This Week in Cleantech (08/21/2026) - Data center backlash is cross-partisan

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. Jeremiah Karpowicz, Content Director at Clarion Events, is filling in for Paul this week.

This week's episode features special guest Molly Taft from WIRED, who discusses the growing, cross-partisan backlash against AI data centers.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Drew Baglino, founder and CEO of Heron Power. His company builds solid-state transformers that don't rely on the steel causing shortages, and Heron just closed a $140 million round to build a U.S. factory capable of producing 40 gigawatts of the gear a year. Congratulations, Drew!

This Week in Cleantech — August 21, 2026

1. OpenAI Locks In Lease for Huge Data Center in Ohio With Backing From Nvidia — The Wall Street Journal
2. The Blackout That Could Devastate America — The New York Times
3. Big Batteries to Bolster the Grid Are Stuck Waiting to Plug In — Bloomberg
4. DOE says we need more transmission, decides building less is fine — Factor This
5. How Data Centers Broke American Politics — WIRED

Energy policy on your mind? Check out all episodes of the Factor This Policycast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello and welcome to this week in Clean Tech, a 15-minute roundup of the biggest stories in climate and clean energy this week. Today is Friday, August 21st, 2026. We have returning guest Molly Taft joining us shortly. I'm Jeremiah Karpowitz, content director at Clarion Events. I am not in my office. I'm at an industry event. I'm also not pert, Paul Girky. Things are all over the place, but thankfully we have some stability because I'm joined by Clean Tech commentator Mike Casey of TigerCom. Mike, how in the heck are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Buddy, if I am your source of stability, uh, we are in a lot of trouble. Let me just say that. But I I do look, I'm a little backstage drama here. Gherky wanted me to relay a request since you're higher ranking than him. He saw the Christy Gnome statue that she has done of herself out in South Dakota. And he would this is no easy way to put it. He would like a statue of himself in Clarion Square. And I'm just fording the request. Look, he let you in a star trailer. He'd like a statue of himself. He didn't want to put he didn't want to make the ask himself, so he put me up to asking, and I'm just I'm just doing the ask. Okay. So you run up to Paul Daniel, you guys talk about it. I don't need a statue. Um, I'm good, but he would like a statue of himself.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Can we can we get maybe a little miniature of you? Maybe like a paperweight, like because I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna get on the clarion phone. I'm gonna get on the clarion phone. I'm gonna send it up the ladder, but I mean being able to make both of those requests, I don't know. Two for one. I think I think that's a better thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

I'm just a commentator. Gherky's the anchor of this show. Uh, but anyway, uh okay, look, I did my job. Gherky wanted me to do it, it's done. Uh uh, mission accomplished.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

I'll I'll I'll let you know what uh what we hear back from uh from the powers that be. So we always appreciate hearing from viewers and listeners uh like you want to make those opinions part of the show. So if you have a story you want to see covered, email us at TWIC at tigercom.us. So, Mike, let's get into it. What's the first story that we're covering?

SPEAKER_02 2:15

First story, Anisa Gardizzi from the Wall Street Journal. OpenAI locks in lease for huge data center in Ohio with backing from NVIDIA. Um, I'm adding the emphasis on huge, Jeremiah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Huge for many reasons and data center everything. That's gonna be something we're we're talking about a lot today, but uh ongoing as well. But you know, specific to this news, OpenAI signed a 20-year 10 gigawatt data center lease in Southern Ohio with SoftBank's SB Energy. And that's the largest data center project announced to date. Uh NVIDIA isn't backing the value of this completed facility to the tune of up to $105 billion. So SB Energy can borrow against the project without lenders worrying too much about what happens if OpenAI ever walks away. Giving yourself options, depending on what some of these hyperscalers do is smart. Uh that's a much smaller ask than the roughly 250 billion all-up guarantee NVIDIA was reportedly considering earlier this summer, before investor pushback over the exposure sent its stock down 5% in late July. In this exchange, NVIDIA becomes the exclusive chip supplier for that first half of the campus and is taking a $1.5 billion equity stake in SB Energy. So, Mike, tell us what you think about this.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Uh the site, it's it's partly on a former DOE uranium enrichment property and is expected to generate enough power for 7 million homes. That's a lot of power. It's backed by a 9.2 gigawatt gas plant that will be owned by the U.S. government and financed through the U.S.-Japan trade deal. Um, Jeremiah, it's really good that the hyperscalers are getting underwritten by taxpayers because, you know, as a scrappy startup industry that is that's cash-trapped, they kind of need it. But hey, NVIDIA, it's not just de-risking someone else's bet, it's also lining up hundreds of billions in chip sales into the same campus and has talked about financing OpenAI's purchase of that hardware too. SB Energy is also eyeing an IPO as soon as next month to raise five point five to seven billion dollars. And this at least gives them a very good number to put in front of investors. Uh, yeah, I would say so. That's the understatement of the week. Jeremiah, story number two.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

So our second story is by Christopher Cox over at the New York Times, and that's titled The Blackout That Could Devastate America.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Yeah. Uh this is a this is definitely a must-read story if you work in the power industry. So in 2013, uh snipers shot up a PGE substation near San Jose, disabling 17 transformers and knocking out enough capacity to threaten a Bay Area blackout. Um, and these guys uh were clearly skilled. They knew what parts of the substation to shoot at. They've never been caught. Uh and a friend of mine, John Wellinghoff, the former FERC chairman, was in the middle of all this. So he had subsequent modeling by FERC, later found out that taking out just nine critical substations nationwide could black out the entire country for 18 months. Large power transformers, the truck size units that step down in high voltage electricity for local use, are mostly bespoke and hand built and can take up to five years and cost as much as $14 million each. The U.S. only manufactures 20% of what it buys. A significant portion of the country's large power transformers were already averaging 38 to 40 years old over a decade ago, meaning now many of them are well past that. The smallest street side distribution transformers have a 50-year expected lifespan and 75% of those already passed due to be replaced. So replacing this aging fleet and powering new data centers could double the demand for large power transformers by 2027. That would be next year. This has pushed hyperscalers to pay premiums to jump the manufacturing queue of heady utilities and factories. If a coordinated attack knocked out enough substations, experts say the recovery could take years, not weeks, since replacement transformers have to be custom built and are too heavy to move without specialized rail cars that barely exist in North America anymore. Jeremiah, you do you think?

SPEAKER_01 6:19

No, I'm really glad that we included this one, Mike, because uh obviously there the headlines are being dominated by data centers. There we're gonna be talking with Molly about all of that, but like this security issue, it's it's one of those that's always been around. It's underneath the surface, and it's just so important in a way that stories like this really highlight and bring to surface. And even that came up even at the the event that I'm at. I mean, more folks are asking about security in a way that they didn't five even five years ago, and it's just it's just really important. Um, because you know, dozens of other facilities have really been targeted in this way, and that's since the 2013 Metcalf shooting with similar tactics. You know, in 2022 attack uh in North Carolina that left 45,000 people without power for up to five days. Um, but neither of those uh incidents uh led to an arrest. You know, data centers are accelerating one possible fix though. Companies like Ampersand and Huron Power are racing to commercialize solid-state transformers, which are a modular and easy to replace, with components that can ease that are easier to source, swapping hand-wound copper and oil for modular power electronics. Hyperscalers are also becoming the first customers because NVIDIA has already redesigned its data center blueprints around them. So I think you can see here, Mike, I mean, all the things happening in the in the space they have these connections and how data centers could be uh have a solution within that that's that's enabling this this bigger problem. I think there's there's a lot to dig into. Um so what's our third story?

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Summer Maxwell, Bloomberg. Big batteries to bolster the grid are stuck waiting to plug in, Jeremiah.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Gosh, this is another one that uh battery storage is is another topic that's been out there forever, but how it's changing and coming on in a bigger way, I think needs to be top of mind and is something that that I'm looking forward to to digging into for content for our site and our events. Um, because battery demand is surging. I mean, data centers and electrification push the electricity use up, but connecting those batteries to the grid is getting it's actually getting slower somehow. Uh nationwide, roughly 750 gigawatts of storage projects are sitting in interconnection use, waiting to get up, hooked up. And the median wait time has jumped from 1.5 years in 2015 to five years in 2025. So where's that gonna leave us in 2030 if that keeps going at that pace? Uh the holdup is mostly equipment, meaning transformers, circuit breakers, and other grid gear that are in such short supply that utilities can't build the upgrades fast enough. PG ⁇ E says some circuit breakers now take nearly four years to procure. I mean, it's something that comes up in how many different conversations? And like, it's just we want we want this equipment and we want it, and the the backlog just keeps getting longer and longer, and that's across the board. Uh in New York, Con Edison started requiring battery developers to help pay for grid upgrades if their project would strain local infrastructure. Uh, its goal was to stop the grid from being overwhelmed by too many projects in the wrong places, but it's raised the average project cost by $21 million and has already led to at least 25 cancellations. So, Mike, a lot here. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Yeah, like the blackout risk outlined in the last story, this battery slowdown is largely a consequence of grid equipment shortages, including transformers. Even uh when they're cheap and ready to build, batteries are stuck between the same equipment, bottleneck, slowing everything else on the grid. Regulators are trying to unclog the queue by prioritizing further along projects over a first-come, first served basis and by penalizing developers who file speculative applications just to hold a spot in line. The bigger picture is that batteries are none of the are one of the more shovel-ready tools we have to manage rising demand, but shovel ready doesn't matter much if there's a five-year line just to plug in. Jeremiah or four story?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Our four story is one I have a lot to say about because that's by the aforementioned Paul Gherke, and that's titled The DOE says we need more transmission, but decides building less is fine. Mike, you're up first.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Oh boy. Um where do you start? Uh the Department of Energy is killing off the review process for the last three proposed national interest electric transmission corridors or NyETS. Uh, these are DOE designated regions that are eligible for loans and permitting tools intended to speed up transmission development and high condition parts of the grid. All seven of the others had already been scrapped back in 2024. These three corridors would have spanned more than 3,500 miles connecting Canada to the PGM grid, linking the Southwest Power Pool with West Connect and expanding tribal energy access. Uh the energy secretary called the review process ineffective at improving reliability or cutting costs. The DOE points to other transmission investments instead, including $1.6 billion and $3.3 billion in loans to Utility AEP and its Texas subsidiary, along with $26 billion for Georgia Power and Alabama Power, both subsidiaries of the utility Southern Company. Jeremiah, your thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

I have I have so many and Mike in an exclusive here. I have a piece written up that's going to be dropping on our site next week that really outlines the stakes that are associated with developments like this. And it uses what Paul's laid out as a starting place to really explore. I think a lot of these stories tell one side of the story around the costs associated with it and potential land displacement, but there's another side of that story, and that's the value that is going to be unlocked in the short term and long term. And that's something that we as an as a utility industry, as an energy industry, need to push in a bigger way. But that's that that's for the future. For right now, the DOE's own draft transmission need study, that's the study that they released just last month, says the opposite of what this decision does. It flags a, let's quote, dire need for more in uh interregional transmission, which makes killing these three corridors literally contradictory. Um it's not new territory either. Congress first created the NIAX back in 2005 after a wave of blackouts, and the first ones designated in 2007 got struck down by a federal court uh for in 2021, 2011 for skipping uh required environmental review. So these NIAX now have failed twice under two different administrations for two different reasons. It was legal process the first time, and this time, uh, let's be charitable and say political friction is uh the cause this time. Uh the loans that the DOE is touting instead are they're real money, but they're upgrades to existing lines, not the new interregional connections that these corridors were designed to build, and that the DOE's own study said there's a dire need for. And Mike, a lot, I'm gonna have a lot more to say about this next week. There might be t-shirts. Stay tuned. So what's our last story?

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Well, I'm gonna put bets on uh all right, I'm gonna not take bets on how quickly those report writers are fired. Just just gonna just gonna point that out. All right, our fifth story is by returning show guest, Molly Taft of Wired, uh, how data centers broke American Politics. Molly Taft, welcome back. Uh I really thought this was an awesome story. And um it's long and it's in depth, and I think it's a really important read. Uh, give us the big takeaway to get people thinking about this story and enticing them to read it because I think it's really important.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah, I I, gosh, there's so many things going on. Um, I think like one big takeaway is that, you know, when we're talking about opposition to data centers, I when I when I pitched this story back in January, I was noticing a lot of folks in the AI space and in the energy space kind of dismiss data center opposition as just NIMBYism, right? It's like, oh, people just don't like new things in their backyards, you know, people are really concerned about electricity, they're they're erroneously concerned about water. And the the two things that that made me kind of sit up and take notice is first of all, for those of us that have watched the opposition to renewable energy, we know that like a lot of the so-called NIMBYism comes from like a very bipartisan and populist space. I actually reported a couple years ago on the Summit CO2 pipeline resistance, where I went to a meeting that was chaired by both the Sierra Club and Steve King, the um congressman who was ejected from Congress for being really racist. It was like really fascinating to watch those two sides of the coin coalesce and impose an industrial energy project. And then the other thing I was noticing is that some of the first politicians I was keeping track of like more than a year ago at this point when I first started thinking about how data centers could be a big deal, were right-wing populists like Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey, who were the first and only people to put together the idea that Trump's um or you know, the Republicans' uh kind of 10-year moratorium on state-level um AI policy could be used to force through data centers. That was something they were publicly talking about. And they were the only people I saw publicly talking about that. And so I thought, you know, I think this is both bigger than just garden variety NIMBYism and also going to really quickly encompass both parties in a way that is incredibly important. So, you know, I spent most of the piece following this guy named Joe Allen who rose to prominence on um Steve Bannon's podcast. He's uh he's a really interesting character, but he has been kind of the anti-tech voice behind Steve Bannon for a couple of years at this point. Um, and a lot of people don't understand that like opposition to AI runs through both political parties. And a lot of what they're talking about when we talk about opposing data centers, opposing AI, kind of don't fall in camps that we currently understand in this kind of bipartisan landscape. You know, Trump is working with a lot of these AI companies, he's pushing through data centers. That doesn't mean a lot of the base that voted for him are happy about it, or even that they are going to follow along. So I really wanted to kind of explore what might be coming and what's already happening with this opposition.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

That was one of the things that that jumped out to me most is that these folks that normally wouldn't be aligned politically are around this issue. So, I mean, do you think it is indicative of how those those same, what would otherwise be opposing camps might unite on some other issues, even if unite might be too strong of a word, but that they'll it's gonna realign the the political coalitions in ways that you wouldn't guess?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah, this is something I've honestly I grapple with in the piece and I I don't still have an answer. I think that the coalitions on one hand, you know, they are they're going to be differing so heavily on certain issues. You know, I can see if there's another situation with ice come up, you know, that's going to maybe fracture some of these coalitions. Like there are some really disparate opinions of people who are uniting on this issue. On the other hand, I think that a lot of people are not seeing past data centers where opposition to tech and AI, which is just increasingly consuming everything we talk about in politics right now, are really going to have these coalitions stick together. I'm thinking about flock cameras, especially right now.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Um they're getting like like shot out. And like, I mean, citizens literally taking those out.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

People hate these things. And one thing I consistently heard from the right is that data centers are surveillance machines. And like that is one of the things that they are really opposed to and they do not like. And that I think is going to be really huge is this idea of we're yeah, these like deep conversations about like the kind of world we're building, like and and who wins, and um, you know, who who is left feeling increasingly like we're living in Skynet. Like, I I don't know the answer to your question because I don't think we've grappled like any with anything like this before.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

