Open Circuit

• Pain and resilience for climate tech investors

  The climate tech investment landscape is undergoing a major recalibration. After a period of rapid growth and inflated valuations, investors and startups are now navigating a complex environment shaped by tariffs, shifting incentives, and economic clouds. In this episode of Open Circuit, we examine the latest data and investor sentiment trends with Kim Zou, CEO of Sightline Climate.  Sightline’s data shows climate tech investment declined 19% in the first half of 2025, reflecting both macroeconomic pressures and sector-specific challenges.  The firm’s recent investor survey reveals how the sector is grappling with extreme policy whiplash, with tariffs leading the list of worries. The ongoing reconciliation bill debate adds another layer of uncertainty around IRA tax credits, leading investors to search for “policy proof” business models.  Startups are also facing a growing funding gap. Companies developing first-of-a-kind projects face a particular hurdle: they need infrastructure-scale capital but still carry venture-level risk, creating a mismatch that "most private investors aren't really willing to accept," said Zou. That gap — what Zou calls "the missing middle within the missing middle" — is heavily weighing on companies ready to build their first commercial facilities. Despite the headwinds, new opportunities are emerging: grid-enhancing technologies had their best quarter ever, driven by the growing power demands of AI; companies focused on cost savings rather than green premiums are attracting more attention; and innovative financing structures are evolving beyond traditional equity models. Acquisitions doubled in the first half of the year, driven by bargain-hunting “where corporates and strategics are buying up companies at more opportunistic costs,” said Zou. We also explore how U.S. investors and companies are increasingly looking to European markets, the practical challenges of scaling hardware-intensive technologies, and why some sectors are better positioned to navigate the current environment than others. Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

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• The grid is smarter. Why aren't we smarter about the grid?

  The grid faces a mismatch: the system is getting smarter, but we're not getting smarter about how we use it. Utilities have installed 130 million advanced meters. Millions of homes have smart thermostats, water heaters, and batteries that could work in concert. Data centers could unlock over 100 gigawatts of new capacity without major infrastructure expansion. Yet most smart devices aren't coordinated, advanced meter data sits unused, and there's no standard way to plan for or pay flexible loads.  In this episode of Open Circuit, we examine what is holding back grid flexibility — and what it would take to unlock the resources we've already paid for. We’re joined by Arushi Sharma Frank, the founder of Luminary Strategies, and former markets policy lead for Tesla, who explains the imperative for flexibility: "We have a massive opportunity to leverage this for the whole grid. Why would you not want to leverage the opportunity that is staring at you in the face?" Sharma Frank, who is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has long been on the front lines of DER policy. We examine the barriers to deploying VPPs, AMI, and flexible data centers. Utilities want these services, but why don’t planners and regulators trust them? The fix isn't complicated: align state agencies with regulators, make sure all customers benefit from flexibility programs, and bring tech companies into the grid planning process. As Sharma Frank puts it: "If we're going to procure a grid asset, it needs to be in a procurement process for a grid asset, period." Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

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• AI rewrites the corporate energy playbook

  The exponential growth of AI is colliding with the linear reality of building energy infrastructure — forcing a rethink of how tech companies power their ambitions.  Is the corporate clean energy playbook becoming obsolete? In this live episode from Transition-AI in Boston, we dive deep into the infrastructure challenges of the AI era. We’re joined by Caroline Golin, who spent eight years building Google's energy strategy before leaving earlier this year. We examine how tech companies moved from a buyer's market with abundant resources to a seller's market with serious capacity constraints.  "The vast majority of procurement in this country looks like single-source renewable PPAs, and that's what it's been for years," Golin explained. "That wasn't going to get us to where we needed to go." Then we turn to a financing puzzle. We need to see more than $5 trillion in capex spending on data center infrastructure by 2030 to keep pace with computing demands from AI. But even with many different types of capital trying to solve the infrastructure challenge, they all want completely different things. How do we align them? The just-in-time procurement model that served the hyperscalers for a decade must evolve into global-scale, integrated infrastructure development. Can regulators, utilities, and policymakers keep up? Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.  Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

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• How Tesla bootstrapped the Powerwall 2

  This week, we’re featuring an episode of The Green Blueprint featuring Drew Baglino, a former SVP at Tesla. Subscribe here.  In 2014, Drew Baglino was helping build Tesla's energy division with a passionate, scrappy team. Using parts from Tesla's vehicles, they created the first Powerwall home battery. But as demand grew, they hit a critical bottleneck: cell shortages. Customers across multiple markets were already excited about the Powerwall, but Drew’s team struggled to keep up with demand. With Powerwall 2 already announced, pressure mounted while the supply chain faltered. And with Tesla prioritizing vehicles, the energy team was left to "get the scraps and figure it out.” In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Drew Baglino, former senior vice president of powertrain and energy at Tesla, about building a new product category through bootstrapping and creative resource sharing. Drew shares how a couple dozen "Swiss Army knife" engineers created a residential battery system that would ultimately define the market. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at ⁠sungrowpower.com⁠.  Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. The Green Blueprint is hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

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• The abundance agenda meets scarcity politics

  America is facing an uncomfortable question: do we know how to build anymore?  House Republicans just passed a reconciliation bill that would repeal much of the Inflation Reduction Act while adding up to $5 trillion to the national debt. The legislation doesn't just gut clean energy incentives — it hinders the most realistic path to meeting exploding electricity demand. After leveraging hundreds of billions in clean energy investments, 80% flowing to Republican districts, every GOP House member who promised to protect these programs voted to eliminate them anyway.  "Who wants this?" asked Costa Samaras, former White House energy advisor and current director of Carnegie Mellon's Scott Institute for Energy Innovation. "Who wants to have more expensive energy and less manufacturing in the United States?" This week, Samaras joins Open Circuit to talk about the potential impact of the legislation, lessons learned from the IRA, and whether the abundance framework offers a viable alternative for scaling the clean energy economy. As the country faces 150 gigawatts of new electricity demand by 2030, the reconciliation bill would make deploying and manufacturing a wide range of clean resources more expensive — likely forcing investment overseas. This sets up a direct collision with the "abundance agenda," which argues that America has become too good at stopping things and not good enough at building them. The abundance solution: make it easier to build infrastructure, accept some messiness in exchange for progress, and focus relentlessly on outputs rather than process. But can abundance thinking survive an era of deep political instability? We explore what an "IRA 2.0" might look like — one that pays for performance, builds government capacity, and creates durable coalitions for getting big things done. Get tickets for Transition-AI: Boston to see Open Circuit live, with Google’s Caroline Golin. Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at ⁠sungrowpower.com⁠. Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com. Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.

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