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.
Alfred interviews Sheldon Kimber, founder and CEO of Intersect, about the company's risky merchant approach to renewable energy generation and its successful acquisition by Alphabet.
13 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT
Inside Lowercarbon’s apolitical approach to cleantech investing
Host Alfred Johnson interviews Lowercarbon Capital's Chris Sacca and Caie Kelley about their apolitical approach to cleantech investing and rebuilding the capital stack for innovation.
1 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT
Senator Martin Heinrich unpacks his new permitting reform bill
Alfred Johnson interviews Senator Martin Heinrich about his new permitting reform bill and its potential to accelerate energy projects.
29 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT
Data centers gave nuclear its moment. Can it deliver?
Alfred Johnson interviews Lara Pierpoint, managing director of Trellis Climate, about nuclear power's potential to meet data center energy demands and overcome cost challenges.
15 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT
What it costs to make power cheap
Alfred Johnson interviews Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO of Base Power, about the true cost of cheap electricity and how owning the supply chain is key.
1 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT
What is takes to build in America again
Alfred Johnson interviews Erin Price-Wright, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, about the regulatory hurdles slowing American industrial build-outs and the shift in investment strategies.
18 Aug 2026TRANSCRIPT
AI is disrupting services. What does that mean for power demand?
Host Alfred Johnson interviews Emergence Capital partner Jake Saper about how AI is reshaping the services economy and driving demand for energy infrastructure.
4 Aug 2026TRANSCRIPT
Senator Thom Tillis on energy, China, and leaving Congress
Alfred Johnson interviews Senator Thom Tillis about building bipartisan energy policy to meet rising demand and global competition.
21 Jul 2026TRANSCRIPT
The unprecedented opportunity for infrastructure investors
Host Alfred Johnson interviews Jessica Bailey, Global Head of Infrastructure at Nuveen, about the unprecedented investment opportunities in infrastructure driven by energy transition and digitalization.
7 Jul 2026TRANSCRIPT
Navigating the new world disorder
Alfred Johnson interviews David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee, about navigating global instability and addressing energy poverty for vulnerable populations.
23 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT
The trillion-dollar collision between AI and the grid
Dr. Varun Sivaram, CEO of Emerald AI, explains how load flexibility in AI data centers prevents grid instability and unlocks clean energy potential in this interview.
9 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT
The US-China rivalry runs through energy and minerals
Host Alfred Johnson interviews Harvard professor Graham Allison about the US-China rivalry's impact on energy and minerals, exploring the "Thucydides Trap" and its implications for global power dynamics.
26 May 2026TRANSCRIPT
The clean energy transition has a hardware problem
Alfred Johnson interviews Drew Baglino, founder and CEO of Heron Power, about how aging grid hardware and power electronics create bottlenecks in the clean energy transition.
7 May 2026TRANSCRIPT
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 consistently.
In this episode, we sit down with Sarah Bianchi, former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative and current senior managing director at Evercore, to unpack the forces reshaping global trade, industrial policy, and investment. Drawing on decades inside Washington and firsthand experience negotiating trade deals, Sarah explains how we got here and why political volatility may be the biggest risk to America’s economic strategy.
Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.
28 Apr 2026
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, to discuss why the next generation of trillion-dollar companies will be built where "atoms and bits" connect. They trace the industrial arc from the Gilded Age to the modern age of physical AI, exploring the geopolitical "dance" with China and the radical energy shifts required to power the future along the way.
And they ask: Who wins when the digital world runs headfirst into the physical one?
Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.
13 Apr 2026
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 Johnson is the CEO of Crux, the capital platform for the clean economy. He has spent his career working at the intersection of finance, software, and public policy. On Critical Capital, Alfred talks with the people deploying capital, shaping policy, and laying the foundation for the modern economy.
This is a show about how power moves across markets, institutions, and systems — and what that means for the future of energy.
Episodes drop every other Tuesday, starting April 28. Subscribe to Critical Capital wherever you get your podcasts, or listen at cruxclimate.com.
Inside a recent episode
Inside Intersect’s behind-the-meter gamble
Published 29 Oct 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] Water, you know, dry cooling and using all efforts to kind of mitigate any water use. That's the one where I feel like they're the biggest kind of just outright lies in the social media world because you can absolutely contain information. your water usage, right, with your choice of technologies. […]
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