Jane Flegal Jane Flegal works on the policy side of the energy transition, moving between philanthropy, government, and think tanks rather than industry or advocacy.

“we are not going to rooftop solar our way to a decarbonized economy.”

Volts · Climate & Energy · September 2026

Flegal had just been ribbed by David Roberts for criticising green groups, and was explaining why she gets called abundance-coded. She grants first that efficiency measures — peak shaving, virtual power plants, getting more out of the existing grid — are genuinely important and that she has written policy on them. The line is the turn: they are a part of the answer, not the bulk of it, and no optimistic scenario changes that.

Volts · 2026-09-11 Listen to the episode → More from Jane Flegal → More Climate & Energy quotes →

Transcript

Volts Around 1:03:08 into the episode

Jane Flegal

Stop telling me I criticize the green groups, David. You're going to get me in trouble.

David Roberts

For approaching this with a kind of scarcity mindset. Talk about what you mean by that.

Jane Flegal

…One is affordability politics, right? And that's where all of the stuff on like get more out of the existing grid, peak shaving, VPPs and DERs, all of that stuff is really important. I have in fact written about policy ideas that states should use to like do better on that front. So I am not at all dismissed. Missing those things. But it is also the case that, as you know better than everyone, we are not going to rooftop solar our way to a decarbonized economy. It is an important part of it, but it is not actually the bulk of it, even, even under the most optimistic scenarios. Like we need inter-regional transmission. We need a lot more utility scale, clean power. These things are just true. Batteries are great, but they're not going to solve this problem on their own. And so my big issue is: are we kind of penny pinching? Are we overly focused on…

David Roberts

Well, I'm glad you're raising this about the affordability politics because I feel like everyone in the Democratic world and associated groups is just herding in this direction. But we need growth of the grid in the long term. We need a lot of investment, and that's going to cost money. So like…

Jane Flegal

Yeah, I think that's totally right. The one other thing that the layer that I would add here is like that kind of assumes that you have two options, which is reduce or increase the amount that we're spending on things. A third option is like change who's paying for stuff.

David Roberts

And

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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