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James Benetatos, Head of Business Development at Quaise Energy, joined Alex Cameron to talk about Project Obsidian, the company's first-of-a-kind superhot geothermal project at Newberry Volcano in Oregon. Quaise has developed a gyrotron-powered drilling platform that vaporises boreholes through rock using high-power millimeter waves, reaching depths and temperatures that conventional drilling cannot.
Where traditional methods top out, Quaise's project will be pushing past five kilometres and beyond 300 degrees Celsius, a combination that has never been achieved before. The goal is to access superhot geothermal heat and to do that anywhere in the world (not just in volcanic zones).
Fresh off a $180M Series B, with permitting secured in under five months and a drilling rig already on site, Quaise is targeting first power to grid by 2030, with 200-250MW to follow shortly after. Listen in to hear about their decision to be the project developer rather than a simply a drilling tech/services company, how they are sequencing conventional and millimeter wave drilling to de-risk the subsurface, and what it will actually take to replicate the shale revolution in geothermal.
Key points:
Links:
· Connect with James Benetatos of Quaise Energy
· Follow Alex Cameron on LinkedIn and find how to get involved with the podcast or events and membership
· Find out more about Quaise Energy and its projects
· Want more like this? Join Alex and a network of energy buyers, investors & series B+ tech at Firm Power Connect in San Francisco (December 2026)
· Sign up for our newsletter
Want to learn more about us?
This episode is brought to you by Industrial Connect Group, formerly Decarb Connect. Our rebrand reflects where our members and clients told us the real work is happening: not just in carbon reduction as a standalone goal, but across the full complexity of industrial transition, where energy, materials, capital, and operations intersect. Industrial Connect Group serves the same community of operators, investors, and technology companies navigating hard-to-abate sectors, with the same focus on substance over noise.
If you enjoyed this conversation, find out about our portfolio of events in US, Canada, UK and Europe – or explore our Decarbonisation Leaders Network (DLN), and learn why more than 200 members from the energy-intensive sectors have joined to share insights, meet partners who can accelerate their plans and why it’s the most valuable network of its kind.
Host: Tom Angus, Director of Conferences, Decarb Connect
Guest: Clay Bedwell, Associate Director of Platform and Partnerships, 3Degrees
For years, ambitious corporate renewable energy goals were built on simple targets and Excel spreadsheets. Today, those programs have expanded into complex portfolios spanning physical PPAs, virtual PPAs, spot RECs, green tariffs, and behind-the-meter solar across multiple jurisdictions. What was once a straightforward procurement task has quietly turned into a persistent drain on internal time, budget, and risk capacity.
In this episode, Clay Bedwell outlines why software automation alone cannot solve modern portfolio friction, why customer revenue protection is redefining how organizations buy energy, and how sustainability teams can build a compelling case for portfolio risk management to skeptical CFOs.
Key Takeaways
As organizations accumulate multiple contract types and counterparty arrangements, manual reconciliation becomes unmanageable. Escalating demands from internal stakeholders (spanning P&L impact queries from finance, audit preparation from sustainability, and target reporting from leadership) mean manual data aggregation is no longer operational.
Corporate buyers are no longer procuring renewable energy solely to meet internal target metrics. Using an example from the metals sector, Clay illustrates how commercial customers increasingly demand specific, audited renewable allocations before purchasing products. Demonstrating compliance at the customer level has transformed procurement into a tool for safeguarding revenue.
While software excels at routine PPA hygiene (such as invoice validation, production tracking, and contract management) it falls short during non-standard edge cases. Managing complex counterparty events, such as developer insolvencies or contract restructuring, requires direct market relationships and real-world trading experience alongside digital tools.
Repeatable financial value rarely comes from chasing quick, one-off PPA savings. Instead, the core ROI lies in portfolio risk management: stress-testing downside scenarios, evaluating long-term contract strips, and providing financial leadership with the confidence to scale programs responsibly as standards evolve.
