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As energy demand reaches historic levels, the utility industry needs to build a 21st-century grid while also keeping monthly bills affordable for the average family. What does it mean to do so on a practical level?

To find out, we connected with Exelon EVP and COO Mike Innocenzo. Drawing on a career that began as a field engineer, he explains why affordability has become the starting point for every conversation at Exelon. He shares how the company navigates the massive costs of data center integration and EV adoption while overseeing a $38 billion capital plan. We also explore the reality of hardening the grid, the regulatory innovations needed to streamline costs, how Exelon uses AI to protect their customer’s bottom line and much more.

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

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Monika Gerhart, executive director at Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, who is championing clean energy benefits and opportunities in a region well known for its fossil fuel legacy. Monika orchestrated an event last week where various businesses and trade associations held panels on several topics, one of which being how to handle energy demand for huge data centers. Erin Greeson made this nomination, and she noted to never underestimate Louisianians. Congratulations Monika! 

This Week in Cleantech — February 6, 2026 

1. China’s Solar Power Capacity on Course to Surpass Coal This Year — Bloomberg
2. Google Is Spending Big to Build a Lead in the AI Energy Race – WSJ
3. Texas’ Grid Holds Up During Winter Weather — Inside Climate News
4. Surge in public charging infrastructure defies EV slowdown — Axios
5. The Super Safe, Super Expensive Nuclear Fuel That’s Making a Comeback — Heatmap News

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Jon Chesto from The Boston Globe, who wrote about new questions about how dependable Canadian hydropower will be during severe winter storms.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Andrew Beebe, Managing Director at Obvious Ventures. This week, the company announced Fund 5, which closed at $360,360,360. Congratulations, Andrew!

This Week in Cleantech — January 30, 2026 

1. EVs just outsold gas cars in Europe for the first time — Fast Company
2. Power Outages Could Rise as Freezing Temperatures Persist After Winter Storm — The New York Times
3. Michigan attorney general sues oil industry over allegations of collusion against electric vehicles and renewable energy — POLITICO
4. US Exits Paris Agreement: What Trump’s Withdrawal Means for Climate Change — Bloomberg
5. New power line provided little juice to New England during Sunday’s storm, frigid temperatures — The Boston Globe

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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The scale of energy demand in Northern California has reached a historic inflection point. With a 10 GW pipeline of data center demand—enough load to power more than 7.5 million homes—utility planners at Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) are navigating a high-stakes race against time, infrastructure limits, and the laws of physics.

To better understand how PG&E is turning these challenges into opportunities, we connected with two people who are doing exactly that for the company every single day. Austin Hastings is Vice President, Gas Engineering at PG&E while Mike Medeiros is Vice President, Strategic Commercial Solutions at PG&E.

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Maxine Joselow from the New York Times, who wrote about the EPA's decision to stop assigning a dollar value to lives saved in cost-benefit analyses for major air pollution rules.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is funeral director Eric Chamberlain, who helped bring wind power to Rock Port, Missouri, making it one of the first US towns to generate more wind electricity than it used. Nearly two decades later, the wind project is still delivering lasting local benefits through jobs, landowner payments and major county tax revenue. Congratulations, Eric!

This Week in Cleantech — January 23, 2026 

1. Supreme Court will not hear Duke Energy’s appeal in anti-monopoly case — The Carolina Journal
2. Soaring Electricity Costs Are Now a Hot Political Issue — The Wall Street Journal
3. Trump Is Obsessed With Oil, but Chinese Batteries Will Soon Run the World — The New York Times
4. Solar Projects Face Turmoil Under Trump, but Big Business Is Still Banking on Them — The Wall Street Journal
5. What’s a Human Life Worth? The E.P.A. Says Zero Dollars. — The New York Times

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Nico Rivero from the Washington Post, who wrote about how the rapid growth of grid-scale batteries in the U.S. is likely to pause in 2026.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Darian Nagle-Gamm, Iowa City’s transportation director, who is also the program owner for the city’s fare-free bus system. Ridership eventually grew to 118% of prepandemic levels. Carbon pollution dropped by about 778 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, roughly the equivalent of taking 167 vehicles off the roads. Congratulations, Darian!

