Leaders in Cleantech

What’s it all about? Solar, and moving from corporate life to a start up. I first met my guest today, Joachim Rupp at a start-up within a corporate, building Viessmann’s Photovoltaic business, before that he’d been in some big corporate roles, more recently we helped him secure the CEO role at a Lithuanian solar scale-up, Detra Solar. We talk solar evolution and trends, but also the challenges and...

What’s it all about? Batteries. More specifically, software enabled batteries helping to make Electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and wearables, more efficient, providing better customer experiences. I speak to another start-up spun out of Imperial College London, with a novel and proven set of products and technologies moving forward the transition towards better, longer lasting and faster c...

In start-up world everyone wants to know about the deals. Who raised what, which VC's are spending some of that 'dry powder' all these things are important, but looking at the bigger trends is perhaps more useful. In this Bitesize episode I speak with Federico Cristoforoni of Net Zero Insights about some of the trends is their Q! Quarterly Report. We discuss some of the key themes,...

What’s it all about? Solar. Another part of the value-chain explored by this BNEF award-winning, Mega-funding round landing solar SaaS start-up/scale-up. We speak with founder and CEO David Trainavvicius about the journey so far. About David Trainavicius: David is the Founder and CEO of PVcase. He has been involved with a wide variety of solar projects since 2009, gaining expertise in the European...

What’s it all about? Solar. But not rooftops this time, the other end of the value-chain. Wafers are not only a large part of the cost of solar modules, producing them is also very energy intensive, and therefore carbon emitting. Through innovation in this part of the process Nexwafe hope to make the manufacture of solar modules, cheaper, cleaner, and to bring manufacturing at scale to Europe, Nor...

What’s it all about? Solar. Beautiful Solar roofs. This harks back to my early days in solar, founding a solar EPC which initially at least focused of residential roofs, before expanding to include large commercial installations. Roofit have a unique, aesthetic solar roof solution, just at a time when both energy costs and EU legislation are driving the uptake of retrofit and newbuild solar roofto...

What’s it all about Batteries, patents, entrepreneurship, and the founder’s journey. I first met my guest Gavin White at Energy Tech Summit in Warsaw a little over a year ago. So much has happened in that time, and he and business partner Kieran O’Regan have built an outstanding team and offering to the battery and automotive sector, with clients including Porsche. From PhD student to patents to a...

What’s it all about? People, Policies and Technology. Unsung cleantech heroes, why we shouldn’t worry too much about Trump in the Whitehouse, at least where the IRA is concerned. I take a deep dive into the economic and technological drivers of the energy and mobility transition with Bloomberg Climate reporter and Author of Climate Capitalism, Akshat Rathi, it’s a great episode, Take a watch/liste...

What’s it all about? The perhaps surprising insurtech solution to unlocking innovation and scaling for clean technology deployment. We've often discussed how business model innovation can be as important if not more so, than technological innovation. Fundability and risk can be inhibitors, can insurance innovation solve that problem? Take a listen as I explore this topic the with co-founder o...

What’s it all about? Policy and government. For a long time I’ve said that the cleantech sector has done well despite, not because of politics and policy. I do however think that to truly scale we do need politicians and policies to support the energy and mobility transitions, and over the last years we have seen this increase. But we still have a deeply entrenched fossil fuel funded government in...

What’s it all about? An end of year reflection on the cleantech funding landscape during 2023, and a view of a leading European Cleantech VC on what will be the defining technologies for investment in 2024. Some tips for founders who need to raise in the first half of 2024, and some optimistic thoughts to end the year. About Anton Arts:  Anton Arts is a Managing Partner at SET Ventures since 2018....

What’s it all about? Flexibility, the energy transition, the mobility transition, convergence, entrepreneurship, luck, customer focus and Apples!! There is a whole lot to unpack in this episode, and some great insights and advice into the energy and mobility transitions, entrepreneurship, and the joys, challenges and opportunities that come with them all. Enjoy the episode. About David Watson: Dav...

What’s it all about? Speeding the mobility transition where grid connections and EV infrastructure are lacking, expensive or flaky. Award winning entrepreneur Josh Aviv has developed both a unique product and business model that delivers electrons where you are. This is not so much for drivers who run low on range, although that too, but about getting fleet users up and running quickly, smoothly a...

What’s it all about?  Geothermal. How big is the opportunity to exploit this renewable resource for heating, cooling and for power generation? Where are the hot spots (excuse the pun), what are the business models and use cases? How can we use heat to cool a warming world! This and all things Geothermal.  About Alexander Helling: As CEO, Alexander is in charge of Baseload Capital’s investments and...

What’s it all about? The A-Bomb- No not that one. Why does no one talk about Adaptation? Of course we should and must keep working on inventing, scaling and investing in technologies that combat climate change, and help prevent the worst outcomes, but we’re already well down the path of negative climate feedback loops. We have to talk about, and invest in technologies that help mitigate the worst...

What’s it all about? Innovation and University spin-outs! In particular we look at the UK scene and support in the Oxford, Cambridge, London triangle. I had a great conversation with CEO of Oxfordshire Greentech, Hannah Scott about the support and challenges and opportunities facing founders, universities and the ecosystems that support them. Enjoy the episode. About Hannah Scott: Hannah Scott is...

What’s it all about? A seamless e-mobility experience!  From Phd to Founder, solving some of the key technical aspects of a fully integrated user experience for changing at all scales, public, fleet, residential and all of these combined. We talk company culture, talent, hiring better than yourself, motivation on dark days, optimism for the future, fundraising, expansion and much more besides. Enj...

Christoph Berger - vilisto What’s it all about? Renewable Heat, as we’ve featured recently, so often the elephant in the room. Addressing the needs of decarbonising heat is critical to the clean energy transition. In this episode we address heating and inefficiency in commercial and public buildings as I speak to CEO and Founder of Vilisto, Christophe Berger. Having recently raised a £5m they are...

Helen Czerski What’s it all about? Letting lose my inner nerd! I’ve known Helen for some time, known in a loose sense, we shared a panel session at a Fully Charged event some years ago, and I’ve watched with enthusiasm much of her TV and Fully Charged presenting, When I saw she’d written a book about a gigantic solar powered machine, I needed to know more! But seriously, the topic of how our plane...

What’s it all about? Flexibility, curtailment and how to use software, as well as new infrastructure to create the resilient, flexible, fit for purpose grid we need now and for the future. We also talk co-founding a company at 21, the challenges and opportunities this brings, building teams, culture, and how an English Literature graduate falls in love with energy and builds a cleantech business. ...

What’s it all about? The often overlooked issue of renewable heat. I take dive into the world of solar thermal with Hyperion client Naked Energy. Co-founder and CEO Christophe Williams has a great founder story too, from inventors genes to global advertising exec, to cleantech founder. Christophe shares about the Cinderella story of solar thermal, and well as the trials and tribulations of foundin...

What’s it all about? Batteries, smart use of second life batteries. There is of course so much demand for new batteries, and that won’t go away, but soon we have a lot of batteries too useful to recycle just yet, but not useful for electric vehicles of first use cases. Entrepreneur and founder, Jorgon Erdal shares his vision and experience building a business to take advantage of this opportunity,...

What’s it all about? Seamlessly easy EV charging and the evolution to a full stack of revenues and grid services, the mobility transition supporting the energy transition. Also, the challenges and motivations of a co- founder CEO, and his own transition from corporate to start up life, the importance of good people and letting go. About Tore Harritshøj: Tore is an experienced Chief Executive Offic...

What’s it all about? Sodium metal batteries have hit the headlines of late, with major announcements from BYD and CATL for use in electric vehicles. I speak to CCO or LiNa, a UK start-up developing Sodium batteries for stationary storage, now beyond TRL6 and making good traction. We talk tech, but also the journey of Will Tope, from O&G to Cleantech, from global corporate to small start-up. En...

What’s it all about? Entrepreneurship, and the journey of failures. Uri Levine is the founder of not one, but two Unicorns, Waze and Moovit. He continues to be an active entrepreneur and investor, but his passion to help create more start-up success stories, and to support entrepreneurs led him to write ‘Fall in love with the problem, not the solution’. According to Steve Wozniak (Apple co-founder...