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Mike Englhard is the Chief Development Officer at Terawatt Infrastructure, a pioneering startup dedicated to designing, developing, and operating high-powered charging sites for commercial electric vehicles across the US.
Terawatt has been a trailblazer in the EV infrastructure market since 2021 as it started to strategically acquire prime charging sites, at a time where few heavy-duty electric trucks were on the road. With over $1 billion raised and growing momentum behind commercial vehicle electrification, Terawatt is now rapidly expanding: 15 charging sites in development in the US and dozens more in the pipeline.
In this episode, we delve deep into what it takes to develop large-scale clean energy infrastructure and how to accelerate these multi-million dollar projects. Tune in to hear about:
Building High-Powered EV Fleet Charging Stations: Discover how to develop large-scale infrastructure projects; selecting optimal land parcels, navigating permitting complexities, and procuring long-lead-time electrical components.The Role of Grid Interconnection: Understand the pivotal role of grid interconnection and strategies to expedite this crucial process.Advancements in Charging Technology: Learn about the latest developments in charging technology, including the emerging Megawatt Charging System, and how it could unlock the widespread adoption of long-haul truck electrification.On-Site Solar and Battery Storage: Explore the benefits of using on-site renewables to power charging stations directly.Terawatt's Business Model: Understand how Terawatt's business model could unlock hundreds of millions in revenue with a relatively small number of charging sites.Enjoy the discussion!
To learn more about trucking decarbonization:
Episode 15 with Ian Rust (Revoy): learn about the benefits and challenges of electric trucks, hydrogen trucks, and other decarbonization solutions for commercial vehiclesTeraWatt Infrastructure: explore TeraWatt's charging network under development (~15 sites)Federal truck charging network strategy: dig into the US strategy to accelerate the deployment of Zero-Emission Infrastructure for Freight Trucks (released in March 2024)
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Ian Rust is the founder and CEO of Revoy, a startup enabling heavy-duty truck electrification at no upfront cost. Revoy's one-of-a-kind electric trailer, which fits between the tractor and trailer of any diesel truck, can reduce fuel use by 90%—all at no upfront cost and in under 2 minutes.
With over 25% of US transportation emissions coming from 3 million semi-trucks, Revoy offers a critical solution to decarbonize the 3 million diesel semi-trucks on the road today.
In this episode, we explore the trucking industry and Revoy's unique technology. Tune in to hear about:
Ian’s insights on hydrogen's high costs and his strong belief in electrification.The current limitations of electric trucks (charging time & cost) and how Revoy's electric trailer can overcome these barriers.Revoy's product development strategy for rapidly developing sophisticated hardware technology by leveraging automotive and aerospace supply chains.Ian's broader vision of creating renewable-powered hubs to support entire communities, going well beyond trucking decarbonizationEnjoy the discussion!
To learn more about trucking decarbonization:
Revoy websiteRyder report on total cost of transportation
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Nicolas Banchet is the co-founder of Zeplug, a startup installing Electric Vehicles (EV) charging stations. What sets Zeplug apart? Their positioning and innovative business model:
Targeting multi-occupant buildings: Zeplug provides EV charging services only for apartment buildings where the electrical infrastructure has to be shared in parkingsNo upfront cost: EV charging service is provided at no upfront cost for the building; Zeplug funds the shared infrastructure and recoups costs over time based on resident usage.This approach has fueled Zeplug's rapid expansion across Europe, now serving over 16,000 buildings and offering access to 1 million parking spaces.
But that's not all.
Nicolas also founded another thriving startup at the same time: ChargeGuru. Operating in the EV charging space as well, ChargeGuru provides end-to-end installation services for individual and commercial customers.
In this episode, we talk with Nicolas about:
His journey from management consulting to CEO of a family business, then founding two climate tech startupsCustomer pain points in EV charger installation and how ChargeGuru simplified the processBuilding a strong flywheel with partners (OEMs and property managers) selling the Zeplug solutionKey strategies for entering new countries and markets with varying regulationsExpansion potential of Zeplug into Virtual Power Plants using vehicle-to-home/grid technology and current challenges in scaling up this marketEnjoy the discussion!
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Nicolas Guinebretière is the co-founder of Vestack, a startup reinventing the construction industry with low-carbon materials and offsite manufacturing. By using timber frames manufactured away from the construction site, Vestack can be cost-competitive with traditional cement-based buildings while cutting the building's carbon footprint by up to 3. This is a game changer in an industry representing 25% of global emissions.
