Supercool

Cow burps are one of climate’s strangest and most stubborn problems. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, and cattle are responsible for about 30 percent of global methane emissions. For years, the basic answer has been: eat less beef and drink less milk.Kathryn Polkoff, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Hoofprint Biome, thinks there is a better way. Hoofprint uses natural enzymes to reshape the cow’s rumen microbiome, cutting methane production while boosting dairy milk yield and beef cattle weight gain. No harsh chemical feed additives. Just a solution that helps farmers produce more with less methane.In Supercool’s first live recording, Josh talks with Kathryn at Raleigh-Durham Startup Week’s inaugural Climate Tech Day about cow burps, commercializing agricultural climate tech, and why Hoofprint could not exist without AI. It is a climate story about biology, business, and turning wasted energy into value.Show NotesGuest: Kathryn Polkoff, PhD, co-founder and CEOCompany: Hoofprint BiomeFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Construction has a hidden waste problem, and it starts long before anything reaches the job site.For centuries, the master builder was the person who translated architectural vision into buildable reality. Today, modern construction is too complex for any one person to play that role. A commercial building can contain hundreds of thousands of components across electrical, mechanical, plumbing, structural, and fire protection systems. No one can see it all.That turns construction into a zero-sum game. Trades compete for the same walls, ceilings, shafts, and risers. Some win. Some lose. And when those conflicts get discovered during construction instead of design, the result is rework, delays, wasted material, and systems that cost more than they should to build and operate.In this episode, Josh talks with Frio Iorio, co-founder and CEO of Augmenta, about using AI to bring constructability to the start of design: turning architectural models, engineering requirements, and project constraints into 3D designs that show what can actually be built before construction begins.The result: less material waste, fewer expensive mistakes, and buildings designed to use less energy for decades.Show NotesGuest: Francesco Iorio Company: Augmenta Documentary (referenced): Manufactured LandscapesFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Ron Gonen built the largest privately held recycling and composting company in America largely in secret. For five years, his team acquired family-owned recycling operations across the country. When Circular Services finally surfaced two years ago — 35 facilities, municipal contracts in New York, Charlotte, Austin, San Antonio, and Phoenix — the industry's reaction was: wait, they did what?That's one piece of what Closed Loop Partners does. The company Gonen founded after serving as Mayor Bloomberg's Recycling Czar is built around a single thesis: the circular economy needs infrastructure. To build it, Closed Loop operates across three businesses: an asset management business with funds across venture, private equity, and credit; an advisory arm that works with corporations to redesign their supply chains; and Circular Services, the physical infrastructure that processes material and feeds it back in.His argument isn't environmental. It's economic. The global supply chains built over the last 60 years made sense under conditions that no longer exist. The businesses that figure out how to use what the economy throws away as their primary input aren't just the future. They're already winning.Show NotesGuest: Ron Gonen, Founder & CEOCompany: Closed Loop PartnersFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Sign up for Johnson Controls' Free Webinar: Optimizing Lifecycle Value Webinar--The ocean is an unforgiving place to put a machine. That’s why wave energy has remained one of the most promising — and most elusive — sources of renewable power. In this episode, Josh talks with Catharina Belfrage Sahlstrand, Chief Commercial Officer of CorPower Ocean, about how the company is turning wave energy into a viable power source. They discuss CorPower’s spherical buoys, designed around a principle borrowed from the human heart, and the commercial challenge of getting utilities, developers, and large offtakers comfortable with a new source of clean energy. Catharina explains why surviving 60-foot waves off the coast of Portugal became a critical proof point, why CorPower is now building its first commercial wave farms in Portugal and Scotland, and how wave power — as a complement to wind and solar — can make the broader renewable mix more affordable.Show NotesGuest: Catharina Belfrage Sahlstrand, Chief Commercial OfficerCompany: CorPower OceanFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Sign up for Johnson Controls' Free Webinar: Optimizing Lifecycle Value Webinar-- It’s one thing to invent a better, more sustainable building material. It’s another to get builders, dealers, and contractors to adopt it. Modern Mill has done both. In this episode, Josh talks with Chandler Delinks, the company’s Sales Director and employee number one, about how Modern Mill set up shop in Mississippi to upcycle rice hulls into Acre, a high-performance material now used for trim, siding, cladding, cabinetry, and more. Chandler shares how the company brought a lower-carbon alternative into one of the most change-resistant industries in the economy: earning credibility with contractors, building out distribution region by region, and helping a material made from waste earn its place on jobsites.  Show NotesGuest: Chandler Delinks, Sales DirectorCompany: Modern MillFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Sign up for Risk and Resilience — Designing for a Changing World, a Johnson Controls fireside chat at 1pm EST today featuring Ralph DiNola, founder of Building Insights Group and former CEO of New Buildings Institute, in conversation with Rob Tanner, Marketing Director at Johnson Controls.  --For decades, the answer to shoreline erosion has been the same: build something big, hard, and heavy. Natrx is rewriting that playbook using AI, machine learning, and 3D-printed reef structures engineered to work with natural systems, not against them.In this episode, Josh talks with Tad Schwendler, COO of Natrx, about how the company maps erosion across entire coastlines at one-meter resolution — analysis that would otherwise take years — and turns that intelligence into reef structures that protect shorelines and help coastal ecosystems come back to life.With more than 80 projects across Louisiana, North Carolina, the Chesapeake Bay, and Hawaii, Natrx is doing more than protecting shorelines. It is helping defend coastal wetlands that store large amounts of carbon — and that, when lost, release nearly 2 gigatons of CO₂ a year. This is a conversation about technology, execution, and what it takes to build a company around one of climate’s hardest challenges: moving fast enough, with the right tools and the right stakeholders, to protect coastlines before they change for good.Show NotesGuest: Tad Schwendler, COOCompany: NatrxFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Every climate company that scales knows the secret: they don’t sell climate. In this solo episode of Supercool, host Josh Dorfman shares one of the clearest lessons from nearly two years of conversations with founders, CEOs, operators, and investors across the low-carbon economy: the companies that break through do not lead with technical specs or climate mission. Their messaging is built around concrete customer benefits. Josh shows what that looks like in practice, with examples from companies scaling in mobility, home electrification, the built environment, and renewable energy. Time and again, the same pattern emerges. The climate companies that win never ask customers to sacrifice. They offer something immediate and better: lower costs, better performance, more control, and peace of mind. Carbon reductions are built in.Reserve your spot here for Johnson Controls' free fireside chat: Risk and Resilience — Designing for a Changing WorldFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