With upcoming changes to the SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard and GHG Protocol Scope 2 guidance, corporate buyers must shift from short-term compliance mindsets to long-term strategic planning. Early adopters are moving away from bloated PPA exposure toward structured portfolio risk models and 24/7 carbon-free energy tracking.
Links
Host: Alex Cameron, Founder & CEO, Industrial Connect Group Ltd
Guest: Grant Budge, CEO, PeroCycle
Europe spent somewhere between eight and ten billion euros on hydrogen and CCS projects over the last decade. Grant Budge's rough calculation is that the same capital, deployed into carbon capture and utilisation, could have been removing three to six million tonnes of CO2 per year by now. Instead, we have a handful of projects that never crossed the line and an industry still arguing about infrastructure that doesn't exist. Grant was there for CCS v1.0. He knows why it stalled, and he has a clear view on what we keep getting wrong, as well as what could help drive the right capital to the right tech.
PeroCycle is CEO of a team converting CO2 into carbon monoxide on site, no pipeline, no offsite infrastructure, negative cost of carbon abatement on a DRI steel plant at current European energy prices. That's the claim. In this episode, Grant walks through how they got there, what could still break it, and why the deeper problem in industrial decarbonization isn't the technology at all.
Key Takeaways
1. Why large corporate balance sheets have been part of the problem, not the solution. The assumption that big companies with big balance sheets would lead deployment shaped a decade of policy. Grant explains why that logic kept failing, and what it meant for the technologies that got backed as a result.
2. The real reason hydrogen and CCS absorbed so much capital for so little output. It wasn't just bad technology choices. Grant traces it back to how the direction was set in the first place, and who was driving that conversation.
3. What a global database of validated decarbonization technologies would actually change. Right now, an industrial company trying to compare options has no independent source to go to. Grant makes the case for why that gap exists, who could fill it, and what it would have meant if it had existed ten years ago.
4. How PeroCycle moved from a cost of plus $50-60 per tonne of CO2 abated to minus $80. The engineering decisions behind that shift, and what they tell you about where most tech developers are leaving value on the table.
5. The stage gate that will make or break the business case. Scaling to the steel sector means a first-of-kind plant costing $250-300 million for a pre-revenue startup. Grant explains the strategy for getting there without that number killing the story with investors.
6. Why nickel and glass might matter more to PeroCycle right now than steel. The biggest market isn't always the right first market. Grant's thinking on this is worth hearing by anyone building deep tech for heavy industry.
7. What investors actually want to see from industrial tech companies at TRL 4-5. Grant has been on both sides of this conversation. His read on what separates companies that keep the conversation alive from those that get screened out early is direct and practical.
Links:
· Follow Alex Cameron on LinkedIn and find how to get involved with the membership and work of Decarb Connect
· Connect with Grant Budge, CEO, PeroCycle
· Find out more about Perocycle and its projects
· Join Alex and a network of hardtech investors and series B+ tech disruptors at Decarb TechInvest in Boston (September 2025)
· Sign up for our newsletter
Want to learn more about Decarb Connect?
We provide insights and introductions that derisk decision-making and support industrial leaders in deploying decarbonization and low carbon product strategy. Our global membership platform, events and facilitated introductions support commercial decarb planning and business models around the world. Our clients include the most energy-intensive industrials from cement, metals and mining, glass, ceramics, chemicals, O&G and many more along with technology disruptors, investors and advisors.
If you enjoyed this conversation, find out about our portfolio of events in US, Canada, UK and Europe – or explore our Decarbonisation Leaders Network (DLN), and learn why more than 200 members from the energy-intensive sectors have joined to share insights, meet partners who can accelerate their plans and why it’s the most valuable network of its kind.
Host: Alex Cameron, Founder & CEO, Industrial Connect Group
Guest: Rolf Kuby, Director General, Euromines
An EV is not carbon free on the day it rolls off the line. A wind turbine has a footprint before it generates a single watt. The materials these things are built from carry emissions too, and right now, most climate policy either ignores that or assumes someone else in the value chain will sort it out. Rolf Kuby has spent 30 years doing public affairs in Brussels and five of them running Euromines, the European voice of the mining industry. He has a clear view of where the system is broken.
