FUELED | A Fenstermaker Podcast

About FUELED | A Fenstermaker Podcast

Our corporate podcast brings a 360° perspective to issues and topics that concern the diverse industries within our Client portfolio, offering a variety of professional insights, fueling a greater understanding and awareness of Fenstermaker's expertise.

Publisher

Fenstermaker

Category

business · business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

4 Nov 2019

Latest episode

16 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

34 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   16 Sept 2026

   S6 Ep7 Entergy Louisiana President & CEO Phillip May | Powering Louisiana’s Future

   In Episode 7 of FUELED Season 6, Kathryn Fenstermaker sits down with Phillip May, President and CEO of Entergy Louisiana, for a conversation about what happens when economic ambition reaches the electric grid—and the utility responsible for making it work. The episode serves as the system-scale capstone to a season spent examining Louisiana’s power landscape from multiple perspectives. May has worked inside that system for nearly four decades, joining Entergy in 1986 and leading Entergy Louisiana since 2013. His career now spans two very different eras: one defined by relatively modest electricity growth and another emerging as industrial expansion, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and extraordinarily large loads reshape what the grid is being asked to do. May explains that this shift is no longer simply about adding incremental capacity. Projects such as Meta and Hyundai Steel require Entergy to reconsider the system at a much larger scale—generation, transmission, substations, distribution, fuel supply, redundancy, and resilience together. The opportunity is not only to serve new customers but to use that growth to build a stronger system for the customers already here. That opportunity comes with a nonnegotiable principle: growth must pay for growth. May repeatedly returns to affordability throughout the conversation. New demand, he argues, cannot simply be layered onto the existing customer base. Infrastructure created specifically for large-load customers must be assigned to those customers, while the broader system should receive measurable benefits from their arrival. That framework leads into Entergy’s Fair Share Plus approach. May explains that large-load customers pay for the infrastructure directly attributable to their service while also contributing toward existing system costs that otherwise would be borne by current customers. Long-term contracts, minimum bills, customer collateral, accelerated depreciation, and exit obligations are designed to protect existing customers if a project develops differently than anticipated. May says Entergy’s current Louisiana data-center agreements are expected to create more than $2.8 billion in direct benefits for other customers over the next two decades. He also points to commitments involving Power to Care assistance, home-energy-efficiency investments, workforce development, and infrastructure improvements. His answer to those skeptical of the promised benefits is straightforward: “We’ll put our money where our mouth is.” The conversation also examines one of the defining phrases of Louisiana’s current economic-development moment: speed to power. May describes a “power-first world” in which major companies want to know not only whether electricity will be available, but how quickly it can be delivered. Entergy began preparing before the current wave fully arrived, securing turbines and other long-lead equipment as proposed projects grew from tens of megawatts into hundreds and, eventually, gigawatts. Moving quickly, however, does not eliminate the need to measure risk. Entergy evaluates whether a company has acquired land, possesses the financial and technical capacity to execute, operates within a market capable of supporting the investment, and is willing to make meaningful contractual commitments. This becomes especially important with data centers, whose construction schedules can move much faster than traditional generation projects. The discussion then widens from individual projects to the power system Louisiana is becoming—a grid that must be larger, more redundant, more resilient, and capable of moving extraordinary amounts of electricity without sacrificing affordability or reliability. Energy supply must also diversify. Entergy is building highly efficient natural-gas generation, expanding solar and battery storage, exploring additional nuclear opportunities, and considering how emerging technologies could fit its portfolio over time. Each resource has a role to earn based on customer needs, reliability, cost, timing, performance, and risk. Generation, however, is only half the equation. Louisiana must simultaneously build the transmission system capable of moving power where it is needed. In May’s telling, generation and transmission are not separate strategies; they are pieces of the same effort to create a bigger, stronger, more redundant grid. Resilience brings that strategy down to everyday life. May says the objective is not to promise that extreme weather will never interrupt electricity. It is to build a system that recovers much faster when it does. He points to Grand Isle remaining energized through Hurricane Francine as tangible evidence that previous hardening investments can change system performance. As the conversation approaches its close, the question becomes what Louisiana cannot afford to get wrong. May’s answer is simple: wait. Major industrial and technology companies operate on compressed timelines, and Louisiana’s ability to deliver will help determine whether the current wave of investment compounds into something larger or moves elsewhere. Success requires moving at the speed of customers while preserving the discipline that keeps investments reliable and affordable. For May, however, the ultimate measure is not megawatts, plants, or even projects announced. It is whether Louisiana becomes a place where people can build their futures. He shares the story of a young engineer who heard about Meta’s investment and decided it might finally be time to move home. A decade from now, May wants stories like that to be commonplace: communities thriving, opportunity expanding, and Louisianans no longer forced to choose between the place they love and the careers they want. That vision also answers the closing question. What fuels Phillip May is the opportunity to transform the state he loves in a way Louisiana has not seen in generations—and to create a future where his own daughters, and families across Louisiana, can come home and thrive. At its heart, this season finale is about execution at scale: moving fast without abandoning discipline, building ahead without building recklessly, asking growth to carry its own costs, using extraordinary new demand to strengthen the system already here, and ensuring Louisiana’s historic economic opportunity ultimately reaches the people who call it home.

