas call it and some people call it energy transition, some don't like that. But but whatever you call it there, we're in a moment in energy, right? Things are changing. And so even as your viewpoint is changing, you have principles that aren't changing. Can you talk about what those are and how those interact with your work on energy?

John Szoka (07:42.776)

Fast.

John Szoka (07:51.786)

Absolutely,

John Szoka (07:52.446)

because conservatives believe in a number of principles that don't change. We believe in free markets. I think markets, generally speaking, are better than directives from government in figuring out what the public wants and how they're going to pay for it. I think that as a legislator, constituents come first. And with energy, affordability is a big issue. You might have the best

John Szoka (08:18.132)

idea in the world, but if it's going to cost a gazillion dollars, why would you push that just for the sake of whatever? So affordability is obviously something that's, you know, we talk about clean energy, land, you know, do you get to tell me what I get to do on my land? Shouldn't be like that. And yet there's a lot of people who think that because they don't like fill in the blank, whatever form of energy it is.

John Szoka (08:45.826)

that they can tell me what I can do on my land. I can't put solar on there. I can't put wind. I can't put a nuclear station, you know. It's like, you know, we have property rights in this country and people should be able to use their own land for whatever they decide is the best use of it. I mean, I can start from there and continue on down, but those are kind of like really underpinning ones.

Doug Lewin (09:08.386)

Yeah, yeah, free markets, private property rights. mean, so one of things I definitely want to ask you about, and that's a good segue right into it is we're obviously recording here at a time when Senate Bill 819 is about to be considered in the Senate. We're recording the day before the hearing. We're recording on March 26. The hearing will be on March 27th. This is a bill that it's very interesting, you know, in Texas, I think if any legislator of either party.

Doug Lewin (09:35.704)

put forward a bill that really restricted oil and gas development on private property and said, as a, you know, there's a whole organization, right, in Texas called TIPRO, the Independent Producers and Royalty Association, right? There's a long history of people making money off of oil and gas wells on their land or oil and gas deposits, you know, beneath their surface. And the Texas legislature,

Doug Lewin (10:01.752)

barely regulates that at all, very, very lightly. And if anybody put forward a bill and said, you've got to ask anybody within 20 miles if you can earn money from a gas well on your land, whether they're a Democrat or Republican, they'd be in a lot of trouble. And yet here we are with a bill very similar to one that passed last session. So you could certainly talk about that bill. But I know this is something that you guys work on around the country. We keep seeing these different siting proposals.

Doug Lewin (10:30.488)

come up, tell me a little bit about your work there, what you think of some of these proposals. And again, kind of how, how does that, how do those conversations go when you're talking to a, a, a self-described conservative Republican who wants to limit what somebody can do on their own private property? Like how do they even defend that?

John Szoka (10:50.278)

That's a great question. And the way I talk to him is I don't do that initially. The first thing I do when I'm talking to a state legislator or a congressman or a US Senator whoever is I show them a copy of our mission and our goals and our principles and, you know, private property rights is on there, free markets is on all these things. So I start with an initial like we agree that we as conservatives believe in all these things, right?

John Szoka (11:16.942)

And I say, yeah, of course we do. We believe in all that. And then I kind of explain the issue on energy and increasing demand all across the nation. We have to meet this somehow. So how are we going to do it? And then they say, yeah, we need to do that. And I say, well, look at your state of Texas, for example, you're leading the country in solar and wind. And they look at me and I pull up the ERCOT Alert app, which I love that. I keep it on my phone. I think I showed it to you last week.

John Szoka (11:46.99)

I say, if solar and onshore wind are so bad, why is it that right now, as we're talking at 11 a.m. or 3 p.m. or whatever it is, that 75 % of the energy going into ERCOT grid right now is things that you say you really don't like? And they go, well, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump. I say, I can answer what it is. It's because it's the lowest cost at this time of day for the 12 hours when the sun is shining. So.

John Szoka (12:16.28)

People don't do it in Texas. The ERCOT doesn't put it on the grid to satisfy some liberal mandate from Washington, D.C. or from anywhere else.

Doug Lewin (12:25.29)

No, we're a market that's yeah, it's economic dispatch. It's whatever the lowest cost is against dispatch.

John Szoka (12:31.022)

And then if nothing else, sometimes, usually the light goes on and people start thinking about it and they kind of fall off their hard held false beliefs that it's just a bunch of liberal gobbledygook. You know, they say, I didn't know that. And it's like, that's why I'm here. that scene is repeated day in and day out in all the 26 states we work in, not only at the federal level, but at the state level.

