Watt It Takes

According to the World Economic Forum, if we want to reach a carbon-neutral future, the world will depend on emerging markets to build energy systems that rely on clean energy instead of fossil fuels. However, only one fifth of global clean energy investments are being channeled into emerging markets. Financing the development of distributed renewable energy projects has been slow and challenging for interested investors and project developers. In order to facilitate the growth of distributed renewable energy in emerging markets, and connect financiers, equipment providers, and project developers who see the immense opportunity in decarbonizing growth in emerging markets, we need a platform where all stakeholders get what they need to finance, build, and track the performance of these projects.  That’s exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Emily McAteer, co-founder and CEO of Odyssey Energy Solutions, is building. At Odyssey, Emily and her team are building a new kind of platform to make it possible for distributed renewable energy projects to launch in emerging markets, by connecting financiers, equipment providers, and project developers, and providing the remote monitoring and control needed to assess performance.Emily joined the podcast to speak about her journey from Concord, Massachusetts, to working on Wall Street, to the lecture that would change her life, to founding Odyssey and building a platform that’s responsible for the deployment of ~ 2.5 million standalone solar systems and positively impacting the lives of 15 million people. SponsorsWatt It Takes is brought to you by Microsoft and Shell Ventures.The $1 Billion Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund is investing in innovative technologies that have the potential for meaningful, measurable climate impact by 2030. To date, Microsoft has allocated more than $700M into a global portfolio of over 50 investments including sustainable solutions in energy, industrial, and natural systems. Visit https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/ to learn more about Microsoft’s progress toward their impact commitments. Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.About Powerhouse and Powerhouse VenturesPowerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations and investors to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate.Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our climate positive future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

Residential energy use accounts for about 20% of greenhouse emissions in the U.S., making it one of the most important sectors to decarbonize. As the world electrifies and consumers become more climate-conscious, energy will become one of the next consumer engagement frontiers. The WattBuy platform connects clean energy providers with residential customers, helps consumers save money on their energy bills, and helps companies engage customers with insights and provide enhanced offerings and services.In this episode, Emily Kirsch sits down with WattBuy Co-Founder & CEO Naman Trivedi to learn more about founding the company, WattBuy’s mission to decarbonize the grid, and building a platform that has generated 20 gigawatt hours of renewable energy for homeowners and renters, and helped them save upwards of $4M on their energy bills.SponsorsWatt It Takes is brought to you by Microsoft and Shell Ventures.The $1 Billion Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund is investing in innovative technologies that have the potential for meaningful, measurable climate impact by 2030. To date, Microsoft has allocated more than $700M into a global portfolio of over 50 investments including sustainable solutions in energy, industrial, and natural systems. Visit microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility to learn more about Microsoft’s progress toward their impact commitments.Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.About Powerhouse and Powerhouse VenturesPowerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations and investors to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate.Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our climate positive future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

Some experts are calling 2024 the “make or break year” for the voluntary and compliance carbon markets, which were rocked by a shaky 2023. To usher in a new era of effective and impactful carbon markets, the verification process needs a major tech update, and a serious credibility boost.Marion Verles founded SustainCERT to be the first fully digital carbon project verification platform and Scope 3 emissions verification solution.The team at SustainCERT is employing a novel approach to verify a project’s impact on the carbon cycle, and it starts with building a digital platform where project developers and suppliers can enter, track, and adjust their projects in accordance with valuable data insights.SustainCERT has raised $47M, has a team of more than 100, and has developed what they describe as the first fully digital carbon project verification platform and, more recently, a Scope 3 emissions verification solution. I spoke to Marion about her journey, from her childhood in the south of France, to founding her first company in Cambodia after starting her career in finance, to launching and leading a digital-first verification platform.SponsorsWatt It Takes is brought to you by Microsoft and Shell Ventures.The $1 Billion Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund is investing in innovative technologies that have the potential for meaningful, measurable climate impact by 2030. To date, Microsoft has allocated more than $700M into a global portfolio of over 50 investments including sustainable solutions in energy, industrial, and natural systems. Visit microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/ to learn more about Microsoft’s progress toward their impact commitments.Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.About Powerhouse and Powerhouse VenturesPowerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations and investors to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate.Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our climate positive future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

