Latest / Factor This / This Week in Cleantech (08/28/2026) - Rooftop solar takes a huge hit

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This Week in Cleantech (08/28/2026) - Rooftop solar takes a huge hit · Factor This

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody and welcome back to another edition of this week in CleanTech, your favorite 15-minute roundup of some of the biggest stories in climate and clean energy we compile each week for you.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Today is Friday, August 28th, 2026.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: We got a returning guest in waiting, Dan Girino joining us shortly.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Factor this content director, Paul Gurky, joined again as always by Cleantech commentator Mike Casey of TigerCom.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Mike, how are you today?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fine.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, uh, my friend.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I did run your request up for a statue up the flagpole.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Paul Daniel said he he would like to know are you thinking bronze or marble?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I want it to be copper so that it's easy to be stolen and resold.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: I want to help out the people.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Copper statue, please.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Recycled copper.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can pull it right out of a building if you can.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And hey, I want to give a shout out to Brian Mendez for the new look and feel and also for reasoning with us, uh setting the count down to 20 minutes instead of 15, which we're always blowing past.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, Senator Gherky, uh, he did accommodate your senatorial ways.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: In the meantime, I want to thank two listeners.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Michael Perone from FF.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: He actually caught a factual error from me a few episodes back.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he said, quote, your listeners are paying attention.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Michael, thank you.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: We got you.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you listening.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then Kurt Summer from CMA Insurance Services, who described himself as, quote, a fanboy, end quote.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So love you guys both.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Over to you, Paul.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna lean into the the Peron.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Mike Perron sent us that email.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like the French-Canadian uh nature of his last name was gonna be the real strong part that I emphasized.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I did want to point out that that the mistake that he caught was uh was about the um folks being arrested uh in Georgia.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: I believe you said it was at a solar facility, it was actually at a battery manufacturing facility.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: That story a few months ago, was that even this year?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like time has just been flying, but it was either early this year or late last.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, but anyway, thank you to the listeners for actually paying attention to what we say and holding us accountable when we we speak a little quickly.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um if you have something you want to share, two cents that you want to toss our way, please.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've got an email, TWIC Twick at tigercom with twoms.us.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: That stuff gets forwarded right to me.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's how we saw Michael's email uh earlier this week.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: So feel free to let us have it, especially when we deserve it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: All right, five stories to get to, Mike, and uh 20 minutes on the counter.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like we got nothing but time to kill.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: What's story number one?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Former show guest Robinson Meyer from Heatmap News.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Exclusive 75% of Americans now oppose local data center development.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: That number's been ticking up for a while.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I remember the studies that, you know, hey, it's more than half.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, two-thirds of Americans.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now we're talking about three-quarters.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about a new heat map poll here.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was conducted by Embold Research, and it found that three-quarters of Americans would now oppose data centers being built near where they live.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: More than six in ten say they would oppose it strongly.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, this is the most negative response Heatmap has recorded since it started asking that question about a year ago.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: American opinion has swung at least 33 points against data centers, and that's just over the last year.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: There is increasing opposition across party lines, income levels, age groups, rural versus urban.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody seems to want these things around.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Rural voters, who have trended more Republican traditionally, especially over the last decade, are now 63 points underwater on data centers.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Urban and suburban voters are not far behind.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Mike, it's funny that people don't want these uh noisy, uh polluting, uh energy bill increasing in many cases uh installations near them.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Odd.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um we we actually work on data center community engagement, so we are a hip deep in this right now.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Americans are basically split on data centers built near where they live.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they were last August.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: 43% sport, 42% opposed.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: This May, seven and ten were opposed.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're at 75%.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: This thing just is ticking up.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh only 4% of people said they'd strongly support a data center in their area, down from 13% a year ago.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So even the uh most enthusiastic, their ranks is thinning out.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: More than 530 counties and municipalities have already restricted or banned the construction of these centers near them, and politicians are scrambling to catch up.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: You got New York's governor, Pennsylvania's governor, and Texas governor, who said, I quote, the data center developers have dug their own grave with the public.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Paul, story number two.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I got a lot more to say about that, but I think we'll have other opportunities, Mike.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: So as we move on to story two, this one by Kendra Pierre-Louis, another French uh accent.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Photography by Joe Cucklow in Atmos magazine.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's titled, The Clean Energy Transition Has a Grid Problem.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Here's how to fix it.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Finally, a solution.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me about it, Mike.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this piece argues that the bottleneck holding back the clean energy transition isn't building solar and wind projects.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's connecting them to the grid.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, that's nothing new.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and a January assessment from NURC, the nonprofit overseeing grid reliability across North America, found that 60% of U.S.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: grid regions are at elevated or high risk of demand outrunning supply by 2030.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Part of the problem is that the country doesn't have one power grid, which we, the listeners of the show, well know this.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's it has three that barely talk to each other, and hooking up a new power plant means getting a in a long line of other projects competing for approval on an aging system.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Texas does it differently.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, instead of making every project fund a full study of its impact on the wider grid before connecting, Texas lets generators connect first and manage congestion as it comes up.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a big reason the state leads the country in new interconnections.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: A bill from New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich would push the rest of the country toward the same model.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Paul?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: I want to say that we're barely scraping the iceberg on this.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to learn a little bit more about interconnection and the role that it plays in uh the crisis that we're in right now, I strongly suggest clicking around on our website on Factor This and reading some of the stuff we've written about it, particularly about how the disparate grids are uh uh assessing a very similar problem cross-country and jammed cues and not being able to get generation online quick enough, uh, but also having to figure out how to get transmission built fast enough to get the electrons where they need to go.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: When we're talking about adding new demand to a system, like like a data center coming online or a new subdivision or a Walmart or something, the process is completely separate than from adding new supply.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Generator interconnection entirely separate than new demand.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: So when data centers get approved and they start pulling faster, then new generation is coming online to cover it.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: We see prices go up because the grid simply can't keep the supply and demand in sync.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of folks that say that the generation will follow the supply and that there will always be someone willing to step up and build generation for these power plants, or for these data centers rather.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we're seeing this happen in Virginia right now where data center growth is outpacing that new power supply, and PJM is chief among those that you mentioned with a capacity shortfall looming.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's upwards of six gigawatts, um, pushing prices up everywhere across that 13 state region.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh meanwhile, uh a little further away in Iowa and Minnesota, uh back out west, wind power is very plentiful.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Prices sometimes go negative.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: The East Coast, though, stuck paying high prices for its own power supply.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: A more connected grid, a more national grid, uh could move some of that power uh to places that need it and be able to take advantage of that cheaper generation.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: We're seeing that out west right now with the e-dam, Mike.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Out in California, their extended day ahead market, where really the entire Western United States is starting to come together and saying, okay, why should I have to pay more for electricity at this time of day when I could get it cheap from hydropower up north somewhere?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: And why would they want to pay for energy when it's more expensive for them when they could get cheap solar power when it's for free down here in California?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: So we're starting to see that out west.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: I agree that it would be better to see this more nationally, but we're starting to see the first uh steps taken toward bringing this power grid into a larger system that could communicate from coast to coast.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Mike, I could go on all day, but we got more stories to get to.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: Story three.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can't help um but feeling that we continue in this country to be very good at coming up with new things and not so good looking around the corners and thinking about how we implement it without making a mess.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I just get this sense like this it's a collective gamble.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, put it on the grid and we'll figure it out later.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I I at some point that stops working.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: But well, the connector manage thing in Texas has worked, but the problem is the manage part.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like the connect part is fun.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's when you have to start managing it and you have to start talking about curtailment and you have to start talking about investors not getting the money that they expected out of a project.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's where you start to run into issues.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: But absolutely.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, third story.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oliver Milman, he has been on the show before from The Guardian.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: He says U.S.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: building twice as much gas-fired capacity as China in the AI boom analysis finds.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Not really a surprise, Paul Gurky, given how much uh the thumb is being placed on the scale uh on be on behalf of the Frappers.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Trump administration has definitely leaned into uh gas and fossil fuel interests in general um over the past couple of years.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I was looking at this yesterday, actually, Mike.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it's staggering how much new gas capacity is set to come online soon.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think if I read correctly, it's something like two, it would uh it would represent like two-thirds of our total capacity uh like coming online in the next few years.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: A new analysis from Global Energy Monitor finds the U.S.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: is now building twice as much as China is, which is obviously more than anybody else in the world.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, under construction gas projects here in the U.S.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: jumped up 76% just the first half of this year.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Since January, it's up to 378 gigawatts under development, uh, up from 252.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's that's a huge jump.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: If all of this gets built, we're talking about a price tag north of$647 billion, to give you an idea for the scale of the investment.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: About half of that new capacity is going straight into powering data centers, like one-to-one PPAs.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one estimate says leaning on gas instead of renewables for that build-out could push up prices in the power sector, also pollution by as much as 20 percent.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, hey, we know solar and batteries can get online quickly, Mike, um, and that's gonna often be the thing that people choose when they realize they need to wait four or five years for a gas turbine.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that's a lot of build out.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: It is huge.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So China's been out building the U.S.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: on gas for decades, and the Global Energy Monitor says that flipped in the last six months.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So demand for the most efficient gas turbines has backed up so badly that companies like Elon Musk's AI are switching to smaller, less efficient turbines that pollute more just to get projects moving faster.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, solar and storage.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Trump said that data centers could be bigger than oil and push governors to cut taxes to attract them, but powering them with gas means more pollution and higher less predictable bills for ratepayers.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna venture out on a on a limb here, Paul.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're going to learn that one of the sources of community pushback against data centers is how they are being powered.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Paul, our fourth story.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're right about that.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: We'll get to it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Our fourth story, Jinju Lee from the Wall Street Journal.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Hyperscaler's off-grid power push comes with risks.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me about them.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, it Paul, it's really amazing how much the themes that we tend to cover on this show have shifted from China's control of supply chains and new technology advances here in the United States to data centers.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's just, you know, it's just managing data centers.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's become a it's become such a dominant theme in the coverage that that we try to condense for listeners here.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So the big tech companies are building their own off-grid power systems to keep pace with AI's rush timelines.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about that a lot here.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: But uh out of the four operational data centers in the U.S.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: running on off-grid or partially grid connected power, three of them have already reported issues.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: So Bloomberg previously talked about crack turbines at AI's Colossus site in Memphis and the broken energy cranks at others, Solaris, which runs those turbines, says it hasn't been unusual failure rates.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Take note of that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Vantage Data Centers has had a critical power failure at its Virginia campus in July, forcing about a day on diesel backup.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about being popular with the neighbors.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: The main issue is that AI workloads create massive sudden power swings, spiking during computation, then dropping off, and those swings can stress and even fracture turbine shafts.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Anthropic pays$1.25 billion a month for computing capacity on Colossus and Colossus 2, which means a single day of downtime could cost tens of millions of dollars.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Paul, your thoughts?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well well, largely my thoughts are what the hell are we even doing here?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but but other than that, I got a lot of thoughts, um, not the least of which is what you mentioned about those large loads going on and offline.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: PJM has been sounding the alarm about that for a while.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: They recently had an instance where four gigawatts dropped offline in a span of a couple of seconds and uh sent them spinning.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: They got everything back together within, I think, nine minutes, which is well within uh NURC standards for controlling your voltage uh uh fluctuations and all that.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think they give you a half an hour to get that stuff straightened out, but still terrifying stuff.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about gigawatts just dipping offline and and these grid operators having to figure it out in real time.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um you're asking for trouble there.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I've got a lot to say, but I want to bring Dan in.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: So just quickly on this, um one of the problems here, Mike, is that these these companies are often having to patchwork together equipment from different manufacturers based on what's available and what the lead times look like.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes getting those mismatched pieces to work together reliably can be a bit of a challenge.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's there's the stakes are getting higher too here, Mike.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about seven gigawatt data centers in Amazon's planned data center in Pecos County, Texas, 7.65 gigawatts.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about the output of several nuclear plants.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um so when that's gets swingy, uh, everything else gets pretty swingy too.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: All right, good.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um wandering off the reservation.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get to our last story and our guest.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Dan Garino from Inside Climate News.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, Dan.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Rooftop Solar is having a rough one.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I winced when I read this headline, but I knew that we needed to have you on.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: For people who have not read this excellent story, what is the big takeaway?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: The rooftop solar business is not an easy business to start with, uh, especially if you're a small a small installer.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and this is uh a rough time because of a combination of the tax credit going away, the residential tax credit uh going away um with uh federal legislation last year, and then also um tariffs.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um tariffs are affecting the supply chains and the pricing of the major components of these companies.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that means that if you're a rooftop solar installer, especially a small installer, and you write someone a quote for how much of the system's gonna cost, and they come back um you know three weeks later and say, Let's do it.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Your prices just changed on stuff because of the completely chaotic uh tariff systems that we've got.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So this adds up to real tough times for for this space.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now tough times across small installers, medium installers, large installers.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, it's um this is I think we'll look back on this 2026.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um rooftop solar is not going away.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be a much bigger industry in five years, 10 years.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um but we'll look back on 2026 as a a real low point.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Dan the year, the year, the year we the year we got really, really stupid about it.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Dan, um I got two questions for you, and I guess they can be rolled into one.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um how much of a role do you see paired battery storage playing in reinvigorating rooftop solar sales?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because it feels like we're entering a time where one really isn't as valuable without the other.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and two, um, do you foresee this latest tariff on polysilicon that was levied by the Trump administration as as creating further chaos within that space and leading to probably more mergers and acquisitions and more of these smaller companies getting getting tilled under?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the the the the um growing popularity of storage um now that varies a lot state by state and it has a lot to do with policy.