John Szoka (12:58.7)

And I've got people down at the local level that deal with siting. People just don't know because energy is so incredibly complex, they need to be educated.

Doug Lewin (13:10.254)

Yeah, I think, you know, on the, on the private property rights, I was, uh, as I was researching to write an article about Senate bill eight 19, I found this quote from Ronald Reagan where he says, I'm quoting this is from, is a time for choosing speech. said, what does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or the, or property, if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property.

Doug Lewin (13:35.374)

I don't know if you've seen this lot in North Carolina. I've talked to a lot of people in Texas who have ranches and farms and say, but for the wind and solar on my land, I wouldn't have been able to keep it. John Davis, a former Texas legislator has had a, I put a picture of him and his ranch in that same article. The ranch's been in his family since the 1880s and he didn't think they were going to be able to hold onto it till he got some wind turbines. Like what gives the government the right to tell you, you can't, you know, earn some money from your land.

John Szoka (14:05.134)

100 % dead on. There's two farmers I'm aware of in my own county that leased out their land for utility scale solar. I remember one, he's passed now, but he was kind of a cantankerous old cuss, just to say. And if he was sitting here, he would say, you're damn right I am, I love it.

Doug Lewin (14:26.794)

You

John Szoka (14:28.686)

But I, what Joe ran as they're putting things in, I said, I asked him a question, said, what do you say to people, because there are some in the legislature, not me, because I knew what it was like, said, what do you say to people who say that they should have a say on what you do on your property? And he went off. I couldn't stop him for about six or seven minutes. It's my land.

John Szoka (14:52.064)

Over here I cut the trees 50 years ago and I did this over here and I improved the drainage. And by the way, I don't like the Corp of Engineers. And he went on and on and on. He said, I'm leaving this for my kids because none of them want to farm, but the land is important to me and needs to make money. This is the best way to do it. And that is that type of story, the one you just said, the one I just said, is repeated time after time after time all across rural America. And yet.

John Szoka (15:21.07)

There are people who are maybe this guy's neighbors or somebody else's neighbors who say, can't do what you want to on your land. And it baffles me how they can really think that when they're conservatives and they're tied to the land. it's not like you're having a subdivision. mean, you build a subdivision with houses. It's not going away. know, mean, solar. could lease this up. You could take it all out and farm the land.

John Szoka (15:51.222)

Wind, yeah, it takes up a little bit of land, but you farm around it.

Doug Lewin (15:55.724)

Yep. And even solar, right? We're starting to see a lot of agri-volt takes too, which I'm really excited about because we, you know, like there's, the ability to do certain kinds of farming. can't do everything when there's solar panels for sure, but some kinds of farming and agriculture work, work quite well with it. Yeah. And we're, you know, we're the, stories are important because it's important to really like understand that there's people behind the numbers, but in Texas, the numbers are pretty staggering too, right? Something on the order of a little more than $20 billion.

Doug Lewin (16:24.908)

in landowner payments, local government tax payments, with a line of sight to about 50 billion. That's just within the state of Texas. I it's been pretty transformative to rural Texas and I think large parts of rural America, right?

John Szoka (16:38.99)

It

John Szoka (16:39.59)

is and it baffles me particularly in the great state of Texas why somebody would put this bill forward and why anybody else would think it's a good idea. mean, you know, most conservatives say we're for all of the above and then the ones who don't like something except fill in the blank, except solar, except wind, except geothermal, except, you're there for all of the above and let marketplace forces work.

John Szoka (17:08.018)

Or you're really not and you're just trying to pick a winner or loser, which we all say we don't pick winners or losers. So yeah.

Doug Lewin (17:14.828)

And look, think, you know, there, there are certainly some, you know, stories out there of developers who did things the wrong way, whether it be solar, but that is not like, can't, you know, that's sort of throwing a baby out with the bath water, you know, like you, you, gotta make sure that like, I don't know if this has ever come up in it. Have you seen any good examples of where, like, I don't know if you guys did this in North Carolina or maybe in other States where like,

Doug Lewin (17:42.622)

There's got to be a way to, you know, deal with the really bad ones without doing like Senate Bill 819 does, which painting with this really broad brush and making it that almost, you know, no renewables can be developed. You can answer that one. I actually what I really want to get to next. And you can you can put that answer in there if you want to really want to get to is what I think is causing these bills more than the few bad cases. I really think there's just.