On November 17th, 2023 the average global temperature was temporarily 2 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrialization, an event with ominous climate implications. To slow global climate change, we need to find ways to supercharge natural carbon removal processes like ocean alkalization, and do it in a way that is good for the planet. That’s exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes Guest, Ben Tarbell, Co-Founder and CEO of Ebb Carbon, is doing.The team at Ebb is approaching carbon removal in a way that is both novel and as ancient as the ocean itself; integrating with existing facilities that process seawater, they use electrochemistry to remove acidity, and return the alkaline seawater to the ocean where it can then absorb more carbon.Ebb has raised $23M, has a team of 40, and is deploying their carbon removal system. I spoke to Ben about his journey, from his childhood spent obsessed with building and engineering, to his career in solar, to prototyping the Ebb System in a bathroom-less empty warehouse, to opening Ebb’s first site and starting to meaningfully remove carbon via the ocean. SponsorsWatt It Takes is brought to you by Microsoft and Shell Ventures.The $1 Billion Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund is investing in innovative technologies that have the potential for meaningful, measurable climate impact by 2030. To date, Microsoft has allocated more than $700M into a global portfolio of over 50 investments including sustainable solutions in energy, industrial, and natural systems. Visit microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/ to learn more about Microsoft’s progress toward their impact commitments. Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.About Powerhouse and Powerhouse VenturesPowerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations and investors to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate.Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our climate positive future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we need to return Earth’s atmosphere to 280 parts per million of CO2 for the health of human existence and that of the planet. To achieve that goal, industry experts believe we’ll need to be removing 10-20 billion tons of carbon per year by 2050. Removing carbon is exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Peter Reinhardt, Co-Founder and CEO of Charm Industrial, is doing. The team at Charm has developed a novel process for removing carbon using biomass that is converted to bio-oil via pyrolysis, and then injected into wells deep underground, where it is permanently stored for thousands of years if not millennia. Charm is also developing a process for fossil-free ironmaking.Charm has raised $125M, has a team of 50, and is scaling their carbon removal operations. I spoke to Peter about Charm’s mission to turn the tide of global climate change with carbon removal; from his childhood as a self identified “hard core math nerd” with a passion for the environment, to his early career as a ridiculously successful tech entrepreneur, to switching gears and delivering a carbon removal process to a planet that needs it now more than ever. SponsorsWatt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures and SPAN.Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.SPAN are the makers of the award-winning SPAN Panel—a smart electrical panel that enhances how homeowners interact with their energy. Interested in advancing your career at one of the premier companies in Climate Technology or getting SPAN installed in your home? Visit www.span.io to learn more.About Powerhouse and Powerhouse VenturesPowerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations and investors to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate.Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our climate positive future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

According to researchers around the world, fusion could be a nearly waste-free, carbon-free, and all-geography answer to creating enough dispatchable power to get us through the energy transition. To achieve this, all components of a fusion power plant need to be built so that when fusion energy becomes a reality, we have the industry, infrastructure, and processes in place to distribute the power, and it has to be cost competitive. This is exactly what Bob Mumgaard, Co-Founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), is building. Today, CFS has more than 600 employees, has raised $2B, and is executing on their plan to make the “holy grail” of fusion energy possible. Guest host Lara Pierpoint sat down with Bob to learn more about his journey, the CFS story, and the work being advanced by his team.Sponsors Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures and SPAN.Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.SPAN are the makers of the award-winning SPAN Panel—a smart electrical panel that enhances how homeowners interact with their energy. Interested in advancing your career at one of the premier companies in Climate Technology or getting SPAN installed in your home? Visit www.span.io to learn more.About Powerhouse and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations and investors to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Climate change-fuelled natural disasters and vulnerable transmission infrastructure have defined some of the worst natural disasters of the past decade, including the 2020 wildfires in California. It’s clearer than ever that in high-risk areas, above-ground transmission lines need to be dug underground to protect communities from fires and to ensure their access to electricity in the face of increasing natural disasters. And that’s exactly why this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Kim Abrams, founder and CEO of Petra, is building a trenchless digging platform to make undergrounding utilities easier and more cost-effective. Today, Petra has 72 employees across multiple continents, has raised $45M, and is winning contracts to underground transmission in the US and Colombia.Guest host Lara Pierpoint sat down with Kim to learn how they're enabling utility undergrounding, more about their trenchless technology making it all possible, and the story behind how she founded Petra.Watt It Takes is brought to you by SPAN.SPAN are the makers of the award-winning SPAN Panel—a smart electrical panel that enhances how homeowners interact with their energy. Interested in advancing your career at one of the premier companies in Climate Technology or getting SPAN installed in your home? Visit www.span.io to learn more.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

