The Green Blueprint

Jan 08 2025 141 ep. 32 mins 1k

The Green Blueprint Podcast artwork

We already have many of the climate solutions we need. But scaling them is hard. The Green Blueprint is a show about the people who are architecting the clean economy. Every other week, host Lara Pierpoint profiles the founders, investors, and organizational leaders who are solving complex challenges in the quest to build climate technologies fast.

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Building the world’s biggest DAC facility

Jan 08 2025 35 mins

On Christmas Eve 2023, Doug Chan wasn't celebrating with family. Instead, he was in Hellisheiði, Iceland with his team, preparing to commission Mammoth — what would become the world's largest operational direct air capture facility. Getting there wasn't easy. After building two successful smaller plants, Climeworks faced its biggest challenge yet in attempting a 10x scale-up of

A complex path for building heat batteries

Dec 11 2024 34 mins

In 2022, John O’Donnell and Peter von Behrens figured out how to design a heat battery that would deliver heat at very high, constant temperatures. The breakthrough came on the heels of two years of research and development, some of which took place in Peter’s garage. Now, John and Peter were ready to prove their technology at commercial scale. So they approached a long-time i

The ‘third inning’ of the energy transition [partner content]

Dec 04 2024 35 mins

In the aftermath of the presidential election, the clean energy industry is scrambling to figure out what a second Trump administration would mean for their companies and projects. But Tom Burton isn't just looking at the next four years. After 25 years serving the industry with the law firm Mintz, he's thinking about the growth of the industry over another couple of decades. “Ba

The risk of scaling 100x

Nov 27 2024 29 mins

In 2022, Via Separations was getting ready to build its commercial-scale filtration system, a technology that could help cut emissions and costs for a wide range of industries like paper, chemicals, and food processing. And when the company faced two paths — scale up 10x or 100x — CEO and co-founder Shreya Dave decided to scale faster by building a commercial project at a pape

Why concentrated solar couldn’t compete

Nov 13 2024 33 mins

In 2009, John Woolard’s team flipped the switch on a first-of-a-kind concentrated solar power project. The pilot paved the way for BrightSource Energy, where John was CEO, to build its first commercial CSP plant, a 440-megawatt project in the Mojave Desert called Ivanpah. John and his team believed they were far ahead of the competition, including photovoltaics. And they were on

Introducing: The Green Blueprint

Oct 30 2024 2 mins

We’ve already invented many of the solutions needed to decarbonize the global economy. But a big chunk of emission reductions will come from technologies that are not yet commercial. We don’t have decades to get these commercialized – we have years. So what can we learn from the people who are bringing new technologies from the lab to the market, constructing first-of-a-kind

An update on what's ahead for this show, and more

Oct 02 2024 3 mins

Since we stopped The Carbon Copy, some listeners had questions about what’s next. Here's a preview of our new podcast, the Transition-AI event in December, and a new newsletter called the AI-Energy Nexus. Stay tuned to the feed for our new show, dropping later this fall!

Frontier Forum: How rates will make or break the energy transition

Sep 04 2024 49 mins

Dynamic pricing is everywhere – and impacts all of us. Whether it's the time of day, your location, or the amount of demand, so many of our decisions are driven by real-time pricing changes. But it's still a relatively new concept in electricity. This week, we're featuring a conversation with Scott Engstrom of GridX and Economist Ahmad Faruqui on the imperative for good rate desi

Our final episode: The top stories of 2024 so far

Jul 16 2024 62 mins

Some news: this will be our final installment of The Carbon Copy. But don’t go anywhere! Later this fall, the feed will be transformed into a new show that will profile the people architecting the clean energy economy. We promise it will be a valuable part of your media diet. For our last episode, we brought back some old friends: Jigar Shah, director of the DOE’s loan programs

Avoiding mistakes from the first smart meters

Jun 25 2024 25 mins

When millions of smart meters rolled out across the country at the turn of the last decade, many people hoped it would create the backbone of a digital grid. Today, you’ll find few who think meters lived up to expectations. One survey found only 3% of advanced meters supported by the 2009 stimulus bill brought customer savings. Mike Phillips, the CEO of Sense, is still bullish on