Climate Papa

On this show, we’ve explored how people can make infrastructure changes in their lives that have long-term positive climate impacts—whether it’s upgrading your furnace to a heat pump or switching from a gas car to an EV. Food is on the other end of the spectrum. It’s the ultimate behavioral challenge: the average person has three meals a day, 21 meals a week. That's over 1,000 meals a year or 5,000 decisions over five years. Compare that to the one-time choice of a car you may drive for five years. Each of these meals—and how we prepare them—has a major impact, both on our personal health and on the health of the planet.

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Joel Gamoran—a fellow Seattle papa, chef, culinary teacher, and founder of Homemade Cooking. Joel’s journey has taken him from teaching as the head chef at Sur La Table to hosting the cooking show Scraps, where he turned food waste into culinary masterpieces (and published a cookbook as well).

We discuss staggering truths about the waste in our food system—and how culinary medicine is a key unlock for our health, our communities, and the planet. Joel generously opens up about his own health journey and how that connects to his life’s work.

If after this conversation you want more of Joel’s amazing energy, you can cook with him via his site Homemade Cooking, watch his PBS show Homemade Live, and follow along via his Instagram.

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Get connected:

To get in touch, email ⁠[email protected]⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

I sit down with Kathy Hannun--the founder of Dandelion Energy, a geothermal heat pump comany that she spun out of Google X. What is a geothermal heat pump? Well, if you go outside and drill a hole a few hundred feet below ground you would get to a stable temperature--somewhere in the 50-60 degrees range. This earth is a fantastic place to transfer heat to and from. You can then cycle a fluid (like water) down there and use the transfer of heat to very efficiently heat or cool a home via a heatpump. In fact, a geothermal heatpump should be the most efficient way to heat and cool any building.

We unpack all of that, and also discuss how Kathy made major career decisions—optimizing for each step along the way. Of course, we chat about kids, Halloween costumes, and more.

After the election, I was reflecting on Kathy's timeline--she spun this business out of Google X in 2017. She raised a Seed round then--proving out the product and model until growing significantly in over the last 3 years. It's interesting to realize that the product, team, and company were really formed in the early days of a very pro-fossil fuel administration. I suspect Kathy's story will have many analogs. Many of the most impactful and successful companies will be formed in 2025 by founders just as relentless and thoughtful as her.

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Get connected:

To get in touch, email ⁠[email protected]⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

A bit over a year ago Ben met Anay Shah. In the months that followed Anay and Ben spent hours, then days, then months bringing forth Stepchange. Anay has not only become a fund co-founder and close friend—he’s also shared in the joy of parallel newborn parenting—both he and Ben had new babies less than a month apart over the summer.

Together, they explore Anay’s journey from his early days at the State Department to leadership roles at global fintech startups (Remitly and Tala), focusing on financial inclusion in emerging markets, and how that path led him ultimately to climate tech and venture investing. Anay accidentally coined the idea of “techno-obligation,” the belief that we have a responsibility to use technology for solving urgent global challenges, particularly climate change.

The conversation dives into how loss, the birth of their children, and an awareness of the finite nature of time have shaped their perspectives on life and work, and how those experiences influenced the founding of Stepchange.

Referenced in the episode:

Get connected:

To get in touch, email ⁠[email protected]⁠

Music: Sheeba Marie - Persephone

Intro Music:Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

How do we get the money from climate legislation into the hands of someone buying a heat pump or solar? Between passing legislation, like the Inflation Reducaiton Act (IRA), and a homeowner getting new devices to run their homes there is a major coordination, paperwork, and financing problem to orchestrate. In this episode Ben interviews Jeff Coleman, founder and CEO of Eli Technologies, and fellow climate dad. Jeff’s career has a theme of building digital infrastructure to drive systemic change. He worked on the 2008 Obama campaign, numerous non-profits, and built the digital tools behind Access Clean California. This all led to founding Eli—a startup on a mission to make home decarbonization more equitable and affordable at scale.

Side note—Eli is exactly the type of company that Stepchange is focused on--finding places where software-based products can accelerate the deployment speed of climate solutions. We're lucky to be investors in Eli and as always, nothing in this conversation is investment advice.

Referenced:

Get connected:

To get in touch, email ⁠[email protected]⁠

Today’s outro music: Hot Buttered Rum - No Reason Why

Show theme music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

02:20 Jeff's Musical Background and Family Life

06:03 Jeff's Journey: From Musician to Climate Advocate

10:11 The Obama Campaign Experience

17:24 Transition to Climate Solutions

21:12 Challenges in Solar Installation

22:52 Building Access Clean California

26:51 Government's Role in Program Funding

27:48 Program Administration and Challenges

30:03 Equity and Incentive Structures

32:21 Decentralization and Local Needs

34:29 Eli's Mission and Approach

41:20 Building a Multi-Sided Platform

44:19 The Role of Software in Climate Solutions

50:15 Balancing Startup Life and Family

56:42 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

This episode is a bit more papa and a bit less climate. Ben shares some family news and processes it with his 6-year-old and 3-year-old. They hit on some climate topics, the purpose of ants, and what was in the universe before earth. Kids are the best.

