1602: Geothermal Tech with Dandelion Energy founder Kathy Hannun

Kathy Hannun is the co-founder and President of Dandelion Energy, the largest residential geothermal company in the United States. Dandelion transitions homeowners from fossil-fueled to geothermal heating and cooling using their custom geothermal drilling suite and Dandelion Air heat pump. Before founding Dandelion, Hannun was a Rapid Evaluator at X, Alphabet's innovation lab, where she focused on finding "Moonshots," i.e business opportunities to harness technology for large-scale positive impact. She initiated Dandelion as an X project and then launched it into an independent startup company in May 2017. Dandelion has since raised millions in funding from top venture capitalists, set a new standard for geothermal quality and cost- effectiveness, and empowered homeowners to avoid over 100 million pounds of carbon emissions and counting. In February 2021, Dandelion announced a $30M Series B funding round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The company has partnered with Con Edison utility to promote heat pumps as an alternative to natural gas heating and successfully advocated for increased policy support for heat pumps throughout the Northeast. In addition, Dandelion has increased public awareness of the benefits of ground source heat pumps through stories in publications media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fast Company, WIRED, Bloomberg, and TechCrunch and many others. Hannun has been recognized as a TED Fellow, a DOE C2E Award recipient, one of Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business, and as one of MIT Technology Review's "35 under 35." She graduated from Stanford with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Science.