Doug Lewin (18:10.2)

there's so much misinformation rolling around the particularly the internet, Facebook posts, and then you know, somebody looks at it the algorithm drives them 10 more stories about, you know, like solar panels polluting water or something like as if solar panels are like worse for water than, you know, can find animal feeding operations or oil and gas operations, like there's a million things that cause environmental harm.

Doug Lewin (18:37.974)

And if you're stacking them in a list like solar and wind are somewhere on the list, but they're not near the top. But I think the misinformation just bounces around so much, all these different stories of all the negatives. And that's the way the algorithms work, right? You click on that, then you're not going to get a positive story about a farmer or rancher who now has his farm or ranch because he's got solar with that story never appears in your algorithm. How, how, how did you combat that when you were at the legislature? How do you deal with that at?

Doug Lewin (19:07.906)

conservative energy network. know I know I'm asking a really big question here.

John Szoka (19:11.502)

That is a big question. And how long do we have? 45 minutes now.

John Szoka (19:18.574)

In North Carolina, once I finally understood how solar worked and how onshore wind worked and what they did or didn't do to the environment, it was like we get in closed caucuses, you know, and we'd have these arguments. And I had somebody tell me, well, that's all great. But did you know that solar panels leach cadmium and other heavy metals into the ground? And it's like. I've heard people say that, that's really not true. And then.

John Szoka (19:47.682)

I'd have to reference to do something. Too many of these arguments that are on Facebook and the internet, they're all based on emotions because it's much easier to kill an idea than it is to support it. So the only real answer to that is you have to have enough of the facts behind you to recognize when they're saying something that's completely bogus. Wind turbines, for example. Wind turbines kill all the birds. OK, I've heard that one a lot. I was a meeting of various states.

John Szoka (20:19.714)

Republican energy chairs. And I threw the question out there, I was talking about energy, obviously, and said, what's the biggest killer of birds in the country? Yeah, biggest killer of birds. Is it wind turbines? Like half the hands went up. Yeah. So I threw the chart up there that showed, well, if you want to save birds, get rid of cats. Because by far and away, cats kill more birds than any wind turbines. And actually, a couple more from oil producing states.

John Szoka (20:45.23)

The amount of birds killed by wind turbines are less than birds that are killed in oil on the surface near oil wells when it escapes. So you have to have facts, but you can't go like, got a fact I'm going to shove it in your face. I mean, that doesn't do it. You got to say it with a little bit of love, maybe a little bit of lightness and humor, and then tell a story about

John Szoka (21:11.562)

something that happened in a meeting you were at or whatever and we don't make up stories, God knows, we're 26 states, I've got a gazillion stories to tell. But it's just the education or I should say the lack of education about the admittedly complex subject of energy that it just it's a never-ending struggle.

Doug Lewin (21:33.58)

Yeah. Well, and, and I appreciate the way you, you, you put that, right. That you can't just sort of like put it right in somebody's face. You have to kind of like listen a little bit and, and, and absorb not be super judgmental of where I mean that, that, that approach is, I think, you know, I don't know 80 % of it, right. Cause you have to be able to like establish some kind of a

Doug Lewin (21:57.698)

bond with somebody before they can actually learn anything from you. And that takes patience, a lot of patience.

John Szoka (22:03.694)

You know what one of the most powerful questions in a conversation like that is that you ask whoever you're talking to? It's interesting. Why do you think that? Because there's a lot of assertions out there and then I have to come back and tell you, well, I saw it on Facebook. And then I try not to laugh out too. Did you look any further than Facebook? Right. Right. Because it's easy to repeat talking points.

John Szoka (22:32.824)

but it's much more difficult to have the facts behind it. And usually people don't have the facts, they're just parroting what they heard. So if you, as the educator, know the facts, it's much easier to combat these firmly held wrong beliefs.

Doug Lewin (22:52.62)

Yeah. And I guess there's even some opportunity to try to like replace those falsehoods and misinformation with, you know, fact based information on the other side too. Right. I mean, it's really hard because you're, these algorithms are so powerful. to try to inject some truth in there is really tough, but I assume you're trying to do that too. Right.

John Szoka (23:16.942)

just try and do that through our organization and we post on Twitter and Facebook and try and amplify things. But the sheer amount of negative, it's difficult to overcome. I mean, what do you see on the news every day? Negative, pick a topic, it's never positive, it's always negative.

