Inevitable

This episode is part of our new Capital Series hosted by MCJ partner, Jason Jacobs. This series will explore a diverse range of capital sources and the individuals who drive them. From family offices and institutional LPs to private equity, government funding, and more, we'll take a deep dive into the world of capital and its critical role in driving innovation and progress.  Will Tickle is a part...

Dr. Jay Taneja is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the director of the STIMA Lab (Systems Towards Infrastructure Measurement and Analytics) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Taneja is a world-class expert on the clean energy economy of Kenya, which is our topic for today's discussion. Kenya's story is fascinating from a clean energy and climate change...

This episode is part of our new Capital Series hosted by MCJ partner, Jason Jacobs. This series will explore a diverse range of capital sources and the individuals who drive them. From family offices and institutional LPs to private equity, government funding, and more, we'll take a deep dive into the world of capital and its critical role in driving innovation and progress.  Today’s guest is Sara...

This episode is part of our new Capital Series hosted by MCJ partner, Jason Jacobs. This series will explore a diverse range of capital sources and the individuals who drive them. From family offices and institutional LPs to private equity, government funding, and more, we'll take a deep dive into the world of capital and its critical role in driving innovation and progress.  Today’s guest is Luca...

Today's guests are John Bissell and Rich Riley , co-CEOs at Origin Materials , a carbon-negative materials company that turns carbon found in biomass into chemical outputs. John co-founded Origin Materials as an undergraduate at UC Davis in 2008. Rich became an investor in Origin in 2010, and joined as co-CEO in 2020 after a successful tech career, including most recently as the CEO of the music s...

Scott Case is the CEO and Co-Founder at Recurrent , which provides EV battery reports for used EVs, helping consumers and dealers understand the residual health of the battery in a prospective purchase. Think of them as a Carfax report for EVs. New EV sales have boomed since the launch of the Tesla Model 3 in 2018. A year later, roughly 1% of new sales in the US were EVs. And in 2022, that number...

This episode is part of our new Capital Series hosted by MCJ partner, Jason Jacobs. This series will explore a diverse range of capital sources and the individuals who drive them. From family offices and institutional LPs to private equity, government funding, and more, we'll take a deep dive into the world of capital and its critical role in driving innovation and progress.  Today’s guest is Mark...

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu . This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure. Today’s guest on Yin Lu’s Skilled Labor Series is Alana Guzzetta , a 15-year veteran of the concre...

Today's guest is Jeff More , President and CEO of MineSense .  MineSense provides real-time, sensor-based ore sorting and data analytics for mines. The company recently announced a $42 million Series E round led by JP Morgan's sustainable Growth Equity Group. MineSense technology platform includes a set of sensors that go into a shovel bucket, and at the moment of extraction, help identify the mak...

This episode is part of our new Capital Series hosted by MCJ partner, Jason Jacobs. This series will explore a diverse range of capital sources and the individuals who drive them. From family offices and institutional LPs to private equity, government funding, and more, we'll take a deep dive into the world of capital and its critical role in driving innovation and progress.  Today’s guest is Gran...

Today's guest is Lucy Piper , Director at WorkForClimate .  WorkForClimate is a not-for-profit that provides individual employees with clear step-by-step playbooks to help influence and accelerate a company's decarbonization initiatives. Lucy and Cody discuss how climate change can be an intimidating topic and pushing for change inside your company can be risky. And yet it's clear that if the worl...

Today's guest is Trevor Best , CEO and Co-founder at Syzygy Plasmonics . Syzygy is rethinking how chemicals are produced and pioneering a new technology that energizes chemical reactions via light. Their photocatalyst technology came out of the lab at Rice University. Toward the end of 2022, the company announced a $76 million Series C financing led by Carbon Direct Capital and a number of signifi...

