In an industry that moved fast and defied cities, Veo chose a different path: partnership over disruption. Co-founder and CEO Candice Xie is building one of the only profitable micromobility companies in America by leading with discipline, transparency, and respect for the people shaping urban life. While competitors flooded streets and flamed out, Veo continues to earn trust — winning 90% of city RFPs and operating in over 50 markets nationwide. Candice joins Josh Dorfman to unpack how Veo’s strategy of asking for permission, designing durable hardware, and prioritizing community needs became its true growth engine. This is a masterclass in scaling deliberately, proving that in 2025, the climate-tech companies that endure aren’t the ones that move the fastest — they’re the ones that build trust the deepest.
Show Notes
Guest: Candice Xie, CEO and co-founder
Company: Veo
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Husk Power Systems operates the largest fleet of community-level clean-energy minigrids in the world—over 400 sites across India and Nigeria. Each system combines solar, battery storage, and biomass generation into a modular platform called PRISM, engineered to deploy and power an entire village within 24 hours. Behind the technology is an AI-driven operating system that forecasts demand, manages generation in real time, and keeps every site running autonomously. Co-founder and CEO Manoj Sinha shares how Husk plans to scale to 5,000 minigrids by 2030—delivering reliable, renewable power to millions and redefining what energy access means at civilization’s edge.
Show Notes
Guest: Manoh Sinha, Co-founder and CEO
Company: Husk Power Systems
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SolarCycle is building the next supply chain that makes the clean energy transition possible. Co-founder Jesse Simons spent two decades at the Sierra Club leading national campaigns to accelerate renewable energy before seeing the constraint built into solar’s own success. There aren’t enough raw materials to keep scaling, and communities are starting to resist projects without end-of-life plans.
With a deep bench of industry founders, operators, and visionaries, SolarCycle is closing that loop. They’ve developed technology to extract glass, aluminum, copper, silicon, and silver from old panels—and the reverse logistics to move them efficiently from field to factory.
This episode explores how SolarCycle is making recycling cost-competitive with landfilling—and why that threshold could define the future of solar. As circularity becomes essential to project approvals, investor confidence, and long-term supply, renewable energy is entering its next phase—where even the panels must become renewable too.
Show Notes
Guest: Jesse Simons, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer (corrected)
Company: SOLARCYCLE
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Ken LaRoe has done what no one else in U.S. history has: founded three banks. His first two were financial successes. His third—Climate First Bank—is his answer to unfinished business. Built to align money with mission, it’s now America’s fastest-growing new bank, surpassing $1.4 billion in assets while financing the clean energy economy.
In this episode, Ken shares what he learned across 25 years of banking—why financial performance and climate action can’t be opposites, and how being, in his words, a “rabid environmentalist and rabid capitalist” became his edge. He explains how Climate First’s fintech arm, OneEthos, built proprietary software that powers $30 million in solar loans each month across 700+ installers—without relying on tax credits or Wall Street intermediaries.
Now, as the bank prepares for an IPO, Ken is proving that mission-driven finance can outperform the market—and that the clean energy transition runs on something deeper than capital: conviction.
Show Notes
Guest: Ken LaRoe, CEO of Climate First Bancorp and Executive Chairman of Climate First Bank
Comnpany: Climate First Bank
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Cambium is building the operating system for reuse—a digital supply chain connecting the fragmented network of companies needed to turn fallen trees into finished goods.
Every year, tens of millions of urban trees come down. The scale is staggering, and most end up chipped, burned, or buried. Cambium links tree-removal crews, haulers, mills, and end customers through a unified digital platform—transforming what was once waste into market-ready material.
Today, more than 500 companies across the U.S. and Canada coordinate each tree’s journey, forming a just-in-time network for reclaimed wood.
Co-founder and CEO Ben Christensen calls it building a “tech-native forestry company”—one where reuse runs on code, data, and tight coordination. In this episode, Ben and host Josh Dorfman explore how mastering complexity becomes a competitive advantage, how data builds defensibility, and how scaling reuse could redefine how the material economy works.
Show Notes
Guest: Ben Christensen
Company: Cambium
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AI, electrification, decarbonization—they all hinge on how effectively the grid is orchestrated. Yet thousands of clean energy projects are stuck in U.S. interconnection queues. The backlog is twice the size of all the energy we use today. It’s not a cost problem. It’s the grid—the largest machine on earth—built last century for stability and missing the cloud-scale infrastructure to handle what’s ahead.
Astrid Atkinson has run a machine like this before. At Google, she spent fifteen years in site reliability engineering, keeping Search, Maps, YouTube, and Gmail online with 99.999% uptime. If google.com went down, her team got paged. Running one of the world’s largest critical infrastructure systems taught her a lesson: you don’t scale by adding infinite hardware. You scale with visibility, software, and flexibility.
