Supercool

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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Mike Martin helped launch the first climate change concert tour with Dave Matthews. He’s worked with Billie Eilish to flip venues vegan and wrote the green touring playbook years ago that artists still follow today.

But after decades trying to make recycling and compostables work at live events, Mike hit a wall. Zero-waste wasn’t working. Then he remembered what he saw on tour with U2 during the Joshua Tree run—European stadiums using reusable cups.

That moment sparked r.World, the reuse company now transforming how concerts, stadiums, and venues across the country are ditching single-use and building a circular economy. From Red Rocks to Coachella to Alaska Airlines, Mike shares what it takes to scale reuse—and why it all starts with a cup no one wants to take home.

Show Notes
Guest: Michael Martin, Founder & CEO
Company: r.World

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Johnson Controls helped invent modern air conditioning. Now, it’s reengineering how buildings cut carbon — using AI and automation to make infrastructure smarter, cleaner, and more efficient.

Reuben Petty, Principal Digital Sales Engineer, works with business leaders, facility teams, and city officials to connect legacy systems to the digital tools of tomorrow. His focus is OpenBlue — the company’s platform that brings data and intelligence to the heart of building operations.

In this episode, we explore how a 140-year-old company is reinventing itself for a low-carbon future — and what it means for commercial real estate, city infrastructure, and climate action at scale.

Show Notes

Guest: Reuben Petty, Principal Digital Sales Engineer

Company: Johnson Controls

Open Blue at World Cup 2022 - Qatar

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E-bikes are booming—nearly as many were sold in the U.S. last year as electric cars. But while EVs get the attention, e-bikes are quietly reshaping how people move, cutting emissions, making urban life easier, and recreation more fun.

The catch? Buying an e-bike is easy. Reselling one isn’t.

That’s where Upway comes in. They’re building the Carvana for e-bikes—a seamless resale marketplace with accessible pricing, warranties, home delivery, and easy returns. And the industry is taking notice.

This week, Max Renson, U.S. General Manager at Upway, joins us to talk about why resale is the missing piece of e-bike adoption, how Upway is powering returns for brands like Aventon and Rad Power Bikes, and what it takes to turn secondhand e-bikes into a mainstream, trusted option.

E-bikes are taking off. Upway is making sure nothing slows them down.

Show Notes

Guest: Maxime Renson

Company: Upway

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How do you make solar adoption irresistible? By not selling solar.

This week on Supercool, we’re joined by Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun, and Jessica Bergman, a marketing strategist who’s spent her career figuring out why clean energy adoption stalls—and how to fix it.

Under Mary’s leadership, Sunrun stopped being just a solar company and became something much bigger: a storage-first, customer-obsessed clean energy lifestyle brand. And it’s working—60%+ of customers now add batteries, turning their homes into mini power plants that keep the lights on when the grid goes down.

What’s the secret? Productization. Jessica argues that the industry has been selling kilowatt hours when it should be selling comfort, convenience, and control. Sunrun is proving that when you remove friction, make financing a no-brainer, and give customers a “Pizza Tracker” for their solar installations, adoption skyrockets.

In this episode, we dig into why clean energy isn’t scaling fast enough, what the industry gets wrong, and how Sunrun is changing the game. If you want to know how to move clean energy from “maybe someday” to “why didn’t I do this sooner?”—this one’s for you.

Show Notes

Guests:
Mary Powell, CEO
Jessica Bergman, Senior Strategist

Companies:
Sunrun
ID Lab Global

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Supercool regularly speaks with innovators working at the intersection of business, technology, and climate—AI giving buildings brains, pneumatic tubes hauling away trash, and electric school buses optimizing routes. With so much climate momentum underway, how do we properly assess this moment?

Molly Wood has been tracking it from multiple angles. A veteran journalist (Wired, CNET, The New York Times, NPR’s Marketplace), she left media to invest in climate tech—then returned with Everybody in the Pool, a podcast and newsletter focused on climate solutions and the entrepreneurs, businesses, and products solving the climate crisis.

Today, she shares her perspective on what’s working, what’s next, where the biggest opportunities lie and the importance of powerful narratives and storytelling that drive investment, innovation, and action.

SHOW NOTES

Guest: Molly Wood, Award-winning journalist and podcaster, climate tech investor, startup advisor, and consultant.

Companies: Molly Wood Media and Amasia

Show: Everybody in the Pool 

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Since 2018, GoodLeap has financed home solar, batteries, and efficiency upgrades at an unprecedented scale—serving over 1 million customers and originating more than $30 billion in financing for sustainable solutions.

Founder Hayes Barnard saw the bottleneck wasn’t price—it was friction. Homeowners needed fast, hassle-free financing. Contractors needed better tools to manage projects. GoodLeap built a technology platform to solve both—delivering a seamless, app-driven experience that puts financing, project management, and energy upgrades in the palm of your hand.

Now, GoodLeap is expanding into energy management. Homes won’t just consume power; they’ll contribute to the grid. Virtual Power Plants will enable homeowners to generate and sell energy back to stabilize the system and reduce fossil fuel reliance. Beyond that, GoodLeap is financing smart home tech, energy-efficient appliances, and electrification solutions—helping homeowners take control of their energy use and maximize savings.

At the center of this shift is Dan Lotano, GoodLeap’s Chief Operating Officer. After 15 years at NextEra Energy, the nation’s largest utility and its largest producer of renewable power, Dan is now leading a transformation where our homes become active participants in the energy grid and accelerate the clean energy transition.

How will this reshape home energy—and how soon will we be thinking about kilowatt-hours the way we think about the cost of gasoline?

Dan Lotano shares what’s next for clean energy and how our homes will drive the change.

Show Notes

Guest: Daniel Lotano, Chief Operating Officer

Company: GoodLeap

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CannonDesign is building a reputation for designing buildings that eliminate carbon and improve lives. In 2024, Metropolis Magazine recognized the firm as its Planet Positive Firm of the Year for leading the way in net-zero architecture.

It wasn't always this way. As one of North America's largest and oldest firms, CannonDesign had the scale, heritage, and reputation—but no clear sustainability strategy. In 2019, they turned to Eric Corey Freed, one of the foremost voices in green architecture, to embed sustainability into every project and reframe the business case for net-zero buildings.

Freed has been practicing and advocating for better, greener buildings since the 1900s—as he fondly puts it. In 2005, San Francisco Magazine named him Best Green Architect. He literally wrote Green Building for Dummies a generation ago.

CannonDesign's novel approach to designing solutions for today's greatest challenges, combined with Freed's wisdom and expertise in shifting mindsets, has pushed sustainability to the forefront, making it the standard, not the exception. The firm's work showcases how the greenest buildings are not only good for the planet but essential for a future where people and places thrive.

Show Notes

- Guest: Eric Corey Freed, Principal, Director of Sustainability

- Firm: CannonDesign

-Eric Corey Freed's Books on Amazon

- Eric Corey Freed's TEDx Talks: Here and Here

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What if buildings could think for themselves—anticipating energy needs, preventing breakdowns, and adjusting to outside weather conditions in real-time? In this episode, we explore how BrainBox AI, a Montreal-based company, is making that a reality. Their cutting-edge technology powers over 15,000 buildings across 17 countries, using advanced artificial intelligence to take the guesswork out of building management. No more scrambling for last-minute repairs or manually adjusting systems—BrainBox AI predicts issues before they happen and fine-tunes operations automatically, giving maintenance technicians and facility managers more time to focus on what matters.

This isn’t just automation—it’s a new era in which buildings learn, adapt, and predict, continuously improving their performance without anyone lifting a finger. The benefits go beyond convenience. By optimizing HVAC systems, BrainBox AI slashes building energy consumption by up to 25% and reduces carbon emissions by up to 40%. BrainBox AI CEO Sam Ramadori joins Josh to share how artificial intelligence is redefining the future of the built environment.

Show Notes

Company: Brainbox AI, recently acquired by Trane

Guest: Sam Ramadori, CEO

Aria Videos referenced in the interview.

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