Dr. Sarah Kapnick serves as the Chief Scientist at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which plays a critical role in understanding and predicting changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts. Bringing a unique mix of science and finance to NOAA, Dr. Kapnick's background includes a stint as a senior climate scientist at JP Morgan Chase, a leadership role at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and an early career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. She...

Ning Mosberger-Tang is the founder and president at 1.5 Climate Strategies Group, alongside a host of other climate and civic organizations. As one of the pioneering female engineers at Google, Ning played a crucial role in the development of Google's initial advertising platform. Transitioning from Google in 2006, her focus shifted towards combating climate change. Presently, she spearheads multiple organizations dedicated to instigating change. This discussion spans her endeavors in...

Dr. Peter Fiske is the Executive Director at the National Alliance for Water Innovation or NAWI. NAWI is a collection of 19 universities, four national labs and 190 plus US water companies committed to developing new technologies to enable distributed desalination and water reuse. They're a five-year, $110 million research program supported by the US Department of Energy in partnership with the California Department of Water Resources and the California State Water Resources Control Board....

Eric Law is the CEO and co-founder of Urban Machine. Urban Machine develops robotics and AI to reclaim lumber from construction and demolition for re-use. They claim that 37 million tons of wood goes into landfills annually, and much of that wood could be reused. Their robotic machines specialize in the necessary steps to prep wood for reconditioning. In 2022, Urban Machine successfully secured a seed funding round, spearheaded by Lower Carbon Capital and supported by GV (Google...

Brandon Hurlbut, our guest on this episode, wears multiple hats. He's co-founder at Boundary Stone Partners, a climate change focused government affairs firm created in 2013 that operates at the intersection of technology, finance, and policy. He's also co-founder of Overture, an early stage climate tech venture capital firm that recently announced a $60 million debut fund, and he is an operating partner at NGP, a private equity fund focused on energy with billions of dollars under...

Kim Stanley Robinson, renowned science fiction author, is our guest on this episode of MCJ. He is the author of the Ministry for the Future, a novel which outlines humanity's attempts to navigate climate change in the coming decades. Former President Barack Obama named the Ministry for the Future as one of his favorite books of 2020. The work has been cited by numerous entrepreneurs and builders in the MCJ member community as having had a significant impact on their interest in working on...

Subodh Kulkarni is CEO and President at Rigetti Computing, and our topic in this episode is quantum computing and its implications for our changing planet. Rigetti Computing, a publicly listed company, builds quantum computers and superconducting quantum processors. It also provides cloud-based access to quantum computing for both commercial and research purposes. Quantum computing, a field rooted in theoretical physics, is complex and involves the use of quantum bits or qubits, which...

Eric Letvin serves as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s deputy assistant administrator for mitigation. Eric directs FEMA's pre and post-disaster mitigation programs that support sustainable disaster resilient communities to avoid or reduce the loss of life, property and financial impacts of natural hazards. We talk about Eric's career journey, a brief history of FEMA and what the agency does before, during, and after natural hazards or disasters. We emphasize the importance...

Dr. Britt Wray is a science communicator and the author of two books. Her latest is Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety, which is a national bestseller. Dr. Wray is also the director of CIRCLE (Community-minded Interventions for Resilience, Climate Leadership, and Emotional wellbeing) at Stanford Psychiatry, a research and action initiative in the Stanford School of Medicine. Her first book, the Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction...

On this episode of My Climate Journey, we have two guests: Susan Schofer and Po Bronson. Susan is partner at SOSV and Chief Science Officer at Hax, which is SOSV's initiative around hard tech. She has a PhD in chemistry from Caltech, and most recently spent eight years at Modern Meadow, a growth stage startup in the bio leather space. Po is general partner at SOSV, and managing director of IndieBio, which is SOSV's initiative around biotech. Po has written seven New York Times bestsellers,...

Dan Yates is the CEO and Chairman of Dandelion Energy, a Series B Stage startup deploying solutions for residential geothermal energy. As Dan explains it, residential geothermal distinguishes itself from utility-scale geothermal by not aiming to exploit a scarce, underground heat source for electricity generation through turbines. Instead, the process involves circulating an aqueous solution through a closed loop underground. This allows the system to harness the stable temperature of the...

Today’s guests are Dr. Melissa Burt and Dr. Emily Fischer, who are part of a group called the Science Moms. The Science Moms are a consortium of climate scientists who are also mothers and who are, in their words, working to give our children the planet they deserve. They aim to demystify climate science and motivate everyday moms to demand climate change plans and solutions. Dr. Burt is an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University with a focus...

Prakash Govindan is COO and Co-founder at Gradiant. Gradiant is a Series D stage company that develops technology for industrial wastewater treatment. They work with Fortune 500 clients across a range of industries, including semiconductor fabrication, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, mining, and more, to help them reuse water in their operations. Prakash discusses his background, experiences with water scarcity during his childhood in India, how he met his co-founder during his...

Ben Hubbard is CEO and Co-founder at Nexus PMG, an infrastructure advisory and project development organization dedicated to reducing carbon intensity and enhancing resource efficiency. Ben co-founded Nexus PMG in 2013 after multiple years of working on complex metal refining facilities in locations including Mongolia and Saudi Arabia. In this episode, Cody and Ben cover how Nexus PMG got started, what key risks the firm explores when assessing a project for development capital, Ben's advice...

Roy Mittleider is the director of training for CalCERTS. CalCERTS is one of California's Home Energy Rating System providers (or HERS), which is an acronym we use a lot in this episode. They operate in the state under the conditional approval of the California Energy Commission, or the CEC. CalCERTS provides specialized HERS training and certification, performs quality assurance on all HERS Raters they certify, and maintains an online data registry of permits and records of energy efficiency...

Dr. Denise Baden is Professor of Sustainable Business at the University of Southampton and founder of Green Stories. At Green Stories, Dr. Baden has run 16 writing competitions since 2018, focused around sustainability and storytelling. She is herself also the author of multiple eco-fiction novels, including Habitat Man and is the editor of a collection of short stories called No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet. She's working with BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and...

Sarah Lamaison is the CEO and Co-founder of Dioxycle. Dioxycle is developing technology to produce sustainable ethylene from recycled carbon emissions. Ethylene is the world's most used organic chemical and it's a precursor to many everyday products including construction materials, plastics, and textile fibers. Indeed, it's a core feedstock for polyester. Ethylene is also an enormous market at well over $100 billion. We were excited to learn from Sarah about Dioxycle as an example of a...

Bruce Niven is the Head of Strategic Venturing at Aramco Ventures. Aramco Ventures is the corporate venturing arm of Aramco, a world-leading integrated energy and chemicals company. As of 2022, it was the second-largest company in the world by revenue. It also has both the world's second-largest proven crude oil reserves at more than 270 billion barrels and largest daily oil production of all oil producing companies. Bruce joined Aramco Ventures 11 years ago to build the corporate venture...

Scott Gale is Executive Director at Halliburton Labs. Halliburton is a complex company. It’s a 100-year-old oil field services giant, known for its extensive fracking operations and infrastructure expertise in the oil and gas sector. It is not an oil and gas distributor like Chevron or Exxon, but it is a powerhouse nonetheless. With their Halliburton Labs program, Scott and team are actively investing in and supporting the innovation ecosystem around clean energy and climate tech. They...

Eloa Guillotin is the Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Aero. The topic of aviation emissions is complex. Flying is in many ways a crucial part of our global society, and although COVID lockdowns temporarily reduced frequent flying, the reliance on air travel in modern society is indisputable. Aviation accounts for over 2% of global emissions. Lithium-ion batteries are heavy, which doesn't really pair well with flight. Sustainable aviation fuel is one potential solution and has promise as a...

Barbara Burger is the former president of Chevron Technology Ventures and describes herself as a "corporate graduate." She now spends her time advising and helping startups and venture funds working on the energy transition, including Greentown Labs, Energy Impact Partners, Emerald Technology Ventures, Syzygy Plasmonics, Heliogen, and many more. In this episode, we discuss her multifaceted career journey and her current role in guiding startups and venture funds in the energy sector. The...

Chris Higgins works for the city of Vancouver, British Columbia as a building planner, where he spearheads the development of energy-efficient building codes that contribute to Vancouver's ambition of achieving 100% renewable energy by 2050. Chris works on reducing greenhouse gas emissions through rezoning building policies for new buildings to be on all renewables, the “sticks,” and creating incentives for existing homes to switch to renewables, the “carrots.” On the “stick” side, Chris was...

Tom Ferguson is founder and managing partner at Burnt Island Ventures, which is an early-stage venture capital fund focused on technologies related to water. Burnt Island's website notes that climate change is water change. And that water is the medium through which we will feel the effects of a warming earth. Tom has been working in water for over a decade, first at the sustainability consultancy, ERM, then at Imagine H2O, a non-profit startup accelerator for water startups. He’s been at...

Stanley Janicki is the Chief Revenue Officer at Sedron Technologies. Sedron is on a mission to revolutionize how waste streams can be processed to eliminate disposal costs and destroy pathogens while capturing valuable energy and recycling water. Their Varcor system takes liquid waste slurries and recovers nutrients for beneficial reuse. Their primary go-to-market implementations today are in three areas: dairy and animal agriculture, wastewater treatment and distillery waste. The company...