The conversation
Electricity has become a kitchen-table issue. What voters make of that will shape how fast the energy transition actually moves.
Rising utility bills, fast-growing electricity demand, and a strained grid have pushed energy out of the policy pages and into the politics of affordability. For founders and investors, that shift changes the calculus on everything from siting and permitting to which technologies find a durable market.
Governor JB Pritzker returns to Overture to read the political mood directly: what he is hearing from voters, how it maps onto the coalition that passed three major energy packages in Illinois in a decade, and what that suggests about where the national conversation is heading.
He is joined by Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor, who brings the wider frame. Energy policy now sits inside a contest over industrial capacity, supply chains, and American standing abroad, and that story still has to be told to a skeptical electorate.
What we’ll cover
Affordability as politics
Why the electricity bill has become the most politically potent number in energy, and what that does to the pace of deployment.
Illinois as a template
Three energy packages in ten years, from the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act to the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act. What held the coalition together.
Demand, and who pays for it
New load is arriving faster than the grid was built to carry it. How states are weighing growth against what ratepayers absorb.
The national frame
Energy as industrial policy and as foreign policy, and how that argument lands with voters who are not persuaded by climate framing alone.
What it means for founders
Where public policy still de-risks infrastructure, crowds in private capital, and shortens the path from pilot to deployment.
The road ahead
What the next election cycle changes, what it doesn’t, and which assumptions in energy investing are worth revisiting now.
Speakers
Request to attend
Requests are reviewed individually. Space is limited and senior investors are prioritized. The venue is shared with confirmed guests ahead of the event.