Scaling Clean

Hosted by Tigercomm

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Aug 2026

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About the show

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.

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August 28, 202636 min

Episode 62: Nico Johnson, Host of Suncast, on What a Thousand Conversations Taught Him About Clean Energy Leadership

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 are three takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 The story lags behind the company. Businesses land on an early narrative that helps them raise money and win first customers, then keep repeating it long after the product, the customers, and the economics have changed. Nico believes the best leaders slow down long enough to notice when their story is out of date. 🔹 One message doesn't work for every audience. Too many executives only know how to pitch investors, because that's the call they take most often. Nico's advice is to build a "story bank" so you can speak fluently to investors, customers, partners, and government officials, in the language that moves each one. 🔹 Podcasts build your personal brand and your investor readiness. Being a guest sharpens your message, boosts discoverability, and adds to what Nico calls your "trust ledger." Nico said, “revenue is downstream of trust,” and trust gets built by showing up.

August 3, 202635 min

Episode 61: Hervé Billiet, CEO of Sunvoy, on Why Solar Installers Are Sitting on a Gold Mine of Customer Relationships

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 has evolved from selling panels to selling batteries, EV chargers, maintenance, etc. The installers who stay connected with customers are in the best position to grow alongside them. 🔹 AI is only as valuable as the data behind it. Hervé believes the opportunity isn't adding AI for the sake of it, but rather organizing years of installer data, customer interactions, production data, and service history so AI can help businesses operate more efficiently. 🔹 Installers can prove they deliver as promised with real fleet data. That can build trust before a sale happens. Sunvoy compares projected system performance with actual production across an installer's entire fleet, allowing companies to show prospective customers that their systems perform as promised.

July 8, 202636 min

Episode 60: Yann Brandt on Why Solar Needs Bigger Ideas, Better Advocacy, and More People Willing to Take Risks

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 SolarWakeup, Yann has offered many thought-provoking ideas to our industry. Here are three takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 The solar industry can't afford to be passive in politics. Solar may have bipartisan support among voters, but policy still determines how quickly the industry can grow. Yann argues that companies need to view political engagement as a core business function. 🔹 The best leaders want to hear fresh ideas. His advice to younger professionals is to never assume your voice doesn't matter. Thoughtful ideas only make an impact if you share them. 🔹 Consistent writing and reading build better thinking. Fourteen years of publishing SolarWakeup sharpened Yann's perspective on the solar industry by forcing him to read deeply, form opinions, and challenge his own assumptions. Yann also argued that the ITC isn't just an incentive for the industry, but a tool to keep electricity affordable. Lowering the cost of building solar projects helps deliver lower-cost power at a time when consumers need it most.

June 8, 202634 min

Episode 59: Marco Krapels of Enphase on EVs, VPPs, and Unlocking America's Hidden Energy Capacity

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 hardest-fought policy battles. Now he's focused on turning millions of homes into grid assets. Here are three takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 Your EV may soon become an energy asset. Marco believes bidirectional EV charging could change the role of EVs. Instead of consuming electricity, EVs could store energy, power homes during outages, and provide flexible capacity to the grid when demand spikes. As a Mach-E owner myself, I found this fascinating. 🔹 Utilities and distributed energy don't have to be opponents. The solar industry spent years fighting utilities over net metering. Marco believes the next era is about partnership. As utilities face growing demand from electrification and AI-driven data centers, distributed energy resources can help solve capacity constraints faster than traditional generation. 🔹 We have a deployment problem. The U.S. already has untapped energy potential. 10 million homes with 10 kW of solar and 10 kWh of storage could unlock roughly 100 GW of dispatchable capacity. As electricity demand surges from AI, data centers, and electrification, the challenge may be less about building new generation and more about deploying the solutions we already have.

May 11, 202639 min

Episode 58: Daniel Dus, CEO of Cleantech Industry Resources, on Reinventing Clean Energy Project Delivery

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: everything from diligence to asset management. We talk about why Daniel believes the future of the industry depends as much on community and storytelling as it does on technology. Here are three takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 The traditional development model is under pressure. Daniel argues that many developers built for a different market environment. Today, variable project pipelines, tighter margins and permitting delays are forcing companies to rethink how they staff and execute projects. 🔹 AI is becoming an accelerant, not a replacement. CIR uses AI and software tools to advance nearly every workflow. But Daniel emphasized keeping the “human in the loop” still matters, especially when billions of dollars and critical infrastructure are involved. 🔹 Clean energy needs better storytelling. One of the strongest themes in our conversation was communication. Daniel believes the industry is losing ground to misinformation, despite having a fundamentally better story to tell around affordability, reliability, and energy independence. His latest initiative, cleantechfactcheck.org, is designed to help the industry respond faster and more effectively with a robust database of myth busters, videos, job boards and more. We also talked about: ⚡ Why procurement inefficiency is costing the industry millions ⚡ What developers get wrong about operational scaling ⚡ Why community and relationships still matter in an AI-driven industry ⚡ How Solar Fight Night became one of clean energy’s biggest networking events

April 9, 202636 min

Episode 57: Emilie Flanagan, CEO of Carson Power, on Finding Signal in the Noise

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 permitting. Here are three big takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast” - a motto borrowed from the Navy SEALs. In the early days of starting a company, it’s common to want to rush into things. But in high-stakes environments, Emilie reminds us it’s more important to slow down and do things properly. 🔹 The real community sentiment comes from direct conversations. Sitting down with landowners, neighbors, and local officials, often long before permitting, reveals a much more nuanced (and often more supportive) reality. 🔹 Leadership is about helping teams “see the signal.” Emilie described her role less as a decision-maker and more as someone who helps her team step back, filter noise, and focus on what actually matters moving forward, especially in a fast-moving industry.

March 9, 202634 min

Episode 56: Eli Andrews, CEO and Co-Founder of civicIQ, on Turning Community Opposition into Dialogue

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 build genuine local support long before projects reach a planning board. Here are three big takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 Opposition isn’t static. It changes over time. civicIQ’s data shows that shifts in national narratives can quickly influence what people believe. Developers who assume sentiment is fixed risk missing these changes. 🔹 Invite the community into CapEx-friendly decision-making. Instead of asking communities if they support or oppose a project, civicIQ invites neighbors into the design process – choices like pollinator grasses, buffer zones, or solar grazing. 🔹 AI could help re-ground conversations in shared facts. Eli described early experiments using transparent AI conversations trained on narrow, trusted knowledge bases to help people explore information and question misinformation. The goal isn’t persuasion, it’s what he calls “narrative regrounding.”

February 6, 202638 min

Episode 55: Chris Finley, TruGrid CCO, on What Actually Breaks Battery Storage Projects

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 utilities navigate the messy middle of storage deployment, where projects are won or lost long before commissioning. Here are three big takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 Most storage issues come from the blind spots between OEMs, controls providers, EPCs, and asset owners. Each stakeholder is focused on their slice of risk. Without clear integration planning before construction, those gaps turn into lost revenue. 🔹 Labor may be the biggest constraint ahead. With massive infrastructure buildout competing for the same tradespeople, risk comes down to workforce availability. 🔹 Speak less, listen more. You don’t have all the answers, so surround yourself with the people who do and learn as much as you can.

January 20, 202634 min

Episode 54: Abby Hopper

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 receiving feedback: Be open to it, but don’t let it become your identity. Your sense of what’s right, and who you are, can’t be built from other people’s opinions. Here are three big takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 Impact and empathy can coexist. Leadership isn’t just about growth, but about making people feel welcome in the process. 🔹 Clear is kind. Abby navigated COVID layoffs and policy fights by seeing that honesty and being direct build far more trust than just being “nice.” 🔹 A new chapter in life does not always need to start with a job title. As Abby prepares to step down, she’s focused less on what role comes next and more on the quality of life she wants to build.

January 6, 202633 min

Episode 53: Jan Andersen

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 takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 The belief that clean energy is noble can blind us to the reality of how communities and politics actually work. Opposition plays hardball and fills the void when developers don’t address local concerns directly. 🔹 The hard part about building transmission is the routing, land access, and stakeholder alignment, not the wires themselves. But early outreach and planning decisions can make the buildout process easier, and determine whether opposition ever gains traction. 🔹 You can’t outsource community relationships. The developer has to own local engagement. Otherwise you’re handing your project’s fate to someone who isn’t accountable for the outcome.