Doug Lewin (23:38.534)

I know it's a well-documented human thing, right? Negativity bias is a real thing. People are likely to click on the, you know, what is it? If bleeds, it leads. They've said in the news for generations, right? And people are going to click on the negative stories. It's just kind of the way it goes. So I want to ask you, you mentioned you work in 25 states. Texas is obviously one of those. You've been head of the organization for what, just about two years?

John Szoka (24:06.094)

Going on two years, yeah.

Doug Lewin (24:07.694)

So can you talk to a little compare and contrast like some of the other states you work in, what's different about Texas? What do you like about Texas that you've seen so far? Where do you think Texas has something to teach other states and where is Texas maybe behind a little bit where Texas could learn from some pure science?

John Szoka (24:24.738)

Well, since I live in North Carolina, let me establish my Texas creds, I may. was stationed there at Fort Hood for three years and then the Army, well, the Army, then the Army sent me.

Doug Lewin (24:35.201)

The great place. Isn't that what they call it? The good place? The great place?

John Szoka (24:37.71)

Look, love Fort Hood. Now, Fort Kavassos, I knew General Kavassos. He was there. He's a great American. When I was there, was Fort Hood. And then I got my master's degree in operations research from UT Austin, looking for horns. So sorry for any Aggies listening.

Doug Lewin (24:56.558)

I had Governor Perry on so the Aggie hit a big Aggie flag behind him for anybody that watched the video so if Aggies are feeling upset go look at the Perry video.

John Szoka (25:07.025)

I didn't

John Szoka (25:07.746)

want to offend any of your listening audience. And I own property in Texas. I was there for like six years. I got a good feeling. I love the state of Texas. But to your answer or to your question is, frankly, what the Texas legislature did last session and this session, I can't really explain why they're going off on a tangent to do some of the things they're doing. But what they're doing, we see that in other states as well.

John Szoka (25:35.694)

There's a bill about to be filed in North Carolina that talks about onshore wind and you have to notify everybody within 20 miles of where it's going to be because somebody doesn't like the flashing lights on top of the wind turbines because sometimes you have some Air Force jets flying around there as a training area. I mean, they don't even care about the flight paths, but you got to have that. FAA says you have to have it. I mean, people glom onto the little issues that they think

John Szoka (26:06.094)

are like really, really important and they might be to 20 constituents in their district, but in the overall scheme of things, it's not. So this stuff's popping up all over the country and actually in my opinion, it's been getting worse over the last four or five years. We went from, I don't know, like 200 county moratoriums and really restrictive ordinances five years ago to there's over a thousand today.

John Szoka (26:32.398)

what we do and what you do on your podcast, and what a number of other groups do too, is try and stamp out the missing disinformation. I think it's, I always use the analogy, if you're gonna fight a forest fire, would you rather stomp on the match that some evil guy just threw in the pine straw before it spreads? Or do you wanna come in three days later when you got 100,000 acres burning? Pick one, which one you want. And there's not enough people doing what we do.

John Szoka (27:01.398)

and I'm including you in that and other groups as well, to actually educate people about the truth of energy.

Doug Lewin (27:08.46)

Yeah. And I think, you know, in relation to the things you're talking about, the Texas has done, or in some cases, like almost done, right? Some of these bad proposals did not pass last session, thankfully, because of a lot of the good work in the House. And hopefully that'll happen again this time. But what I often say on these things is like, and I'm curious your perspective on this. A lot of times I think what's going on with sort of the anti-renewable bills is what

Doug Lewin (27:36.718)

They're really they think that they want more gas plants or they want more nuclear plants or they want more geothermal or they want more whatever. And they think that if you stop wind and solar batteries, then you'll get more of these other things. Senate Bill 388 that just passed this one. I've written about it a lot on the the newsletter. It says you have to have a megawatt of gas for every megawatt wind and solar. That really slows down wind and solar. There's another approach, which is like legislate for the things you want.

Doug Lewin (28:05.25)

like build those up. Texas legislature passed the Texas energy fund last time the Senate and House governor all got together on that passed it, we're going to get some more gas in the state. There's a nuclear bill that is moving through the house. The day we're recording again, March 26, it just passed committee. It would put $2 billion towards new nuclear in the state of Texas passed on a 10 to one vote bipartisan support, like

Doug Lewin (28:30.21)

do those things. You only have so many legislative days. You only have so many priorities you could actually move, right? Focus on the things you want. So I'm curious what you think of that kind of approach. And then also, you know, nuclear, geothermal, are you guys working on those things at conservative energy network? Are there other technologies generating resources that that you're excited about and are sort of sort of within your purview or prioritized in your work?

