Tim De Chant
Tim De Chant covers how climate technology, energy systems and transportation are reshaping each other, with particular depth on electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and the companies powering the energy transition. He is a senior climate reporter at TechCrunch, bringing a science-writing background and long experience explaining complex technologies in clear, grounded terms. His beat spans startups, finance, policy and hardware, and his stories trace how climate solutions move from lab and pilot projects into roads, grids and factories.
Electric vehicles and charging infrastructure
Electric vehicles and the infrastructure that supports them are a recurring focus, with reporting that blends road tests, network performance and the business realities behind charging. In one recent piece, he uses a 600-mile road trip and charging data to assess how far public EV charging has come, drilling into reliability, speed and driver experience rather than treating the technology in isolation.
His archive is filled with work on fast-charging networks, including an outlook on why EV fast-charging faces a challenging year, where he examines grid constraints, capital needs and operational hurdles for charging providers.
He follows the startup side of charging, profiling companies like EVCS as they raise funds to expand networks and exploring how their business models differ from legacy fuel retail. De Chant also looks at fleet and consumer adoption, asking whether battery swapping can work beyond fleets and what it would take for EVs to succeed in rental car operations, tying user behavior and economics back to infrastructure design.
Automaker strategy is part of this thread: he writes about Tesla opening its Superchargers to all EVs and weighs whether that move is a masterstroke or a mistake, and he analyzes how GM and Toyota risk becoming losers in the EV transition as they juggle legacy portfolios and new models. Across these stories, he treats EVs as a systems problem - vehicles, chargers, batteries, grids and corporate decisions - rather than as stand-alone products.
Climate tech startups and funding flows
De Chant devotes substantial coverage to climate tech startups and the capital shaping them, often using individual funding rounds to illustrate broader investor sentiment. He profiles energy and materials companies raising large rounds, such as battery manufacturer Our Next Energy’s massive Series B for a new gigafactory and Divert’s combination of growth equity and project financing to tackle grocery store food waste, detailing both the technology and how investors plan to scale it.
His reporting on KoBold’s AI-driven mineral exploration and the surge of investment it attracted shows how software, data and resource extraction intersect in the climate economy.
Venture and growth funds are another strand: he covers Juniper Ventures’ spin-out to focus on synthetic biology for climate, new climate-focused funds from firms like Congruent, and vehicles launched by managers expecting a wave of climate tech M&A, spelling out where capital is moving and why. He tracks major backers, including a piece on Breakthrough Energy’s bets on 21 startups that it believes will define future energy systems, emphasizing the technologies and sectors those bets represent.
Roundups of climate tech deals - touching food waste, wastewater, batteries, solar and more - give communications teams a view into the niches he returns to and the kinds of milestones that qualify as newsworthy in his coverage.
Energy transition, policy and corporate strategy
Another distinguishing thread in De Chant’s work is the way he connects climate policy, geopolitics and corporate strategy with investment and technology.
He writes about energy transition investments crossing $1.1 trillion in a single year and about clean energy investment hitting new heights, parsing which segments of the market are growing fastest and what that implies for startups and incumbents. Policy-heavy pieces, such as his breakdowns of the Inflation Reduction Act, identify industries ripe for innovation and sort winners and losers, making dense legislation intelligible to readers focused on business outcomes. His reporting from climate summits like COP27 and COP28 examines the role of private investors in loss-and-damage funds and the shift from oil-driven foreign policy to what he calls decarbonization diplomacy, tying international negotiations back to capital flows and corporate commitments.
Large companies feature when their climate strategies falter or advance: he has analyzed Amazon’s struggle to eliminate carbon emissions, using the company’s scale to highlight how difficult full decarbonization is even for a sophisticated operator. Pieces on how startups should think about the geopolitical repercussions of climate law show that he is as interested in regulatory risk and macro context as he is in technology, framing climate tech within the constraints and opportunities of policy.
