The Wharton Current

What does non-concessionary climate investing actually look like in practice? Ben Huang of Builders Vision joins the Wharton Current to break down how the platform deploys capital from philanthropy to market-rate returns— and why he underwrites climate funds the same way he'd underwrite any other. We cover manager selection, undercapitalized opportunities, the family office landscape, and career a...

China just released its Five Year Plan in March 2026. How should clean energy investors, founders, and policymakers in the US respond? On April 2, we sat down with Ali Zaidi, former White House National Climate Advisor, to discuss what China’s clean energy priorities mean for the future of the sector globally and how we can adapt US industrial policy to gain an edge.

What does it actually take to pull carbon out of the air — and turn it into a scalable business? In this episode, we sit down with Shashank Samala, CEO & Founder of Heirloom Carbon, to unpack the reality of building one of the world’s most ambitious direct air capture companies. We dive into commercializing DAC at scale, raising climate infrastructure capital, navigating policy and 45Q, and partne...

We sat down with Colby Hastings, Senior Director of Residential Energy at Tesla, to unpack how battery storage and distributed energy resources are reshaping the grid. Drawing on nearly a decade at Tesla, Colby walks us through the evolution of Tesla Energy—from the early days of Powerwall and grid-scale storage to today’s Megapack deployments and large-scale virtual power plants.

In this episode, Aroon shares insights on why data center flexibility is critical to protecting energy affordability, grid reliability and the broader economy amidst the AI boom.

We were thrilled to speak with Brandon Corts, Senior Director of Product at Newlab — a venture platform accelerating the commercialization of critical technologies. Between early-stage VC funding and late-stage infrastructure capital, hard technology companies face a “valley of death” where many fail. This challenge is not new but it is intensifying. According to Sightline Climate, in 2024, there...

Small Scale, Big Impact: Nuclear Microreactors -- James Walker, CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy by The Wharton Current

Energy Geopolitics in Transition — Dr. Benjamin Schmitt, Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Kleinman Center for Energy Policy by The Wharton Current

Geothermal energy may be the biggest dark horse in the clean energy transition. And it's bipartisan. At Deploy24, Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm gave a strong endorsement of geothermal, calling it her "personal favorite" power source. Recently confirmed Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said he is “optimistic about advancing geothermal technology deployment." Sage Geosystems is h...

What’s next for clean energy under a Trump administration? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Jen Wilcox. Now a Penn professor, Dr. Wilcox led the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management under the Biden Administration. Named one of the Time 100 in Climate in 2023, she had a front row seat as Biden’s pro-clean energy policies spurred growth in the industry, and she p...

What if aging wind parks could produce 5x more green energy? Lars Meyer, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of NeXtWind, is focused on making that vision a reality. In 2023, NeXtWind raised $750M to "repower" aging wind farms across Germany, upgrading inefficient turbines and increasing power output by 4-5x. In this episode, Lars joined host Ian Miller to discuss: - Enabling Net Zero: How Lars and his co-found...

Over the past decade, climate tech venture capital has expanded rapidly. Total funding increased by 12.5x and new venture firms like Clean Energy Ventures emerged, filling critical gaps in the capital stack and helping founders reimagine a more sustainable future. Our guest, Matt Cohen, Principal at Clean Energy Ventures, has dedicated his career to helping climate tech entrepreneurs scale their b...

Rising electric vehicle demand is creating new challenges for both EV owners and utilities. Concentrated charging times are driving up electricity prices, making it more expensive to charge EVs. This "peaky" electricity demand is pushing utilities to rely on fossil fuel plants, impacting the energy transition. Apoorv Bhargava, CEO of WeaveGrid, is focused on addressing these problems by making the...

You hear it every day -- artificial intelligence is the future. But artificial intelligence data centers require an extraordinary amount of electricity. How are utilities going to meet this growing demand all while transitioning to a greener energy mix? Nelson Abramson, CEO of Verrus, is revolutionizing the data center industry by developing a more sustainable and energy efficient data center desi...

For investors, taking sustainability seriously requires high-quality company-level data. That, in turn, requires standards that ensure companies across industries and economies are providing this kind of investor-useful data. We need accounting standards for sustainability reporting, just like what we have for financial reporting. Our guest this week is from the international body that's tackling...

What technologies can get us to net-zero steel? Dr. Christina Chang knows this space as well as anyone in venture capital. She's a PhD chemist and inventor in fields from solar PV to advanced manufacturing, a former steel startup CEO, and now a partner at Lowercarbon Capital. Join us to learn: -- Which technologies can help cut steel emissions -- and why near-commercial options like CCUS and hydro...

Adding renewables and batteries to our power grid cuts emissions and can lower costs. But it also makes grid stability a more complex affair. That's in part because these systems tend to have less "inertia" -- a byproduct of turbine rotation that helps insulate grids against fluctuations in supply and demand. The old models and heuristics for inertia management no longer apply, and grid operators...

Rising climate risk has corporates around the world announcing targets to cut their emissions. But how can investors know whether a company’s targets are ambitious enough to support our world’s climate goals -- to help mitigate global climate risk? Ned Downie & Adriel Barrett-Johnson talk in this episode with Luiz Amaral, the CEO of the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), a UN-backed initiati...

Join host Ellie McDonald on this episode of The Wharton Current as she welcomes Leshika Samarasinghe, founder and solo GP of Twine Ventures! Twine Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in purpose-driven startups focused on healthcare, fintech, and climate technology. With a Harvard Business School degree and early experience at Google and ARPA-E, Leshika shares her unique in...

How do you store a lot of zero-carbon energy for cheap? Justin Briggs and his co-founders at Antora Energy believe in a simple answer. Find a cheap and abundant material that can retain a lot of energy in a small volume -- and use zero-carbon electricity to get it really hot. That's the product that Antora Energy offers: thermal energy storage using blocks of solid carbon. They've raised $50mn in...

Energy efficiency saves consumers money, and we need deep cuts in home energy use to reach our world’s net-zero goals. How can we get more homeowners to invest in it? That’s the question that drives Lauren Salz. She’s CEO and co-founder of Sealed, an energy and financial technology company that helps homeowners finance home improvements that save on energy costs and emissions too. Lauren tells us...

In this episode, Ned Downie and Ellie McDonald chat with a founder from an area of climatetech that's only starting to get the attention it deserves -- adaptation. Guest Bessie Schwarz is co-founder and CEO of Floodbase, a company that provides near real-time data on flood mapping and flood risk for markets including parametric insurance, risk analysis, and disaster management. They announced a $1...

The market for carbon capture focuses on large-scale projects -- capture retrofits in heavy industry, say, or enormous facilities to suck carbon directly out of the air. But should we also be capturing carbon inside buildings? Our guest for this week says yes. Nick Martin is COO of Carbon Reform, a Delaware-based startup developing a modular retrofit device for commercial HVAC systems that scrubs...

Concrete is the most used material in the world after water -- but an indispensable input, cement, accounts for 8% of global carbon emissions. How do we slash cement's carbon footprint? Join the Current to hear thoughts on this from Ian Riley, CEO of the World Cement Association, a global trade body for the cement industry. Ian is a cement industry veteran whose C-suite experience includes a stint...

Join us on The Wharton Current as we sit down with Sara Harari, Associate Director of Innovation and Strategic Advisor to the President at Connecticut Green Bank. Sara discusses the future of clean technologies and how state-level green banks are driving investment in sustainable infrastructure and technology. We also delve into the intricacies of the Inflation Reduction Act, Sara's role as co-cha...