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The U.S. transmission grid needs a facelift and a little reconstructive surgery. Efforts are underway to construct new long-distance high-voltage lines, but construction takes time, prompting states to explore additional ways to quickly meet growing electricity demand.

The low-hanging fruit? Getting more out of the system we've already got. 

Readily available, affordable, and quick-to-deploy advanced transmission technologies (ATTs), including grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) and advanced conductors, are proven tools for quickly increasing the capabilities and capacities of transmission lines and could complement transmission build-out while saving consumers money and bolstering grid reliability. By one estimate, GETs could have saved consumers $8.3 billion in 2022 alone, had they been more widely used. Yet these technologies remain largely untapped in America today, in part due to outdated electricity business models and state public policy. 

But modern problems (like the aforementioned load growth) require modern solutions, and there's been a recent uptick in support for ATTs across the country, with bipartisan interest in policies that ensure ATTs are being considered, including at the federal level.

On this edition of the Factor This Policycast, presented in partnership with Advanced Energy United, host Paul Gerke is joined by Theodore Paradise, chief policy & grid strategy officer at CTC Global, Brian Berry, chief product officer at Heimdall Power, and Leah Rubin Shen, managing director at Advanced Energy United, to explore everything ATTs, including: 

• Real-life use cases and problems ATTs can solve
• How lawmakers are crafting legislation to ensure utilities consider ATTs
• Updates on efforts in states considering bills encouraging their adoption
• Policy and implementation barriers to deployment
• What FERC can do to help

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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 Alexa St. John from The Associated Press, who discusses how automakers are increasingly turning their EVs and hybrids into home backup power sources as EV sales growth slows.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver. The nonprofit just started selling zero-markup, plug-in balcony solar kits, starting at about $300, with shipping to 47 states kicking off in August. Cora said that nonprofits are often willing to stomach financial losses in the near term, because its mission is to get solar into the hands of more people, so they can lower their energy bills and carbon pollution. Congratulations, Cora!

This Week in Cleantech — July 24, 2026 

1. Data Center Troubles Stoke Industry’s Fear of Coming Distress — Bloomberg
2. Why States Are Making It Harder to Save Money With Solar Panels — The New York Times
3. The Key to Solar and Wind Power Is Battery Storage, and China Is Dominating — The Wall Street Journal
4. State legislatures are getting better at clean-energy permitting policy — Canary Media
5. Need backup power? Automakers want you to look no further than their vehicles in your driveway — Associated Press

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 Lana Ferguson from the Dallas Morning News, who discusses the booming agrivoltaics industry in Texas.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Joey Fiore, CEO of PowerLabs. His company builds the Roav, a portable solar generator that unfolds into a tracking solar array that looks like a metal trailer you’d pull behind a car. It is cleaner, cheaper and easier to use than a standard diesel generator. Congratulations Joey!

This Week in Cleantech — July 17, 2026 

1. New York becomes first US state to impose data center moratorium — Data Center Dynamics
2. The American E.V. Has Been Crushed. Will It Take the U.S. Auto Industry With It? — The New York Times
3. US power companies scramble to secure equipment as surging data center demand strains supplies — Reuters
4. Global Investment in Fusion Companies Surges 69% to $4.5 Billion — Bloomberg
5. Solar sheep: Texas ranchers, farmers' new opportunity on solar sites – Dallas Morning 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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July 4, 2026, marked one year since the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) was signed into law and a critical safe harbor deadline for clean energy developers in the United States. The legislation, which sunsets federal tax credit eligibility for some technologies such as wind and solar photovoltaics, spurred stakeholders to scramble to maximize legacy incentives before Independence Day. Now that the fireworks have passed, what happens next?

This episode of the Factor This Policycast, presented in partnership with Advanced Energy United, discusses how clean energy projects are being constructed and financed in the second half of 2026 and beyond. It will address the challenges of a post-tax-credit world, share the incentives still available, and explore how policy reforms at the state and federal levels could accelerate deployment. Could federal clean energy credits someday return? 

Featuring guests:

Dylan Reed, Managing Director at Advanced Energy United, former GDO at DOE

Walter L. McLeod, Partner, Managing Director of Monarch Strategic Ventures at Monarch Private Capital

Bryan Didier, Partner, Managing Director, Energy at Monarch Private Capital

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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 Martha Muir from The Financial Times, who discusses how the cost of clean energy power purchase agreements is set to rise 40 to 120 percent as Inflation Reduction Act subsidies wind down.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Dr. Bill Ho, CEO of GRST, whose company makes a PFAS-free, water-soluble battery binder. Conventional binder relies on "forever chemicals" and toxic solvents to process. GRST's version dissolves in water, making recycling to high-purity black mass simpler and cheaper. Congratulations, Bill!

This Week in Cleantech — July 10, 2026 

1. In the woods of Maine, searching for an answer to a ticking climate bomb – The Boston Globe
2. One-third of India's new renewable energy capacity faces curtailment – PV Magazine
3. Why Europe Still Struggles to Scale Its Homegrown Climate Tech – Heatmap News
4. Europe's next climate adaptation boom isn't solar panels — it's asphalt –  Reuters
5. US clean power prices set to soar as AI demand coincides with subsidy cuts – Financial Times

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Generator interconnection, the process by which power plants like large solar arrays, wind farms, and utility-scale batteries connect to the electrical grid, continues to be one of the biggest barriers to project development.

