Watt It Takes Emily Kirsch

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we need to return Earth’s atmosphere to 280 parts per million of CO2 for the health of human existence and that of the planet. To achieve that goal, industry experts believe we’ll need to be removing 10-20 billion tons of carbon per year by 2050.

Removing carbon is exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Peter Reinhardt, Co-Founder and CEO of Charm Industrial, is doing. The team at Charm has developed a novel process for removing carbon using biomass that is converted to bio-oil via pyrolysis, and then injected into wells deep underground, where it is permanently stored for thousands of years if not millennia. Charm is also developing a process for fossil-free ironmaking.

Fusion could be a nearly waste-free, carbon-free, and all-geography answer to creating enough dispatchable power to get us through the energy transition. To achieve this, all components of a fusion power plant need to be built so that when fusion energy becomes a reality, we have the industry, infrastructure, and processes in place to distribute the power, and it has to be cost competitive. This is exactly what Bob Mumgaard, Co-Founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), is building. Today, CFS has more than 600 employees, has raised $2B, and is executing on their plan to make the “holy grail” of fusion energy possible.

In 2018, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history, the Camp Fire, was sparked by a faulty transmission line. In response, Kim Abrams founded Petra on a mission to underground the world’s utilities to protect communities and their access to energy from worsening disasters using their industry-leading trenchless technology.

Kunal Girotra, Founder and CEO of Lunar Energy, shares how they're building the future of residential electrification.

Emily sits down with Dave Snydacker, Founder and CEO of Lilac Solutions, to learn how they're revolutionizing lithium extraction.

Kate Steel and Nithio are de-risking investments into energy access in Africa, helping distributors of solar systems and other products grow and reach the 600M households across the continent with no or unreliable energy access.