Inevitable

Today's guests are Ajay Kochhar , President, CEO, and co-founder at Li-Cycle , and Jigar Shah , Director of the Loan Programs Office at the United States Department of Energy .  Jigar is a multi-time guest on the show and a friend of the pod, and he reached out to us to see if we'd want to record an episode discussing Li-Cycle's experience in applying for and receiving a conditional commitment fro...

Today's guest is Carlos Araque , co-founder and CEO of Quaise Energy . Quaise is seeking to unlock the power of geothermal energy by drilling into deeper and hotter parts of the earth than ever, using microwave-based technology rather than traditional mechanical drill bits. Carlos has a fascinating background; he grew up in Medellin, Colombia, during the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, matriculated to...

*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 James Sedlak , who leads Operations and Community Engagement at Kodama Systems ,...

Our guests today are, Diego Saez-Gil of Pachama and Sam Gill of Sylvera , and we're talking about forestry carbon offsets. Forestry carbon offsets were designed as a financial tool to provide an economic incentive for landowners to make alternative decisions, to pay landowners to keep their forests intact in the case of deforestation avoidance credits or to reforest previously damaged land in the...

Today's guest is Oliver Gunasekara , co-founder and CEO at Impossible Metals .  If we're to electrify everything, we need an order of magnitude more batteries and wiring. All of this requires metals including nickel, cobalt, lithium, manganese, and copper. More metals mean… you guessed it, more mining. Today's land-based mining practices are fraught with externalities that vary by material, but of...

Today's guest is Alex Blumberg , who is most recently the co-host of the climate change-focused podcast, How to Save a Planet . Alex was co-founder and CEO of Gimlet Media, which was acquired by Spotify in 2019.  Alex has a history of unpacking incredibly complex systemic issues and making them digestible for mass audiences. Prior to Gimlet, he was co-host of the podcast Planet Money, which had it...

Today's guest is Peter Reinhardt , co-founder and CEO of Charm Industrial .  This conversation was recorded as a live session during Climate Career Week , a series of talks, local meetups, and office hours designed to help people make the transition into climate-oriented work. Climate Career Week was organized by Climate Draft , Terra.do , Work on Climate , and MCJ Collective.  Given the nature of...

Today's guest is Simon Moores, CEO of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence , the world’s leading Price Reporting Agency (PRA) for the lithium-ion battery to the electric vehicle supply chain and a data and intelligence provider for the space. Simon and Cody have a great conversation about the state of the EV battery supply chain and lithium in particular – where it comes from, how it's processed, what d...

Today's guest is Dr. Evan Thomas , CEO and Founder of Virridy , and Director of the Mortensen  Center in Global Engineering & Resilience and the Climate Innovation Collaboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Evan is also a tenured Associate Professor in the CU Boulder Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Department. So, he’s a busy guy.   Virridy’ s water sensors monitor...

This episode is part of our new 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. Our next guest is Tonya Hicks , President and CEO of Power Solutions and Managing Principle of...

Today's guest is Sam D'Amico , Founder and CEO at Impulse . Impulse is helping to electrify homes with sleek-looking all-electric appliances, starting with an induction cooktop. Regardless of whether or not you pay close attention to the climate space, you've probably seen some commentary in the last few weeks about gas stoves. The gas stovetop has become one of the latest culture war topics in Am...

Today, we have two guests, Peter Minor , Director of Science and Innovation at Carbon180 ; and Jack Andreasen , Policy Manager for Carbon Management at Breakthrough Energy . Peter and Jack are two of the world’s foremost experts in the world on carbon dioxide removal, or CDR as it's called in climate circles. They and their respective organizations influence public policy, support critical technol...

Today's guest is Allison Dring , CEO and co-founder of Made of Air , which makes carbon-negative materials using biochar for the built environment and consumer goods. Biochar is a carbon-rich material from burning biomass such as wood or crop residue. We’ve loosely covered this topic with startups like Climate Robotics , but Made of Air is taking a different approach. The company uses biochar powd...

Today’s guest is Dr. David Kirtley , Founder and CEO at Helion , which is building the world's first fusion generator and enabling a future of unlimited clean electricity.  Nuclear fusion has the potential to revolutionize the way we produce energy. As the driving force behind every star in our galaxy, fusion has long been hailed as the "holy grail" of clean energy, offering a limitless and fossil...

Today's guest is Manik Suri , CEO and Founder of Therma .  The cold chain is a massive part of modern society that doesn't get much attention. It stores a huge amount of goods, allowing us to keep food fresh, medicines effective, and current internet infrastructure. Yes, even data centers are part of the cold chain. Therma is turning commercial and industrial refrigeration systems into virtual pow...

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 Brittany Heller , Director of Program Management at HeatSpring .  Last year, we k...

Today's guest is Dr. Leah Ellis , CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems , which is using electrochemistry to make cement and in doing so claims to have a pathway to reduce the emissions footprint of cement production by 60-90%. Cement is the most abundant man-made material on earth, with billions of tons produced yearly. So far the primary pathway to reducing its emissions footprint is via point s...

Today's guest is Jonathan Strauss , co-founder and CEO of Climate Draft , whose mission is to expose more people to the inspiring, impactful, and lucrative opportunities at venture-backed startups focused on decarbonizing the global economy. Talent movement into climate tech is critical, especially talent that has learned to scale businesses and technologies fast. In many cases, the skillsets that...

Today's guest is Sarah Richardson , CEO and co-founder of MicroByre , which is domesticating novel bacteria and using biology to produce chemicals that can supplant petrochemical production methods. Only a small portion of a barrel of oil is responsible for its petrochemical outputs. Most of a barrel is what you'd expect: fuel that's converted to gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc. But that small por...

This episode is part of our new 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, we are talking trucks with Larry Coons .  Transportation accounted for the largest port...

Today's guest is Jason Prapas , CEO and Founder of FYTO , which is a technology company that is unlocking the potential of nutrient-rich aquatic plants to reduce the emissions and water footprint of food production, starting with cattle cultivation. Raising livestock, particularly cattle, is known for its incredibly high emissions footprint. And while we can make responsible diet choices individua...

Today's guest is Dr. Katharine Wilkinson , best-selling author, strategist, teacher, and one of 15 “women who will save the world,” according to Time magazine. Dr. Wilkinson leads the All We Can Save Project , which she co-founded with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. As an emergent nonprofit, the project's mission is to nurture the leaderful climate community we need for a life-giving future using th...

Today's guest is Adam Wright , CEO and co-founder of Vespene Energy , which uses landfill methane to fuel Bitcoin mining. At MCJ we’ve spent some time at the intersection of Bitcoin as an incentive mechanism for halting methane emissions with Crusoe Energy and their work with flared waste gas at oil wells. But understanding the actual scale of the landfill emissions problem and how the status quo...

Today's guest is Ira Pearl , Vice President of Environmental Sustainability at Cox Enterprises . Ira is also the leader of Cox Conserves.  In his role, Ira leads Cox's efforts to tackle sustainability challenges while driving its goals to achieve zero waste to landfill by 2024 and become water and carbon neutral by 2034. Cox Enterprises is interesting because they are a privately held global congl...

Today's guest is Matt LeDucq , CEO and co-founder of Forum Mobility , which is working on the problem of heavy-duty trucking electrification, starting in California with the drayage sector. There are essentially two types of trucking. The first is long-haul or "over the road" which transports goods over long distances. If you've ever done a cross-country road-trip, the semi trucks on the interstat...