This week's episode covers Base Power's $1 billion funding round and new 36-hour home battery, the Trump administration's $3 billion critical minerals push that's inadvertently boosting EV supply chains, a Nebraska tax program funneling renewable energy revenue into rural schools and counties, a federal judge's order forcing the Pentagon to lift its freeze on wind project reviews, and a deep dive with returning guest Mark Chediak of Bloomberg on new tariffs targeting imported polysilicon. The episode closes with "Cleantecher of the Week," honoring a UK dairy farm's milk-powered heat pump innovation.
Hey everybody and welcome back to another edition of This Week in Cleantech. It's that show where we do all the big stories in climate and clean energy in about 15 minutes, depending on how rambly we get. We're shooting for Friday, August 14th, 2026. We have a returning guest in waiting — Mark Chediak will be joining us shortly to talk about his story this week. I'm Factor This content director Paul Gerke, joined as always by cleantech commentator Mike Casey of Tigercomm. Mike, I noticed you were giving Mark a little grief in the green room, if you will, before the show, trying to figure out if he's even the best guest from his own outlet.
No, I asked Gemini a very simple question. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the better This Week in Cleantech guest from Bloomberg News, Mark Chediak or Akshat Rathi? And it showed clear conflict aversion. It said, declaring a definitive winner between Mark Chediak and Akshat Rathi on This Week in Cleantech is like choosing between a high voltage transformer and a global energy policy blueprint. Both are essential but they serve different functions. And then it ends — it gets a side-by-side comparison on these frequent guests. It ends by saying, "Ultimately, Chediak gives you the grid, Rathi gives you the globe, and the real winner is a listener getting talked to."
You have trained that thing to tell you exactly what you want to hear. We always love hearing what you, the listeners, have to say, so Mike doesn't have to listen to the machines. You can make your opinions part of the show anytime by reaching out to us at our typical work email addresses, or the one that we devised just for this program. It's TWIC at Tigercomm dot com. Mike, as always, we've got five stories locked and loaded. What's the first one in the hopper?
Oh, heck yeah. I like this first one. Jennifer Hiller, Wall Street Journal. Zach Dell is raising money to put a battery in your backyard. This is a cool story. The farmer's in the Dell, and he's got a home battery to sell you.
Yeah, if you didn't see this one, big deal for Base Power, a company we've been talking about for a couple of years now since they debuted. They locked down a billion bucks in funding, putting the company's valuation at 13 billion. No joke. Three-year-old startup has installed more than 23,000 backyard batteries, mostly across Texas, now in the Chicago area and beyond as well, running about 100 installations a day. They're trying to double that by year end. The newest battery units are pretty interesting. They made a concurrent announcement that they had scored that billion dollars in funding. And then the other side of the announcement is, "Hey, we have a new thing to sell." It's their new home battery. It's about three times the size at minimum of most commercially available home backup batteries. It does eclipse around the capacity of the Tesla Powerwall. It's good enough for about 36 hours of home backup. That's a pretty big deal. Installation is down to an hour thanks to a pre-wired modular design. So you can see why this thing is selling, and you can see why Base Power is raising money. They run two different business models, Mike. In deregulated markets, like down in Texas, they sell cheaper than average electricity directly, aggregating battery capacity to feed back to the grid during peak demand or during outages. In regulated markets, so pretty much everywhere else, they partner with utilities and co-ops to relieve local grid bottlenecks and congestion while helping customers get much-needed backup power. It seems like a win-win any way you look at it. Mike, what do you think?
Oh, heck yeah. I should note that Zach does not have any investment from his famous and very wealthy father, Michael Dell. He's done this on his own, so that's really cool. The battery industry installed a record 1.3 gigawatt hours of home batteries in Q1 alone, and Base Power's growth is a big part of that story. So utilities like El Paso Electric are already piloting Base Power batteries as an alternative to expensive new substations and power lines — infrastructure that otherwise sits mostly idle except for a handful of extreme demand days each summer. Zach, this is Mike. Please come to Virginia. I will be your first customer. Just saying.
That's all it takes to get you as a customer, is just come say hi to you. Just any interaction at all is enough to curry your favor. Somebody call Mike Casey. If you got his number, give the man a ring.
I'm a pushover.
