This Week in Cleantech

Heatmap News

This week's episode covers the Department of Energy's $17.5 billion in conditional loans to bolster the US nuclear supply chain and back ten new Westinghouse reactors; a report showing Spanish households save €10 monthly thanks to renewables decoupling electricity from gas prices; why California is seeing few data centers built despite the AI boom; the grid interconnection bottleneck keeping data centers from plugging in; and Sunrun, Tesla, and Renew Home offering 16 gigawatts of virtual power plant capacity. 

This week’s episode examines how clean energy is increasingly intersecting with politics, economics, and local communities. The hosts discuss a Texas primary race influenced by solar-backed political spending, a federal plan to repurpose Cold War plutonium for nuclear fuel, and growing turmoil in China’s dominant solar industry. They also look at how stalled federal reviews are putting billions in U.S. wind investments at risk. Heatmap News’ Robinson Meyer joins the show to explain why local opposition to data centers is surging and what it could mean for future development.

Paul Gerke and Mike Casey break down the week’s biggest cleantech stories, including a massive lithium discovery in Appalachia that could reduce U.S. import reliance, Europe’s move to block Chinese-made solar inverters from EU-funded projects, and the rise of plug-in balcony solar systems in the U.S. They also discuss organized solar theft rings in Chile and welcome Heatmap News reporter Andrew Moseman to discuss Ford’s secretive EV skunkworks operation aimed at producing affordable electric trucks and reinventing the automaker’s EV strategy.