Lots of brands, from BMW to Stella McCartney to Allbirds, are using all-natural fibers, textiles, and even shoe soles that are nontoxic and totally recyclable. And all of those materials come from one place: NFW, or Natural Fiber Welding. Molly Wood interviews Luke Haverhals, the founder and CEO of NFW, about how the company develops “recipes” using abundant natural resources and runs them through existing manufacturing infrastructure, enabling a scalable transition away from fossil fuel-derived...
Apr 25, 2024•29 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes the water-related titles really write themselves. This week, Molly goes under the sea with Julia Marsh of Sway, which is developing a replacement for plastic using seaweed. Julia explains that seaweed is abundant, regenerative, and can be made into a replacement for single-use plastics using almost the exact same processes that are currently used to make plastic. Also, this is a woman who really, really loves seaweed. RESOURCES & LINKS Sway: https://swaythefuture.com/ All episode...
Apr 18, 2024•36 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast Molly Wood talks to Raghu Belur, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Enphase Energy, about the company's pioneering work in decentralized solar power and their vision for a distributed, software-driven energy system that puts renewable power and storage in the hands of homes and businesses. They discuss Enphase's origins back in Clean Tech 1.0, the importance of microinverters, the role of batteries, and the policy challenges (ahem, California) that are shaping the adoption of distributed en...
Apr 10, 2024•34 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we’re talking about sustainable food production—both an adaptation and a mitigation opportunity. Molly Wood talks with Alexander Olesen, co-founder and CEO of Babylon Micro-farms, who shares the journey from a student project aimed at feeding people in refugee camps to developing small-scale, remotely managed vertical farming systems. This startup is focused on installing beautiful micro-farms in stores, campuses, senior centers, educational spaces, and other facilities that can benef...
Apr 04, 2024•27 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Everybody in the Pool , Molly Wood speaks with Tiya Gordon, co-founder of It’s Electric, a company focused on overcoming the challenges of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in urban areas. They delve into the barriers to EV adoption, emphasizing the lack of accessible charging options for city dwellers without private parking. It’s Electric proposes a novel solution by installing small, bollard-style chargers powered by adjacent buildings, avoiding the need for ext...
Mar 27, 2024•32 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast This episode of Everybody in the Pool dives into the pressing issue of food waste and its significant impact on the climate crisis. Molly talks with Jordan Schenck, the Chief Customer Officer at Flashfood, exploring the staggering fact that 30-40% of the US food supply is wasted at various stages from production to household disposal. This results in a colossal loss of approximately $161 billion annually and contributes massively to greenhouse gas emissions, notably methane, due to food decompos...
Mar 20, 2024•33 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re sticking with renewable energy! Wind and solar often steal the renewable spotlight, but geothermal energy—derived from the Earth's constant underground heat—offers a clean, infinite source of power for heating and cooling. This week, we’re joined by retired NHL great Mike Richter, who has an amazing career pivot story into climate finance and resource deployment. He’s currently the CEO of Brightcore Energy, which does all kinds of sustainable energy retr...
Mar 13, 2024•34 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking utilities. We know that one of the big keys to dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing global warming to manageable levels is to transition as quickly as possible to renewable energy and electrify everything. And at the absolute heart of that challenge are utilities—the ones responsible for generating and distributing electricity. Addressing the challenge takes commitment, to start with, and not all utilities are created equal ...
Mar 06, 2024•29 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re getting a little high-tech. In the climate solutions conversation, people often talk about the need for game-changing innovation. That doesn’t mean giving up on policy and business and energy transition, obviously. But if we’re building a better future for everyone, it’s good to think of the breakthroughs that could not only solve our current crisis, but lay the foundation for all kinds of other breakthroughs, as well. One of those is quantum computing: ...
Feb 28, 2024•39 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re featuring a panel discussion moderated by Molly at the GreenBiz conference, held in Phoenix, AZ, in February. The conversation blends tech and climate and three amazing professionals talking about how AI (the other hottest topic on the planet, if you’ll pardon the very scary pun) can help with efforts to heal nature and restore biodiversity. Molly spoke with Elizabeth Hunter, co-founder and COO of a robotics and AI biodiversity startup called TreeSwift; ...
Feb 21, 2024•22 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re going a little sci-fi with a startup that spun out of Google and is trying to reinvent urban mobility. And by that I mean they’re developing modular electric tram systems that would take passengers around dense urban areas, hospital or college campuses, or maybe, you know, Google, on a series of cables suspended above buildings and streets. This means reducing the number of cars on the road, sure, but it also means we can build new cities, housing develo...
Feb 14, 2024•35 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re back to buildings! Buildings and the built environment are responsible for as much as 40 percent of carbon emissions and energy demand. In fact, a UN report from 2022 found that although the buildings and construction industry has done some investing in energy efficiency and more sustainable processes, its emissions hit an all-time high that year, after a brief dip during the pandemic. Solutions lie in more sustainable building practices, denser housing,...
Feb 07, 2024•27 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re exploring a topic that once seemed fanciful, unlikely at best, and even slightly controversial: carbon removal. Literally, taking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it so it doesn’t keep warming the planet. In fact, in 2022, the UN released a report that essentially said developing carbon removal technology is not optional, in addition to cutting emissions, if we want to keep warming to manageable (ie, not catastrophic) levels. So this week, we’re...
Jan 31, 2024•35 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. This week: how to get to the major breakthroughs that a lot of people think are necessary if we’re going to stop or even reverse the worst effects of human-caused climate change. Breakthroughs take money, yes, and they also take brilliant people, full stop! Scientists, inventors, wild-eyed optimists—the people who have ideas and need support, training, funding, and encouragement to see them through or come up with other brilliant ideas. Enter Activate, a no...
Jan 24, 2024•29 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool in 2024! We’re getting a bit of a late start this year because Molly was at CES in Las Vegas last week, which turned out to be a stealth sustainability show. On this week’s episode, we caught up with Stefan Solyom, CTO of Pebble, which is making a completely electric travel trailer—think RV—that can sustain itself off the grid for up to a week, power your home like a giant backup battery, back up and park itself, and has tech built inside that puts all other...
Jan 17, 2024•22 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, it’s almost the end of 2023 and this little podcast just finished its first year of existence! Aww! Thanks to everyone who came on this ride and came on this show! This week, we’re doing a little retrospective to look at some of the fun, adoptable solutions we highlighted (from wrapping paper to repairing your phones and keeping them longer), all the way to the mind-blowing inventions that have us genuinely hopeful about the future. Shout-out Shiki Wrap, Kyle ...
Dec 21, 2023•23 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we are once again thinking big when it comes to the energy transition. If last week was about electrifying whole fleets of cars, this week is about electrifying entire towns! Dan Bridleman of KB Home and Matt Brost of Sunpower join Molly to talk about how they’ve teamed up on a big experiment in southern California: a planned community of more than 200 net zero homes, all-electric, with smart thermostats and plugs and energy meters, with solar and whole-home b...
Dec 14, 2023•30 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we all know it’s a big deal to get lots of drivers to switch from ICE (internal combustion engine) cars to electric cars. But getting them to switch one at a time is for the birds—let’s talk about fleets of cars all at once! Taxi cabs, company cars, delivery vehicles, government cars … what does it take to get hundreds or thousands of cars to go electric? Well, a lot, as it turns out. Today’s guest is Josh Green, CEO of Inspiration Mobility, which buys and lea...
Dec 07, 2023•31 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, new ways to make old stuff! The materials, creation, transport, and disposal of furniture all generate lots of greenhouse gases, and manufacturers have been exploring ways to make furniture production greener, including overhauling the entire manufacturing process by 3D printing beautiful furniture from biodegradable and carbon-neutral materials. This week, Molly talks with Phillip Raub of Model No. about sustainable design, hyperlocal manufacturing, and turni...
Nov 16, 2023•26 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re going up a level, from the entrepreneurs inventing solutions to the climate crisis to an investor who’s keeping an eye out for the next big thing. But this isn’t just any venture capital fund—Fifth Wall is a massive investment fund that gets a lot of its money from the property and real estate industry. So, obviously, climate was an inevitable part of its investment thesis, since the built environment is a huge contributor to climate change, and an indus...
Nov 09, 2023•32 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re going back to the topic that first got Molly interested in climate solutions: adaptation and resilience. Or, put simply, how we survive the worsening climate crisis. This week, we’re talking with Emilie Mazzacurati, who’s been working on getting attention, money, and data on this part of the conversation for over a decade. She’s now founded Tailwind Climate, an organization designed to encourage, incubate and fund solutions that help us survive—and thriv...
Nov 03, 2023•26 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, alchemy! Just kidding, it’s science. I’m talking to a cleantech entrepreneur who has co-invented a new way to make magnesium metal out of seawater, in a process that’s specifically designed to use renewable energy. That’s a big deal because magnesium is an alloy in all kinds of metals we need, like aluminum, steel, and titanium, and right now it’s almost all coming from China or Russia and it’s made with coal. An abundant supply of domestic lightweight metal l...
Oct 25, 2023•31 min•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re always looking to national governments and multinational corporations to make big changes, but a lot of times, the real impact is local. The LA Cleantech Incubator is a super interesting example of an organization that used support from the city to raise private dollars and start a fund to support entrepreneurs building cool climate solutions. And with the Olympic Games coming to town in 2028, it’s an organization on a mission to decarbonize the city bef...
Oct 18, 2023•19 min•Ep 23•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re going full sci-fi. And when we say full sci-fi, we mean back to science that was conceived in the 17th century and is only now being perfected by a startup that’s trying to bring back lighter-than-air ships (blimps and aerostats) in the hopes of eventually moving cargo around in a zero-emissions and possibly even carbon-negative way. Diana Little of Anuma Aerospace explains the tech and and how proving the co-inventor of calculus wrong is only part of th...
Oct 11, 2023•28 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, it’s funny how we keep talking about climate solutions and haven’t gotten to the big ball of free energy in the sky yet. Maybe it’s because everybody thinks solar is “solved,” or it’s old tech, or it’s boring. But actually, solar adoption is lagging, and that’s a problem, because as we electrify everything, we need lots more renewable energy to meet the demand, and solar combined with batteries is not only a renewable energy solution, but a really cool way to ...
Oct 04, 2023•36 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, more hard problems! Today we’re talking to a startup focused on buildings and the carbon emissions that get literally built into them. That comes from construction materials like walls and flooring and yes, concrete, and even windows and the steel used to support them. Increasingly, developers and builders are on the hook for measuring and reducing what’s known as “embodied carbon,” and this week’s startup helps them do just that. Nicole Granath and Anneli Tos...
Sep 27, 2023•28 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, sometimes you just need to know that people are out there working on solving hard problems—like cement, which has roughly the same global CO2 emissions as … well, cars. It’s a big problem, it’s basically been made for the same way for 150 years, and it’s the single most-consumed human-made material on earth. So a few years ago, Cody Finke, a chemist, was looking for an impactful company to start in the climate space that wasn’t getting a ton of attention. Turn...
Sep 21, 2023•30 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, a two-fer of artist-activists who are both advocating for a world without fossil fuel-derived plastics and also working to portray that world in film and TV. Dianna Cohen is the founder and CEO of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, and Nada Djordjevich is an independent filmmaker, and both are trying to change the story—or at least make it represent real life. RESOURCES & LINKS Plastic Pollution Coalition: https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/ Plastic Kills...
Sep 13, 2023•24 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we respectfully thank you very, very much for carrying a reusable water bottle and refilling it instead of buying plastic water bottles. And also, sadly, we’re going to have to do a lot more than that to get rid of disposable beverage containers. This week’s entrepreneur, Manuela Zoninsein, is building a whole bottling plant the size of a vending machine that plugs into local tap water, filters it, delivers it in a reusable stainless steel bottle, and washes, ...
Sep 06, 2023•29 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re diving into a topic that has many people afraid of the deep end: should you go vegan to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions? Like many things you maybe don’t want to do, the answer is unequivocally yes, at least from a climate standpoint. But I hear you, it’s tough. So this week, we’re asking our new favorite vegan, Jessica Resler, to address some of the myths, the barriers, and the resistance, and she gives some tips and tricks on how to get started. R...
Aug 30, 2023•30 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast 
