When Roger Griffiths first heard about Formula E in 2014, he was intrigued but skeptical. A veteran of IndyCar, Le Mans, and Formula 1—and a self-described petrol head—he wasn’t convinced electric racing could deliver credible performance. Then he saw who was signing on. Michael Andretti. Alain Prost. Emerson Fittipaldi. Frank Williams. Plus early backers like Richard Branson. Racing legends and global brands were putting their reputations behind an all-electric series built for city streets, di...
Jun 25, 2025•50 min•Ep. 48
Grid battery storage has gone from niche to necessary, fast. Projects that were once 300 megawatt-hours are now hitting 9 gigawatt-hours. And companies like Wärtsilä are leading the charge, taking on the hardest, highest-stakes deployments around the world. In this episode, Dave Hebert, VP of Global Sales & Business Strategy for Wärtsilä's Energy Storage division, takes us inside the systems powering the clean energy transition. Wärtsilä has deployed over 17 gigawatt-hours of storage—enough ...
Jun 18, 2025•42 min•Ep. 47
Jaime Pumarejo helped lead Barranquilla, Colombia, through a stunning transition. When he first joined the city’s government in his twenties, Barranquilla was under bankruptcy protection, poverty was high, and public trust was fractured. Today, it serves as a global model for how climate action can drive economic growth, attract investment, and deliver tangible benefits to people’s lives. In 2020, when Pumarejo became mayor, he accelerated the transformation. He established a public-private tree...
Jun 11, 2025•59 min•Ep. 46
The energy grid we know today was built for a different era—centralized generation, one-way power flow, no rooftop solar, no EVs, no AI-driven demand. If Thomas Edison were alive, he’d recognize it instantly. And that’s the problem. Raghu Belur bet the system would have to change. In 2006, he co-founded Enphase Energy and started from the distributed edge, designing a microinverter that made every solar panel smart, efficient, and self-reliant. That foundation became the starting point for a new...
Jun 04, 2025•45 min•Ep. 45
If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter, right behind the United States and China, accounting for 8-10% of global carbon emissions. It’s a staggering problem: 30% of all food produced globally goes to waste. And for supermarkets already operating on razor-thin margins, that waste translates into billions of dollars lost every year. At the heart of the problem? A broken pricing model. Food hits an arbitrary sell-by date—and it’s trashed. Oded Omer thought that was absu...
May 28, 2025•47 min•Ep. 44
Before becoming the youngest elected mayor in Quito’s history, Mauricio Rodas had already founded a political party, launched a think tank in Mexico City, and run for president. In 1944, when the global financial system was designed, just 29% of the world lived in cities. Today, that number has nearly doubled to 56%. Cities now account for more than 70% of global emissions and 80% of energy consumption—yet most still can’t access the capital they need to fund climate solutions. The system, built...
May 21, 2025•44 min•Ep. 43
Circularity isn’t just about keeping t-shirts and jeans out of landfills. Done right, it’s a growth engine for brands. That’s exactly what Trove is building: the recommerce technology that drives margins, attracts new customers, and streamlines operations. As the resale platform behind Patagonia, Levi’s, Brooks, Arc'teryx, Carhartt, and Canada Goose, Trove helps brands give their products a second, third, even fourth life—while driving profitable growth. For CEO Terry Boyle, an e-commerce vetera...
May 14, 2025•46 min•Ep. 42
As mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees helped launch a billion-pound public-private partnership to decarbonize his city, one of the most ambitious deals of its kind anywhere in the world. This wasn’t just about climate targets. It was about results: cutting emissions, cutting energy bills, creating jobs, and improving housing — all while building a long-term investment model that gave private partners confidence and gave residents real benefits they could feel. When Marvin started, the city had no bud...
May 07, 2025•46 min•Ep. 41
Rare earth magnets power the modern world and the clean energy transition. They’re inside every electric vehicle motor, wind turbine, MRI machine, and computer hard drive in a data center. But the world throws most of them away. Less than 1% are ever recycled. And today, China controls nearly 90% of the global supply. That’s the crisis Cyclic Materials was built to solve — by turning circularity into industrial reality. In this episode, co-founder and CEO Ahmad Ghahreman explains how his team fi...
Apr 30, 2025•44 min•Ep. 40
It took over a century to build today’s power grid. Now we need to triple its capacity by 2050. Why? Because demand is surging, and a net-zero future depends on a bigger, smarter, and cleaner grid. Electrification is transforming how we power transportation, buildings, industry, and data. Renewables are decentralized and intermittent. And the current grid, built for centralized fossil fuel power, wasn’t designed for what comes next. Grid infrastructure is now one of the most urgent industrial an...
Apr 23, 2025•35 min•Ep. 39
Rondo Energy is building a renewable energy battery using bricks and toaster wire. But it’s not for your home—it’s for the factories that run the world. Industrial heat drives 10% of global carbon emissions. It’s essential for making steel, cement, chemicals, food, paper, and fuel. And it’s one of the hardest challenges in climate—expensive to electrify, risky to retrofit, and central to the global economy. That’s what makes Rondo’s approach so powerful. In this episode, John O’Donnell, co-found...
Apr 16, 2025•46 min•Ep. 38
Fifteen years ago, smart thermostats promised to save you money and learn your habits. Today, they—and other grid-connected devices and appliances—are forming the backbone of the most sustainable power plant on the grid. Jeff Gleeson, Chief Product Officer of Renew Home, joins Josh to unpack how his team is transforming everyday home tech into a distributed, intelligent, always-on energy layer—one that cuts carbon, boosts grid resilience, and earns households money, all without asking homeowners...
Apr 09, 2025•47 min•Ep. 37
Mike Martin helped launch the first climate change concert tour with Dave Matthews. He’s worked with Billie Eilish to flip venues vegan and wrote the green touring playbook years ago that artists still follow today. But after decades trying to make recycling and compostables work at live events, Mike hit a wall. Zero-waste wasn’t working. Then he remembered what he saw on tour with U2 during the Joshua Tree run—European stadiums using reusable cups. That moment sparked r.World, the reuse company...
Apr 02, 2025•33 min•Ep. 36
Johnson Controls helped invent modern air conditioning. Now, it’s reengineering how buildings cut carbon — using AI and automation to make infrastructure smarter, cleaner, and more efficient. Reuben Petty, Principal Digital Sales Engineer, works with business leaders, facility teams, and city officials to connect legacy systems to the digital tools of tomorrow. His focus is OpenBlue — the company’s platform that brings data and intelligence to the heart of building operations. In this episode, w...
Mar 26, 2025•33 min•Ep. 35
E-bikes are booming—nearly as many were sold in the U.S. last year as electric cars. But while EVs get the attention, e-bikes are quietly reshaping how people move, cutting emissions, making urban life easier, and recreation more fun. The catch? Buying an e-bike is easy. Reselling one isn’t. That’s where Upway comes in. They’re building the Carvana for e-bikes—a seamless resale marketplace with accessible pricing, warranties, home delivery, and easy returns. And the industry is taking notice. Th...
Mar 19, 2025•41 min•Ep. 34
How do you make solar adoption irresistible? By not selling solar. This week on Supercool , we’re joined by Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun, and Jessica Bergman, a marketing strategist who’s spent her career figuring out why clean energy adoption stalls—and how to fix it. Under Mary’s leadership, Sunrun stopped being just a solar company and became something much bigger: a storage-first, customer-obsessed clean energy lifestyle brand. And it’s working—60%+ of customers now add batteries, turning thei...
Mar 12, 2025•46 min•Ep. 33
Supercool regularly speaks with innovators working at the intersection of business, technology, and climate—AI giving buildings brains, pneumatic tubes hauling away trash, and electric school buses optimizing routes. With so much climate momentum underway, how do we properly assess this moment? Molly Wood has been tracking it from multiple angles. A veteran journalist (Wired, CNET, The New York Times, NPR’s Marketplace), she left media to invest in climate tech—then returned with Everybody in th...
Mar 05, 2025•41 min•Ep. 32
Since 2018, GoodLeap has financed home solar, batteries, and efficiency upgrades at an unprecedented scale—serving over 1 million customers and originating more than $30 billion in financing for sustainable solutions. Founder Hayes Barnard saw the bottleneck wasn’t price—it was friction. Homeowners needed fast, hassle-free financing. Contractors needed better tools to manage projects. GoodLeap built a technology platform to solve both—delivering a seamless, app-driven experience that puts financ...
Feb 26, 2025•50 min•Ep. 31
CannonDesign is building a reputation for designing buildings that eliminate carbon and improve lives. In 2024, Metropolis Magazine recognized the firm as its Planet Positive Firm of the Year for leading the way in net-zero architecture. It wasn't always this way. As one of North America's largest and oldest firms, CannonDesign had the scale, heritage, and reputation—but no clear sustainability strategy. In 2019, they turned to Eric Corey Freed, one of the foremost voices in green architecture, ...
Feb 19, 2025•43 min•Ep. 30
What if buildings could think for themselves—anticipating energy needs, preventing breakdowns, and adjusting to outside weather conditions in real-time? In this episode, we explore how BrainBox AI, a Montreal-based company, is making that a reality. Their cutting-edge technology powers over 15,000 buildings across 17 countries, using advanced artificial intelligence to take the guesswork out of building management. No more scrambling for last-minute repairs or manually adjusting systems—BrainBox...
Feb 12, 2025•42 min•Ep. 29
Industrial heat is one of the biggest, most stubborn sources of carbon emissions—responsible for nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gases. High costs, complex retrofits, and tight margins keep manufacturers locked into fossil fuels. But what if there were a way to swap out natural gas boilers without costly disruptions or major infrastructure overhauls? That’s exactly what Brenmiller’s thermal energy storage (TES) technology offers. Chief Business Officer Doron Brenmiller explains how their h...
Feb 05, 2025•49 min•Ep. 28
Best known as one of the industry's most efficient Bitcoin miners, TeraWulf is expanding into high-performance computing (HPC) data centers for AI. Critics slam AI and Bitcoin mining for their massive energy consumption, but TeraWulf challenges that narrative. Its operations run on 91% zero-carbon energy, mostly hydropower, proving energy-hungry computing doesn’t have to come at a climate cost. Nazar Khan, TeraWulf’s co-founder and CTO, joins Josh to discuss building world-class AI infrastructur...
Jan 29, 2025•47 min•Ep. 27
Who is paying for the clean energy revolution? Today, we’re diving into the financial side of the transition—where the trillions of dollars needed to move civilization off fossil fuels and into a low-carbon future are coming from, and how these massive deals come together. Joining Josh is Britta Von Oesen, Partner and Managing Director at CRC-IB, the nation’s leading investment bank dedicated exclusively to financing the clean energy economy. CRC-IB has advised on over 350 deals worth $72 billio...
Jan 22, 2025•46 min•Ep. 26
Every day, 27 million kids ride 500,000 school buses—the largest transit system in America. And yet, this 80-year-old relic is stuck in the past: buses are late, routes are inefficient, and parents have no clue where the bus is or when it’s coming. Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of Zum, decided to fix it. All of it. With real-time tracking, smarter routes, and electric buses, Zum has modernized student transportation for 4,000 schools, including the school districts of Los Angeles, San Francisco,...
Jan 15, 2025•40 min•Ep. 25
Budderfly is one of the fastest growing companies in America, with an unparalleled Energy-as-a-Service offering. For many small business owners, especially franchisees of the world's most recognizable fast food brands like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC, Al Subbloie and team offer up to 40% energy savings and no-cost upgrades of HVAC, lighting, and refrigeration equipment. Solar panels? Why not? Budderfly won’t even charge to install all of this state-of-the-art infrastructure. With an offer too ...
Jan 08, 2025•41 min•Ep. 24
In 2009, Amit Gupta, a rising executive at Carrier, the global HVAC company, discovered a neglected technology inside the company called Aeroseal. It used aerosol particles to seal air leaks in building envelopes and air ducts—offering a simple yet powerful way to tackle a major problem: the 10% of global energy wasted due to leaks. Seeing its potential, Amit took a leap. In 2010, he left his corporate career, rebooted Aeroseal as a startup, and focused on what matters most to customers: lowerin...
Jan 01, 2025•42 min•Ep. 23
In 2014, Gundersen Health, headquartered in La Crosse, Wisconsin, became the nation's first health system to eliminate fossil fuels, transitioning to 100% local renewable energy. Today, the high-growth Gundersen saves $5 million annually on energy, helping to control healthcare costs for its patient populations across 11 hospitals and 100+ clinics in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. Gundersen merged with Bellin Health in 2022 to become Emplify Health. Alan Eber led the effort at Gunders...
Dec 25, 2024•41 min•Ep. 22
Cities have nowhere to go but down to tap new sources of emissions-free, clean energy, harden assets against climate impacts, cut operational costs, and enhance urban life for their residents above. In this end-of-year episode, we're delving into the emergence of the underground climate economy, a Supercool trend we've identified after completing our first 20 episodes since launching in July. Whether eliminating curbside trash pickup by sending out trash through pneumatic tubes below streets, re...
Dec 18, 2024•22 min•Ep. 21
Iowa generates enough wind power to meet 77% of its energy demand. That's great for combating climate change and financially beneficial for local farmers, towns, and the overall economy. Discover how Iowa rose to wind energy prominence. We're joined by Chaz Allen, former Mayor of Newton, Iowa, and current Executive Director of the Iowa Utility Association. We also speak with Kathy Law, a farmer turned corporate attorney and one of the leading wind energy dealmakers in the state. Notes Guests: 1....
Dec 04, 2024•52 min•Ep. 20
Even the most innovative climate tech startups face marketing challenges. To gain traction or raise capital, they must generate brand awareness, educate the market, and build trust with prospective customers in a race against time before their funds run out. Companies that go bold in their climate communications stand a stronger chance of standing out in a "sea of same." That's the advice of this week's guest, Adam Malik, co-founder of Bloxspring, a marketing agency for visionary brands radicall...
Nov 27, 2024•43 min•Ep. 19