If the circular economy is ever going to become just “the economy,” it will need infrastructure. In this episode, Josh talks with Rich Amsinger, co-founder of Manymoons and The Many Company, about building it. The conversation traces the company’s evolution from Borobabi, which began with Rich and Carolyn Butler trying to keep their daughter’s outgrown clothes in use, to Manymoons, what the company calls America’s first circular retailer, and now ManyCo, the AI-, logistics-, and demand-powered engine behind it all. Rich explains why returns, overstock, and excess inventory aren’t side issues in retail but a massive opportunity. He also makes the case that circularity requires more than software. It requires actually selling the stuff—while protecting the brand, recovering more value, and keeping better products in use longer.Show NotesGuest: Rich Amsinger, Co-Founder Companies: Manymoons and ManyCoFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Most architects don't tell you your home could be nearly silent, filter every breath of air, and run almost without heat. Not because it's impossible. Because they don't know how to build it.Michael Ingui does. For more than a decade, his firm has built Passive Houses across New York City — landmarked townhouses, gut renovations, apartments with swimming pools and floor-to-ceiling glass. His clients get quieter rooms, cleaner air, and heating and cooling bills 80 to 90 percent below a conventional home. For the life of the building.His opening question to clients isn't about energy or carbon. It's whether they'd like a home free of bugs. Whether they'd like to stop hearing the street.Michael is also co-founder of the Passive House Accelerator, a catalyst for zero carbon building that shares innovation and thought leadership across Passive House design and construction, and Source 2050, a marketplace for vetted high-performance building materials.For Michael, the goal is straightforward: get everyone building this way, as fast as possible. The high-performance, zero-carbon future is counting on it.Show NotesGuest: Michael Ingui, PartnerCompany: Ingui ArchitectureJohnson Controls webinar linkFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Nobody wants to be policed. Not even sustainability advocates.Charlie Sellars has spent six years as a Director of Sustainability at Microsoft. He's the author of What We Can Do: A Climate Optimist's Guide to Sustainable Living. His TEDx talk is titled "Make Sustainability Fun Again." His argument: the movement has spent too long trying to be right at the expense of being effective. And that mistake is costing us.But making sustainability fun is only half the equation. The other half is knowing where to aim. And that means lifecycle analysis — the ability to measure the true environmental cost of anything from cradle to grave.Here's what that reveals: 80 to 90 percent of a device's lifetime emissions — like the one you're reading now and listening with — occur before you ever turn it on. Which means the single most impactful thing you can do with the phone you're holding right now has nothing to do with how you use it.It's how long you keep it.Show Notes:Guest: Charlie Sellars, Award-Winning Author and Microsoft Sustainability DirectorBook: What We Can Do: A Climate Optimist's Guide to Sustainable LivingFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

* Sign-up for Johnson Controls Webinar: Evolving Building Codes *The largest geothermal residential building in New York City just opened in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. 834 apartments. 320 boreholes drilled hundreds of feet underground — enough to heat and cool every unit in the building. Even the rooftop pool.Geosource Energy drilled it. This conversation is about how they did it, and what it takes to build geoexchange systems at scale in dense cities, where there's already a city's worth of infrastructure below: water, gas, electric, telecom, subways, and foundations.Geoexchange is simple to explain and hard to execute. No combustion. No fuel. Fully electric. The physics are straightforward. The delivery is not.Building owners choose geoexchange for the operating savings. And for every dollar saved at the building level, the grid saves eight or nine — because geoexchange cuts peak demand when electricity is most expensive and most scarce.That's a true decarbonization driver. And why cities from Toronto to Boston to New York are leaning in with more to follow.Geosource has completed more than 400 projects. The infrastructure they install is designed to outlast the buildings it serves. Stan calls it 500-year pipe. He's seen a building come down and the borefield stay put, ready for the next one.Show Notes:Guest: Stanley Reitsma, CEOCompany: Geosource EnergyFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

People assume farmers are conservative by nature. Cautious. Set in their ways.Ryan Jones, VP of Sustainability at Indigo Ag, has a different read: farmers aren’t risk-averse. They’re risk-saturated.Consider factors like weather, debt, input costs, labor, and fluctuating commodity prices. One bad season can set a farmer back years. So when someone shows up and says, “Change how you farm,” the first question any farmer asks is: who’s carrying the risk?That’s the problem Indigo was built to solve. Pay farmers to adopt regenerative practices. Quantify the outcomes. Connect them to buyers through carbon markets or corporate supply chains. Today, Indigo operates in 15 countries and manages a portfolio spanning 20 million acres, delivering over a megaton of greenhouse gas reductions/removals and conserving nearly 100 billion gallons of water—and it recently announced a 12-year offtake agreement with Microsoft for 2.85 million tons of carbon removal credits.But this conversation is about more than keeping carbon in the soil. It’s also about water. In the Mid-South rice belt, companies face an existential sourcing risk and farmers face an existential livelihood risk. And with a shared aquifer, one farmer conserving water doesn’t move the needle if everyone else keeps pumping.The only way through is everyone moving together. And Indigo’s bet is that you get there by making the most practical thing the most profitable thing—fast enough to matter.Show NotesGuest: Ryan Jones, Vice President of SustainabilityCompany: Indigo AgFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Forty-five million Americans live in apartments. Almost none have solar—not because the technology doesn't work, but because building owners pay for installation while tenants get the savings. It's the split incentive conundrum holding the sector back.Owen Barrett saw this problem when he started investing in apartment buildings. Nobody in multifamily was thinking about energy—just paint colors and new countertops. He tried consulting. Nobody listened. So he raised capital, bought buildings, and installed solar himself.The breakthrough: software that tracks each tenant's solar usage and bills them for it. Owners earn revenue. Tenants save money.That became Shine, a company that installs solar on apartment buildings and handles everything from design to maintenance.Shine went from 100 units in 2024 to 3,000 in 2025, projecting 20,000 in 2026. They're working with two of the five largest apartment owners in America.Owen and Josh discuss why execution beats innovation, how rising electricity prices make subsidies irrelevant, and why doing what you promise became a competitive advantage.Show NotesGuest: Owen Barrett, CEO Company: ShineFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

