This week on This Week in Cleantech, Paul Gerke and Mike Casey cover China's solar capacity closing in on coal, a pro-solar super PAC's role in unseating Rep. Andy Ogles in his primary, and the world crossing 3 terawatts of installed solar capacity. They also dig into the US critical minerals mining boom at sites like Thacker Pass, and welcome first-time guest Heather Clancy of Trellis to discuss why Equinix and Oracle are turning to Bloom Energy fuel cells for data center power. The episode closes with Aytaç Yilmaz of Ore Energy as Cleantecher of the Week.
Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of This Week in Cleantech, your favorite 15-minute roundup of the biggest stories in climate and clean energy every week. This is Friday, August 7th, 2026. We got a first-time guest joining us shortly, Heather Clancy from Trellis. I'm Factor This content director Paul Gerke, joined as always by cleantech commentator Mike Casey of Tigercomm. Mike, how are you on this fine Friday?
I could not be better, not be better, my friend. Well, first for several reasons. I'm going to love the stories that we're going to cover in this episode. And two, it's really a pleasure to have Heather Clancy on. She was part of our podcasters roundtable during the pandemic, and it's good to have her back. We covered a story of hers back in October, so it's nice to have her finally on the show.
All right, man. Excited to get to it.
You sound excited, too. Just your normal chipper self this morning.
This is what happens when we do the show in the morning and not in the afternoons. Let's go, everybody, wake up. We'd love to hear from the viewers, the listeners, the people that make this show possible. If you got something to say to us, we want your two cents. You can send it to us at twic@tigercomm.us. We'll find a way to make you a part of the program. We also do five stories that are relevant to our viewers and listeners every week. That's the core of the program. So, let's dive into that. Story number one, Mike, where are we starting?
Absolutely. Bloomberg has a story. I'm going to read it slowly, this headline, I love it: Solar Set to Soon Pass Coal as China's Top Power Capacity Source.
Paul Gerke, we've been watching it approach that for some time now, Mike. And now it looks like we're finally about to see that tipping point. The China Electricity Council, they say solar is going to pass coal as China's largest source of generation capacity sometime this quarter. It might have already happened at the end of June. Solar was producing 1,274 gigawatts in China. That's 1 gigawatt behind coal's production. By the end of this year, China expects total installed capacity to reach more than 4,300 gigawatts. Solar and wind making up about half of that. Thermal power share falling to just 31%. Mike, is this a look at our distant future?
Well, not if the current clown show of federal policy has its way. But I want to pull age on a lot of you youngsters out in the listening audience. I remember year after year when the fossil fuel lobby would have a refrain trying to put clean energy at the kids' table. "China builds a coal plant once every two weeks. Why would we do clean energy when they're going to do the dirty energy?" You know, we're hearing from them now, Paul Gerke. Crickets, zilch, nada. And that's because China's renewable buildout has actually slowed significantly after a policy overhaul ended guaranteed revenue for wind and solar projects. But that has not stopped them from adding 72 gigawatts of solar in the first half of 2026. That's all, just the 72 gigawatts. That's after adding 93 gigawatts in May of 2025 alone.
Okay, so that policy shift dragged total power investment in the first six months of the year down more than 3% from 2025, to $54 billion. But the slowdown looks temporary. China is planning to add 240 gigawatts of new power capacity in the second half of the year. A 50% jump from the first half. And JP Morgan is calling for the same seasonal rebound. The grid's already starting to keep pace. Solar utilization fell to 91.4% this year from 94.3% the year before. But this is what's called a pleasant problem to have, Paul Gerke.
Yeah, champagne problem, like steak too juicy, lobster too buttery — situation for them. Too much power generation.
Absolutely. Wish we had that problem here in some places. Let's get to our second story this week.
Story number two, Timothy Cama of Politico. It's titled "How Solar Donors Helped Take Down a Trump-Backed Republican." Mike, what's it about?
I am uncharacteristically underdressed for this show. I have a t-shirt on, and that is for a reason, because first off, disclosure, I am involved with the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition. And I'm going to unkindly say there's been a lot of second-guessing and ankle biting of Tom Matzzie, the pro-solar super PAC chair, and the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, and what they're doing. The criticism has been that a lot of the spending has been on the margins in these political races that were otherwise going to go the way they wanted. This event last night is the strongest proof point yet that counters those criticisms. Solar-hating Freedom Caucus member Andy Ogles lost by seven points in his primary. He was cruising comfortably to a win before Tom Matzzie and the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition came in and dumped $2 million against him. Ogles was a near-fanatic hater of clean energy and railed against this entire form of affordable energy as some sort of scam. Other haters in Congress should now learn that attacking clean energy and raising Americans' electricity bills will not be an accountability-free exercise anymore. Andy, don't let the doorknob hit you where the good Lord split you. Paul, what do you think?
I think that I generally try to stay apolitical on this show and leave you to do the punching there. So I'm going to say, just from a personal note, it is somewhat gratifying to see someone who is anti-clean energy fail. Because I work in clean energy, and I do this show with you, and I can see the difference that it's making on US grids every single day. And so those folks that want to rally against it in favor of fossil fuel interests are misguided, in my opinion. So that makes me happy. And then the other thing is, I just want to defer the couple seconds I would normally spend here yammering to allowing the viewers that are watching this podcast to see the beautiful t-shirt you have on. Could you stand up and show them what it actually says?
Absolutely. Here we go.
Yep. Don't — I just see the word "don't," stand up a little. "Don't mess with solar." There it is. There we go. We didn't even see the gym shorts you got on.
All right, Mike. Story number three this week. Where are we going? Akshat Rathi from Bloomberg. Have you ever heard of him? He's been our most frequent guest here. I think the world crossed a major solar milestone and no one noticed except Akshat. Akshat's got his eyes on it. Yeah. What's happening in China is really interesting, but this is a global thing. We're talking about the world hitting 3 terawatts of installed solar capacity. It took 10 years to build the first terawatt. The next two came in under five years. BloombergNEF expects that pace will keep accelerating. Global solar deployment should top 9 terawatts by 2036. China, though, as you may have suspected, is driving a lot of that growth. It's also outpacing its own grid, as we mentioned in the first story, although that is a bit of a good problem to have. Curtailment is rising because transmission and storage haven't kept up, which is why China's latest five-year plan pushes for more renewables consumption than just production. I could think of some hungry, hungry data center developers that might want a piece of that pie.
Absolutely.
Developing countries are not benefiting from this milestone quite yet. Their share of global solar deployment has basically stalled since 2020, even as costs keep falling. BloombergNEF thinks that's about to change. Developing countries are starting from such a low base, they won't hit the same grid constraints that China is facing now. And by 2036, they could account for more than a quarter of all solar installed worldwide. Hot spots like Pakistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines are already showing what that looks like, with rooftop solar booming and battery adoption following right behind it, even without much policy support pushing it. Access to financing is still a bottleneck for a lot of these markets, more so than technical or workforce issues at this point.
Paul, our fourth story, story number four this week. Justin Worland from Time magazine. It's titled "This Is What the New Rush to Mine America Looks Like." What does it look like, Mike?
Yeah, we had Justin on the show, I think, a while back. So great pictures in the story, make sure you take a look at them. Thacker Pass in northern Nevada is bigger than the island of Manhattan, and it's the largest US lithium mine built in decades. The lithium will be used to satisfy growing demand for EVs and batteries for the grid and data centers. Right now, the federal government has 40 mining projects sitting on a fast-track list, and they're moving through permitting faster than we've seen in years. The Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe says Thacker Pass will destroy sites sacred to them. The Department of Energy still took a 5% equity stake in the project and the company building it. Globally, more than half the minerals we need for the energy transition sit on or near land of indigenous or other land-connected communities, according to new research out in Nature Sustainability.
Paul, in the latest in the "all roads lead to Rome" thing, most of the world's critical mineral supply, as you know, runs through China. Every story goes back to China, Mike. It turned into a vulnerability when Beijing hit back at Trump's tariffs a while back and threatened to cut off US mineral supplies. That's what actually put the federal pedal down on permitting more than clean energy ever did, really. South32's Hermosa project in Arizona just became the first mine to receive expedited federal permitting under a new streamlined process. It's an underground mine rather than an open pit, so the company's betting that a smaller visible footprint will buy it more goodwill within the community. Even Hell's Kitchen out on California's Salton Sea, which was originally pitched as a lithium play for EVs, is now leaning hard on AI data center booms to justify itself now that the EV demand has cooled off a bit. Permitting speed is bipartisan, Mike. It's something that both sides of the aisle want. What is still completely unresolved is what a fast-tracked mine actually owes the people living next to it. I think the people that are about to live next to some data centers probably have very similar questions, too, for different reasons.
We could talk about that until the cows come home, but instead, let's bring the guest in. Story number five.
Absolutely. Heather Clancy at Trellis. Why data center companies like Equinix and Oracle are buying fuel cells. Hey Heather, lovely to have you on the show. It's good to see you again. We want people to read the story, but for those who have not yet, what's the really big takeaway?
So the really big takeaway is that the companies need independence. They need speed — the speed to power that you're talking about — and they're going to get it anywhere. Equinix and Oracle are two of the biggest customers for Bloom, and I actually still remember that "60 Minutes" segment many years ago, right? So this is not a new company. They've been around quite a while, and Equinix has been flirting, if you will, with fuel cells for quite a while. But actually, one of their San Jose data centers is going to be running completely off of it, and they're going to use the grid as backup. It's not a secret what the reason is. It's like, they need to get these things in operation as quickly as possible, and that's the quickest way they're going to do it.
We talk a lot about a variety of renewable energy technologies on the show. I'm not sure we've talked about fuel cells anytime recently. So, Heather, I'll be the dumb one and just be like, "What's a fuel cell?" Can you explain to our listeners and viewers what a fuel cell is and why they want them?
Absolutely. The reason this particular trend caught my attention is because of the coverage of the natural gas generators, right? The sort of off-grid generators that are powering — I'll mention them by name — the Meta, you know, there's xAI, this massive data center power grid, right? And it's dirty, it's coming in under the permits. And so these companies that have goals are trying to do the same, but with a cleaner technology. So basically, a fuel cell converts using a much cleaner process. It's a chemical process instead of a combustion process. That's the simplest answer. And yes, these particular cells use natural gas. A lot of Bloom ones run off natural gas, but it's still a much cleaner solution than certain generators, right? There's all the scales of the different generators that you can put in place. And if you're going to — I guess I mean, it's a practicality thing, right? You're not going to tell these companies not to put new power on the grid or off the grid, if that the case may be. You want them, though, to do it in the cleanest way possible. So if you're not going to do solar or wind or whatever, I don't know, geothermal, this is another source that I think is kind of under the radar a little bit. The biggest problem with fuel cells, I think one of the biggest problems, has been the fact that there's just not that much capacity, right? I think the back orders, just as with some of the gas turbines, are pretty substantial. But yeah, I think it's worth looking at.
Heather, in your reporting for this piece, did you get a sense that the developers, like Equinix, think that fuel cells will lower community resistance? Because we've covered a lot on this show — the shocking coalescing of public opposition across the political spectrum to data centers. They're at 70% opposition right now. And from what I can tell, even for conversations I was having as late as like 14 hours ago, these developers are still coming to terms with just how opposed Americans are. Is that factoring into their purchases here, you know?
So, on the Oracle side, I don't — I couldn't say, because they're very opaque about what they care about in terms of the climate. They just haven't been that vocal. Equinix is a pretty strongly committed company when it comes to having good water policy, good — you know, they do a lot of matching of their power usage. I don't actually think that these particular deals were made with that in mind, but it sure is helping, right? So they've been working with these companies for a while. And I think now it's like a lucky happenstance that they're able to now claim that these are — they absolutely are quieter. There's less knocks, there's less socks, right? So it is definitely less polluting and a little bit less bad. I don't know if you want to say it that way. I think maybe they're definitely going to use that now as a rallying cry, but I don't think it originally was thought of in that way.
Mike, you think we got time for one more question?
Absolutely.
All right, one more. And this is one you might not be able to answer, Heather, because you kind of touched on this a little bit with limited capacity — but do you see fuel cells as being more of a solution than they're being explored right now, not just in the data center AI space, but for larger, you know, grid uses, for example, or applications which might arise in the next few years in this sprint toward power in any way we can get it?
Well, actually, it's a great question, and I haven't done the research to tell me the answer, but I would say that anyone with a big distributed load, like think retailers that are now unable to get power for a new store, they definitely would, I think, be looking at this sort of technology. I mean, I know that Walmart has plenty of fuel cells already, like so that — Walmart is definitely on the Bloom list. So I wouldn't be surprised to see those that are kind of shut out of other deals now, because there's so few clean projects to bid on, that they would look at this source. Definitely.
I learned something today, Mike, about fuel cells.
So did I. No, that's not the way that's supposed to work. Damn. I think we learn something every time we get a guest on the show, and Heather is no exception. Hey pal, we got to go to our Cleantecher of the Week.
All right, let's do it. Our Cleantecher of the Week — drum roll, please. Oh, they gave me a difficult name. You guys have got to make — this is so funny, every single time you got to put a pronouncer in, but I'm going to nail it. You ready?
Cleantecher of the Week is Aytaç Yilmaz, the co-founder and CEO of Ore Energy. It's an Amsterdam-based startup. They just closed a $43 million Series A on iron-air batteries. If you're not familiar, they can store renewable power for up to 100 hours. They just rust and unrust iron electrodes — no lithium, no cobalt. They also just signed a long-duration storage deal in continental Europe. It's a one-gigawatt-hour agreement with a Dutch utility called Budget Thuis.
Congratulations, Aytaç, our Cleantecher of the Week.
That's nothing to sneeze at for an A round, man, I got to tell you that.
All right, well, we want to thank Alex Petersen and Clare Quirin for helping gather these stories. And thank you, the listener and viewer, for joining us for another round of This Week in Cleantech, some odd episodes in. Thank you to Heather Clancy for making her debut on the show. I would love to have you back sometime. Please check out that article if you haven't already, and subscribe, leave a little feedback, share a story suggestion to the email we mentioned at the top of the show if you want to be a part of the program. You can find all the articles we discuss every week — there are links in the episode description, as well as in the post where this lives on factorthis.com. Until next Friday, be good people.
And Paul, not to put you on the spot, but I believe Heather is in the "data center" camp, not the "data center" — you finally found somebody to join your cohort. That's cool. Just — data, proper English is becoming a rare thing.
Heather's got it. I put up with yours. The debate will continue next week.