Scaling Clean
Scaling Clean is the podcast for renewable energy leaders, investors, and advisors. Think of this as a cross between NPR's "How I Built This" and The New York Times' "Corner Office." Host Melissa Baldwin interviews CEOs, founders, and executives across solar, wind, storage, EVs, and more. Guests share founder journeys and insights on fundraising, M&A, retention, marketing, and hard-earned lessons on building resilient, profitable companies in the clean economy. Produced by Clare Quirin and powered by Tigercomm, the leading U.S. cleantech communications firm.
Episodes
My latest Scaling Clean guest, Rebecca Holmes, has spent two decades helping companies rebuild their websites and brands. Now she's the founder of bennu, a growth marketing company working with mission-driven clients in renewable energy and resource resilience.
Here are three takeaways from our conversation:
🔹 A website isn't the final product. It's an artifact, and the strategy behind it is what actually matters. Rebecca says compa...
After nearly a decade interviewing founders and CEOs for Suncast, my latest Scaling Clean guest turned the tables and let me ask him the questions.
With nearly 1,000 episodes under his belt, Nico Johnson has probably interviewed more clean energy executives than anyone else in the industry. Along the way, he's picked up on both the trends driving clean energy and what makes an executive or company sound interesting to the media.
Here...
Times may be tough for residential installers, but my latest Scaling Clean guest says those installers are sitting on a gold mine.
Hervé Billiet, CEO of Sunvoy notes that installers can earn the most valuable asset: consumer trust, and maintaining that relationship post-install is an under-tapped opportunity.
Here are three takeaways from our conversation:
🔹 Installers should think beyond the first sale. Residential solar...
One comment from my latest Scaling Clean guest, Yann Brandt, really stuck with me.
He said that as a CEO, by the time an idea reached his desk, it had been filtered, softened, and stripped of what made it interesting.
That's why he wants more people (especially younger professionals) to speak up, ask questions, and not be afraid to bring new ideas to the table.
After nearly two decades across the solar industry and 14 years publishing...
Imagine your EV sitting in the driveway overnight - not just charging, but powering your home, supporting the grid, and earning money while you sleep.
That's not a distant vision. It's what Marco Krapels, Chief Marketing Officer at Enphase Energy, says is coming soon.
Marco is my latest guest on Scaling Clean. He's spent decades shaping the clean energy industry, from early EV charging infrastructure to some of the sector's har...
Most clean energy companies fit into a category: developer, EPC, IPP.
My latest Scaling Clean guest, Daniel Dus, has spent his career working across all of them.
Daniel is the CEO of Cleantech Industry Resources and co-founder of one of our industry’s famous social gatherings: Solar Fight Night.
CIR is an on-demand operating system for clean energy project delivery, providing service to developers wherever they need it: everythi...
A reminder for our developer friends: The loudest voice in the community isn’t the only voice in the community. It’s easy to mistake social media comments, public hearings, or a handful of vocal opponents as the full picture. But that’s not reality.
My latest Scaling Clean guest, Emilie Flanagan, CEO of Carson Power, shared a perspective that cuts through that noise, especially for developers navigating local permi...
Community opposition isn’t constant. It's dynamic. What communities believe, fear, or support can shift at a moment’s notice.
My latest Scaling Clean guest, Eli Andrews, CEO and Co-Founder of civicIQ, is building a new model for community engagement that treats public sentiment as something to listen to, measure, and respond to over time. civicIQ helps developers gauge community sentiment, counter misinformation, and bui...
Battery storage capacity has grown +5x in the U.S. since 2021. But as storage scales, so does the complexity around controls, labor, and integration.
My latest Scaling Clean guest, Chris Finley, Chief Commercial Officer at TruGrid, has spent more than 20 years building utility-scale solar and storage projects across 16 countries, totaling over 8 GW of deployed capacity. At TruGrid, he helps developers, asset owners, and utilit...
Abigail Hopper, CEO of Solar Energy Industries Association, has steered our sector through turbulent waters and overseen tremendous growth. That includes a 7-fold expansion in U.S. solar from 36 GW to 255 GW.