John Szoka (28:56.846)

Well, to your first point, I do agree that it's always better and usually a better vote getter. If you're for something, I mean, if you're a negative Nellie and you're against everything, pretty soon people don't listen to you and that clues your constituents. It's better to be for something. So if you want to incentivize A over B, okay, go incentivize it. But still, there's some element of the free market that has to go in there. As far as incentivizing nuke,

John Szoka (29:27.552)

I'm not necessarily against that. I'm kind of for it because we as a country allowed it to die out. The supply chains, the knowledge base of people who actually know what to do in a nuclear power plant. So there is a role for government to incentivize certain technologies. But at some point in time, incentives need to go away and things need to compete on their own. If you incentivize

John Szoka (29:56.618)

option C, whatever it might be, and it comes to fruition and start building it and it's costing $200 a megawatt hour, you know, it's probably time to pull the plugs on that one and let solar wind, nuke or geothermal, whatever it's going to be. the answer to the rest of your question is yes, we do work in geothermal. Most of that work is in the West and in Texas. Now, there's just not the hot rocks close enough to the surface to do it on the East Coast. North Carolina.

John Szoka (30:25.72)

Makes me particularly sad that you got to drill like so far down that it's just not economical. Nuclear, yeah, we'll work for that. But it's not to replace anything we currently have. And the one thing you didn't mention was transmission. We do a lot of work in transmission because that's important. You can generate all electrons you want, but if you can't get them from where they're generated to where they're needed, and there's a heck of a lot of work needs to be done in that.

John Szoka (30:55.535)

not only at FARC at the national level, but within certain states too. And some states are further along and spurring new transmission lines than others.

Doug Lewin (31:04.854)

Yep, Texas has a big decision ahead of it. The Public Utility Commission sometime in the next month or so is going to decide on a 765 kilovolts or 345 kilovolt, what they're calling backbone for the state. And we don't have any 765. I don't know if you guys have any that's like extra high voltage. don't know you guys have any. don't think. I don't know. Yeah, we don't have any here yet. But I think I think it's time. It's like for for a modern economy. I mean, that

John Szoka (31:25.08)

We have any North Carolina, but I'm not.

Doug Lewin (31:33.586)

the Chinese are putting up 765 like, like it's going out of style and we don't have any yet. It's like we, we, we are in a race, you know, particularly on, on AI and meeting this kind of load growth and where it's harder here, right? It's a democracy. We argue over stuff. and, that, and that's proper. We should have a democracy. We should argue over stuff and we should build to like, we need to, we got to figure out how to, how to, you know, make sure that we make sure that we build.

John Szoka (32:02.446)

We are nation builders to your point. If you go back 100, 200 years, we've always been building things. We make stuff and we're pretty doggone good at it. China wouldn't be where it is if they didn't steal most of our plans and technology. I mean, seriously. So, yeah, we need to be able to

Doug Lewin (32:21.292)

Yeah, there's all kinds of IP that is, if you know, everybody kind of knows if you take your IP over there, it's probably going to get stolen. But yeah, we I think John, though, like, to a certain extent, it's gotten away from us a little bit. I'm not sure we are right now in 2025. And nation of builders is in our DNA. It's in our history. I don't know that we're really living up to that right now.

John Szoka (32:44.91)

And I'd agree with that too. think we've at the state level and pretty much every state, even the great state of Texas and at the national level, we've made things so complex to protect the one person or the one child or the one puppy from potential injury on a one in 10 gazillion chances that we over legislate this stuff. We over protect ourselves. You cannot.

John Szoka (33:12.93)

I got this theory and it has to do with liberalism is that if you pass a bill to do protection and then it goes for a year or two, my liberal friends will come back because there's always a failure on it. No matter what the topic is. It's like, you know, we passed this bill two years ago and it was a good thought, but it just wasn't tight enough. We need to put more on and more. And all of a sudden, I mean, I think that's what happened to EPA. Hell, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where the where the river burned. OK, I know what bad pollution looks like.

John Szoka (33:41.752)

Yeah, I can breathe on some days because there's so much crap in the air from the coal plants. There's a boy scout I saw the forest in northern Ohio and eastern or western Pennsylvania dying. You need regulation to protect people, but you can't protect anybody from every possible bad thing that might happen in the world. And I think that's where we are now. We need to loosen some of that stuff up.