Second story this week. Hannah Northey and James Bikales from E&E News. Sorry if I messed your name up, James. Trump waged war on EVs. Now he's helping them out. What's in this one, Mike?
Yeah, Trump — he spent his second term gutting support for EVs, killing the $7,500 tax credit, rolling back pollution standards, and stalling charging station infrastructure funding. But last week, he unveiled $3 billion for critical mineral projects, and those happen to be exactly what EV batteries need. Westwater Resources is getting a $25 million federal loan for a graphite processing plant in Alabama. The Pentagon is putting another 1.4 billion into Sila Nanotechnologies for silicon anode material. And Niron Magnetics is getting $150 million for rare earth-free magnets from Minnesota. One Westwater executive called it, quote, "serendipitous benefit," end quote, for EVs, since the funding was pitched around defense and data centers, not electric cars. Paul, your thoughts?
Yeah, I think it's funny. I'm actually working on a story right now about that Sila deal, $1.4 billion. You know where they're at, Mike? They're working on that project up in Moses Lake, Washington, the site of the old Silfab plant. If you remember, over the last few years, they were trying to refine it for solar and they couldn't get the purity right for their customer, which I believe was Qcells, and they had to scrap the whole deal, and it looks like they sold the operation to this company, and they're going to use that same processing — which they couldn't get refined enough for solar — but for batteries it makes a lot of sense. We don't have really much capacity here in the US, so EVs represent 70%ish of global lithium demand versus 20% for battery storage and a sliver for defense. EV sales are ticking up in the US and in China in Q2 versus Q1 — it's partially, at least, a byproduct of the ongoing Iran war. Sila's CEO, that company I mentioned a second ago, made the point that military demand alone can't support a real domestic battery supply chain. But as EVs start to eat more at that market, and other commercial volume comes online as well, it makes that industrial base actually work and worth the investment.
All right, my friend. Well, the third story is by Anila Yoganathan at Grist, in partnership with Flatwater Free Press. Some Nebraska communities are cashing in on renewables and others are being left behind. Okay, this story's got numbers in it, so these were fed to me. Mike, Nebraska has got a nameplate capacity tax that charges wind and solar developments $3,518 American per megawatt of generating capacity every year. And that money flows to counties and local school districts instead of standard property taxes. One Nebraska school district used nine years of that revenue — $7.6 million — to help fund a $13.2 million expansion of its junior-senior high school. That's pretty cool. Statewide revenue has grown fast: $2 million in 2015 all the way up to $13.6 million last year, but more than 88% of that money went to just 10 of Nebraska's 93 counties. Lawmakers this year expanded the tax to cover battery storage, too, though a separate push to raise the per-megawatt rate died in the legislature. Mike, your thoughts?
So, the 10 counties getting almost all the tax money are the counties where the wind and solar farms sit. A lot of the other 83 counties have made sure none get built on their land through moratoriums or zoning that blocks them outright.
Huh. Funny how that works.
It does. So, the pushback is mostly about protecting farmland, but the Nebraska Farmers Union president has made the opposite case — that a turbine lease works like an off-farm job. A farmer never has to leave the property to get paid for it. Utilities like Omaha Public Power District are leaning on renewables anyway because they're cheap and fast to build at a moment when new gas turbines are backlogged and nuclear takes years. The counties saying no to wind and solar are also saying no to millions in community funding, and voting to let neighbors cash the check instead.
Paul, a fourth story.
Yeah, before we get to four, Mike, I just want to add that the gas turbine line, from what I understand, and our friends over at Power Engineering — it's very much like a Taylor Swift concert ticket line, where if you're in line, stay in line and just hang out there for a bit. Get comfortable, because you're not getting to the front anytime soon.
Story number four, this one by Brad Plumer from the New York Times. It's titled "Federal Judge Orders Pentagon to Lift Freeze on Wind Power." Oh, go on, Mike. This is a BFD, pal.
Federal judge in Oregon ordered the Pentagon to lift its freeze on reviewing new onshore wind projects, ruling that renewable energy groups suing the agency are likely to win their case.
[gasps]
Since April, the Pentagon had halted all reviews supposed to run to check whether wind turbines interfere with military radar or flight path — a process that used to move fairly routinely. That freeze has stalled 106 wind projects across 21 states, representing about $47 billion in potential investment. And there's another 29 gigawatts of wind sitting in the Pentagon's review queue right now. The judge, a Trump appointee, ordered the Pentagon to restart reviews and report its progress back to the court every 30 days.
