This week, Paul Gerke and Mike Casey cover New York's first-in-the-nation data center moratorium, the American auto industry's retreat from EVs even as global sales boom, a transformer and grid equipment shortage driven by AI data center demand, and a 69% surge in global fusion investment. Dallas Morning News reporter Lana Ferguson joins to discuss Texas's booming "solar sheep" agrivoltaics industry, where ranchers graze sheep beneath solar panels. The episode closes with Cleantecher of the Week Joey Fiore, CEO of PowerLabs, maker of the portable solar generator Roav.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another edition of This Week in Cleantech, your favorite 15-minute roundup of the biggest stories in climate and clean energy each week. We're taping for Friday, July 17th, 2026. We've got a guest on the horn. Lana Ferguson from the Dallas Morning News will be joining us shortly.
If you don't know my voice or face by now, I'm Factor This content director Paul Gerke, joined as always by the other half of the party boys tag team tandem we've put together, cleantech commentator Mike Casey of Tigercomm.
If you want to be on the show, all you got to do is email us. The email address for the show is twic@tigercomm.us. Send us story suggestions or thoughts and we'll try to get them into the program. As always, we've got five hot stories on tap. Let's start with number one. Mike, what is it?
All right, Paul Gerke. Our first story is by Zachary Skidmore from Data Center Dynamics, titled "New York Becomes First US State to Impose a Data Center Moratorium." Now you're going to call it a data center, you say "dator," and I say "data." It's a data center anyway. New York has become the first state to say, "Hey, we don't want them." There's been other jurisdictions, but not a state, until New York, to say we're putting up a moratorium on new large-scale data centers, pausing environmental permitting on any project with a capacity of more than 50 megawatts for at least a year. The order, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, gives regulators some time to build out a generic environmental impact statement that better assesses data center energy demand, water use, air quality, that kind of stuff. Within 60 days, the state is also going to issue guidance letting local governments negotiate community benefit agreements directly with data center developers. We've seen that work elsewhere. Mike, your thoughts?
Yeah. So Hochul's directing the Department of Public Service to weigh a New York grid acceleration fund, which would make data centers pay for upgrades to the state's aging grid. Reports indicate that she'll also push legislation to repeal the state's sales tax exemption for data centers. I bet not a lot of people knew that actually existed. A separate and tougher bill, a three-year moratorium from State Senator Elizabeth Krueger, is still moving through the legislature, and the governor's office says it went with the one-year version because of the bill's complicated nature. If I were in the data center development business, I would pay very close attention to this growing movement for bans. Paul, story number two.
Our second story this week, from Matthew Sher [name uncertain — please verify against the byline] at the New York Times, is titled "The American EV Has Been Crushed. Will We Take the US Auto Industry With It?" Mike, my favorite quote from this piece is from auto journalist Martin Padet [name uncertain — please verify], who told a reporter, "The way I'd put it is that the United States pulled a U-turn while the rest of the world was pushing forward." So for Ford, GM, Stellantis, they've all pulled back from EVs. Even as global EV sales boomed, Ford axed its three-row electric SUV and the F-150 Lightning. Stellantis ended its electric Charger and Ram, and GM delayed a Buick EV. The cancellations piled up elsewhere too, under the second Trump administration the EV tax credit was eliminated and tailpipe standards were gutted because, well, why not? 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. If you play to lose, you're gonna lose. That's on them.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good take, Mike. And for Ford in particular, I mean, I was there. I saw the way that they were building out their new production lines and rethinking the way that they were going to make a vehicle to accommodate their Lightning F-150. And it just feels like they got so far along and then got cold feet and just balked and were like, "We're losing too much money on this, there's no federal support." And that's not to say they're not doing interesting stuff now, the big three definitely are, but I think that quote you shared a moment ago is pretty apt. The IEA, meanwhile, says one in four vehicles sold globally last year was electric. So we see where the trend is going.
Bloomberg expects that share to more than double within a decade, putting gas cars in the minority of new sales for the first time ever. That will be a moment when it happens.
Yeah, for sure.
China, as we know though, Mike, they're the leader in EVs. They build about 75% of the world's supply. 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 that gap is only widening. Norway hit 97% of EV sales last year. Global average around 25%. The US, though, if you're curious, just 10%. Mike, story number three.
Yeah, Kavya Balaraman from Reuters, "US Power Companies Scramble to Secure Equipment as Surging Data Center Demand Strains Supplies." Paul, I don't know anything about data center demand, but I do know about surging data center demand, and it's straining the supply of critical grid equipment like transformers, driving up costs and wait times. Sorry, I had to. Wood Mackenzie projects US data center capacity will hit 110 gigawatts by 2030. That's about 24 gigawatts or so, if we're splitting hairs, more than today, consuming eight times more electricity than EVs over that stretch. And data center share of the electrical equipment market keeps going up too, anticipated to swell to 40% under accelerated scenarios. A lot of different players competing for the same electrical components. Generator step-up transformer lead times topped 160 weeks in the first quarter of this year. You got time to wait. That was up from a 143-week average in 2024. High-voltage circuit breakers, another one in high demand, 125 weeks in the back half of last year versus just 77 in 2023. Mike, your thoughts on all this?
Uh, my thoughts are they got a big problem. So transformer costs are going to climb another 4 to 10% over the next year, depending on the type. Utilities are trying to adapt. Take Roseville Electric Utility in California. It used to procure equipment about a year out. Now it's planning three years ahead and buying for known future projects five years out. So yeah, it's a lot. Federal regulators, they ordered grid operators last month to look into faster protocols for connecting data centers and other large power users. You can permit a data center, and that is not a small feat anymore. But if the transformer it needs takes three years to source, the AI buildout is only ever moving as fast as the slowest piece of steel in the supply chain. Paul, our fourth story.
Story four will wade, Bloomberg, "Global Investment in Fusion Companies Surges 69% to $4.5 Billion." Nice. So fusion, very exciting. Global investment in fusion climbed 69% to a record $4.5 billion over the past year, according to the new Fusion Industry Association report. So fusion developers have now raised $14.2 billion since the FIA started tracking the data in 2021. Four companies, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Inertia Enterprises, Helion Energy, and Proxima Fusion, they accounted for more than half of last year's investment. About 70% of companies surveyed expect a commercial fusion power plant to enter service by 2040. Paul, your thoughts?
I'll believe it when I see it. But there does seem to be a lot of confidence there, Mike. It traces back to a 2022 breakthrough when researchers triggered a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it took to spark it. But no one has replicated that result outside of the lab since. Important to note, fusion promises abundant carbon-free energy, but real scientific and engineering challenges still stand between here and a commercial plant. The industry has to recreate intense heat and pressure, like you're in a star, fusing small atoms into larger ones and releasing energy. Rising electricity demand to feed those data centers and our air conditioners, that's part of what's bringing the money to this space.
But we'll see. There might be a lot more smoke than there is fire. Again, 2040, all right, I'll set my calendar. Mike, while we wait, how about we bring in our guest?
Our last story is by Lana Ferguson from the Dallas Morning News, her first time on the show. Lana, welcome. "Solar Sheep: Texas Ranchers and Farmers New Opportunity on Solar Sites," that is the title for your story, which we want people to read if they haven't yet. What's the big takeaway?
Thanks for having me. The big takeaway is that Texas agriculture is alive and well and can coexist with clean energy. At least that's what they're trying to tell us.
I love the idea of agrivoltaics projects. I feel like this is such a natural solution, and it's such a great way for landowners and those seeking to build solar generation to coalesce and to come together and exist in a peaceful way. In your reporting, what did you see that caught your eye that I think people that might be familiar with agrivoltaics might be surprised by?
Probably the most interesting thing, although everyone gets excited to see the sheep out there, they honk their horns and the sheep come running, thinking their dinner bell is going off. But I was surprised. I was like, why sheep? And there is actually an explanation to it. Goats are a little tricky, they like to jump on things so they can break panels, they nibble at wires. And then cattle, as of right now, is too tall, too big for most panels. So that was really interesting to me, as to why sheep, and I think everyone understood that after talking about it.
Lana, I've been hearing that there is a push now to get the panels high enough to put cattle underneath them, because it's just a more dominant form of livestock. Did you hear that in your reporting, like when cattle will be going underneath panels?
I don't know about when, but I do think it could definitely be something in the future. I mean, as you know, Texas especially is big on cattle. I've heard even maybe horizontal solar panels. I think the ingenuity could be there. One of the farmers, ranchers that we met with on this training, actually he started with just sheep and already added hay harvesting between the solar panels. So I have no doubt that they're going to come up with something that will get whatever kind of agriculture you want to work with the companies.
I know in your piece you spoke to some ranchers out there, Texas Solar Sheep, one of the big players in this space. The last I spoke to them, it sounded like they couldn't keep up with business, it was booming. Is that still the case? Are more and more landowners starting to catch on to this possibility?
They really are. And JR Howard is great, he's one, along with Ely Valdez, that has kind of led this. And JR did tell me, he's like, "I'm not greedy, everyone needs to be doing this." So it's kind of the common good. So yeah, they're catching on. Ely started about 10 years ago, I think. So it's been slow, we've heard things about it, but the fact that they had the American Farmland Trust and American Solar Grazing Association hold this training, and like 30 plus people showed up, the interest is there and I think more people are going to be getting into this.
This week's Cleantecher of the Week is Joey Fiore, CEO of PowerLabs. If you're unfamiliar, his company builds the Roav. It's a portable solar generator that unfolds into a tracking solar array. It looks like a metal trailer you'd pull behind a car. It's cleaner, it's cheaper, it's easier to use than your standard diesel generator that I had to use during the last storm situation out here in the Northeast. Congrats, Joey Fiore, CEO of PowerLabs, our Cleantecher of the Week.
Thank you, Alex Petersen and Clare Quirin, for helping gather these stories.
Yeah, and thank you, the listener, the viewer, for joining us on this episode of This Week in Cleantech. If you like what you heard, subscribe, leave a little feedback, share a story suggestion, and give a round of applause to Lana Ferguson for joining us on this week's episode to talk some solar sheep. You can read all the articles, including hers, that we discussed this week. They're in links in the episode description, as well as where this podcast lives on factorthis.com. Until next time, people, be good.