The Green Blueprint

Nov 13 2024 137 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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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

Why ditching aluminum is key to securing the US solar supply chain

Jun 13 2024 44 mins

Solar is the fastest growing electricity-generating technology in history. That rapid scaling was a result of squeezing cost reductions out of every step of production. But there's one critical piece that hasn't changed much: frames. Aluminum frames now make up one-quarter of the cost of a PV module. And that metal mostly comes from China, a country that controls nearly 60% of the

AI-fueled geothermal and ‘the edge of the possible’

Jun 10 2024 40 mins

A lot of climate tech investors are still trying to figure out how to invest in artificial intelligence. Will it become a unique investment category? Or just a natural enhancement of what many startups are already building? There’s an emerging class of startups with AI at the center of their business. Citrine Informatics is using generative AI to speed up discovery of new materia

A macro view on the state of climate tech

Jun 03 2024 32 mins

We need to invest many trillions of dollars every year to build a climate-positive economy. We know what those technologies are – but they're all at very different levels of readiness. So what would it take to scale critical climate technologies? That was the simple-but-complicated question recently posed by a group of energy, industry, and high-tech experts at McKinsey. The rese

Energy is now the ‘primary bottleneck’ for AI

May 21 2024 56 mins

Data centers are an impressive energy success story. Over the last 25 years, internet traffic has climbed more than 500x while data center electricity use has remained flat. The servers and energy infrastructure have gotten wildly more efficient, and the biggest tech companies have focused on powering those warehouse-scale computers with renewables. But a lot of people are suddenl