Paul Gerke and Mike Casey return from a two-week break to cover the looming copper shortage and how cheap solar quietly passed nuclear in global power output. They look at why vehicle-to-grid tech hasn’t taken off and whether Ford’s new Fathom pickup can change that, plus how solid-state transformers could ease grid bottlenecks for the AI boom. The New York Times’ Brad Plumer explains how heat batteries like Antora’s turn cheap power into industrial steam. Cleantecher of the Week is Endurance Energy’s founder, who tested the first subsea geothermal plant in an underwater volcano.
Episode 149: Featuring Brad Plumer of The New York Times
Overview
- What the coming copper crunch means for the global economy — Financial Times
- ‘It’s offensively cheap’: How solar power is quietly becoming bigger than nuclear — BBC
- Why EVs aren’t powering America’s electric grid yet — Axios
- How solid-state transformers could help power the AI boom — MIT Technology Review
- A New Kind of Battery Is Taking Off. This One Stores Blistering Heat. — The New York Times
Introduction
Paul Gerke: Hello everybody and welcome to another round of This Week in Cleantech.
Mike Casey: That old thing that’s still around.
Paul Gerke: Oh yeah, it is, buddy. Your favorite 15-minute roundup of the biggest stories in climate and clean energy each week is back this week after two weeks away. You could say we were dressed as a ghost for the Halloween season the last couple of weeks. All apologies. Life gets in the way sometimes, but we’re happy to do a show for this Friday, October 30th, 2026. A spooktacular edition of This Week in Cleantech.
Mike Casey: Oh my god.
Paul Gerke: Well, are we not going to do Halloween stuff? Did you not script it? Do I have to ad lib at all?
Mike Casey: You have not been a dad for more than a year and you’re already hucking dad jokes.
Paul Gerke: I was born for this, brother. We’re fired up to have a long sought guest in waiting, Brad Plumer from the New York Times. We got a New York Times correspondent on the program.
Mike Casey: We’ve had a few minutes. Stop talking. Yeah, you’re negotiating yourselves. Like, listen. Well, you said we were waiting for the guy for a long time. I didn’t realize he showed up and then left us in the lurch for a couple of years. That’s kind of a different equation.
Paul Gerke: Hey, hey, listen. Today it’s Brad Plumer. Next week it’ll be the pope. Just think positive, dude.
Mike Casey: We talk White Sox baseball if we get him.
Paul Gerke: I’m Factor This content director Paul Gerke, joined as always by cleantech commentator Mike Casey of Tigercomm. Mike, what’s new?
Mike Casey: Hey, first I want to apologize to the audience for the two-week hiatus. Without the gory details, I’ll just say that work and life get a vote. I do want to give a shout out to Maggie Glenn. She is Jupiter Power director of communications and public affairs. But a fun fact, she started listening to us when she was writing with your predecessor John Engel, working for Clarion. And yeah, man. The fact that she didn’t run screaming for the hills outside Austin, where she lives and works, when she was free of John says a lot about our star power. Wouldn’t you say, Paul Gerke?
Paul Gerke: I just want to ask her which one of us she prefers, because our styles are slightly different.
Mike Casey: She says data, by the way, just so you know.
Paul Gerke: I’m glad you’re still taking the informal poll. Weigh in anytime on this program. Data centers or data centers? Text Mike at... Anyway, we appreciate hearing from you guys. If you want to make your opinions part of the show, we’ll always take your two cents. Just shoot us an email, twic@tigercomm.us. As always, we got five stories loaded in the hopper. Let’s start with the first one. Mike, what are we covering this week?
What the Coming Copper Crunch Means for the Global Economy
Mike Casey: Simon Mundy, Financial Times, “What the coming copper crunch means for the global economy.” I got that alliteration out quite well, I would say.
Paul Gerke: Say that 10 times fast. Copper, you probably heard about it. Maybe you stole some out of your neighbor’s walls. It’s in solar panels, EVs, data centers, the high-tech military gear governments are trying to buy. Demand is taking off. So, great time to get over there and rip that copper out if you still can. But a new BloombergNEF report warns of massive long-term copper shortages starting very soon, about 2028. Supply falling 8% short of demand in 2035 and then precipitously short by 2050. The IEA has issued some similar warnings. The CEO of a major copper producer, Teck, went even further, predicting a shortfall of about 30% by 2035. If you’re in the copper market, prices, as you may have noticed, are climbing. Records of $14,875 per ton were hit on the London Metal Exchange last month. That’s up 76% in less than 2 years. The Strait of Hormuz crisis has made things worse. No duh. Cutting Middle Eastern supplies of sulfur, which is used to extract copper. Mike, your thoughts on this?
Mike Casey: All right, so the Teck CEO noted it can take six months to build a data center and 15 years to discover, permit, and build a new mine. Many of the existing mines have been running for decades, and the ore quality is getting worse. So, the challenge to hold production steady... Investment in new mines has largely been flat over the past couple of decades. Wood Mackenzie, our friends over there, they say this is due to risk-averse investors trying to squeeze more money out of what they have or merge mining operations. Some of the richest untapped deposits are in places that are political no-go zones, like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Chinese mining companies are showing more interest there, but not at the scale needed to close the global gap. Paul, story number two.
It’s Offensively Cheap: How Solar Power Is Quietly Becoming Bigger Than Nuclear
Paul Gerke: Let’s get out of the mines and up to the rooftops. Second story this week, from Jocelyn Timperley over at BBC, is titled “It’s offensively cheap: How solar power is quietly becoming bigger than nuclear.” What’s in that story, Mike?
Mike Casey: Yeah, for the LinkedIn bros all over LinkedIn, we’re very sorry about this story, but I have to say that I love that solar is giving such offense. A decade ago, solar made up 1% of the world’s power. This year, 10%, taking a clear position ahead of nuclear power. According to Ember data, solar edged past nuclear globally in 2025, and over 12 months through September ‘26 has produced 13% more energy than nukes. So just to put this in perspective. Nukes, roughly flat since 2000. Solar, 2,700-fold growth, meeting 3/4 of the growth in global electricity demand last year. Even the normally pro-renewables IEA keeps underestimating its growth. You know who’s getting it right? The cleantech bulls, like Kevin Smith of Cypress Creek Energy, Shaw and Steve Vavrik. A panel costs well under a hundred bucks and can generate power for 30 or 40 years. Maybe that’s why Ember’s co-founder called it offensively cheap. Paul?
Paul Gerke: US is actually number two now in installed capacity. There’s been a lot of strong growth in states that Trump won in 2024, ironically enough. We now have enough solar to power more than a third of American households. Some of the fastest growth is coming from places with unreliable grids and pricey diesel fuel, like in Pakistan, where solar went from under 2% of electricity back in 2019 to 24% today, mostly paid for by the people. Batteries are making a big difference, too. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about those, and we’ll be talking about them more later in this episode. In California, solar plus storage covered more than a quarter of demand during the 7 to 9 p.m. evening peak in the first half of this year. And you may have heard about some new options on the way, like balcony solar, making its way through legislatures in the United States and spreading fast in Europe as well. Mike, story number three.
Why EVs Aren’t Powering America’s Electric Grid Yet
Mike Casey: Joann Muller at Axios. “Why EVs aren’t powering America’s electric grid yet.” Paul?
Paul Gerke: It’s complicated, man. There’s like, you know, bidirectional cables and stuff. It’s a whole thing. Back to you. No, I’m kidding. So for years, EVs have been pitched as a way to back up the grid, charging when power is cheap and plentiful and then, you know, discharging back when it’s not. Data centers and manufacturing are driving demand up. We talk about it in every single episode. Millions of parked EVs could help utilities avoid shortages in a big way. Those are big honking batteries in those things. But vehicle-to-grid tech, V2G, is still catching on here in the States. Expensive equipment that I joked about in the beginning, complicated utility rules, and some skeptical drivers have left it more or less stuck over the last couple of years. Ford thinks its new Fathom electric pickup, which is coming next year, starting under $30,000, might change that. It’s got a built-in inverter, which converts battery power into electricity that a home can use, so you don’t need any external equipment. Ford, which is actually really early on this V2G stuff, estimates the home charging and backup hardware will run about $2,100, which is down from about $5,200 for its current system, although final prices aren’t out yet. Mike, I’m a big V2G guy. I see the potential there. It’s just a matter of getting it across the finish line. The technology is really not the inhibitor anymore. It’s the markets, the utilities and EV growth in the US, if you had to ask me. What are your thoughts on this?
