A conversation with Jeff Immelt '78 and K.R. Sridhar at the Irving Institute for Energy and Society
The moment feels urgent. Electricity demand is surging. Infrastructure is straining. And the policies designed to govern the energy system are struggling to keep pace with a world that is changing faster than anyone anticipated. But if you spend an evening with Jeff Immelt '78 and K.R. Sridhar, you leave not with dread, but with a sense that this is precisely the kind of moment that creates enormous opportunity for those bold enough to seize it.
That was the spirit animating a lively discussion at Dartmouth on April 30th, hosted by the Irving Institute for Energy and Society, the Tuck School of Business, and the Thayer School of Engineering—together representing the science, systems, and strategy the energy challenge demands. The conversation was moderated by Tuck Professor of Business Administration Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu.
The discussion brought together two experienced voices in American energy: Immelt, the former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, and Sridhar, the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Bloom Energy—a company he built over 25 years into a gigawatt-scale provider of distributed clean power.
Immelt didn't mince words about the moment we're in.
"What's happening today is a collision of radically increasing demand, driven by data centers and emerging markets," he said. "These forces are running up against really non-contemporary government policy. When rising demand meets policy that isn't prepared for where we are, then chaos takes place."
The numbers tell the story. To support the renewable energy buildout the grid requires, the U.S. would need roughly 100,000 miles of new transmission lines by 2035. The country is currently adding about 600 miles per year. Data centers—the physical infrastructure of the AI revolution—can take upward of twelve years to connect to new generation capacity. Some hyperscalers, like Meta, are already bypassing the traditional utility model entirely, building their own energy supply because waiting is not an option.
Sridhar put the core problem plainly: "Power. Timescales for power. Our infrastructure is orders of magnitude slower than AI. Chips, talent, everything can be done faster. So time to power, for the next several years, is the biggest challenge."
Immelt agreed: "We are fighting the battle of speed against a system that is set up to prevent speed."
Yet neither speaker suggested abandoning the energy system we have. Both focused on what comes next.
For Sridhar, the distributed energy future isn't a fallback—it's the destination. Drawing on a pattern he sees across the history of technology, he argued that every major platform eventually moves from centralized to decentralized.
"Every big technology started centralized and moved to the edge, closer to where activities are, to where people live," he said. "Clean is how humanity will go. Distributed clean power. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Chaos is a crisis, creating opportunity. The world is your oyster."
Bloom's technology, solid oxide fuel cells capable of delivering what Sridhar calls "six nines" of reliability (99.9999%), is designed for a world where digital infrastructure cannot afford to go dark. "We are the only solution designed for that future," he said. "Your grandchildren will need to go to a museum to see how life was without abundant always-on electricity. There better not be a power outage due to a weather event."
Immelt, who has spent thirty years investing in clean energy, sees the entry of large technology companies into energy procurement as a meaningful shift. "They have the balance sheets to do it. They will buy their way there. They will use their capital." And the effect, he and Sridhar agreed, will ripple through the broader industry, driving down cost curves and pulling new technologies to scale.
"The richest companies in the world are feeling the pain of not having enough power and are willing to take control of their own power," Sridhar said. "That is a blessing, because Google, Meta and Oracle will pay a reasonable premium to make sure that power is also clean. With that clear buying signal, innovative entrepreneurs will figure out great solutions for them. With that scale, the learning curve resulting in lower costs for clean power will come and result in cheaper and cleaner power for everyone."
One of the evening's more thought-provoking arguments concerned how we've been telling the story of the energy transition—and why that framing may be holding us back.
"The energy transition has historically been about climate change," Sridhar said. "That hasn't worked. It can include a pillar of climate change. It must include economics and security."
Immelt pointed to Europe as a cautionary tale. Policies like feed-in tariffs, designed to incentivize conservation and innovation, produced a very different result: stranded assets, shuttered nuclear plants, coal imports, and real energy hardship among ordinary citizens after the war in Ukraine disrupted supply. "I'm an AND guy," Immelt said. "Ten cents per kWh AND decarbonization."
Sridhar also refuses to accept false choices. "I don't accept choices. I want both. I want it to happen, and to happen fast."
Both speakers invoked John F. Kennedy's Moon speech—not just as inspiration, but as a model. Immelt called for making the working engineer the hero of the energy transition, the same role the engineer played in the space race. Sridhar took the metaphor further. For years, he noted, the math seemed to say that a chemical rocket could never reach escape velocity. Then someone asked a different question—and designed the multistage rocket.
The conversation turned personal when the audience asked what it takes to succeed in a sector as demanding as energy.
"It took a 25-year journey to reach 'overnight success,'" Sridhar said. His advice to aspiring entrepreneurs: ask the right foundational questions early. What is the theoretical low cost of this technology? How much time are you willing to invest to get there?
Immelt recalled telling Sridhar years ago: "You will be a hundred-billion-dollar company or a zero-dollar company." The binary nature of deep technology bets in energy is real, he acknowledged. But he pointed to a different reason why people stay through the hard years. When he asked Bloom employees why they had stayed, the answer was consistent: the mission.
Many of Bloom's employees have been with the company well over a decade. "It is the mission," Sridhar said. "When we recruit people, good is not good enough. We look for passion. Are you a team player? No one person can do what Bloom is doing."
Then he posed a question he said every student should ask themselves: "Are you someone for whom success is your criteria, or significance? The significance is sweeter than the success. Don't rewire yourself. Follow your nature. Success requires endurance. I am a long-distance runner. I don't think about the last steps. I think about the next steps."
Asked whether the United States is well positioned to win what both men described as a global race for energy and AI leadership, Sridhar was direct.
"Anyone in the modern world betting against the U.S. in technology is making a bad bet. I believe in the innovative space in this country. It takes a free world to innovate. Don't bet against America. Don't bet against Silicon Valley."
Immelt is similarly optimistic about the road ahead — and about Bloom specifically. "We have a window at Bloom to build a generational company," he said. "Right product, with a tailwind. At this point of inflection, we need to drive it home. This is our moment to build a company for the next century."
The evening also marked the launch of the Inaugural Teevens Center Leadership Fellowship, honoring the legacy of Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens, whose life's work centered on developing people, building strong cultures, and helping others pursue excellence. Jeff Immelt was recently named the Inaugural Teevens Center Leadership Fellow.