Climate Positive

For several years, well-intentioned companies seeking to reduce their emissions from electricity consumption – a primary component of their Scope 2 emissions – have bought Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) or signed Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). Known as energy or megawatt hour matching, this approach, which forms the backbone of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Scope 2 Market-Based Method accounti...

Nanobubbles provide an effective solution to many of the challenges of climate change. These nanoscopic bubbles are 2500 times smaller than a single grain of salt and can be formed with any gas.  Unlike larger bubbles, they remain suspended in liquid longer and remain stable until they interact with surfaces or contaminants. Their size allows them to achieve dissolved oxygen levels many times grea...

Every community across the globe produces waste. This waste can come from landfills, decomposing food, animal manure, and wastewater sludge. As this waste decomposes, it emits natural gas – primarily composed of methane, which is a naturally occurring but very potent and harmful greenhouse gas. In fact, methane is nearly 30 times more potent at trapping heat in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide....

In this week's episode, Gil speaks with Matt Rogers, the founder and CEO of Mill, a startup revolutionizing how we tackle food waste. They delve into the inspiration behind Mill, discussing how the idea came about and the parallels to Matt's previous work as the co-founder of Nest, the company behind the iconic learning thermostat and other smart home products. Matt discusses the functionality of...

Seafood provides nearly 20% of the animal protein humans consume globally. This growing source of protein is also rather healthy with many of our nutrient-rich foods coming from aquatic creatures. But already, the supply of our wild capture seafood has flattened, meaning that the vast majority of our global fisheries today are being overfished in an unsustainable manner.  Fortunately, Finless Food...

In this week's episode, Gil Jenkins and Hilary Langer speak with Jason Horowitz and Emma Bubola of The New York Times about their recent cover story on Venice's battle against the relentless forces of rising seas. They discuss the unlikely early success of the MOSE sea walls in protecting the city during high water events that have become increasingly commonplace due to climate change. Links:  As...

With extreme weather events proliferating, insurance companies are already on the front lines of climate change. In this episode, Chad Reed speaks with Sarah Chapman, Chief Sustainability Officer for Manulife – one of the world’s largest insurance providers and investment managers. Sarah discusses how Manulife incorporates ESG risks and opportunities, including emissions accounting and biodiversit...

More than 90% of Fortune 500 companies report their emissions using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP), which supplies the world’s most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standards. But despite significant advances in data analytics around emissions measurement, it’s been nearly a decade since the GHGP was last updated. Thankfully, the NGOs that manage the GHGP recently kicked off the update pr...

Expanding access to clean energy like solar is essential to global climate goals, and it is especially impactful for the residents on island nations in the Caribbean that face high energy costs and are exposed to increasingly violent storms. As the director of projects for the Rocky Mountain Institute (now known as RMI), Chris Burgess navigates the decarbonization and decentralization of energy in...

In this episode, Gil Jenkins speaks with Peter Krull, Partner & Director of Sustainable Investing at Earth Equity Advisors, A Prime Capital Investment Advisors Company. Peter focuses on creating and managing Earth Equity’s sustainable, responsible, and impact investment portfolios as well as writing thought leadership pieces and elevating the responsible investing story. Gil talks with Peter about...

Over the last few years, there has been an influx of venture capital seeking out profitable climate tech startups. At the same time, asset-backed financing has become generally more available and cheaper – all else equal – for renewable energy and other sustainable infrastructure projects.  But there has been a missing middle – investors willing to underwrite both technology and project-level risk...

Way back in early 2020, Microsoft made some of the most ambitious climate pledges of any corporation on the planet. It pledged to be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 to remove from the atmosphere all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by way of electricity consumption since its founding nearly 50 years ago. It also launched a $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund to accelerate t...

Kim Kovacs is the Chief Executive Officer of element6 Dynamics. She is spearheading a transformation in the hemp industry to bring industrial hemp production to scale.  By replacing tree-based pulp in paper and in packaging, hemp can reduce the pressure to harvest forests while also sequestering carbon and replenishing soils.  In this episode, Hilary Langer and Kim Kovacs discuss how hemp works as...

