Energy policy, translated into real consequences.
Just Power treats energy policy as a practical question: who pays, who decides, and who is protected when systems change. Its recent affordability series moves from rate design and utility planning to customer conversations, housing pilots, and household stress.
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Just Power is a public-minded interview show about the energy transition as it is felt in bills, homes, utility offices, and regulatory rooms. Its recent focus on energy affordability gives the show a clear center of gravity. Rates are not treated as a mysterious line item. They are traced back through infrastructure decisions, rate design, resource planning, customer programs, and the political pressure facing utilities and regulators. The result is a show that makes complicated systems legible without sanding off their complexity. It is serious work. It is also practical. Episodes move from grid investments to the basic question of whether a household can keep up with monthly energy costs. Carolyn Pars often frames a topic in broad civic terms, then presses guests toward the mechanism: who decides, what process governs the decision, what data matters, and what happens to people at the edge of the system. That pattern gives the show its usefulness. A conversation with Eric Blank turns Public Utilities Commission work into a look at who pays for a more expensive grid transformation. A discussion with John Wilson follows the hidden role of regulatory proceedings, long-term contracts, data centers, and industrial demand. Mina Byers brings the conversation into utility practice, where pilots, health-care partnerships, new construction, and customer data are tested against affordability goals. Utibe Bassey shifts the frame toward customer experience, empathy, preparation, and transparency during high-bill moments. Ben Nathan places affordability inside utility strategy rather than treating it as a narrow customer-service problem. Other episodes widen the lens to assistance programs, dignity-centered leadership, eligibility barriers, prevention, and the limits of crisis-oriented support. The show is not a cheerleading platform for clean energy. It is more demanding than that. It asks whether the transition can be managed in ways that are credible, humane, and operationally real. Its best moments come when abstract language gives way to plain consequences: a bill, a customer call, a regulatory process, a small business left out of a deal. For listeners trying to understand energy equity beyond slogans, Just Power offers a calm, detailed account of the systems that decide whether clean energy is actually accessible.
Made for: For listeners who care about energy affordability, utility regulation, public policy, and the human side of the clean-energy transition. It suits people who want substance without insider fog.
What sets it apart: Just Power keeps technical energy conversations tied to bills, service, fairness, and decision-making power. Its strength is showing how policy becomes lived experience through specific regulatory and utility choices.
The Just Power Podcast is about making clean, affordable and reliable energy accessible to everyone. Created and hosted by Carolyn Parrs, CEO of Mind Over Markets, it features energy experts, policymakers, Tribal voices, and community champions who are working hard to make energy equity a reality in our energy transition.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Just Power traces energy affordability from regulatory decisions to the utility practices that determine what customers actually experience.
Just Power keeps asking how energy affordability moves from a stated priority into utility practice. In interviews led by Carolyn Pars, the conversation follows decisions through rate cases, customer programs and regulatory proceedings, with guests drawn from utilities, advocacy…
This is where your power bill meets the billion-dollar room deciding who pays.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Energy affordability is shown through pilots, partnerships, and practical delivery.
Just Power treats energy affordability as a systems question, with Carolyn Pars and Mina Byers weighing what credibility looks like when policy, utility work, health care, and housing have to move together.
A utility episode that treats empathy as something to build, train, and measure.
The episode treats energy affordability as a people-and-process problem, tracing Utibe Bassey from Lagos, Nigeria, where power was not reliable, to her work as vice president of customer experience at Dominion Energy.
Utility affordability is presented as a strategic issue, with a practical look at the tools utilities are using to respond.
Just Power treats utility affordability as a strategic question, not only a customer-service one. It shows how lower bills can shape spending on new power plants and grid infrastructure, while also tracing the issue through rate cases, regulatory proceedings, and boardrooms.
Colorado's grid transition is measured here by what shows up on a bill.
Just Power frames Colorado's Public Utilities Commission as the point where energy affordability meets the grind of building a cleaner grid. Carolyn Pars speaks with Eric Blank, chair of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, about how billion-dollar investments get…
A practical review of energy assistance, public leadership, and the limits of crisis-first policy.
The third installment of Just Power's Leading Through Energy Affordability series frames energy affordability as a public leadership issue, rooted in the reality that one in three Americans struggles to pay for everyday energy needs.
David Roberts interviews energy and policy experts on grids, solar, geothermal, and climate law.
The episode opens with energy affordability.
Carolyn Pars opens by asking what it would take to operationalize empathy in energy affordability.
Carolyn Pars welcomes back Ben Nathan, director of affordability and equity at eSource.
Carolyn Pars opens by making the case that average residential rates need to stay as low as possible, even as environmental goals remain in place.
Just Power host Carolyn Pars closes her Leading Through Energy Affordability series with Columbia University associate professor Dr.