Everybody in the Pool

Climate Cabinet founder and executive director Caroline Spears joins Molly Wood to explain why some of the most important climate decisions in America are happening far below the level of Congress—in mayor’s offices, public service commissions, land commissioner races, county commissions, state legislatures, and even obscure budget committees. They dig into how Climate Cabinet uses data science, A...

This week, in honor of the July 4 holiday and a commitment to the importance of free speech, activism, and the power of a citizenry to determine its own future, I want to revisit a conversation from way back in season 2, with Dana R. Fisher. Fisher is the author of “Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action,” and in this conversation, we talked about the importance of activism in add...

Utah Clean Energy climate scientist and energy analyst Logan Mitchell joins Molly Wood to explain how a deeply conservative state can still become a proving ground for clean energy—by focusing on affordability, reliability, and coalition-building. They dig into the rapid rise of next‑generation geothermal in Utah (including the DOE’s FORGE project and private-sector follow‑on development), why geo...

In part two of my two-part field trip to Livermore, California, I sit down with Inertia Enterprises’ third co-founder — Annie Kritcher, the chief scientist at Inertia and a longtime physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Annie was the lead designer behind the December 2022 National Ignition Facility (NIF) shot that achieved ignition — a self-heating fusion “burning plasma” that produ...

Fusion has been “ten years away” for decades — but one corner of the field just crossed a line that changes the conversation. In December 2022, Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s National Ignition Facility achieved ignition: a self-sustaining fusion reaction that produced net energy. And they’ve repeated it. So what happens when you take the only fusion approach that’s proven to work, and focus les...

If you’re on a mission to make your home greener, solar panels might seem like an obvious place to start. But for renters, apartment dwellers, and homeowners who can’t afford a traditional rooftop solar installation, solar has long been out of reach — until now. This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly talks with Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, about a simple climate technology that's...

We need to triple global energy production by 2050. Renewables are scaling fast, but the real wild card that could change everything might just be fusion. The physics and engineering are closer than ever, but there’s a critical materials problem standing between us and unlimited clean energy. This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly speaks with Dr. John Elling, a Los Alamos chemist turned serial...

You’re doing all the right things to make your home greener: you switched to solar and induction, you remember your reusable bags, and you always compost your scraps. But some of the biggest climate impacts of the building you live or work in? They were locked in the day it was built — in the concrete, the steel, the glass. And that matters, because the built environment accounts for roughly 42% o...

Home batteries are having a moment, but for years, getting one meant cobbling together a solar panel from one company, an inverter from another, a smart panel from a third, and hoping they'd all play nice. This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly takes a field trip to Mountain View, California, to visit Lunar Energy, where founder and CEO Kunal Girotra has built the fully integrated solar-plus-b...

Washington and the COP conferences get all the headlines, but some of the most creative and effective climate action in the world is emerging from city halls — and Denver's Office of Climate Action is one of the best examples of what's possible. This week, Molly zooms in on the Mile High City as she talks with Chelsea Warren, Marketing and Communications Manager for Denver’s Office of Climate Acti...

Trillions of dollars worth of goods move around the planet every year, and a shocking amount is lost, spoiled, or discarded. That wasted food, medicine, and equipment isn’t just a business problem; it’s a massive, underappreciated climate problem. This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly talks with Krenar Komoni, CEO and founder of Tive, a supply chain visibility company that helps businesses tr...

Data centers don't exactly have a reputation for being climate heroes… but what if they could be? This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly sits down with Jasper de Vries, co-founder and CEO of Lucend, to talk about the surprisingly wild world of data center optimization — and why the industry has been leaving billions of dollars and millions of megawatt hours on the table. In this conversation,...

Less than 2% of all philanthropic giving goes to climate, and a big reason why is something Greg Rock calls "donor paralysis." People care, but the landscape is so complex that many well-meaning donors don’t take action. This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly sits down with Greg Rock, Executive Director of 1.5°Climate, a free national donor collaborative that's borrowing the energy of VC pitch...