Dr. Brian von Herzen is the founder and executive director of the Climate Foundation, and a champion of marine permaculture – a process that the Climate Foundation is bringing to scale to reduce carbon, improve food security and regenerate marine ecosystems. In this episode, Hilary Langer and Brian von Herzen discuss the importance of restoring balance to the ocean, how marine permaculture engages...

Every day, the alphabet soup of climate and ESG-related NGOs seems to thicken. But their respective raisons d’etre can seem like a mystery for all but the closet of insiders. To help unravel the role of each of these organizations in the broader social movement and policy push for urgent climate action, Chad Reed speaks with Ivan Frishberg, the chief sustainability officer of Amalgamated Bank and...

Corals are the gems of the oceans, creating beautiful colors and shapes that form our reefs while serving many vital functions for life on this planet. With 25-40% already lost, the worldwide coral population faces incredible danger from climate change and other threats. But there is hope.  On this week’s episode, Hilary and I talk with Dr. David E. Vaughan, an esteemed marine biologist and author...

In this episode, Hilary Langer speaks with Michelle Moore, CEO of the nonprofit Groundswell and author of the recently published book, “Rural Renaissance. Revitalizing America’s Hometowns Through Clean Power.” Michelle has spent her career advocating for equitable power.  Her accomplishments range from delivering programs that cut energy use by $11 billion and led to the deployment of 3.2 Gigawatt...

In this episode, Gil Jenkins speaks with Justin Gillis and Hal Harvey, authors of the recently published book “The Big Fix: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet.” The book offers an everyday citizen's guide to the seven essential changes our communities must enact to bring our greenhouse gas emissions down to zero. Justin Gillis spent a decade as an award-winning reporter for The New York Times co...

If you’re listening to this podcast, you have probably heard of Shayle Kann. Shayle has been at the frontier of climatetech research, media, and investing for over 15 years. Now a partner with the venture capital firm Energy Impact Partners (EIP), Shayle leads EIP’s Frontier Fund, which invests in revolutionary technologies to enable deep decarbonization. Of course, he’s also the host of the popul...

As more and more leading companies, governments, and other large buyers of electricity pledge to procure 100% carbon-free energy (CFE), markets are in need of better, more granular information on the time, location, and emissionality of every megawatt-hour that is produced and consumed. To this end, EnergyTag – an independent, non-profit, industry-led initiative – is developing the standards and m...

Deia Bayoumi is the Vice President of Global Product Management at Bloom Energy, a San Jose-based company whose mission is to make clean, reliable, and affordable energy for everyone globally. In this episode, Deia, a global innovation executive with more than three decades of experience, discusses Bloom’s unique fuel cell and clean hydrogen solutions and the role these technologies play in addres...

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA ruled that the Clean Air Act does not authorize the EPA to require a systematic shift to cleaner sources of electricity generation. Many fear this decision will be devastating to the agency’s and the executive branch’s ability to move the U.S. away from carbon-intensive energy sources and toward cleaner resources to address climate...

For decades, many have called nuclear fusion the “holy grail” of energy sources. The undying hope is that fusion will someday provide very cheap, abundant, zero-carbon electricity to all – thereby both decisively addressing the climate crisis and powering economic growth across the globe. But despite decades of well-funded research and even recent technological breakthroughs, we still seem to be y...

In this episode, Gil Jenkins speaks with internationally renowned economist, author, and activist John Perkins. John Perkins was formerly chief economist at a major consulting firm, where he advised the World Bank, United Nations, Fortune 500 corporations, and the U.S. and other governments—though much of this was a part of his previous work as an economic hit man he later denounced and became a w...

This week we’re presenting a special bonus episode where Gil Jenkins joined fellow podcasters for the most recent edition of the Cleantech Podcasters Quarterly Roundtable, hosted by Tigercomm & SunCast Media. We covered topics such as the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on EPA power plant regulations, the implications for energy markets due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, the escalating a...