Happy Father’s Day to all the fellow climate papas out there.

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In other fun news, I made Bloomberg Green’s “13 Most Influential Climate Leaders to Watch in 2024”

Hope to see many of you at the Bloomberg Green Festival in July in Seattle. Shoot me a note ([email protected]) if you’re planning to make it. We may have some special Climate Papa meetups in the works!

The presentation: Decarbonization: Stocks and flows, abundance and scarcity, net zero

In 1995, a Morgan Stanley analyst named Mary Meeker released a report called The Internet Trends Report. In 2001 it became a slide deck. Each year the release of the annual Mary Meeker deck was eagerly devoured by those trying to understand what's going on in technology1. It informed public market and venture capital investment decisions, led to board room strategy shifts, and rippled across the industry.

Those of us interested in climate and the societal and infrastructural response to climate now have our annual trend report. Beginning in 2020, Nat Bullard began publishing a presentation about the state of decarbonization, and this last years deck, his 4th, is probably one of the most useful artifacts one could consume if they wanted to understand what happened in 2023.

In this wide ranging conversation with Nat we intentionally spend little time on the content of the deck, but instead focus on how and why he makes this each year. Who it’s for, and how the process of making it each year makes him think about the moment we're in right now. We also talk about big life transitions, raising kids in Singapore, and how to feel about all of this as the years march on.

Nat has spent nearly two decades at the intersection of climate, technology, strategy, and capital markets. He worked at BloombergNEF and Bloomberg Green for over 13 years, and finished his time at BloombergNEF as the Chief Content Officer.

If you want more Nat unpacking a few select slides of the deck, I highly recommend the excellent two-parter on Catalyst with Shayle Kann.

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Get connected:

To get in touch, email ⁠[email protected]⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

As the first episode of the year, I’m focusing on a bit of a personal update. Today, I'm announcing the launch of a new climate venture fund, Stepchange. I use this week's episode to share the story behind the fund.

I struggled with putting this episode out—I felt self-conscious spending the time promoting my work so publicly. But I believe that investing our money, our time, and our social capital in these startups is the best thing that I can do right now to make a difference. These companies will be critical to our energy transition and to addressing big elements of the climate crisis. This is how I’m spending most of my time. This is my toolkit, my hammer—and I’m going to swing it.

So yes, this episode is me introducing Stepchange.

The episode plays out in three parts:

Thanks so much for listening today. I'm really excited to get Stepchange out into the world. Here’s to 2024.

-Ben
[email protected]

Referenced in the episode:

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

See Nicole's work referenced here.

The world of climate tech is small and something happened about two years ago. From climate newsletters to Twitter accounts and LinkedIn posts... everything became more...colorful. There were stunning watercolors explaining the carbon cycle in oceans, the carbon impact of a hamburger, or the way that heat pump works to magically transfer heat into a home. Nicole Kelner had arrived on the scene. Taking her unique water color style and combining it with a deep desire to understand, and communicate, climate solutions.

In this conversation, Nicole shares her journey to climate tech artist, her process for coming up with new art ideas, and her love of running the business. We also cover why Taylor Swift should date a climate scientist, the role of AI in art, and how to make wind turbines into a beautiful neon mural.

Nicole's created the first climate solutions coloring book, The Electrify Everything Coloring book.

The next episode of Climate Papa will share more on my focus for 2024. If you haven’t already subscribe here to follow along.

To see more of Nicole’s work:

Referenced:

Get connected:

To get in touch, email ⁠[email protected]⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Ben sits down with fellow climate papa, Dimitry Gershenson. They head off the deep end into how to balance being a present father with being present for your start up ambitions. They explore if founding a startup makes you more of a jerk to your kids and the importance of vulnerability and apology when you mess up. They reflect on how those same skills make you a much better parent, partner, and leader.

They then turn to the money that makes the world go round and the gaps in the climate funding markets where there’s not enough going around. Dimitry ramps Ben up on the unique ways that fintech tools like revenue-based financing can be applied to climate companies and how many other financiers aren’t doing this right—either giving out bad, dilutive, terms, or taking way too long to finance the companies that urgently need capital. These realizations have led Dimitry to start Enduring Planet to address the market gap.

Prior to Enduring Planet, Dimitry led M&A and served as COO for Rango Wireless, an Enduring Ventures portfolio company. Before that, Dimitry built Meta’s Energy Access program, a $15M+ investing initiative that enabled energy access for 3M people and unlocked nearly $500M in additional capital in underserved markets like Kenya and India. While at Meta, Dimitry also led the development of multiple predictive ML products in the cleantech space and built corporate accelerator programs for impact startups in India and Puerto Rico.

Outside of Enduring Planet, Dimitry sits on the board of Ecosafi, a Lowercarbon-backed climate startup enabling clean cooking in emerging markets. Dimitry holds an MS in Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley, a BS in Natural Resource Management from Rutgers University.

Referenced in the episode:

Get connected:

Feedback? Guest suggestions? Email ⁠[email protected]⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Note: Ben is an angel investor in Enduring Planet. Nothing in this episode should be viewed as investment advice.