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Grid resilience isn’t a new concept, but the way utilities achieve it is changing dramatically. Traditionally, hardening the grid meant building bigger physical infrastructure. But as Switched Source CEO Charles Murray has outlined, meeting upcoming grid demands cost-effectively requires utilities to think differently and embrace new capabilities.

Heavy capital hardware upgrades are no longer a standalone fix. Today, grid resilience is all about operational agility and dynamic power-flow control to keep the power on. But what does doing so mean on a practical level? What happens when high-level operational intelligence is paired with real-time grid automation? How should utilities newly think about their resilience strategy? On the latest episode of the Factor This Podcast, we caught up with Murray to get answers to these questions 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 episode features special guest Jillian Goodman from Heatmap, who breaks down the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, a new permitting reform package meant to lower energy costs and make it easier to build infrastructure. 

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is James Worden, founder of Worden Marine. James has been building solar-powered vehicles since the 1980s, starting with a wood-and-cardboard solar go-kart that won the Massachusetts state science fair. He went on to help start MIT's Solar Electric Vehicle Team and co-founded Solectria with his late wife, Anita. Now he's taking that vision to the water. His startup's TruSolar20 boat, named Anita in her honor, can run all day on six solar panels at about eight miles an hour, and a bigger version built for ferries and river tours is on the way. Congratulations, James!

This Week in Cleantech — October 5, 2026 

1. Why Won’t the Clean Energy Industry Play Dirty? — Washington Monthly
2. Trump Sharply Scales Back Fuel Economy Rules for New Cars — The New York Times
3. Fix it or trash it? How to decide how long to keep your car and home appliances. — The Washington Post
4. Plug Power Inks Electrolyzer Deal for Denmark Jet Fuel Project — Bloomberg
5. The Senate’s Big Bipartisan Permitting Deal, Explained — Heatmap News

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We get excited about new technologies that have the capability to transform utility operations, which is easy to do because the value they can create is real. However, the irony is that these innovations are often the least important part of the effort to create that value. Real efficiencies, especially ones that can scale, are driven by people and processes. Unlocking the true value of any innovation requires an independent, vendor-agnostic strategy that cuts across technical, business, and regulatory domains.

And that’s exactly why Dash Power Partners was created.

Co-founded by Dr. Damir Novosel, who is also the CEO and a recognized pioneer in power grid reliability, Dash Power provides services and solutions for utilities, ISOs, developers, data centers, and more. The company pairs deep technical expertise with leadership from experienced executives like Chris Root, who brings over 45 years of utility sector leadership.

Dr. Novosel and Root will be bringing this expertise to DTECH Northeast in Boston this November, where they’ll lead the Strategic Alignment & Scalable Energy Solutions workshop that is designed to deliver actionable strategies rather than high-level theory. We connected with both and with Wayne Bishop, Executive Vice President of Energy at Clarion Events, for an in-depth interview to explore some of the grid modernization challenges that the energy sector is working through and how they’re specifically impacting the Northeast.

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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. On this episode, Clarion Events Content Director Jeremiah Karpowicz is filling in for Paul Gerke.

This week's episode features special guest David Fickling from Bloomberg, who discusses how the Bangladesh's garment industry is coping with the Iran war's disruption of the energy supply chain. 

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Dr. Joe Romm, a physicist and one of the most influential voices in the fight against climate change, who passed away unexpectedly this month. Joe served at the Department of Energy under President Clinton and turned his focus to climate after his brother lost his home in Hurricane Katrina. He founded the blog Climate Progress, which Time called the web's most influential climate-change blog, and he was chief science advisor for the Emmy-winning series Years of Living Dangerously. Rest in peace, Joe. 

This Week in Cleantech — September 25, 2026 

1. The New Clean Tech Meta and Google Are Turning to Power AI — Bloomberg
2. Senate inches closer to US infrastructure permitting reform bill — Reuters
3. Africa's cement boom signals next great shift in global energy use — Reuters
4. Iran war causes global pain at the pump — Axios
5. Your $30 Jeans Are Running Out of Cheap Power in Bangladesh — Bloomberg

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Utilities and grid operators face immense pressure to meet rising electricity demand, harden systems against extreme weather, upgrade and replace aging infrastructure, adapt to changing state and federal policies, and keep rates affordable. It's a juggling act, and with all of those balls in the air, the 'old-school' utility method of building more supply-side solutions just doesn't cut it anymore.

As a result, distributed energy resources (DERs), or customer-sited technologies, are moving beyond the margins of reliability planning to the center of attention. This episode of the Factor This Policycast, presented in partnership with national business association Advanced Energy United, explores how mostly behind-the-meter tools like batteries, smart thermostats, backup generators, microgrids, rooftop solar, and flexible load can be aggregated and operated as dependable grid assets.

Extending a conversation that began at DTECH Reliability & Resiliency 2026 in Chicago, Illinois, moderator Paul Gerke leads a discussion alongside Emma Heins, policy principal at Advanced Energy United, about what it takes to scale virtual power plants and other DER programs. The conversation, featuring Bart Jackson of Sunrun, ENERGYHUB's Maxwell Burke-Scoll, and Kahri Gerke at Alliant Energy, highlights practical lessons from states and utilities moving past pilots to full-scale implementation, focusing on how DERs can improve reliability, reduce peak demand, support resilience during emergencies, and lower customer costs. Also on the table: utility partnerships, market design, customer enrollment, dispatch performance, interconnection, data visibility, and compensation.