Paul, it's nothing new and I'm not saying anything novel here, but it's pretty clear that the Trump administration, or Trump specifically, doesn't like wind. I think it's largely because he doesn't understand it, or at least doesn't appreciate how much it already contributes to the US grid. The Justice Department has been raving about national security when it comes to wind projects, particularly the offshore ones that have been sunk, or the companies that were paid off to go away and take their money to oil interests — specifically saying that turbines could make it harder to detect drones, things like that. The judge wasn't convinced in this case.
Mike, said justifying freezing every single project nationwide was not common sense. This fits a pattern. As we alluded to, Trump moved to block wind farm approvals on federal land literally day one when he got into office. There's been a back and forth bit of litigation with five big offshore projects that were already under construction that he tried to pull the plug on. Those have been able to stay on track. He's paid more than $4 billion now, I think, to those companies to walk away from offshore investments as well. Whether you realize it or not, or haven't been through the Dallas airport recently, wind supplies more than 10% of the country's electricity today. Right now, we're not talking about future endeavors. Courts keep ruling that national security on its face does not hold up for halting projects like this. I'm sure we'll be talking about it again in the future.
For now though, we've carved out some time for our recurring guest. Let's get to it. Mike, what's our last story this week?
All right, so we want to welcome back Mark Chediak. He was one of a duo of reporters with Nadja Popovich — they wrote a piece called "How the US Is Trying to End Solar Tariff Whack-a-Mole." So, Mark Chediak, I actually lied. Gemini just praised you up and down and said Akshat is a far inferior guest. I just want to pull you aside and let you know that. I don't want to hurt Akshat's feelings, so we're only going to share that at the start of the show to kind of balance it out, but it sided with you quite a bit.
That said, if someone has not read this important story, which we want them to do, what is the big takeaway?
Well, the big takeaway here is basically that the Trump administration — Trump issued an executive order last week that will impose tariffs on imported polysilicon into the US. So that includes polysilicon and its derivatives — we're talking about polysilicon, we're talking about solar wafers, we're talking about solar cells, we're talking about solar panels. And this would apply globally. So what this tariff is designed to do is to address this issue that US trade officials have been grappling with for more than the last decade, which is essentially: you've had US domestic solar manufacturers basically complaining to trade officials that China was dumping low-cost, heavily subsidized solar panels and cells into the US market and really undercutting and hurting any chance of a US domestic solar manufacturing industry.
So what we saw more than a decade ago was tariffs were placed on Chinese solar imports, and what happened after that is basically these Chinese companies moved their manufacturing to other countries to avoid these tariffs. So they moved to Southeast Asia. Then these domestic solar manufacturers protested that, so then we saw tariffs on imports coming from Southeast Asia. Then these manufacturing facilities moved to other nations — Indonesia, Laos, now in Africa. We're seeing tariffs being placed on imports from those countries.
So we have what we described as sort of a whack-a-mole game, where you place tariffs coming out of one country and that manufacturing capacity just quickly moves to another nation. So with these new tariffs, these polysilicon tariffs, the idea is that you would place basically a minimum price that the importer has to pay for this equipment, plus a 15% additional tariff. And this would apply whether it's solar coming from Ethiopia or Oman or Vietnam. So it would be far more difficult for low-cost Chinese manufacturers to sort of skirt around the existing tariff infrastructure.
Mark, isn't this a little bit of cutting off our nose to spite our face here, and admitting that we can't keep up with that game of whack-a-mole, and instead undercutting our ability to get solar projects online quickly? I mean, there's no way that the current rate of domestic manufacturing can keep up with where demand is right now. I'm guessing that that tariff won't be prohibitive to the point that we won't still be importing plenty of polysilicon, because we've, as we sort of briefly discussed earlier on the show, scaling up our own production and refining it to the levels we need is a very difficult and expensive process, right?
So, there are a couple — yeah, so a couple things. Well, you know, there are a few consequences, some intended, maybe some unintended. One, it's going to raise the price of solar panels in the US. The average price of a solar module in the US is about 27 cents. BloombergNEF, which is our in-house research firm, sees these tariffs raising the module price to like 50 cents a watt. So that's a pretty significant increase. So it will eventually raise the cost of solar in the United States.
