Jaime Pumarejo helped lead Barranquilla, Colombia, through a stunning transition. When he first joined the city’s government in his twenties, Barranquilla was under bankruptcy protection, poverty was high, and public trust was fractured. Today, it serves as a global model for how climate action can drive economic growth, attract investment, and deliver tangible benefits to people’s lives.

In 2020, when Pumarejo became mayor, he accelerated the transformation. He established a public-private tree company to enhance property values, increase tax revenue, and enhance climate resilience. Delivered 300 parks co-designed by residents. Made biodiversity and eco-tourism part of the city’s economic engine. And positioned Barranquilla to lead on clean energy, with major solar projects and Colombia’s first offshore wind farm underway.

Jaime also secured capital on better terms. Convinced development banks to change how they lend. And showed that cities aren’t risky—they’re investable.

Now, as a member of the SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, he’s helping cities around the world unlock the climate capital they need to cut emissions and build the low-carbon future.

This is what the ROI on climate looks like. Not someday—now.

Show Notes

Guest: Jaime Pumarejo

Organization: SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, whose Secretariat is housed at the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR)

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The energy grid we know today was built for a different era—centralized generation, one-way power flow, no rooftop solar, no EVs, no AI-driven demand. If Thomas Edison were alive, he’d recognize it instantly. And that’s the problem.

Raghu Belur bet the system would have to change. In 2006, he co-founded Enphase Energy and started from the distributed edge, designing a microinverter that made every solar panel smart, efficient, and self-reliant.

That foundation became the starting point for a new kind of energy system—built to turn homes into mini power plants and partners to the grid, not just customers.

Today, Enphase delivers integrated home energy systems encompassing solar, storage, EV charging, and intelligent management software that give homeowners control, reliability, and resilience in a rapidly shifting energy landscape.

Raghu’s story embodies the American Dream—a young immigrant who came to the U.S. to study engineering, absorbed the best of Silicon Valley, and built a company reshaping how energy works in homes around the world. He joins Supercool to discuss how the decentralized grid isn’t just some day, it’s already here.

Show Notes

Guest: Raghu Belur, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer

Company: Enphase Energy

Video link referenced: American Innovation: Making Enphase Batteries in Texas

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If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter, right behind the United States and China, accounting for 8-10% of global carbon emissions. It’s a staggering problem: 30% of all food produced globally goes to waste. And for supermarkets already operating on razor-thin margins, that waste translates into billions of dollars lost every year.

At the heart of the problem? A broken pricing model. Food hits an arbitrary sell-by date—and it’s trashed.

Oded Omer thought that was absurd. So he built Wasteless, an AI-powered platform that helps grocers sell more food before it expires. Wasteless’ system uses dynamic discounting to find the sweet spot—just enough of a price reduction to move products at the right moment, without slashing margins.

Today, grocers across Europe, the Americas, and beyond are embracing Wasteless. It’s not just a product—it’s business model innovation. Wasteless created a category that didn’t exist, and now it’s become the shorthand for solving the food waste problem—like Netflix is to streaming, or Kleenex is to tissues.

In this episode, Oded shares how he built Wasteless into a global category leader—and why solving food waste is both a climate and profit imperative.

Show Notes

Guest: Oded Omer

Company: Wasteless

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Before becoming the youngest elected mayor in Quito’s history, Mauricio Rodas had already founded a political party, launched a think tank in Mexico City, and run for president.

In 1944, when the global financial system was designed, just 29% of the world lived in cities. Today, that number has nearly doubled to 56%. Cities now account for more than 70% of global emissions and 80% of energy consumption—yet most still can’t access the capital they need to fund climate solutions. The system, built at the tail end of World War II, wasn’t made for them.

Mauricio Rodas knows that firsthand. As mayor of Quito, he had to fight for national approval to fund the city’s subway. Now he’s working to change the rules. As co-lead of the SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, he’s helping reshape the global financial architecture needed to unlock climate capital for cities.

Mauricio joins Supercool to discuss subways, politics, public luxury goods, institutional entrepreneurship, and the global effort to rewrite outdated financial rules so cities can rapidly deploy the next generation of climate solutions.

Supercool is collaborating with the Commission’s Secretariat, hosted at the University of Pennsylvania, to feature global mayors at the forefront of this movement.

Show Notes

Guest: Mauricio Rodas

Organization:
- Former Mayor of Quito, Ecuador
- Visiting Scholar, Penn Institute of Urban Research, University of Pennsylvania
- Co-Lead, SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance

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Circularity isn’t just about keeping t-shirts and jeans out of landfills. Done right, it’s a growth engine for brands. That’s exactly what Trove is building: the recommerce technology that drives margins, attracts new customers, and streamlines operations.

As the resale platform behind Patagonia, Levi’s, Brooks, Arc'teryx, Carhartt, and Canada Goose, Trove helps brands give their products a second, third, even fourth life—while driving profitable growth.

For CEO Terry Boyle, an e-commerce veteran of major shopping sites like Nordstromrack.com, Zulily, HauteLook, and Trunk Club, circularity was never going to scale on sustainability values alone. It had to deliver clear business results.

