Podcasts

Cleantech hits a rough patch — This Week in Cleantech

Cleantech hits a rough patch — This Week in Cleantech
(Courtesy: American Public Power Association)

This Week in Cleantech is a new, weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in cleantech and climate in 15 minutes or less. Produced by Renewable Energy World and Tigercomm, This Week in Cleantech will air every Friday in the Factor This! podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.

This week’s episode features Tim De Chant from TechCrunch, who wrote about a possible path to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions from the airline and shipping industries: a startup working to develop “green” methanol, which is made without fossil fuels.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Nora Zacharski, Press Secretary at Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Nora recently graduated with her Master’s in Political Communications, and shared her Capstone project online, which analyzed Facebook messaging by opponents of land-based and offshore wind energy. Congratulations, Nora!

1. What Will We Do With Our Free Power? — New York Times

Over the past decade, solar power experienced rapid expansion and reduced costs. Solar module costs have dropped to about $0.10 per watt, compared to a decade ago when it seemed impossible to reach $1 per watt. Over the next decade, the total cost of solar energy—including the price of panels and all related project expenses—is projected to be cut in half.

These major cost reductions have already led to so much renewables deployment that in some of the nation’s more mature markets, like Texas and California, when wind and solar are at their peak, they have negative electricity prices. Consumers actually get paid to use electricity at certain times of the day. 

Innovating in the solar space is still crucial, but storing and transporting this solar electricity will become proportionally more important, given that the fuel is free. A new kind of long-distance transmission could take the solar power from a sunny part of the world, to another location where the sun is, or already has, set.

2. How much more water and power does AI computing demand? Tech firms don’t want you to know — LA Times

If all Google searches used AI, they might consume as much electricity as a country the size of Ireland. And right now, we aren’t building enough renewables fast enough to meet the demand.

To prevent AI from stalling the energy transition and throwing a life line to dirty energy, experts are calling on tech companies to report to consumers how much energy they use with each AI-generated search. This is similar to how Google discloses to consumers how much carbon pollution their chosen flight will produce.

Another issue is that Google automatically produces an AI-generated response after someone searches, and consumers don’t have the option to turn the feature off. Google also failed to say how much AI was adding to its energy use. Without accurate data on Google’s power use after incorporating AI, it’s impossible to know how much more power Google AI is using.

3. Local opposition is now a ‘leading cause’ of canceled clean energy projects — Latitude Media

Community opposition is now on par with grid interconnection issues as the “leading cause of clean energy project delays and cancellations,” according to new Berkeley Lab research survey. It’s been described as “one of, if not the, largest challenge to widespread decarbonization.”

Developers are working to improve their community engagement efforts, but there is no clear industry standard on how to tackle this problem. But, many developers have agreed that effective community engagement does lead to fewer project cancellations. The industry just needs to track down the most effective way to do it. Engaging the community early is essential. But engaging them too early, such as 3 years in advance, can cause misinformation to spread.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

4. More cleantech companies fail as fundraising challenges emerge — Financial Times

Some cleantech businesses previously supported by investors and the IRA’s tax credits are now closing, or struggling to stay afloat, due to high interest rates and delays in federal tax credit support. These cleantech companies are failing to transition from their start-up phase to commercial viability at scale. In other words, they haven’t crossed the proverbial “Valley of Death.”

There is also the challenge of so many cleantech companies competing for funding. Investment priorities have shifted to other sectors like AI, life sciences and defense tech, making clean energy funding even harder to get. And these failures to transition from a startup to a mature company is not a good signal for investors that cleantech is worth funding. We need to find a way to bridge this gap, whether that be through new funding models or policy changes to support the “missing middle.”

5. Oxylus Energy strikes ‘beautiful balance’ to make e-fuels for aviation and shipping — TechCrunch

Oxylus Energy, a company which spun out of a Yale chemistry lab last year, has been working to refine the production of so-called green methanol for transportation fuel. The key differentiator for Oxylus Energy is that it eliminates the need for green hydrogen production, which is typically an expensive and energy-intensive part of making the green methanol necessary for other transportation fuels.