Mike Casey: So, first I want to say this makes me want to get one of these trucks. I have no need for a pickup truck at this point in my life, but this is pretty cool. So, Ford estimates that owners could save 30 to 60 bucks a month by charging when rates are low or powering their homes when rates are high. PG&E, the big utility out in California, says drivers in its pilot could potentially earn $600 a season sending power back during demand spikes. But adoption is tiny. PG&E has 19, that’s one fewer than 20, eligible EV models in its pilot program and fewer than 70 customers signed up. The head of PG&E’s V2G program notes that part of the problem is every bidirectional charger is wired differently. So utilities have a tough time plugging them all into the grid, and paperwork like an electrician’s affidavit is scaring people off, even with up to 4K in equipment incentives on the table. But you know what PG&E’s problem is? They don’t have a killer comms firm on the payroll.
Paul Gerke: Oh, there you go. I remember when they did the first pilot for V2G, there were three trucks enrolled in it, out in Baltimore Gas and Electric territory. Three. Anyway, what were you saying? Sorry I cut you off.
Mike Casey: That was the most gross self-promotional plug I’ve done in two years on this show.
Paul Gerke: Yeah, I caught it. I think the listeners did, too. I wonder if someone will take you up on it. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. All right, story four this week. It’s Casey Crownhart from MIT Technology Review, titled “How solid-state transformers could help power the AI boom.” Maybe I should have given your cell phone number out earlier when I had the opportunity, Mike. You could be fielding some business calls instead of reading about story 4.
Mike Casey: I’m not Venmoing you a finder’s fee.
Paul Gerke: Just, let’s just get that story. My rate is low. Go on.
Mike Casey: Before we knew we could land Brad Plumer and his star power, we were trying to get Casey Crownhart back on the show. She’s not jealous. Just letting you know, you’re second choice. Just welcome to the show, Second Fiddle. We’ll be talking to you shortly. Sit tight, dude.
Paul Gerke: Way to roll out the welcome mat.
Mike Casey: Right. So Casey is under the weather this week. We hope she feels better, but she wrote a good story, “How solid-state transformers can help power the AI boom.” So transformers, they’re one of the most important and least noticed parts of the grid. They step voltage up so electricity can travel long distances without losing as much power as heat, then step it back down so it can be used in homes and businesses. The basic design has not changed much in a century. It’s mostly specialized steel and miles of copper wire, which makes them big and bulky and expensive to replace. So solid-state transformers add power electronics, which are semiconductors that convert and control electricity, and it lets the magnetic core shrink a lot. Some models are about one-tenth the size of a conventional transformer with the same capacity. And they can take over the jobs of inverters and rectifiers, devices that switch power between AC and DC. So, you need less equipment overall. New York Power Authority and Electric Power Research Institute recently tested a 1-megawatt solid-state transformer built in a North Carolina State lab. Under realistic utility conditions, it was about 98% efficient, compared to 96% for conventional equipment. That sounds small, but it cuts power losses roughly in half. Paul Gerke, I thought about writing just a whole thing about Optimus Prime and other Transformers in this section instead of reading about the article. And then I realized the show’s just not built for long-form jokes like that. And so I got to get back to business. One of the companies doing this work, Heron Power, they raised a whole bunch of money back in February, $140 million bucks. They’re building a $100 million factory out in California that’s going to start production next year. They’re trying to reach 40 gigawatts worth of transformers a year by 2029. The trade-off here though is that transformers with power electronics inside them can fail in more ways than the old school transformers. It sort of makes sense, right? Heron’s answer is a modular design. So if one small part of it goes down, the rest can keep running while that part gets swapped out.
Paul Gerke: And timing is huge here, Mike. We talk about the power demand in the United States, energy demand in the United States, rapidly increasing. And wait times for conventional transformers, which are used in so many different types of projects, are extending out to like 5 years. Right now, equipment makers have put about $3 billion into US transformer manufacturing, but we just can’t build them fast enough, quite literally. All right, without any further ado, our last story of the show.
A New Kind of Battery Is Taking Off. This One Stores Blistering Heat.
Mike Casey: Drum roll, baby. Brad Plumer, two years in the hunt. We have him on the show. We’re fired up. He’s from this place you might have heard of called the New York Times. “A new kind of battery’s taking off. This one stores blistering heat.” Brad Plumer, what is your blistering summary on this blistering story?
Brad Plumer: Well, thanks so much for having me. So, this idea, some people call it heat batteries, thermal batteries, thermal storage. I don’t feel like we’ve really settled on a good term, which can make it a little frustrating for journalists. This idea has been kicking around for quite some time. And this company I wrote about, Antora, I first started talking to them, geez, maybe two years ago, you know, thought it was super interesting. Basically the idea is you take... there are all sorts of places in the country where you get these periods of very low electricity prices, maybe because it’s midday and there are a lot of solar panels, you know, in operation, or there are pockets of the country where there’s a lot of wind but there’s not enough transmission to carry it around the country. So you have this very cheap electricity if anyone could figure out how to harness it. So one idea that a number of companies, including [Antora], have come up with is use that electricity when it’s cheap and heat something up. So in Antora’s case, they took these carbon blocks. Other people, Rondo Energy is a big company in this space, they are just heating up bricks. And you can heat them up. They store heat for a long time, days. And you can use that heat, you know, these things get very, very hot, thousands of degrees, to create steam for industrial purposes, and lots of industries need heat, lots of industries need steam. So it’s kind of a cool idea to solve two problems at once. One, the intermittency of renewable energy. You know, it’s not always available, and sometimes it’s available when you don’t need it. And then two, heat is such a big portion of the energy world that we often don’t talk about. You know, I was surprised to learn that, you know, most companies, they burn coal or gas to make industrial heat for everything from potato chips to, you know, smelting iron ore. And this actually creates more emissions than all the world’s passenger cars combined. So, you know, if you could find ways to access cheap renewable electricity and turn it into heat, you can solve a lot of problems. And so, you know, when I first heard this concept a couple years ago, I thought, “Wow, that’s really cool.” But, you know, let’s keep talking, get back to me when you’ve built something, cuz I want to see this up and running. And so, you know, I went to South Dakota to go visit Antora. They have built this huge battery, heat battery, and they are now delivering steam to an ethanol plant. So you can actually see it in action. And, you know, I realize not everyone in the clean energy world, you know, people have different views about ethanol, but, you know, what I found is this is kind of a proof of concept for this idea. And there are lots of places that need steam, lots of industries. So it’s a cool idea. It’s in operation. It seems to be working, and I decided to go write about it.
Paul Gerke: I think it’s interesting. Brad, go ahead. Sorry, Mike.
Mike Casey: I want you to know, Paul Gerke, we’re at the 15-minute mark and Michael Peron is going to breathe down our neck. So, get your question, my friend.
Paul Gerke: I’m glad you added that interjection to tack another 15 seconds onto the show instead of just letting me ask the question that I had very cleanly come in to ask. Anyway, Brad, when we talk about long-duration energy storage, I’m always fascinated about the ways that people think about storing energy and for how long it can be stored. The applications and the scaling is always the part that gets sticky, where it’s like, okay, this does work. It is a cool concept. You saw it for yourself. You can attest to it. And there are instances where it might be useful, but really, how many, and can it reach scale? What’s your take on the sort of footprint that this type of storage might have in the US, or similar types to it?
Brad Plumer: So that was my biggest question. Like, is this... this is very cool, you know, what’s happening in South Dakota, where they’re getting this pocket of cheap electricity because they have a lot of curtailed wind, and there was a company that happened to need heat for some idiosyncratic reasons. But, like, is this a special case where it’s, you know, a one-off? So fortunately, smarter people than me at the National, god, what’s it called now, the National Laboratory of the Rockies, used to be NREL, they actually looked at this. They were like, okay, this works if, you know, you can find enough electricity that’s cheap enough and the battery costs are low enough and you can compete with natural gas, which is very cheap in the US. And they found, you know, under the right conditions, yeah, this could scale up a lot in the US. You know, they estimate at the high end it could potentially provide up to a third of industrial heat in the US. Some of the companies involved had some quibbles. They thought it was higher. You know, the big kind of thing that needs to change that the researchers wrote about is right now in many parts of the country, it’s not actually possible to just take electricity when it’s cheap and charge up. You know, utility tariffs might charge you the average price for all hours of electricity. So, in this case, [Antora] worked with the local utility to kind of write a specialized tariff that allows them to just take the cheapest hours of electricity. And, you know, they’re hoping they can spread that across the country, but that is a sort of policy barrier that they’re facing.
Mike Casey: Brad, two quick questions. One, is there a look ahead on the ability to produce not just heat and steam, but electricity? So, electricity to heat back to electricity. And two, any sense of, like, total pollution savings nationwide, worldwide?
Brad Plumer: So I kind of backed into the second question. Yes. So industrial heat is about 10% of global emissions, and I think it’s about 10% of US emissions. So significant, you know. Globally, that’s more than all the cars that are out there. It’s more than planes. Maybe cars and planes combined. So, you know, in the US, if you could replace one-third of that, that’s, what, 3, 4% of US emissions. I mean, it’s both small, and that would be a big deal. You know, every little thing adds up. It may have more potential elsewhere in the world where natural gas is not as cheap as in the US, but, you know, potentially knock out a big chunk of global emissions. On the electricity side, this was something that was new to me. I had not seen it really written about much, that a lot of investors in this technology are very excited about the application for data centers. Basically, these heat batteries produce steam. You know, they’re hooked up to a heat generator. It could, or a steam generator, can produce steam. You could in theory just hook that up to a steam turbine and produce electricity. So, it’s inefficient to do it that way. You’re basically taking electricity, storing it as heat, which is, you know, pretty efficient, more than 90% efficient, but then running it through a steam turbine, which is not that efficient. Let’s say 40%. I’m guessing here, to turn it back to electricity. So, it doesn’t seem great, but again, if you could build these batteries cheaply enough, if you could build them quickly enough, I mean, a lot of them are just, I’m oversimplifying, but piles of bricks or piles of, you know, carbon blocks, that you could find the materials all over the place. You know, some people told me you could imagine that being attractive to a lot of people, that this is a much simpler way to do things, and quicker, than waiting years and years and years for a gas turbine. So we’ll see. We haven’t seen data centers powered by this yet, but that seems to be the hope, and why a lot of these companies can raise a fair amount of money right now, because everyone’s, you know, going crazy for AI. And then the last thing I’ll say that was kind of surprising to me, a few years ago, Tesla did one of these master plans where they’re kind of looking at the future of the world, and, you know, solar power is going to be big. Lithium-ion batteries are going to be big. And in one of their analyses, they found that, you know, if the world was going to get really serious about decarbonizing, we would need trillions and trillions of dollars’ worth of heat batteries or thermal storage of some sort. You know, they did identify a specific company or a specific technology, but that concept of storing heat for later is something we’ll need. So, you know, at least it has the potential to be something that’s very big.
Cleantecher of the Week
Paul Gerke: Well, we’re just about out of time. We need to go to our Cleantecher of the Week. You know, they’re doing this in reverse. They’re doing it with cold storage, and put this show on ice.
Mike Casey: But bam, I was just hoping you were going to have that transition. The dad jokes continue.
Paul Gerke: Cleantecher of the Week, everybody. Drum roll, please. This time around, it’s Andrew Red, founder of Endurance Energy, former SpaceX engineer. Just tested the world’s first subsea geothermal power plant in an active underwater volcano off the coast of Oregon. And I work from home. It only produced net positive power for 8.7 seconds, but that’s still pretty damn cool. Enough to prove that it works. Endurance is now planning its first commercial project in Tonga. Congratulations, Andrew. And enjoy all those flight miles, my friend.
Mike Casey: Yeah. And Brad, we can’t let you off, because I keep piling on my co-host. Is it data or data?
Brad Plumer: Oh jeez. You probably said it. Say both. I think I say data. But I mispronounce all sorts of things. So don’t take my word for it.
Paul Gerke: A ringing endorsement for my side of the fence. Brad, thank you.
Conclusion
Mike Casey: Gerke, you and Clara Hudson of the Wall Street Journal are on an island to yourselves. It’s shameful. All right. But you know who’s not ashamed is Clare Quirin and Alex Petersen, who helped us gather these stories.
Paul Gerke: Thanks for your help, guys. And thank you, the listener, the viewer, for popping into this episode of This Week in Cleantech. Special thanks to Casey Crownhart, who said she was going to be on the show and then got sick. I hope you’re feeling better. Double shout out to Brad for stepping in to pinch hit. Great to have you on. If you enjoyed something from the show today, please subscribe, leave a little feedback, share a story suggestion if you like. We mentioned the email at the top of the show. You can also read every article we talk about each week. There are links in the episode description, as well as where this thing lives, in the post on factorthis.com. Until next time, be good people.