From induction cooktops and heat pumps to the rooftop solar needed to power it all and the batteries to store excess energy for use during blackouts, we’ve had incredible success building the tools we need to decarbonize our homes. But to the regular consumer, the universe of electrified solutions can be overwhelming. What we need is a home battery system and an integrated ecosystem of all electric products to make it easier than ever for homes to switch from gas to electricity, alongside software solutions to help manage residential energy production, storage, and usage. And that’s exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Kunal Girotra, Founder and CEO of Lunar Energy, is building.Lunar emerged from stealth last year with $300M in funding from SK Group and Sunrun, now has 250 employees, and publicly unveiled their integrated residential energy product last week.Emily sat down with Kunal to learn about how they're building the future of residential electrification, his journey from growing up in India to leading energy at Tesla, and the story behind the growth of Lunar Energy.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures and SPAN.Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.SPAN are the makers of the award-winning SPAN Panel—a smart electrical panel that enhances how homeowners interact with their energy. Interested in advancing your career at one of the premier companies in Climate Technology or getting SPAN installed in your home? Visit www.span.io to learn more.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

If the world is going to make the switch from fossil fuels to clean energy, we’re going to need lots of energy storage, and a lot of lithium. The global transition to clean energy is expected to trigger a 40-fold increase in the demand for lithium by 2040. Lithium is in high demand, but current methods for lithium extraction make it difficult and expensive to source. Conventional extraction methods take up lots of land, use lots of water and energy, and often have devastating environmental impacts. Traditional lithium extraction uses massive evaporation ponds, where lithium-rich-brine, (meaning saline groundwater that is rich in lithium) is pumped to the surface and evaporated until it can be processed and extracted. These projects often require as much as 10,000 acres of land, and only recover 40% of the lithium available in the brine. To make the lithium ion batteries we need to power our electrified world, and more specifically to power the electrification of transportation, we’ll need to source lithium in a way that doesn’t harm the environment, yields tons of high purity lithium concentrate, and uses as little land as possible. And that’s exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Dave Syndacker, Founder and CEO of Lilac Solutions, is building. Lilac Solutions created superior ion exchange beads using ceramic materials that absorb lithium from brine. Lithium rich brine is pumped into a vessel containing the ion exchange beads, which absorb the lithium. Then, hydrochloric or sulfuric acid is used to flush out the lithium to produce lithium chloride or sulfate. Those intermediate forms of lithium are then converted to lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide which get used to make batteries.Emily spoke to Dave about his journey to becoming a founder, from his childhood on the beach in Rhode Island, to leading seminars about battery technology at Northwestern where a few provocative questions from fellow students put Dave on the path to create Lilac.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures and SPAN.Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.SPAN are the makers of the award-winning SPAN Panel—a smart electrical panel that enhances how homeowners interact with their energy. Interested in advancing your career at one of the premier companies in Climate Technology or getting SPAN installed in your home? Visit www.span.io to learn more.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

As we speak, there are 600 million people in Africa who lack access to even basic electricity. That’s driven in part by low levels of domestic and foreign investment into electricity infrastructure across the continent: over the last decade, just 3% of capital invested into energy infrastructure worldwide went to Africa. To enable universal energy access in Africa, we’ll need innovative climate financing solutions that get the right kind of capital to the right kind of projects at the right time. And that’s exactly what Kate Steel, Co-Founder and CEO of Nithio, is doing. Nithio uses AI-powered analytics to help investors, local banks, and grant-makers understand payment patterns, credit risk, and portfolio quality in the distributed energy space. They also operate a financing vehicle called Nithio FI that provides loans to distributors that need capital to reach the millions of households with no or unreliable energy access.In this episode, Emily sits down with Kate to hear about the high school ditch day that introduced her to engineering, her journey in energy access, and the work Nithio is doing financing electricity access across Africa. Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures and SPAN.Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.SPAN are the makers of the award-winning SPAN Panel—a smart electrical panel that enhances how homeowners interact with their energy. Interested in advancing your career at one of the premier companies in Climate Technology or getting SPAN installed in your home? Visit www.span.io to learn more.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Concrete is the second most-used material in the world, right behind water. It’s everywhere – in our bridges, our buildings, our homes, our roads. It’s the literal foundation for much of our lives.And cement is a key ingredient in that foundation. It acts as the glue that binds together the water and aggregate to make concrete. Globally, we produced more than four billion tons of cement in 2021, and demand is expected to grow.But for each ton of cement produced, a ton of carbon is emitted due to the fossil fuel-powered heat and reactions needed to produce it. Altogether, the cement industry accounts for 8% of global carbon emissions. To build our net-zero future, we'll need even more concrete for new and existing infrastructure, but we'll also need to clean up cement production to prevent ever increasing emissions.And that's what this month's Watt it Takes guest, Sublime Systems CEO and co-founder Leah Ellis, is doing.Leah and her colleagues at Sublime Systems are decarbonizing the cement industry by creating a process that produces cement with electricity instead of fossil fuels.Emily spoke with Leah about developing the science behind low carbon cement. They also talked about the importance of getting experience in the industry while she was still an academic, and Sublime's ultimate goal of launching a plant capable of producing a million tons of cement a year.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures. Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

