PODCAST · technology
The Green Blueprint
by Latitude Media
We already have many of the climate solutions we need. But scaling them is hard. The Green Blueprint is a show about the people who are architecting the clean economy. Every other week, host Lara Pierpoint profiles the founders, investors, and organizational leaders who are solving complex challenges in the quest to build climate technologies fast.
Episodes
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The pivot that reinvented the air conditioner
While living in Delhi, Sorin Grama gave a window air conditioner to an employee. He found out weeks later she wasn't using it because the electricity costs were too high. It was a stark reminder that access to global cooling isn't about upfront equipment costs. It’s about the high electricity…
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How “Black Sand” could help build a domestic battery supply chain
When David Fauvre and his co-founder entered the battery space in 2015, they started as brokers exporting American battery waste to recycling partners in Korea and Japan. But as the industry grew, shipping companies increasingly refused to transport the hazardous materials, making it clear that…
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Burying trees to save forests?
“Good fires" naturally regenerate forests. But a rise in high-severity blazes in the American West are leaving behind barren moonscapes filled with dead trees. These scorched trees act as hazardous fuel for future fires, but clearing them to replant the landscape is astronomically expensive. Add…
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The microbial solution to our massive copper shortfall
To build the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition — from wind turbines and grid stabilization to massive new AI data centers — the world needs more copper between now and 2050 than humanity has produced in its entire history. But new copper mines take anywhere from 10 to 16…
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Did someone just figure out how to project finance nuclear?
For decades, the promise of new nuclear power in the West has been stifled not by the technology itself, but by the “construction problem.” Massive, multi-billion dollar mega-projects plagued by schedule creep and labor shortages have made nuclear a financial non-starter for commercial project...
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The missing capital for climate startups: more debt
Climate tech companies are often forced to rely on expensive equity to bridge the gap between government grant awards and the cash needed to get projects off the ground. But for founders building the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition, dilutive capital isn't always the right...
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The ‘brutal reality’ of scaling low-carbon fertilizer
Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for global food security, yet its production is a hyper-centralized, fossil-fuel-intensive process that accounts for 5 to 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As geopolitical instability threatens traditional supply chains, the vulnerability of this industry has...
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Form Energy's manufacturing breakthrough
Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized energy storage, but inexpensive, truly long-duration batteries may still have a significant role to play in backing renewables and decarbonizing the grid. Form Energy is tackling that challenge with a new class of iron-air batteries. By oxidizing and...
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Why the climate tech ‘missing middle’ is a massive opportunity
If you’re building a consumer software startup, your investors may expect you to project hockey stick-style growth. But if you’re building the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition, you’re likely in a very different position. Frank O’Sullivan, Managing Director at S2G…
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The perovskite bet that could transform solar
Silicon solar panels have led the market for decades but will soon hit a ceiling around 25% efficiency. Perovskite, a frontier material once dismissed for degrading too fast, is now being called the holy grail of solar. Saritha Peruri, VP of Commercialization at Tandem PV, is bringing it to…
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How Supercool Earth's microbes could ease the water crisis
California recorded its second-lowest Sierra Nevada snowpack on record this spring. That's not just a bad ski season, it's a water supply crisis. Snowpack is where California's water comes from. And when it doesn't materialize, agriculture, hydropower, and fire suppression all feel the strain....
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The $6 trillion threat to climate tech finance
The global financial system is undergoing a structural shift into a "volatile new world order," where unpredictability is the norm, and climate tech is uniquely exposed. Venture investor Susan Su says the war in Iran is complicating the landscape. That's because about 40% of the world's capital...
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The Green Blueprint is back for a second season!
We already have the blueprint for decarbonizing the global economy. We've invented many of the solutions, but much of that tech is still sitting on the sidelines waiting to get financed and built at scale. But over the last year, we've seen a wave of change that complicates and – in some cases –...
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Sage Geosystems' bet on underground energy storage
About 90% of global energy storage is pumped storage hydropower – which requires a mountain, a lake, and a whole lot of permitting. While lithium batteries have gotten drastically cheaper over the last decade, they’re still expensive for longer durations. But Cindy Taff and her team at Sage...
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Inside Microsoft’s plan to remove 50 years of carbon emissions
In 2020, Microsoft announced a major goal: by 2050 the company aims to remove from the atmosphere all the carbon emissions it has produced since its founding in 1975. When Phil Goodman joined the company in 2022, he quickly found that the market for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) was just getting…
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Captura's high-stakes gamble
Back in January, Captura CEO Steve Oldham was sitting in a conference room in Hawaii, entertaining reps from the company’s first potential customer. What the customer didn’t know was that Captura’s ocean-based carbon removal pilot –the whole reason for the visit – still wasn’t working. The stakes...
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Boston Metal’s path to carbon-free steel
This year in the U.S., steel manufacturers will produce more than 71 million tons of steel – enough to build nearly 200 Empire State buildings. It's a stunning statistic, but not surprising. The steel industry has fueled economic growth and innovation in America since the early 1800s. But for…
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The thermal battery transforming cold storage for India’s dairy farmers
In 2007 Sam White, co-founder of Promethean Power Systems, was traveling through India looking for a rural electrification problem to solve. He and his team had just won a $10,000 grant in an MIT competition, and they wanted to find an industry in India that needed their help. After looking at…
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This VC wants climate tech to play hardball in Washington
Clean energy founders love to talk about technology, capital, and scale. But few are prepared for the fourth pillar of success: government. Shomik Dutta, a co-founder and managing partner at Overture VC, learned that lesson firsthand after a career that spanned Obama’s White House, private…
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Shortening the nuclear development cycle from decades to years
For decades, nuclear has struggled with cost overruns and delays — Georgia’s Vogtle plant being the latest example. Kairos Power co-founder and CEO Mike Laufer thinks the solution is to flip the script: focus first on non-nuclear demonstrations and then iterate quickly. It’s a counterintuitive…
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The sunk cost dilemma
Deep into engineering studies for Project Cormorant, 8 Rivers' massive low-carbon ammonia facility, the team discovered new efficiencies that would create a safer, more advanced version of their hydrogen technology. But there was one problem: they'd already invested heavily in the current design....
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John Hickenlooper’s optimism in the face of opposition
Three years ago this month, the Inflation Reduction Act passed, marking the largest investment in climate policy in U.S. history. It included over $300 billion to address global warming and was expected to unlock nearly $3 trillion in private investment by 2032. But then came Donald Trump. Over…
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The rogue idea that saved a hydrogen startup
In 2022, Zach Jones learned that his technical team at Graphitic Energy was secretly working nights and weekends on an unsanctioned approach to producing clean hydrogen from natural gas. It was an approach that abandoned the technology Zach and the company had spent years developing. And Zach...
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The tape that led to a fusion breakthrough
In 2021, Commonwealth Fusion Systems proved it had built the most powerful magnet in the world. The breakthrough was based on a specific material - a tape - that conducts massive amounts of current with very little loss. Rick Needham, Chief Commercial Officer for CFS, says the breakthrough led to…
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Frontier Forum: Fixing distributed energy's finance gap
Clean energy attracts nearly $3 trillion in investment annually, but most of that capital flows to massive utility-scale projects through the world's biggest banks and large-scale asset managers. Meanwhile, smaller distributed projects — rooftop solar, batteries, microgrids — face a structural...
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FOAK tales
This week, we're bringing you a special episode of Catalyst with Shayle Kann, a show about how to decarbonize the planet. In this episode: what it takes to secure investments for first-of-a-kind infrastructure projects. First-of-a-kind projects need infrastructure investment, the kind of money…
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Building Fervo's geothermal giant
In 2023, Sarah Jewett was on her honeymoon in France when she received a life-changing text: steam was flowing from Fervo Energy's first commercial geothermal project in Nevada. That moment confirmed their revolutionary approach—applying horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing from the oil…
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Terawatt Infrastructure’s billion-dollar strategy
In 2021, Neha Palmer co-founced Terawatt Infrastructure with a bold mission: create the backbone for America's electric trucking revolution. Within its first year, Terawatt secured a billion-dollar investment. But as the company developed plans for a nationwide charging network, it confronted the...
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The scrappy beginning of Tesla’s energy business
In 2014, Drew Baglino was helping build Tesla's energy division with a passionate, scrappy team. Using parts from Tesla's vehicles, they created the first Powerwall home battery. But as demand grew, they hit a critical bottleneck: cell shortages. Customers across multiple markets were already...
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LineVision's quest to win over utilities
In 2018, LineVision was a young company with revolutionary technology for electric transmission lines. Its dynamic line rating sensors and software could increase the capacity of existing power lines by up to 40% without building new infrastructure — a critical solution for integrating renewables...
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Nextracker's blueprint for 100 gigawatts of solar trackers
Dan Shugar has been trying to move solar panels around since the 1980s. What started with a few experiments as a young engineer has turned into one of the biggest solar tracker companies in the world. In 2012 he founded Nextracker with a single product. Since then, Nextracker has revolutionized...
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Electric Hydrogen’s bet on supersized electrolyzers
When Raffi Garabedian co-founded Electric Hydrogen in 2020, he saw existing electrolyzers as too small and expensive to make green hydrogen economically viable. Instead of building standard sub-megawatt units, his team aimed for 100-megawatt systems at half the industry cost. Initial market...
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How supply chain chaos sank Sunfolding
Leila Madrone founded Sunfolding in 2012 with an innovative idea – build a solar tracker using pneumatic "airbags" instead of motors and torque tubes. By 2015, the company was deploying the technology in a field test in Davis, California. Over the next six years, Sunfolding iterated on the...
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Open Circuit: Jigar, Katherine, and Stephen are back
This week, we’re featuring an episode of Open Circuit, a new show from Latitude Media that reunites Jigar Shah, Katherine Hamilton, and Stephen Lacey. Many listeners may remember them from The Energy Gang, a show they co-hosted for eight years. They are back together, co-hosting a weekly…
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The first commercial construction project for low-carbon cement
In May 2024, Yanni Tsipis was watching as his team prepared to pour a low-carbon version of concrete — one that had never been used in a commercial project. As senior vice president of WS Development, he was in charge of the team building Boston’s largest net-zero office building for operating...
