The Wharton Current

In this episode, host Thomas Obermeier sits down with Silicon Ranch co-founders Reagan Farr, CEO and President, and Matt Kisber, Chairman of the Board. Since starting the company together with former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen in 2011 in Nashville, TN, they have grown the utility-scale solar owner and operator into one of the largest independent power producers in the United States.

In this episode, they discuss Silicon Ranch's origin and unique struggles as a solar company in the Southeast in the early 2010s, their recent $775mm new equity capital raise, the value of strong stakeholder partnerships in times of crises, as well as how regenerative land management practices and solar energy can be mutually beneficial.

According to the IEA, heat is the world’s largest energy end use, accounting for almost half of global final energy consumption in 2021, significantly more than electricity (20%) and transport (30%). Of that, industrial processes are responsible for 51% of the energy consumed.

In this episode, co-hosts Thomas Obermeier and Ellie McDonald sit down with John O'Donnell, founder and CEO of Rondo Energy, which is seeking to provide low-cost zero-carbon industrial heat through its Rondo Heat Battery. We discuss why industrial heat has historically been seen as a hard to decarbonize industry, how Rondo is seeking to change that by deploying its Heat Battery, and how its product differs from other energy storage technologies.

On this episode of The Wharton Current, host Ellie McDonald sits down with Peter McHale, the Co-Founder and CEO of Gaia AI. Join us as we talk about Gaia AI's business model, trends in the carbon credit space, specifically surrounding forest carbon credits, and what climate tech startups are looking for from early stage investors.

To learn more about Gaia AI, visit their website at www.gaia-ai.eco/ or check out their LinkedIn page (www.linkedin.com/company/gaiaai/).

In this episode, co-host Adriel Barrett-Johnson sits down with Teague Egan, Founder and CEO of EnergyX, a lithium extraction startup. They discuss how Teague founded the company, the role of lithium in the energy transition, and how EnergyX is working with the government of Bolivia to run pilots of their technology. They get into why there aren't more greentech companies in Bolivia, and what might need to change for a community of greentech startups to grow there.

For the New York Times feature on EnergyX, see here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/business/energy-environment/bolivia-lithium-electric-cars.html

For more on the history of Potosi, see here: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/21/story-of-cities-6-potosi-bolivia-peru-inca-first-city-capitalism

In this episode of The Wharton Current, co-hosts Ellie McDonald and Thomas Obermeier sit down with Ed Ballard, the bureau chief for Wall Street Journal Pro Sustainable Business Unit.

Join us as we talk about the implications of COP26, what sustainability KPIs are gaining traction in public and private sectors, and how companies are planning to meet seemingly impossible carbon pledges.

Find the Pro Sustainability Business newsletter at https://www.wsj.com/newsletters (search for: Pro Sustainable Business) and Ed at https://www.wsj.com/news/author/ed-ballard.

There's never been a better time to be a climate tech entrepreneur. Over the course of 2021, more than 70 new climate-dedicated investment funds were set up to deploy $35B+ to climate tech solutions.

In this episode, co-hosts Thomas Obermeier and Nick Van Hollen sit down with Wharton grad Amy Duffuor, Managing Director at Prime Impact Fund and General Partner at Azolla Ventures, to learn about Prime Impact Fund’s pioneering investment model, the evolving role of “catalytic capital”, and investment opportunities with gigaton-scale climate impact. They also discuss Amy’s journey from Wharton to Prime and keys to success for MBA students looking to attract early-stage funding for their own ventures or make a career transition into climate investing.

In this episode, co-hosts Thomas Obermeier and Nick Van Hollen sit down with Kiran Bhatraju, founder and CEO of Arcadia, a tech company whose platform enables users to access cleaner and more affordable electricity through products like community solar and offers valuable data and payment capabilities for energy service providers.

They discuss the benefits of community solar and why the Department of Energy’s goal of expanding community solar to 5 million households by 2025 is setting the bar too low. They also explore what makes Arcadia’s platform unique and why data is currency in a world with more distributed energy resources, drawing similarities between Arcadia’s evolving business model and the data services responsible for innovation in the fintech industry at companies like Stripe and PayPal.

In this episode, co-hosts Thomas Obermeier and Nick Van Hollen sit down with Jesse Jenkins, assistant professor at Princeton University with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment, to discuss how models can be used to understand complex energy systems and why solely relying on variable energy sources such as solar and wind is like having your star point guard play center. We also discuss the merits of the proposed Clean Electricity Performance Program versus a carbon tax.

Check out Jesse's new project REPEAT (Rapid Energy Policy Evaluation and Analysis Toolkit), which evaluates the impact of federal energy and climate policies, here: https://repeatproject.org/

In this episode, host Thomas Obermeier sits down with PJ Deschenes, Managing Director at Nomura Greentech, to discuss the current state of SPACs, provide a primer on what they actually are, and explain how the continued growth in climate tech SPACs can be tied back to a 'Green Swan' event in 2020.

In this episode, co-hosts Thomas Obermeier and Charles Lachapelle sit down with the authors of the Climate Tech VC newsletter, Sophie Purdom, early stage climate tech investor, and Kim Zou, investor at Energy Impact Partners. They discuss the state of climate tech, how it's different from cleantech 1.0, and which areas within the space are currently particularly attractive to venture capital investors.

Check out the latest Climate Tech VC newsletter and subscribe at https://climatetechvc.org/.