This week’s episode covers Stegra’s $1.65 billion push to finish a green steel plant in Sweden, Texas’ data center rush straining ERCOT, and renewables outpacing global electricity demand. The hosts also discuss why the U.S. is falling behind on EV adoption. Bianca Giacobone of Latitude Media joins to explain how strikes on aluminum smelters in Iran could raise costs for U.S. grid equipment, solar, batteries, and consumers.
Paul Gerke — 00:01
Hey everybody, we’re back again for another episode of This Week in Cleantech, your favorite 15-minute roundup of the biggest stories in climate and clean energy this week.
You’re listening on Friday, April 24, 2026. We’ve got a guest waiting: Bianca Giacobone of Latitude Media, joining us shortly on the show.
If you don’t know my voice or face by now, I’m Factor This content director Paul Gerke, joined again, as always, by Cleantech commentator Mike Casey of TigerComm.
Mike, how are you on this fine day?
Mike Casey — 00:29
Good, friend. Greetings from Austin. I’m down here at the Geronimo Power Executive Summit, and I had the pleasure of having lunch yesterday with Brian Mendez. Did you know that?
Paul Gerke — 00:42
You guys were talking about it a second ago. You said you shared a sushi roll?
Mike Casey — 00:46
No. It was an all-you-can-eat sushi place that Brian recommended, and they brought out the largest platter of sushi I’d ever had.
Paul Gerke — 00:54
Why’d you share a roll, though? That was the weird thing, I thought. You guys just wouldn’t shut up about it.
Mike Casey — 00:58
No, there were leftover pieces, and he took them home.
I’ll say this: I thought it was going to be a pleasant experience, but it was just one grievance after another from this guy. He wants a clothing allowance. He wants a star trailer. He wants his Pete Hegseth makeup studio.
I’m like, “You’re not even on camera, dude, except for the door.”
Paul Gerke — 01:19
If anyone owes you an afternoon of grievances, it’s Brian Mendes. I hope you picked up the tab.
Mike Casey — 01:25
I didn’t. He stuck me with the tab. Can you believe that?
I do want to give a listener shout-out to Shamali Mudelek from Denmark. This is so cool. She reached out and said she’s been listening to our podcast for a year. It inspired her to launch Wind Her Way, a blog and newsletter where she’ll be writing about wind energy, sustainability, and policy as a wind engineer.
She thanked us for the inspiration. I thought that was so cool.
Paul Gerke — 01:55
That’s very cool. Thank you for listening. We accidentally educated somebody. That’s always rad.
If you take something out of the show besides a hearty laugh, we always love to hear from you. Send a shout-out our way, or maybe send a story you’d like to see included on the show. You can email us anytime at TWIC@TigerComm.us.
Mike, we’ve got five stories on tap this week. Let’s start with number one.
Mike Casey — 02:22
We’re rolling.
Dominic Chopping, The Wall Street Journal: “Swedish Green Steel Startup Stegra Gets $1.65 Billion Funding to Complete New Plant.”
Paul?
Paul Gerke — 02:34
That’s a good chunk of change, Mike.
Green steel startup Stegra, formerly known as H2 Green Steel, has raised $1.65 billion in financing from a consortium led by Sweden’s prominent Wallenberg family, enabling it to finish building its new steel facility.
The company said last year that it needed more funding due to higher costs, longer timelines, and a shortfall in government grants. Where have we heard that story before?
Stegra is building a large steel mill in northern Sweden that’ll use green hydrogen instead of coal for iron-ore-based steelmaking. That process is expected to produce steel that cuts carbon pollution by 95% compared to the traditional process.
Mike, your thoughts?
Mike Casey — 03:14
I think Wallenberg Investments is going to invest €250 million in equity, taking a leading position in the company. They call it an industrial project of clear importance to Sweden, according to chairman Marcus Wallenberg.
He said it’s commercially viable but complex and dependent on strong execution. I think that is a masterful understatement right there.
With funding progress, Stegra is set to ramp up construction, though the timeline is under review. The financing round is expected to close in June 2026.
Paul, story number two.
Paul Gerke — 03:47
Our second story this week, by Shelby Webb from Politico, is titled “Data Centers’ Mad Dash for the Texas Grid.”
What’s shaking down there in ERCOT, Mike?
Mike Casey — 03:56
Data center developers are pouring into Texas, where I am, and they’re competing for access to a power grid under unprecedented growth.
Regulators and the state’s main grid operator are considering a system to approve projects in batches. Those in the initial batch zero would receive power based on current grid capacity. Projects that miss that first round would face delays of years while new transmission and generation are built.
Texas is projected to potentially surpass my state of Virginia by 2030 as the nation’s leading state in data center development.
ERCOT expects electricity demand to more than quadruple to roughly 360 gigawatts by 2032, with data centers driving over 60% of that growth.
I should note that those projections are really uncertain. As connection requests surge, ERCOT and other grid operators are working to separate viable projects from speculative ones, which is a massive challenge.
Paul?
Paul Gerke — 04:58
They’re saying Texas is the new Data Center Alley. They’re saying it in the streets. I’m hearing it from the people, so keep an eye on that.
Relevant to this story, the batch system you were talking about, Mike, sounds an awful lot like cluster studies. It’s maybe another word for the interconnection processes they’re using there.
It seems like there’s no silver bullet for any of this. The batch system that ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission of Texas are reviewing basically looks at requests from data centers and large users collectively, in chunks, rather than individually.
When you’re talking about transmission upgrades, things get pricey in a hurry. It’s better to disperse those costs if you can.
Under this plan, the projects in that initial batch zero would be grouped into tiers based on their expected connection timelines, with some fast-moving projects automatically included. That sounds like what PJM is doing right now with queue jumping.
ERCOT recently released draft criteria for participation. They say early feedback has been positive, but some developers are worried.
One developer, for example, had already started construction on a project that got its interconnection agreement from a utility in 2024, but is now being told it might not qualify under the new batch zero rules.
That is an example of how interconnection is messed up in this country and has a ripple effect on a lot of other things.
We could go on, but instead: story number three.
Mike Casey — 06:11
Indeed.
Alexa St. John, AP News: “Renewable Energies Overtook Global Electricity Demand Last Year, Led by Solar Growth in China and India.”
Paul?
Paul Gerke — 06:25
It’s not news to us, Mike. This is a trumpet that we toot often. That’s what you do to trumpets, right? You toot them? I didn’t take music in school.
A surge in solar, particularly in China and India, really helped clean energy outpace rising global electricity demand last year.
Ember reported that clean power generation rose by 887 terawatt-hours, surpassing the 849-terawatt-hour increase in overall demand. What’s a few terawatt-hours between friends?
Drawing on electricity data from 215 countries, including detailed 2025 figures from 91 nations accounting for about 93% of global demand, Ember found that renewables hit more than one-third of the world’s electricity mix for the first time in modern history last year.
Another historic first: coal power’s share fell below one-third of global generation, with coal output dropping by about 0.6%.
Mike, do you have any thoughts about coal generation and a particular friend of yours, whom you mention often on the show, and his opinion about coal this week that was making headlines?
Mike Casey — 07:33
I am actually, for once in your life, not going to rise to your baiting me.
I’m just going to stick to the important things because I’m committed, unlike you, to delivering value for our listeners.
With that, I’ll say that over the past few decades, rising electricity demand has typically meant more fossil fuel generation. That’s starting to change.
You noted the dip in coal. Overall fossil generation fell by 0.2% in 2025, one of only a few years this century without an increase.
An Ember data analyst also makes the point that even as electricity demand rises with the growth of EVs, heat pumps, and industrial electrification, clean power is expected to keep pace in the coming years and eventually begin reducing reliance on fossil fuels overall.
That would mark a major shift from the past.
Paul, our fourth story.
Paul Gerke — 08:25
Story four is by Ed Ballard at The Wall Street Journal, writing for the Climate and Energy newsletter. It’s titled “Why the U.S. Is Such an Outlier on EVs.”