Next-generation energy and climate innovations
De Chant’s archive includes deep coverage of next-generation energy technologies, where he explains technical advances while keeping an eye on feasibility and timelines. He reports on enhanced geothermal, including the completion of what he describes as the world’s first enhanced geothermal power plant in just 23 months, and profiles startups working to harness the Earth’s heat to displace fossil fuels. Fusion and advanced nuclear are recurring themes: he writes about Type One Energy’s seed round to accelerate its reactor designs, surveys five promising fusion startups that are not yet unicorns, and covers X-energy’s large Series D in the context of a nuclear “wave.” In one story, he follows a startup aiming to build a fusion reactor on a boat, using the unconventional platform to discuss engineering and deployment challenges for fusion.
He also tracks electrothermal and storage innovations, such as Fourth Power’s breakthroughs that justified its Series A and Noon Energy’s carbon–oxygen battery technology adapted from Mars research, drawing clear lines between scientific concepts and commercial applications. Beyond generation and storage, he covers companies using particle physics and satellites to find critical minerals, materials startups like Novoloop and Allbirds’ use of upcycled and plant-based materials, and efforts to push solar into multifamily housing or expand domestic solar manufacturing.
Waste, recycling and circularity appear frequently in his reporting on hyperspectral imaging for recycling, nutrient recovery from wastewater and new waste-management startups, showing that his climate lens includes both heavy infrastructure and everyday systems.
Before joining TechCrunch, De Chant wrote for publications including Wired, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica and The Wire China, and he served as the founding editor of NOVA Next, experience that reflects a long-standing focus on science and technology storytelling. He teaches in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing and is a past Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT, grounding his reporting in both scientific literacy and an interest in new models for journalism. Across his work, the consistent pattern is close attention to how climate technologies scale: from EV charging corridors and battery plants to fusion experiments and food waste platforms, his stories ask whether promising ideas can be built into durable businesses that materially cut emissions.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aarian Marshall
Aarian Marshall is a staff writer at WIRED who stands out for covering how cars, software, and policy collide. She writes on transportation systems and cities, from the auto industry to broader mobility systems. Before WIRED, she reported on cities and urban policy for The Atlantic’s CityLab. Her beat runs from electric vehicles, fuel prices, tariffs, and car-buying decisions to autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and software-defined cars. She reports with a systems view, linking policy shifts, technical failures, and urban life to what happens on streets, in repair shops, and at the pump.
Abby Smith
Abby Smith’s most distinctive work combines motorsports coverage with live digital and radio reporting. She is Digital Director at KRDO13 and covers the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, including race updates, weather shifts, breaking developments and ways to follow the action. Her beat also includes automotive news, crime, public safety, politics, city government and community life. Notable work includes coverage of homicide arrests, a major drug bust, a presidential address about the war with Iran, a family’s effort to bring Stephen Hubbard home, a state governor candidate and a city security ordinance. She also reports on fitness, school spirit and station staff. Smith writes in a concise, factual style shaped by investigative documentary experience. She turns live events, official announcements and daily developments into clear coverage across digital and radio platforms.
Adele Peters
Adele Peters covers climate solutions and other structural problems as design and policy questions, focusing on what can work in practice. She is a senior writer at Fast Company, where she reports on energy, transportation, housing, materials, agriculture, corporate sustainability, and social impact. Her stories examine climate technologies, grid resilience, electric vehicles, renewable energy, modular construction, homelessness, affordable housing, compostable materials, regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. She looks at whether projects can scale, their real-world constraints, and their measurable effects. She interviews political and philanthropic leaders, startup founders, and climate tech entrepreneurs, anchoring stories in what is being built and tested. She has written more than 3,000 stories and contributed to Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and State of Housing Design 2023.
Adrian Leung
Adrian Leung writes engineering-led coverage of Chinese electric vehicles and performance cars for CarNewsChina. He focuses on new energy vehicles, battery systems, powertrains, electric platforms, high-end domestic brands, and track-ready models, and he explains technical details in plain language for non-specialist readers. His reporting treats new models as hardware and systems stories, with precise figures on range, battery capacity, chassis layout, motor outputs, weight, and acceleration. He also covers the Chinese auto industry’s finances and technology roadmap, including sector profits, vehicle volumes, and solid-state battery timelines. His background in Electrical and Computer Engineering shows in the way he writes about vehicle electronics and battery management.