Doug Lewin (34:04.94)

Yeah, I mean, like so much else in life, right? It's like the extremes and the polls typically don't work. It's really about sort of where do you turn that dial to the optimal point where there is protection of the public. Like you said, some regulation is obviously needed. Nobody wants the river to be on fire. I think everybody can agree on that. But but if it does go too far, you do slow down building of things and we need to build that we need we need to manufacture in this country. We need to build transmission.

Doug Lewin (34:34.178)

lines, we need to build power plants of lots of different varieties. And that's all so it really is that question about so you think, and this is probably obvious, because you're a self described conservative, but like the dial has been turned too far towards sort of regulation, and it's become too heavy handed, and we need to kind of turn that

John Szoka (34:53.454)

I agree. And I think there's too many reviews of reviews of reviews. mean, take transmission line, for example, I was at a conference about a year ago and there was a major utility in PJM that talked about how it took 19 years to build a nine mile stretch of high voltage transmission line because of all the hoops they had to jump through. That's just ridiculous. I mean,

John Szoka (35:22.126)

Even today, in the best of circumstances, it's going to take 10 years to do all this. We don't have 10 years to wait to build more transition. We don't have 10 years to wait to build more generation. We got a huge issue and we got it right now, today. What are we going to do now?

Doug Lewin (35:37.336)

Yeah. Somewhere behind me, I've got that book, super power by Russell Gold, where he's talking about the effort to build a major transmission line. and, it not only wasn't done in 19 years, it was never completed because every state had veto power over it. And like, those are lines that really would have helped the country at, at multiple points over the last, you know, many years. It is something that I, that I think is, is valuable about Texas's independence from.

Doug Lewin (36:07.03)

FERC and why I'm somewhat defensive of it is that we don't have to go through some of those federal, there's of course still state processes and there's due process and that needs to still be there. We can build transmission faster in the state and that's going to be put to the test. That's the claim everybody in Texas makes. We're about to find out with this high voltage project, so we'll see.

John Szoka (36:31.566)

I hope so. know the capabilities there because I've talked to some of the largest private builders of transmission in the country and they tell me that they can. But the expense just continues to skyrocket because of all the hoops they have to jump through. And again, I don't want burning rivers. I don't want air. can't breathe and I don't want to kill all the wildlife because wildlife is basically a trust. They're in trust. They belong to everybody. We don't want to kill them. But you know what?

John Szoka (37:02.133)

I think humans are at the top of the food chain and we need to build stuff to make everybody's life better no matter income level, matter race, gender, whatever, whatever, whatever. I don't care. We need to build stuff.

Doug Lewin (37:16.27)

Let me also ask you, just shifting gears just a little bit, but kind of staying in this realm of different technologies and solutions that help with our energy challenges. I have spent a large part of my career and talk a lot on this podcast about demand side solutions, energy efficiency, demand responses, distributed solar and storage, all these kinds of things. I am hopeful, because I think there's different ways to go about

Doug Lewin (37:45.954)

getting an active demand side, getting more participation from the demand side, like reducing peak demand to increase reliability, paying people to participate in programs, all voluntary, if they want to put money back in their pockets. Those programs are most prominent, not exclusively at all, because Arkansas, Oklahoma, a lot of red states have really good energy efficiency programs. But it's more associated with like California and Massachusetts.

Doug Lewin (38:13.782)

Right. I think that there's opportunities for conservatives to really figure out how to kind of bring a market lens to that demand side. This is sort of something I think about a lot and I think might actually work in Texas. But if you had, did you, did you work on energy efficiency at the North Carolina legislature?

John Szoka (38:31.736)

I personally did. Yeah, I did. As a matter of fact, I had a bill that passed the House almost unanimously and died and my friends in the Senate. And basically it was just, it was looking at the inventory of state-owned buildings and categorizing them by age and size. If you got a 50,000 square foot warehouse and it's 20 years old and we're going to keep it, we probably have to update HVAC and whatever else we got.

John Szoka (38:59.968)

So let's do a study of those and use performance contracting to figure out when we do it, how do we save money on energy costs? Because you can build all the buildings you want, but if they leak heat and air, I mean, you're just going to pay, pay, pay. I thought it was a great bill. So did a lot of contractors. My friends in the Senate, thought their exact quote was, well, if the Department of Administration wanted to do it, they can already do it. Well, they could.

John Szoka (39:29.538)

But a legislature exists to provide direction to different parts of the government. So I was trying to do is say, you guys do this and we'll end up saving money. Some of the universities in North Carolina actually did it on their own. And guess what? They saved hundreds of thousands of dollars from campus t