GLOW Strategies

Our co-founders Cristina Talacko and Jeffrey Donovan are already making waves on the Pacific coast. Just days into their work on the ground in #California, Cris and Jeff are helping to re-open one of the state’s most consequential #energy debates. After convening state political leaders, policymakers, industry heads, and advocates to examine the 1976 moratorium on new nuclear construction, their op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle argues for a pragmatic shift toward energy affordability, system reliability and resilience, and clean firm capacity. #Deployability isn’t theory. It’s action.

This week’s California launch dinner marked a milestone and clarified what GLOW is building: a deployability platform for critical infrastructure. Diagnosis. Resolution. Execution. Thank you to everyone who joined the conversation.

Last week in Napa, GLOW Strategies convened a conversation that would have been unthinkable in #California not long ago: a serious, cross-sector discussion about whether the state should reconsider its 1976 ban on new #nuclear construction. In a room that brought together state legislators, mayors, labor leaders, utilities, investors, and industry, the tone was pragmatic and forward-looking. Not ideological. Not performative. Focused on systems, trade-offs, and execution. For GLOW, this moment mattered. A month after our launch, we found ourselves at the center of a defining debate for the world’s fourth-largest economy. The challenge California faces is not unique. As electricity demand accelerates from AI, data centers, advanced manufacturing, desalination, and electrification, ambition is colliding with deployability. That is where we work. GLOW helps beneficial critical infrastructure across energy, resources, and technology move from ambition to reality by diagnosing and resolving deployability risk: policy, capital, institutional, social, and system-level constraints that determine whether projects actually get built. The conversation in Napa reflected that mission: - Energy realism over slogans - System costs over single-project metrics - Private capital and implementation pathways over abstraction For co-founder Jeffrey Donovan, it marked a return to his home state after years working globally on nuclear energy and system resilience. For co-founder Cristina Talacko, it brought clear parallels from Australia’s own struggles with affordability, reliability, and political hesitation—lessons learned the hard way. Our thanks to California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy (CFEE) for hosting, to our featured speaker Charles Oppenheimer for his many insights, and to everyone who stayed in the room, asked hard questions, and treated the issue with the seriousness it deserves. This was not about advocating one technology. It was about whether California, and other advanced economies, are willing to modernize energy frameworks written for a different era, using the knowledge we have now. At GLOW, we believe that the future belongs to systems that work. And we’re here to help build them.

🔋GLOW Strategies is proud to announce our partnership with Jindalee Energy, as they build a platform focused on one of the central challenges of Australia’s energy transition: how to firm the #grid as thermal capacity exits and volatility rises. As #coal retires and variable #renewables dominate new build, Australia’s power system increasingly depends on dispatchable storage and flexible peaking generation to maintain reliability, manage price volatility, and keep the lights on during periods of system stress. Jindalee’s growing pipeline — including five #BESS sites in southern NSW, alongside expansion into #gas and #geothermal — is directly positioned to address this gap, unlocking value from firming, capacity, and #energysecurity in one of the world’s most ambitious decarbonisation markets. As part of our collaboration, GLOW Strategies will support Jindalee with: • strategic positioning as an institutional-grade platform • capital narrative, risk translation, and investor preparation • disciplined engagement with global capital partners Huge thanks to Ben Loiterton and George Loiterton for their trust — we’re looking forward to building something durable and investable together. #energystorage #BESS #gridfirming #energysecurity #Australia #energytransition #infrastructure #projectdevelopment #GLOWStrategies #JindaleeEnergy

At GLOW, we don’t start with #StakeholderEngagement as a #communications exercise. We start by asking whether a project is actually designed to survive reality. Many high-stakes infrastructure projects follow best practice. Engagement is serious. Process is clean. Support is visible. And still, they stall quietly. We’ve tracked three offshore energy projects over the last 18 months that followed this pattern. All had political backing. All cleared permitting hurdles. All followed accepted engagement practices. All were ultimately cancelled or restructured. What failed wasn’t engagement. It was the risk structure. The common thread: power prices were fixed early, while construction costs remained exposed — to inflation, rising interest rates, vessel scarcity, and supply-chain pressure. Most of that risk sat with developers. When costs rose and financing conditions tightened, there was no mechanism to rebalance risk across the system. Financing assumptions broke long before any public decision was made. Institutional confidence drained away upstream. Engagement manages legitimacy. Alignment determines survivability. That’s where we work — upstream, before commitments harden — aligning narrative, capital, regulation, and delivery so projects don’t break when macro conditions move. That’s the difference between being approved and being built.

