Inevitable

Today’s guest is Akshat Rathi, a London-based reporter, covering science, energy, and environment for Bloomberg News. He has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford, and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. He tells stories of the people and their ideas tackling the biggest problem facing humanity: climate change. And he is currently...

Today's guest is Joey Bergstein, CEO of Seventh Generation, recently acquired by Unilever. Seventh Generation’s mission is to inspire a consumer revolution that nurtures the health of the next seven generations. The company is a leader in positive business practices through the use of renewable plant-based products, industry-leading transparency with respect to ingredient disclosures, and recyclab...

Today's guest is Senator Stephen Fenberg, a Democrat who serves as state Senator in the 18th District in Colorado where he's served since 2017. He also serves as the Senate Majority Leader. A few years after graduating from CU, Senator Fenberg founded New Era Colorado, a nonprofit organization dedicated engaging, educating, and training young people in the political process. The organization has r...

Today's guest is Shreya Dave, co-founder and CEO of Via Separations. Via Separations has pioneered a new membrane based on graphene oxide for fine liquid filtration in harsh environments, with applications in food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and bulk and specialty chemicals.  They are scaling up and commercializing the material platform for use in industrial separation processes such as food ing...

Today's guest is David Perry, President, CEO, and Director of Indigo Ag,  Indigo Ag is harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet. They improve grower profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health through the use of natural microbiology and digital technologies. Founded in 2016 Indigo Ag has raised more than $650 million in funding. The recently announced Terr...

Today's guest is Dr. Jonathan Foley, Executive Director of Project Drawdown. Project Drawdown is a world-class research organization that reviews, analyzes, and identifies the most viable global climate solutions, and shares these findings with the world. Their book, Drawdown, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and describes the hundred most substantive solutions to global warming. For each...

Today’s guest is Barney Schauble, Chairman, Nephila Climate, the world's largest asset manager dedicated to weather and catastrophe insurance risks. Barney joined Nephila Capital in 2004 as a Managing Partner and moved to San Francisco in 2010 to set up Nephila Advisors. Barney is the Chair of the Board of Nephila Climate (NCx), and also a Director of Nephila Capital Ltd. and Nephila Holdings Ltd....

Today’s guest is Marilyn Waite, Program Officer, Climate & Clean Energy Finance at William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. Marilyn manages the foundation’s grantmaking on climate and clean energy finance with the ambitious goal of addressing climate change by accelerating the transition to a climate-friendly economy. Her grantmaking mobilizes private capital investments in low-carbon and climate-frien...

Today’s guest is Gene Berdichevsky, Co-Founder & CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies.  Prior to co-founding Sila, Gene was the seventh employee at Tesla Motors where he served as Principal Engineer on the Roadster battery, leading the development of the world’s first, safe, mass-produced, automotive lithium-ion battery system. Gene holds two degrees from Stanford University; an MS in Engineering with a f...

Today’s guest is Shayle Kann, Managing Director for Energy Impact Partners. EIP is an investment firm that invests in companies shaping the energy landscape of the future. It's backed by a broad coalition of some of the world's largest and most innovative utilities that collectively span the globe, access millions of households, and spend more than 20 billion annually on new technologies and procu...

Today’s guest is Jason Jacobs, host of this podcast! That's right. Enough people were asking me to do an episode where someone interviews me to summarize where I am on the journey, that I finally but the bullet and did it. And it wasn’t even planned! I was having coffee with an avid MCJ listener, Remy Evard, and he said “you should really do an episode where someone interviews you”, so, with about...

Today’s guest is Professor Sam Fankhauser, Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Director of the ESRC-funded Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, both at The London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also an Associate Director at economics consultancy Vivid Economics and a Non-Executive Director of CDC Group, the UK’s development finance institu...

Today’s guest Dr. Julio Friedmann, a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Dr. Friedmann recently served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy where he was responsible for DOE’s R&D program in advanced fossil energy systems, carbon capture, and storage (CCS), CO2 utilization, and clean coa...