In this episode, Rolf maps the gap between Europe's decarbonization ambitions and the raw material supply chains those ambitions depend on. From the world's first fossil-free mine already operating in Sweden, to the IEA's projection that net zero requires six times current output of critical minerals by 2050, this is a conversation about the part of the transition that doesn't make the headlines but makes everything else possible.
Key Takeaways
Links:
· Follow Alex Cameron on LinkedIn and find how to get involved with the membership and work of Decarb Connect
· Connect with Rolf Kuby, Director General of Euromines
· Join Alex and a network of hardtech investors and series B+ tech disruptors at Decarb TechInvest in Boston (September 2025)
· Sign up for our newsletter
Want to learn more about Decarb Connect?
We provide insights and introductions that derisk decision-making and support industrial leaders in deploying decarbonization and low carbon product strategy. Our global membership platform, events and facilitated introductions support commercial decarb planning and business models around the world. Our clients include the most energy-intensive industrials from cement, metals and mining, glass, ceramics, chemicals, O&G and many more along with technology disruptors, investors and advisors.
If you enjoyed this conversation, find out about our portfolio of events in US, Canada, UK and Europe – or explore our Decarbonisation Leaders Network (DLN), and learn why more than 200 members from the energy-intensive sectors have joined to share insights, meet partners who can accelerate their plans and why it’s the most valuable network of its kind.
Host: Alex Cameron, Founder & CEO, Decarb Connect
Guest: Bilal Hussain, Co-founder, Artio Carbon
Carbon markets have a credibility problem, and most of the proposed fixes sit on the same side of the transaction. Bilal Hussain is building on the other side. As co-founder of Artio Carbon, he's spent years assessing carbon projects from the inside, and what he found was a market where capital was circling projects it couldn't trust, and projects couldn't scale because no one would stand behind them. Insurance, done properly, solves that.
In this episode, Bilal walks through what underwriting a carbon project actually looks like, from biochar machines with 24-hour test histories to abandoned well projects where the leak has been visible for decades. He explains why execution and counterparty risk are the real questions insurers should be asking, not methodology quality, and what that distinction means for how climate finance moves from promise to delivery.
Key Takeaways
Links:
· Follow Alex Cameron on LinkedIn and find how to get involved with the membership and work of Decarb Connect
· Connect with Bilal Hussein, Co-Founder of Artio
· Artio at London Climate Week 2026: “Bridging the Disconnect” – connecting nature to finance and Step into the data
· Access Artio's recently published CORSIA Market Forecast 2026
· Join Alex and a network of hardtech investors and series B+ tech disruptors at Decarb TechInvest in Boston (September 2025)
Want to learn more about Decarb Connect?
We provide insights and introductions that derisk decision-making and support industrial leaders in deploying decarbonization and low carbon product strategy. Our global membership platform, events and facilitated introductions support commercial decarb planning and business models around the world. Our clients include the most energy-intensive industrials from cement, metals and mining, glass, ceramics, chemicals, O&G and many more along with technology disruptors, investors and advisors.
If you enjoyed this conversation, find out about our portfolio of events in US, Canada, UK and Europe – or explore our Decarbonisation Leaders Network (DLN), and learn why more than 200 members from the energy-intensive sectors have joined to share insights, meet partners who can accelerate their net zero plans and why it’s the fastest growing network of its kind.
Host: Alex Cameron, Founder & CEO, Decarb Connect
Guests: Jon Stewart, CEO and Tom Brown, Head of Business Development and Commercial Strategy, Binding Solutions
The steel industry accounts for roughly 8% of global emissions and has made some of the loudest net zero commitments in heavy industry. But talk to the mills privately and most will tell you they are not on track. The dominant solutions, hydrogen, carbon capture, EAF transition, are either years away, eye-wateringly expensive, or both.
Meanwhile, there's a supply chain vulnerability that almost nobody is talking about publicly: pellets. Every major decarb pathway for steel needs them. Producing them at scale costs a billion dollars and most of Europe buys from a handful of suppliers with almost no leverage. Today we're talking to the team at BSL about whether the industry is solving the wrong problems first, and what a lower-cost, modular alternative on something as fundamental as pellets can do for price and targets.