Now, as co-founder and CEO of Camus Energy, she’s applying that lesson to the grid. Camus builds a real-time data layer—linking past, present, and future—and turns it into signals utilities use to coordinate assets: charge later, ramp down, discharge when needed.
With visibility and signals, utilities gain the control knobs they need—so projects connect in months instead of years and demand flexibility becomes part of the grid’s DNA.
Show Notes
Guest: Astrid Atkinson, co-founder and CEO
Company: Camus Energy
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Curbside charging sounds obvious—plug in outside your apartment, wake up to a full battery. Yet more than 40 million potential urban EV owners are still waiting for someone to figure it out.
it’s electric, co-founded by Tiya Gordon, is designing EV charging for cities—making curbside charging possible by inventing what didn’t exist: hardware powered directly by buildings, a revenue model that pays property owners, and a way to work with cities that clears the path to install. Its chargers are already operational in Boston, Detroit, and San Francisco, with more cities on the way.
Tiya brings a unique background in public-facing technology and design to the challenge—she led the technology for the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Now she’s assembled a team from transportation, design, and public projects—people who know how to connect landlords, planners, and engineers into the same conversation. That’s how It’s Electric moves swiftly through city permitting in days instead of years—and why the future of EV charging will feel less like bulky infrastructure, and more like disco and sunshine.
Show Notes
Guest: Tiya Gordon
Company: it's electric
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By fusing architect and developer, Alloy Development is proving that the riskiest choice in real estate isn’t electrification or Passive House — it’s clinging to the past.
CEO Jared Della Valle joins Supercool to share the company’s journey to developing The Alloy Block in downtown Brooklyn—aiming to create the most sustainable block in the city. It’s anchored by 505 State Street, New York’s first all-electric skyscraper; two Passive House–certified public schools; and soon, One Third Avenue—the tallest Passive House tower in the world.
Della Valle describes how Alloy built investor confidence project by project—staying nimble, controlling risk, and executing at a standard that pulled institutional capital toward climate performance. He explains why going all-electric lowered long-term risk, how policy and pricing dynamics shifted investor expectations, and why the most competitive real estate today is also the cleanest.
Alloy is shifting how Wall Street perceives risk and return—redefining climate performance not as the exception, but the expectation.
Show Notes
Guest: Jared Della Valle, CEO
Company: Alloy Development
Project: The Alloy Block
Building: 505 State Street - All-Electric Skyscraper
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Mike Faherty grew up surfing the Jersey Shore, surrounded by coastal style but chasing something that felt more enduring. Even as a kid, he obsessed over fabrics—the way silk ties carried weight, how colors layered, how clothes gained character through texture. By seventeen, he had already mapped the outlines of the brand he wanted to build.
In 2012, he launched Faherty with his twin brother Alex and sister-in-law Kerry—creating a clothing company rooted in surf culture, elevated by craft, and grounded in responsibility. Today, it's grown into one of the most distinctive brands in American fashion—80+ stores, hundreds of millions in revenue, and a headquarters team of just over 100 people that still moves with the urgency of a “Day One” startup.
Faherty doesn’t market itself as a sustainability brand, but responsibility is stitched into its DNA. Seventy-two percent of fabrics already meet the company’s responsible sourcing standard, with a goal of 100% by 2030—all disclosed in its public Impact Report. Regenerative organic cotton from the Amazon. Recycled polyester engineered for softness. Supply chain partners chosen for shared values and trust.
In this conversation, Mike, the company's Chief Creative Officer, shares how a lifelong passion for materials became a strategy for innovation—why feel matters, how responsibility shows up behind the seams, and what it takes to scale a modern American fashion brand built for lasting impact.
Show Notes
Guest: Mike Faherty, Co-founder & Chief Creative Officer
Company: Faherty Brand
Resource: Faherty Brand Impact Report
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Forum Mobility is electrifying how America moves freight. Every year, more than 30,000 diesel 18-wheelers haul containers in and out of California’s ports, logging over a billion miles, generating enormous carbon emissions and polluting nearby communities.
Electric semis are powerful, quiet, and clean. But at $500,000 apiece with uncertain charging and maintenance, the math doesn’t work for the independent operators — often family-run businesses — who move most containers from port to warehouse, the first mile of logistics known as drayage. The technology is ready. The adoption is stuck.
In 2024, Forum Mobility opened the world’s largest port-based charging depot at Long Beach. But the company’s breakthrough isn’t hardware — it’s the model: EV Trucking as a Service. By bundling trucks and charging into a predictable monthly subscription, Forum Mobility makes running electric cheaper than diesel and removes the risk that has stalled adoption.
Founder and CEO Matt Leducq saw the same shift in solar, where he built his career and where financing innovation became the key to unlocking market adoption. Now he’s betting the same playbook can electrify freight.
Show Notes
Guest: Matt Leducq, Co-Founder & CEO
Company: Forum Mobility
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Most U.S. homes aren’t wired for electrified living, even though the clean energy future depends on it. Upgrading panels and wiring can cost thousands before a single new appliance is even installed.
Plus, consumers aren’t demanding electrification. They want lifestyle upgrades—faster, more precise cooking, backup power in a pinch, and appliances that cost less and perform more.
Copper has designed the solution. The company is building 21st-century appliances to work on 20th-century infrastructure, i.e., the aging grid we have today. No infrastructure upgrades necessary.
Charlie, their first electric appliance, is a sleek, modern induction range equipped with a built-in 5 kWh battery. It plugs into a standard 110-volt kitchen outlet, cooks four times faster than natural gas, charges when renewables are on the grid, and keeps going even during blackouts.
Copper’s Founder and CEO, Sam Calisch, helped shape clean energy policy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act as co-founder of Rewiring America. Now he and the team at Copper are building battery-embedded electric appliances that install easily and perform better.
The clean energy transition is cooking.
Show Notes
Guest: Sam Calisch, Founder and CEO
Company: Copper
Resource: Wall Street Journal—Maker of Battery-Powered Kitchen Stoves Raises $28 Million
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Interface is a public company proving that carbon-negative is possible at scale. The billion-dollar flooring brand has more than 400 carbon-negative products on the market today and a plan to take its entire business carbon-negative by 2040. Liz Minne, Head of Global Sustainability Strategy, shares how Interface is operationalizing that ambition through product innovation, supply chain engagement, and a culture that keeps climate goals at the center of business decisions. She discusses what it means to lead as a public company, how to translate climate targets into everyday execution, and why culture may be Interface’s most important competitive edge. Interface shows that a carbon-negative future isn’t theoretical—it’s now being built in the heart of corporate America.
Show Notes
Guest: Liz Minné, Head of Global Sustainability Strategy
Company: Interface
Resource: "All In On Carbon" Climate Commitment
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At Amazon, speed isn’t a carbon cost—it’s a carbon advantage. The company now runs 30,000 electric delivery vehicles, delivered 1.5 billion packages on battery power last year, and has built over 600 renewable energy projects in more than 20 countries—20 gigawatts of clean energy capacity, making it the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable power.
Inside that scale is a playbook for how a global business operationalizes decarbonization without slowing down. Chris Roe, Amazon’s Director of Worldwide Environment for Carbon, and Chris Atkins, Director of Worldwide Operations for Sustainability, share how speed has become a lever for lower emissions, why regionalizing the network cuts both carbon and cost, and how they’re mobilizing teams across the company to hit net zero by 2040—ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement.
We cover EV fleet deployment, renewable power strategy, packaging reduction, AI-driven efficiency, and Amazon’s push to bring suppliers and competitors along through The Climate Pledge. It’s a rare inside look at a company turning massive logistics into massive carbon cuts—and inviting others to do the same.
Show Notes
Guests:
- Chris Roe, Director of Worldwide Environment, Carbon
- Chris Atkins, Director of Worldwide Operations, Sustainability
Company: Amazon
Resources:
- 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report
- Amazon's Sustainability Exchange
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For fifty years, Brompton has been the most iconic name in urban cycling. Engineered and made in London, beloved by city riders, and still unrivaled in how fast it folds and how good it feels to ride.
But in the U.S., where biking is still mostly recreational and folding bikes barely register, the brand faces a different challenge: how to scale a joy-filled, performance-driven mobility tool in a market that doesn’t know it needs it.
Juliet Scott-Croxford, President of the Americas, is modernizing everything around the fold—retail, product, e-commerce, community—while keeping the company’s elite dealer network close.
This is how a legacy brand retains its stature while accelerating growth—by evolving everything but the reason people love it. And why joy might be the most underrated climate signal of all.
Show Notes
Guest: Juliet Scott-Croxford, President of the Americas
Company: Brompton
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To scale climate solutions you have to know how to talk about them. The companies driving climate adoption don’t just offer better solutions—they tell better stories. Stories that reframe clean energy as the smarter, cheaper, everyday choice. Stories that win customers, sway skeptics, and shift markets.
Keith Zakheim has spent two decades working with climate brands to sharpen their strategy and scale their message. As CEO of Antenna Group, he’s shaped the public narrative around clean energy, circular economy, and climate tech adoption—long before those terms entered the mainstream lexicon.
Keith joins Josh to unpack the new landscape resulting from the One Big Beautiful Bill, the continued surge of private investment, and why even in the Age of Adoption, the right story still determines who grabs market share—and who falters. They break down how Antenna’s new AI tool, Conscious Compass, evaluates whether a brand’s sustainability rhetoric matches reality. And they explore why messaging grounded in prosperity, security, and abundance may be 2025’s most strategic climate language.
Clean energy won’t scale because the climate crisis demands it. It’ll scale because it feels like it belongs—like football in the fall.
Show Notes
Guest: Keith Zakheim, CEO
Company: Antenna Group
Article referenced: The Hill - Why the climate and sustainability economy will thrive in a Trump presidency
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Industrial hemp always had believers. What it lacked was a supply chain.
Hempitecture is changing that—starting with the only commercial-scale factory in the U.S. making high-performance home insulation from hemp.
From Idaho, it now ships to over 5,000 customers across 48 states. It’s the largest buyer of industrial hemp fiber in North America—proving a crop once sidelined by regulation and volatility can power a fast-growing manufacturing business.
In this episode, co-founder Tommy Gibbons shares the operational playbook: how Hempitecture proved its insulation performs, raised capital through crowdfunding when venture capital didn’t show up, and built a new distribution model in a category with no precedent.
Hempitecture’s insulation cuts carbon in two ways—by lowering embodied emissions during manufacturing and reducing operational emissions once installed.
Nearly a century after hemp was banned in 1937, the supply chain is finally getting built—with carbon impact to match.
And this time, it’s not just legal—it’s scalable.
Show Notes
Guest: Tommy Gibbons, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Company: Hempitecture
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Consumers want the upgrades. The climate does too. But the electrical panel in the garage stands in the way.
EVs, heat pumps, induction stoves—electrification is becoming more attractive. The products are faster, cleaner, cheaper to run. But nearly 48 million U.S. homes still rely on outdated 100-amp service. That means expensive utility upgrades, long delays, and a halt to progress.
Arch Rao, former Tesla Energy product lead, built Span to fix the bottleneck. The Span Panel replaces the old breaker box with a connected, intelligent device that lets homeowners add electric appliances without triggering a full service upgrade. It works with solar, batteries, and EVs—and gives people visibility and control over their energy use for the first time.
Span is the upgrade that makes all the other upgrades possible. And with Span Edge, utilities can manage demand house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood—without building more poles and wires.
Span turns a forgotten piece of hardware into a platform for electrification—at home, and across the grid.
Show Notes
Guest: Arch Rao, Founder & CEO
Company: Span
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Clean Energy Is Dead. Long Live Clean Energy.
The U.S. was first. The first silicon solar cell in New Jersey. The first wind turbine in Cleveland. The first microinverter in a California garage.
But now it’s China scaling the clean energy transition—building factories, locking in supply chains, and racing toward a low-carbon economy at industrial speed.
In the U.S., the president just signed the Big Beautiful Bill into law—gutting the historic clean energy investments at the heart of the Inflation Reduction Act. The country that helped invent the clean energy future is now stepping back. Just as solar keeps getting cheaper. Just as global investment hits $2 trillion. Just as the low-carbon transition starts to tip.
David Roberts, founder of Volts, has spent 20 years as a journalist tracking this shift. In this episode, he joins Josh Dorfman to dissect the precarious moment we find ourselves in—when America’s energy future is uncertain, global momentum is accelerating, and the clean energy transition won’t wait. They talk solar’s 60-year cost curve, energy policy, and why the real revolution may be happening from the bottom up.
This is what it looks like when the politics retreat—but the transition doesn’t.
Show Notes
Guest: David Roberts
Company: Volts
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TerraCycle takes on waste the rest of the world ignores—cigarette butts, diapers, pharmaceutical blister packs. But what makes the model work isn’t what they recycle. It’s how they get companies to pay for it.
Even with one of the most ambitious missions in climate tech—eliminate the idea of waste—TerraCycle doesn’t lead with sustainability. It leads with business logic.
In this episode, founder Tom Szaky shares how the company has grown for 23 straight years by solving a problem no one wanted: how to turn unprofitable waste streams into brand and operational value. Salons use recycling to drive bookings. Labs use it to retain top talent. Big brands use it to earn loyalty. Every program works because it helps someone grow.
He also explains why his second company, Loop, is scaling fast in France and Japan. The reason isn’t culture. It’s the right rules and incentives.
This is a conversation about turning materials with negative value into real business drivers—so waste stays out of the landfill, and the value shows up on the P&L.
Show Notes
Guest: Tom Szaky, CEO
Company: TerraCycle
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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, digital-native fans, and a new kind of mobility.
That’s when Roger knew: failure wasn’t an option.
He joined Andretti Global to help lead its Formula E team. Today, he’s Team Principal and Chairman of the Formula E Teams Association.
Just over a decade later, Formula E is the fastest-growing motorsport on Earth. It races through city centers, draws 500 million fans, and connects with a global audience that legacy motorsports can’t reach.
Roger takes us inside how Formula E became the sport brands chase, fans love, and the future demands.
Show Notes
Guest: Roger Griffiths, Team Principal, Andretti Formula E
Company: Andretti Global
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