In 2019, Will Wiseman watched 100,000 people march through Barcelona for the global climate strikes. He felt hope. Then the obvious truth: everyone was going home, and nothing would change. So, he built Climatize, an SEC-registered investment platform that allows anyone to invest as little as $10 in clean energy projects across the United States.Climatize specializes in projects ranging from $250,000 to $5 million, which are traditionally too small for institutional lenders to fund. The company's proprietary AI tools compress due diligence from weeks to minutes. Some projects raise hundreds of thousands of dollars within 24 hours.The crowdfunding platform's progress to date: $14 million deployed across 33 clean energy projects—solar, battery storage, EV charging, and energy efficiency—in 14 states.Will and Josh discuss why finance-first messaging outperforms climate-first messaging, how AI has made small deals viable, and why speed to finance has become Climatize's competitive moat.Show NotesGuest: Will Wiseman, Co-Founder & CEO Company: ClimatizeFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Kunal Girotra was Head of Tesla Energy before leaving in 2020 to found Lunar Energy. Then he went silent. Over two years, he raised $300 million, built a 250-person team, and developed home battery systems that blend sleek design with state-of-the-art technology. Lunar emerged from stealth in 2022 with a mission to deliver endless, affordable clean energy.What differentiates Lunar: it's both a hardware and software company. The battery and AI are designed and integrated as a single system. The software learns each home's unique energy fingerprint, deciding when to charge from the grid at low rates, when to run on battery, and when to sell power back at premium prices.The results: customers earn an average of $464 annually through Virtual Power Plant programs and $338 through optimization—over $800 in total, with seamless backup power.Lunar's GridShare platform now manages 650 megawatts of distributed energy for utilities across multiple continents. This morning, the company announced $232 million in new funding to expand nationwide.Show Notes:Guest: Kunal Girotra, Founder & CEOCompany: Lunar EnergyFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Data centers have always pursued energy efficiency through better hardware—smarter chillers, advanced cooling systems. But there's a ceiling. You can only make hardware so efficient.Seven years ago, Jasper de Vries discovered the butterfly effect in data centers—something on a roof rippling through 300 billion sensor readings down to valves in server rooms. His company, Lucend, ingests that sensor data to generate operator recommendations. One facility cut power usage by 40% in a year, saving $4.3 million.Yet here's what most of us miss about AI's big energy problem: we focus on operational energy use while Scope 3 emissions—the embodied carbon from manufacturing hardware—creates massive impact, so much so that Microsoft won't hit its 2030 climate targets because of its data center growth plans. With JP Morgan projecting $5 trillion in AI infrastructure buildouts by 2030, the need to bring embodied carbon under control is urgent.Lucend's software addresses both challenges: it slashes operational energy while extending hardware life through predictive maintenance, reducing the physical wear that forces early replacement. Its technology is now deployed across over 50 facilities globally.Show NotesGuest: Jasper de Vries Company: LucendFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

What if we stopped trying to recycle and just used all our trash instead?UBQ Materials makes bio-plastics from entire trash bags—dirty diapers, greasy pizza boxes, chicken bones, mixed plastics. Everything. 100% utilization. Nothing returns to landfills.The material works in existing manufacturing equipment, costs the same as virgin plastic, and can be recycled 10+ times. It's already in Mercedes interiors and McDonald's products.CEO Albert Douer spent eight years in stealth mode perfecting the technology before selling a pound. The original plan: three years. Reality: ten. Most VCs would've killed it. He kept going.Now UBQ operates an 80,000-ton facility in the Netherlands proving the technology works at scale. The implications for waste, plastics, and the circular economy are staggering—and Albert's journey reveals what it actually takes to bring impossible-sounding innovation into the real world.Show NotesGuest: Albert Douer, CEOCompany: UBQ MaterialsFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

When any part of the economy modernizes, it electrifies. New HVAC systems? Electric heat pumps. Autonomous vehicles? Battery-powered electric cars. Next-generation factories? Not a smoke stack in sight. Which means the US needs to build as much grid infrastructure in the next decade as we built in the last 50 years.Schneider Electric is a 189-year-old infrastructure company that makes everything from the cooling systems in AI factories to the switchgear moving power across the grid. Jim Simonelli, their SVP of data centers, joins Supercool to explain why efficiency is now a core business necessity, not just an environmental virtue. Every watt that doesn't reach compute is lost revenue, which changes everything about how you design and operate at gigawatt scale.Vincent Petit, who runs Schneider's research institute, breaks down why 15 years of flat electricity demand means we've lost the muscle to build infrastructure. And why the answer isn't just more generation—it's rethinking the entire system.Show NotesGuests: Jim Simonelli, Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Secure Power and Vincent Petit, Senior Vice President, Climate & Energy Transition ResearchCompany: Schneider ElectricFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Mass Timber is growing fast—expanding from a handful of commercial wood buildings in the U.S. just over a decade ago to more than 2,000 today, with 24,000 projected by 2034. Once considered niche, mass timber is moving mainstream—competing on price, speed, and domestic supply chains, not sustainability alone.Sterling Structural is leading that shift. As America's largest CLT manufacturer, the company produces one cross-laminated timber panel every 65 seconds, sourcing 100% of its wood from domestic sawmills. Sterling has recently produced its one millionth panel.This is mass timber for the masses—standardized, modular systems that contractors already understand.Michaela Harms, Vice President of Mass Timber at Sterling, joins Josh Dorfman to share how mass timber went from alternative to mainstream in a decade. She discusses how Sterling supplied 1,100 prefabricated CLT panels for Amazon’s new facility in Elkhart, Indiana, and why the industry is scaling by competing directly on price, speed, and practicality—with the carbon and forestry benefits included.Show NotesGuest: Michaela Harms, Vice President of Mass TimberCompany: Sterling StructuralFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn 