This episode is part of our new Capital Series hosted by MCJ partner, Jason Jacobs. This series will explore a diverse range of capital sources and the individuals who drive them. From family offices and institutional LPs to private equity, government funding, and more, we'll take a deep dive into the world of capital and the critical role it plays in driving innovation and progress.  Today’s gues...

 Today's guest is Will Steger , an educator, activist, photographer, and polar explorer. Will is a prominent spokesperson for the preservation and understanding of the Arctic and is the creator of the Will Steger Foundation , which exists to educate and empower people to engage in solutions to climate change. Will was the fourth person ever to have reached both Earth's poles. He led the first conf...

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu . This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure. Today's guest is Dylan Welch , Plant Manager at AMP Robotics .  Dylan grew up in the foothills of...

Today's guest is John Kinney, Founder, CEO and Managing Partner at CleanFund .  CleanFund specializes in PACE financing, an innovative way for property owners to finance public good improvements to their buildings, including clean energy, efficiency, and resiliency through their property taxes. CleanFund got its start in Berkeley, California in 2009 and initiated the first privately funded PACE tr...

Today's guest on the My Climate Journey Startup Series is Jack Morrison , Co-founder and CEO at Scythe .  Scythe recently announced a $42M Series B round of financing led by Energy Impact Partners to grow and scale their product line of autonomous electric commercial lawnmowers. When discussing the need to electrify everything, we tend to focus on electric vehicles and home efficiency. But over th...

Today's guest is Robert Piconi , CEO and co-founder at Energy Vault , which develops and deploys utility-scale energy storage solutions.  The company's offerings include proprietary gravity, battery, and green hydrogen energy storage hardware technologies supported by a technology-agnostic energy management system software layer. They can deliver short- and long-duration energy storage with the go...

Today's guest is Heidi Kujawa , founder and CEO at ByFusion . ByFusion is solving the global plastic waste crisis by turning unrecyclable plastics into building materials. Plastics are lightweight, durable, strong, low-cost, and built to last. Those qualities are fantastic in reducing the cost and weight of shipping and packaging items. And those qualities are equally terrible when it comes to was...

Today's guest is Martin Wainstein , Founder and Executive Director of OpenEarth Foundation , a California-based nonprofit that creates and supports the deployment of open-source software at the intergovernmental level to further climate understanding and action. When we think of blockchain, our brains are mostly wired to think of cryptocurrencies and for-profit schemes. OpenEarth Foundation, howev...

Today's guest is Megan O'Connor , CEO and Co-Founder of Nth Cycle .  Nth Cycle uses a metals processing technology that allows battery manufacturers to convert lower-grade critical metals into EV-battery grade on-site. The company’s approach obviates large portions of cumbersome and dirty metal supply chains for crucial EV battery metals like nickel. Megan claims that Nth Cycle's technology can be...

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu . This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure. Today is Zach Gallant , Head of Maritime Operations at Fleetzero .  Zach grew up in Maine and atte...

Today's guest is Harry Tannenbaum , Co-founder and President at Mill .  Mill developed a household bin that not only collects uneaten food but also shrinks and deodorizes it. The company’s solution aims to keep food in the system and prevent it from ending up in landfills or waste systems, which would otherwise generate significant emissions.  Mill recently exited stealth and we're proud to be mul...

Today's topic is ERCOT ( The Electric Reliability Council of Texas ), and we have two guests.  Eric Goff is President at Goff Policy , an infrastructure consulting firm focusing on ERCOT market energy transition issues. Eric serves as the sole representative for residential consumers in the ERCOT stakeholder process.  Jaden Crawford is director of policy at David Energy , a modern energy retailer...

Today, we have two guests, Sonia Kastner, Founder and CEO at Pano , and Bill Clerico , Founder and Managing Partner at Convective Capital .  Both Sonia and Bill are keynotes in the emerging category of fire tech and in the subcategory of climate tech that's referred to as adaptation solutions, technologies that can help deliver resiliency in the face of an increasingly unstable planet. At Pano, So...