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Submit ReviewEric 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 Ventures).
With a career rooted in the construction and contracting industry, Eric has extensive experience in large construction projects and has been involved in creating and selling software targeted at this sector. We start our conversation with an overview of the construction industry, highlighting the main players, their challenges, including considerations around emissions and sustainability.
The discussion touches on challenges Urban Machine aims to address, the innovative technology they employ, and their aspirations for the future.
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Episode recorded on Mar 14, 2024 (Published on Mar 28, 2024)
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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 management. Among other activities, Brandon also serves on the board of directors of the Sunrise Movement, The Solutions Project, co-founded by Mark Ruffalo, and Clean Energy for America.
Before this, Brandon served in the Obama administration as US Department of Energy Chief of Staff, and in the White House as the president's liaison to the energy and environment cabinet agencies. At the DOE, Brandon oversaw day-to-day operations of a federal agency with a $29 billion budget and a 115,000 person workforce. He also served on the investment committee for its $38 billion Clean Energy Fund.
Cody and Brandon discuss the intersection of policy and innovation, including what his work at Boundary Stone entails and the types of problems they help companies navigate. They also delve into the 2024 US election, including what's at stake from a climate change perspective in the presidential, House, and Senate elections.
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Episode recorded on Mar 1, 2024 (Published on Mar 18, 2024)
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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 climate and decarbonization solutions. The subject of climate change shows up in many of Kim Stanley Robinson's works from his Mars trilogy, written in the 1990s about humans terraforming Mars, to his science in the capital Series from the mid 2000s, to his 2017 novel, New York 2140, which is set in a Lower Manhattan that is submerged due to sea level rise.
And it shows up in many of his other works as well. Stan, as he goes by, has won numerous awards including the Hugo Award for best novel for both Green Mars and Blue Mars, and the Nebula Award for best novel for Red Mars and his book 2312. The Atlantic has called his work the gold standard of realistic and highly literary science fiction writing. And according to an article in the New Yorker, he is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science fiction writers. Stan and Cody have a wide-ranging conversation about his relationship with nature, his views on capitalism, society, government and technology, and of course his writings and his views on climate change and the path ahead for us all.
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Episode recorded on Feb 7, 2024 (Published on Mar 11, 2024)
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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 differ from binary computing's zeros and ones. As the world's computing demand continues to soar with AI and data centers consuming vast amounts of energy, AI also has the potential to unlock climate change solutions through innovations in biotech, advanced energy, planetary modeling, and more.
We wanted to learn from Subodh about how quantum computing might change the game in all of these areas as it matures. Is it possible that quantum computing is an enormous future climate solution? Let's find out.
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Episode recorded on Jan 23, 2024 (Published on Mar 4, 2024)
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This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu. This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure.
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 of pre-disaster mitigation alongside talking about a new tranche of funding from the Infrastructure Bill going to support the work here.
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Episode recorded on Nov 16, 2023 (Published on Feb 29, 2024)
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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 was named a best book of 2017 by the New Yorker. She most recently is a top award winner of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications, which was bestowed upon her by the National Academies in partnership with Schmidt Futures.
Climate change evokes a myriad of emotions unique to each individual. It can stir outrage in some, sadness in others, a sense of helplessness for some, and dread for the future in others. There is no universally right or wrong reaction, as our responses are shaped by our distinct relationships with the world and the diverse circumstances in which we live. The perception of climate change varies; for some, it may feel abstract, while for others, the impacts are undeniably profound and far-reaching.
But as Dr. Wray points out, we know that climate change as we are experiencing it is anthropogenic, meaning it's the result of human behavior. And yet so little has been studied about the human behavioral response to climate change. How do we individually and collectively feel about climate change, and what do those feelings drive us to do? This is the sweet spot of Britt's work.
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Episode recorded on Jan 29, 2024 (Published on Feb 26, 2024)
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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, and has won nine national awards for science journalism.
Cody and our guests cover Susan and Po's backgrounds, the challenges in evaluating material science startups, their journeys from academia and the food industry, and early-stage deep tech investment models. They also discuss business economics in material science startups, scaling challenges, sustainable sourcing, and the potential and limitations of synthetic biology in the context of material science startups.
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Episode recorded on Jan 16, 2024 (Published on Feb 20, 2024)
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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 soil beneath and employ it for both heating and cooling functions in a residential ground source heat pump. Essentially, residential geothermal aligns with the trajectory of residential HVAC heat pump adoption, serving as a means to maintain a dependable and efficient temperature for optimal heat pump performance.
Dan is a repeat guest on My Climate Journey. He joined Jason way back on Episode 7 to recount his journey as the Co-founder and the CEO of Opower. Dandelion's Co-founder, Kathy Hannun, was also on the pod way back on Episode 35. A lot has changed in that time.
In today's conversation, we touch a bit on Dan's Opower journey, but most of the time is spent on Dandelion and geothermal. We also cover Dandelion's current geographic focus areas, the technologies it has developed, how they operate the company, the business model, the recent tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislation that have benefited the company, and so much more.
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Episode recorded on Jan 18, 2024 (Published on Feb 15, 2024)
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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 on arctic clouds, radiation and sea ice, and the assistant dean for diversity and inclusion in the school's Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering. Dr. Fischer is an associate professor also in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. She also serves as an affiliate faculty member for the CSU School of Global Environmental Sustainability.
A few months ago, we took to social media to see who could talk more about kids and climate change. The Science Moms were recommended by a huge number of folks that we know and trust. So here we are. Enjoy the show!
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Episode recorded on Feb 5, 2024 (Published on Feb 12, 2024)
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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 doctoral work at MIT, how the company started, and the problem of industrial wastewater today. Cody and Prakash talk about some of the different industries and use cases that Gradiant serves, a bit about how their technology works, and how their business model is structured.
As Prakash says in the conversation, water is one of the primary interfaces through which the world will experience climate change, whether through drought or flood. The more we can do to manage our water supply, the better off we will be.
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Episode recorded on Jan 5, 2024 (Published on Feb 8, 2024)
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