Clean power has never been cheaper. So why are electricity bills rising—and what's blocking faster deployment? Jigar Shah joins Supercool to explain why 2025 marked a turning point: for the first time in history, essentially 100% of new electricity demand worldwide was met by solar, wind, and nuclear. It happened because the same solutions that solve climate change are winning on affordability.But deployment could be moving much faster. The technology is proven. The finance exists. The barrier is political: governors and mayors don’t realize the leverage they have over utilities, and utility CEOs won’t act unless forced by law.In climate circles, Jigar needs no introduction. He pioneered solar financing at SunEdison, launched the Carbon War Room with Richard Branson, and ran the DOE Loan Programs Office that deployed over $100 billion in clean energy financing during the Biden Administration.We dig into what gives elected officials more power than they know, why some utility CEOs want to be mandated to deploy cheaper solutions, and why Jigar’s headline for 2026 isn’t more technology—it’s more workforce.Show NotesGuest: Jigar Shah, Co-Managing PartnerCompany: MultiplierFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

In 2025, the U.S. president called climate change a hoax. Meanwhile, global clean energy investment hit a record $2.2 trillion. Akshat Rathi is a senior reporter covering climate and energy for Bloomberg. His read on the past year: China is becoming the modern Standard Oil. The same way Rockefeller's empire exported petroleum infrastructure globally, China is now exporting electrification—solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, grid tech, project finance—to countries racing to modernize their economies. Pakistan imported solar equal to half its grid capacity in twelve months. And Ethiopia went from zero to 7% EV market share. Developing countries treat electricity like a growth engine. Rich countries struggle to meet 4% annual demand increases. Rathi joins Supercool to walk through Trump's rollback, the ripple effects at home and abroad, and why none of it is stopping the global transition to the low-carbon future.Show NotesGuest: Akshat RathiRecent Articles: BloombergBook: Climate Capitalism  Podcast: Zero: The Climate RaceFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

In this end-of-year conversation, David Roberts, a renowned climate and clean energy journalist, lays out his headline for 2025: the rapid growth of AI data centers has forced long-delayed decisions about the power system. After two decades of mostly flat U.S. electricity demand, utilities are now facing sharp new load growth, tighter timelines, and major uncertainty—making grid capacity and interconnection central challenges. Roberts, who hosts and writes the Volts podcast and newsletter, argues that long-lead solutions like new nuclear power plants are poorly matched to this moment. The fastest, lowest-cost capacity available today comes from distributed resources: solar, batteries, flexible building loads, coordinated EV charging, and virtual power plants. Because hyperscalers face real financial pressure to get data centers online, he sees a potential opportunity to redirect some of that capital toward building distributed capacity that benefits the wider grid. The conversation also touches on political volatility and why clean energy and electrification continue to advance globally on their favorable economics, even amid U.S. policy uncertainty.Show NotesGuest: David RobertsCompany: VoltsFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Real estate companies say they want sustainability. They'll pay for it too, provided it comes with zero risk.Brad Pilgrim is co-founder & CEO of Parity, a remote HVAC optimization service for high-rises and hotels. Its customer team can walk into a building, spend 90 minutes going from the basement to roof, and tell the owner how much energy they can save—then guarantee it. After eight years, clients like AvalonBay—one of the largest multifamily REITs in the country—are seeing 20-30% cuts in HVAC costs with payback in one to two years.Brad joins Supercool to discuss how Parity overcomes real estate's risk aversion, why proof matters more than technology, and what happens when you can precondition a thousand-unit building before a heatwave hits. Plus: the one slide Brad had to add to his Series B funding round deck that changed everything.Show NotesGuest: Brad Pilgrim, co-founder & CEO Company: Parity Inc.For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

EVs for commercial fleets are increasingly attractive. Battery costs are down, range is up, and in many cases the total cost of ownership already beats gas. The problem isn’t the vehicles. It’s where they’ll charge.Voltera takes on the part of the EV transition most people never see: procuring the right real estate, securing stadium-scale power capacity, navigating zoning codes that rarely recognize EV charging as a primary use, and getting sign-off—sometimes from more than a dozen city departments—just to get started.Voltera CEO Brett Hauser joins Josh to show how the company has built a playbook for that messy middle, making EV charging viable for the country’s fleets. Now operating in markets from Los Angeles to Miami, Voltera does this work not so fleets don’t have to, but because fleets never will.Show NotesGuest: Brett Hauser, Chairman and Chief Executive OfficerCompany: VolteraFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Something big is happening inside buildings. They’re getting brains.Schneider Electric is a global giant in energy and building performance—nearly two centuries old, operating across 100+ countries, and already embedded in a million buildings. Manish Kumar, EVP of Digital Energy, joins me to unpack what it means when AI starts running the places we live and work. We dig into EcoStruxure Foresight, Schneider’s new AI assistant for buildings: a layer that links critical equipment, learns the rhythms of a space, flags waste in real time, and helps facility teams interact with their buildings as performance partners. From hospitals and data centers to hotels, airports, and offices, we explore what changes when these environments can diagnose themselves, tune performance daily, and keep improving over time—then push into the bigger horizon: what happens when that capability scales across millions of sites worldwide, how it reshapes the future of work, and the role intelligent buildings play in a modernizing grid.Show NotesGuest: Manish Kumar, Executive Vice President, Digital EnergyCompany: Schneider Electric Key Link: Innovation SummitFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

There are trillions of dollars of clean energy projects ready to be built—and trillions more in capital waiting to fund them. But the system connecting the two is too slow, fragmented, and expensive.That gap is what Alfred Johnson set out to close. A former Treasury official who helped steer markets through the 2008 financial crisis and later served under Janet Yellen, Johnson co-founded Crux to build the financial software layer the energy transition was missing.Crux connects developers, manufacturers, and investors across a marketplace for clean energy finance. In just two years, it’s closed over 120 transactions worth billions—turning a bureaucratic tangle of documents into a liquid market built for speed, trust, and scale.This conversation explores how liquidity, intelligence, and automation are accelerating capital into hard infrastructure—and how Crux is becoming the financial engine powering today’s clean energy industrial revolution.Show NotesGuest: Alfred Johnson, Co-Founder & CEO Company: CruxFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

