Factor This

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 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 In...

Tell us what you think of the show! 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. 202...

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 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 “C...

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 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...

Tell us what you think of the show! 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...

Tell us what you think of the show! 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 alignmen...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Akshat Rathi from Bloomberg, who discusses the energy crisis caused by the war in Iran, which is causing some governments to pursue structural sh...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Benjamin Storrow from E&E News, who discusses how some Democratic governors are more open to natural gas pipeline expansion as energy costs r...

Tell us what you think of the show! The U.S. Department of Energy is moving forward with releasing billions of dollars in rebate funding to states earmarked by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for two home energy programs: Home Efficiency Rebates (HER/HOMES), which enables whole-home retrofits that cut overall energy use by at least 15%, and Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates (HEAR), prov...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Robison Meyer from Heatmap News, who discussed how local opposition to data centers hit a new record in the first quarter of 2026. This week’s “C...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Akshat Rathi from Bloomberg News, who discussed how the Iran conflict is boosting the security benefits of clean energy. This week’s “Cleantecher...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Molly Taft from WIRED, who discusses Elon Musk's AI company xAI's decision to add 19 natural gas turbines to its Colossus 2 data center...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Andrew Moseman from Heatmap News, who discusses Ford's efforts to rebuild its struggling EV program from the ground up. This week’s “Cleante...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Oliver Milman from The Guardian, who discussed how the clean energy industry is pushing forward despite Trump's aggressive efforts to suppre...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Bianca Giacobone of Latitude Media, who discussed how Iran's strikes on aluminum smelters in the UAE and Bahrain last month pushed prices up...

Tell us what you think of the show! Headlines talking up the surge in energy demand driven by AI and connected to data center development highlight how much has changed across the sector. But what if the capacity to meet this demand is already there, just hidden behind outdated assumptions?  To better understand what it means to utilize the existing capacity of the grid to meet this demand, we con...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Jennifer Hiller of The Wall Street Journal, who wrote about U.S. utilities' plans to spend about $1.4 trillion over the next five years to u...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Kelsey Tamborrino from POLITICO, who wrote a story in E&E News about a new survey of renewable energy developers that found federal permittin...

Tell us what you think of the show! There’s no shortage of talk about the hardware and AI-driven transformations that will define the grid of the future. However, the true driver of success is about a strategic mindset that’s focused on change management, which is inherently more about people and process than it is technology and tools. Andy Quick lived and enabled this reality during a nearly 30-...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Jeff St John from Canary Media, who reported on a 21 gigawatt solar and battery storage project in California, which is potentially the largest p...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Robert Piconi, CEO of Energy Vault. This week, the company officially acquired the 175 MW McMurtre battery storage project in ERCOT North...

Tell us what you think of the show! Terms like “AMI 2.0” often mean different things to different teams, depending on a utility’s current infrastructure and future goals. This lack of consensus is why Matt Wakefield, Director of Information, Communication & Cyber Security at EPRI, argues that the industry may need to shift from hardware versions to core capabilities. By positioning AMI as a cr...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Jennifer McDermott from the Associated Press, who reported on Revolution Wind, an offshore wind project targeted by Trump administration that is...

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 featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. This week's episode features special guest Chuck McCutcheon from Axios, who wrote about a new coalition of companies, including tech giants like Google and Tesla, which is aiming to make b...

Tell us what you think of the show! The energy landscape has entered a volatile era of climate disruption. Regions once considered safe now face the devastating reality of escalating wildfires and extreme weather. In this episode, we sit down with Don McPhail, VP of Market Development at eSmart Systems, to discuss why traditional, asset-focused mitigation is no longer enough for utilities across t...