Last week, we hosted the 5th Cleantech Editors Roundtable, and we think it was our best yet. Six editors from major cleantech news sites met to cover a wide range of topics. You can view a highlight reel below, but beneath that is what we heard to be the “B3Ps,” or Big 3 Points:
#1 - There’s a truckload of stuff going on in cleantech.
Q: What are 3 biggest cleantech topics you see emerging from the summer that are sure to extend into the fall?
| Heather Clancy (Green Biz) |
Carbon accounting software, electronic waste, increased focus on domestic manufacturing. |
| Iulia Gheorghiu (Utility Dive) |
Developing offshore wind supply chains, electrification, cybersecurity. |
| Kelly Pickerel (Solar Power World) |
State-level solar policy in CA and beyond, international solar tariffs, domestic solar tax credits. |
| Zachary Shahan (Clean Technica) |
Growing EV sales/decline in ICE cars, domestic manufacturing of EV batteries, self-driving vehicles. |
| Darius Snieckus (Recharge) |
Green hydrogen, offshore wind & hydro as a “power couple,” floating wind. |
| David Wagman (PV Magazine) |
Energy storage alongside solar, more policy focus on reshoring manufacturing, risk of grid disruption. |
#2 – Storing electricity is going to have a bigger impact than storing heat.
Q: Within the next five to 10 years, will storing heat or storing electricity contribute more to renewable scaling?
Clancy: That is a really hard question. [If] you're asking which will have the most impact, then I say electricity. Which should have the most impact? I'd say heat, I mean, that’s where so many companies have not made a dent yet in their decarbonization. They have all these manufacturing processes that require that heat, and we really need to work on that.
Wagman: Yeah. I'd have to agree, electricity. Although, I will say that my colleagues who are working on the global issue of our magazine over in Europe are getting a lot of play around heat and they're covering that as an increasing issue. It hasn't hit the radar to the extent here.
Gheorghiu: I think of the heating question as something that is just so much more conceptual [in] the U.S. We'd be reporting on something that would be cutting edge to pilot or to model. Whereas the discussions on energy storage, electricity storage, has been a lot more about “how can we scale up yesterday?”
#3 – There's no one way yet emerging to address renewables’ transmission challenge.
Q: Will the renewables industry be able to solve its transmission challenge, and if so, how?
Gheorghiu: Everyone agrees transmission is a big, big block. But it's hard to have renewables try to sell that for themselves. So, I say hopefully we're going to see a lot more coming from FERC and a lot more coming from different wholesale markets on just the competition to have transmission connect to them.
Wagman: I think the interesting thing about solar is that it certainly is scalable and you can solve the transmission problem by putting solar on your rooftop and really have a local, very distributed solution to it.... [we need] more distributed, local micro grid solutions that use solar along with storage. It strikes me as solving some of those transmission issues.
Pickerel: I've been talking to a lot of people out in the Northeast United States about virtual power plants....Utilities have always been quick to dislike residential solar, but now it seems that they are actually pro-residential storage. So it's starting, and those situations are going to solve a lot of those bigger transmission issues.
Snieckus: Hydrogen is the solution, obviously. You produce as much as you like, you make it a commodity, you ship it around the planet, you use ex LNG shuttle tankers to do so, and you're green shipping in the process. Transmission ain’t that big a deal all of a sudden, in a sense.
Bonus point.... Editors have the “dream” interview, and here’s who they are:
Q: What would be the dream interview or dream byline, and why?
Shahan: Yeah, Elon would be great.
Clancy: Laurene Powell Jobs. I just feel like she's…got a lot of money and she's using it in places you wouldn't expect.
Gheorghiu: I'm interested in utility executives that made the transition into distributed and other energy services, because they will have a lot of perspective on utility partnerships and competing for services with utilities. People like Mary Powell, who's now at the helm of Sunrun.
Wagman: What I like are elegant, simple solutions, folks who come up with those and then really drive them down to the underserved portions of the global population.
Pickerel: I think the actor Mark Ruffalo would be really cool to talk to. He's very pro solar, he's gone to board meetings, utility board meetings, and spoke his mind.
Snieckus: Amanda Lefton, I think, director of BOEM. She's taking a creaky old oil and gas organization and she's turning it upside down and turning it into something that's very forward looking and visionary.