A few months ago, Quilt became the first company in residential HVAC history to deliver an over-the-air upgrade—making its systems 20% more powerful overnight.Quilt is rethinking how homes heat and cool themselves. Its software-driven, ductless HVAC system combines intelligent controls, high-efficiency heat pumps, and a design language that fits seamlessly into modern architecture. By bringing the pace and polish of consumer technology to an overlooked industry, Quilt transforms comfort into a catalyst for electrification.Founder and CEO Paul Lambert joins Josh Dorfman to share how Quilt’s approach—what he calls “technical arbitrage”—adapts proven innovations from EVs and connected devices to reimagine the American home for the electric age.This episode explores how software, design, and emotion converge to make clean energy aspirational and why desire may be the most powerful tool in decarbonization.Show NotesGuest: Paul Lambert, Founder & CEOCompany: QuiltBTS Video SeriesFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

In an industry that moved fast and defied cities, Veo chose a different path: partnership over disruption. Co-founder and CEO Candice Xie is building one of the only profitable micromobility companies in America by leading with discipline, transparency, and respect for the people shaping urban life. While competitors flooded streets and flamed out, Veo continues to earn trust — winning 90% of city RFPs and operating in over 50 markets nationwide. Candice joins Josh Dorfman to unpack how Veo’s strategy of asking for permission, designing durable hardware, and prioritizing community needs became its true growth engine. This is a masterclass in scaling deliberately, proving that in 2025, the climate-tech companies that endure aren’t the ones that move the fastest — they’re the ones that build trust the deepest.Show NotesGuest: Candice Xie, CEO and co-founderCompany: VeoFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Husk Power Systems operates the largest fleet of community-level clean-energy minigrids in the world—over 400 sites across India and Nigeria. Each system combines solar, battery storage, and biomass generation into a modular platform called PRISM, engineered to deploy and power an entire village within 24 hours. Behind the technology is an AI-driven operating system that forecasts demand, manages generation in real time, and keeps every site running autonomously. Co-founder and CEO Manoj Sinha shares how Husk plans to scale to 5,000 minigrids by 2030—delivering reliable, renewable power to millions and redefining what energy access means at civilization’s edge.Show NotesGuest: Manoh Sinha, Co-founder and CEOCompany: Husk Power SystemsFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

SolarCycle is building the next supply chain that makes the clean energy transition possible. Co-founder Jesse Simons spent two decades at the Sierra Club leading national campaigns to accelerate renewable energy before seeing the constraint built into solar’s own success. There aren’t enough raw materials to keep scaling, and communities are starting to resist projects without end-of-life plans.With a deep bench of industry founders, operators, and visionaries, SolarCycle is closing that loop. They’ve developed technology to extract glass, aluminum, copper, silicon, and silver from old panels—and the reverse logistics to move them efficiently from field to factory.This episode explores how SolarCycle is making recycling cost-competitive with landfilling—and why that threshold could define the future of solar. As circularity becomes essential to project approvals, investor confidence, and long-term supply, renewable energy is entering its next phase—where even the panels must become renewable too.Show NotesGuest: Jesse Simons, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer (corrected)Company: SOLARCYCLEFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

Ken LaRoe has done what no one else in U.S. history has: founded three banks. His first two were financial successes. His third—Climate First Bank—is his answer to unfinished business. Built to align money with mission, it’s now America’s fastest-growing new bank, surpassing $1.4 billion in assets while financing the clean energy economy.In this episode, Ken shares what he learned across 25 years of banking—why financial performance and climate action can’t be opposites, and how being, in his words, a “rabid environmentalist and rabid capitalist” became his edge. He explains how Climate First’s fintech arm, OneEthos, built proprietary software that powers $30 million in solar loans each month across 700+ installers—without relying on tax credits or Wall Street intermediaries.Now, as the bank prepares for an IPO, Ken is proving that mission-driven finance can outperform the market—and that the clean energy transition runs on something deeper than capital: conviction.Show NotesGuest: Ken LaRoe, CEO of Climate First Bancorp and Executive Chairman of Climate First BankComnpany: Climate First BankFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks that drive their adoption—subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

Cambium is building the operating system for reuse—a digital supply chain connecting the fragmented network of companies needed to turn fallen trees into finished goods.Every year, tens of millions of urban trees come down. The scale is staggering, and most end up chipped, burned, or buried. Cambium links tree-removal crews, haulers, mills, and end customers through a unified digital platform—transforming what was once waste into market-ready material.Today, more than 500 companies across the U.S. and Canada coordinate each tree’s journey, forming a just-in-time network for reclaimed wood.Co-founder and CEO Ben Christensen calls it building a “tech-native forestry company”—one where reuse runs on code, data, and tight coordination. In this episode, Ben and host Josh Dorfman explore how mastering complexity becomes a competitive advantage, how data builds defensibility, and how scaling reuse could redefine how the material economy works.Show NotesGuest: Ben Christensen Company: CambiumFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks that drive their adoption—subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

AI, electrification, decarbonization—they all hinge on how effectively the grid is orchestrated. Yet thousands of clean energy projects are stuck in U.S. interconnection queues. The backlog is twice the size of all the energy we use today. It’s not a cost problem. It’s the grid—the largest machine on earth—built last century for stability and missing the cloud-scale infrastructure to handle what’s ahead.Astrid Atkinson has run a machine like this before. At Google, she spent fifteen years in site reliability engineering, keeping Search, Maps, YouTube, and Gmail online with 99.999% uptime. If google.com went down, her team got paged. Running one of the world’s largest critical infrastructure systems taught her a lesson: you don’t scale by adding infinite hardware. You scale with visibility, software, and flexibility.Now, as co-founder and CEO of Camus Energy, she’s applying that lesson to the grid. Camus builds a real-time data layer—linking past, present, and future—and turns it into signals utilities use to coordinate assets: charge later, ramp down, discharge when needed.With visibility and signals, utilities gain the control knobs they need—so projects connect in months instead of years and demand flexibility becomes part of the grid’s DNA.Show NotesGuest: Astrid Atkinson, co-founder and CEOCompany: Camus EnergyFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks that drive their adoption—subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

