The Climate Tech Podcast with Fexingo: Energy, Sustainability, and Decarbonization Companies

Episode 53 of The Climate Tech Podcast with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna explore a new frontier in carbon removal: enhanced rock weathering using mine waste. They profile one startup that pulverizes ultramafic tailings from abandoned nickel mines and spreads the dust on agricultural land, where natural chemical reactions pull CO2 from the atmosphere. The hosts break down the chemistry (olivine + CO2 =...

Episode 52 of The Climate Tech Podcast dives into a growing problem: millions of expired solar panels heading to landfills. Lucas and Luna explore the scale of the solar-waste challenge — over 100,000 tons globally by 2030 — and profile one startup that has developed a process to recover 95% of panel materials, including silver and high-purity silicon. They discuss the economics of recycling versu...

Lucas and Luna dive into the story of Ecovative — a New York-based startup that uses mycelium (mushroom roots) to transform agricultural waste like corn stalks and hemp hurds into compostable packaging that performs as well as Styrofoam. They break down the numbers: Ecovative's flagship product, MycoComposite, costs about $0.30 per cubic foot versus $0.15 for EPS foam, but with scale and carbon cr...

Episode 50 takes a deep dive into a breakthrough from a Caltech spinout that has developed a solar panel capable of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, even in the dark. By storing solar energy in chemical bonds, the device achieves a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 12.3 percent, which is three times higher than previous prototypes. The hosts Lucas and Luna explore how this technology could...

Episode 49 of The Climate Tech Podcast explores a pressing problem: what happens to solar panels after 25 years. Lucas and Luna dive into the story of SolarCycle, a startup that has developed a process to recover 95% of the value from decommissioned panels, including high-purity silver and silicon. They walk through the scale of the looming waste crisis—by 2050, 78 million tons of panel waste glob...

Lucas and Luna dive into the world of wave energy, focusing on one startup — CorPower Ocean — that has cracked the code on harnessing ocean swells for baseload electricity. They explain how the company's 'heaving buoy' technology uses a novel phase-control system to amplify wave motion by a factor of three, making wave power cost-competitive with offshore wind for the first time. The conversation...

Lucas and Luna dive into the world of carbon-to-fuel technology, focusing on a startup called Twelve that turns captured CO2 into synthetic jet fuel. They break down the chemistry—how the company uses electrolysis to transform CO2 and water into hydrocarbon building blocks—and the economics, including the current cost per gallon versus traditional jet fuel. Lucas explains why this approach matters...

Episode 46 of The Climate Tech Podcast explores how a startup named Heliosense is using distributed fiber-optic sensors and machine learning to detect micro-cracks, hot spots, and soiling on solar panels in real time. Lucas explains how the technology works — sending laser pulses through a fiber cable running alongside panels and analyzing backscattered light for temperature and strain anomalies....

Lucas and Luna dive into the world of biomining, where startups are using engineered microbes to extract copper from electronic waste. They explore why copper is critical for the energy transition, how traditional smelting produces toxic waste, and the specific biology behind one company's approach: a startup called Mint Innovation that uses a proprietary microbe to leach copper from printed circu...

Episode 44 of The Climate Tech Podcast explores a breakthrough in sustainable materials: using algae to produce biodegradable plastics that actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Lucas and Luna dive into the science behind the company AlgaeMatrix, which claims its process can sequester two tons of CO2 per ton of bioplastic produced — making it carbon-negative. They discuss the economics, the cha...

Episode 43 of The Climate Tech Podcast with Fexingo dives into a growing trend: capturing waste heat from data centers and converting it into usable energy. Lucas and Luna explore how companies like Deep Green in the UK and a startup in Finland are installing direct-to-chip heat exchangers and heat pumps to warm homes, offices, and even commercial greenhouses. They break down the numbers: a single...

Lucas and Luna dive into how one startup is using captured industrial carbon dioxide to make concrete that actually absorbs more CO2 than it emits. They explore the chemistry behind carbon-negative aggregates, the economics of selling a material that costs more than conventional cement, and why construction giants are already placing orders. With a focus on the startup CarbonCure and its partnersh...

Episode 41 of The Climate Tech Podcast explores a fresh angle in energy efficiency: using waste heat from industrial processes to power cooling systems. Lucas and Luna dive into the story of a startup called 'Cooling as a Service' (CaaS) that has developed a sorption-based chiller which converts 80% of waste heat into cooling for data centers and factories. They discuss how this technology could r...

Episode 40 dives into a Colorado-based startup that deploys engineered bacteria to leach rare earth elements from discarded electronics. Hosts Lucas and Luna unpack the chemistry: how the microbes bind to neodymium and dysprosium, why the process consumes 80% less energy than traditional smelting, and what it means for the $57 billion e-waste problem. They explore the startup's pilot facility in D...

Lucas and Luna explore how a California-based startup transforms discarded fruit peels, coffee grounds, and vegetable scraps into a leather-like material called 'Pinatex 2.0'. They dive into the specific process: taking cellulose fibers from food waste, combining them with a plant-based binder, and creating a durable textile used by brands like H&M and Matt & Nat. The episode examines the environm...

Cows belch methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years. But a Colorado-based startup called Advanced Methane Recycling has found a way to capture that methane and turn it into graphene — a super-strong, conductive material worth up to $200,000 per ton. In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into the chemistry behind the process, the economics of turning a waste stream into a...

Standard Lithium is building a direct lithium extraction plant in Arkansas that could produce 20,900 metric tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate per year from naturally occurring brine. Unlike conventional lithium mining in Chile or Australia, this process avoids evaporation ponds and open-pit mines. Lucas and Luna walk through the chemistry, the economics at roughly $4,000 per ton operating co...

Methane hydrates — ice-like crystals on the ocean floor — hold more energy than all known fossil fuels combined. But they've been notoriously difficult to extract without triggering massive methane release. This episode profiles a Colorado-based startup called HydraShift that has developed a novel 'solid-to-gas-to-liquid' process to harvest methane from submarine hydrates and convert it directly i...

Episode 35 of The Climate Tech Podcast looks at a surprising feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel: livestock manure. Lucas and Luna explore how a Nebraska-based startup called FarmFuel Energy is building its first commercial plant to convert hog waste into drop-in jet fuel, potentially cutting emissions by 80% compared to fossil kerosene. They break down the two-step process — anaerobic digesti...

Lucas and Luna explore a startup called NanoCarbon that uses a plasma reactor to convert methane from landfills into graphene and clean hydrogen. Graphene is a super-strong, conductive material used in batteries, concrete, and coatings. The process is also carbon-negative because it prevents methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from escaping into the atmosphere. The hosts discuss the technology, the...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how one startup is taking methane gas from landfills and turning it into graphene, a material stronger than steel and more conductive than copper. The company, called Graphene Innovations Ltd, uses a plasma reactor to crack methane molecules into hydrogen and carbon atoms, assembling them into graphene sheets. They discuss the economics: the cost of capturin...

Episode 32 of The Climate Tech Podcast takes you inside a Danish startup that's solving one of renewable energy's biggest headaches: what to do with all that excess wind power. When the wind blows harder than the grid can handle, turbines are often shut down — a waste of clean electricity. But this company, ElectroPower, has built a modular electrolyzer that turns that cheap, abundant power into g...

Episode 31 of The Climate Tech Podcast dives into a lesser-known frontier of decarbonization: industrial waste heat recovery. Lucas and Luna explore how one startup, Thermonics Energy, is using solid-state thermoelectric generators to capture ultra-high-temperature exhaust from steel mills, glass furnaces, and cement kilns — converting it directly into electricity without any moving parts. They br...

On this episode of The Climate Tech Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how a Boston-based startup, AquaCycle, developed a new reverse osmosis membrane made entirely from recycled PET plastic. The company's breakthrough could cut the cost of seawater desalination by 30 percent while diverting millions of plastic bottles from landfills. Lucas breaks down the chemistry, the economics, and the scalabilit...

Lucas and Luna explore the unlikely journey of coffee waste to bus fuel. A startup in London has figured out how to collect used coffee grounds from cafes and turn them into a biodiesel blend that powers city buses. They break down the numbers: each tonne of grounds yields about 200 liters of oil, and the company is already processing over 5,000 tonnes a year. Lucas questions whether the math scal...