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/.

In this episode, co-hosts Thomas Obermeier and Hamza Zafar interview Mark Tercek, author of The Instigator newsletter and former Goldman Sachs partner and CEO of The Nature Conservancy to discuss his work advising private sector leaders on ambitious environmental strategies that make business sense and how having a climate focus maximizes shareholder value.

In this episode, co-hosts Charles Lachapelle, Hamza Zafar interview Zach Gross, Executive Director at JP Morgan in their Power & Utilities Investment Banking team to discuss the trends in US offshore wind.

In this episode, co-hosts Charles Lachapelle and Hamza Zafar interview Wharton professor Business Economics and Public Policy, Arthur van Benthem, to discuss the current energy and emissions policies in the US.

In this episode, co-hosts Charles Lachapelle, Hamza Zafar, and Hayley McCurdy interview first year Wharton MBA student Jonte Boysen to discuss his work on carbon capture.