On January 30, Abby will step down as CEO, marking the end of a remarkable 9-year tenure.
As a female executive, Abby has been a particularly inspiring leader for me. I was struck by her sense of self and her advice on receivin...
With the interconnection queue topping 2.6 terawatts of proposed generation and storage, we need faster, smarter ways to build transmission. My latest Scaling Clean guest, Jan Andersen, CEO and founder of Jubilee Transmission, is doing exactly that.
What stood out most in our conversation was Jan’s take on a clean energy blind spot: Opposition is playing to win while we’re playing to be right.
Here are three big tak...
I recently chatted with Gareth Brown, CEO and co-founder of Clir Renewables, for Scaling Clean. Gareth's company built a risk intelligence platform that helps investors manage massive wind, solar, and storage portfolios — over 200 GW of data!
What I loved most was Gareth's point on go-to-market strategy. You could have the world's best technology, but if you don't nail a repeatable sales process, you can’t scale.
Here are...
On the latest episode of Scaling Clean, I sat down with a leader who built his career in oil and gas with companies like Schlumberger and Halliburton. Akshay Sagar is now the CEO of the world’s largest solar O&M provider, NovaSource Power, managing more than 30 GW of solar and storage projects worldwide.
I love Akshay’s advice about focusing on people and not being intimidated when people around you bring great idea...
On the latest episode of Scaling Clean, I got to interview a man who’s navigated not one, but two successful exits. Jacob Susman is the Senior VP of Development at top-tier project development company Electric Hydrogen, which recently acquired his green hydrogen company, Ambient Fuels. Jacob unpacked what it takes to build, grow, and successfully sell a clean energy company.
Here are three big takeaways from our conversation:
�...
My latest Scaling Clean guest is Alon Mashkovich, the CEO of enSights, an AI profitability software that helps solar C&I owners capture missing revenue. Alon saw that 70% of solar projects were missing production forecasts. Now, the enSights software helps 6,000+ global clean energy assets stay profitable by getting to the root cause of project failures.
Here are Alon’s big three points:
🔹 Local insight d...
Thomas Jam Pedersen is my latest Scaling Clean podcast guest. Thomas Jam Pedersen, the CEO of Danish startup Copenhagen Atomics, is developing compact molten salt reactors fueled by recycled nuclear waste and thorium for greater efficiency and scalability. What’s interesting about this tech is its potential to address long-term radioactive waste, reducing storage time requirements from 100,000 years to ~300 years.
Here a...
This episode of Scaling Clean is a first on two fronts. We’ve interviewed not one, but two guests, and captured it all on video. I sat down with Nextracker founder and CEO Dan Shugar and Doral Renewables CEO Nick Cohen to hear the story behind Mammoth Solar, America’s largest solar project, and how it’s fueling prosperity in the heart of Indiana.
The project’s name comes from a woolly mammoth whose bones were...
My latest Scaling Clean guest is Blake Nixon, CEO of Geronimo Power, formerly known as National Grid Renewables. Blake discusses Geronimo’s rebrand and what it signals for the company’s future. He also shares the inspiring story of his mentor, Geronimo Power founder, Noel Rahn.
A few more standout moments from our conversation:
1️⃣ Be a risk taker. It doesn't get easier to take risks as you grow older. So take them ...
My guest on the latest episode of Scaling Clean, Robert Laubach, knows what it’s like to weather industry headwinds. In his words:
“We’ve gotten a lot of solar whiplash over the years. But you just keep going. You keep building.”
Robert is the CEO of MBL Energy, a California-based solar EPC contractor that has designed and installed over 800 megawatts of commercial and industrial solar energy projects. He brin...
Cleantechers –
My latest Scaling Clean episode is with a familiar guest: data center developer John Belizaire, the CEO of Soluna Computing.
Because we’ve already talked to John about hiring and firing, I had more time to explore a topic near and dear to my heart: generating attention.
A committed pro himself, John’s advice on how to build profile was excellent. Belizaire made three points I wholeheartedly...
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