December 23, 2025 • 11 mins
Palmetto is a consumer home energy marketplace aimed at accelerating the transition to a clean energy future. Through a data-driven platform, Palmetto empowers homeowners to understand their energy use, discover personalized savings opportunities, and seamlessly purchase, finance, and manage home electrification and clean energy products and services.
Neil Chatterjee, Palmetto’s Chief Government Affairs Officer, brings more than two decades of experience shaping US energy policy experience. A longtime bipartisan negotiator and former Commissioner and Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Neil plays a key role in guiding Palmetto’s policy strategy at a pivotal moment in the clean energy transition. He discusses the most pressing issues across the energy space, particularly when it comes to affordability for consumers, with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Well a queue for power intensive customers looking to tap
into New York's energy grade as surge does. The boom
for AI and growth in large scale manufacturing has driven
demand for electricity. You remember earlier this week Carol, National
Grid New York president Sally Librera was on with us.
That was a great chat. It was she said that
so called large load connection requests over the next five
years has jumped ten gigawatts, tripling in a just a year.
(00:37):
Here's what she told us on Monday.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
New York is also very attractive to manufacturing and large
scale manufacturing, particularly some of the modern manufacturing we see
around semiconductors and computer components. It's very energy intensive and
companies with big power needs are drawn to New York
and we are working to make sure that they have
the power that they need, not just to do, but
(01:00):
well into the future.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
That was National Grid New York President Silou Librera on
our show on Monday. Curious what Neil Strattergy he is seeing.
He's in the chief of Governmental affaros over at Palmetto.
It calls itself a quote energy marketplace dedicated to accelerating
the transition to a clean energy future. He's also a
former commissioner and chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
That was during the first Trump term, but you're also
(01:22):
a member. It went into Biden's term as well, just
for a few months. That's when you're I mean.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Just for clarification, the Federal Energy Relatory Commissioner for is
an independent agency. It's commissioners are pointed to staggered five
year terms, the idea being you can outlast the press.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
It Well, there are a lot of independent agencies right
now that are looking less and less independent. I think
is fair to.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Say, Yeah, Firk's been pretty good, has it? And I
think it's actually been.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
A beacon of stability in an otherwise folatile regulatory landscape.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Why Okay, so we're going to talk about what you're
doing at Palmetto in just a minute, But first I
want to talk about the affordability issue here because because
for so many years we thought that in the US
power demand would kind of just be stable, and then
this whole AI thing happened. Data centers started getting built,
(02:11):
people started buying evs. Now demand is just going up
and up, and it's hitting customers' wallets, and affordability is
becoming a big issue. How do you view it?
Speaker 5 (02:21):
Yeah, no question.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
So we have been the beneficiaries in the US of
a period of relatively flat demand for about two decades,
and unfortunately what happened was, during the course of that
two decades we allowed politics to interfere with what otherwise
had been the dominion of engineers and economists. So mean,
(02:44):
so suddenly complex decisions around plant retirements and things like
resource adequacy that used to be made by engineers were
being made by politicians, and you had celebrities weighing in
on their preferred sources of fuel, whether it's Billy Bob
Thornton for land or I mean, obviously that's more recent,
but you know, I'm using that to be illustrative, illustrative
(03:05):
or others who were saying we want to see the
retirement of fossil generation.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And nuclear too, was a few years ago. You had celebrities,
a lot of celebrities weighing on nuclear.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I'm where are the other yeah, right, And so to me,
we need to get back to a place where we
focus on what will it take to make sure that
the lights stay on and they're affordable for America.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, but you know to that point, I mean, I
want to throw in climate change is a real thing,
and so you've got to think about what are the
best energy policies well, making sure that you know, Mother
Earth is here in fifty years and you know, we've
all seen the fires, the climate adjustments that we're making.
(03:47):
We're living increasingly in a tougher environment. So I just
I do wonder, you know how you know, if we
just go to the lowest power source, that's not necessarily
going to be good for life on Earth. So like,
what is the balance? How do we move forward? Because
we have an administration that's turning its back in a
big way on renewables, and so I just do wonder
(04:10):
how do we find the right policy going forward?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, I love that question, And I want to be
clear from the onset. I'm a Republican from Kentucky who
works for Mitch McConnell and was appointed chairman of FIRK
by Donald Trump. I made very clear from the moment
I had a platform of my own that I believed
that climate change was real that man had a significant impact,
and then we needed to take steps to mitigate emissions.
