This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.
This week’s episode features special guest Benton Graham from Grist, who discusses the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s plans to electrify Boston’s Fairmount Line with battery-powered trains.
This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Christopher Galarza, a longtime chef and co-founder of EcoChef, which certifies sustainable commercial kitchens. Christopher co-authored a new peer-reviewed study and recruited most of the kitchens in it, finding that 70% of gas-fired restaurant kitchens had nitrogen dioxide levels above EPA and WHO safety limits, even with commercial ventilation. He says working in all-electric kitchens was the first time in his career he could do what he loved without feeling he was dying. Congratulations, Christopher!
1. The energy transition is starting to feed itself — Reuters
EVs, solar, batteries and the grid all need a lot more copper, rare earths, silver and other minerals than fossil energy does, but new mines and refineries take years to come online. One of the most promising new sources of supply is the energy transition’s own hardware, meaning old batteries, retired solar panels, decommissioned wind turbines and aging grid equipment.
Redwood Materials says it recovers more than 95% of the lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper from spent batteries and factory scrap, and produces over 60,000 metric tons of critical materials a year. With the first wave of big EV batteries now aging out, that pile is only going to grow. The IEA says recycling could cover 20 to 30% of global lithium, nickel and cobalt demand by 2050.
2. How to keep the lights on in an electrified world — The Financial Times
Balancing the grid used to mean dispatching a few fossil fuel plants. Now operators are managing hundreds of wind and solar farms, plus a flood of rooftop solar that’s tough to forecast, with power flowing both ways between customers and the grid. At the same time, demand is climbing as people switch to EVs and heat pumps. Britain’s grid operator thinks the country’s total generating capacity may need to grow by 206% to 245% between 2024 and 2050 to keep up, and just under a third of that increase has to be storage or dispatchable power.
Britain is leaning on EVs. Octopus Energy, the UK’s largest household supplier, says smart charging, where cars charge automatically when power is cheap and plentiful, is going mainstream fast. Octopus thinks 2 million UK cars could be selling power back to the grid by 2030. At five kilowatts each, that adds up to several nuclear plants’ worth of capacity.
3. What if the world hadn’t built wind and solar? — The Climate Brink
A common argument online is that renewables aren’t replacing fossil fuels at all, they’re just getting stacked on top of them. And if you only look at the numbers on paper, it’s hard to argue with that. Coal power hit a record in 2024, gas hit one in 2025, and global fossil generation is about 50% higher than it was in 2005.
Hausfather argues that this is the wrong comparison. Global electricity demand grew 75% over those 20 years because of industry, EVs, air conditioning and data centers. That demand was coming whether we built a single wind turbine or not. Since 2015, wind and solar met 57% of new demand, compared to 29% for fossil fuels. Last year, they covered 99% of it.
By his estimate, without that growth, global power-sector pollution would’ve been 28% higher last year. That’s 3.7 billion tonnes of CO2 avoided in 2025 alone, about three-quarters of total US carbon pollution. Over the full 20 years, it’s roughly 23 billion tonnes.
4. US Solar Panel Makers Try to Catch China With a Big Leap in Technology — The New York Times
U.S. solar manufacturers say they’re close to a breakthrough with tandem solar panels, which stack extra layers of material on top of each other, kind of a layer cake, so the panel can turn more sunlight into electricity. The goal is about 25% more energy than most panels on the market today. Tandem PV, First Solar and Qcells all say they’re getting ready to sell them commercially soon.
Qcells, which started making solar cells at its Cartersville, Georgia factory in June, is now the first company to get a tandem panel independently certified. This matters because China controls about 80% of the solar panel market. Getting tandems right first could give the U.S. and its allies a shot at winning back a big piece of the industry.
5. The future of commuter rail could be taking shape in Boston — Grist
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority plans to electrify Boston’s Fairmount Line with battery-powered trains. The T will lease seven trains, each with four cars, for 15 years in a deal expected to cost $765 million. The trains, built by Swiss company Stadler, are slated for 2030. They will increase service on the 10-mile route from every 30 minutes to every 20 and 17,700 tons of CO2 per year compared with the diesel trains they replace.
Battery trains let agencies electrify without installing miles of overhead wire. But the technology hasn’t been proven on busy routes. Caltrain plans to introduce battery trains by 2028 and Chicago’s Metra is on a similar timeline. Caltrain’s 2024 switch to overhead-powered electric trains on its San Francisco to San Jose line offers a preview of electrification’s benefits: commute times dropped as much as 23%, ridership climbed 60% and riders’ exposure to black carbon fell 89%.
Sumber Artikel:
Renewableenergyworld.com