2. 

   1 Sept 2026

   S6 Ep6 LPSC Commissioner Jean-Paul Coussan | Powering Louisiana's Future

   In Episode 6 of FUELED Season 6, Kathryn Fenstermaker sits down with Jean-Paul Coussan, Vice Chairman of the Louisiana Public Service Commission and Commissioner for District 2, to discuss how the Commission approaches some of Louisiana’s most consequential energy decisions. Coussan begins by explaining the Commission’s broad constitutional authority to regulate utilities and protect the public interest. He also describes the personal side of that responsibility: his district office handles roughly 1,500 constituent complaints each year involving outages, billing questions, and utility service. That connection to the public shapes Coussan’s approach to policy. Reflecting on the thousands of oil and gas jobs Acadiana once lost, he explains why “jobs, jobs and jobs” remain his priority—and why economic growth should create opportunities for people to remain in Louisiana, raise families, and build wealth in their communities. The conversation turns to Louisiana’s rapidly rising electricity demand, particularly from major industrial developments and data centers. Coussan explains how the Commission evaluates whether new power infrastructure is necessary while guarding against overbuilding, stranded assets, and costs being passed to existing customers. One of the episode’s central themes is growth without cost shifting. Coussan argues that large-load customers should carry the costs and risks created by their projects while also producing measurable benefits for the broader system. Using Meta’s Richland Parish development as an example, he discusses customer guarantees, infrastructure contributions, minimum payments, and other protections intended to benefit surrounding communities and the electric grid. Coussan also explains the “Lightning Amendment,” an accelerated review process designed to help the Commission respond to major economic-development opportunities without lowering its standards. The goal is to move with urgency without surrendering scrutiny. The discussion also explores long-term energy planning, Louisiana’s “all-of-the-above” approach to generation, and the Commission’s continuing oversight of approved utility investments. Looking ahead, Coussan defines success as a Louisiana growing in population and opportunity while maintaining nationally competitive electricity rates. At its heart, the episode is about regulation as stewardship: supporting growth without abandoning scrutiny or shifting its risks to the public. Coussan closes by comparing Louisiana’s future to planting oak trees whose full impact may not be seen for decades—a reminder that today’s decisions will shape the state for generations.

3. 

   18 Aug 2026

   S6 Ep5 LED Secretary Susan Bourgeois | Powering Louisiana's Future

   In Episode 5 of FUELED Season 6, Kathryn Fenstermaker sits down with Susan Bourgeois, Secretary of Louisiana Economic Development, for a conversation about the relationship between power, economic growth, and Louisiana’s ability to compete for the industries shaping the next generation of the American economy. Bourgeois begins with her determination to change both the reality and the narrative of opportunity in Louisiana. She describes accepting the role at LED with a mandate to transform a system that was not delivering the outcomes the state deserved and building a culture designed to move from “no, but” to “yes, and.” That means making the experience of doing business in Louisiana faster, more coordinated, more service-oriented, and more confident in what the state can offer. That vision quickly converges with energy. Bourgeois explains that access to reliable, abundant electricity now enters major recruitment conversations earlier than ever. Louisiana’s natural gas resources, extensive pipeline network, experienced energy workforce, industrial infrastructure, regulatory environment, and pro-growth posture have become increasingly important advantages as companies pursue large-scale projects with significant power demands. Workforce is another central piece of that equation. Bourgeois describes Louisiana’s people, work ethic, industrial experience, and culture as assets companies repeatedly recognize, while emphasizing the need to expand the skilled-worker pipeline through Louisiana Works, K–12 education, two-year institutions, higher education, and private-sector coordination. Winning major investments matters only if Louisiana can deliver the workforce and systems those projects require. The conversation also explores the state’s “whole-of-Louisiana” approach to economic development. Bourgeois points to the Meta project as an example of state agencies, Entergy, regional and local partners, regulators, and other institutions working in parallel rather than sequence. The model is designed to reduce friction, accelerate decisions, and connect companies directly with the agencies responsible for permitting, transportation, regulation, power, and other project-critical needs. Bourgeois is equally direct about the responsibilities that come with large-load growth. She discusses protecting existing ratepayers, ensuring new investment bears the costs it creates, strengthening the electric grid, and pursuing an all-of-the-above energy strategy that can include natural gas, LNG, nuclear, and other generation resources. The focus, she argues, should remain on delivering reliable and affordable power rather than relying on any single technology. As the discussion turns to artificial intelligence, infrastructure, permitting, and regulation, speed becomes a defining theme. Bourgeois describes efforts to align LED, the Louisiana Public Service Commission, DEQ, transportation officials, utilities, and other partners so major projects can move with urgency while maintaining the state’s public responsibilities. At its heart, the episode is about translating economic development into everyday opportunity. Bourgeois connects reliable, affordable energy to jobs, wages, benefits, private investment, stronger communities, and the ability for people to build a life in Louisiana. Her long-term measure of success is not a temporary surge of announcements, but making unprecedented investment the new normal. And when asked what fuels her, the answer is simple: the wins—not for the headline, but for their ability to change people’s lives.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

422,071

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 50 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

41

Social presence

0

YouTube

86

Engagement

60

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.