This Week in Cleantech — January 16, 2026 

1. Scoop: Local Pushback, Canceled Data Centers Surged in 2025 — Heatmap News
2. US judge lets Denmark's Orsted resume Rhode Island offshore wind project that Trump halted — Reuters
3. New York Tells Data Centers They Must Pay More for Power — Bloomberg
4. Big Tech is poaching energy talent to fuel its AI ambitions — CNBC
5. The American battery boom is on shaky ground — The Washington Post

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As the Senior Vice President of Products & Services and Pricing Solutions at Duke Energy, Meghan Dewey oversees a portfolio that generates over $1.5 billion in annual revenue. But for her, the true metric of success isn't about spreadsheets or numbers but is instead about empowering the people on both sides of a utility bill.

Meghan sits at the intersection of massive corporate scale and human-centric innovation. From the Emerging Technology Office and customer prototype labs to large-scale transportation electrification, her team is essentially designing a blueprint for how utilities can operate in the short and long term. She’s the engine behind how Duke Energy scales high-value solutions while also prioritizing customer experience in a way that resonates.

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Ivan Penn from The New York Times, who wrote about surging optimism for nuclear power in the U.S.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Mariangela Hungria, a Brazilian agronomist and microbiologist who won the 2025 World Food Prize for her work on microbes that feed plants nitrogen, allowing farmers to cut fertilizer costs and pollution. 

This Week in Cleantech — January 9, 2026 

1. Trump administration halts offshore wind projects from Virginia to New England, in major blow to clean power — POLITICO
2. The 4 Things Standing Between the U.S. and Venezuela’s Oil — Heatmap News
3. The Positive Climate News You May Have Missed This Year — Bloomberg
4. China’s BYD overtakes Tesla as world’s top EV seller for first time — CNBC
5. Optimism About Nuclear Energy Is Rising Again. Will It Last? — New York Times

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Dana Clare Redden from our “Cleantecher of the Year” committee, who announced our “Cleantechers of the Year.”

This Week in Cleantech — December 19, 2025 

1. Electricity Is Now Holding Back Growth Across the Global Economy — Bloomberg
2. Ford pulls the plug on the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck – NPR
3. There’s a New Color for Hydrogen: Orange – Heatmap News
4. Trump moves to dismantle major US climate research center in Colorado – USA Today
5. How the planet fared in 2025 — the good, the bad, and the ugly — Grist

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Transforming the grid to meet skyrocketing energy demand isn't just about switching generation sources but is instead about fundamentally redesigning the entire energy market. It's going to require unlocking the true potential of every Distributed Energy Resources (DER) that we have, and integrating them seamlessly into a complex, resilient system. 

That’s easy to say but exceptionally complicated to do logistically and in a way that makes sense for a given market, which is why we wanted to talk with someone who isn’t just supporting this transformation, but is also actively working with utilities to better understand what’s happening at the grid edge to make informed decisions. Jo-Jo Hubbard is the Co-founder and CEO of Electron, which helps network utilities and grid operators adopt and scale flexibility markets to manage grid congestion, improve connection rates, and lower bills. Among other things, we discuss:

• Why utilities need to shift from a static view of the distribution grid to a real-time, dynamic model
• How smart coordination of DERs creates a resilient and efficient grid
• What it means to make DER orchestration simpler and more compelling to utilities
• How tiny efficiencies can lead to billions in savings at scale.
• The single biggest lesson learned that utilities need to have top of mind when designing their own DER aggregation and dispatch programs

Want to make a suggestion for an upcoming episode? Get in touch to let us know what people, projects and technology you’d like to see us to further explore. 

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