Supercool

Supercool
  • 5.0 (21)
  • BUSINESS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Climate companies are winning. Trillions in capital are shifting to solutions that cut carbon, grow profits, and redefine modern life. At the center are CEOs, founders, and operators turning climate innovation into market momentum. Hosted by climate-tech founder and author Josh Dorfman, Supercool goes inside their strategies, execution, and business models to reveal how value is created in the race to decarbonize—and how the future is being built.

  1. 5D AGO

    Cash Beats Climate: Crowdfunding Millions for Clean Energy

    In 2019, Will Wiseman watched 100,000 people march through Barcelona for the global climate strikes. He felt hope. Then the obvious truth: everyone was going home, and nothing would change. So, he built Climatize, an SEC-registered investment platform that allows anyone to invest as little as $10 in clean energy projects across the United States. Climatize specializes in projects ranging from $250,000 to $5 million, which are traditionally too small for institutional lenders to fund. The company's proprietary AI tools compress due diligence from weeks to minutes. Some projects raise hundreds of thousands of dollars within 24 hours. The crowdfunding platform's progress to date: $14 million deployed across 33 clean energy projects—solar, battery storage, EV charging, and energy efficiency—in 14 states. Will and Josh discuss why finance-first messaging outperforms climate-first messaging, how AI has made small deals viable, and why speed to finance has become Climatize's competitive moat. Show Notes Guest: Will Wiseman, Co-Founder & CEO Company: Climatize For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

    46 min

  2. FEB 4

    Beauty and Brains: Lunar Batteries Save Money and Look Good Doing It

    Kunal Girotra was Head of Tesla Energy before leaving in 2020 to found Lunar Energy. Then he went silent. Over two years, he raised $300 million, built a 250-person team, and developed home battery systems that blend sleek design with state-of-the-art technology. Lunar emerged from stealth in 2022 with a mission to deliver endless, affordable clean energy. What differentiates Lunar: it's both a hardware and software company. The battery and AI are designed and integrated as a single system. The software learns each home's unique energy fingerprint, deciding when to charge from the grid at low rates, when to run on battery, and when to sell power back at premium prices. The results: customers earn an average of $464 annually through Virtual Power Plant programs and $338 through optimization—over $800 in total, with seamless backup power. Lunar's GridShare platform now manages 650 megawatts of distributed energy for utilities across multiple continents. This morning, the company announced $232 million in new funding to expand nationwide. Show Notes: Guest: Kunal Girotra, Founder & CEO Company: Lunar Energy For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

    48 min

  3. JAN 28

    Can AI Save AI Infrastructure? Cutting Energy, Water, and Wear in Data Centers

    Data centers have always pursued energy efficiency through better hardware—smarter chillers, advanced cooling systems. But there's a ceiling. You can only make hardware so efficient. Seven years ago, Jasper de Vries discovered the butterfly effect in data centers—something on a roof rippling through 300 billion sensor readings down to valves in server rooms. His company, Lucend, ingests that sensor data to generate operator recommendations. One facility cut power usage by 40% in a year, saving $4.3 million. Yet here's what most of us miss about AI's big energy problem: we focus on operational energy use while Scope 3 emissions—the embodied carbon from manufacturing hardware—creates massive impact, so much so that Microsoft won't hit its 2030 climate targets because of its data center growth plans. With JP Morgan projecting $5 trillion in AI infrastructure buildouts by 2030, the need to bring embodied carbon under control is urgent. Lucend's software addresses both challenges: it slashes operational energy while extending hardware life through predictive maintenance, reducing the physical wear that forces early replacement. Its technology is now deployed across over 50 facilities globally. Show Notes Guest: Jasper de Vries Company: Lucend For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

    40 min

  4. JAN 21

    Stop Sorting: How UBQ Materials Uses 100% Of Your Trash

    What if we stopped trying to recycle and just used all our trash instead? UBQ Materials makes bio-plastics from entire trash bags—dirty diapers, greasy pizza boxes, chicken bones, mixed plastics. Everything. 100% utilization. Nothing returns to landfills. The material works in existing manufacturing equipment, costs the same as virgin plastic, and can be recycled 10+ times. It's already in Mercedes interiors and McDonald's products. CEO Albert Douer spent eight years in stealth mode perfecting the technology before selling a pound. The original plan: three years. Reality: ten. Most VCs would've killed it. He kept going. Now UBQ operates an 80,000-ton facility in the Netherlands proving the technology works at scale. The implications for waste, plastics, and the circular economy are staggering—and Albert's journey reveals what it actually takes to bring impossible-sounding innovation into the real world. Show Notes Guest: Albert Douer, CEO Company: UBQ Materials For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

    39 min

  5. JAN 14

    Modernization Is Electrification: How Schneider Electric Builds at Gigawatt Scale