Curbside charging sounds obvious—plug in outside your apartment, wake up to a full battery. Yet more than 40 million potential urban EV owners are still waiting for someone to figure it out.it’s electric, co-founded by Tiya Gordon, is designing EV charging for cities—making curbside charging possible by inventing what didn’t exist: hardware powered directly by buildings, a revenue model that pays property owners, and a way to work with cities that clears the path to install. Its chargers are already operational in Boston, Detroit, and San Francisco, with more cities on the way.Tiya brings a unique background in public-facing technology and design to the challenge—she led the technology for the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Now she’s assembled a team from transportation, design, and public projects—people who know how to connect landlords, planners, and engineers into the same conversation. That’s how It’s Electric moves swiftly through city permitting in days instead of years—and why the future of EV charging will feel less like bulky infrastructure, and more like disco and sunshine.Show NotesGuest: Tiya GordonCompany: it's electricFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks that drive their adoption—subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

By fusing architect and developer, Alloy Development is proving that the riskiest choice in real estate isn’t electrification or Passive House — it’s clinging to the past.CEO Jared Della Valle joins Supercool to share the company’s journey to developing The Alloy Block in downtown Brooklyn—aiming to create the most sustainable block in the city. It’s anchored by 505 State Street, New York’s first all-electric skyscraper; two Passive House–certified public schools; and soon, One Third Avenue—the tallest Passive House tower in the world.Della Valle describes how Alloy built investor confidence project by project—staying nimble, controlling risk, and executing at a standard that pulled institutional capital toward climate performance. He explains why going all-electric lowered long-term risk, how policy and pricing dynamics shifted investor expectations, and why the most competitive real estate today is also the cleanest.Alloy is shifting how Wall Street perceives risk and return—redefining climate performance not as the exception, but the expectation.Show NotesGuest: Jared Della Valle, CEO Company: Alloy DevelopmentProject: The Alloy BlockBuilding: 505 State Street - All-Electric SkyscraperFor more Supercool climate solutions that cut carbon, improve modern life, and shape the new low carbon economy, subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Youtube Channel* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram and Linkedin 

Mike Faherty grew up surfing the Jersey Shore, surrounded by coastal style but chasing something that felt more enduring. Even as a kid, he obsessed over fabrics—the way silk ties carried weight, how colors layered, how clothes gained character through texture. By seventeen, he had already mapped the outlines of the brand he wanted to build.In 2012, he launched Faherty with his twin brother Alex and sister-in-law Kerry—creating a clothing company rooted in surf culture, elevated by craft, and grounded in responsibility. Today, it's grown into one of the most distinctive brands in American fashion—80+ stores, hundreds of millions in revenue, and a headquarters team of just over 100 people that still moves with the urgency of a “Day One” startup.Faherty doesn’t market itself as a sustainability brand, but responsibility is stitched into its DNA. Seventy-two percent of fabrics already meet the company’s responsible sourcing standard, with a goal of 100% by 2030—all disclosed in its public Impact Report. Regenerative organic cotton from the Amazon. Recycled polyester engineered for softness. Supply chain partners chosen for shared values and trust.In this conversation, Mike, the company's Chief Creative Officer, shares how a lifelong passion for materials became a strategy for innovation—why feel matters, how responsibility shows up behind the seams, and what it takes to scale a modern American fashion brand built for lasting impact.Show NotesGuest: Mike Faherty, Co-founder & Chief Creative OfficerCompany: Faherty Brand Resource: Faherty Brand Impact Report For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks that drive their adoption—subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram 

Forum Mobility is electrifying how America moves freight. Every year, more than 30,000 diesel 18-wheelers haul containers in and out of California’s ports, logging over a billion miles, generating enormous carbon emissions and polluting nearby communities.Electric semis are powerful, quiet, and clean. But at $500,000 apiece with uncertain charging and maintenance, the math doesn’t work for the independent operators — often family-run businesses — who move most containers from port to warehouse, the first mile of logistics known as drayage. The technology is ready. The adoption is stuck.In 2024, Forum Mobility opened the world’s largest port-based charging depot at Long Beach. But the company’s breakthrough isn’t hardware — it’s the model: EV Trucking as a Service. By bundling trucks and charging into a predictable monthly subscription, Forum Mobility makes running electric cheaper than diesel and removes the risk that has stalled adoption.Founder and CEO Matt Leducq saw the same shift in solar, where he built his career and where financing innovation became the key to unlocking market adoption. Now he’s betting the same playbook can electrify freight.Show NotesGuest: Matt Leducq, Co-Founder & CEOCompany: Forum MobilityFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling—and the playbooks that drive their adoption—subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram 

Most U.S. homes aren’t wired for electrified living, even though the clean energy future depends on it. Upgrading panels and wiring can cost thousands before a single new appliance is even installed.Plus, consumers aren’t demanding electrification. They want lifestyle upgrades—faster, more precise cooking, backup power in a pinch, and appliances that cost less and perform more.Copper has designed the solution. The company is building 21st-century appliances to work on 20th-century infrastructure, i.e., the aging grid we have today. No infrastructure upgrades necessary.Charlie, their first electric appliance, is a sleek, modern induction range equipped with a built-in 5 kWh battery. It plugs into a standard 110-volt kitchen outlet, cooks four times faster than natural gas, charges when renewables are on the grid, and keeps going even during blackouts.Copper’s Founder and CEO, Sam Calisch, helped shape clean energy policy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act as co-founder of Rewiring America. Now he and the team at Copper are building battery-embedded electric appliances that install easily and perform better.The clean energy transition is cooking.Show NotesGuest: Sam Calisch, Founder and CEOCompany: CopperResource: Wall Street Journal—Maker of Battery-Powered Kitchen Stoves Raises $28 MillionFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling—and the playbooks that drive their adoption—subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram 

Interface is a public company proving that carbon-negative is possible at scale. The billion-dollar flooring brand has more than 400 carbon-negative products on the market today and a plan to take its entire business carbon-negative by 2040. Liz Minne, Head of Global Sustainability Strategy, shares how Interface is operationalizing that ambition through product innovation, supply chain engagement, and a culture that keeps climate goals at the center of business decisions. She discusses what it means to lead as a public company, how to translate climate targets into everyday execution, and why culture may be Interface’s most important competitive edge. Interface shows that a carbon-negative future isn’t theoretical—it’s now being built in the heart of corporate America.Show NotesGuest: Liz Minné, Head of Global Sustainability StrategyCompany: InterfaceResource: "All In On Carbon" Climate CommitmentFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling, subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