The U.S. is on track to deploy 550 gigawatts of new renewables on the grid by 2030. That's a massive amount of solar, wind, and other renewables powering buildings, EVs, appliances, and industrial processes in our increasingly electrified world.Last year electric vehicles (EVs) hit a massive milestone by making up 5% of all new car sales in the U.S. And Bloomberg estimated that more than half of new car sales could be EVs by 2030.That future looks bright, but to keep the headlights on and the wheels turning, the grid will have to be prepared to provide power at triple its current capacity by 2050. Fossil fuel peaker plants have been filling in the gaps left by renewables during times of peak demand. But to reach net-zero by 2050, the U.S. will need more sources of firm power that don't come from coal or natural gas.Thomas Folker, CEO and co-founder of Leap, a Powerhouse Ventures portfolio company, is working to solve that problem. Leap has built the platform needed to turn all of our various grid-connected devices into virtual power plants that can be called upon during times of high demand. Thomas and the team at Leap are helping to prevent the use of fossil fuel power plants called peaker plants, many of which only run during times of high energy and don't actually run on a daily basis.Virtual power plants, or VPPs, aggregate the combined power of EVs, rooftop solar, residential and commercial batteries and other distributed energy resources, or DERs, and make that energy available to areas of high demand. Leap's API makes it simple for these smart, grid-connected devices to collectively act as virtual power plants, and their platform allows their customers to sell that energy to buyers.I spoke with Thomas about leveraging software solutions to solve hard, real-world problems on the grid. We also talked about how his early roles helping build energy projects both big and small gave him a realistic view on what it takes to make lasting change.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures. Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Forests make up a third of all land on Earth,  and they're one of our major defenses against a warming world. 45% of the carbon stored in land exists in forests.Today, our forests are struggling to adapt to human activity and a rapidly changing climate. Deforestation and wildfires continue to ravage habitats like the Amazon. In the U.S.destructive wildfires have increasingly ravaged the West. To protect these valuable ecosystems and carbon sinks, we need to radically change the way we restore, conserve and expand these landscapes.And that's exactly what Vibrant Planet CEO and co-founder Allison Wolff is doing.Allison and the Vibrant Planet team are modernizing forest conservation and restoration with a product called Land Tender, a digital platform that leverages data to help Forest Services, municipalities and tribal lands better manage their conservation and restoration efforts. Allison describes it as the operating system for forest restoration. By digitizing forest conservation and restoration, Land Tender makes it easy for municipal fire districts, conservations districts, nonprofits, and NGOs to coordinate and plan with each other.Different interventions like removing vegetation and prescribed burns can be mapped over time using machine learning and AI to adjust treatments accordingly.Emily spoke with Allison about the process of merging nature-based climate solutions with cutting edge technology, how she developed Land Tender, and Allison’s  long career pushing big tech companies to make positive choices for people and the planet.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures. Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Industrial processes are one of the hardest sectors of the economy to decarbonize. Fossil fuels have been the go-to way of powering the facilities that make paper, plastics, food, beverages, and chemicals. Slashing greenhouse gas emissions from industry means changing the way companies produce their raw materials.The problem: sometimes the hardest sectors to decarbonize are the ones that may not believe in climate change at all, and thus don’t feel the need to change their practices.And that's what Shreya Dave, CEO and co-founder of Via Separations, is changing.Shreya and the team at Via Separations are making it attractive for their customers to decarbonize by providing a cheaper alternative to an often overlooked source of emissions: chemical separations and purification.The traditional way of separating desirable materials is very resource-intensive. Shreya likens the whole process to separating pasta from water in a pot. The water, which is the waste product, is boiled off using heat from fossil fuels to get to just the cooked pasta, or the desirable material, at the bottom of the pot.Via Separations is changing the way separations are done by developing and deploying filtration systems that act like a pasta strainer, filtering out the waste product using less energy and producing less emissions.The energy savings can't be understated. Chemical separations and purification make up a whopping 12 percent of the country's yearly energy consumption. That's on par with all the energy used in gasoline powered cars and trucks in the U.S. every year. Emily spoke with Shreya about the work needed to scale the tech, the importance of speaking to customers about their needs, and the industries Via Separations is going after first.Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures. Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Large swaths of the global economy are very hard to decarbonize with renewables and batteries alone. Steel, cement, aviation – these industries are run on the high heat and explosive force of burning fossil fuels. Together, these activities make up the industrial basement of society; the often overlooked and essential sectors of the economy that can only be made possible, in part, by burning liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons.Cleaning up these sectors requires an energy-dense alternative that can go the distance.And that's exactly what today's guest, Electric Hydrogen CEO and co-founder Raffi Garabedian, is building.Raffi and the team at Electric Hydrogen are building the electrolyzers and supporting infrastructure that can produce the clean, green hydrogen needed to fuel our net-zero future.Hydrogen has the potential to replace the role of petrochemicals altogether. Burning hydrogen could generate the high temperatures that heavy industry requires – without any added carbon emissions. And it could also be used for synthetic fuels in aviation or shipping. But in order to do so, hydrogen production has to clean up its act.And that's what Raffi and Electric Hydrogen are doing by building massive electrolyzers – tractor trailer-sized machines that run electricity through water, splitting it into its basic elements: oxygen and hydrogen.Commercial electrolyzers today are typically 5-10 megawatts. But Electric Hydrogen is aiming for 100 megawatts to drive down costs. By building larger and more efficient electrolyzers with much higher energy inputs, the company aims to produce greater amounts of hydrogen at a price that would make it competitive with natural gas.Emily spoke to Raffi about what it takes to move fast and break bonds in their journey to get green hydrogen down to fossil fuel price parity. They also talked about the balance between being a technologist and entrepreneur, and the infrastructure and innovation we'll need for widespread green hydrogen use in tough to decarbonize industries.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.Watt It Takes is brought to you by our exclusive sponsor, Google Nest. Want to do more to address climate change? Nest Renew offers a simple place to start. To learn more about Nest Renew, visit nestrenew.google.com.  