Trove has built that system and is now scaling it globally. Today, more than 75% of U.S. brands with branded take-back and resale programs run on Trove. With strategic acquisitions accelerating growth in the U.S. and Europe, the company aims to become the largest e-commerce player no one’s ever heard of, seamlessly operating on the backend to deliver world-class resale experiences on the front end.

For brands that want to grow, the next evolution of retail is circular and profitable.

Show Notes

Guest: Terry Boyle, Chief Executive Officer

Company: Trove

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As mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees helped launch a billion-pound public-private partnership to decarbonize his city, one of the most ambitious deals of its kind anywhere in the world.

This wasn’t just about climate targets. It was about results: cutting emissions, cutting energy bills, creating jobs, and improving housing — all while building a long-term investment model that gave private partners confidence and gave residents real benefits they could feel.

When Marvin started, the city had no budget, limited staff, and a local government still reeling from years of austerity. So he got creative. He turned Bristol’s public assets into a platform for investment and built the capacity to get a 20-year deal signed, funded, and delivered.

Now, Marvin is helping cities around the world do the same through a new global commission to mobilize climate finance for urban action; the SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance.

Supercool is collaborating with the Commission’s Secretariat, hosted at the University of Pennsylvania, to conduct a series of episodes with global mayors at the forefront of this movement.

Show Notes

Guest: Marvin Rees

Organization: Member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom, former Mayor of Bristol, and Distinguished Visiting Fellow (2024–2025 Academic Year, Perry Ward House at University of Pennsylvania)

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Rare earth magnets power the modern world and the clean energy transition. They’re inside every electric vehicle motor, wind turbine, MRI machine, and computer hard drive in a data center. But the world throws most of them away. Less than 1% are ever recycled. And today, China controls nearly 90% of the global supply.

That’s the crisis Cyclic Materials was built to solve — by turning circularity into industrial reality.

In this episode, co-founder and CEO Ahmad Ghahreman explains how his team figured out what the industry long thought impossible: separating rare earth magnets from steel before they’re lost forever. We explore the engineering that makes rare earth recycling commercially viable, the spoke-and-hub logistics model to power urban mining where end-of-life products are abundant, and why companies like Microsoft, Amazon, BMW, and Jaguar are already lining up to work with Cyclic Materials.

If the clean economy is going to scale, it needs rare earths. Cyclic Materials found a way to recover them — not from a mine, but from the discarded machines all around us.

Show Notes:

Guest: Ahmad Ghahreman - CEO, President, and co-founder

Company: Cyclic Materials

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It took over a century to build today’s power grid. Now we need to triple its capacity by 2050. Why? Because demand is surging, and a net-zero future depends on a bigger, smarter, and cleaner grid. Electrification is transforming how we power transportation, buildings, industry, and data. Renewables are decentralized and intermittent. And the current grid, built for centralized fossil fuel power, wasn’t designed for what comes next.

Grid infrastructure is now one of the most urgent industrial and climate challenges of our time. Siemens Energy is at the forefront of solving it. Already, one-sixth of the electricity generated worldwide is based on its technologies. Today, it’s focused on upgrading, expanding, and digitizing the transmission backbone that the clean energy economy depends on. backbone that the clean energy economy depends on.

At the center of that transformation is Tim Holt. A member of Siemens Energy’s Executive Board, he leads its global Grid Technologies business and oversees operations across the Americas. In this episode, Tim describes what it takes to rewire the world’s power grids—and how Siemens Energy is moving fast to build the grid the clean energy future demands.

Show Notes
Guest: Tim Holt, Member of the Executive Board and Labor Director at Siemens Energy
Company: Siemens Energy

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Rondo Energy is building a renewable energy battery using bricks and toaster wire. But it’s not for your home—it’s for the factories that run the world. Industrial heat drives 10% of global carbon emissions. It’s essential for making steel, cement, chemicals, food, paper, and fuel. And it’s one of the hardest challenges in climate—expensive to electrify, risky to retrofit, and central to the global economy.

That’s what makes Rondo’s approach so powerful. In this episode, John O’Donnell, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, explains how Rondo stores excess wind and solar energy as clean, high-temperature heat and delivers it into existing industrial systems without combustion, redesigns, or rare materials.

Its low-cost approach is underway across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. John shares how decades of experience building global energy projects—and navigating the realities of infrastructure finance—shaped Rondo’s strategy for rapid scale and deployment, and why the low-carbon future is being built with bricks.

Show Notes

Guest: John O'Donnell, Chief Innovation Officer

Company: Rondo Energy

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Fifteen years ago, smart thermostats promised to save you money and learn your habits. Today, they—and other grid-connected devices and appliances—are forming the backbone of the most sustainable power plant on the grid.

Jeff Gleeson, Chief Product Officer of Renew Home, joins Josh to unpack how his team is transforming everyday home tech into a distributed, intelligent, always-on energy layer—one that cuts carbon, boosts grid resilience, and earns households money, all without asking homeowners to think much about it.

Jeff explains why the industry’s go-to term—“virtual power plant”—doesn’t resonate with consumers and how Renew Home is finding language that actually lands. He shares how the company is scaling a sophisticated, AI-powered home energy platform, why utilities—once hesitant—are now eager to partner, and why the most important power plants in a low-carbon economy may be the ones that never need to be built at all.

Show Notes
Guest: Jeff Gleeson, Chief Product Officer
Company: Renew Home

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