In March 2017, the American solar industry had a number worth celebrating: 14,762 megawatts of photovoltaic capacity installed the previous year. Someone had to count it, explain it and distinguish a durable market from a particularly busy construction season. Greentech Media helped do all three. Four years later, its daily publishing operation was closing. The industry had not run out of news. The company that owned the newsroom had decided to organise its information business differently.
- GTM combined clean-energy reporting, paid market research and industry gatherings.
- Its premium membership once cost $249 a year.
- Wood Mackenzie acquired it in 2016; new GTM publication ended in March 2021.
- Research, events and podcasts continued within the parent business.
The audience was not the customer
Scott Clavenna and Rick Thompson founded Greentech Media in 2007. The proposition was admirably specific. Cover the businesses changing how electricity is produced, delivered and managed. Solar was central, but batteries, utility regulation and the increasingly complicated grid belonged in the same conversation. A panel on a roof was interesting. What happened when thousands of those panels met a utility’s business model was a story.
GTM was an information-services company with a newsroom. It published business news, produced market intelligence through GTM Research and convened conferences. That combination placed it between the trade publication and the research consultancy. Readers could follow a financing announcement; professional customers could buy the analysis needed to put that announcement in context.
The distinction matters. A homeowner wondering about solar and a developer deciding where to build may both enjoy an article about falling costs. Only one is likely to need a detailed market forecast for work. GTM addressed utilities, developers, installers, equipment and software suppliers, consultants and financiers. Their common problem was uncertainty, though the price of a wrong answer varied considerably.
A name for the messy bit
In 2013, GTM launched its Grid Edge initiative. The phrase gathered together changes that were otherwise scattered across engineering departments and regulatory proceedings: distributed generation, storage, communications and the technologies connecting customers to electricity networks. The old picture of a power station serving passive consumers was becoming harder to draw with a straight face.
GTM made the subject into a package of research, reporting, webinars and an executive council. Its Grid Edge Live event brought technology vendors, policy specialists and energy managers together. Enphase’s account of its 2014 Grid Edge 20 award describes executives discussing smart solar inverters at that gathering. Here was a media business helping an industry organise its conversation.
The research also supplied something less theatrical than a conference stage: a shared set of numbers. With the Solar Energy Industries Association, GTM Research produced U.S. Solar Market Insight. The 2016 year-end findings showed solar providing 39 percent of new American generating capacity. Twenty-two states added more than 100 megawatts each, compared with two in 2010. Clean energy was acquiring a geography as well as a constituency.
That explains GTM’s position in the market. Publications such as pv magazine and Utility Dive offered alternative specialist reading. BloombergNEF occupied the adjacent intelligence market. GTM combined editorial interpretation with research and gatherings under one roof. The attraction was the connection between those activities, rather than a claim that no one else could report on solar.
What $249 bought
The first documented pressure point was display advertising. A Parse.ly case study described readership growing while online advertising revenue declined. GTM identified professionals who wanted more depth but did not need full research studies. It surveyed engaged readers and used audience analytics to shape a middle-priced product.
GTM Squared launched in September 2015. Parse.ly supplied analytics, Piano handled subscription commerce and Vector Media Group supported development. The vendor case study reported subscribers in the thousands. That account is evidence of the launch approach, rather than an audited financial statement.
The former GTM Squared membership.
Publication ended in 2021.
The advertised benefits made the bargain tangible: specialist columns, research highlights, quarterly webinars, conference livestreams, on-demand sessions and event discounts. The membership page promised more than 60 hours of annual panels and sessions. A busy professional could follow the discussion without taking every flight. Paying bought access and interpretation as well as additional reading.
A publisher can borrow the underlying idea: identify a recurring professional need, then sell a product sized to it. That requires readers whose work benefits from deeper information. A casual audience with little reason to return, or material readily available elsewhere, would give the same offer a much harder time.
The acquisition and the silence
In July 2016, Verisk announced an agreement to acquire GTM for Wood Mackenzie. The buyer wanted expertise in solar, storage and smart grids to extend its energy intelligence coverage. Wood Mackenzie president Neal Anderson said clients expected those technologies to be covered within an integrated energy service. Clean-energy knowledge was becoming part of a broader commercial energy service.
“our clients expect coverage in the solar, storage, and smart grid spaces”Neal Anderson / Wood Mackenzie / 2016
GTM Research joined Wood Mackenzie’s Power and Renewables team in 2019. In February 2021, the parent announced the remaining integration. New content on greentechmedia.com and GTM Squared would stop in mid-March. Podcasts, insights, webinars, whitepapers and renewables events would move onto Wood Mackenzie platforms.
It is tempting to make the ending a verdict on the whole enterprise. The documented decision was narrower: the separate publishing sites ended, while other activities moved. For readers, losing a familiar newsroom mattered. For the parent, combining the work under its own platforms was the stated strategy. Those interests could coexist without producing the same outcome.
Where the conversation went
Today, follow Wood Mackenzie for power and renewables intelligence. Energy Gang continues with Ed Crooks as host; Interchange Recharged offers technical conversations about energy infrastructure and innovation. Treat GTM’s old prices and membership descriptions as history. Its enduring lesson is practical: explaining an industry, measuring it and gathering its participants are related jobs. A company can preserve those jobs while retiring the publication that made them familiar.