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um like you see, California, Hawaii, um there are certain states where storage is almost a given.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's more popular, it's growing in popularity in other states.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: But um but yeah, this is uh the percentage of projects that have storage connection continues to rise and it it changes the kind of what kinds of companies these are that are doing the installs.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't just a solar company anymore, this is like an energy services company.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're doing more storage, and then they're also doing more servicing of systems um that were built and installed by others, um, which is different than this owner operator that might have started ten years ago just doing it all themselves and um just installing their own systems.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yes, that is a that is a fundamental change that is we're only gonna see more of.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um these latest tariffs, it's it's challenging to get your arms around it, um, especially with the rooftop market.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, and I say rooftop market because I I think for a general audience, when I say distributed solar, distributed residential solar, people don't necessarily know what that is.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um but so when I say rooftop, that's what I mean.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's um panels for the residential market are more expensive.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're being you're buying them in smaller quantities, you don't have the economies of scale.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you're more likely to be buying from a US or Canadian um supplier.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of the rooftop solar companies will advertise it's a selling point, you know, US-made panels.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's for me at this point, it is a question mark because um it's this definitely is going to affect the broader market for panels, which will affect the uh distributed solar market for commercial and residential.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: How much is harder to say, but I I see that um the utility scale is going to um that's definitely going to affect them.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when it's gonna affect them and um how much is is an open question.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but it's uh we'll we'll have a better sense of this, maybe, you know.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, talk to me next year at this time.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Dan, we were before we uh started taping, we were walking down memory lane uh about all the um corruption that's happened in my home state, your current state of Ohio.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I gotta say, I look at the troubles of rooftop solar and I don't think it's an accident.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just because they're parent just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I look at, you know, we've we've um the stories we talked about this week, here we are um noting that people we're building way more behind the meter gas for data centers bec in part because the thumbs have been pushed on the scale for frack gas.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you see our money getting cut to offshore wind companies to walk away from leases.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the this policy skullduggery, I I just have to think it pervades down to the basic act of allowing Americans to produce their own energy.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think incumbent energy sources don't like that, and they don't want that to happen because they make more money when we burn gas to power our homes rather than produce our own power from the sun.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can tell me I'm crazy if if if you think I am, but do you see intention behind at least part of the rooftop solar industry's troubles?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Mike, you'll be glad to know that you are not crazy.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: You are in fact correctly observing what is uh phenomenon going on.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Don't encourage him.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I mean you you can see this in a bunch of different forms.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's I mean this touches on the larger discussion about net metering policy, and um which is uh an absolute, you know, it's it's you can see in states that have high levels of um of rooftop solar adoption why doing allowing the full retail rate um through net metering policy may not be sustainable if you get to a future where a very high percentage of people have rooftop solar.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the the the manner in which states have reduced the ability of solar owners to um make that financially sustainable and have rapid payoff times, that is very much um this is very much uh utilities having a heavy hand in shaping those policies.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and and they're they're concerned because this undermines their ability to make to make money.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like it's um as an act of self-preservation, you know, they see there are innovative ways though that utilities could get in on this.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um they could um in states that allow, you know, it it it varies by state.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you look at like virtual power plants, you look at solar and home solar and home storage, um some utility somewhere is going to realize that uh that it's some have, but we'll do it on a large scale.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that there's there is an opportunity here, as opposed to having an army of lobbyists try to you know nickel and dime solar solar toils.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: May it be so, as they say in as they say in church.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Paul, we could get religion with Dan uh Guerino all day.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: We got to go to our clean tech of the week.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Dan, appreciate you spending an extra few minutes with us, but we do got to get this show on the road.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: Our clean tech of the week this week, Richard Wang, CEO and co-founder of Voya Energy.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't heard, they just raised 35 million bucks.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: They're turning scrap aluminum into backup power for data centers because they can't feed them enough.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's just an open maw.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Those data centers need more, baby.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of diesel generators, though, Voya system runs an electrochemical reaction.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: It pulls energy out of aluminum with zero carbon pollution.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's quieter, smaller, cleaner than the diesel backup that's become such a flashpoint for local data center opposition.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: The company plans to have more of those generators ready for on-site testing by the end of next year.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: About a dozen companies are already lining up for pilot demonstrations.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Congrats to Richard Wang, CEO and co-founder of Voya Energy, our clean techner of the week.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to offer thanks to Brian Mendez, our wonderful producer, and Alex Peterson and Claire Quirin for helping gather these stories.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks to you, the listener, for listening in to another episode of This Week in Cleantech.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: And one big shout out to Dan for joining this week's episode.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: Go check out his story in Inside Clima News if you haven't already.
• 23:10
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• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: Do whatever you please.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: You can read every article we talk about each week.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: There are links in the episode description, as well as in the post where this thing lives on factorthis.com.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, people, be good.