Introducing Suncast: Democratizing the clean energy revolution

03/16/23 • 63 min

Bonus episode!
Today, we're dropping in an episode from our friends over at the Suncast podcast that we know you'll enjoy.
Nico Johnson has an interesting and important conversation with Steph Spiers, co-founder and CEO of the community solar manager Solstice about equity in the energy transition.
Speirs believes that "the role of power and privilege is to use it to open up doors for other folks to access that same power". Her company, Solstice, aims to democratize the clean energy revolution and create energy equity through community solar, and they do this by increasing access to solar power for households that are locked out of the solar marketplace. She has won more than three dozen accolades and awards for her private market innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as her public sector work, which includes developing Middle East policy as the youngest policy director at the White House National Security Council.
You can find the episode blog, as well as the full Suncast episode library, here.

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Previous Episode

Data: The energy transition’s next big thing

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While the energy transition is well underway, the power dynamics that have ruled the industry for generations are still largely the same.
Kiran Bhatraju, founder and CEO of Arcadia, is upending that paradigm by taking control of energy data and using it to fuel the rapid deployment of distributed energy assets.
Arcadia manages more community solar subscribers than almost anyone else, and its software platform, Arc, uses data from thousands of utilities to pinpoint where, and when, to build and use DERs.
Still commonly referred to as a startup, Arcadia is now a billion-dollar cleantech unicorn.
Bhatraju joined Episode 38 of the Factor This! podcast to discuss Arcadia's climb and the energy transition's next big thing.
Factor This! is produced by Renewable Energy World and Clarion Energy. Connect with John Engel, the host of Factor This!, on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Next Episode

A fresh start for concentrated solar power?

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Concentrated solar power has had a rough go in the US. But that's not because it's a poor resource.
Using mirrors and towers, CSP can cleanly generate electricity, provide long-duration thermal energy storage, and decarbonize heavy industry by producing heat. Still, solar PV deployment dwarfs installed CSP capacity 113 GW to 2.
Why hasn't it caught on here?
Episode 40 of the Factor This! podcast features Craig Wood, CEO of the Australian next-gen CSP company Vast, which thinks it can change CSP's fortunes in the US.
Vast is planning to list on the New York Stock Exchange at a valuation of more than a half-billion dollars to deploy its next-gen CSP technology. Wood breaks down CSP's less-than-sunny history, why it's getting a fresh look, and its role in the energy transition.