But even though you just go ahead and say, Mike. Yeah, no, uh, just quickly, I mean, what you just mentioned about how the concerns about AI and concerns about data centers, previously those had been separate issues, but now they're they're coming together in a way that we're seeing across the board. Uh go ahead, Mike.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Well, I I'm I'm actually uh my firm is on the ground right now in a southern county that voted for Trump 67%, doing community engagement for data centers. Okay. And we have we were the first ever to poll rural Americans of what they thought of renewable energy built in their midst. Your average conservative, Trumpy rural community is starts at around 25 to 27% opposed to renewables. Your average community anywhere in America starts at 71% of opposition. So it's almost 3x. And it did not get there by accident. So hear me now. If you listen to the show, if you do data center development, and if you think this is a solvable problem by what you've already done, you are going to get your butt kicked. Like you're going to get rejected. This this I wrote on LinkedIn yesterday, this fight is just getting started. You're not 71% is not the ceiling, it's the new floor. And if you're going to get a community's permission to build in your mitts, you're going to have to stop doing bone-headed things like sneaking this past with a bunch of public meeting notices attended by three half-asleep senior citizens who are let out of the old folks' home. Like that doesn't work anymore. You can't buy a bunch of people off. You have to actually explain this, and you're going to have to make these things quieter, much more water conservative, and you're going to need to power them with clean energy. It doesn't pollute the hell out of the neighbors. Like I can tell you, we are in Trumpy communities, and they are deeply, deeply opposed. So Molly, when I saw this, I was like, wow. And I'll point out, um, there's a Wall Street Journal piece. This came out, I think, two days ago, that very much echoes what you're talking about. You know, which it talks about the remedial ed classes that the data center, the hyperscalers are giving themselves about how to relate to communities, but oh my gosh, it's not a day too day too soon.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

It's really crazy for me, to be honest. I consistently, and I think everyone who's been reporting on this for a while, like, you know, I've been completely shocked at how data center developers didn't seem to like see any of this coming. Like, you know, and like there's a couple of us, like frankly, like a couple folks who are in the climate space and the renewable space, who like, you know, a year or so ago, we were, I was, you know, we're like, oh my God, this is going to be really, really big. And the way they're going about it, especially, I think, you know, the NDA certainly didn't help. Doing it in the dark certainly didn't help. You know, like not disclosing your water or electric use certainly didn't help. But at the same time, I like the the insurmountable obstacle of like what is actually being constructed to serve Homst and what is also something that is just, I don't know how we go around it. Um, so good luck to anyone who's trying, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

Yeah, it's good. Jeremiah, I I could, I'm sorry, filibuster in this. We could talk about this all day. I certainly could, but I think we're about out of time. We need to go to our clean tech of the week.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

We are, but such a great piece that that really showcases the present where things are with this issue, but then also that crystal ball of potential political future. So great work, Molly. Um, so this week's clean tech of the week is Drew Baglino. He's the founder and CEO of Heron Power. And we just were talking about transformers before, and that's why this is such a timely clean techner. Uh, Baglino is setting out to fix the transformer bottleneck that we talked about. His company builds solid state transformers that don't relay, don't rely on the steel causing all of those shortages. And Heron just closed a hundred and forty million dollar round to build a US factory capable of producing 40 gigawatts of the gear a year. So, congratulations, Drew. And that is the sort of sort of company, the sort of innovation that is gonna support and enable these uh bottlenecks that we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

We want to thank our wonderful producer Brian Mendez, Alex Peterson, and Claire Quirin for gathering these stories. And we want to wish happy birthday to birthday girl Miley Taft for and uh spend some time on her birthday with us.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Thank you very much. So, yeah, thanks so much for joining us for this episode of this week in Clean Tech. Uh, please subscribe, give us feedback, share your story suggestions. You can also read all the articles that we discussed this week by clicking on the links in the episode description.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Take care. We'll see you next week.