I just returned from the ACP Siting & Permitting Conference in Aurora, Colorado, and the mood in the room was not what you might expect from an industry that has spent the last year absorbing headwinds from Washington. What I found instead was steely resolve — a clean energy industry energized by surging data center demand, reinforced by a wave of battle-tested offshore wind professionals finding new roles across solar, storage, and transmission, and disciplined by a rising financial close bar that is putting a premium on getting permitting right the first time. AI tools for siting and permitting were a consistent topic of conversation, with genuine interest but adoption still catching up to awareness. Read the full field report for my five takeaways from one of the most important gatherings in clean energy development.

Something shifted in the last few weeks. And I don't think the clean energy industry has fully absorbed it yet.

The conflict that began February 28th sent oil past $100 a barrel and shut down 19% of global LNG trade through the Strait of Hormuz almost overnight. But here's what I keep coming back to: the geopolitical shock didn't create the problem. It landed on top of a set of structural pressures that were already reshaping the economics of clean energy development.

Rising utility bills. Surging electricity demand from AI and data centers. New regulatory frameworks that formalize expectations that used to be negotiated informally. Novel technologies that communities and regulators haven't evaluated before.

Any one of these would be manageable. Together, they've changed something fundamental about how this work gets done — and what it costs to get it wrong early.

I've written about permitting reform, about AI tools, about the gap between clean energy ambition and local reality. This post tries to connect those threads into a single argument.

The margin for error in front-end project development has shrunk. The urgency to get it right has never been greater.

The math has changed.

Most permitting delays don’t begin during hearings. They begin months earlier at the front end when teams are making site selection and strategy decisions with incomplete intelligence. I’ve spent years building permitting matrices for substations, storage projects, and transmission upgrades. The work is thorough. But what those matrices rarely capture are the signals that shape outcomes: precedent from similar proceedings, patterns in local board decisions, emerging community sentiment. When you’re screening one site, that gap is manageable. When you’re screening a portfolio across multiple jurisdictions, it becomes expensive. In my latest article, I explore what I wish I’d had earlier in my career: better front-end permitting intelligence and why AI tools are starting to change how development teams approach early-stage risk.

My years permitting offshore wind shape how I think about the current push to speed energy permitting, and why I believe some of the approaches being tried right now will make things worse, not better. My latest post explores what's driving the frustration, what smarter reform actually looks like, and why better tools, including AI, may be an underutilized lever that makes positive impacts.

Siting and permitting reform offer real opportunities in the clean-energy transition, if done right. I’ve seen it up close, from the decade-long Sudbury–Hudson Reliability Project to the new reforms underway in Massachusetts, New York, and beyond. The goal isn’t to weaken standards—it’s to modernize them. Here’s my take on how smart, well-designed reform can help us build faster, more predictably, and with greater public trust.