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Select Quotes From This Episode:
“Energy regulation is boring to most people, even though energy regulation is under so much strain right now from the rise in demand.” – Hudson
“The energy industry is the only major sector of our economy where the regulator is still sitting on PDF documents and not using data.” – Hudson
“Because we have to build the grid so fast, the amount of paperwork, the amount of compliance is going to skyrocket.” – Hudson
“We’re going to see AI agents that are able to do the work of a regulatory lawyer or a regulatory accountant.” – Hudson
“I realized that if we were going to modernize the government, we had to change the law. So I went back to Capitol Hill... to rewrite the laws of financial regulation.” – Hudson
Why Energy Innovation Dies in PDF Files
We talk a lot about “building the grid,” but we rarely talk about the mountain of paperwork required to approve it.
For decades, the interaction between Utilities (the Regulated) and Public Service Commissions (the Regulators) has been stuck in the dark ages: millions of pages of PDFs, searched manually with “Control-F.” This inefficiency isn’t just annoying; it’s a bottleneck for the entire energy transition.
Hudson Hollister—Founder and CEO of HData—is changing that.
A former SEC attorney and Capitol Hill counsel, Hudson actually wrote the federal laws mandating open data before leaving the government to build the tool that helps the industry use it. HData is now the platform digitizing the regulatory lifecycle, using AI to turn static documents into actionable intelligence for utilities and regulators alike.
In this episode, we dive into the “natural monopoly” of utilities, the fundamental conflict of Rate Cases, and why AI agents will soon be doing the work of regulatory lawyers.
Hudson also opens up about a brutal “dark night of the soul” in 2022, where the company had 60 days of cash left, and the providential meeting that turned it all around.
If you want to understand the unsexy but absolutely critical “paperwork layer” of CleanTech, this episode is a masterclass.
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📝 Show Notes:
Topics
Here are some key timestamps from the episode:
00:00 – Intro: Why energy regulation is the “unsexy” bottleneck of the transition.
03:11 – Hudson’s Background: From SEC Attorney to rewriting federal data laws.
05:55 – What HData Does: The platform for rate cases, compliance, and wildfire plans.
06:40 – The Natural Monopoly: Explaining the “Regulator vs. Regulated” conflict.
10:13 – The Rate Case Process: How utilities get paid (and why it takes so much paper).
14:00 – The ROI of AI: Moving from “Control-F” to vertical AI agents.
22:20 – The Urgency: Why grid modernization creates a compliance explosion.
35:00 – Hyperscalers & AI: How data center demand is changing the regulatory game.
46:18 – The Future of Work: Will AI replace regulatory lawyers?
48:00 – Founder Story: The 2022 cash crisis and the “Dark Night of the Soul.”
53:00 – Hiring Framework: The 3 motivations Hudson looks for in talent.
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