Climate Confident

<p><b>Climate Confident is the podcast for business leaders, policy-makers, and climate tech professionals who want real, practical strategies for slashing emissions, fast.</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Every Wednesday at 7am CET, I sit down with the people doing the work, executives, engineers, scientists, innovators, to unpack how they’re driving measurable climate action across industries, from energy and transport to supply chains, agriculture, and beyond.</p><p><br /></p><p>This isn’t about vague pledges or greenwashing. It’s about what’s working, and what isn’t, so you can make smarter decisions, faster.</p><p><br /></p><p>We cover:</p><p><br /></p><ul><li>Scalable solutions in energy, mobility, food, and finance</li><li>The politics and policies shaping the energy transition</li><li>Tools and tech transforming climate accountability and risk</li><li>Hard truths, bold ideas, and real-world success stories</li></ul><p><br /></p><p>👉 <b>Climate Confident+</b> subscribers get full access to the complete archive, <b>230+ episodes of deep, data-driven insights</b>.</p><p><br />🎧 Not ready to subscribe? No worries, you’ll still get the most recent 30 days of episodes for free.</p><p><br /></p><p>Want to shape the conversation? I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line anytime at <b>Tom@tomraftery.com - </b>whether it’s feedback, a guest suggestion, or just a hello.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ready to stop doomscrolling and start climate-doing? Hit follow and let’s get to work.</p>

Decarbonising Shipping with Drop-In Waste-Based Fuels

Send me a message What if the fastest way to decarbonise shipping isn’t a shiny new fuel, but the waste it’s already throwing away? Shipping moves 90% of global trade, yet it’s still one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise. In this episode, I’m joined by Nicholas Ball, CEO and founder of XFuel, to unpack why cost, physics, and adoption matter more than climate theatre when cutting emissions at scale. Nicholas leads a company turning difficult waste streams, including oily residues from ship...

12-17
38:48

Deep Sea Minerals and the Future of Climate Tech

Send me a message What if the clean energy transition depended on potato-sized rocks four miles under the Pacific, and we’ve barely started talking about it? In this episode I’m joined by Oliver Gunasekara, CEO and co-founder of Impossible Metals, to tackle one of the most uncomfortable truths in climate tech: there is no net zero without mining. We dig into how deep sea polymetallic nodules, AI-driven underwater robots and smarter policy could reshape the energy transition, emissions reducti...

12-10
47:35

The 30% Solar Breakthrough: Perovskites and the Future of Power

Send me a message What happens when solar stops being just “cheap” and becomes game-changingly efficient as well, pushing past 30% and reshaping global power economics? In this episode, I sit down with Aaron Thurlow, a 25-year solar veteran and commercial lead at Caelux, to unpack how perovskite-silicon tandem modules could transform not just clean energy - but the resilience, cost base, and strategic footing of every organisation betting on electrification. With AI, manufacturing, and data c...

12-03
36:03

Inside the Solar PPA Model Driving Clean Energy Growth

Send me a message What if the real disruption in solar isn’t the technology — but the business model behind it? This week I’m joined by Scott Therien, Director of Strategic Partnerships at REC Solar, to unpack one of the most important, and least discussed, shifts in the energy transition: the move from one-off construction projects to long-term, risk-bearing power-purchase agreements. It’s a change that’s quietly reshaping who owns energy infrastructure, who carries the financial risk, and h...

11-26
43:11

The Regeneration Mindset for Climate Action

Send me a message What if cutting emissions isn’t enough, and never was? And what if the real lever we’ve been ignoring is regeneration, not reduction? This week I’m joined by Chad Frischmann, co-creator of Project Drawdown and founder of Regenerative Intelligence, for a conversation that goes right to the core of what the climate movement keeps getting wrong. We dig into why stopping global warming requires more than technology, pledges, or net-zero spreadsheets. It demands a full systems sh...

11-19
49:38

Decarbonising Heat: Why Half of Industrial Energy Is Ripe for Reinvention

Send me a message Most people never think about industrial heat. Yet half of all manufacturing emissions come from it. My guest this week, Addison Stark, CEO and co-founder of AtmosZero, is on a mission to electrify one of the dirtiest, most overlooked pieces of infrastructure on Earth: the steam boiler. In this episode, Addison and I uncover how a technology unchanged since the 1860s can finally go clean. We talk about the hidden carbon footprint of steam, why “waste heat recovery” can actua...

11-12
49:22

Microgrids, Hydrogen, and the End of Fossil Fuels

Send me a message What if business, not politics, held the real key to ending the climate crisis? In this week’s episode, I sit down with Rinaldo Brutoco, founder and CEO of the World Business Academy, to explore a radical but beautifully simple idea: that stakeholder capitalism - where companies serve people and planet, not just shareholders, can actually outperform the old profit-only model. Rinaldo’s been proving it for decades, from helping shut down a dangerous nuclear plant in Californi...

11-05
01:00:31

The 60 Million Home Challenge: Inside Zero Homes’ Plan to Electrify America

Send me a message What if upgrading your home to be climate-friendly was as simple as scanning it with your phone? In this week’s episode of the Climate Confident Podcast, I talk with Grant Gunnison, founder and CEO of Zero Homes - a former NASA and MIT engineer who’s now tackling one of climate tech’s toughest challenges: decarbonising existing homes. His company uses smartphone scans and digital twins to design fully-scoped, permit-ready electrification plans - no site visit, no clipboard, ...

10-29
43:34

Why Traditional VC Is Failing the Climate, and What Comes Next

Send me a message In this week’s episode of Climate Confident, I sat down with Johanna Wolfson, co-founder and general partner at Azolla Ventures, to talk about how we can rethink climate-tech investing - not as a game of chasing returns, but as a mission to fund what truly matters. Johanna’s firm takes a bold approach using catalytic capital, money that embraces higher risk to bring breakthrough technologies from lab to market. We explored why that matters right now, as parts of the venture ...

10-22
43:15

How Lignin Could Replace 40% of the World’s Plastics, and Cut Emissions Fast

Send me a message In this week’s episode of Climate Confident, I sat down with Christopher Carrick, founder and CTO of Lignin Industries, to explore a game-changing innovation in the fight against plastic pollution, turning waste from the paper industry into carbon-negative bioplastics. Christopher’s story starts in his kitchen, where curiosity (and a Star Wars ice-cube tray) led to a breakthrough: modifying lignin, the brown polymer in wood, so it can be melted, shaped, and blended into ever...

10-15
43:47

Food for the Planet: How Elior North America Cut Food Waste by 64% and are Decarbonising Food

Send me a message In this week’s episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Sherie Nelson, Senior Director of Responsibility & Wellness at Elior North America, a food service company serving millions of meals daily across schools, hospitals, universities, and businesses. Sherie sits at the fascinating intersection of nutrition, sustainability, and systems change - proving that what’s good for people is, quite literally, good for the planet. We discuss how Elior has cut food waste by 64% ...

10-08
35:41

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