Podcasts

Does clean energy need a Marshall Plan? — This Week in Cleantech

Does clean energy need a Marshall Plan? — This Week in Cleantech
(Photo by Michael Fousert on Unsplash.)

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 Dan Gearino from Inside Climate News, who wrote about how progress in solid-state battery technology may soon enable electric vehicles to achieve up to 600 miles of range. 

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Emilie Oxel O’Leary, founder of Green Clean Wind LLC. Emilie is actively urging her LinkedIn followers to reach out for their solar recycling needs, highlighting the growing concern over solar components ending up in landfills. She’s asking for every steel pile, aluminum racking component, nut, and bolt, so she can help clean up your site. Congratulations Emilie! 

1. Far-Right ‘Terrorgram’ Chatrooms Fuel Wave of Power Grid Attacks — Bloomberg

In December 2022, two Duke Energy substations in North Carolina were shot at, hitting sensitive pieces of tech. The attack caused 45,000 families to lose power for four days. Although the case remains unsolved, police have described both incidents as a coordinated attack, highlighting a growing trend of far-right groups targeting power infrastructure to create chaos. Even now, nearly two years later, nobody has been arrested.

This attack was discussed on social media platform “Telegram”, which hosts a network of channels known as “Terrorgram,” where people promote violent white supremacist ideologies and share instructions on how to use weapons to attack power infrastructure.

These types of attacks have spiked recently. Power companies reported that there were 185 attacks or threats to grid infrastructure in 2023, more than twice as many as in 2021. Now power companies are racing to defend themselves. NERC recently had 250 participants join an emergency simulation and the DOE said they’d dedicate $70 million to help with grid resiliency. 

2. The Case for a Clean Energy Marshall Plan — Foreign Affairs

76 years ago, the Marshall Plan was launched by U.S. President Harry Truman and U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall to subsidize European demand for U.S. products and services needed to rebuild postwar Europe. Now, former White House National Economic Council director, Brian Deese, argues the U.S. should draw lessons from that plan, and use it for the energy transition.

Just as the 1948 Marshall Plan helped countries impacted most by World War II, a new Marshall Plan could help support countries most vulnerable to global climate destruction. And just like with the Marshall Plan, the idea is to support those countries with American manufacturing. The Inflation Reduction Act already put the U.S. closer to the forefront of the clean energy transition. Now, the U.S. has the opportunity to expand this leadership to a global level.

3. Scoop: Swell is shutting down — Latitude Media

The virtual power plant company, Swell, is closing its doors. They have laid off all staff only six months after acquiring Renu Energy and expanding into the SouthEast. The company raised $100 million in equity and teamed up on some VPP deployments just two years ago.

The VPP market is still young, making it difficult for startups to succeed. Unlike established players like Sunrun and Tesla, which have a solid foundation from their existing solar and storage technologies, Swell was starting from scratch. This closure reflects broader challenges within the distributed energy storage and VPP markets, which are still evolving and struggling to establish sustainable business models. Swell’s strategy of building its VPP platform via channel partners rather than leveraging an existing customer base may have contributed to its shuttering.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

4. Hungry for Clean Energy, Facebook Looks to a New Type of Geothermal — New York Times

The energy demands of data centers are so great that some of the biggest users, Google and Meta, are investing in new ways to get clean power. On Monday, Meta unveiled a new partnership with the startup Sage Geosystems to provide 150 MW of geothermal power to their data centers. Sage has plans to build its first large-scale power plant in 2027. Google has partnered with another geothermal startup, Fervo Energy, to build a 5MW plant.

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Big tech companies have played an important role in developing American clean energy and, with data centers predicted to use up 9% of America’s electricity by 2030, that’s probably not going to change. It’s still a very new technology, but the commercial and technical progress of advanced geothermal is exciting. It has lots of potential – the DOE estimates we could be getting 90 gigawatts of geothermal by 2050 – but at this point it receives a fraction of the funding for other technologies like hydrogen or nuclear.

5. Want an EV With 600 Miles of Range? It’s Coming — Inside Climate News

Solid-state batteries are getting closer to becoming a reality. They can store more energy per unit of volume than traditional batteries, and thus have the potential to extend the range of electric vehicles.

Earlier this year, Samsung SDI said it would be producing solid-state batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) by 2027, claiming that the vehicles could drive more than 600 miles without charging. That’s about double the range of today’s EVs.

Toyota is eyeing a 2027 or 2028 completion date on the development of its solid-state battery, which it plans to mass produce. California-based QuantumScape recently announced it will be licensing solid-state battery tech to Volkswagen for mass production, but did not include a timeframe.