Seafood provides nearly 20% of the animal protein humans consume globally. This growing source of protein is also rather healthy with many of our nutrient-rich foods coming from aquatic creatures. But already, the supply of our wild capture seafood has flattened, meaning that the vast majority of our global fisheries today are being overfished in an unsustainable manner. Fortunately, Finless Foods and other sustainable seafood startups are working to bring sustainability-driven innovation...

In this week's episode, Gil Jenkins and Hilary Langer speak with Jason Horowitz and Emma Bubola of The New York Times about their recent cover story on Venice's battle against the relentless forces of rising seas. They discuss the unlikely early success of the MOSE sea walls in protecting the city during high water events that have become increasingly commonplace due to climate change.

With extreme weather events proliferating, insurance companies are already on the front lines of climate change. In this episode, Chad Reed speaks with Sarah Chapman, Chief Sustainability Officer for Manulife – one of the world’s largest insurance providers and investment managers. Sarah discusses how Manulife incorporates ESG risks and opportunities, including emissions accounting and biodiversity issues, into its operations and investment decisions, the three pillars of Manulife’s ambitious...

More than 90% of Fortune 500 companies report their emissions using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP), which supplies the world’s most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standards. But despite significant advances in data analytics around emissions measurement, it’s been nearly a decade since the GHGP was last updated. Thankfully, the NGOs that manage the GHGP recently kicked off the update process, soliciting feedback from stakeholders across the spectrum. In this episode, Chad Reed and...

Expanding access to clean energy like solar is essential to global climate goals, and it is especially impactful for the residents on island nations in the Caribbean that face high energy costs and are exposed to increasingly violent storms. As the director of projects for the Rocky Mountain Institute (now known as RMI), Chris Burgess navigates the decarbonization and decentralization of energy in markets that have previously been left out of the energy transition. Hilary Langer and Chris...

In this episode, Gil Jenkins speaks with Peter Krull, Partner & Director of Sustainable Investing at Earth Equity Advisors, A Prime Capital Investment Advisors Company. Peter focuses on creating and managing Earth Equity’s sustainable, responsible, and impact investment portfolios as well as writing thought leadership pieces and elevating the responsible investing story. Gil talks with Peter about his background and journey into the industry, how sustainable investing has evolved from...

Over the last few years, there has been an influx of venture capital seeking out profitable climate tech startups. At the same time, asset-backed financing has become generally more available and cheaper – all else equal – for renewable energy and other sustainable infrastructure projects. But there has been a missing middle – investors willing to underwrite both technology and project-level risk to drive systemic climate positive change. This is why Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP)...

Way back in early 2020, Microsoft made some of the most ambitious climate pledges of any corporation on the planet. It pledged to be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 to remove from the atmosphere all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by way of electricity consumption since its founding nearly 50 years ago. It also launched a $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund to accelerate the global development of technologies required to achieve these pledges. In this episode, Chad...

Kim Kovacs is the Chief Executive Officer of element6 Dynamics. She is spearheading a transformation in the hemp industry to bring industrial hemp production to scale. By replacing tree-based pulp in paper and in packaging, hemp can reduce the pressure to harvest forests while also sequestering carbon and replenishing soils. In this episode, Hilary Langer and Kim Kovacs discuss how hemp works as a carbon sink, why both farmers and corporations are eager to get involved in hemp production,...

Dr. Brian von Herzen is the founder and executive director of the Climate Foundation, and a champion of marine permaculture – a process that the Climate Foundation is bringing to scale to reduce carbon, improve food security and regenerate marine ecosystems. In this episode, Hilary Langer and Brian von Herzen discuss the importance of restoring balance to the ocean, how marine permaculture engages populations that depend on the ocean for food, and how his team plans to expand marine...

Every day, the alphabet soup of climate and ESG-related NGOs seems to thicken. But their respective raisons d’etre can seem like a mystery for all but the closet of insiders. To help unravel the role of each of these organizations in the broader social movement and policy push for urgent climate action, Chad Reed speaks with Ivan Frishberg, the chief sustainability officer of Amalgamated Bank and a pioneer of climate collaboration for big banks and corporates. Given his historically central...

Corals are the gems of the oceans, creating beautiful colors and shapes that form our reefs while serving many vital functions for life on this planet. With 25-40% already lost, the worldwide coral population faces incredible danger from climate change and other threats. But there is hope. On this week’s episode, Hilary and I talk with Dr. David E. Vaughan, an esteemed marine biologist and author of the new book The Secret Life of Corals: Sex, War, and Rocks that Don’t Roll. Dr. Vaughan has...

In this episode, Hilary Langer speaks with Michelle Moore, CEO of the nonprofit Groundswell and author of the recently published book, “Rural Renaissance. Revitalizing America’s Hometowns Through Clean Power.” Michelle has spent her career advocating for equitable power. Her accomplishments range from delivering programs that cut energy use by $11 billion and led to the deployment of 3.2 Gigawatts of new renewable energy production while leading sustainability for the Obama Administration;...

In this episode, Gil Jenkins speaks with Justin Gillis and Hal Harvey, authors of the recently published book “The Big Fix: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet.” The book offers an everyday citizen's guide to the seven essential changes our communities must enact to bring our greenhouse gas emissions down to zero. Justin Gillis spent a decade as an award-winning reporter for The New York Times covering climate change, where he is a contributing opinion writer for the newspaper now and...

If you’re listening to this podcast, you have probably heard of Shayle Kann. Shayle has been at the frontier of climatetech research, media, and investing for over 15 years. Now a partner with the venture capital firm Energy Impact Partners (EIP), Shayle leads EIP’s Frontier Fund, which invests in revolutionary technologies to enable deep decarbonization. Of course, he’s also the host of the popular climate tech podcast from Canary Media, Catalyst with Shayle Kann. In this episode, Chad Reed...

As more and more leading companies, governments, and other large buyers of electricity pledge to procure 100% carbon-free energy (CFE), markets are in need of better, more granular information on the time, location, and emissionality of every megawatt-hour that is produced and consumed. To this end, EnergyTag – an independent, non-profit, industry-led initiative – is developing the standards and markets for Granular Certificates (GCs) that enable energy consumers to verify the source of their...

Deia Bayoumi is the Vice President of Global Product Management at Bloom Energy, a San Jose-based company whose mission is to make clean, reliable, and affordable energy for everyone globally. In this episode, Deia, a global innovation executive with more than three decades of experience, discusses Bloom’s unique fuel cell and clean hydrogen solutions and the role these technologies play in addressing climate change. Bloom is changing the future of energy with its leading solid oxide platform...

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA ruled that the Clean Air Act does not authorize the EPA to require a systematic shift to cleaner sources of electricity generation. Many fear this decision will be devastating to the agency’s and the executive branch’s ability to move the U.S. away from carbon-intensive energy sources and toward cleaner resources to address climate change in the accelerated timeline necessary to avoid its worst impacts. So, in this episode,...

For decades, many have called nuclear fusion the “holy grail” of energy sources. The undying hope is that fusion will someday provide very cheap, abundant, zero-carbon electricity to all – thereby both decisively addressing the climate crisis and powering economic growth across the globe. But despite decades of well-funded research and even recent technological breakthroughs, we still seem to be years away from a commercially viable fusion reactor. In this episode, Chad Reed speaks with Jim...

In this episode, Gil Jenkins speaks with internationally renowned economist, author, and activist John Perkins. John Perkins was formerly chief economist at a major consulting firm, where he advised the World Bank, United Nations, Fortune 500 corporations, and the U.S. and other governments—though much of this was a part of his previous work as an economic hit man he later denounced and became a whistleblower on, as he detailed in his New York Times Bestselling memoir, Confessions of an...

This week we’re presenting a special bonus episode where Gil Jenkins joined fellow podcasters for the most recent edition of the Cleantech Podcasters Quarterly Roundtable, hosted by Tigercomm & SunCast Media. We covered topics such as the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on EPA power plant regulations, the implications for energy markets due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, the escalating attacks by pro-fossil fuel pundits, and a whole lot more. Please note that we recorded this...

As CEO of GridPoint, Mark Danzenbaker believes that energy efficiency can be harnessed to make the power grid more sustainable and resilient. GridPoint does this by installing energy optimization hardware in mid-sized commercial buildings that are often overlooked by efficiency programs. GridPoint works with corporations that have many sites across the country and provides real time data on savings and energy consumption for a client’s portfolio of buildings. As their reach has expanded,...

With the meteoric rise in net-zero commitments and “green” capital raises by corporations and financial institutions, investors and consumers are wondering if these statements are credible. Do “green” labels actually accelerate the flow of capital to companies and projects seeking to improve our climate future? In this episode, Chad Reed sits down with Desiree Fixler (former chief sustainability officer at DWS), Tim Mohin (chief sustainability officer at Persefoni), and Erik Becker (senior...

Climate change solutions typically center on carbon, and addressing carbon is essential for a safer climate future. But we sometimes forget that carbon isn’t the only culprit. Fluorinated gases such as old HVAC refrigerants can have more than 10,000 times the climate-changing potential of carbon. The climate research nonprofit Project Drawdown determined that refrigerant management is one of the most impactful ways to mitigate climate change. As CEO of Tradewater, Tim Brown is racing to...

Sheldon Kimber has built from scratch multiple successful enterprises over his two decades in the energy industry. Now the CEO and Co-Founder of Intersect Power, a developer and owner of some of the world’s largest clean energy resources, Sheldon is working to bring innovative and scalable low-carbon solutions to customers across North America. Earlier this year, Sheldon published an article entitled, “The Nexus of Deep Decarbonization,” in which he discusses the five inevitable industries...