As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, I’ve been thinking about what energy independence really means.
For many, it means expanding domestic oil and gas production to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers and geopolitical risk. For Energy Changemakers readers, it means something else: who produces, controls and manages the electrons we use.
Grid independence is gaining appeal among energy users. In a Cognition Smart Data survey, 82% of consumers said “owning my energy” added to their sense of financial security.
Why?
The obvious answer is that onsite energy offsets rising utility rates. But I think the answer runs deeper.
Because electricity underpins nearly every part of daily life, consumers feel increasingly uneasy about how far out of their control it is, especially as data centers expose the grid’s limits. There is growing recognition that resilience comes from distributing supply, not concentrating it. Distributed energy offers a kind of insurance policy — one that gives customers, communities and businesses options when the centralized system falls short.
The technology already exists. Solar, batteries, microgrids, virtual power plants and other distributed energy resources are steadily building what some analysts call a shadow grid: a customer- and community-owned layer of energy infrastructure that can operate independently of the traditional grid or alongside it, depending on the need of the moment.
But the transition isn’t happening as quickly as the technology allows. Our electric system remains bound by decades of regulatory, economic and political assumptions built around centralized power. Greater energy independence requires not just new technologies, but new ways of thinking about how electricity is planned, regulated and valued.
Those are the topics we explore on the Energy Changemakers podcast — which just reached a milestone of its own. We posted our 50th episode.
So in honor of that milestone, and of the Fourth of July, here are five episodes that offer distinct perspectives on energy independence — and practical strategies for making it real.
1. Freedom to DIY
The holy grail for solar is making it Home Depot ready: buy it like any appliance, take it home, plug it in.
Such is the promise of plug-in solar, one of the fastest-growing entry points into clean energy — and one finally gaining a legal foothold in the United States. Because it’s so new here, it raises questions. Is it safe? Can it really save a household money? Is it truly plug and play?
In this episode, I talk with Stephan Scherer, co-founder and CEO of CraftStrom, who spent roughly a decade in the European plug-in solar market before bringing the technology to the US. Available now to Substack subscribers and publicly on July 8.
2. Freedom from uncertain policy
Federal tax credits for solar always struck me as more than fair. Utilities socialize the costs of power plants, wires and poles, yet households that want solar must pay for it themselves.
The sudden loss of those incentives a year ago under the One Big Beautiful Bill destabilized many rooftop solar companies. Now the industry is racing to build business models that don’t depend on federal support — which means driving down the cost of distributed solar.
Nick Josefowitz, chief executive of Permit Power, is working on a big piece of the puzzle: cutting the soft costs of installation.
See How to Make it Easier for American Families to Go Solar.
3. Freedom to keep energy wealth local
This episode revisits one of the most-listened-to conversations in Energy Changemakers history: a three-way dialogue among Kay Aikin, CEO of Dynamic Grid in Maine; Lorenzo Kristov, independent grid market architect and formerly of the California ISO; and Mark Paterson, principal and lead systems architect at Energy Catalyst in Australia.
The original aired in 2024. This return engagement goes deeper, reexamining energy abundance through a sharper, more urgent lens. The conversation takes direct aim at the dominant political narrative of “generate, generate, generate” — the idea that energy problems are solved simply by producing more power. That approach, the guests argue, confuses quantity with quality, and supply with access. They draw a line between “smart abundance” and “dumb abundance” and make the case that a truly abundant energy future must be planned from the bottom up — starting closest to the user, at the community level, not at the distant bulk power system.
Kristov calls it a local-first mindset. It starts with determining demand at the granular level — a town, or a section of a city, a new subdivision or a business park. With that data in hand, the next step is to calculate how much of that need local energy can meet. The remainder can come from the grid.
“In some locations, you may be able to meet only 10%, 15%, 20% of your need locally. In other locations, you meet 80 or 90 or 100% of your needs locally. So you do what you can. We don’t throw away the bulk system, but we plan it based on maximizing the local potential first,” Kristov says. “The local ownership means that revenues stay within the local community and you build wealth in the community.”
See Energy Abundance from the Bottom Up
4. Freedom to build differently
Veteran energy innovator Steve Pullins, CEO of ResSET, unveils his new creastion: a highly unusual sustainable apartment building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, designed to operate entirely off-grid. Forgoing a grid connection isn’t typical, especially for a city building. But Pullins argues it’s time to think of the grid as one energy option among several — not the default.
Called South Town, the project aims to cut housing costs through several novel strategies, including a shared electric vehicle fleet for residents. Pullins also sized the energy system around the kilowatts appliances actually use, not their generic nameplate ratings — a choice that produced significant energy savings.
He hopes to see the model replicated. It needs to be, he says: the world’s building footprint will double over the next 40 years, threatening climate goals unless commercial construction changes radically.
See Off Grid and Urban: An Apartment Building that Signals the Future
5. Freedom from waste and its cost
Energy independence carries an obligation: energy responsibility, or using the resource to its maximum productivity.
In this episode, I sit down with energy economist Skip Laitner to explore the surprising ways our stuff — from food waste to excess parking lots — shapes our energy use, economy and environment. Drawing on decades of work at the EPA, ACEEE and beyond, Laitner reframes the energy conversation from producing more to using resources more productively.
The sheer mass of human-made materials now likely outweighs all living biomass on Earth, he notes, and that matters for energy demand. He explains the difference between energy efficiency and energy productivity — the latter, he argues, could cut total energy use in half. He also makes the case that distributed energy systems make people more aware of what they consume and waste, and that repurposing and reuse, not degrowth, are the keys to a healthier economy and planet.
If you care about making the grid cleaner, more local and more equitable, this conversation will leave you thinking differently about where real change begins.
See Less Waste, More Productivity: An Economist’s Take on Our Energy Dilemma