Tell me about it, Mike.
Mike Casey — 08:35
Has Ed ever been on our show? I don’t know. I think we need to put him on the Kelsey Tamborrino list.
Ed, David Wallace-Wells: you’re coming on the show. You just don’t know it yet. We’re after you.
EV adoption is accelerating around the world, but the U.S. is moving in the opposite direction. IEA data showed a 2.6% decline in domestic sales of plug-in vehicles last year, bucking the global trend.
Worse, U.S. EV sales fell year over year for a sixth straight month in March, with EVs making up just 6% of new vehicle sales, down from almost 12% in September, according to Cox Automotive.
Meanwhile, EV sales were up more than 50% in many European countries last month. In China, sales have dipped since a subsidy change last year, but EVs still have an almost 60% market share.
So we’re at 6%. They’re at 60%.
Reporter Ed Ballard takes us through five figures that help explain why.
Paul, what are those figures?
Paul Gerke — 09:40
Five figures, quickly.
The first one is four. That’s $4 per gallon, the price of gas where EVs tend to tip the scales and become cheaper to own in the United States, according to Bloomberg. Gas right now is around there, at $4.03 per gallon. Even an energy crisis hasn’t tipped the scales yet, though. Gas in France, if you’re curious, is about $9 per gallon. Then it really makes sense to drive an EV.
The second number is 31. That’s the number of EVs per public charger in the U.S., according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. China has nine per charger. The Netherlands has five. Also, a lot of bikes there. I digress.
The third number is 4,500. That’s 4,500 pounds, the weight of a Ford F-150, the best-selling vehicle in the U.S., roughly double the weight of Europe’s most popular car. A preference for bigger cars translates to heavier, costlier batteries.
The fourth number is 7,500. That’s the value of the EV tax credit that’s no longer on the table. You can’t get it, so forget that number.
The fifth number is 100. That’s 100%, the U.S. tariff rate on Chinese EVs, and why you can’t get your hands on them in this country.
Jean-François Mercure of the University of Exeter expects falling costs and global competitive pressure to eventually force a tipping point in the U.S. But, as he put it, you can delay it.
We can delay our fifth story no longer. Mike, where are we going?
Mike Casey — 10:59
Paul Gerke, I want to go to what I think we’ve uncovered as a pro-France bias in the limits of how cosmopolitan you are.
You got Jean-François’ last name right, but you really Americanized Bianca’s last name. So I’m going to nail it here.
Ready? Bianca Giacobone
Bianca Giacobone — 11:20
That was very good. Well done.
Mike Casey — 11:22
Sweet.
Gerke, learn lessons from the geezer, because I’m the worldly one. You’re the parochial American, and that’s why we attract international guests.
Bianca, welcome. You’ve got a really cool story: “Why the U.S. Grid Will End Up Paying More for Iran’s Aluminum Strikes.”
We want people to read this story, but if they haven’t yet, what’s the big takeaway?
Bianca Giacobone — 11:53
The big takeaway is that we’re going to see the consequences of the war in Iran on the energy sector in the U.S. well beyond oil prices.
One way we’re going to see it is in aluminum prices.
Aluminum is used in energy in a lot of things, including overhead power lines, solar panel frames, batteries, et cetera. And now, because of two major strikes in Iran on two aluminum smelters, we have a lot less aluminum in circulation in the world.
That’s a problem for the U.S. specifically because last year the U.S. put 50% tariffs on aluminum from Canada.
Now the U.S. is importing less aluminum from Canada. It’s more expensive, and it was filling that gap with Middle Eastern aluminum. Now it cannot do that anymore.
So we’re likely going to see quite a stark increase in aluminum prices.
Paul Gerke — 12:58
How long do you think that takes before it really trickles down to U.S. consumers? Does it reach other markets first?
I was reading something about how there’s a Coke shortage in India right now, and it’s not because Coca-Cola doesn’t have product. It’s because they’re struggling to source aluminum in that country for their cans.
If they’re already feeling it, how long does it take to hit shores here?
