Supercool

If the circular economy is ever going to become just “the economy,” it will need infrastructure. In this episode, Josh talks with Rich Amsinger, co-founder of Manymoons and The Many Company, about building it. The conversation traces the company’s evolution from Borobabi, which began with Rich and Carolyn Butler trying to keep their daughter’s outgrown clothes in use, to Manymoons, what the company calls America’s first circular retailer, and now ManyCo, the AI-, logistics-, and demand-powered engine behind it all. Rich explains why returns, overstock, and excess inventory aren’t side issues in retail but a massive opportunity. He also makes the case that circularity requires more than software. It requires actually selling the stuff—while protecting the brand, recovering more value, and keeping better products in use longer.Show NotesGuest: Rich Amsinger, Co-Founder Companies: Manymoons and ManyCoFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Most architects don't tell you your home could be nearly silent, filter every breath of air, and run almost without heat. Not because it's impossible. Because they don't know how to build it.Michael Ingui does. For more than a decade, his firm has built Passive Houses across New York City — landmarked townhouses, gut renovations, apartments with swimming pools and floor-to-ceiling glass. His clients get quieter rooms, cleaner air, and heating and cooling bills 80 to 90 percent below a conventional home. For the life of the building.His opening question to clients isn't about energy or carbon. It's whether they'd like a home free of bugs. Whether they'd like to stop hearing the street.Michael is also co-founder of the Passive House Accelerator, a catalyst for zero carbon building that shares innovation and thought leadership across Passive House design and construction, and Source 2050, a marketplace for vetted high-performance building materials.For Michael, the goal is straightforward: get everyone building this way, as fast as possible. The high-performance, zero-carbon future is counting on it.Show NotesGuest: Michael Ingui, PartnerCompany: Ingui ArchitectureJohnson Controls webinar linkFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Charlie Sellars, Microsoft sustainability director and author of What We Can Do, champions making sustainability accessible and fun. He discusses why optimism and playful framing mobilize people, how quick wins and collaborative messaging beat policing, and why lifecycle analysis is the right tool to target real impact. The conversation focuses on culture, practical incentives, and smarter decisions about products and energy.

* Sign-up for Johnson Controls Webinar: Evolving Building Codes *The largest geothermal residential building in New York City just opened in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. 834 apartments. 320 boreholes drilled hundreds of feet underground — enough to heat and cool every unit in the building. Even the rooftop pool.Geosource Energy drilled it. This conversation is about how they did it, and what it takes to build geoexchange systems at scale in dense cities, where there's already a city's worth of infrastructure below: water, gas, electric, telecom, subways, and foundations.Geoexchange is simple to explain and hard to execute. No combustion. No fuel. Fully electric. The physics are straightforward. The delivery is not.Building owners choose geoexchange for the operating savings. And for every dollar saved at the building level, the grid saves eight or nine — because geoexchange cuts peak demand when electricity is most expensive and most scarce.That's a true decarbonization driver. And why cities from Toronto to Boston to New York are leaning in with more to follow.Geosource has completed more than 400 projects. The infrastructure they install is designed to outlast the buildings it serves. Stan calls it 500-year pipe. He's seen a building come down and the borefield stay put, ready for the next one.Show Notes:Guest: Stanley Reitsma, CEOCompany: Geosource EnergyFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

People assume farmers are conservative by nature. Cautious. Set in their ways.Ryan Jones, VP of Sustainability at Indigo Ag, has a different read: farmers aren’t risk-averse. They’re risk-saturated.Consider factors like weather, debt, input costs, labor, and fluctuating commodity prices. One bad season can set a farmer back years. So when someone shows up and says, “Change how you farm,” the first question any farmer asks is: who’s carrying the risk?That’s the problem Indigo was built to solve. Pay farmers to adopt regenerative practices. Quantify the outcomes. Connect them to buyers through carbon markets or corporate supply chains. Today, Indigo operates in 15 countries and manages a portfolio spanning 20 million acres, delivering over a megaton of greenhouse gas reductions/removals and conserving nearly 100 billion gallons of water—and it recently announced a 12-year offtake agreement with Microsoft for 2.85 million tons of carbon removal credits.But this conversation is about more than keeping carbon in the soil. It’s also about water. In the Mid-South rice belt, companies face an existential sourcing risk and farmers face an existential livelihood risk. And with a shared aquifer, one farmer conserving water doesn’t move the needle if everyone else keeps pumping.The only way through is everyone moving together. And Indigo’s bet is that you get there by making the most practical thing the most profitable thing—fast enough to matter.Show NotesGuest: Ryan Jones, Vice President of SustainabilityCompany: Indigo AgFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Forty-five million Americans live in apartments. Almost none have solar—not because the technology doesn't work, but because building owners pay for installation while tenants get the savings. It's the split incentive conundrum holding the sector back.Owen Barrett saw this problem when he started investing in apartment buildings. Nobody in multifamily was thinking about energy—just paint colors and new countertops. He tried consulting. Nobody listened. So he raised capital, bought buildings, and installed solar himself.The breakthrough: software that tracks each tenant's solar usage and bills them for it. Owners earn revenue. Tenants save money.That became Shine, a company that installs solar on apartment buildings and handles everything from design to maintenance.Shine went from 100 units in 2024 to 3,000 in 2025, projecting 20,000 in 2026. They're working with two of the five largest apartment owners in America.Owen and Josh discuss why execution beats innovation, how rising electricity prices make subsidies irrelevant, and why doing what you promise became a competitive advantage.Show NotesGuest: Owen Barrett, CEO Company: ShineFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Will Wiseman, co-founder and CEO of Climatize and former renewable energy engineering student, built an SEC-registered crowdfunding platform that lets people invest small amounts in clean energy. He discusses turning climate marches into capital, using AI to cut diligence from weeks to minutes, funding $250k–$5M projects fast, and why finance-first messaging and speed create momentum.

Kunal Girotra was Head of Tesla Energy before leaving in 2020 to found Lunar Energy. Then he went silent. Over two years, he raised $300 million, built a 250-person team, and developed home battery systems that blend sleek design with state-of-the-art technology. Lunar emerged from stealth in 2022 with a mission to deliver endless, affordable clean energy.What differentiates Lunar: it's both a hardware and software company. The battery and AI are designed and integrated as a single system. The software learns each home's unique energy fingerprint, deciding when to charge from the grid at low rates, when to run on battery, and when to sell power back at premium prices.The results: customers earn an average of $464 annually through Virtual Power Plant programs and $338 through optimization—over $800 in total, with seamless backup power.Lunar's GridShare platform now manages 650 megawatts of distributed energy for utilities across multiple continents. This morning, the company announced $232 million in new funding to expand nationwide.Show Notes:Guest: Kunal Girotra, Founder & CEOCompany: Lunar EnergyFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Data centers have always pursued energy efficiency through better hardware—smarter chillers, advanced cooling systems. But there's a ceiling. You can only make hardware so efficient.Seven years ago, Jasper de Vries discovered the butterfly effect in data centers—something on a roof rippling through 300 billion sensor readings down to valves in server rooms. His company, Lucend, ingests that sensor data to generate operator recommendations. One facility cut power usage by 40% in a year, saving $4.3 million.Yet here's what most of us miss about AI's big energy problem: we focus on operational energy use while Scope 3 emissions—the embodied carbon from manufacturing hardware—creates massive impact, so much so that Microsoft won't hit its 2030 climate targets because of its data center growth plans. With JP Morgan projecting $5 trillion in AI infrastructure buildouts by 2030, the need to bring embodied carbon under control is urgent.Lucend's software addresses both challenges: it slashes operational energy while extending hardware life through predictive maintenance, reducing the physical wear that forces early replacement. Its technology is now deployed across over 50 facilities globally.Show NotesGuest: Jasper de Vries Company: LucendFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

What if we stopped trying to recycle and just used all our trash instead?UBQ Materials makes bio-plastics from entire trash bags—dirty diapers, greasy pizza boxes, chicken bones, mixed plastics. Everything. 100% utilization. Nothing returns to landfills.The material works in existing manufacturing equipment, costs the same as virgin plastic, and can be recycled 10+ times. It's already in Mercedes interiors and McDonald's products.CEO Albert Douer spent eight years in stealth mode perfecting the technology before selling a pound. The original plan: three years. Reality: ten. Most VCs would've killed it. He kept going.Now UBQ operates an 80,000-ton facility in the Netherlands proving the technology works at scale. The implications for waste, plastics, and the circular economy are staggering—and Albert's journey reveals what it actually takes to bring impossible-sounding innovation into the real world.Show NotesGuest: Albert Douer, CEOCompany: UBQ MaterialsFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn