We recently completed our third investors roundtable working with our friends at CTLR (@Cleantech Leaders Roundtable). We had a great roster that included:

#Cleantechers, we hosted our 9th Quarterly Cleantech Editors and Reporters Roundtable in April. It’s hard to believe we’ve run these for over two years, but they continue to be the one of the highlights in Tigercomm's quarterly content stream.

These convenings are a rare opportunity to hear how our sectors show up to the people who cover us, and to ask THEM questions. With our accelerating progress, these insights are more and more important for cleantech communicators to have and utilize.

We had the honor to moderate a discussion with:
- Jennifer Dlouhy of Bloomberg News
- John Engel of Renewable Energy World
- Nichola Groom of Thomson Reuters
- Zachary Shahan of CleanTechnica

#Cleantechers, Tigercomm hosts/moderates three quarterly convenings of cleantech players. These groups of journalists, podcasters and investors bring fascinating perspectives that help us stay current on trends within clean energy. This series was inspired by Tigercomm's 16 quarterly convenings of cleantech editors, reporters, and podcasters, including from the main stage at last year's RE+ trade show in Anaheim. 
 
We like to say that our editors give us a breadth of view, while our podcasters give us a depth of view. But the investors you’ll hear from have perhaps the deepest expertise of any group we assemble. They see our sectors through the lens of our financial aspirations, expressed through the hundreds of pitches they hear and evaluate.
 
A special thanks to my friend, Andrea Luecke, the Executive Director of the Cleantech Leaders Roundtable – or “CTLR,” for short. CTLR is the official sponsor of this convening, and as the “First Member” of CTLR, it’s a particular honor for her to ask me to moderate this series. I know co-founders Jigar Shah and Jacob Susman are proud of this milestone as well.

These folks are very smart and worth the time to hear. Thanks to our panelists Amy Francetic, Matt Cheney, Nancy Floyd and Dave Kirkpatrick. It was fun to talk with you.

Just before the holidays, we hosted a year-end episode of the Cleantech Podcasters Roundtable. Our lineup changed a bit, with the happy addition of John Belizaire.

Here are our “B3Ps,” or Big 3 Points from that episode. You can read the full transcript below.
 
1. At the risk of sounding like a broken record: The Cleantech sector needs to invest more time and resources into messaging. Fossil fuel front groups are still working the mainstream media refs, spreading misinformation about the Inflation Reduction Act, painting ESG investing as “woke capitalism,” and the messaging that next-generation nuclear fission will be our climate savior. We have the tools to accelerate the energy transition, and our industry conversations should reflect that confidence I our public communications.

2. Expect grid resiliency, distributed energy resources, retrofitting, and workforce employment to be big topics for the new year — and more stories about people leaving “dirty” jobs for clean ones.
 
3. Let’s celebrate the people and organizations that helped prevent a pro-fossil fuel wave in the recent elections. Our participants gave laurels to: the Environmental Voter Project, Governor Kathy Hochul, Governor Gavin Newsom, and the California Public Utilities Commission.

Listen to the full episode on the SunCast Podcast:

We closed our cleantech journalists panel at RE+ with a question we often like to ask our Scaling Clean podcast guests: Are you a climate optimist or pessimist – and why? Our panelists gave thoughtful answers, a mix of optimism and realism about the aggression of energy industry incumbents (read the fossil fuel lobby). We’d like to share their answers here.

In the U.S., the field of companies developing renewable energy farms is quickly expanding. There are a large number of new additions coming from developing countries, where project development faces a very different set of problem. Some would argue they are much harder to solve. But the question is, does developing renewable energy in developing countries equip a company to succeed in a market like the U.S.

When we convened our cleantech journalists live from the stage at the RE+ trade show, among the questions we posed was how clean economy would address its half-dozen major challenges: Permitting, storage, transmission, grid stability, workforce development, and mineral processing. We also wanted to know who would address them. Check out our panel’s answers from Jon Powers, Julia Pyper and Scott Cooney

We know that most people won't watch the full 45 minutes of our live Cleantech Journalist Roundtable from the RE+ mainstage. We're starting a series of four excerpt videos that focus on particular parts of the discussion.

Whoa.  
 
When we first developed the idea of a quarterly investors roundtable with Andrea Luecke and the Cleantech Leaders Roundtable, we didn’t know how informative this series could be.  
 
But after hosting the first episode, I’m at a loss on how to excerpt this uber-rich session into its B3Ps, or “Big 3 Points.” What I now realize is that within the confines of their investment strategy, these investors have to be master trackers of our sectors. If they don’t, they don’t succeed professionally.  
 
Our panelists covered a TON of ground in an hour, all of it smart, insightful and very much worth listening: