Everybody in the Pool

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re taking a step back to take a look at the data and see how we’re tracking toward making it to net zero by 2050. Ryan Pancharadsam is a partner at Kleiner Perkins and together with legendary clean tech investor John Doerr, he wrote a book called Speed & Scale, breaking down the climate crisis into a series of categories with accomplishable objectives attached to them. We’ll talk about the tea...

Lots of brands, from BMW to Stella McCartney to Allbirds, are using all-natural fibers, textiles, and even shoe soles that are nontoxic and totally recyclable. And all of those materials come from one place: NFW, or Natural Fiber Welding. Molly Wood interviews Luke Haverhals, the founder and CEO of NFW, about how the company develops “recipes” using abundant natural resources and runs them through existing manufacturing infrastruct...

Sometimes the water-related titles really write themselves. This week, Molly goes under the sea with Julia Marsh of Sway, which is developing a replacement for plastic using seaweed. Julia explains that seaweed is abundant, regenerative, and can be made into a replacement for single-use plastics using almost the exact same processes that are currently used to make plastic. Also, this is a woman who really, really loves seaweed.

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Molly Wood talks to Raghu Belur, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Enphase Energy, about the company's pioneering work in decentralized solar power and their vision for a distributed, software-driven energy system that puts renewable power and storage in the hands of homes and businesses. They discuss Enphase's origins back in Clean Tech 1.0, the importance of microinverters, the role of batteries, and the policy challenges (...

This week, we’re talking about sustainable food production—both an adaptation and a mitigation opportunity. Molly Wood talks with Alexander Olesen, co-founder and CEO of Babylon Micro-farms, who shares the journey from a student project aimed at feeding people in refugee camps to developing small-scale, remotely managed vertical farming systems. This startup is focused on installing beautiful micro-farms in stores, campuses, senior...

In this episode of Everybody in the Pool, Molly Wood speaks with Tiya Gordon, co-founder of It’s Electric, a company focused on overcoming the challenges of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in urban areas. They delve into the barriers to EV adoption, emphasizing the lack of accessible charging options for city dwellers without private parking. It’s Electric proposes a novel solution by installing small, bollard-style c...

This episode of Everybody in the Pool dives into the pressing issue of food waste and its significant impact on the climate crisis. Molly talks with Jordan Schenck, the Chief Customer Officer at Flashfood, exploring the staggering fact that 30-40% of the US food supply is wasted at various stages from production to household disposal. This results in a colossal loss of approximately $161 billion annually and contributes massively t...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re sticking with renewable energy! Wind and solar often steal the renewable spotlight, but geothermal energy—derived from the Earth's constant underground heat—offers a clean, infinite source of power for heating and cooling. This week, we’re joined by retired NHL great Mike Richter, who has an amazing career pivot story into climate finance and resource deployment. He’s currently the CEO of B...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking utilities. We know that one of the big keys to dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing global warming to manageable levels is to transition as quickly as possible to renewable energy and electrify everything. And at the absolute heart of that challenge are utilities—the ones responsible for generating and distributing electricity. Addressing the challenge takes co...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re getting a little high-tech. In the climate solutions conversation, people often talk about the need for game-changing innovation. That doesn’t mean giving up on policy and business and energy transition, obviously. But if we’re building a better future for everyone, it’s good to think of the breakthroughs that could not only solve our current crisis, but lay the foundation for all kinds of ...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re featuring a panel discussion moderated by Molly at the GreenBiz conference, held in Phoenix, AZ, in February. The conversation blends tech and climate and three amazing professionals talking about how AI (the other hottest topic on the planet, if you’ll pardon the very scary pun) can help with efforts to heal nature and restore biodiversity. Molly spoke with Elizabeth Hunter, co-founder and...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re going a little sci-fi with a startup that spun out of Google and is trying to reinvent urban mobility. And by that I mean they’re developing modular electric tram systems that would take passengers around dense urban areas, hospital or college campuses, or maybe, you know, Google, on a series of cables suspended above buildings and streets. This means reducing the number of cars on the road...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re back to buildings! Buildings and the built environment are responsible for as much as 40 percent of carbon emissions and energy demand. In fact, a UN report from 2022 found that although the buildings and construction industry has done some investing in energy efficiency and more sustainable processes, its emissions hit an all-time high that year, after a brief dip during the pandemic. Solu...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re exploring a topic that once seemed fanciful, unlikely at best, and even slightly controversial: carbon removal. Literally, taking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it so it doesn’t keep warming the planet. In fact, in 2022, the UN released a report that essentially said developing carbon removal technology is not optional, in addition to cutting emissions, if we want to keep warming...

Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. This week: how to get to the major breakthroughs that a lot of people think are necessary if we’re going to stop or even reverse the worst effects of human-caused climate change. Breakthroughs take money, yes, and they also take brilliant people, full stop! Scientists, inventors, wild-eyed optimists—the people who have ideas and need support, training, funding, and encouragement to see them th...

Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool in 2024! We’re getting a bit of a late start this year because Molly was at CES in Las Vegas last week, which turned out to be a stealth sustainability show. On this week’s episode, we caught up with Stefan Solyom, CTO of Pebble, which is making a completely electric travel trailer—think RV—that can sustain itself off the grid for up to a week, power your home like a giant backup battery, back ...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, it’s almost the end of 2023 and this little podcast just finished its first year of existence! Aww! Thanks to everyone who came on this ride and came on this show! This week, we’re doing a little retrospective to look at some of the fun, adoptable solutions we highlighted (from wrapping paper to repairing your phones and keeping them longer), all the way to the mind-blowing inventions that have u...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we are once again thinking big when it comes to the energy transition. If last week was about electrifying whole fleets of cars, this week is about electrifying entire towns! Dan Bridleman of KB Home and Matt Brost of Sunpower join Molly to talk about how they’ve teamed up on a big experiment in southern California: a planned community of more than 200 net zero homes, all-electric, with smart the...

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we all know it’s a big deal to get lots of drivers to switch from ICE (internal combustion engine) cars to electric cars. But getting them to switch one at a time is for the birds—let’s talk about fleets of cars all at once! Taxi cabs, company cars, delivery vehicles, government cars … what does it take to get hundreds or thousands of cars to go electric? Well, a lot, as it turns out. Today’s gue...