Rewiring Energy: Disruption, Transparency, and Scaling with Purpose – Joe McDonald, TEM In this energised episode, David Hunt is joined by Joe McDonald, Co-founder and CEO of TEM – a fast-scaling UK energytech startup reshaping how energy transactions are done. From his early days at LimeJump and the acquisition by Shell, to co-founding TEM and challenging the very core of how electricity is bought, sold, and valued – Joe shares a story of timing, execution, and bold ambition. Joe and David dive...
Jun 04, 2025•47 min•Ep. 153
🎧 Episode and guest overview In this episode of Leaders in Cleantech , David Hunt is joined by Danijel Visevic, Managing Partner of World Fund, Europe’s largest climate tech VC. Danijel shares his personal and professional journey — from journalism and politics to launching a €300M venture fund dedicated to decarbonisation. They explore the challenges of scaling deep tech and hardware-centric startups, the urgent funding gaps at Series B, and how Europe risks losing its most promising IP to the...
May 21, 2025•34 min•Ep. 152
What’s it all about? In this episode, I’m joined by Monica Collings—former CEO of Vattenfall UK and ESB Energy, and now a board chair, non-exec, and strategic advisor across the energy transition space. We discuss her journey from executive leadership to a portfolio career, lessons from leading through the energy crisis, building resilient cultures in volatile times, and why diversity, inclusion, and human-centred leadership are critical to the future of cleantech and utilities. A thoughtful, ho...
Apr 30, 2025•40 min•Ep. 151
🎙 Episode 150 – Jan Lozek, Managing Director & Founder, Future Energy Ventures In this milestone episode of Leaders in Cleantech, David Hunt is joined by Jan Lozek, a veteran investor and the founder of Future Energy Ventures, one of Europe’s largest and most influential climate tech VCs. Together, they explore the evolution of cleantech investment, the challenges and opportunities facing founders today, and why Europe is uniquely positioned to lead the energy transition—despite global head...
Apr 16, 2025•43 min•Ep. 150
What’s it all about? Energy Storage, to infinity and beyond! How do you forecast and predict revenues from your energy storage assets, even if not built yet? Modo have a range of solutions to help asset owners, developers and investors to answer these questions. We also dive into the challenges and experiences of high growth, from pivoting and fundraising to new market entry and building and retaining high performing teams. About Quentin Scrimshire: Quentin ‘Q’ Scrimshire has over a decade of ex...
Sep 18, 2024•39 min
What’s it all about? Building cleantech start-ups, at scale. It can be confusing, the world of Incubators, accelerators and venture builders, also known as start-up studios. Who does what, how and why? In this episode we clarify some of those things, but discuss so much more about the why and how of new cleantech venture builder Big Circle Ventures, with founder CEO Joost Kruytzer. Joost is a very experienced venture builder, recently moving from healthtech to cleantech following a passion to ad...
Jul 24, 2024•41 min
What’s it all about? Investing in Hardtech! Yes, it’s true, some VC’s do invest in hardtech/deeptech, knowing the specific challenges of supporting companies of this nature to scale. This week I speak with Malin Carlstrom of Danish VC Climentum Capital about scaling deeptech, the importance of team, the usefulness (and otherwise) of advisors and NED’s, and the ‘perfect storm’ giving optimism about the chances for climatetech to have its’ day. About Malin Carlstrom: Malin has spent the last two d...
Jul 10, 2024•40 min
What’s it all about? Clean, efficient, reliable, electric public transport. After traveling by Bus and Coach across five continents, Keith Bradbury and Co-Founder Pierce Glennie made the switch from Fintech to Cleantech, with a solution to the cost, pollution and unreliability and hassle of public transport. Ember was born, you can hear the story from inception to recent A-round fundraise, and plans for the future. Enjoy the episode. About Keith Bradbury: Deep generalist. Hopeful sceptical empir...
Jun 26, 2024•45 min
What’s it all about? Solar, and moving from corporate life to a start up. I first met my guest today, Joachim Rupp at a start-up within a corporate, building Viessmann’s Photovoltaic business, before that he’d been in some big corporate roles, more recently we helped him secure the CEO role at a Lithuanian solar scale-up, Detra Solar. We talk solar evolution and trends, but also the challenges and rewards of a career transition. Enjoy the episode. Chapters: 00:00:00 - Introduction and Background...
Jun 12, 2024•38 min
What’s it all about? Batteries. More specifically, software enabled batteries helping to make Electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and wearables, more efficient, providing better customer experiences. I speak to another start-up spun out of Imperial College London, with a novel and proven set of products and technologies moving forward the transition towards better, longer lasting and faster charging vehicles and devices. A great spin-out journey. I hope you enjoy the episode. Chapters: 00:0...
May 22, 2024•45 min
In start-up world everyone wants to know about the deals. Who raised what, which VC's are spending some of that 'dry powder' all these things are important, but looking at the bigger trends is perhaps more useful. In this Bitesize episode I speak with Federico Cristoforoni of Net Zero Insights about some of the trends is their Q! Quarterly Report. We discuss some of the key themes, but you can access the full report here . Chapters: 00:00:00 - Introduction to Federico 00:01:40 - State of the Ind...
May 01, 2024•18 min
What’s it all about? Solar. Another part of the value-chain explored by this BNEF award-winning, Mega-funding round landing solar SaaS start-up/scale-up. We speak with founder and CEO David Trainavvicius about the journey so far. About David Trainavicius: David is the Founder and CEO of PVcase. He has been involved with a wide variety of solar projects since 2009, gaining expertise in the European solar power market and regulations. He has an in-depth knowledge of solar energy systems, including...
Apr 25, 2024•34 min
What’s it all about? Solar. But not rooftops this time, the other end of the value-chain. Wafers are not only a large part of the cost of solar modules, producing them is also very energy intensive, and therefore carbon emitting. Through innovation in this part of the process Nexwafe hope to make the manufacture of solar modules, cheaper, cleaner, and to bring manufacturing at scale to Europe, North America, and India, and beyond. We need how much solar? We’re heading to Terawatt territory. We n...
Apr 17, 2024•38 min
What’s it all about? Solar. Beautiful Solar roofs. This harks back to my early days in solar, founding a solar EPC which initially at least focused of residential roofs, before expanding to include large commercial installations. Roofit have a unique, aesthetic solar roof solution, just at a time when both energy costs and EU legislation are driving the uptake of retrofit and newbuild solar rooftop installations. Our entrepreneur in the episode is a former banker and dirty energy developer turne...
Mar 27, 2024•38 min
What’s it all about Batteries, patents, entrepreneurship, and the founder’s journey. I first met my guest Gavin White at Energy Tech Summit in Warsaw a little over a year ago. So much has happened in that time, and he and business partner Kieran O’Regan have built an outstanding team and offering to the battery and automotive sector, with clients including Porsche. From PhD student to patents to a lifelong ambition to build a company. I hope you enjoy the conversation. About Gavin White: Gavin W...
Mar 06, 2024•44 min
What’s it all about? People, Policies and Technology. Unsung cleantech heroes, why we shouldn’t worry too much about Trump in the Whitehouse, at least where the IRA is concerned. I take a deep dive into the economic and technological drivers of the energy and mobility transition with Bloomberg Climate reporter and Author of Climate Capitalism, Akshat Rathi, it’s a great episode, Take a watch/listen. About Akshat Rathi: Akshat Rathi is an award-winning senior climate reporter for Bloomberg News. ...
Jan 24, 2024•45 min
What’s it all about? The perhaps surprising insurtech solution to unlocking innovation and scaling for clean technology deployment. We've often discussed how business model innovation can be as important if not more so, than technological innovation. Fundability and risk can be inhibitors, can insurance innovation solve that problem? Take a listen as I explore this topic the with co-founder of Insurtech Gateway. About Stephen Brittain: Stephen co-founded the Insurtech Gateway in 2016, using his ...
Jan 16, 2024•46 min
What’s it all about? Policy and government. For a long time I’ve said that the cleantech sector has done well despite, not because of politics and policy. I do however think that to truly scale we do need politicians and policies to support the energy and mobility transitions, and over the last years we have seen this increase. But we still have a deeply entrenched fossil fuel funded government in the UK, and in many partsof the world, and the Orange buffoon lurking again in the US. I’ve recentl...
Jan 04, 2024•43 min
What’s it all about? An end of year reflection on the cleantech funding landscape during 2023, and a view of a leading European Cleantech VC on what will be the defining technologies for investment in 2024. Some tips for founders who need to raise in the first half of 2024, and some optimistic thoughts to end the year. About Anton Arts: Anton Arts is a Managing Partner at SET Ventures since 2018. He is a board member of Green Eagle Solutions, ESFORIN, instagrid and GreenFlux (acquired by DKV). F...
Dec 20, 2023•29 min
What’s it all about? Flexibility, the energy transition, the mobility transition, convergence, entrepreneurship, luck, customer focus and Apples!! There is a whole lot to unpack in this episode, and some great insights and advice into the energy and mobility transitions, entrepreneurship, and the joys, challenges and opportunities that come with them all. Enjoy the episode. About David Watson: David Watson worked in the financial markets as a risk manager and portfolio manager at investment bank...
Nov 07, 2023•46 min
What’s it all about? Speeding the mobility transition where grid connections and EV infrastructure are lacking, expensive or flaky. Award winning entrepreneur Josh Aviv has developed both a unique product and business model that delivers electrons where you are. This is not so much for drivers who run low on range, although that too, but about getting fleet users up and running quickly, smoothly and reliably with a Charging as a service (CaaS) solution. About Joshua Aviv: Joshua Aviv is a certif...
Oct 03, 2023•42 min
What’s it all about? Geothermal. How big is the opportunity to exploit this renewable resource for heating, cooling and for power generation? Where are the hot spots (excuse the pun), what are the business models and use cases? How can we use heat to cool a warming world! This and all things Geothermal. About Alexander Helling: As CEO, Alexander is in charge of Baseload Capital’s investments and overall portfolio performance. He has extensive experience in international project finance as well a...
Sep 26, 2023•43 min
What’s it all about? The A-Bomb- No not that one. Why does no one talk about Adaptation? Of course we should and must keep working on inventing, scaling and investing in technologies that combat climate change, and help prevent the worst outcomes, but we’re already well down the path of negative climate feedback loops. We have to talk about, and invest in technologies that help mitigate the worst of what is already happening, and what’s to come. Floods, water shortages, food disruption, climate ...
Sep 19, 2023•31 min
What’s it all about? Innovation and University spin-outs! In particular we look at the UK scene and support in the Oxford, Cambridge, London triangle. I had a great conversation with CEO of Oxfordshire Greentech, Hannah Scott about the support and challenges and opportunities facing founders, universities and the ecosystems that support them. Enjoy the episode. About Hannah Scott: Hannah Scott is the Co-Founder and CEO of business network Oxfordshire Greentech, which aims to grow and support the...
Sep 12, 2023•43 min
What’s it all about? A seamless e-mobility experience! From Phd to Founder, solving some of the key technical aspects of a fully integrated user experience for changing at all scales, public, fleet, residential and all of these combined. We talk company culture, talent, hiring better than yourself, motivation on dark days, optimism for the future, fundraising, expansion and much more besides. Enjoy the episode. About Marc Multin: Marc is the CEO and visionary force behind Switch, a deep-tech com...
Sep 06, 2023•42 min
Christoph Berger - vilisto What’s it all about? Renewable Heat, as we’ve featured recently, so often the elephant in the room. Addressing the needs of decarbonising heat is critical to the clean energy transition. In this episode we address heating and inefficiency in commercial and public buildings as I speak to CEO and Founder of Vilisto, Christophe Berger. Having recently raised a £5m they are focused on scaling to bring their solutions to a wider audience. About Christoph Berger: Christoph B...
Aug 02, 2023•42 min
Helen Czerski What’s it all about? Letting lose my inner nerd! I’ve known Helen for some time, known in a loose sense, we shared a panel session at a Fully Charged event some years ago, and I’ve watched with enthusiasm much of her TV and Fully Charged presenting, When I saw she’d written a book about a gigantic solar powered machine, I needed to know more! But seriously, the topic of how our planet works has held my interest and curiosity since I was a child. Helen’s latest book, ‘The Blue Machi...
Jul 11, 2023•53 min
What’s it all about? Flexibility, curtailment and how to use software, as well as new infrastructure to create the resilient, flexible, fit for purpose grid we need now and for the future. We also talk co-founding a company at 21, the challenges and opportunities this brings, building teams, culture, and how an English Literature graduate falls in love with energy and builds a cleantech business. About Jo-Jo Hubbard: Jo-Jo started her energy career in cleantech financing and investment, speciali...
Jul 04, 2023•42 min
What’s it all about? The often overlooked issue of renewable heat. I take dive into the world of solar thermal with Hyperion client Naked Energy. Co-founder and CEO Christophe Williams has a great founder story too, from inventors genes to global advertising exec, to cleantech founder. Christophe shares about the Cinderella story of solar thermal, and well as the trials and tribulations of founding and scaling a tech business. About Christophe Williams: Christophe is the CEO and Co-Founder at Na...
Jun 28, 2023•42 min
What’s it all about? Batteries, smart use of second life batteries. There is of course so much demand for new batteries, and that won’t go away, but soon we have a lot of batteries too useful to recycle just yet, but not useful for electric vehicles of first use cases. Entrepreneur and founder, Jorgon Erdal shares his vision and experience building a business to take advantage of this opportunity, and to play a large and important role in the energy transition. We also delve into his background ...
Jun 20, 2023•42 min
