Technology

Factor This

Launched in 2022, the Factor This Podcast has featured many of the most influential leaders driving the energy transition. From solar and battery storage executives to utility CEOs, the Factor This Podcast brings unique insights and answers to the energy industry’s most pressing challenges. Go beyond high-level trends and mainstream talking points with actionable takeaways.

The Factor This Podcast grew in 2023 with the addition of This Week in Cleantech, a weekly roundup of the biggest stories in climate and clean energy in 15 minutes or less. With new episodes every Friday, Factor This content director Paul Gerke and Mike Casey, a cleantech commentator and president of Tigercomm, bring listeners the most important headlines of the week while featuring the leading journalists behind the stories.

The all-new FactorThis.com is your best source for news, commentary, and analysis of renewable energy and the power grid.

Latest Episodes:

This Week in Cleantech (01/23/2026) - What's a life worth to the EPA? Jan 23, 2026

Show notes

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 Maxine Joselow from the New York Times, who wrote about the EPA's decision to stop assigning a dollar value to lives saved in cost-benefit analyses for major air pollution rules.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is funeral director Eric Chamberlain, who helped bring wind power to Rock Port, Missouri, making it one of the first US towns to generate more wind electricity than it used. Nearly two decades later, the wind project is still delivering lasting local benefits through jobs, landowner payments and major county tax revenue. Congratulations, Eric!

This Week in Cleantech — January 23, 2026

Supreme Court will not hear Duke Energy’s appeal in anti-monopoly case — The Carolina Journal
Soaring Electricity Costs Are Now a Hot Political Issue — The Wall Street Journal
Trump Is Obsessed With Oil, but Chinese Batteries Will Soon Run the World — The New York Times
Solar Projects Face Turmoil Under Trump, but Big Business Is Still Banking on Them — The Wall Street Journal
What’s a Human Life Worth? The E.P.A. Says Zero Dollars. — The New York Times

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

This Week in Cleantech (01/16/2026) - Can American batteries keep up the pace? Jan 16, 2026

Show notes

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 Nico Rivero from the Washington Post, who wrote about how the rapid growth of grid-scale batteries in the U.S. is likely to pause in 2026.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Darian Nagle-Gamm, Iowa City’s transportation director, who is also the program owner for the city’s fare-free bus system. Ridership eventually grew to 118% of prepandemic levels. Carbon pollution dropped by about 778 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, roughly the equivalent of taking 167 vehicles off the roads. Congratulations, Darian!

This Week in Cleantech — January 16, 2026

Scoop: Local Pushback, Canceled Data Centers Surged in 2025 — Heatmap News
US judge lets Denmark's Orsted resume Rhode Island offshore wind project that Trump halted — Reuters
New York Tells Data Centers They Must Pay More for Power — Bloomberg
Big Tech is poaching energy talent to fuel its AI ambitions — CNBC
The American battery boom is on shaky ground — The Washington Post

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

Meghan Dewey helps define a human-centric utility at Duke Energy Jan 12, 2026

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As the Senior Vice President of Products & Services and Pricing Solutions at Duke Energy, Meghan Dewey oversees a portfolio that generates over $1.5 billion in annual revenue. But for her, the true metric of success isn't about spreadsheets or numbers but is instead about empowering the people on both sides of a utility bill.

Meghan sits at the intersection of massive corporate scale and human-centric innovation. From the Emerging Technology Office and customer prototype labs to large-scale transportation electrification, her team is essentially designing a blueprint for how utilities can operate in the short and long term. She’s the engine behind how Duke Energy scales high-value solutions while also prioritizing customer experience in a way that resonates.

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

This Week in Cleantech (01/09/2026) - Time for a nuclear renaissance? Jan 09, 2026

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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 Ivan Penn from The New York Times, who wrote about surging optimism for nuclear power in the U.S.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Mariangela Hungria, a Brazilian agronomist and microbiologist who won the 2025 World Food Prize for her work on microbes that feed plants nitrogen, allowing farmers to cut fertilizer costs and pollution.

This Week in Cleantech — January 9, 2026

Trump administration halts offshore wind projects from Virginia to New England, in major blow to clean power — POLITICO
The 4 Things Standing Between the U.S. and Venezuela’s Oil — Heatmap News
The Positive Climate News You May Have Missed This Year — Bloomberg
China’s BYD overtakes Tesla as world’s top EV seller for first time — CNBC
Optimism About Nuclear Energy Is Rising Again. Will It Last? — New York Times

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

This Week in Cleantech (12/19/2025) - Cleantech 2025: a year in review Dec 19, 2025

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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 Dana Clare Redden from our “Cleantecher of the Year” committee, who announced our “Cleantechers of the Year.”

