Factor This
Launched in 2022, the Factor This Podcasthas featured many of the most influential leaders driving the energy transition. From solar and battery storage executives to utility CEOs, the Factor This Podcast brings unique insights and answers to the energy industry’s most pressing challenges. Go beyond high-level trends and mainstream talking points with actionable takeaways.
The Factor This Podcast grew in 2023 with the addition of This Week in Cleantech, a weekly roundup of the biggest stories in climate and clean energy in 15 minutes or less. With new episodes every Friday, Factor This editor-in-chief John Engel and Mike Casey, a cleantech commentator and president of Tigercomm, bring listeners the most important headlines of the week while featuring the leading journalists behind the stories.
Factor This
Perovskites: Solar power revolutionary or cleantech fad?
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In the year since the Inflation Reduction Act supercharged clean energy manufacturing, rarely does a week go by without a new solar factory notice. Rich incentives have led to unprecedented investments.
But making solar panels is really hard. Not only does it require a lot of energy, but complicated global supply chains leave profit margins razor thin. And existing technology is bumping up against theoretical efficiency limits.
Industry heavyweights see perovskite solar cells as the heir apparent to the crystalline chemistries that currently dominate global supply. They're betting that perovskites will offer a domestically produced, higher-efficiency, flexible, and cheaper alternative.
The perovskite revolution is not without its detractors, though. Sizeable achievements are needed to take perovskites from labs to commercial viability.
Episode 57 of the Factor This! podcast features Joseph Berry, a Senior Research Fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Paul Warley, the CEO of Ascent, a company working to commercialize perovskites for agriculture and space applications.
Perovskites could be the missing link as terawatt-scale solar and broad decarbonization are pursued. Or, they could end up on the proverbial ash heap of history. Which is it?