At Amazon, speed isn’t a carbon cost—it’s a carbon advantage. The company now runs 30,000 electric delivery vehicles, delivered 1.5 billion packages on battery power last year, and has built over 600 renewable energy projects in more than 20 countries—20 gigawatts of clean energy capacity, making it the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable power.Inside that scale is a playbook for how a global business operationalizes decarbonization without slowing down. Chris Roe, Amazon’s Director of Worldwide Environment for Carbon, and Chris Atkins, Director of Worldwide Operations for Sustainability, share how speed has become a lever for lower emissions, why regionalizing the network cuts both carbon and cost, and how they’re mobilizing teams across the company to hit net zero by 2040—ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement.We cover EV fleet deployment, renewable power strategy, packaging reduction, AI-driven efficiency, and Amazon’s push to bring suppliers and competitors along through The Climate Pledge. It’s a rare inside look at a company turning massive logistics into massive carbon cuts—and inviting others to do the same.Show NotesGuests: - Chris Roe, Director of Worldwide Environment, Carbon - Chris Atkins, Director of Worldwide Operations, SustainabilityCompany: AmazonResources:- 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report- Amazon's Sustainability ExchangeFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling, subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

For fifty years, Brompton has been the most iconic name in urban cycling. Engineered and made in London, beloved by city riders, and still unrivaled in how fast it folds and how good it feels to ride.But in the U.S., where biking is still mostly recreational and folding bikes barely register, the brand faces a different challenge: how to scale a joy-filled, performance-driven mobility tool in a market that doesn’t know it needs it.Juliet Scott-Croxford, President of the Americas, is modernizing everything around the fold—retail, product, e-commerce, community—while keeping the company’s elite dealer network close. This is how a legacy brand retains its stature while accelerating growth—by evolving everything but the reason people love it. And why joy might be the most underrated climate signal of all.Show NotesGuest: Juliet Scott-Croxford, President of the AmericasCompany: BromptonFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling, subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

To scale climate solutions, you have to know how to talk about them. The companies driving climate adoption don’t just offer better solutions—they tell better stories. Stories that reframe clean energy as the smarter, cheaper, everyday choice. Stories that win customers, sway skeptics, and shift markets.Keith Zakheim has spent two decades working with climate brands to sharpen their strategy and scale their message. As CEO of Antenna Group, he’s shaped the public narrative around clean energy, circular economy, and climate tech adoption—long before those terms entered the mainstream lexicon.Keith joins Josh to unpack the new landscape resulting from the One Big Beautiful Bill, the continued surge of private investment, and why even in the Age of Adoption, the right story still determines who grabs market share—and who falters. They break down how Antenna’s new AI tool, Conscious Compass, evaluates whether a brand’s sustainability rhetoric matches reality. And they explore why messaging grounded in prosperity, security, and abundance may be 2025’s most strategic climate language.Clean energy won’t scale because the climate crisis demands it. It’ll scale because it feels as distinctly American as football in the fall.Show NotesGuest: Keith Zakheim, CEO Company: Antenna Group Article referenced: The Hill - Why the climate and sustainability economy will thrive in a Trump presidencyFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling, subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

Industrial hemp always had believers. What it lacked was a supply chain. Hempitecture is changing that—starting with the first commercial-scale factory in the U.S. making high-performance home insulation from hemp.Headquartered in Idaho, the company has shipped to 5,000+ customers across 48 states. It’s now the largest buyer of industrial hemp fiber in North America—proving that a crop once sidelined by regulation and volatility can power a fast-growing manufacturing business.In this episode, co-founder Tommy Gibbons shares the operational playbook: how Hempitecture proved its insulation performs, raised capital through crowdfunding when venture capital didn’t show up, and built a new distribution model in a category with no precedent. Hempitecture’s insulation cuts carbon in two ways—by lowering embodied emissions during manufacturing and reducing operational emissions once installed.Nearly a century after hemp was banned in 1937, the supply chain is finally getting built—with carbon impact to match.And this time, it’s not just legal—it’s scalable.Show NotesGuest: Tommy Gibbons, co-founder and Chief Innovation OfficerCompany: HempitectureFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling, subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

Consumers want the upgrades. The climate does too. But the electrical panel in the garage stands in the way.EVs, heat pumps, induction stoves—electrification is becoming more attractive. The products are faster, cleaner, cheaper to run. But nearly 48 million U.S. homes still rely on outdated 100-amp service. That means expensive utility upgrades, long delays, and a halt to progress.Arch Rao, former Tesla Energy product lead, built Span to fix the bottleneck. The Span Panel replaces the old breaker box with a connected, intelligent device that lets homeowners add electric appliances without triggering a full service upgrade. It works with solar, batteries, and EVs—and gives people visibility and control over their energy use for the first time.Span is the upgrade that makes all the other upgrades possible. And with Span Edge, utilities can manage demand house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood—without building more poles and wires.Span turns a forgotten piece of hardware into a platform for electrification—at home, and across the grid.Show NotesGuest: Arch Rao, Founder & CEOCompany: SpanFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling, subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

America invented the clean energy future. Now it may be dismantling it, just as the rest of the world hits the accelerator.The U.S. was first. The first silicon solar cell in New Jersey. The first wind turbine in Cleveland. The first microinverter in a California garage.But now it’s China scaling the clean energy transition—building factories, locking in supply chains, and racing toward a low-carbon economy at industrial speed.In the U.S., the president just signed the Big Beautiful Bill into law—gutting the historic clean energy investments at the heart of the Inflation Reduction Act. The country that helped invent the clean energy future is now stepping back. Just as solar keeps getting cheaper. Just as global investment hits $2 trillion. Just as the low-carbon transition starts to tip.David Roberts, founder of Volts, has spent 20 years as a journalist tracking this shift. In this episode, he joins Josh Dorfman to dissect the precarious moment we find ourselves in—when America’s energy future is uncertain, global momentum is accelerating, and the clean energy transition won’t wait. They talk solar’s 60-year cost curve, energy policy, and why the real revolution may be happening from the bottom up.This is what it looks like when the politics retreat—but the transition doesn’t.Show NotesGuest: David Roberts  Company: VoltsFor more Supercool climate solutions that cut carbon, improve modern life, and shape the new low carbon economy, subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Youtube Channel* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram and Linkedin 

TerraCycle takes on waste the rest of the world ignores—cigarette butts, diapers, pharmaceutical blister packs.But what makes the model work isn’t what they recycle. It’s how they get companies to pay for it.Even with one of the boldest missions in climate tech—eliminate the idea of waste—TerraCycle doesn’t lead with sustainability. It leads with the business case.In this episode, CEO Tom Szaky shares with host Josh Dorfman how the company has grown for 23 straight years by solving a problem no one wanted: how to make recycling hard-to-process waste worth paying for. Salons use it to attract new customers. Labs use it to retain top talent. Big brands use it to build loyalty. Every program works because it helps someone grow their business.Tom also explains how Loop, TerraCycle’s reuse division for consumer packaging, is scaling fast in France and Japan. The reason isn’t culture. It’s the right rules and incentives.This is a conversation about reimagining the entire business model of recycling and reuse—so waste stays out of the landfill, and the value shows up on the P&L.Show NotesGuest: Tom Szaky, CEO Company: TerraCycleFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling, subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

When Roger Griffiths first heard about Formula E in 2014, he was intrigued but skeptical. A veteran of IndyCar, Le Mans, and Formula 1—and a self-described petrol head—he wasn’t convinced electric racing could deliver credible performance.Then he saw who was signing on.Michael Andretti. Alain Prost. Emerson Fittipaldi. Frank Williams. Plus early backers like Richard Branson. Racing legends and global brands were putting their reputations behind an all-electric series built for city streets, digital-native fans, and a new kind of mobility.That’s when Roger knew: failure wasn’t an option.He joined Andretti Global to help lead its Formula E team. Today, he’s Team Principal and Chairman of the Formula E Teams Association.Just over a decade later, Formula E is the fastest-growing motorsport on Earth. It races through city centers, draws 500 million fans, and connects with a global audience that legacy motorsports can’t reach.Roger takes us inside how Formula E became the sport brands chase, fans love, and the future demands.Show NotesGuest: Roger Griffiths, Team Principal, Andretti Formula ECompany: Andretti GlobalFor more Supercool climate solutions that cut carbon, improve modern life, and shape the new low carbon economy, subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Youtube Channel* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram and Linkedin 

Grid battery storage has gone from niche to necessary. Fast. Projects that were once 300 megawatt-hours are now hitting 9 gigawatt-hours. And companies like Wärtsilä are leading the charge, taking on the hardest, highest-stakes deployments around the world.In this episode, Dave Hebert, VP of Global Sales & Business Strategy for Wärtsilä's Energy Storage division, takes us inside the systems powering the clean energy transition. Wärtsilä has deployed over 17 gigawatt-hours of storage—enough to power millions of homes for hours at a time—across more than 130 projects worldwide. Many of these are first-of-a-kind systems built in remote deserts, on islands, and in densely populated urban neighborhoods, where batteries now operate alongside people, not just power lines.Dave shares what it takes to deliver at this level: fire safety, noise control, seismic readiness, cybersecurity, and software managing millions of real-time data points across every cell.Battery storage now sits at the heart of the energy transition. It’s how we make solar and wind reliable. How we stabilize grids shaped by AI, EVs, and electrified homes. Wärtsilä is building that future, where others won’t.Show NotesGuest: Dave Hebert, VP of Global Sales & Business StrategyCompany: Wärtsilä Energy StorageFor more Supercool climate solutions now scaling, subscribe or follow the podcast, plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* YouTube Channel* Supercool on LinkedIn and Instagram

Jaime Pumarejo helped lead Barranquilla, Colombia, through a stunning transition. When he first joined the city’s government in his twenties, Barranquilla was under bankruptcy protection, poverty was high, and public trust was fractured. Today, it serves as a global model for how climate action can drive economic growth, attract investment, and deliver tangible benefits to people’s lives.In 2020, when Pumarejo became mayor, he accelerated the transformation. He established a public-private tree company to enhance property values, increase tax revenue, and enhance climate resilience. Delivered 300 parks co-designed by residents. Made biodiversity and eco-tourism part of the city’s economic engine. And positioned Barranquilla to lead on clean energy, with major solar projects and Colombia’s first offshore wind farm underway.Jaime also secured capital on better terms. Convinced development banks to change how they lend. And showed that cities aren’t risky—they’re investable.Now, as a member of the SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, he’s helping cities around the world unlock the climate capital they need to cut emissions and build the low-carbon future.This is what the ROI on climate looks like. Not someday—now.Show NotesGuest: Jaime PumarejoOrganization: SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, whose Secretariat is housed at the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR)For more Supercool climate solutions that cut carbon, improve modern life, and shape the new low carbon economy, subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Youtube Channel* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram and Linkedin 

The energy grid we know today was built for a different era—centralized generation, one-way power flow, no rooftop solar, no EVs, no AI-driven demand. If Thomas Edison were alive, he’d recognize it instantly. And that’s the problem.Raghu Belur bet the system would have to change. In 2006, he co-founded Enphase Energy and started from the distributed edge, designing a microinverter that made every solar panel smart, efficient, and self-reliant.That foundation became the starting point for a new kind of energy system—built to turn homes into mini power plants and partners to the grid, not just customers.Today, Enphase delivers integrated home energy systems encompassing solar, storage, EV charging, and intelligent management software that give homeowners control, reliability, and resilience in a rapidly shifting energy landscape.Raghu’s story embodies the American Dream—a young immigrant who came to the U.S. to study engineering, absorbed the best of Silicon Valley, and built a company reshaping how energy works in homes around the world. He joins Supercool to discuss how the decentralized grid isn’t just some day, it’s already here.Show NotesGuest: Raghu Belur, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer Company: Enphase Energy Video link referenced: American Innovation: Making Enphase Batteries in TexasFor more Supercool climate solutions that cut carbon, improve modern life, and shape the new low-carbon economy, subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Youtube Channel* Weekly Newsletter* Supercool on Instagram and Linkedin