Scaling Clean: Gareth Brown on How AI, Go-to-Market Focus, and Clear Reporting Are Transforming Renewable Asset Performance

In this episode of Scaling Clean, I sat down with Gareth Brown, CEO and co-founder of Clir Renewables, a risk-intelligence platform that helps banks, investors, and operators understand how their wind, solar, and storage assets are performing, and why.

Clir started in Vancouver in 2017 with six employees and 500 MW of assets. Now, it has grown into a 100-person team processing performance data for more than 200 GW of renewable and storage projects.

Here are his big three points:

In renewables, the “fuel” is free, but the uncertainty isn’t.

Gareth made the point that renewable energy is the only power source where investors don’t fully know the “fuel” going into the machine, making it challenging to determine whether underperformance is caused by external factors like wind and solar conditions or by internal factors like equipment issues. As a result, investors want clear reporting that explains past performance, benchmarks it against similar projects, and provides reliable forward-looking projections.

“What we see from investors is that they want really great reporting. They want to understand what has happened at that farm, how that compares to its peers, and what will happen in the future.” – Gareth Brown

Go-to-market discipline is just as important as product quality.

If Garrett could go back in time and give advice to his younger self, and he would focus more on go-to-market strategy, along with three important points:

• Founder-led sales are great, but not scalable.
• Big logos don’t mean you’ve cracked repeatability.
• The real test is moving from pilots to fleet-wide adoption.

“You're thinking, ‘Great, this person is buying. They're going to buy more from me as we go forward.’ But not getting stuck at that pilot stage is making sure that you've got that expansion process really well understood – the decision makers, the value props, the communication, and the marketing.”

To scale, businesses need a repeatable go-to-market strategy built on both solid data and a narrative. Narrative without data is just fiction, but data without narrative is just numbers. 

Great teams run on impact.

Gareth believes people stay motivated when they see the real-world value they are creating. For his team, this means showing customer impact early, celebrating improved asset performance, creating a strong management team, and hiring mission-aligned people who want to decarbonize the grid. These are things that get the team excited about working for your company. 

“When our customers are able to get better financial returns or log in and use the software all the time, we show those metrics to the team to show the impact that we're having... This really helps our team.”

Why This Conversation Matters

For me, this episode highlights several points about scaling clean energy companies:

• Certainty drives investment. Platforms that explain asset performance build confidence and unlock capital.
• Scaling isn’t about a single go-to-market push, but a repeatable go-to-market strategy. Cleantech CEOs must build repeatable sales engines.
• Mission-driven teams need to see their impact. Shared purpose is more motivating than softer benefits, like days off. 

Listen to the full conversation on Apple, Spotify, Radio Public, Amazon Music, and iHeart.