(04:33):
And so why I am actually optimistic about the current
scenario that we are in is we've got kind of
locked into this antiquated notion the last fifteen twenty years
or so that if you're for fossil fuels, you're the
political right, and if you're for clean energy and climate solutions,
you're the political left. AI data centers, streaming services, crypto,
(04:58):
bitcoin mining, vehicle electrification, building electrification, all these things that
are going to put intense pressure on the grid. It's
going to require every available electron, even wind, wind, solar, storage, geothermal,
beyond that negawatts. Have you all ever heard this term
(05:20):
NEGA wants? But i'm demand response, energy efficiency, virtual power plants,
grid enhancing technologies. I don't want to bore your listeners
to death, but things like dynamic line ratings which enable
us to get maximum efficiency for existing clean energy infrastructure,
This is all the cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
So negawats is the idea to shift the focus from
producing more energy to using.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
Less, to using it more efficiently or using less.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Or using So sorry, I want to be very clear, Yeah,
we're going to need a tremendous amount of energy to
meet this come surge in demand.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
We need every available electron.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I was frustrated with the Biden administration because I thought
they took steps, including my former colleagues at FIRK, to
suppress capacity prices to accelerate the retirement of certain older
forms of fossil generation. I thought that was bad policy.
I'm not happy that the Trump administration is blocking clean
(06:25):
energy deployment. Both strategies frustrate me. We need all the
electrons and to preserve the ones.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, don't judge me.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Cool So look in the grand scheme of things. And
I'm from Kentucky, right, I grew up in Kentucky. I
understand the pain that people in coal communities feel. There
may be steps that the administration is taking, and they
are taking to keep existing coal fire generation online a
little bit longer than it otherwise would have, but it's
(06:59):
not additive. It's just keeping. It doesn't get us the
new electrons. The new electrons. I'm telling you right now,
if I could tattoo it under my arm, I would
solar plus storage with gas speakers to.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Balance the gro Why not wind?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Also? Wind?
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Is there?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I just don't think it's as deployable as solar. So
you mentioned at the onset, you know, I'm at this
residential rooftop clean tech company, Palmetto. Now I think there's
a huge opportunity in residential rooftop solar because we offer
the alternative to folks who are concerned about higher electricity bills.
(07:38):
It's quicker, it's easier to deploy, it's financeable. Wind is expensive,
and that's the challenge.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Well, let's talk about Palmetto because my understanding is that
it's much more than just rooftop solar. It's this whole
platform for clean energy, and I think people have a
lot of hard time understanding even where their energy comes
from and the grid versus the two you know, the
delivery charge versus the actual electricity charge on a bill.
How does Palmetta fit into all this?
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Yeah, look, nobody thinks about this, right, Well we do.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Now we can we get the bills every month, we
hit the switch.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
And the lights come on.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
What attracted me to Palmetto as a conservative from Kentucky,
as I mentioned, was this is the future.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
In my view. You've got your phone right there.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
There's so much information available through software and platforms, and
the ability to track our energy consumption and utilization by
moving to solar plus storage and smart plugs and hvac
and other clean energy you know, advances that enable us
(08:38):
to you know, not just bring down the cost of
our bills, but to enhance our quality of living. And oh,
by the way, it happens to benefit the environment. But
that's not the selling point. The selling point is quite frankly,
the economic one. We save you money. Yeah, we help
the environment in the long run. But the bottom line
(09:00):
is the reason I went to Palmetto is the business case,
not the environmental.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So make the business case. Tell us about give us
some you know, we're bloomberg, so give us some of
the financials in terms of people you've signed up, people
that you know. Just give us some idea of the
growth the interest.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I think generally as an American, I don't like high
electricity prices.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
I don't it's it's it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
As a regulator who is responsible for monitoring the reliability
of the grid, it was hard for me when prices
went up because I had to balance the interest between
maintaining reliability and controlling consumer costs. I love the idea
that consumers now have an alternative option that they can
turn to residential rooftop solar and storage and smartplugs and
(09:50):
these alternatives. And I do think, unfortunately, because of this
coming surge in demand that the country is going to see.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
From all of the variables that I laid out earlier.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Prices are going to continue to tick up. And I
think more and more you're going to see consumers saying, hey,
I don't want to be paying a bill to my monopoly.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
They said that, they said that in November.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I mean, we've made some adjustments because we had an
eight hundred dollars a month power bill and it was
kind of crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
What did you do? Uh? Did it work?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Turned off? A hated floor turned on? Like, we made
some changes because it was ridiculous and it came down.
I think we're working on it.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's hard, But so again, your company, give us an idea, customers, growth, profitability.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
All of the above, because the demand.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Is what's the growth, what's the growth of customer and
your top line?
Speaker 5 (10:46):
You know, I'm I'm the policy guys.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
There are others who are smarter about this kind of
thing and should be on this program. What I can
say is that there was an essential threat to the
business in the obbb A, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,
and we were able to beat it back, and we
had conservatives. If you had asked me at the beginning
(11:11):
of this process to rank one hundred United States centers
on who might come to the rescue of residential rooftop solar,
I would have probably the bondset put Ted Cruz of
Texas in the bottom five. Ted Cruz stepped up and
fought for and actually told it, and he understood this
(11:32):
as populous.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Neil, we got a rhyme, come back soon, Neil Tatterje
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Well a queue for power intensive customers looking to tap
into New York's energy grade as surge does. The boom
for AI and growth in large scale manufacturing has driven
demand for electricity. You remember earlier this week Carol, National
Grid New York president Sally Librera was on with us.
That was a great chat. It was she said that
so called large load connection requests over the next five
years has jumped ten gigawatts, tripling in a just a year.
(00:37):
Here's what she told us on Monday.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
New York is also very attractive to manufacturing and large
scale manufacturing, particularly some of the modern manufacturing we see
around semiconductors and computer components. It's very energy intensive and
companies with big power needs are drawn to New York
and we are working to make sure that they have
the power that they need, not just to do, but
(01:00):
well into the future.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
That was National Grid New York President Silou Librera on
our show on Monday. Curious what Neil Strattergy he is seeing.
He's in the chief of Governmental affaros over at Palmetto.
It calls itself a quote energy marketplace dedicated to accelerating
the transition to a clean energy future. He's also a
former commissioner and chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
That was during the first Trump term, but you're also
(01:22):
a member. It went into Biden's term as well, just
for a few months. That's when you're I mean.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Just for clarification, the Federal Energy Relatory Commissioner for is
an independent agency. It's commissioners are pointed to staggered five
year terms, the idea being you can outlast the press.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
It Well, there are a lot of independent agencies right
now that are looking less and less independent. I think
is fair to.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Say, Yeah, Firk's been pretty good, has it? And I
think it's actually been.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
A beacon of stability in an otherwise folatile regulatory landscape.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Why Okay, so we're going to talk about what you're
doing at Palmetto in just a minute, But first I
want to talk about the affordability issue here because because
for so many years we thought that in the US
power demand would kind of just be stable, and then
this whole AI thing happened. Data centers started getting built,
(02:11):
people started buying evs. Now demand is just going up
and up, and it's hitting customers' wallets, and affordability is
becoming a big issue. How do you view it?
Speaker 5 (02:21):
Yeah, no question.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
So we have been the beneficiaries in the US of
a period of relatively flat demand for about two decades,
and unfortunately what happened was, during the course of that
two decades we allowed politics to interfere with what otherwise
had been the dominion of engineers and economists. So mean,
(02:44):
so suddenly complex decisions around plant retirements and things like
resource adequacy that used to be made by engineers were
being made by politicians, and you had celebrities weighing in
on their preferred sources of fuel, whether it's Billy Bob
Thornton for land or I mean, obviously that's more recent,
but you know, I'm using that to be illustrative, illustrative
(03:05):
or others who were saying we want to see the
retirement of fossil generation.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And nuclear too, was a few years ago. You had celebrities,
a lot of celebrities weighing on nuclear.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I'm where are the other yeah, right, And so to me,
we need to get back to a place where we
focus on what will it take to make sure that
the lights stay on and they're affordable for America.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, but you know to that point, I mean, I
want to throw in climate change is a real thing,
and so you've got to think about what are the
best energy policies well, making sure that you know, Mother
Earth is here in fifty years and you know, we've
all seen the fires, the climate adjustments that we're making.
(03:47):
We're living increasingly in a tougher environment. So I just
I do wonder, you know how you know, if we
just go to the lowest power source, that's not necessarily
going to be good for life on Earth. So like,
what is the balance? How do we move forward? Because
we have an administration that's turning its back in a
big way on renewables, and so I just do wonder
(04:10):
how do we find the right policy going forward?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, I love that question, And I want to be
clear from the onset. I'm a Republican from Kentucky who
works for Mitch McConnell and was appointed chairman of FIRK
by Donald Trump. I made very clear from the moment
I had a platform of my own that I believed
that climate change was real that man had a significant impact,
and then we needed to take steps to mitigate emissions.
(04:33):
And so why I am actually optimistic about the current
scenario that we are in is we've got kind of
locked into this antiquated notion the last fifteen twenty years
or so that if you're for fossil fuels, you're the
political right, and if you're for clean energy and climate solutions,
you're the political left. AI data centers, streaming services, crypto,
(04:58):
bitcoin mining, vehicle electrification, building electrification, all these things that
are going to put intense pressure on the grid. It's
going to require every available electron, even wind, wind, solar, storage, geothermal,
beyond that negawatts. Have you all ever heard this term
(05:20):
NEGA wants? But i'm demand response, energy efficiency, virtual power plants,
grid enhancing technologies. I don't want to bore your listeners
to death, but things like dynamic line ratings which enable
us to get maximum efficiency for existing clean energy infrastructure,
This is all the cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
So negawats is the idea to shift the focus from
producing more energy to using.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
Less, to using it more efficiently or using less.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Or using So sorry, I want to be very clear, Yeah,
we're going to need a tremendous amount of energy to
meet this come surge in demand.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
We need every available electron.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I was frustrated with the Biden administration because I thought
they took steps, including my former colleagues at FIRK, to
suppress capacity prices to accelerate the retirement of certain older
forms of fossil generation. I thought that was bad policy.
I'm not happy that the Trump administration is blocking clean
(06:25):
energy deployment. Both strategies frustrate me. We need all the
electrons and to preserve the ones.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, don't judge me.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Cool So look in the grand scheme of things. And
I'm from Kentucky, right, I grew up in Kentucky. I
understand the pain that people in coal communities feel. There
may be steps that the administration is taking, and they
are taking to keep existing coal fire generation online a
little bit longer than it otherwise would have, but it's
(06:59):
not additive. It's just keeping. It doesn't get us the
new electrons. The new electrons. I'm telling you right now,
if I could tattoo it under my arm, I would
solar plus storage with gas speakers to.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Balance the gro Why not wind?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Also? Wind?
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Is there?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I just don't think it's as deployable as solar. So
you mentioned at the onset, you know, I'm at this
residential rooftop clean tech company, Palmetto. Now I think there's
a huge opportunity in residential rooftop solar because we offer
the alternative to folks who are concerned about higher electricity bills.
(07:38):
It's quicker, it's easier to deploy, it's financeable. Wind is expensive,
and that's the challenge.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Well, let's talk about Palmetto because my understanding is that
it's much more than just rooftop solar. It's this whole
platform for clean energy, and I think people have a
lot of hard time understanding even where their energy comes
from and the grid versus the two you know, the
delivery charge versus the actual electricity charge on a bill.
How does Palmetta fit into all this?
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Yeah, look, nobody thinks about this, right, Well we do.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Now we can we get the bills every month, we
hit the switch.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
And the lights come on.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
What attracted me to Palmetto as a conservative from Kentucky,
as I mentioned, was this is the future.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
In my view. You've got your phone right there.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
There's so much information available through software and platforms, and
the ability to track our energy consumption and utilization by
moving to solar plus storage and smart plugs and hvac
and other clean energy you know, advances that enable us
(08:38):
to you know, not just bring down the cost of
our bills, but to enhance our quality of living. And oh,
by the way, it happens to benefit the environment. But
that's not the selling point. The selling point is quite frankly,
the economic one. We save you money. Yeah, we help
the environment in the long run. But the bottom line
(09:00):
is the reason I went to Palmetto is the business case,
not the environmental.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So make the business case. Tell us about give us
some you know, we're bloomberg, so give us some of
the financials in terms of people you've signed up, people
that you know. Just give us some idea of the
growth the interest.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I think generally as an American, I don't like high
electricity prices.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
I don't it's it's it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
As a regulator who is responsible for monitoring the reliability
of the grid, it was hard for me when prices
went up because I had to balance the interest between
maintaining reliability and controlling consumer costs. I love the idea
that consumers now have an alternative option that they can
turn to residential rooftop solar and storage and smartplugs and
(09:50):
these alternatives. And I do think, unfortunately, because of this
coming surge in demand that the country is going to see.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
From all of the variables that I laid out earlier.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Prices are going to continue to tick up. And I
think more and more you're going to see consumers saying, hey,
I don't want to be paying a bill to my monopoly.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
They said that, they said that in November.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I mean, we've made some adjustments because we had an
eight hundred dollars a month power bill and it was
kind of crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
What did you do? Uh? Did it work?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Turned off? A hated floor turned on? Like, we made
some changes because it was ridiculous and it came down.
I think we're working on it.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's hard, But so again, your company, give us an idea, customers, growth, profitability.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
All of the above, because the demand.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Is what's the growth, what's the growth of customer and
your top line?
Speaker 5 (10:46):
You know, I'm I'm the policy guys.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
There are others who are smarter about this kind of
thing and should be on this program. What I can
say is that there was an essential threat to the
business in the obbb A, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,
and we were able to beat it back, and we
had conservatives. If you had asked me at the beginning
(11:11):
of this process to rank one hundred United States centers
on who might come to the rescue of residential rooftop solar,
I would have probably the bondset put Ted Cruz of
Texas in the bottom five. Ted Cruz stepped up and
fought for and actually told it, and he understood this
(11:32):
as populous.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Neil, we got a rhyme, come back soon, Neil Tatterje
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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