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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. It recently ranked 13th on Feedspot’s 50 Best Solar Energy Podcasts and cracked the top-25 in its 80 Best Energy Transition Podcasts.

This week’s episode features special guest Camila Domonoske from NPR, who wrote about how Ford plans to retool an assembly plant to build a more affordable midsize electric pickup truck.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Saad Dara, CEO of Mangrove Lithium. Last week he hosted British Columbia Premier David Eby and several Canadian officials visited their groundbreaking new plant, which will be the first electrochemical refining facility in North America. 

This Week in Cleantech — August 15, 2025 

1. Suddenly, the Trump Administration Tightens the Vise on Wind Farms – The New York Times
2. Plastic Waste Is Piling Up, but Alternative Materials Struggle to Get Off the Ground – The Wall Street Journal
3. U.S. Clean Tech Leadership at Risk Due to Trump Policies, Investors Warn – Newsweek
4. The lessons of Europe’s upside-down power market – Financial Times
5. Ford says it will roll out a cheaper electric pickup truck – NPR

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Agrivoltaics, or using land for both farming and solar energy generation, is becoming more popular in the United States. Such dual-use practices are a 'middle ground' between critics who argue too much prime farmland is being used for utility-scale solar projects and proponents, who point out significantly more real estate is dedicated to ethanol production. 

In many situations, it's an attractive proposition for land owners to lease a chunk of their property to a developer for 20-30 years, at which point, the plot is restored to its original state and can resume crop production. Each agrivoltaics project is a custom fit, requiring community engagement from the first planning stages. Accordingly, developers of dual-use projects must become fast friends with farmers, creating a symbiotic relationship that ensures each endeavor ends up a win-win.

On this episode of the Factor This podcast, host Paul Gerke is joined by three foremost agrivoltaics experts to share stories, discuss best practices, and pontificate on perfecting policy. Topics include establishing dual-use markets, detailing new pilots and innovations, recalling memorable interactions with landowners, and more.

Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing [email protected]

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week’s episode features special guest Dan Gearino from Inside Climate News, who wrote about how an Ohio utility has won a fight over who foots the costs of grid infrastructure upgrades from the buildout of data centers.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Russ Bates, Founder of NXTGEN Energy Solutions. Russ was asked to testify as an expert witness before the Georgia Public Service Commission. Georgia Power Company imposes size limits on solar-plus-storage and provides little meaningful access to community solar. Russ explained how these concerns are already addressed by inverter technology, export-limiting capabilities, and Georgia’s own interconnection review process. Now, the Commission has expanded access to clean energy across churches, schools and the like. They also put community solar on a clear path forward. 

This Week in Cleantech — July 25, 2025 

1. Trump administration taking new steps to block wind and solar projects, undisclosed memo says — POLITICO
2. With One Call, Trump Alters the Fate of a Contested Power Project — The New York Times
3. Wall St. Firms Are Buying Utilities to Tap Into the A.I. Boom — The New York Times
4. Lobbyists spent millions to save green energy. Wins were few. — E&E News
5. Consumers (and a Utility) Get a Win in Ohio, While Data Centers Take the Loss — Inside Climate News

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In the shadow of the ongoing federal dismantling of renewable energy policy, a growing number of states are exploring the benefits of community solar. On this episode of the Factor This podcast, Jorge Vargas, the co-founder and CEO of distributed generation platform Aspen Power, rallies behind his industry at a critical moment, detailing the importance of such projects amid unprecedented electric load growth.

Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing [email protected]

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week’s episode features special guest Sam Black, a filmmaker and journalist for More Perfect Union, who began investigating the early impacts of political uncertainty on clean energy sectors following Donald Trump's re-election. 

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Kevin Doffing, from Project Vanguard, who just shared a post on solar and farmland. He cites the 100 acres of land for ethanol = 1 acre of land for solar stat, then asks the questions: Do we want to keep burning food for fuel? Or use a fraction of that land to power our homes, cars, and grid? 

This Week in Cleantech — July 18, 2025

1. Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car — The New York Times
2. Supercharging Solar With Quantum Dots — The Wall Street Journal
3. Dems couldn’t save Biden’s energy programs — so they’ll try to make them a weapon against the GOP — POLITICO
4. 4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment — The New Yorker
5. He Voted For Trump. It Cost Him His Job – More Perfect Union

Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing [email protected]

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week’s episode features special guest Mark Gongloff from Bloomberg, who wrote about how Senate Republicans are proposing nearly $18 billion in new subsidies for fossil-fuel companies over the next decade.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Mark Jacobs, co-founder of EVmath. Mark led marketing for the DOE-funded EMPOWER Project which helps workplaces install EV chargers for their employees. 

