This week's episode of the GreenBiz 350 comes to you directly from VERGE 2015 in the heart of Silicon Valley, where we covered climate, clean energy, tech and much more for four solid days.

First time tuning in to the podcast? Just click the play button in the media player above and get ready to hear from the likes of billionaire clean-energy evangelist Tom Steyer, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams and Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase, who all spoke at VERGE.

Stay tuned for the full archived video footage from the event main stage in the days ahead. Then, if you like what you hear on the podcast, be sure to check www.greenbiz.com/350 for a new episode every Friday.

In the meantime, if you've questions or suggestions for the show, send them our way at [email protected].

Find out more about the stories, companies and initiatives mentioned during the show with the guide below:

GreenBiz week in review

A weekly roundup of the news you need to know about.

Oakland fuses solar with electric bikes

The GreenBiz hometown mayor, Oakland's Libby Schaaf, talked urban resilience and income inequality in the face of a Bay Area tech boom during a panel with 100 Resilient Cities CEO Michael Berkowitz.

But Schaaf also shared some news: The city is poised to become the first in the world, she said, to install solar-powered electric bike charging. That's thanks to a planned project with e-bike manufacturer GenZe in the waterfront Jack London Square neighborhood, also home to solar provider Sungevity.

Solar in a box

Sinking cold hard cash into a big energy upgrade project can be daunting enough, even before you factor in the moving parts involved in solar systems rigged with panels, inverters and other elements.

Solar provider SunPower is hoping to make clean energy buying less daunting for would-be commercial energy buyers with an all-in-one commercial package called Helix announced this week at VERGE.

Aiming for autonomy

By now we're all well acquainted with the hype surrounding self-driving cars. Exactly how we'll overcome the technological and regulatory hurdles between the status quo and autnomous cars, however, isn't so easy to nail down.

That disconnect spurred Stanford's Stefan Heck to jump into the budding market for semi-autonomous vehicle solutions with his new company, Nauto, which will compete with a number of players looking to retrofit cars and fleets for autonomy.

Featured stories

An in-depth look at two stories changing the game for green business.

Digging into data

Data, data, data. If you've heard the hype about how data will change one sector — food, transportation, energy — you've heard how it will change them all. Ditto with new types of platform business models, such as social networks and sharing economy services, being applied to everything from communication to hospitality to taxi rides.

The Open Data Institute's Gavin Starks, along with Zipcar and Veniam founder Robin Chase and Twitter and Medium co-founder Ev Williams, talked tech, startups and Uber-izing sustainability.

The elephant in the room

With the notable exception of Van Jones, social justice is usually relegated to the status of a hard-to-ignore undercurrent in discussions about who will benefit from the future of clean energy.

This week, Jones shared the stage with Steyer to tackle exactly that issue. Then, Green Bronx Machine's Stephen Ritz brought the house down with a 10 minute, 200-slide whirlwind on how he has grown a small schoolyard urban farming project into an environmental justice movement.

What's new at GreenBiz?

News, events, webcasts — the list goes on. Keep your finger on the pulse of the latest in sustainability by keeping up with GreenBiz.

VERGE heads to Hawaii

This week may have been all about VERGE 2015, but GreenBiz CEO Eric Farout is always looking ahead to June 21 to 23, when the event will hit the road for Honolulu with VERGE Hawaii. Then, from Sept. 19 to 22, VERGE 2016 will bring us back to Silicon Valley.

Our next online events

Even If you couldn't make it to San Jose for VERGE, it's not too late to sign up for two free online events: A Nov. 3 webcast on "Green Infrastructure and the Triple-Bottom-Line: New Tech for Sustainable City Design," plus the Nov. 10 webcast "Beyond COP21: Why Tackling Climate Change Is Good For Business."

Technical direction for GreenBiz 350 by Sureya Melkonian.