Everybody in the Pool

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re taking a step back to take a look at the data and see how we’re tracking toward making it to net zero by 2050. Ryan Pancharadsam is a partner at Kleiner Perkins and together with legendary clean tech investor John Doerr, he wrote a book called Speed & Scale, breaking down the climate crisis into a series of categories with accomplishable objectives attached to them. We’ll talk about the team’s newly updated tracker, looking at progress toward our survival, and the places where we need to move a lot farther and a lot faster to make it to net zero.Speed & Scale Tracker: https://speedandscale.com/trackerAll episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 materials.RESOURCES & LINKSNFW: https://nfw.earth/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 energy resources.RESOURCES & LINKSEnphase Energy: https://enphase.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 benefit from growing food onsite. But we also tackle the bigger picture about traditional farming, such as soil degradation and high greenhouse gas emissions, and explore how controlled environment agriculture and hydroponics present a resource-efficient solution.RESOURCES & LINKSBabylon Micro-Farms: https://babylonmicrofarms.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 extensive infrastructure and utility coordination. This approach not only promises to expand EV charging access in densely populated areas but also offers building owners a revenue-sharing model, turning every participating building into a potential charging station. The goal: make it easy to transition to electric vehicles no matter where you live.RESOURCES & LINKSIt’s Electric: https://www.itselectric.us/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 decomposition in landfills. Also it’s just dumb, because it’s food, people. Flashfood is an app that lets grocery stores sell surplus or near-expiry items at half the price, reducing waste and providing consumers with affordable food options, and letting margin-strapped grocery stores make a little extra, too.RESOURCES & LINKSFlashfood: https://www.flashfood.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 retrofitting for the built environment, and which, lately, is specifically focused on ground source heat pumps, using geothermal energy to heat and cool buildings even in dense urban areas, like Manhattan.RESOURCES & LINKSBrightcore Energy: https://brightcoreenergy.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 in this regard. The ones who are quickly realized it also takes investment and innovation. Molly talks with Steve Smith, the CEO of National Grid Partners, which is the corporate venture arm of National Grid Group, about the tech needed to modernize the grid ASAP.RESOURCES & LINKSNational Grid Partners: https://www.ngpartners.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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: computing powerful enough to revolutionize materials discovery, battery chemistry breakthroughs, fertilizer production, and who knows what else. Molly talks with Pete Shadbolt, co-founder of PsiQuantum, about the company’s attempts to commercialize quantum computing as soon as possible.RESOURCES & LINKSPsiQuantum: https://www.psiquantum.com/Quantum computing, explained: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/quantum-computing.htmlAll episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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; Melanie Nakagawa, chief sustainability officer at Microsoft; and Millie Chapman, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and Climate Change AI.RESOURCES & LINKSVideo version: https://www.greenbiz.com/events/greenbiz/sessions/ai-nature-climate-and-beyond-how-new-tech-transforming-sustainabilityTreeSwift: https://www.treeswift.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 developments, and urban centers that have density without resource-hogging skyscrapers, and which don’t need a ton of extra land for parking and multi-lane highways and such. Wild? Sure. Doable? We’ll see. Interesting? Absolutely. With Swyft Cities founder and CEO Jeral Poskey.RESOURCES & LINKSSwyft Cities: https://swyftcities.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, and better building materials, and this week’s guest is doing all three. Plant Prefab sustainably builds multi-unit housing in super high-tech automated factories. This week’s guest is founder and former CEO Steve Glenn.RESOURCES & LINKSPlant Prefab: https://www.plantprefab.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 talking with one of the most promising players in the space, Spiritus, whose CEO Charles Cadieu details the novel material they’ve invented that will eventually become orchards of carbon-absorbing “fruits.”RESOURCES & LINKSSpiritus: https://spiritus.com/enAll episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 nonprofit fellowship that provides all of that to scientist-entrepreneurs, in hopes of making sure there are more of them in every room where decisions are being made. This week, Molly talks with Activate’s new CEO, Cyrus Wadia. Enjoy!RESOURCES & LINKSActivate: https://www.activate.org/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 glamping to shame. Plus, flying cars. No, really. Lots of them! Welcome back and happy New Year!RESOURCES & LINKSThe Pebble RV: https://pebblelife.com/From the newsletter: Is it the age of EVTOLs?All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Wiens, Ridwell, Mill, Universal Hydrogen, Magrathea Metals, Anuma Aerospace, and more. Happy New Year!RESOURCES & LINKSAll episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 batteries, that will also be connected with a community battery and a microgrid that will send power back to the utility to help keep the lights on when needed and give power back to the utility when they need it. Cool, right? Let’s move there!RESOURCES & LINKSShadow Mountain at Menifee: https://www.kbhome.com/new-homes-california/menifeeAll episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 leases electric cars but also provides all the fleet management services a company needs to transition to EVs—which, not for nothing, are cheaper and more reliable to operate once they do. Plus, the surprising reason existing fleet management companies don’t prioritize EVs.RESOURCES & LINKSInspiration Mobility: https://inspirationmobility.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 turning waste into super beautiful chairs and planters.RESOURCES & LINKSModel No. https://www.model-no.com/Business Insider on furniture rental: https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/why-i-rent-furniture-2021-11All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool Please subscribe and tell your friends about EITP! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.