Transparency and engagement matter. But on their own, they rarely prevent major infrastructure projects from stalling. Well before public hearings or community meetings, many high-stakes projects begin to bog down in rooms most people never see. An investment committee asks for one more scenario. A regulator wants comfort on a dependency that didn’t matter six months ago. An insurer quietly widens exclusions because timelines feel less certain. On its own, none of this is fatal Taken together, it changes the feel of the project. Decisions get deferred. Conditions pile up. Everyone is waiting for something to resolve, but it’s not clear what that something is. From the outside, it can look like the project has “hit opposition.” Inside, it feels more like the story no longer holds together. That’s why transparency alone doesn’t fix it. By the time friction shows up publicly, the real problem has often been sitting quietly in the sequencing of decisions and risk. Across nuclear, mining, data centers, and other high-stakes infrastructure projects, momentum is increasingly decided here -- long before anything fails outright, and long before opposition ever becomes visible. Which means the real leverage sits upstream of controversy: how projects are framed, sequenced, and explained long before they reach the public eye. #infrastructure #nuclear #mining #datacenters #energy #capital #projects

🎄 How 2025 quietly reshaped energy — a year-end reflection In 2025, #energy changed through decisions; not announcements. As we close the year, we’re grateful for the conversations that helped launch GLOW Strategies. Many of the most important shifts happened quietly — but with lasting consequence. ⚛️ #Nuclear moved from ideology to infrastructure: #Japan advanced restarts and life extensions. #France accelerated new build. #EasternEurope deepened partnerships. The #MiddleEast treated nuclear as national infrastructure. The pattern is clear: nuclear is now #strategic, #sovereign capability. ☀️ #Renewables scaled — and exposed system limits: #Solar and #wind kept expanding, reducing #emissions and #costs. But higher penetration revealed congestion, curtailment, storage gaps and volatility. #Renewables don’t replace systems — they reshape them. 🔥 #Gas returned as critical flexibility: Despite political discomfort, gas underpinned reliability, backed renewables and supported #security. The debate shifted from whether it’s needed to how it is managed. ⛏️ #Criticalminerals became the true bottleneck: #Lithium, #copper, #nickel, #uranium and #rareearths became national priorities. The challenge wasn’t #geology — it was permitting, processing, #trust and #geopolitics. 🖥️ #Datacentres forced an energy reality check: As #AI and cloud scaled, the constraint wasn’t capital or compute. It was #electricity, energy and digital strategy converged around one need: firm, 24/7 power at scale. 🛡️ #Energysecurity moved to the centre: Reliability, domestic capability and geopolitical exposure increasingly shaped decisions — from life extensions to reserves, #gas supply and #grid hardening. 🔗 The core challenge: integration, not replacement We’re not swapping one system for another. We’re integrating many at once — renewables with firm power, minerals with manufacturing, data centres with grids. 🔮 Looking to 2026 Strategy will shift from “transition” to system expansion and integration: • #Nuclear as foundational infrastructure • #Gas as essential flexibility • #Criticalminerals as sovereign assets The winners won’t ask “what replaces what?” but “how does this integrate?” ✨ Why this shaped GLOW These dynamics shaped GLOW Strategies — focused on #energy, #criticalminerals, #datainfrastructure and #geopolitics, where decisions are complex and consequences real. Many organisations know what happened. Fewer understand why. Even fewer act early enough. That’s GLOW’s space. Thank you to everyone who engaged with us this year. If these themes resonate, we’d welcome the conversation in 2026. Wishing you a restful festive season and a wonderful New Year, Cristina & Jeff #EnergyIntegration #CriticalMinerals #NuclearEnergy #EnergyStrategy #Geopolitics

