Factor This

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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.

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

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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 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

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

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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 Ari Natter from Bloomberg, who wrote about how the Trump administration plans to repurpose Biden’s $400 billion green bank to fund loans for nuclear, geothermal, and critical mineral projects

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Mayor Mondale Robinson of Enfield, North Carolina. He led a plan to build a solar farm, resilience hub, and weatherization center in Enfield, cutting $650 monthly energy bills, replacing crumbling grid infrastructure, and using clean energy to bring jobs and economic independence to a historically Black, underserved rural community.

This Week in Cleantech — June 6, 2025

1. The Supreme Court Just Started a Permitting Revolution — Heatmap
2. U.S. Oil Companies Are ‘Battening Down the Hatches’ — The New York Times
3. Why Wind And Solar Make Grids More Vulnerable to Blackouts — The Wall Street Journal
4. Chinese battery glut plugs into solar boom to power Pakistan — The Financial Times
5. Trump Plans to Tap Biden’s Green Bank to Make Billions in Loans — Bloomberg

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

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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 Kathiann Kowalski from Canary Media who wrote about how Ohio’s House Bill 1 is seen as a win by the solar industry.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Adam Hall, who had his 8th grade students give him a “Solar Mohawk” at their Viva el Drágon festival. Students at the festival demonstrated the power of the sun with student-built solar models. Congratulations, Adam!

This Week in Cleantech — May 30, 2025

1. BYD beats Tesla in European EV sales despite EU tariffs in 'watershed moment,' report says — CNBC
2. Trump Tariffs Blocked by U.S. Court of International Trade — The New York Times
3. Trump policy kick-starts nuclear test reactors in the U.S. — Axios
4. Fate of $20 Billion US Home Solar Market Lies in GOP Senate Hands — Bloomberg
5. Why the solar industry is counting Ohio’s newest energy law as a win — Canary Media

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

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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 Jack Ewing from The New York Times, who wrote about how Massachusetts start-up Factorial Energy, led by Siyu Huang, has successfully tested its solid-state battery in a Mercedes-Benz EQS sedan

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Carlo Angeles, of the Biodiversity Credit Alliance who posted about how defaunation is breaking our forests. He shared that there is a 68% decrease in forest regeneration when key dispersers are gone, along with other information that we’ll include in our episode writeup. Congratulations, Carlo!

This Week in Cleantech — May 22, 2025 

1. Tax bill passed by House Republicans would gut Biden-era clean energy tax credits –– AP News
2. Swiss Clean-Energy Startup Produces Diesel From Solar Power –– The Wall Street Journal
3. Trump orders the government to stop enforcing rules he doesn’t like –– The Washington Post
4. Renewable Energy Is Booming in Texas. Republicans Want to Change That. –– The New York Times
5. A Decade-Long Search for a Battery That Can End the Gasoline Era –– The New York Times

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

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 Nico Rivero from The Washington Post, who wrote about how some startups are are reviving zeppelins as a low-emissions option for cargo and tourism.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is one of our previous ‘This Week in Cleantech’ guests, Michael Thomas, founder at Cleanview and Distilled. He analyzed Cleanview data showing that 78% of post-IRA clean energy projects—and $100 billion in investment—benefit Republican districts, warning that repealing the IRA would hurt those communities most. Congratulations, Michael!

This Week in Cleantech — May 16, 2025 

1. US House targets big climate, clean energy rollbacks in budget proposal — Reuters
2. How Donald Trump blew the offshore wind industry off course — The Verge
3. How this coal company could help break U.S. dependence on China for rare earths — CNBC
4. Energy prices push chemicals groups to explore exit from Europe — The Financial Times
5. Why these start-ups think zeppelins could be the future of air travel — The Washington Post

Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing  [email protected]

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