Despite gradual improvement in some parts of the United States since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) passed Order No. 2023 three years ago, messy, complicated, and sometimes outdated policies are still preventing electrons from reaching end customers at a time of skyrocketing electricity demand. Grid operators have made meaningful strides in reducing interconnection queue backlogs and improving planning processes, but significant challenges remain, as detailed in a new progress report from Grid Strategies and The Brattle Group, on behalf of Advanced Energy United, that evaluates how grid operators are progressing since an initial 2024 assessment.

On this episode of the Factor This Policycast, presented in partnership with Advanced Energy United and recorded live-to-tape at the 2026 Infocast Transmission & Interconnection Summit, Caitlin Marquis, managing director at Advanced Energy United, and Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies, outline how each major regional transmission organization (RTO) and independent system operator (ISO) is approaching generator interconnection reform, criss-crossing the country and touching on progress in PJM, ERCOT, SPP, MISO, CAISO, ISO-NE, and NYISO. Marquis and Gramlich also share policy suggestions and discuss the recent show-cause orders issued by FERC to each of the six regional grid operators within its jurisdiction, directing them to either justify or reform the rules governing how large energy users, such as data centers, connect to the electric grid.

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

This week's episode features special guest Emily Pontecorvo from Heatmap News, who discusses a new partnership making more than 16 gigawatts of virtual power plant capacity.

This week’s “Cleantechers of the Week” are Luigi Resta and Maile Resta. Their utility-scale developer, Energies out of Utah, featured one of their site crews going to work on a solar project just like earlier generations of his family did in coal mines. We want to congratulations them for showing how to make the case for clean energy to the country. Congratulations Luigi and Maile!

This Week in Cleantech — June 26, 2026 

1. US announces $17.5 billion in loans for nuclear power supply chain — Reuters
2. Spanish households save €10 a month thanks to renewables expansion, report finds | Spain — The Guardian
3. If AI data centers are exploding nationwide, why are so few being built in California? – LA Times
4. Why American data centers can't plug in — Works in Progress
5. Sunrun, Tesla, and Renew Home Have 16 Gigawatts Up for Grabs — 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 Tim McDonnell from Semafor, who discusses the potential future of the Strait of Hormuz and energy markets if the US-Iran de-escalation deal holds. 

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Andrew Redd, CEO of Endurance Energy, a Seattle-based seafloor geothermal energy developer, which just raised $54m in Series A funding. Redd is a former SpaceX engineer who is now drilling into spots at the bottom of the ocean where tectonic plates split apart and magma heats the water to over 700 degrees. Congratulations Andrew!

This Week in Cleantech — June 19, 2026

1. Fast-tracked power plants fuel AI boom, with little public scrutiny — Reuters
2. Another day, another illegal billion-dollar bribe to raise your electricity prices — Electrek
3. 🌎 The IPO boom is back, baby! — Climate Tech VC Newsletter
4. Can PJM's new 'fast track' process accelerate interconnection? – Factor This
5. Hormuz will never really be open again — Semafor

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

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Welcome to the premier edition of the Factor This Policycast, a brand-new podcast partnership with national industry association Advanced Energy United, tackling the legislation, rulemaking, and market design that matter to clean energy leaders.

Hosted by Factor This content director and Emmy-Award winning journalist Paul Gerke, this series of discussions will feature voices from across the energy policy landscape and spotlight issues shaping the evolution of our electric grid.

The first topic is one that you may have spotted in recent headlines: competitive transmission solicitation. It's no secret that large-scale, critical electrical infrastructure projects like high-voltage transmission lines cost a LOT to build and take some time to come online.

About 15 years ago, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, mandated that utilities competitively bid out such projects, but that mandate isn't being enforced, for reasons we'll get into on the program. New data points to tremendous benefits from competitive transmission, though, including billions of dollars ultimately saved by ratepayers. Detractors argue the bidding process delays timelines and subjects projects to hidden costs, and a group of Midwest utilities has even asked FERC to halt bidding in MISO and SPP. 

On this episode of the podcast, Factor This's Paul Gerke is joined by Caitlin Marquis, managing director at Advanced Energy United, and Paul Cicio, chair of the Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition (ETCC). Both are advocates for competitive transmission and share findings to support their case. They discuss that utility request to ban competition outright, talk about FERC's role in all of this, and explore the finer points complicating broader transmission build-out- at a time we really need it.

New episodes of the Factor This Policycast go live at 6 am ET every other Thursday.

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Talk about systems and solutions is everywhere across the utility sector, but the biggest challenges the grid is facing are more about coordination than hardware. As utilities, retail suppliers, and operators all compete to manage the same DERs like electric vehicles, solar infrastructure, and smart appliances, the biggest challenges are associated with alignment, timing and expectations on every side. 

Michael Grasso, CEO and founder of GridRails, has a keen awareness of these challenges. His decades of experience in the industry has exposed him to teams and processes that have become paralyzed by fragmented tech silos and sluggish financial settlement cycles that take anywhere from 30 to 120 days to resolve. That's why his company is working to solve these challenges by introducing an agnostic, software-as-a-service (SaaS) orchestration layer that unifies these fragmented endpoints into a single platform, giving energy suppliers direct control over their network operations.

We caught up with him to explore why his platform structures its solution around three core pillars, what it means for consumers to receive instant financial gratification in a digital wallet for adjusting their energy usage in the moment, the importance of shifting the utility paradigm from a penalty-based framework to a real-time incentive model, and much more.

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