🎄 How 2025 quietly reshaped energy — a year-end reflection In 2025, #energy changed through decisions; not announcements. As we close the year, we’re grateful for the conversations that helped launch GLOW Strategies. Many of the most important shifts happened quietly — but with lasting consequence. ⚛️ #Nuclear moved from ideology to infrastructure: #Japan advanced restarts and life extensions. #France accelerated new build. #EasternEurope deepened partnerships. The #MiddleEast treated nuclear as national infrastructure. The pattern is clear: nuclear is now #strategic, #sovereign capability. ☀️ #Renewables scaled — and exposed system limits: #Solar and #wind kept expanding, reducing #emissions and #costs. But higher penetration revealed congestion, curtailment, storage gaps and volatility. #Renewables don’t replace systems — they reshape them. 🔥 #Gas returned as critical flexibility: Despite political discomfort, gas underpinned reliability, backed renewables and supported #security. The debate shifted from whether it’s needed to how it is managed. ⛏️ #Criticalminerals became the true bottleneck: #Lithium, #copper, #nickel, #uranium and #rareearths became national priorities. The challenge wasn’t #geology — it was permitting, processing, #trust and #geopolitics. 🖥️ #Datacentres forced an energy reality check: As #AI and cloud scaled, the constraint wasn’t capital or compute. It was #electricity, energy and digital strategy converged around one need: firm, 24/7 power at scale. 🛡️ #Energysecurity moved to the centre: Reliability, domestic capability and geopolitical exposure increasingly shaped decisions — from life extensions to reserves, #gas supply and #grid hardening. 🔗 The core challenge: integration, not replacement We’re not swapping one system for another. We’re integrating many at once — renewables with firm power, minerals with manufacturing, data centres with grids. 🔮 Looking to 2026 Strategy will shift from “transition” to system expansion and integration: • #Nuclear as foundational infrastructure • #Gas as essential flexibility • #Criticalminerals as sovereign assets The winners won’t ask “what replaces what?” but “how does this integrate?” ✨ Why this shaped GLOW These dynamics shaped GLOW Strategies — focused on #energy, #criticalminerals, #datainfrastructure and #geopolitics, where decisions are complex and consequences real. Many organisations know what happened. Fewer understand why. Even fewer act early enough. That’s GLOW’s space. Thank you to everyone who engaged with us this year. If these themes resonate, we’d welcome the conversation in 2026. Wishing you a restful festive season and a wonderful New Year, Cristina & Jeff #EnergyIntegration #CriticalMinerals #NuclearEnergy #EnergyStrategy #Geopolitics

Best wishes for a joyful festive season! We look forward to staying connected.

You can’t do #energyplanning in isolation. Choices about power sit directly alongside #landuse, #water availability, #foodsystems, and #climate resilience. When those connections are missed early, they tend to reappear later, often when conditions are less forgiving and options are fewer (and much more expensive). That’s the message running through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s newly updated handbook on the Climate–Land–Energy–Water (CLEW) framework. It feels especially relevant at this time of year, with the holidays upon us, when systems slow down and their interconnections become easier to see. A few points the CLEW work brings into focus: • Some low-carbon pathways reduce emissions but increase pressure on land or water • Water availability is becoming a real constraint on energy systems • Food systems are far more energy-dependent and exposed than often assumed • Climate change amplifies all these pressures at once The takeaway is straightforward. Challenges rarely arise because a technology doesn’t work. They arise because constraints weren’t anticipated early enough. When land or water impacts surface late, they don’t stay abstract. They show up as delays, pushback, regulatory friction, and loss of confidence. Frameworks like CLEW matter because they help surface those constraints sooner, while there’s still room to make choices and adjust course. At GLOW Strategies, this is precisely the space we focus on most: the gap between technical feasibility and real-world acceptance, where high-stakes projects often succeed or fail. As the year draws to a close, it’s a useful reminder: anticipating constraints isn’t about slowing things down. It’s about making better decisions, earlier. (Photo of the train bridge at Černošice-Mokropsy outside #Prague.) #EnergyTransition #Infrastructure #Climate #Water #LandUse #DecisionMaking #SocialLicense #NuclearEnergy #HappyHolidays