Links:
· Follow Alex Cameron on LinkedIn and find how to get involved with the membership and work of Decarb Connect
· Connect with Jon Stewart, CEO
· Learn more about Tom Brown, Head of Commercial Strategy
· Check out a video about the team ‘s work with British Steel
· Read a paper by one of BSL’s scientists and a British Steel expert
· Join Alex and a network of hardtech investors and series B+ tech disruptors at Decarb TechInvest in Boston (September 2025)
Want to learn more about Decarb Connect?
We provide insights and introductions that derisk decision-making and support industrial leaders in deploying decarbonization and low carbon product strategy. Our global membership platform, events and facilitated introductions support commercial decarb planning and business models around the world. Our clients include the most energy-intensive industrials from cement, metals and mining, glass, ceramics, chemicals, O&G and many more along with technology disruptors, investors and advisors.
If you enjoyed this conversation, find out about our portfolio of matchmaking events in US, Canada, UK and Europe – or explore our Decarbonisation Leaders Network (DLN), and learn why more than 80 companies the energy-intensive ecosystem have joined to meet the right partners who can accelerate their net zero plans and why it’s the fastest growing network of its kind.
Marta Sjögren, Founder and CEO of Paebbl, joins Alex Cameron, Founder of Decarb Connect, to talk about one of the hardest problems in deep tech: getting a whole industry to move together.
Cement and concrete touch nearly every built asset on the planet, yet the value chain is fragmented, margin-sensitive, and deeply risk-averse. Marta breaks down how Paebbl is navigating that from the inside, with investors across the stack and a carbon-neutral bridge in the Netherlands already in the ground.
This conversation goes deep on what "value chain activation" actually looks like in practice, where adoption breaks down, how to map incentives across buyers with completely different risk profiles, and what it takes to get a first-of-a-kind project from interest to commitment. If you are building in hard materials, construction, or industrial decarbonisation, this one is worth your time.
What you will take away from this episode
About Marta
Marta Sjögren is the Founder and CEO of Paebbl, a deep tech company turning CO2 into a construction material that can decarbonise cement and concrete at scale. She has built Paebbl from first principles, deliberately structuring the business and its investor base to unlock a notoriously slow-moving industry.
Show Links
Connect with Marta Sjögren, Founder and CEO, Paebbl
Connect with Alex Cameron, Founder and CEO, Decarb Connect
Find out more about Decarb Connect via, Including our European Event in Hamburg (June 2-3)
Host: Tom Angus, Director of Conferences, Decarb Connect
Guest: Oskar Schortz, Co-Founder & CCO, GyroPlant
In partnership with Urban Future Lab
Every hydroponic farm in the world depends on growing substrates - the rockwool, coco coir, or peat that plants grow in and almost all of it ends up in landfill after a single use. It’s a supply chain problem hiding in plain sight, embedded in one of the world’s most critical industrial sectors.
In this episode of our mini-series in collaboration with Urban Future Lab, Tom is joined by Oskar Schortz is the Co-Founder and CCO of GyroPlant. They discuss how a small UK deep tech company is engineering its way out of that problem entirely, and what it means for the carbon footprint of controlled environment agriculture at commercial scale.
GyroPlant, a materials and systems innovation company that has developed the GyroCup — a reusable, food-grade silicone growing vessel designed to last up to 10 years and replace disposable substrates across hydroponic and vertical farming operations. They're working with over 200 companies across multiple continents, including a formal Innovate UK project with Dole plc, and has participated in trade missions to Singapore and the UAE through Innovate UK’s Global Incubator Programme.
What you’ll take away:
Show Links:
Learn more about Decarb Connect
Our global membership platform, events and facilitated introductions support leaders driving industrial and energy innovation. Our clients include the most energy-intensive industrials from cement, metals and mining, glass, ceramics, chemicals, O&G and many more along with technology disruptors, investors and advisors. We have summits coming up in Houston, London, Hamburg, Boston and Toronto and the opportunity to find the biggest brains in energy and carbon management – your future collaborators. For year-round introductions and meaningful insights, get in touch about your membership of the Decarbonisation Leaders Network – so many benefits, hundreds of people equally focused on decarbonisation – find out more and talk with Jack Figg, Community Director.
Host: Tom Angus, Director of Conferences, Decarb Connect
Guest: Tom Fenton, CEO, Senze
In partnership with Urban Future Lab
The UK's housing stock is responsible for a significant share of the country's carbon emissions, and the estimated cost of retrofitting it sits at an eye-watering £500 billion. But what if a large portion of that spend is being directed at the wrong interventions, based on certificates and models that don't reflect how buildings actually perform?
In this second episode of our mini-series in collaboration with Urban Future Lab, Tom is joined by Tom Fenton, CEO and Co-Founder of Senze. They discuss how live sensor data and digital twin technology are exposing the gap between buildings 'as designed' and buildings as 'lived in', and why measuring first could transform both the economics and the impact of the UK's net zero retrofit mission.
Tom Fenton co-founded Senze alongside David Partridge of Related Argent and Joseph Daniels of Project Etopia - a lineup that brings together data science, large-scale property development, and net zero housebuilding in a single founding team. Tom previously built Veritherm, where he first encountered the persistent gap between modelled and actual building performance.
Senze deploys live sensors directly into buildings to capture real-time data on energy use and thermal behaviour, combining that with digital twin models to deliver actionable insights for building owners, landlords, and large estate managers - from housing associations in Northern Ireland to portfolios in New York.
What you’ll take away:
Show Links:
Learn more about Decarb Connect
Our global membership platform, events and facilitated introductions support leaders driving industrial and energy innovation. Our clients include the most energy-intensive industrials from cement, metals and mining, glass, ceramics, chemicals, O&G and many more along with technology disruptors, investors and advisors. We have summits coming up in Houston, London, Hamburg, Boston and Toronto and the opportunity to find the biggest brains in energy and carbon management – your future collaborators. For year-round introductions and meaningful insights, get in touch about your membership of the Decarbonisation Leaders Network – so many benefits, hundreds of people equally focused on decarbonisation – find out more and talk with Jack Figg, Community Director.
Construction's Carbon Blind Spot: How Qualis Flow Is Fixing the Industry's Data Problem
Host: Tom Angus, Director of Conferences, Decarb Connect
Guest: Brittany Harris, Co-Founder & CEO, Qualis Flow (Qflow)
In partnership with Urban Future Labs
Construction accounts for roughly 40% of global carbon emissions when embodied carbon and materials are factored in, yet most project teams still can't tell you what they're actually emitting until long after the concrete has been poured. In this opening episode of our mini-series in collaboration with Urban Future Labs, we explore why real-time construction data is emerging as a critical lever for decarbonising the built environment, and how smarter measurement can change both the economics and the carbon profile of major projects.
Brittany Harris, a civil engineer turned founder, built Qualis Flow after seeing firsthand that the industry didn't have a data problem so much as a data capture problem. Qflow delivers the ground truth on construction sites, capturing real-time data on materials, waste, utilities, and carbon directly from site the moment it happens. No spreadsheets, no chasing suppliers, just fast, accurate data that helps teams ensure quality, reduce risk, minimise waste, and avoid costly rework or delays
What you'll take away:
Show Links:
Learn more about Decarb Connect
Our global membership platform, events and facilitated introductions support leaders driving industrial and energy innovation. Our clients include the most energy-intensive industrials from cement, metals and mining, glass, ceramics, chemicals, O&G and many more along with technology disruptors, investors and advisors. We have summits coming up in Houston, London, Hamburg, Boston and Toronto and the opportunity to find the biggest brains in energy and carbon management - your future collaborators. For year-round introductions and meaningful insights, get in touch about your membership of the Decarbonization Leaders Network – so many benefits, hundreds of people equally focused on decarbonization – find out more and talk with Jack Figg, Community Director.
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