Tech Brew keeps business leaders up-to-date on the latest innovations, automation advances, policy shifts, and more, so they can make informed decisions about tech.

Tech Brew

Climate Tech

Patrick Kulp

techbrew.com

For the past couple years, certain ocean freighters hauling cars around the world have had small cameras perched on board. The devices diligently scan the watery expanse, looking for bobbing bits of plastic waste.

It’s part of a deal between Hyundai’s shipping arm and a nonprofit called The Ocean Cleanup, which is placing its custom debris-detecting smart cameras on vessels. Now, the organization is linking up with Amazon Web Services as it seeks to build that data into an AI-powered platform that tracks and predicts the movement of ocean plastic around the world.

While The Ocean Cleanup has spent much of its decade-plus existence building tools to pull trash out of oceans and the rivers that flow into them, it can be hard to know where to place that equipment to maximize its efficiency. Contrary to how it might sound, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other similar sites are not giant islands of plastics that might be easily scooped up, Riccardo Farina, The Ocean Cleanup’s head of partnerships funding, said.

“[That] would make our job way easier,” Farina told Tech Brew. “But actually, it’s more like a soup of plastic, where plastic is very widespread over the area. And the challenge is to identify what we call hotspot areas—areas with the highest concentrations of plastic.”

Through its AWS partnership, the group will now have access to more AI capabilities, drones, flotation devices, and internet-of-things tech that will help it better track plastics, the group said in an announcement. The org will combine data from this project with data from the ship cameras and other in-house sources, as well as publicly available information, like weather patterns and current flows, to steer plastic-collection ships toward hotspots, Farina said.

“We have developed a system that has been proven to be continuously capable of harvesting large amounts of plastic from the ocean,” Farina said. “That’s the hardware solution. Now we’re focusing our efforts to improve the software.”

A new marine life detection system will help reduce the need for protected species observers, who watch for creatures near its cleanup operations 24 hours a day, the announcement said.

“When we harvest plastic, we also want to ensure we do not harm, in any way, marine life species,” Farina said. “We’re looking at building an AI platform with AWS, which will be automatized as much as possible…so we can allocate more resources to plastic harvesting.”

The Ocean Cleanup, which employs about 200 people, claims to have removed 64 million pounds of trash from rivers and oceans as of July of this year. It was founded with the ambitious mission to remove 90% of global plastic pollution by 2040—and “

 from entering the environment again.” You can see a dashboard of the cleanup operations 

“Technology has always been at the heart of The Ocean Cleanup,” Farina said. “The goal was the need to understand the problem, use data and science, then develop a technology that can solve it. So technology has always been, and will continue to be, at the heart of our operations.”

How this nonprofit is using AI to clean up ocean plastics

The Ocean Cleanup wants to build a new AI platform to track and predict marine waste.

Tricia Crimmins

TBR-Solar power audio embed

The solar industry is disappointed: After months of 

 Congress to preserve clean energy tax credits for solar power, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which President Trump signed last month, phases out tax credits for investment in and production of solar power.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act granted subsidies for solar projects that started construction before 2033. Under Trump’s budget bill, those credits will only be available for projects that commence construction within the next year or are in service before the end of 2027.

Brendan Bell, COO and managing director of clean energy firm Aligned Climate Capital, told Tech Brew that the policy changes are bad for the climate and the US economy.

“All of the manufacturing that had come to the US to support these new rules—which was creating jobs in places that haven’t had jobs in a long time, creating an economic industrial base here in the US—that’s gone,” he said. “If there’s anything that is most disastrous about this, it is, there is no longer a reason to have a solar manufacturing plant in the United States.”

But that doesn’t mean solar won’t bounce back. Solar installers, developers, and investors told Tech Brew that the industry will go through a period of transition in which consumers and businesses face a lot of uncertainty about whether they’ll be able to receive those sunsetting tax credits, and power prices will rise. But once the dust settles, they said, solar will be able to survive without subsidies.

“Every developer who you’ve signed a contract with is going to come back and say ‘I need you to pay more for your power,’ because of tax credits,” Bell said. “But people will transition to a different world, and it just means that consumers, whether you’re [a business] or you’re a homeowner, you’re going to pay more for power.”

For now, Bell said Aligned will move forward with projects already in motion and work to “get ahead of the [foreign entity of concern] requirements,” a provision in the new law that restricts clean energy projects from using equipment from foreign entities, like China.

“Our contracts will just build in adjustments,” Bell said. “If you get the tax credits, it’s this price. If it’s not, it’s this price.”