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As increasing energy demand and affordability challenges reshape the electric grid, bridging the gap between academic research and real-world utility execution has never been more important. What works in the lab doesn’t always translate in the field, but at the same time, developments like rapid electrification and inverter based resources have pushed the grid passed the limits of legacy modeling. It’s why utilities rely on universities and national labs to deliver the field-ready tools, training frameworks, and specialized insights needed to modernize the grid.

That process is something that Dr. Leo Jiang, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Center for Electric Power Systems Research at Clarkson University, will be exploring in detail at DTECH Northeast during the Standardizing Power Quality Modeling for DER Grid Compatibility at Scale session. We caught up with him for the latest episode of the Factor This Podcast to get a sense of how utilities can leverage university research to modernize legacy assets, what it means to refine dynamic modeling, how to cultivate the technical talent needed for a resilient grid 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 episode features special guest Jake Spring from The Washington Post, who discusses the EPA's move to repeal Biden-era limits on carbon pollution from power plants.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Dulcie Madden, co-founder and CEO of Dig Energy. Her small startup spent five years developing its technology in a New Hampshire barn, and this month it completed its first commercial job, drilling a set of geothermal wells for a Boston office building using a high-pressure water jet that cut water use by 90%. The approach could cut geothermal drilling costs by up to 80%, and the company's already booked with jobs into mid-2027. Congratulations Dulcie!

This Week in Cleantech — September 18, 2026 

1. A solar industrial complex is turning Republicans into believers — POLITICO
2. Tech giants launch flexible-power coalition for data centers — Axios
3. Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here — The Wall Street Journal
4. There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution for the energy transition — The Financial Times
5. Trump’s EPA is ending one of the nation’s biggest climate protections — The Washington Post

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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 Tim McDonnell of Semafor, who discusses how solar has overtaken coal as China's top power source for the first time, after a massive build-up. 

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Kofi Asante, founder and CEO of Bluecore Energy. Just two months after launching out of stealth, Asante's startup closed an oversubscribed $50 million seed round this week to build small nuclear reactors mounted on floating barges, generating clean power for ports and nearby infrastructure without needing a fixed site. 

This Week in Cleantech — September 11, 2026 

1. Massachusetts Will Require New Data Centers to Use Clean Energy — Bloomberg
2. Carbon Capture Won’t Save Us Anytime Soon — The New Republic
3. Why California Is Reconsidering Its Decision to Shun Nuclear Power — The New York Times
4. China’s cleantech exports are widening the “energy dominance” gap — Latitude Media
5. China's solar beats coal — Semafor

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In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a final permitting reform rule to streamline the authorization process for large electric transmission projects without sacrificing environmental reviews. The Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits (CITAP) program uses the Federal Power Act to establish the DOE as a coordinating entity between federal agencies and the state and local stakeholders responsible for permitting decisions needed to site transmission lines. CITAP sets a binding two-year schedule for a process that has historically taken four years or longer. It also requires developers to submit a comprehensive public participation plan to ensure that communities and key stakeholders are included in the permitting process.

By acting as the lead agency, DOE aims to reduce duplication of effort that would otherwise be expended across several distinct agencies, processes, and procedures. Ultimately, by enabling faster buildout of new electric transmission infrastructure, CITAP promises to increase access to a diversity of energy sources, reduce transmission congestion and energy prices, and deliver reliable, affordable power to consumers when and where they need it. 

More than two years have passed since the final rule was issued- so where is the first wave of streamlined transmission projects?

This episode of the Factor This Policycast, the latest in a series presented in partnership with national business association Advanced Energy United, explores that question. Hosted by Factor This content director Paul Gerke, the podcast features Advanced Energy United managing director Dylan Reed and Ashley Kang, senior director of external affairs and communications for transmission developer Grid United. They dive into the details of the CITAP program and share why community engagement plays a critical role. The group discusses the value of grid-to-grid projects and gets into why they're so tricky to build. They also highlight the early fruits of the feds' efforts, including the North Plains Connector project, which just broke a record for the fastest turnaround on an environmental impact statement.

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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 Evan Halper from The Washington Post, who breaks down new drama surrounding the Trump administration's settlement requiring RWE to abandon offshore wind leases in exchange for $1.2 billion.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Emily McAteer, co-founder and CEO of Odyssey Energy Solutions, which just closed $74 million to scale a platform that connects more than 6,000 solar installers and EPCs across 50-plus countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America with financing and bulk equipment procurement. The company's already facilitated $3.6 billion in capital and unlocked 1.5 gigawatts of distributed solar projects, with activity in India up 205% over the past year.

This Week in Cleantech — September 4, 2026

1. Meet the super PAC working to crush clean energy's political foes — Canary Media
2. Data Center Backlash Reaches the Ballot Box — Data Center Knowledge
3. Is electricity dimming oil’s political power? — POLITICO
4. Fervo bets big on geothermal energy — CNBC
5. $900 million from a canceled wind deal will benefit a Trump donor — The Washington Post

Energy policy on your mind? Check out all episodes of the Factor This Policycast