Launched in 2018, Vestack has already delivered over 15 buildings and is rapidly scaling up with another 30 projects under construction. In this episode, we talk with Nicolas about:
His experience transitioning from McKinsey to building housesHow to start a construction startup from scratchThe climate impact of the construction industry and available low-carbon materialsHow off-site manufacturing is the key to making low-carbon materials competitiveHow to rapidly scale up an asset-heavy manufacturing businessEnjoy the discussion!
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Evan Hynes is the CEO and co-founder of ClimateBase, the leading job platform for climate. Launched in 2020, ClimateBase has scaled incredibly fast with over 250,000 monthly users, over 100,000 subscribers to its climate newsletter, and more than 7,000 participants to the ClimateTech week it recently organized in San Francisco.
And all of this growth with only 7 full-time employees and ~$300K in angel investor funding.
In this episode, we talk with Evan about:
His early experiences in community-building as an undergrad at UC Barbara and then at a YC Combinator startup offering software engineering bootcamps.The origin story behind ClimateBase stemming from Evan's personal challenges with finding relevant climate jobs and building network in the climate space.The climate job gap and how to successfully transition into a climate career.The importance of timing in startup launches and the power of viral word-of-mouth to grow ClimateBase to 250K users without any paid advertising.Enjoy the discussion!
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Raphael Declercq is the CEO of PowerFlex, a 300 people strong company based in San Diego, California with the mission to help businesses transition to distributed renewables and electrified transportation.
Launched as a subsidiary of EDF - the French energy giant operating over 30+ nuclear power plants - PowerFlex has quickly become the 2nd largest installer of rooftop solar for commercial buildings and the 4th largest EV installer in the US.
With $100M raised last year, PowerFlex aims to accelerate the transition of commercial customers to clean energy and to continue to invest in its unique technology integrating on-site solar generation with intelligent EV charging.
In this episode, we talk with Raphael about:
How to create a startup within a giant organizationWhat it will take to cover every commercial rooftop with solar panelsWhat is the impact of EV charging on the stability of the electrical gridHow the PowerFlex tech platform can optimize commercial energy assetsWhat are Virtual Power Plants and how could they play a critical role in a renewables-dominated gridEnjoy the discussion!
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Olivier Reinaud is Co-Founder & Managing Director at NetZero, a startup bringing carbon removal at scale in the tropics with biochar.
Launched in 2021 with a diverse founding team, including the climatologist Jean Jouzel (IPCC vice chair), NetZero has rapidly demonstrated its technology in Cameroon and Brazil and has been selected in the prestigious Musk Foundation’s X Prize for Carbon Removal.
With $12M raised recently to scale up operations, Net Zero aims to remove 2 million tons of CO2 with biochar by 2030 with a mutually beneficial partnership between all biochar stakeholders:
Agricultural cooperatives get to valorize cumbersome biomass residues into biocharFarmers get that biochar to improve yields and minimize fertilizer useFood companies finance biochar production to reduce their supply chain carbon emissionsIn this episode, we talk with Olivier about:
how is grandfather ventured into biochar when climate change was still doubted or ignored by mostthe key role of carbon credits in achieving a net zero worldhow biochar is produced, how does it capture carbon from plants, and what are the benefits for farmersNet Zero licensing model and how it will enable this startup to rapidly grow from 2 facilities to hundreds of biochar facilitiesEnjoy the discussion!
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Sebastian Berning is the co-founder & CEO of Instagrid, a startup aiming to replace combustion generators used for mobile power supply by clean portable batteries.
These generators are used every time power supply is needed without an easy access to the grid: in food carts to cook, on construction sites to run jackhammers, at festivals for lighting & sound, and in countless other applications.
While not getting much attention from regulators to date, these generators do pose massive health and climate problem by releasing huge quantities of air particulates, typically in dense urban areas, and producing significant CO2 emissions (1h run time of a generator is equivalent to driving 250km with a car)
In this episode, we talk with Sebastian about:
Instagrid's ideation from his experience in Silicon Valley innovation labs to building a battery factory in Germanyhow are batteries built and how Instagrid has fully redesigned the battery management systemhow to sell a complex industrial product before building anything the challenge of scaling up a business with a long tail of small customersEnjoy the discussion!