Over the last decade, solar growth has exploded. Just last year, the U.S. added a record 13 gigawatts of utility-scale solar to the grid. And despite supply chain disruptions and inflation, the average solar panel cost still dropped by 11%. New solar plants are now cheaper to build than new gas or coal-fired power plants. But according to the Department of Energy, for the country to achieve a zero-carbon grid by 2050, we'll need 1,600 gigawatts of solar compared to the 13 we added last year. This means solar will have to break through its current single digit share on the grid. And doing that means drastically rethinking the way developers, owners, and operators keep tabs on new and existing solar projects. That's exactly what Nikhil Vadhavkar, CEO and co-founder of Raptor Maps, is doing. Raptor Maps help utility scale solar owners and operators to build, monitor, maintain, and expand their solar plants. Before Raptor Maps, each solar farm operated in its own silo, essentially disconnected from other solar plants, and relied on old school paper, spreadsheets, and emails to record and track important information.By introducing cutting edge software, Raptor Maps’ took an inefficient process and streamlined it. Emily spoke to Nikhil about what it takes to bring new innovation to the now well-established solar industry. They also talked about Raptor Maps' early transition from potato farms to solar farms and the work it took to build their reputation as an industry standard.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.Watt It Takes is brought to you by our exclusive sponsor, Google Nest. Want to do more to address climate change? Nest Renew offers a simple place to start. To learn more about Nest Renew, visit nestrenew.google.com.

To deploy enough solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and lithium-ion batteries needed to decarbonize the grid, we'll need more of the critical minerals that make these technologies possible.Growing demand for clean technology means an even bigger need for lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and other minerals. Right now the world is on track to double its overall mineral requirements for clean technology by 2040. Yet our domestic mining capacity for these materials is a fraction of what exists overseas.And with the Inflation Reduction Act requiring EV manufacturers to source at least 40% of their critical materials for EV batteries domestically by 2024, demand has already quickly surpassed supply. Battery recycling could help us make up the difference, but today the U.S. recycles less than 5% of its lithium-ion batteries. And that's exactly what Megan O'Connor, CEO and co-founder of Nth Cycle, is changing. Megan and the Nth Cycle team believe they can cut through tons of electronic waste generated each year while shoring up the country's supply of the critical minerals needed to get us to net-zero emissions. Nth Cycle's device, dubbed the OYSTER, uses electro-extraction to selectively filter out individual minerals from e-waste.But recycling batteries is just the beginning. In the near future, the Nth Cycle system can be adapted to refine and process ore coming directly from mining sites - enabling 92% less emissions than traditional processes.Emily spoke with Megan about what it takes to build an entirely new mineral supply chain from the ground up. They also talked about developing Nth Cycle's technology from the lab to the field, and the challenges of building hardware.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.Watt It Takes is brought to you by our exclusive sponsor, Google Nest. Want to do more to address climate change? Nest Renew offers a simple place to start. To learn more about Nest Renew, visit nestrenew.google.com.

