CleanTechies Podcast

00:00 – Intro: Coral's $7.5M Seed Round and mission.02:46 – What is Coral?: The FinTech platform for energy-efficient building upgrades.04:46 – The Pain Point: Why HVAC experts don't want to be "rebate experts."06:15 – The Financing Mechanism: How Coral advances funds to make the rebate instant.08:19 – Contractor Benefits: Saving time, avoiding bad reviews, and winning more deals.11:44 – The Economics of Rebates: Why most incentives come from local utilities trying to lower grid demand.15:43 – The Origin Story: Quitting jobs to solve the $8,000 savings bottleneck for homeowners.21:00 – Mission Alignment: Balancing climate goals with helping small businesses grow.24:17 – The "Chicken and Egg" Funding: Using early VC dollars to prove the rebate float model.31:24 – Depoliticizing Clean Tech: Leading with comfort, safety, and pure energy savings.36:09 – Co-Founder Dating: How Samir and Nizar built trust before building a company.42:37 – Pragmatism and Empathy: Why climate founders must be chameleons to succeed.46:27 – Raising Capital: Why they pitched FinTech VCs instead of traditional Climate funds. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe

Andrew Beebe, partner at Obvious Ventures who leads planetary health investing, discusses why this climate investing vintage is real and durable. He covers AI-driven energy demand, generative science accelerating materials and geothermal discovery, local politics of building infrastructure, why red states are racing ahead on clean builds, and the playbook for startups and investors in a falling cost curve world.

00:00 – Intro: Cody Finke returns to the podcast.04:30 – The "Rock Refinery": Moving beyond cement to co-produce aluminum and critical minerals.05:39 – The Physics of Scale: Why cost parity is impossible with small reactors.08:12 – The History of Co-Production: From whale oil to Standard Oil's catalytic cracking.12:39 – "Bad Geologic Luck": Why traditional limestone cement plants can't co-produce.18:54 – De-Risking Deep Tech: How Brimstone uses off-the-shelf components to build a massive patent moat.28:33 – Fundraising Strategy: Raising ~$90M and executing pilot plants.33:44 – PR for Founders: When to stay in stealth and when to reveal your grand vision.38:18 – The $189M DOE Grant: Winning the money under Biden, losing it under Trump, and why it wasn't a disaster.45:54 – Geopolitics & Manufacturing: Why critical materials and heavy industry must return to democratic countries.50:28 – The Ultimate Climate Strategy: Why capitalism only rewards lower costs, not moral outcomes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe

00:00 – Intro: The $500M deal with Jupiter Power.02:15 – Landon’s Background: Lessons from Tesla and Northvolt.06:30 – The "Magnet Hire": How to attract A-Players by hiring one star first.12:00 – Why Sodium-Ion?: The cost and supply chain advantage over Lithium.18:45 – The Jupiter Power Deal: How they negotiated a massive off-take agreement.24:10 – "Engineering Bankability": Selling the manufacturing roadmap, not just the cell.32:00 – Supply Chain: Why Peak Energy avoids conflict minerals and China reliance.41:00 – The Grid Challenge: Why batteries need to last 25 years in the desert.48:00 – Scaling Speed: How to move faster than traditional industrial giants.53:00 – Hiring: The specific traits Landon looks for in executives. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe

00:00 – Intro: Recording in-person at 9Zero in San Francisco.02:45 – Antonio’s Background: From Stanford PhD to Flow Batteries.06:00 – The History: What is the "Zebra Battery" and why did it fail in EVs?10:15 – The Chemistry: How Sodium, Iron, and Salt work together.12:30 – The Economics: Why $1/kWh material cost changes everything.17:00 – Safety First: No thermal runaway and safer than Lithium-Ion.22:00 – Manufacturing Strategy: Leveraging existing UK talent and factories.28:00 – The "Bankability" Challenge: Proving a "new" old technology.34:00 – Commercialization: Who buys these batteries? (Utilities vs Developers).41:00 – The Grid Reality: Why "Non-Wires Alternatives" are the immediate market.46:00 – Founder Advice: How to hire A-players for a hardware startup. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe

00:00 – Intro: Why energy regulation is the "unsexy" bottleneck of the transition.03:11 – Hudson’s Background: From SEC Attorney to rewriting federal data laws.05:55 – What HData Does: The platform for rate cases, compliance, and wildfire plans.06:40 – The Natural Monopoly: Explaining the "Regulator vs. Regulated" conflict.10:13 – The Rate Case Process: How utilities get paid (and why it takes so much paper).14:00 – The ROI of AI: Moving from "Control-F" to vertical AI agents.22:20 – The Urgency: Why grid modernization creates a compliance explosion.35:00 – Hyperscalers & AI: How data center demand is changing the regulatory game.46:18 – The Future of Work: Will AI replace regulatory lawyers?48:00 – Founder Story: The 2022 cash crisis and the "Dark Night of the Soul."53:00 – Hiring Framework: The 3 motivations Hudson looks for in talent. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe

What happens when an oil well dries up? Usually, it becomes a "zombie" liability—leaking methane and waiting to become a taxpayer burden. Kemp Gregory, CEO and Co-founder of Renewell Energy, joins the show to explain how he’s turning these multi-million dollar liabilities into clean energy assets.Renewell converts idle wells into mechanical gravity batteries. By using existing deep wellbores to raise and lower heavy weights, they’ve created long-duration energy storage that is cheaper than lithium-ion and uses the infrastructure we already have.Key Takeaways:The Problem: Why the "Orphan Well Pocalypse" is a looming global crisis.The Tech: How gravity storage works and why it doesn’t degrade like chemical batteries.The Business: Convincing oil companies to hand over wells instead of plugging them.The Grid: Why "stranded assets" are actually perfectly positioned for grid stability.Building Deep-Tech: Why "agency" is the #1 trait Kemp looks for in early hires.Timestamps:01:40 – Kemp’s journey from Oil & Gas to CleanTech.05:00 – The Scale: 900k active wells vs. 2 million idle wells.14:15 – Gravity storage vs. Lithium-Ion: Cost and mechanics.18:00 – Turning abandonment costs into revenue shares.40:15 – Hiring for "Evidence of Agency."Connect & Links:Guest: Kemp Gregory | Renewell EnergyHost: Connect with Silas on LinkedInCommunity: Follow CleanTechies on LinkedInWatch: Subscribe on YouTubeOur Sponsors:Climate Finance Solutions (CFS): Secure government grant funding with a 90% success rate. Learn more at ClimateFinanceSolutions.com.ErthSearch: Specialized CleanTech recruiting. Fast, accurate, and guaranteed. Get started with Silas today.Disclaimer: This podcast is NOT investment advice. Please do your own due diligence. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe

Speed Strapping: How to Reach Breakeven on The era of easy money is over. For CleanTech hardware startups, the old playbook—raise a Seed, build a prototype, and pray for a Series A—is leading companies straight off a cliff. Shaun Abrahamson, Managing Partner at Third Sphere, returns to the pod to unveil the "Speed Strapping" playbook: a survival guide for 2026.Shaun explains why the graduation rate from Seed to Series A has plummeted and why founders must stop building "bridges to nowhere." The new goal? Reach profitability on less than $6M of paid-in capital to control your own destiny.🎧 Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts💡 Key Takeaways:The $6M Limit: If you can’t reach breakeven on $5–$6M of capital, you are at the mercy of a volatile market.Avoid the CapEx Trap: Don't build a factory until you’re hitting $10M–$20M in revenue. Use contract manufacturers instead.The "LEGO" Strategy: Use existing, off-the-shelf components for your V1 instead of reinventing every part.Negative Churn: In hardware, losing a customer isn't just lost marketing spend—it often means getting a broken product back.📝 Key Moments:08:15 – Defining “Speed Strapping”: Why breakeven is the new Series A.15:58 – The “Bridge to Nowhere”: The danger of planning for non-existent funding.28:38 – The CapEx Trap: Why you shouldn’t build a factory too early.36:50 – The “LEGO” Strategy: Moving faster with existing parts.🗣️ Select Quote:"Most of the companies that we see failing right now are failing because they were building a bridge to a Series B that doesn’t exist." — Shaun Abrahamson🚀 Check Out Our Sponsors:Climate Finance Solutions (CFS): Secure government grants with a 90%+ success rate. ClimateFinanceSolutions.comErthSearch: Specialized CleanTech recruiting for sales, engineering, and execs. ErthSearch.comConnect with Silas: LinkedInFollow CleanTechies: LinkedInDisclaimer: This podcast is NOT investment advice. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe

Eclipse Energy: The $0.50/kg Geologic Hydrogen Breakthrough with Prab SekhonPrab Sekhon, CEO of Eclipse Energy (formerly Gold H2), joins us to detail their disruptive technology that is poised to solve the green hydrogen cost problem. Eclipse Energy is taking end-of-life oil fields—which are massive liabilities for oil and gas companies—and turning them into clean energy assets by producing Geologic Hydrogen at an unprecedented $0.50 per kilogram.Key Topics Covered in the Episode:Introduction and Rebrand (01:06, 05:16): Prab introduces himself and discusses the recent rebranding from Gold H2 to Eclipse Energy, reflecting a broader strategy to move beyond just hydrogen.The Moonshot Goal (06:54): Breaking down why the 50 cents per kilogram price is crucial and why their process avoids the high costs and potable water consumption associated with traditional Green Hydrogen.The Technology & Feedstock (08:38, 14:46): Learn how Eclipse Energy uses "uneconomic oil"—a waste stream—as a free feedstock. Prab explains the process using the "gut biome" analogy: injecting specific microbes into deep reservoirs to stimulate the bacteria to produce pure hydrogen.The Business Model & O&G (11:20, 49:10): Discover the "accidental" business model that allows oil companies to defer billions in Plug & Abandon (P&A) liabilities by transforming non-producing wells into 20-year assets. Prab also addresses the role of energy pragmatism in working with oil and gas incumbents.Energy for the Future (18:40): Hear about the Armada partnership to co-locate data centers directly on-site, using the hydrogen to power the AI boom off-grid, and the benefit of hydrogen combustion producing water for cooling.Costs and Macro Trends (21:00, 42:55): A comparison of hydrogen costs (Gray at $1-$1.5/kg vs. Eclipse's $0.50/kg) and an update on the core macro trends in the global hydrogen space.Talent & Scaling (26:50, 54:10): Insights on the "niche field of petroleum microbiology," why the best talent for the energy transition comes from the oil and gas industry, and their partnership with Weatherford to help scale and deploy.Guest: Prab Sekhon, CEO of Eclipse EnergyA quick shoutout to our sponsors: Climate Finance Solutions and ErthSearch. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe

JOIN US FOR THE HACK SUMMIT!The HackSummit returns to Newlab on December 10-11, bringing together 500 founders, funders, and industry leaders in Climate Deep Tech. Together we’ll explore abundance, alongside Founders and Investors at Andreessen Horowitz, Brimstone, Crux, DCVC, Durin, Earth AI, Endolith, Navier, Radical AI, Rainmaker, Voyager Ventures and SOSV. Sign up for 10% off here.How Ivy Energy Finally Cracked the Code on Multi-family SolarIf you’ve ever looked at a massive apartment building and wondered why the roof is empty… yeah, Dover Janis wondered the same thing.Except instead of complaining about it, he built a company to fix it.Dover — co-founder and CEO of Ivy Energy — joined me on the show to break down how his team solved one of the most stubborn problems in clean energy: getting solar onto multi-family buildings where the owner pays the bill, the tenant gets the savings, and everyone assumes it’s impossible.Turns out it wasn’t impossible. It was just missing the right business model.Dover calls the untouched roof on apartment buildings the “naked rooftop.” Owners had zero reason to install solar because they’d get zero financial benefit. And tenants couldn’t install it themselves. So the whole market was stuck.Ivy Energy flipped the entire equation by building a platform that makes solar a new revenue stream for the building owner — not a charity project for tenants. The magic is their software layer, something Dover describes as the “easy button” that tracks energy production, energy use, utility bills, and every transaction between the owner and the tenant. In other words, a virtual grid inside each community.And it’s not just bookkeeping. It’s defensible, transparent financial settlement that regulators trust and tenants benefit from. Owners install solar, tenants keep a slice of the savings, and owners pocket the rest. Profit. Every year. No more split incentives. No more naked rooftops.The wildest part? Investors realized they could install solar, run it for a year, boost the building’s NOI — and then sell the property at a higher valuation. In some deals, that means an instant return before factoring in any long-term cash flow.Ivy’s model is simple: SaaS fees per unit, plus a planning product that uses their massive dataset to help investors deploy capital smarter across their entire portfolio. And the market is huge — 27 million renter households, with more than half viable for on-site energy.They’ve already scaled to 400 communities and 60,000 households, and they’re moving fast through channel partners instead of trying to educate every owner one by one.What’s next? Dover wants Ivy to become the transaction engine for shared energy communities — not just solar, but EV charging, storage, and anything that touches the building’s energy ecosystem. And he’s building the team to get there, hiring people who treat the mission like an inevitability.If you want to understand how one software layer can open wide gigawatts of clean energy on buildings that were previously untouchable, give this episode a listen. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe