Critical Capital
The future of energy is shaped by markets, policy, and capital flows — not just technology. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. The show features in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, and global markets.
Episodes
Inside Lowercarbon’s apolitical approach to cleantech investing
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For decades, clean energy technology was framed as a moral imperative; a necessary strategy for saving the planet. Today, it’s just good business.
Thanks to rapid breakthroughs in generation and storage, the unit economics of cleantech have reached price parity wit
Senator Martin Heinrich unpacks his new permitting reform bill
If there’s one thing stakeholders in the energy sector can agree on, it’s that new infrastructure needs to get built faster and more reliably. A recent Crux study, for instance, found that federal permitting delays hamper clean energy projects for an average of six months; cancellations due to endless litigation are common.
For years, federal lawmakers have sought to expedite this process t
Data centers gave nuclear its moment. Can it deliver?
The rush to build data centers has sparked an energy debate: will gas meet the growing demand or will clean firm power like nuclear step in? Nuclear has bipartisan support, new contracts from tech companies, and the capital to build. What it needs, according to Lara Pierpoint, is to be built on time and on budget with government support that lasts.
In this episode, Alfred Johnson sits down with L
What it costs to make power cheap
Home energy has spent most of a decade being sold as a premium product, priced at a margin homeowners would pay for something they wanted. Zach Dell says there’s a better way. He argues that electricity is a commodity, that the cheapest version is the best one, and that getting there means owning the supply chain that produces it.
In this episode, Alfred Johnson speaks with Zach, co-founder and C
What it takes to build in America again
American industry is building factories, mines, and grid hardware at a scale not attempted in decades, and the capital is there. But Erin Price-Wright says the cost of money no longer sets the return on an industrial project. It’s the time spent waiting on a regulator.
In this episode, Alfred Johnson speaks with Erin who joined Andreessen Horowitz's American Dynamism practice in 2024 to invest in
AI is disrupting services. What does that mean for power demand?
AI is still in the foothills of enterprise adoption, but the infrastructure buildout required to support it is already reshaping energy markets, capital allocation, and industrial policy. Data centers are driving demand for new generation and transmission, while billions of dollars flow into the hardware and software needed to train and run increasingly powerful models.
That makes energy in
Senator Thom Tillis on energy, China, and leaving Congress
Energy policy has become increasingly polarized just as the U.S. faces record electricity demand, a rapidly expanding AI economy, and growing competition from China.
In this episode, Alfred Johnson speaks with North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis about why the country's biggest energy challenge is the inability to build durable, bipartisan policy that survives changes in political leadership.&nb
The unprecedented opportunity for infrastructure investors
We are entering a period of infrastructure development unlike anything we’ve seen in the last century. The infrastructure economy is witnessing a generational redesign and a fundamental reshaping of the physical fabric on which society is built.
In this episode, Alfred Johnson is joined by Jessica Bailey, Global Head of Infrastructure at Nuveen, an institutional giant with over $1.4 trillion in a
Navigating the new world disorder
Conflict and disaster displace millions of people around the world every year, and millions more live with food insecurity, unreliable access to electricity or no electricity at all. These same populations are also the most adversely impacted by climate change, geopolitical competition for resources, and global instability. David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and form
The trillion-dollar collision between AI and the grid
The rapid rise of AI has sparked a multi-trillion-dollar collision between our aging power grid and massive, energy-hungry AI "factories."
Unlike traditional cloud data centers, AI training workloads are incredibly dense and volatile, capable of spiking or dropping power demand in milliseconds and threatening grid stability. Dr. Varun Sivaram, CEO of Emerald AI, says the solution lies in load f
The US-China rivalry runs through energy and minerals
On today’s stage, China is the rising global power, and U.S. dominance is under threat. Geopolitical tensions like wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, combined with supply chain disruptions and a growing demand for rare earth minerals, continue to strain the relationship. But that relationship is key to the future of energy in the United States.
In this episode, Alfred Johnson talks with Harva
The clean energy transition has a hardware problem
The electric grid is under pressure from every direction: surging demand from AI data centers, electrification, utility-scale renewables, and new industrial loads. But according to Drew Baglino, one of the biggest constraints isn’t generation, it’s the aging hardware that moves electricity across the system.
In this episode, Alfred Johnson sits down with Drew Baglino, founder and CEO of Heron Pow
Can U.S. industrial trade policy stay on course?
For decades, the United States bet on globalization: open markets, cheaper goods, and far-flung supply chains. But that model is breaking down. After pandemic disruptions and rising tensions with China, a new bipartisan consensus is emerging that America needs to rebuild its industrial base.
The real question now isn’t whether to reshore critical industries, it’s whether the U.S. can do it consis
Atoms, bits, and the trillion-dollar manufacturing race
For 40 years, the U.S. economy has been optimizing itself for the digital world while exporting its physical manufacturing capabilities. Now, the rise of AI is leaving a massive physical footprint in the form of data centers, power plants, and supply chains.
In this first episode of Critical Capital, Crux CEO and host Alfred Johnson sits down with Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner at Eclipse Ventures
Introducing: Critical Capital
The future of energy isn’t shaped by technology alone. It’s shaped by markets, policy, capital flows, and the institutions that connect them.
Trillions of dollars are moving into clean and critical infrastructure, across energy, advanced manufacturing, supply chains, AI, and digital infrastructure. But the forces driving those investments are complex, global, and often misunderstood.
Alfred John
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