To learn more about Instagrid and clean mobile power:
Clean Air Project: EU-funded study assessing generators climate emissions (~ 30m, ~ 20 pages)Instagrid use cases visualized
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Alexis Normand is the Co-founder & CEO of Greenly, a carbon accounting and management platform enabling companies to measure and reduce their emissions
Carbon accounting has grown from a niche practice only a few years ago to a widely adopted business practice with 18,700 public companies now disclosing their emissions
By measuring their emissions, companies can then define climate targets with ~2,200 companies having set a net zero science-based target to date, a number that has grown exponentially over the last years
Yet, much remains to be done with 17,000 public companies still failing to disclose their emissions and - while science-based target set a high bar for climate ambition - greenwashing and dubious climate claims remain rampant in the corporate world
Launched less than 4 years ago in Paris, Greenly aims to democratize carbon measurement to enable companies of all size to measure their impact and take climate action. Greenly has already convinced 1,000 customers across Europe and the US, from one-person shops to large companies such as banking giant BNP Paribas.
In this episode, we talk with Alexis about:
how Alexis' interest in technology and tracking health data brought him to carbon accountinghow can we measure carbon emissions from company’s datawhich climate commitments can corporates take and what is the difference between carbon neutrality and net zero science-based targetshow can Greenly software platform scale to companies of all sizes globally and become a standard like any financial accounting system but for carbonEnjoy the show!
To learn more about carbon accounting and emission reduction:
The Net-Zero standard for Corporates (report, ~65 pages)Energy: A beginner’s guide, Vaclav Smil (book)How to avoid a climate disaster, Bill Gates (book)Speed & Scale, an action plan for solving our climate crisis, John Doer (book)Drawdown: the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming, Paul Hawken (book)World without end, Jean-Marc Jancovici (comics)
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Alexia Akbay is the founder & CEO of Symbrosia, a startup producing a seaweed feed supplement for ruminants that can reduce their methane emissions by 90%
Ruminent livestock (cows, beef, sheep, goat) are responsible for ~14% of total greenhouse gas emissions (~7Gt of CO2-eq). Enteric fermentation, which is part of the ruminant's digestive process, drives ~40% of these livestock emissions as methane - a highly potent gas with intense short-term warming effects
With global livestock numbers on the rise in spite of the emergence of meat substitutes and milk alternatives, practical solutions like Symbrosia are needed by food brands and farmers farmers to reduce the climate impact of their activities
In this episode, we talk with Alexia about:
how her idea started from reading a research paper, evolved into a school project at Yale to become a 20 people strong company operating in Hawaiiwhy is red seaweed so difficult to farm and how is Symbrosia’s technology enabling an efficient and consistent seaweed productionhow can this farming model scale up from one the latest facility supplying 1M cows to addressing the 1.5B cows across the globe todayEnjoy the show!
To learn more about Symbrosia and livestock farming:
Salesforce Ecopreneur show on Symbrosia, including a view of the product & production facilities in Hawaii (video, ~10mn)Concentration and Power in the Food System, by Philip Howard (book, ~200 pages)
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Casey Handmer is the founder of Terraform Industries, a startup that produces synthetic fuels by combining CO2 captured from the air with renewable hydrogen.
Fossil fuels are responsible for ~75% of anthropogenic emissions and we need to reduce their consumption as fast as possible. Yet, even under the most optimistic decarbonization scenario, natural gas and oil will still play an important role in our energy systems in 2030-40.
Terraform aims to decarbonize this residual fuel consumption by producing synthetic fuels more cheaply than by drilling the Earth. In this episode, we talk with Casey about:
how his early career at Hyperloop & NASA led him to look at fuel sources on Mars to then found a ClimateTech startupwhat are synthetic fuels and why they have a role to play in the energy transitionhow falling cost of solar power can make synthetic fuels cheaper than fossil fuel extracted from the Earth how to rapidly scale production to replace significant fossil fuel quantities in the near termEnjoy the show!
To learn more about Terraform Industries and synthetic fuels:
Terraform whitepaper (~15mn read)Terraform website (for HTML enthusiasts) and Prometheus website (for a more visual version)
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Hydrogen will play a pivotal role in abating 25% to 40% of US emissions in the so-called "hard-to-abate" sectors: long-distance transportation (aviation, shipping, trucking), industrial feedstock processes (ammonia, methanol, refining), long-duration energy storage, and as a heating fuel for commercial & industrial customers.
Shawn Drost is the cofounder and CEO of Phoenix Hydrogen, a startup building the first commodity marketplace connecting all the players of the hydrogen value chain. To get to critical mass, Phoenix Hydrogen is building one of the largest underground storage facilities (the size of the Empire State) to serve California hydrogen needs.
In this episode, we talk with Shawn about:
his previous experience as a tech founder and how he transitioned to Climate Tech applications for hydrogen today and in the near futureproduction pathways for hydrogen and associated climate impact of grey, blue, and green hydrogenthe transport & storage infrastructure needed to scale the hydrogen economyEnjoy the show!
To learn more about hydrogen, here are the materials referenced by Shawn:
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2022) - the reference report aggregating the latest science on climate changeHyBuild LA Initiative - hydrogen Hub near Los Angeles with whom Shawn consulted withSHINe Hub - hydrogen Hub in Arizona where Phoenix Hydrogen underground hydrogen storage asset will be located Terra.do - a bootcamp-style professional education on climateCarbon Brief - reporting on climate science, energy, and policies
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Kathy Hannun is the co-founder and President of Dandelion Energy, the US leader in geothermal heat pumps for home heating and cooling. From an idea emerging at Google X in 2017, Dandelion Energy has now installed over 1,000 geothermal systems and raised a total of $60M.
Building heating is a truly massive climate challenge with ~20% of emissions globally due to energy use in buildings, with most of this energy going to space heating (the rest going to power appliances primarily).
In this episode, we talk with Kathy about:
her early childhood and what drove her interest in climatehow the Dandelion Energy idea originated at Google X and how it grew into an stand-alone startuphow do heat pumps work and how can they reduce building heating emissions how to scale heat pumps to hundred million of housesEnjoy the show!
To learn more about Dandelion Energy and heat pumps:
Introduction to heat pumps (Rewiring America, ~15mn read)Geothermal cost vs. fossil fuel heating (Dandelion Energy, ~15mn read)
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Paul Gross is the co-founder and co-CEO of Remora, a carbon capture solution for heavy-duty trucks. Using work from Christina Reynold's PhD thesis at the University of Michigan (Remora other co-CEO), they created the company in 2020, joined Y Combinator and raised $5.5M to now be a 45 people strong company about to deploy their product at some of the largest American trucking companies.
In this episode, we talk with Paul about:
his early childhood and what drove his interest for climatehow the Remora idea originated at Yale and how he assembled a dream team to get the project off the groundwhat carbon capture is, how it works and why it’s a critical technology to fight climate changehow can we recycle or store carbon and how is this carbon valuablethe role of hydrogen, electricity and biofuels for trucking decarbonizationhow to scale their system from a pilot unit to 2m trucksEnjoy the show!
To learn more about Remora and carbon capture:
Vox carbon capture primer (~30mn read)ClimateTech VC primer on carbon credits (15mn read)Christina Reynold original PhD thesis(160 pages!)
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Sam Bertram is the Founder and CEO of OnePointOne, an agtech startup that is developing aeroponics vertical farming technology to grow fruits and vegetables more efficiently. Picture this as a warehouse packed with robotics, internet of things and AI systems to automate farming operations and to optimize plant growth
In this episode, Sam walks us through:
the origin story of OnePointOne from a university prototype to getting first fundingthe vertical farming technology and the plants it can viably growthe environmental impact of conventional farming and how can vertical farming mitigate some of this huge footprintthe challenges ahead to scale vertical farming: bringing down unit economics cost and developing new farm financing modelsEnjoy the show!
To learn more about OnePointOne: https://www.onepointone.com/
To learn more about the philosopher referenced by Sam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5-P9v3F8w&ab_channel=JustinBieberVEVO
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Olympia Yarger is the Founder and CEO of Goterra, an Agtech startup that is building an autonomous system that breeds insects using organic waste as a feedstock. Picture this as a shipping container containing a robotic system that takes in organic waste on one side, breeds insects, and produces proteins on the other side.
In this episode, Olympia walks us through:
the origin story of Goterra and how she became interested in insects the challenges of conventional farming and waste management, and how insects can be part of the solutionthe initial challenges in building a prototype of such a complex & large insect breeding machinethe first commercial success, how she has scaled the company, and her ambition over the coming yearsEnjoy the show!
To learn more about Goterra: https://goterra.com.au/
To learn more about the Hermetia Olympiae: https://waste-management-world.com/artikel/australia-black-soldier-flies-to-upcycle-food-waste/