Today's guest is Ilan Gur, the CEO of Activate and the Founder of Cyclotron Road. Cyclotron Road is an entrepreneurial fellowship program that pairs PhD fellows working on promising scientific breakthroughs with grants that pay their salaries. Access to a bunch of expensive equipment and showers them with mentorship to try to bridge the gap between early academic research that shows great promise...

Today’s guest is Lara Pierpoint, Director of Technical Strategy at Exelon. Exelon is America's leading competitive energy provider with one of the cleanest and lowest cost power generation fleets. Its utility serves millions of electric and gas customers. Lara's team is tasked with enhancing Exelon's ability to capitalize on new technology and respond to disruptive innovations. Her expertise is in...

Today’s guest is Shawn Murphy, Founder & CEO of Titan Advanced Energy Solutions. Titan is an advanced battery management system technology company, which is revolutionizing the renewable space by lowering the cost of lithium ion batteries by at least 30 to 40%, and doubling their expected life. Titan's technology uses ultrasound to measure and determine the state of health, and state of charge rea...

Today’s guest is David Burt, the CEO and Founder of DeltaTerra Capital and the lead Portfolio Manager for DeltaTerra funds. DeltaTerra provides proprietary financial models, customized portfolio analysis, and unique hedging strategies that enable highly informed climate risk management for asset owners and investors. Before founding DeltaTerra, David was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Wellingt...

Today’s guest is Melinda Hanson, Head of Sustainability at Bird, a micromobility company based in Santa Monica, CA. Founded in September 2017, Bird operates shared electric scooters in over 100 cities in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, with 10 million rides in its first year of operation. Melinda joined Bird from the National Association of City Transportation Officials, where she serv...

Today’s guest is Ken Kimmell, President of Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based nonprofit that combines the knowledge and influence of the scientific community with the passion of concerned citizens to build a healthy planet and a safer world. Ken has more than 30 years of experience in government, environmental policy, and advocacy. He is a national advocate for clean energy and...

Today’s guest is Paulina Jaramillo, Professor, Engineering and Public Policy, & Co-Director, Green Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Paulina Jaramillo has a bachelor’s in civil and environmental engineering from Florida International University (2003), as well as a master's and PhD in civil and environmental engineering with an emphasis in green design from Carnegie Mellon Univer...

Today’s guest is Justin Guay, Director of Global Climate Strategy at Sunrise Project, and organization that grows social movements to drive the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy as fast as possible. Justin  has a decade of experience in nonprofit advocacy and foundation strategy development, including managing grant making and strategy for global coal campaigns at ClimateWorks Found...

Today’s guest is Phil Giudice, Board Member at Ambri, FirstFuel, PRIME Coalition, Clean Air Task Force and NE Clean Energy Council. Most recently, Phil was the CEO of Ambri. Ambri, formerly Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, is a technology company creating cost effective, reliable, wide spread grid electricity storage solutions, enabling separation of power demand from power supply. Phil has more...

Today’s guest is Bill Nussey, CEO & Founder at the Freeing Energy Project. Bill Nussey is the founder of the Freeing Energy Project, whose mission is to accelerate the shift to cleaner, cheaper energy. Prior to Freeing Energy, Bill spent most of his career as a tech CEO. His first company, which he co-founded in high school, provided graphics software for early, text-based personal computers. His...

Today’s guest is Kelly Wanser, Executive Director of SilverLining, a mission organization driving research to ensure safe pathways for climate within a decade. Previously, Kelly was the director of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project, a program focused on research in reflecting sunlight to reduce heat in climate. Kelly is member of the National Academy of Sciences President’s Circle. She also ser...

Today’s guest is Albert Wenger, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures, a NY-based venture capital firm. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor (Etsy, Tumblr). He previously founded or co-founded several companies, including a management consulting firm and an early hosted data analytics company. Albert graduated fro...