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Pioneering one of the first IRA tax credit transfers
When Chris Taylor and his team at GridStor were building Santa Barbara county's largest battery storage project in Goleta, CA they saw an opportunity: become one of the first companies to transfer tax credits under the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act. But there was no playbook to follow....
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Building the world’s biggest DAC facility
On Christmas Eve 2023, Doug Chan wasn't celebrating with family. Instead, he was in Hellisheiði, Iceland with his team, preparing to commission Mammoth — what would become the world's largest operational direct air capture facility. Getting there wasn't easy. After building two successful smaller...
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A complex path for building heat batteries
In 2022, John O’Donnell and Peter von Behrens figured out how to design a heat battery that would deliver heat at very high, constant temperatures. The breakthrough came on the heels of two years of research and development, some of which took place in Peter’s garage. Now, John and Peter were…
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The ‘third inning’ of the energy transition [partner content]
In the aftermath of the presidential election, the clean energy industry is scrambling to figure out what a second Trump administration would mean for their companies and projects. But Tom Burton isn't just looking at the next four years. After 25 years serving the industry with the law firm…
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The risk of scaling 100x
In 2022, Via Separations was getting ready to build its commercial-scale filtration system, a technology that could help cut emissions and costs for a wide range of industries like paper, chemicals, and food processing. And when the company faced two paths — scale up 10x or 100x — CEO and...
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Why concentrated solar couldn’t compete
In 2009, John Woolard’s team flipped the switch on a first-of-a-kind concentrated solar power project. The pilot paved the way for BrightSource Energy, where John was CEO, to build its first commercial CSP plant, a 440-megawatt project in the Mojave Desert called Ivanpah. John and his team…
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Introducing: The Green Blueprint
We’ve already invented many of the solutions needed to decarbonize the global economy. But a big chunk of emission reductions will come from technologies that are not yet commercial. We don’t have decades to get these commercialized – we have years. So what can we learn from the people who are...
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An update on what's ahead for this show, and more
Since we stopped The Carbon Copy, some listeners had questions about what’s next. Here's a preview of our new podcast, the Transition-AI event in December, and a new newsletter called the AI-Energy Nexus. Stay tuned to the feed for our new show, dropping later this fall!
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Frontier Forum: How rates will make or break the energy transition
Dynamic pricing is everywhere – and impacts all of us. Whether it's the time of day, your location, or the amount of demand, so many of our decisions are driven by real-time pricing changes. But it's still a relatively new concept in electricity. This week, we're featuring a conversation with…
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Our final episode: The top stories of 2024 so far
Some news: this will be our final installment of The Carbon Copy. But don’t go anywhere! Later this fall, the feed will be transformed into a new show that will profile the people architecting the clean energy economy. We promise it will be a valuable part of your media diet. For our last…
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Avoiding mistakes from the first smart meters
When millions of smart meters rolled out across the country at the turn of the last decade, many people hoped it would create the backbone of a digital grid. Today, you’ll find few who think meters lived up to expectations. One survey found only 3% of advanced meters supported by the 2009…
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Why ditching aluminum is key to securing the US solar supply chain
Solar is the fastest growing electricity-generating technology in history. That rapid scaling was a result of squeezing cost reductions out of every step of production. But there's one critical piece that hasn't changed much: frames. Aluminum frames now make up one-quarter of the cost of a PV...
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AI-fueled geothermal and ‘the edge of the possible’
A lot of climate tech investors are still trying to figure out how to invest in artificial intelligence. Will it become a unique investment category? Or just a natural enhancement of what many startups are already building? There’s an emerging class of startups with AI at the center of their...
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A macro view on the state of climate tech
We need to invest many trillions of dollars every year to build a climate-positive economy. We know what those technologies are – but they're all at very different levels of readiness. So what would it take to scale critical climate technologies? That was the simple-but-complicated question...
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Energy is now the ‘primary bottleneck’ for AI
Data centers are an impressive energy success story. Over the last 25 years, internet traffic has climbed more than 500x while data center electricity use has remained flat. The servers and energy infrastructure have gotten wildly more efficient, and the biggest tech companies have focused on...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
We already have many of the climate solutions we need. But scaling them is hard. The Green Blueprint is a show about the people who are architecting the clean economy. Every other week, host Lara Pierpoint profiles the founders, investors, and organizational leaders who are solving complex challenges in the quest to build climate technologies fast.
HOSTED BY
Latitude Media
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Green Blueprint have?
The Green Blueprint currently has 177 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Green Blueprint about?
We already have many of the climate solutions we need. But scaling them is hard. The Green Blueprint is a show about the people who are architecting the clean economy. Every other week, host Lara Pierpoint profiles the founders, investors, and organizational leaders who are solving complex...
How often does The Green Blueprint release new episodes?
The Green Blueprint publishes regularly with 177 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to The Green Blueprint on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Green Blueprint?
The Green Blueprint is created and hosted by Latitude Media.
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