The energy we use in our homes remains one of the largest sources of emissions in the country. About 20 percent of our energy-related GHG emissions comes from the fossil fuels used to power gas furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and AC units. With the U.S. predicted to add more than 62 million new homes by 2050, getting fossil fuels out of our houses, apartments and condos is crucial. And we have the tools to do it.Weatherization, insulation, and heat pumps can drastically reduce emissions. But we need to increase consumer awareness and decrease upfront costs for the improvements and technologies needed to decarbonize our homes.Getting there means incentivizing homeowners to view residential energy solutions not as a financial risk, but as a comfort and savings reward. And that's exactly what Lauren Salz, CEO and co-founder of Sealed, is doing.Sealed takes the guesswork out of decarbonizing homes by pairing homeowners with contractors and footing the initial bill themselves. By tying Sealed’s financial performance to homeowners’ energy savings, Sealed provides a massive incentive for homeowners who otherwise might be leery of making their homes more energy efficient.And by monitoring real time energy consumption for their customers, Sealed is able to show up at the end of the day with clear proof of savings. That's real dollars saved and up to 60% less in energy used for Sealed homeowners. Emily spoke with Lauren about what it takes to encourage new growth in the residential efficiency and electrification market. They also talked about her experience as a young founder and CEO.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.Watt It Takes is brought to you by our exclusive sponsor, Google Nest. Want to do more to address climate change? Nest Renew offers a simple place to start. To learn more about Nest Renew, visit nestrenew.google.com.

Earlier this year, solar reached a historic milestone: 1 terawatt of capacity around the world. One trillion watts is a huge achievement. But solar still only makes up 3 percent of the world's electricity. To deploy dozens of terrawatts in the coming years, we'll need to do something about the bottlenecks holding back the planning, design, and construction of the massive solar farms that will make up a renewable-powered grid.Enabling dozens of terawatts of solar development is exactly what this month’s guest, Terabase Energy CEO and co-founder Matt Campbell, is doing.Terabase's mission is to accelerate the build out of utility-scale solar by combining new modeling and design tools with robotics and automation. This combination of modeling software and automation robots is already bringing strong results. Today, Terabase has over 500 engineering, procurement and construction companies, developers, and independent power producers using their platform. Ten gigawatts worth of solar projects have been supported by Terabese across 30 countries. Emily spoke with Matt about what it takes to automate the buildout of utility-scale solar. They also talked about his decade-and-a-half career expanding solar worldwide at SunPower, and what the solar industry's early years taught him about pushing the technology forward.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.Watt It Takes is brought to you by our exclusive sponsor, Google Nest. Want to do more to address climate change? Nest Renew offers a simple place to start. To learn more about Nest Renew, visit nestrenew.google.com.  

Our homes account for 20 percent of America’s greenhouse gas emissions. The fastest way to cut those emissions is to electrify the systems that heat, cool, and power our homes with heat pumps, solar, batteries, and EVs.These technologies are the pillars of residential electrification. But, as more and more homeowners seek to electrify, they’re discovering that a key piece of antiquated technology in their homes is holding them back from their all-electric dream: their electrical panel. That's why our guest, SPAN founder and CEO Arch Rao, is building the electrical panel of the future.Arch and the team at SPAN decided it's time to reimagine the circuit breaker as an enabler of decarbonization. The Span panel gives detailed data on energy use from every device through a companion app – making it easy for homeowners to see how they're saving the most energy, how efficiently each appliance is running, and how to control distributed energy resources.Emily sat down with Arch to talk about what it takes to turn the electrical panel into a product that people will actually care about – and love. They talked about the valuable lessons he learned during his first time as a co-founder of a startup, and how SPAN is making its mark in smart home electrification.Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.Watt It Takes is brought to you by our exclusive sponsor, Google Nest. Want to do more to address climate change? Nest Renew offers a simple place to start. To learn more about Nest Renew, visit nestrenew.google.com.