This Week in Cleantech — July 11, 2025 

1. Trump’s crackdown on renewable energy has just begun — The Washington Post
2. The Permitting Crisis for Renewables — Heatmap News
3. How the Trump tax bill could help China win at A.I. — The Washington Post
4. America invents. Others deploy. — Latitude Media
5. The GOP Wants to Give Big Oil a Handout It Doesn’t Need — Bloomberg

Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing [email protected]

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week’s episode features special guest Maeve Allsup from Latitude Media, who wrote about how a a new startup allowed an Oracle data center using Nvidia GPUs to cut its power consumption 25% during hours of peak grid demand without sacrificing performance.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is JoeBen Bevirt, founder of Joby Aviation, a company developing electric air taxis for commercial passenger service. This week, its electric air taxi completed a series of piloted, vertical-takeoff-and-landing wingborne flights in Dubai. Congratulations, JoeBen! 

This Week in Cleantech — July 07, 2025 

1. Ford Forced to Idle Multiple US Plants on China Magnet Shortage – Bloomberg
2. China's Clean Energy Boom Could Win the Race to Power the Future – New York Times
3. Climate threat to U.S. infrastructure is accelerating. Here's what's most at risk – CNBC
4. Red States–And AI–Are Big Losers From Trump’s Clean Energy Massacre – Forbes
5. Nvidia and Oracle tapped this startup to flex a Phoenix data center – Latitude Media

Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing [email protected]

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week’s episode features special guest Michael Grunwald from the Atlantic, who wrote aobut how we won’t meet climate goals without fixing our food system.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Kakani Katija, creator of the gaming app FathomVerse. This summer, Katija’s team plans to test an AI underwater robot that will search for specific marine species and collect data. The goal is to deploy a fleet of underwater AI-enabled drones constantly monitoring marine animals to gain insight into the ocean’s impact on global climate.

This Week in Cleantech — June 27, 2025 

1. The U.S. Gave Up Its Lead in Clean Energy Sectors Before. It Might Be Doing It Again. — The Wall Street Journal
2. Blackouts, Brownouts, and Freaked-Out Grid Operators: The Summer of Load Has Arrived — Heatmap News
3. ‘Throwing us off a cliff’: Megabill could derail hundreds of planned clean energy projects — POLITICO
4. New York to Build One of First U.S. Nuclear-Power Plants in Generation — The Wall Street Journal
5. Humanity Can Quit Fossil Fuels—But Not Food — The Atlantic

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Since 2022, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a nonprofit, independent research and development group focused on the generation, delivery, and use of electricity, has been developing a framework to help utilities enhance the resilience of their infrastructure. The Climate READi initiative aims to strengthen the power sector’s collective approach to managing climate risk to power systems.

On this episode of the Factor This podcast, host Paul Gerke chats with EPRI's Laura Fischer and Andrea Staid about the ongoing initiative, a robust collaboration including insights from more than 40 electric companies, 100 academic, consulting, and finance institutions, as well as national labs, regulators, and government agencies.

Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing [email protected]

Tell us what you think of the show!

This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week’s episode features special guest Scott Waldman from E&E News, who wrote about how the Trump administration is "crippling" the government’s ability to research global warming.

This week's "Cleantechers of the Week" are the slain and wounded MN legislators, Rep. Melissa Hortman and Sen. John Hoffman. Rep. Hortman was the key legislative leader who shepherded Minnesota’s landmark climate and clean energy bill in 2023. With the passage of that legislation, Minnesota became the 22nd state in the nation to commit to 100% carbon-free electricity, requiring the state’s investor-owned utilities to be fully carbon-free by 2040.

This Week in Cleantech — June 23, 2025

1. The winners and losers of the Senate's take on the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' – Factor This!
2. The U.S. invested in EV battery plants. Now they may be stranded – The Washington Post
3. Energy Abundance Won’t Fix Electricity Bills – The Atlantic
4. What a pioneering project means for ocean carbon removal – Trellis
5. How Trump’s assault on science is blinding America to climate change – E&E News

Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing [email protected]