There’s no shortage of stats to demonstrate the sheer magnitude of our food waste problem: A whopping 40% of food grown for human consumption goes to waste; $400 billion worth of food gets thrown away every year in the U.S — roughly 1.5% of GDP; Food waste is responsible for 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Must we go on? That’s why, after building the Nest Thermostat, Harry Tannenbaum an...

The grid is getting smarter, cleaner, and infinitely more complicated all at once. Enter Gridmatic, a company using artificial intelligence to do what old-school grid modeling can’t: predict when the wind will blow, when prices will spike, and exactly when to charge or discharge a battery. This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly is joined by David Miller, Chief Commercial Officer at Gridmatic,...

Let's be honest: the climate conversation is having a bit of a PR crisis. The word ‘climate’ itself has become politically charged, federal funding is under threat, and media coverage has gone quiet. But the technologies are still working, the solutions are still scaling, and the people building them haven't gone anywhere. So how do you keep telling that story? This week on Everybody in the Pool,...

What if solar panels on your roof, a home battery in your garage, and the EV in your driveway could together make you money — while simultaneously solving the grid capacity crisis? This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly sits down with Marco Krapels, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer of Enphase Energy, to discuss what surging data center energy demand means for the future of residential clean ene...

American businesses waste 25-35% of the energy they use. So why aren’t more business owners doing something about it? For most, the problem is too complex and too expensive — there’s no single fix, there are 30 or 40, and calculating the ROI on all of them is no easy task. That’s where Budderfly comes in. Budderfly is an energy-as-a-service company with a beautifully simple premise: they take over...

99% of registered fleets belong to small and mid-size businesses — but the EV industry wasn't built for them. High upfront costs, years-long waits for grid access, and charging solutions designed for large operators have left the backbone of the American economy behind. This week on Everybody in the Pool, we meet a founder who’s changing that. Galina Russell, co-founder of Mitra EV, built a turnke...

Three million homes are damaged by natural disasters in the US every year — and with a billion-dollar storm hitting roughly every ten days, that number is only growing. But the system for repairing affected homes is stuck in the past, with mountains of paperwork, fragmented funding, and rampant fraud leaving vulnerable homeowners stranded. This week on Everybody in the Pool , Molly sits down with...

The impacts of climate change are hitting the world everywhere, all at once — making climate adaptation more urgent than ever before. This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re flipping the script on climate adaption; no longer viewing it as a funding gap, but as an investment opportunity that could bring lots of types of finance to the table for returns and impact. Niall Murphy, co-founder and man...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, another sexy gadget that doubles as a grid asset! We take a field trip to the Berkeley headquarters of Copper, which is reimagining the humble stove as a powerful tool for decarbonization. Their flagship product, Charlie, is a 30-inch induction range with a built-in battery that allows for plug-and-play installation, precise cooking, and the potential to support...

Heat pumps are having a moment. Last year, the U.S. passed China to become the world's number one market for heat pumps—and they're not slowing down. But while heat pumps are efficient and effective on paper, they haven't always been objects of desire. Until now. This week, Molly talks to Paul Lambert, CEO and co-founder of Quilt, about building a heat pump company that's equal parts climate solut...

Buildings account for a third of America's greenhouse gas emissions, yet until recently, we've been flatlined on progress. That's changing—fast. This week, Molly talks to Panama Bartholomy, founder of the Building Decarbonization Coalition, about how an unlikely alliance of utilities, manufacturers, installers, and nonprofits is transforming the way we heat, cool, and power our homes. Panama expla...

What if the solution to our energy challenges isn't building more—but applying new thinking to the grid we’ve already got? This week, Molly talks to Quinn Nakayama, the senior director at PG&E’s Grid Research Innovation and Development, also known as GRID, division. (Clever, right?) After years of controversy over wildfires that led to the utility’s eventual bankruptcy, PG&E is moving forw...