However, developers (and the people paying them) won’t know if they’ll be able to receive tax credits because they don’t control when a solar power system is placed in service—utilities do. As for residential solar, Absolute Solar CEO Rob Kaercher 

 in the spring that some clients were pausing or canceling solar projects because they were worried that the tax credits would disappear. Now, he said, clients are confused about the phase-out process.

“There’s just unease about what [we can] trust,” Kaercher said of his clients. “Regardless of incentives or underlying policy, when you obscure what’s going on and make it difficult to follow, that uncertainty just hurts industries across the board.”

Absolute Solar is currently “extremely busy and booked out” with all types of solar projects, but Kaercher said he expects most of its projects will be commercial or nonprofit installations next year, given that the residential clean energy credit is only available until the end of 2025.

“It’s more prioritizing or benefiting larger industry, utility-scale projects,” Kaercher said, which “leaves your average person with less tools and less ability to invest in their own future and combat ever-rising rates.”

The loss of a continued solar boom will also hurt the grid, Kaercher said, as residential solar helps 

 the energy demand curve that strains the grid and leads to outages.

Though the tax credits are being phased out, many states still allow net metering, an energy billing policy that discounts the electricity bills of commercial or residential consumers whose solar energy systems send power back to the grid. And according to Steve Hamile, COO of Nevada solar provider Sol-Up, net metering is more important than tax credits when it comes to making solar energy systems affordable. Because of that, Hamile told Tech Brew he’d always wanted the tax credits to phase out—just not as fast as they will now.

“We’ve been a strong believer that subsidies need to sunset over time,” Hamile said. “We just feel that it should have sunset [at] a slower pace.”

 don’t have net-metering rules, and utilities aren’t required to provide compensation for consumers with solar energy systems. Solar in those states and areas, Hamile said, will be most affected by the elimination of the tax credits.

Hamile isn’t alone in wanting to see the solar industry stand on its own without subsidies: Jorge Vargas, CEO of solar development and financing company Aspen Power, told Tech Brew that the tax credits are being phased out too quickly.

“[The US’s] competitive edge was the fact that we made our infrastructure decisions over 10, 20-year spans—which is the right thing to do. But now this administration chose to change that, and in a very hasty and poorly drafted way,” Vargas said. “That’s what the biggest impact is: [the disruptive] way that we’re going to do this.”

Vargas also said he expects the solar industry to get a boost from another type of incentive: some “big, beautiful PPAs”—power purchase agreements—with companies looking to lock down energy prices before they start to rise.

“We’re ready to embrace what’s next. And in a world where power prices increase, we have a product that can compete,” Vargas said. “We will emerge from this.”

A house with solar panels on the roof over $100 bill next to the US capital building

Industry stakeholders say solar power will survive tax credit cuts—but consumers will pay

Sources tell Tech Brew solar is resilient, but power prices will rise amid increased demand.

The debate over how the US will satisfy energy demand from data centers, EVs, and rising electrification continued this week in a divided Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing.

Republicans and Democrats offered different solutions to the problem, and were split on recent energy permitting executive orders from the Trump administration.

Committee Chairman Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) opened the hearing by claiming that wind and solar power aren’t reliable sources of energy—even when paired with battery storage—and that the US has “spent much of the last 20 years shutting down the generation that can actually meet that demand,” like coal- and natural gas-fired power plants.

“The federal government has been investing heavily in certain green energy technologies for decades, handing out tax credits like candy,” Lee said. “Renewables and storage have a place. They’re capable of helping do their part to make the grid more resilient and reliable, but 

And when faced with the reality of the greenhouse gas emissions that come from carbon-intensive energy sources like coal and natural gas, Lee and hearing witness Peter Huntsman advocated for making materials lighter so they require “less energy” to manufacture. Huntsman is the CEO of chemical manufacturer Huntsman Corporation, and said in the hearing that using only renewable energy sources “risk[s] losing both our manufacturing and consumer affordability.”

“Ruinous and unrealistic net-zero and decarbonization policies,” Huntsman said, foster the “failed idea…that you can power a modern economy without developing oil and gas resources.”

Democratic members of the committee, including Ranking Member Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), advocated for an “all of the above” energy strategy, which has been touted by 

 in the House, and cited batteries’ ability to provide stable, reliable power. Heinrich in particular bashed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” for phasing out clean energy tax credits that fast-tracked renewable power generation, and a recent Trump administration policy that requires Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to provide an “elevated review” of all proposed wind and solar projects on federal lands.

“I am deeply disturbed by the recent Department of Interior policy,” Heinrich said. “This nakedly political decision will risk delaying new generation additions to the grid when we need them the most.”

Democrats were also joined by Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in highlighting the importance of renewable energy. She cited off-the-grid communities in Alaska that usually have to rely on expensive diesel fuel to power their 

“If they can get 20% of their diesel-powered consumption offset by some incremental wind and solar, it’s 20% that they’re not spending [on diesel],” Murkowski said. “We’re operating in different worlds.”

Hearing witness Rob Gramlich, president of energy consulting firm Grid Strategies, presented a separate perspective on the energy generation divide, and one that has come up in debates about other national issues: It should be left up to the states.

“Each state uses markets or regulation or various combinations of investor-owned and other types of utilities to meet their power demand needs. And that’s where the process should take place,” Gramlich said. “I don’t think the federal government needs to be meddling right now in specific power plants.”

Still, Gramlich advised states to utilize the aforementioned “all of the above” approach.

“The power system is more like a basketball team. The point guard doesn’t do what the center does, and vice versa. You need it all,” Gramlich said. “Particularly in this moment of rapidly rising low growth, we can’t be taking one of those players off the court.”

Senators debate wind and solar power in energy demand hearing

Hearing witnesses offered competing strategies in the face of the country’s mounting energy needs.

Airloom Energy, a wind energy startup, broke ground at its pilot site in Laramie, Wyoming, last month. The next week, President Trump signed his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law, thereby sunsetting the clean energy production and investment tax credits for solar and wind. Although it’s going to be a big change, CEO Neal Rickner told Tech Brew the company will adapt: Airloom was created to deliver “the lowest-cost energy, subsidy-free,” but the loss of credits could hinder Airloom’s ability to commercialize.

Airloom’s ability to generate competitively priced energy is due to the design of its turbines. Instead of tall wind turbines that adhere to a traditional, windmill-like design, Airloom’s turbines consist of a group of poles in the shape of an oval connected by a track on which wing-like panels circulate, their movement powered by the wind. They’re shorter than traditional wind turbine blades, and, according to Rickner, faster to build.

“It is a hyper-flexible system. So the difference between our small system and the big one is just making it longer, adding sections in the middle. It can be deployed with straightforward infrastructure,” Rickner said. “You don’t need big, long, extendable bed trailers. You don’t need crews who are trained to work at 300 feet in the air with the largest cranes in the world.”

That said, clean energy investment and production tax credits would help Airloom cross “the chasm of commercialization,” which is a notoriously difficult process, Rickner said, particularly in the energy industry.

“We were definitely going to be relying on the tax credits to help us through that,” Rickner said, “because the first few systems we’re going to build are going to be more expensive.”

Rickner said he and the Airloom team are also figuring out how to respond to two other sizable uncertainties that will crop up during their commercialization process as a result of Trump’s policies: future tariffs or excise taxes on equipment from “foreign entities of concern,” and “what qualifies as construction,” which determines how long Airloom will be able to access the tax credits.

The new law states that wind projects have to begin construction within a year of its signing by Trump (or be in service by the end of 2027) to be eligible for the clean energy investment and production tax credits. In a follow up 

, Trump stated that the Treasury secretary will issue “new and revised guidance…to ensure that policies concerning the ‘beginning of construction’ are not circumvented” by “artificial acceleration or manipulation” of construction timelines.

“We are starting construction on our 2027 project this year, but I don’t know how they’re going to define ‘construction’ yet,” Rickner said. “I’m not going to plan for the government to do or not do anything. It’s too unpredictable.”

Despite some big unknowns, Rickner is optimistic because Airloom already has strong market demand—so strong that the company will be selling the power generated by its pilot to a data center customer. And as more data centers come online and need additional forms of energy, Airloom hopes to provide them wind power as the company commercializes.

“Chaos equals opportunity,” Rickner said. “When things are moving around, there’s potential to find opportunity in that chaos.”

How new wind energy startup Airloom is adapting to the loss of federal tax credits

“Chaos equals opportunity,” Airloom Energy CEO Neal Rickner told Tech Brew.

How a new wind energy startup is adapting to the loss of federal tax credits

Jordyn Grzelewski

A decade ago, before all-electric vehicles were routinely spotted on roads, drivers of Volkswagen’s diesel offerings thought they were making an environmentally conscious choice. The company had touted a “best of both worlds” approach: It said its diesel vehicles produced lower emissions than competitors, but still gave customers more energy per gallon compared to gasoline.

“It was this amazing promise in vehicle technology,” Christopher Hennigan, a University of Maryland professor of environmental engineering, told Tech Brew. “But it turned out to be a lie.”

That lie involved Volkswagen putting what the Environmental Protection Agency called “defeat devices” in model year 2009–2016 cars to deceive federal emissions tests: When the cars were being tested, emissions were low. But on the road, they emitted a “major excess” of NOx, or gas particles that can lead to illness and premature death

 when then-International Council on Clean Transportation Senior Fellow John German and his team tested Volkswagen diesel vehicles on the road—not in a test facility. Using a machine in the car’s trunk and a probe down the length of the exhaust pipe, they uncovered extremely high emissions.

As a result, the EPA and Department of Justice found that Volkswagen, which included the Audi and Porsche brands, violated the Clean Air Act, a federal law passed in 1970 to regulate emissions from stationary sources, like factories, and mobile sources, like cars. Under the law, the company agreed to pay multiple settlements and pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

“The Clean Air Act worked as it was intended to—in the sense that we had a company that was violating it and when that was discovered, [there were] massive penalties in response,” Amanda Halter, a partner in Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman’s Environmental & Natural Resources practice, told us. “It’s the kind of law, frankly, that you just couldn’t get passed by today’s Congress.”

As part of the settlement, Volkswagen spent $2 billion to establish a public fast-charging network, Electrify America, which today is the second largest in the US. It now has more than 4,800 charging ports across the country, second only to 

“The contribution that Electrify America has made to the public charging infrastructure is really substantial,” Brent Gruber, executive director of JD Power’s EV practice, told Tech Brew.

However, the network has been criticized by EV drivers and electrification advocates over reliability issues, as detailed in a 

 by The Washington Post. An executive told the outlet that the network was “working hard to improve reliability.”

 on consumer satisfaction with public fast chargers in a 2024 JD Power study. It scored 559 on a 1,000-point scale, while Tesla ranked highest, with 731.

In general, there are two major problems with US public charging, Gruber said: lack of availability and 

The EV “adoption rate is outstripping the pace of charger installation by about two to one,” he said. And about one in five public charging visits fail, per JD Power and 

, because of issues like faulty chargers and long wait times.

Solving these issues is important because public-charging concerns remain the No. 1 barrier to EV adoption, Gruber said. But now, that effort must proceed without federal help, as the Trump administration 

Gruber said he expects to see a near-term slowdown in charger installation, but that states and private-sector players will push ahead, because strong public charging is key to an electric future in which manufacturers are heavily invested.

. It reported that its customers’ 16 million charging sessions represented 50% growth in 2024, and it plans a 30% expansion this year. Electrify America declined to comment on Tech Brew’s questions.

The network is working to increase the number of “Hyper-Fast” 350 kilowatt-hour chargers, per a company report, as well as opening larger stations. It says it’s implemented policies, like idle fees, aimed at reducing wait times.

“Increasing customer satisfaction and station performance is a top priority for Electrify America,” the network said in its Q1 2025 report to the California Air Resources Board. The network will report to the board annually on charger station uptime and “strive to achieve target uptime thresholds on its California network of chargers,” under the terms of its latest maintenance plan.

Meanwhile, Gruber said he was heartened to see significant progress in Q1 on customer satisfaction and charger reliability.

The public charging failure rate dropped to 16% in Q1, the largest improvement since JD Power launched the survey in 2021, according to Gruber. And the satisfaction level with public fast chargers went up by six points from Q4 2024, to 656 out of 1,000.

The results, Gruber said, “gave me a lot of hope that we’re starting to see the tides turn with public charging.”


Volkswagen Passats are offered for sale at a dealership on September 18, 2015, in Chicago, Illinois. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has accused Volkswagen of installing software on nearly 500,000 diesel cars in the U.S. to evade federal emission regulations. 

Dieselgate spawned a large US EV charging network. Why is public charging still so vexing?

Volkswagen agreed to spend $2 billion to build out a network of EV chargers as part of a settlement in the wake of an emissions scandal. A decade later, drivers frequently cite charger unavailability as a roadblock to EV adoption. 

 have bolstered widespread investment in renewable energy since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022. But President Trump has taken aim at them in his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed the 

 last month with cuts to key tax credits that apply to residential clean tech and clean energy production and investment.

While the clean energy industry scrambles to lobby for the credits to be included in the Senate’s version of the bill, BloombergNEF analyzed how the cancellation of the credits would affect clean energy production in the US.

As stipulated in the version of the bill passed by the House, projects built more than 60 days after the bill is signed into law and that don’t start operating before 2029 would be ineligible for tax credits. According to BNEF’s analysis, these stipulations would create a “three-year rush to build new wind, solar, and storage projects followed by a major hangover in 2029” that would result in a 10% decrease in clean energy projects built by 2035.

Solar, wind, and storage technologies will each be impacted differently—the tax credit changes don’t apply to nuclear projects. Without the tax credits, solar projects would decrease 5% and energy storage projects would dip 7% in the next 10 years. General demand for those technologies would still exist, though at a lower level than today. Wind capacity, however, would be cut by a whopping 35%, “with no offshore wind additions post 2028,” BNEF noted. Such a blow to wind technologies would be kicking them while they’re down: A considerable amount of 

And the potential cut of the tax credits would affect more than just clean energy capacity: BNEF’s analysis also warned of “negative effects on the US power system,” especially as energy demand grows due to 

“Rapid load growth driven by data center demand will require either new generation, which this bill makes it harder to add,” BNEF’s analysis stated, “or higher capacity factors from existing power plants, which tend to be both more expensive and higher in greenhouse gas emissions.”

US energy demand is also being stressed by clean energy stakeholders who are currently meeting with Republican senators, urging them to protect the tax credits. Jon Powers, president of clean energy investment firm CleanCapital, told Tech Brew that in a meeting he attended with a senator on Capitol Hill, “someone...wanted to bring an AI data center to the state,” but told the senator “it wouldn’t be possible because there was not enough energy in their area to fulfill the data center’s demand.”

“Congress is now one chamber away from passing a law that would dramatically increase clean energy project risk, states would lose out on millions in investment, and ultimately cause previously announced projects and manufacturing plants to be canceled—making it more difficult to bring AI-critical data centers to fruition and jeopardizing our current infrastructure,” Powers said in an email. “The stakes are high, but with growing energy demand and investor pressure, there’s still time for Congress to course-correct and support bringing more electrons to the grid.”

Correction 06/15/2025: This story has been updated to correct references to BloombergNEF throughout.

Overhead image of suburban neighborhood with lots of rooftop solar panels

Cutting green tax credits would slash US clean energy capacity 10%, BloombergNEF finds

A version of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” with cuts to green tax credits passed the House last month.

Massachusetts has the highest number of climate tech startups per capita in the world—not just in the US. It’s a fact that Governor Maura Healey is proud of, and an achievement she touts when discussing her plan to make the state “the undisputed global home of climate technology.”

“I’ve never viewed my competition with other states,” she said in a speech last month at 

. “I view Massachusetts’ competition with other countries.”

Making Massachusetts No. 1 for climate tech would add that industry to the state’s growing list of gold-medal rankings: It’s a global hub for life sciences and biotech, and is the most educated state in the nation, per 

. Healey wants to use the frameworks that attained those wins to boost the “companies that will lead the world” in climate tech by “investing state dollars” in startups and the green tech workforce.

, a quasi-governmental economic development agency, which invests public funding in climate tech startups, manages the state’s green infrastructure, and fosters the next generation of green tech workers through internships and community college and high school programming.

“Not all states have something like a Clean Energy Center that allows us to offer capital investment dollars and tax incentives to support economic development and growth in climate technology,” Healey told Tech Brew. “[Climate tech is] a huge opportunity for economic growth for our state.”

As governor, Healey has also passed legislation to accelerate Massachusetts’ clean energy transition through permitting and siting reforms. In 2023, she created the Commission on Clean Energy Infrastructure Siting and Permitting (CEISP) through an executive order, which aims to “swiftly remove barriers” to building renewable energy infrastructure. The commission recommended permitting and siting reforms for Massachusetts’ 2024 Climate Act, which Healey signed into law last year. Among other reforms, the law created deadlines for state and municipal permitting processes so clean energy projects aren’t trapped in a seemingly endless 

And just last month, Healey sought further legislation to bring more renewable energy to Massachusetts and cut electricity costs.

“We’ve got to bring energy costs down, and one way to do it is by bringing more forms of energy online, and that includes renewables,” Healey told us. “These are all things that are going to make America more energy independent and in control of our destiny, and not be subject to some of the wild swings that we see in global oil and gas markets right now.”

, a group of 24 state governors committed to decreasing their states’ greenhouse gas emissions and passing high-impact state climate policy. She told us that during President Trump’s second term, green states will continue to work together for the sake of the entire country—which includes Massachusetts, 16 other states, and DC suing the Trump administration for its 

Unsurprisingly, Healey isn’t taking cues from the federal government for Massachusetts’ climate tech action—she’s looking globally.

“Other countries are moving forward,” Healey told us. “That should send a signal to American leadership that this is where we need to go.”

So even as federal climate tech investments decline, she takes any opportunity she can get to encourage those in the industry to keep going.

“I want you to have faith. I want you to continue. I don’t want you to take your foot off the pedal,” Healey said in her speech at ClimaTech. “We are all in, and we’re going to continue to be all in—and there are a whole lot of people who stand to benefit from it.”