When big corporations want to reduce their carbon footprint, they might appoint a chief sustainability officer to create company-wide initiatives to achieve their goal. But what about smaller companies, like IT security company Infoblox or pet food producer Grandma Mae’s?

That’s where Clearloop comes in. With funding from companies of all sizes, it’s been setting up solar infrastructure in communities where there’s a lack of clean energy. Clearloop, which is owned by solar company Silicon Ranch, currently has six projects in Tennessee and Mississippi, each of which powers several hundred to a few thousand homes. The company’s next project will be in Louisiana.

Laura Zapata, Clearloop’s CEO and co-founder, told Tech Brew that she chose to focus on the southeast US because it’s a “carbon-intense” area. Tennessee and Mississippi each contribute less than 1% of the country’s total renewable energy—meaning Clearloop is able to make a tangible difference. Researchers discovered harmful quantities of the pollutant black carbon, or soot, in Mississippi last year, and federal utility company Tennessee Valley Authority is building eight new gas plants in the region, where there are fewer government-led incentives to produce renewables.

“We should all have access to clean energy,” Zapata said. “Turning on the lights shouldn’t have a worse effect depending on where you live because of how we make electricity.”

Keep reading here.—TC

What do Napoleon Bonaparte, a 192-year-old tortoise named Jonathan, and a Subaru Solterra have in common?

They’ve all called one of the world’s most remote locations home. While Napoleon and Jonathan’s residencies on the island of St. Helena date to the 1800s, the Subaru EV is a newer inhabitant. It arrived on the island recently to take part in a project aimed at figuring out the logistics of charging electric vehicles––and therefore, advancing sustainability––in an isolated, rugged environment.

The UK division of the Japanese automaker recently announced the initiative to install what it’s touting as the “world’s most remote public electric vehicle charge point.” The project’s partners worked together to install an EV charging station near the Museum of St. Helena in the island’s capital city, Jamestown.

What makes the test run unique is that it’s taking place more than 1,000 miles away from the closest mainland. St. Helena––a British Overseas Territory––is more than 1,200 miles off the Southwest coast of Africa.

Keep reading here.—JG

Newly inaugurated President Trump has wasted no time attempting to make his administration’s early mark on the buzziest topic in the tech industry.

A day after fulfilling his promise to repeal President Biden’s far-reaching executive order on AI, Trump announced a new joint-venture deal to build AI infrastructure in the US with a sci-fi-esque name: Stargate.

Flanked by Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, and Masayoshi Son at a White House press conference, Trump announced a plan for Oracle, SoftBank, and United Arab Emirates-backed investor MGX to build data centers in the US for OpenAI under the banner of Stargate. The joint venture has pledged to spend $100 billion immediately and up to $500 billion over the next four years. Arm, Microsoft, and Nvidia are also “technology partners.”

Trump claimed it is “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history,” and share prices of the companies involved—and one very much not involved—rose on the news. But there are still many details about the project that have been left vague.

Keep reading here.—PK

Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

Dear streamer: It’s about to get a bit more expensive to stream Squid Game. Netflix announced this week that it plans to raise prices for both ad-free and ad-supported memberships, Marketing Brew reported.

Feed flux: If you’ve noticed a sudden influx over the past few days of political content or posts from politicians you’d not previously followed on Facebook and Instagram, there’s an explanation for that. The New York Times breaks down how social media handles between presidential administrations are transitioned.