Bianca Giacobone — 13:19
I think it’s going to hit fairly soon.
If you checked aluminum imports on the U.S. commodities website a couple of weeks ago, you could see that there was still some aluminum in transit from before the strikes. That is going to finish fairly soon.
We already know that countries like Japan are negotiating with Russia to fill the aluminum gap they had been filling with supply from the Middle East.
So I’m going to assume it will be in the next couple of months, but I cannot say for certain.
Mike Casey — 13:56
Bianca, American listeners to this show will say, “Wait a second, we have a lot of aluminum production here. Why is that a problem?”
I think there’s often a disconnect for Americans about why, when we produce more oil and gas than anyone else in the world, our gas prices should go up in this kind of situation.
I think it’s reasonable to think people have the same disconnect for aluminum. Any light you can shed on that?
Bianca Giacobone — 14:22
The U.S. produces just a fraction of the aluminum it consumes.
Some of it is primary aluminum, meaning non-recycled. Just a tiny fraction of that fraction is recycled aluminum, but it’s really not nearly enough for what the U.S. needs.
Setting up aluminum production in the U.S. is extremely complicated and costly. Of course, that was the intention of President Trump’s tariffs: to encourage domestic production of aluminum.
But an aluminum smelter can take three to five years, something like that, and it’s an extremely energy-intensive operation.
An aluminum smelter would need an offtake agreement of around 15 years for large loads, and we know that’s really not the only large load in town at the moment in the U.S. system.
So it’s really not something that can be done quickly, and it’s probably not something that can be done cheaply enough.
Paul Gerke — 15:24
Speaking of grid modernization in the United States, that is one of those things that doesn’t need another straw on the camel’s back. There doesn’t need to be another hurdle to deployment or grid adoption right now.
In your reporting, Bianca, how much does this slow them down?
We’re already looking at transformer lead times of 18 to 24 months. We’re looking at years out for gas turbines. And now we’re talking about not being able to get critical minerals that we need to put stuff in for the power grid.
Bianca Giacobone — 15:53
I don’t know. It remains to be seen if it slows it down or if it just increases the price.
There is a lot of capital coming into the energy system in the U.S. right now, so it’s possible that the price can be covered.
One solution, although not for everything, is that many of the things aluminum is used for could potentially be substituted with copper.
However, copper is more expensive, and there is an ongoing shortage of copper, which could get even worse right now because both the data center industry and the energy industry really need copper.
So I would say it’s another problem — hopefully not a major one — but we will see.
Mike Casey — 16:42
Paul, we’re just about out of time, so we need to go to our Cleantecher of the Week.
Paul Gerke — 16:46
All right, let’s do it.
This week’s Cleantecher of the Week is Michael Chanin, CEO of Cherry Street Energy.
Through Shine On, Cherry Street’s solar school partnership with the nsoro Foundation, they prepare young adults aging out of Georgia’s foster care system for careers in power infrastructure.
We always need new folks in the trades.
He highlights Emmanuel, who recently transitioned out of foster care and now helps build and maintain solar at Delta Air Lines’ rooftop setup at Hartsfield-Jackson.
Congratulations, our Cleantecher of the Week, Michael Chanin.
Mike Casey — 17:18
Awesome story.
We want to thank our wonderful producer Brian Mendes, as well as Alex Petersen and Claire Quirin, for helping gather these stories.
Paul Gerke — 17:25
And thank you, the listener, for joining us this week on This Week in Cleantech.
One more shout-out to our guest. Mike, why don’t you say her name for me?
Mike Casey — 17:32
Come on, take the training wheels off. Give it a shot.
Paul Gerke — 17:35
Bianca Giacobone. No?
See, I watch too much Sopranos.
Thanks for coming and watching the show, listening to the show — however you take it in. Subscribe, leave a little feedback, share your story suggestions, and go ahead and take potshots at me. I can take it.
You can read all the articles we discussed this week in the links in the episode description. You’ll also find them in the post where this lives on FactorThis.com.
Be good people. We’ll see you next time.