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!
New York has become the first US state to impose a moratorium on new large-scale data centers, pausing environmental permits for any project with a capacity of 50MW or more for one year. The order, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, gives regulators time to build out a “Generic Environmental Impact Statement” assessing data center energy demand, water use and quality, and air quality. Within 60 days, the state will also issue guidance letting local governments negotiate community benefits agreements directly with data center developers.
Ford, GM and Stellantis have all pulled back from EVs even as global EV sales boom. Ford axed its three-row electric SUV and the F-150 Lightning, Stellantis ended the electric Charger and Ram, and GM delayed a Buick EV.
Under the second Trump administration, the EV tax credit was eliminated and tailpipe standards were gutted, and EV plants went dormant while battery plants were closed or repurposed. Stellantis wrote down $26 billion in EV losses this year, and Ford booked a $19 billion loss.
China now builds 75% of the world’s EVs versus roughly 5% from the US, and BYD has passed Tesla to become the largest EV maker on Earth. One research group estimates China can take a new EV from blueprint to launch about a third faster than a US automaker, and analysts warn that gap is only widening.
Surging AI data center demand is straining the supply of critical grid equipment like transformers, driving up costs and wait times. Wood Mackenzie projects US data center capacity will hit 110 GW by 2030, up from around 24 GW today, consuming eight times more electricity than EVs over that stretch. And data centers’ share of the electrical equipment market could swell to 40% under accelerated scenarios, from just under 2% in 2020. Wood Mackenzie’s Ben Boucher says large power transformers are seeing the worst shortage right now, but circuit breakers and switchgear are set for even bigger deficits ahead.
Global investment in fusion climbed 69% to a record $4.5 billion over the past year, according to a new Fusion Industry Association report. Fusion developers have now raised $14.2 billion total since the FIA started tracking the data in 2021. Four companies – Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Inertia Enterprises, Helion Energy and Proxima Fusion – accounted for more than half of the last year’s investment. About 70% of companies surveyed expect a commercial fusion power plant to enter service by 2040.
Agrivoltaics is booming in Texas, with sheep now managing vegetation on over 130,000 acres across 500 sites in 30 states, including about 68,000 acres in Texas alone. Ranchers like JR Howard of Texas Solar Sheep contract their herds to solar farms because sheep graze cleanly around panels (unlike goats or cattle), preventing shading and fire hazards while giving landowners a new income stream as agricultural land is converted to solar use.
Advocates like Garrett Bader of American Farmland Trust and Kevin Richardson of the American Solar Grazing Association frame it as a way to keep working lands in agriculture and see it as a major growth opportunity for the sheep industry. Enel, which hosted a training tour at its Stampede solar site near Saltillo, says the practice cuts costs, emissions, and noise compared to mechanical mowing, even as some local residents remain opposed to large-scale solar development.
Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing [email protected]
Source link