Open Circuit: Jigar, Katherine, and Stephen are back

Dan Shugar has been trying to move solar panels around since the 1980s. What started with a few experiments as a young engineer has turned into one of the biggest solar tracker companies in the world. In 2012 he founded Nextracker with a single product. Since then, Nextracker has revolutionized tracking technology through an array of innovative products. This week, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Nextracker CEO and founder Dan Shugar about product innovation and customer relationships, and how Nextracker made it through the pandemic. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts.

When Raffi Garabedian co-founded Electric Hydrogen in 2020, he saw existing electrolyzers as too small and expensive to make green hydrogen economically viable. Instead of building standard sub-megawatt units, his team aimed for 100-megawatt systems at half the industry cost. Initial market enthusiasm brought millions in capacity reservations, fueling construction of a Massachusetts manufacturing plant. Then came the "trough of disillusionment" – a global cooling on hydrogen as projects faltered under high costs. In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Raffi about taking big technology risks while building a factory during market volatility. He explains why startups, not incumbents, are best positioned to drive the cost reductions needed to make green hydrogen competitive with fossil alternatives. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts.

Leila Madrone founded Sunfolding in 2012 with an innovative idea – build a solar tracker using pneumatic "airbags" instead of motors and torque tubes. By 2015, the company was deploying the technology in a field test in Davis, California.  Over the next six years, Sunfolding iterated on the technology’s design, built out the supply chain, and tried to prove bankability. Then, in 2021, the company found themselves faced with a major decision: take on a utility scale solar project during a global pandemic, or pass.  In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Leila about SunFolding's journey from breakthrough technology to shutdown, exploring the critical decisions that shaped the company's path and ultimately led to Sunfolding shutting down in 2023. Leila also shares the broader lessons for climate hardware startups navigating the complex intersection of innovation, manufacturing, and venture funding. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

This week, we’re featuring an episode of Open Circuit, a new show from Latitude Media that reunites Jigar Shah, Katherine Hamilton, and Stephen Lacey. Many listeners may remember them from The Energy Gang, a show they co-hosted for eight years. They are back together, co-hosting a weekly roundtable that will cover the latest news – to explain what's really accelerating the energy transition, from technological leaps and supply chain shifts, to market upheavals and policy uncertainty. If you like what you hear, go to your podcast app and subscribe to Open Circuit. You can also hear every episode and read transcripts at Latitudemedia.com. We’ll be back with a normal episode of The Green Blueprint next week.

In May 2024, Yanni Tsipis was watching as his team prepared to pour a low-carbon version of concrete — one that had never been used in a commercial project. As senior vice president of WS Development, he was in charge of the team building Boston’s largest net-zero office building for operating emissions (not embodied emissions), and he had spearheaded an effort to use a new type of low-carbon cement from a startup called Sublime Systems. It's hard to understate how big of a deal it is for the construction industry to try a new version of cement. It’s the glue that holds concrete particles together, and the recipe used today has barely changed since 1824. It's incredibly versatile stuff, but making it accounts for nearly 8% of global emissions, so there's pressure on the industry to clean up. But with the literal foundations of buildings, bridges, and roads at stake, you can understand why the industry might be slow to change.  But Yanni's team wanted to try.  In this episode, Lara talked to Yanni about the journey to the first commercial deployment of this low-carbon cement. He talks about the economics of cement, securing enough material in time to meet construction deadlines, and earning buy-in from WS Development’s internal team, plus their long list of contractors and subcontractors. It’s a case study in finding the right customer for a first-of-a-kind climate tech project. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Daniel Woldorff and Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter. On February 19th, join Latitude Media and Crux Climate for their upcoming Frontier Forum to unpack Crux’s 2024 Transferable Tax Credit Market Intelligence Report. Learn how tax credit transferability is accelerating investment in energy, and gain insights into what is shaping the market’s growth through 2025 and beyond. Register today for this virtual event.

When Chris Taylor and his team at GridStor were building Santa Barbara county's largest battery storage project in Goleta, CA they saw an opportunity: become one of the first companies to transfer tax credits under the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act. But there was no playbook to follow. Instead of working with smaller, specialized investors, GridStor took an unconventional approach. They went straight to JP Morgan, one of the largest tax credit investors in the country, to prove that battery storage projects could work with mainstream financial institutions. The strategy involved navigating complex legal requirements, securing specific opinion letters, and creating a framework that other companies could follow. In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Chris Taylor, CEO of GridStor, about executing this groundbreaking financial deal while simultaneously building a 60-megawatt battery storage facility. They discuss the challenges of pioneering new financial territory, working with major financial institutions as a startup, and what successful tax credit transfers could mean for scaling clean energy projects. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

On Christmas Eve 2023, Doug Chan wasn't celebrating with family. Instead, he was in Hellisheiði, Iceland with his team, preparing to commission Mammoth — what would become the world's largest operational direct air capture facility. Getting there wasn't easy. After building two successful smaller plants, Climeworks faced its biggest challenge yet in attempting a 10x scale-up of its Orca plant. When the team broke ground, they discovered issues with their newly designed equipment that forced tough decisions. And Iceland's harsh winter conditions complicated both construction and operations. In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Douglas Chan, chief operations officer at Climeworks, about proving and scaling direct air capture technology. They discuss managing technology risks, choosing the right partners — and what's next as Climeworks plans for an even bigger facility in Louisiana. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

In 2022, John O’Donnell and Peter von Behrens figured out how to design a heat battery that would deliver heat at very high, constant temperatures. The breakthrough came on the heels of two years of research and development, some of which took place in Peter’s garage.  Now, John and Peter were ready to prove their technology at commercial scale. So they approached a long-time innovation partner, Calgren Renewable Fuels, about deploying a 2-megawatt-hour heat battery for industrial heat delivery in Calgren’s Pixley, California plant. That’s when the next wave of problem solving started. It turns out, designing the technology was just half the battle. Manufacturing and installing a commercial scale demonstration proved harder than expected. In October 2023, they started on a six-month construction project that threw a myriad of challenges at the new start-up.  In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to John O’Donnell, co-founder and chief innovation officer at Rondo Energy, about the bumpy road of building a first-of-a-kind commercial demonstration. They cover things like the structural engineering challenges of scaling a new technology, and finding the right construction partner. Plus, John explains what new design specs mean for the company going forward.  The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

In the aftermath of the presidential election, the clean energy industry is scrambling to figure out what a second Trump administration would mean for their companies and projects. But Tom Burton isn't just looking at the next four years. After 25 years serving the industry with the law firm Mintz, he's thinking about the growth of the industry over another couple of decades. “Back in 2000, many pundits said the internet was dead – and that was around the time Google started their business. These transitions take decades. We're probably in the third inning of the game, and we're moving in the right direction,” said Burton.  So what does the state of play look like in that third inning? In this episode, produced in partnership with Mintz, we have a series of conversations tackling some of the biggest stories shaping clean energy today – across finance, policy, and markets. Tom Burton, chair of the energy & sustainability practice of Mintz, details the three distinct phases of the industry: innovation, growth, and scaling. Tanya Das, director of the energy program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, explains why she remains optimistic about the US policy environment. Frank O’Sullivan, managing director of the energy transition team at S2G ventures, talks about the need to de-risk emerging clean energy technologies for infrastructure investors. And Sayles Braga, a senior partner at Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, discusses innovations to manage data center load growth in the AI era.  These conversations were recorded at the Mintz Energy Transition Summit. For finance, policy, and market insights from the Mintz team, sign up for their newsletter.

In 2022, Via Separations was getting ready to build its commercial-scale filtration system, a technology that could help cut emissions and costs for a wide range of industries like paper, chemicals, and food processing.  And when the company faced two paths — scale up 10x or 100x — CEO and co-founder Shreya Dave decided to scale faster by building a commercial project at a paper mill in Alberta, Canada. It was a choice that put Via in a race against cash burn and the onset of the cold Canadian winter. The stakes for the company were high. The goal was to replace energy-intensive industrial evaporation at the paper mill with a first-of-a-kind membrane, akin to a pasta strainer, made of graphene dioxide.  Shreya and her team had worked for years in an MIT lab to develop the membrane, hoping to extract materials with far less energy. Initial tests had shown promise. Scaling up 100x would prove their technology was viable for broader commercial applications. That is, if they could overcome the challenges. In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Shreya Dave, co-founder and CEO of Via Separations, about the risk of going big. They cover things like the challenges of finding a first customer and grappling with how fast to scale. Plus, Shreya explains what she would have done differently. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter. On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!