    When any part of the economy modernizes, it electrifies. New HVAC systems? Electric heat pumps. Autonomous vehicles? Battery-powered electric cars. Next-generation factories? Not a smoke stack in sight. Which means the US needs to build as much grid infrastructure in the next decade as we built in the last 50 years. Schneider Electric is a 189-year-old infrastructure company that makes everything from the cooling systems in AI factories to the switchgear moving power across the grid. Jim Simonelli, their SVP of data centers, joins Supercool to explain why efficiency is now a core business necessity, not just an environmental virtue. Every watt that doesn't reach compute is lost revenue, which changes everything about how you design and operate at gigawatt scale. Vincent Petit, who runs Schneider's research institute, breaks down why 15 years of flat electricity demand means we've lost the muscle to build infrastructure. And why the answer isn't just more generation—it's rethinking the entire system. Show Notes Guests: Jim Simonelli, Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Secure Power and Vincent Petit, Senior Vice President, Climate & Energy Transition Research Company: Schneider Electric For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

    46 min

  6. JAN 7

    Mass Timber For The Masses: How Sterling Mainstreamed CLT

    Mass Timber is growing fast—expanding from a handful of commercial wood buildings in the U.S. just over a decade ago to more than 2,000 today, with 24,000 projected by 2034. Once considered niche, mass timber is moving mainstream—competing on price, speed, and domestic supply chains, not sustainability alone. Sterling Structural is leading that shift. As America's largest CLT manufacturer, the company produces one cross-laminated timber panel every 65 seconds, sourcing 100% of its wood from domestic sawmills. Sterling has recently produced its one millionth panel. This is mass timber for the masses—standardized, modular systems that contractors already understand. Michaela Harms, Vice President of Mass Timber at Sterling, joins Josh Dorfman to share how mass timber went from alternative to mainstream in a decade. She discusses how Sterling supplied 1,100 prefabricated CLT panels for Amazon’s new facility in Elkhart, Indiana, and why the industry is scaling by competing directly on price, speed, and practicality—with the carbon and forestry benefits included. Show NotesGuest: Michaela Harms, Vice President of Mass Timber Company: Sterling Structural For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

    50 min

  7. 12/31/2025

    The Clean Energy Transition Runs on Affordability

    Clean power has never been cheaper. So why are electricity bills rising—and what's blocking faster deployment? Jigar Shah joins Supercool to explain why 2025 marked a turning point: for the first time in history, essentially 100% of new electricity demand worldwide was met by solar, wind, and nuclear. It happened because the same solutions that solve climate change are winning on affordability. But deployment could be moving much faster. The technology is proven. The finance exists. The barrier is political: governors and mayors don’t realize the leverage they have over utilities, and utility CEOs won’t act unless forced by law. In climate circles, Jigar needs no introduction. He pioneered solar financing at SunEdison, launched the Carbon War Room with Richard Branson, and ran the DOE Loan Programs Office that deployed over $100 billion in clean energy financing during the Biden Administration. We dig into what gives elected officials more power than they know, why some utility CEOs want to be mandated to deploy cheaper solutions, and why Jigar’s headline for 2026 isn’t more technology—it’s more workforce. Show Notes Guest: Jigar Shah, Co-Managing Partner Company: Multiplier For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

    47 min

  8. 12/24/2025

    The $2.2 Trillion Year: Clean Power Keeps Compounding

    In 2025, the U.S. president called climate change a hoax. Meanwhile, global clean energy investment hit a record $2.2 trillion. Akshat Rathi is a senior reporter covering climate and energy for Bloomberg. His read on the past year: China is becoming the modern Standard Oil. The same way Rockefeller's empire exported petroleum infrastructure globally, China is now exporting electrification—solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, grid tech, project finance—to countries racing to modernize their economies. Pakistan imported solar equal to half its grid capacity in twelve months. And Ethiopia went from zero to 7% EV market share. Developing countries treat electricity like a growth engine. Rich countries struggle to meet 4% annual demand increases. Rathi joins Supercool to walk through Trump's rollback, the ripple effects at home and abroad, and why none of it is stopping the global transition to the low-carbon future. Show NotesGuest: Akshat Rathi Recent Articles: Bloomberg Book: Climate Capitalism  Podcast: Zero: The Climate Race For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram  * Supercool on LinkedIn

    45 min
See All (82)

Trailer

5
out of 5
21 Ratings

About

Climate companies are winning. Trillions in capital are shifting to solutions that cut carbon, grow profits, and redefine modern life. At the center are CEOs, founders, and operators turning climate innovation into market momentum. Hosted by climate-tech founder and author Josh Dorfman, Supercool goes inside their strategies, execution, and business models to reveal how value is created in the race to decarbonize—and how the future is being built.

Information

  • Creator
    Supercool
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    82
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Supercool
  • Show Website
    Supercool

You Might Also Like