In terms of spurring domestic manufacturing, I think the administration does realize that that is still a work in progress. So what they are offering is tariff relief for companies willing to invest in standing up domestic solar manufacturing facilities in the United States — that's polysilicon, wafer, cell, and module. We already have enough module assembly in the United States to meet demand, but we do not have anything close to meeting demand for cells and wafers and poly. So the idea is you give these companies a little bit of a break, they get a chance to stand up their operations, and then hopefully you have a robust domestic industry by the time these tariffs start hitting.
Mark, wouldn't you say there is grounds for a little bit of skepticism? I mean, it's not like this administration has gone out of its way to encourage domestic solar manufacturing. They're choking domestic solar deployment and they're raising prices on the feedstock for that deployment. Oh, and let's not forget they arrested a whole bunch of workers at a Georgia solar plant. I just — the cynic in me thinks raising prices, panel prices, from 27 cents to 50 cents, that's not an afterthought. I think that's actually the intent. Now, that's my amateur speculation, but is that not a defensible view?
Well, yeah, I mean, it's certainly fair to say the Trump administration has not been a great friend of solar. At the same time, I think that they do feel like there is a national security need and desire to — if you are going to have a solar industry — to have it be homegrown. That does mean it makes it more expensive. What the domestic solar manufacturers actually would like to see, because they also see this issue of demand — because we do have, you know, we have these tax incentives for solar installations that have ended — the Trump administration ended those, the Trump administration has been slow-walking permits for new solar developments. What the domestic solar manufacturers want to see now is a reinstatement of the tax incentive to install solar in the US, to keep demand at the levels that we've seen prior to the last year or so. Whether or not that happens is an open question. But yes, if you take into account all of these factors you're talking about, it does not seem to be a hugely bullish case for solar in the United States.
Paul, last question before you go to Cleantecher of the Week.
I assume we shouldn't hold our breath on bringing tax credits back anytime soon.
Mark, I think that's a good way to end the conversation.
Okay, stay tuned, I guess.
Exactly. But we can't let Mark go without asking him — Mark, is it data centers or data centers?
He's taking a poll. [laughter] Really? Is it data center?
I'm from the Midwest, so I guess I say data centers.
I'm also from the Midwest, and I say data centers. I don't know.
You are behind already. This majority is going to keep building and building.
To me, "data" sounds more formal. "Data" sounds serious. "Data" sounds like it might be your Facebook profile, your match pictures. You know what I mean?
He was held back in 8th grade for a year.
But let's just go, people. I was held back. I was — [laughter] — not held back.
All right, Cleantecher of the Week. Speaking of things that don't make a ton of sense — this one could be made up. And I've had the suspicion for a really long time that you are going to sneak a completely made-up Cleantecher of the Week as like a Ron Burgundy-style joke, where you're like, "This guy will read anything that we give him." If there was ever one that is completely BS, I'm flagging it before I read it — it's this one. But on the off chance that this is a real person and a real company and a real technology, I'm going to read it, and I'm going to read it enthusiastically. Okay.
This week's Cleantecher of the Week is Kumo Sharma, founder of Arkaya Energy, whose company's milk-source heat pump pulls heat straight from fresh milk as it's chilled for cheesemaking. It then uses that heat to make near-boiling water for washdown. It's an all-in-one cheese machine, cutting England's Barber's Farmhouse Cheesemakers' electricity use in half. Mike, can you believe it? In half. Saved him 94 grand a year. Congratulations, Kumo, who I'm assuming exists — you are our Cleantecher of the Week.
Paul, you know, your predecessor, John Engel, used to hate on new tech, and I would honk at him all for it. And you're picking up the mantle. But you know what? I'm not — [laughter] — that just sounds implausible.
I'm going to not hate here. Alex Petersen, Clare Quirin, for gathering these stories. As always, thank you for your patience, the viewer, the listener, and our guest, Mark Chediak, for joining this week's episode. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe, give us some feedback, share a story suggestion to the email we mentioned at the top of the show. Don't forget, you can read every article we discuss each week — there are links in the episode description, as well as where this thing lives on factorthis.com. Until next time, be good, people.