This Week in Cleantech — December 19, 2025

Electricity Is Now Holding Back Growth Across the Global Economy — Bloomberg
Ford pulls the plug on the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck – NPR
There’s a New Color for Hydrogen: Orange – Heatmap News
Trump moves to dismantle major US climate research center in Colorado – USA Today
How the planet fared in 2025 — the good, the bad, and the ugly — Grist

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

How are DER flexibility markets transforming the grid and enabling utility savings? Dec 15, 2025

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Transforming the grid to meet skyrocketing energy demand isn't just about switching generation sources but is instead about fundamentally redesigning the entire energy market. It's going to require unlocking the true potential of every Distributed Energy Resources (DER) that we have, and integrating them seamlessly into a complex, resilient system.

That’s easy to say but exceptionally complicated to do logistically and in a way that makes sense for a given market, which is why we wanted to talk with someone who isn’t just supporting this transformation, but is also actively working with utilities to better understand what’s happening at the grid edge to make informed decisions. Jo-Jo Hubbard is the Co-founder and CEO of Electron, which helps network utilities and grid operators adopt and scale flexibility markets to manage grid congestion, improve connection rates, and lower bills. Among other things, we discuss:

Why utilities need to shift from a static view of the distribution grid to a real-time, dynamic model
How smart coordination of DERs creates a resilient and efficient grid
What it means to make DER orchestration simpler and more compelling to utilities
How tiny efficiencies can lead to billions in savings at scale.
The single biggest lesson learned that utilities need to have top of mind when designing their own DER aggregation and dispatch programs

Want to make a suggestion for an upcoming episode? Get in touch to let us know what people, projects and technology you’d like to see us to further explore.

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

This Week in Cleantech (12/12/2025) - Can these senators save NEPA? Dec 12, 2025

Show notes

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 Jael Holzman from Heatmap News, who wrote about several senators who came out against the SPEED Act, a bill that would change the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Ryan Johnson, the CEO of Culdesac Tempe, a rental development outside of Phoenix. He modeled a blueprint for living in a walkable place, so residents don’t need to use cars. Johnson said quote, “It’s one of the best things we can do for climate, health, happiness, low cost of living, and even low cost of government.” Congratulations, to Ryan!

This Week in Cleantech — December 12, 2025

Federal judge throws out Trump order blocking development of wind energy – AP News
How a Nuclear-Fossil Fuel Alliance Is Winning the Fight for Energy Dominance — Bloomberg
Driving Xiaomi's Electric Car: Are we Cooked? — Marques Brownlee
Will the Self-Driving Cars of the Future Lower Emissions? — The New York Times
Exclusive: Key Senate Democrats Oppose Permitting Bill — Heatmap News

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

This Week in Cleantech (12/05/2025) - 'Amid the ashes' of the 2025 LA wildfires Dec 05, 2025

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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 Justin Worland at TIME Magazine, who wrote about the fires that hit Los Angeles in January 2025, and how to prevent similar disasters in the future.

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Josh Silverman, the CEO of Windfall Bio, which figured out how to create microbes that consume leaking methane from cow manure lagoons as their food source. His team’s system tackles one of agriculture’s toughest climate challenges with a low-cost, farm-ready solution. Congratulations, Josh!

This Week in Cleantech — December 5, 2025

Climate urgency means bypassing COP is necessary, says COP30 boss — The Financial Times
Data center boom drives internal fight at largest US grid operator — Semafor
India’s Desert State Reignites Coal-Fired Power Debate — Bloomberg
Kentucky officials will appeal decision they say is unfair to Kentucky Power ratepayers – Kentucky Lantern
Amid the Ashes — TIME

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

This Week in Cleantech (11/21/2025) - Oil industry gears up for a comeback Nov 21, 2025

Show notes

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 in 15 minutes or less featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Amy Harder from Axios, who wrote about an oil industry lobbying group spending big to advertise during Paramount’s second season of “Landman."

This week's "Cleantecher of the Week" is Glenna Gannon, an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Glenna led research for an agrivoltaics project in Alaska, helping grow potatoes, kale and spinach underneath the panels. Congratulations, Glenna!

This Week in Cleantech — November 21, 2025

Hydropower Is Getting Less Reliable as the World Needs More Energy — The New York Times
Why the Time Has Finally Come for Geothermal Energy – The New Yorker
US loans Constellation $1 billion for Three Mile Island reactor reboot — Reuters
World Is Off Course on Pledge to Rein in Emissions of Heat-Trapping Methane — Bloomberg
"Landman" TV show reflects oil industry's renewed swagger — Axios

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

Semiconductors, Storage, and the Future of Transmission Nov 18, 2025

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Sponsored content.

In this episode of the Factor This podcast, Content Director Jeremiah Karpowicz interviews Henrik Mannesson, General Manager of Energy Infrastructure at Texas Instruments (TI). The two explore how TI's analog and embedded processing chips are driving a shift in energy and expectations in both the short and long term as well as:

the need for deeper utility collaboration
innovation at market inflection points
semiconductors as a short-term grid solution that open up long term opportunities

Want to make a suggestion for an upcoming episode? Get in touch to let us know what people, projects and technology you’d like us to further explore: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/contribute-content/

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