The Seeds

Matt Plante is the president and co-founder of Voltus, a distributed energy resources platform whose mission is to fulfill the promise of the energy transition. Voltus’s technology platform, VoltApp, connects any distributed energy resource, from energy efficiency to demand response, to any wholesale market in North America. In this episode, we discuss the electric grid of the future, the DER technology and policy to get us there, ...

Sy Bohy is the co-founder of Seam, a startup offering a device- and brand-agnostic API for developers to control homes and buildings. Seam’s IoT platform enables organizations to control building devices, like opening door locks, controlling thermostats, turning off lights, and more. Sy and his co-founder Dawn bring years of expertise from Nest and Sonder to progress the burgeoning building managemen...

SteamaCo enables utilities to sell energy anywhere on the planet. Their data-efficient energy management system helps overcome cost and infrastructure barriers to underserved energy customers in 10 African countries. This episode covers why last-mile connectivity is such a challenge, how SteamaCo augments and automates preexisting smart metering and cloud technology, and three frameworks around limiting beliefs, procrastination, an...

Angelo Campus is the founder of BoxPower, a startup offering small scale renewable microgrids in 20-ft shipping containers. They are expanding energy access to rural, often-low income, communities that are off-grid or recovering from a natural disaster. They also provide back-up power to critical infrastructures like hospitals in California that are experiencing more blackouts than ever before. Angel...

Wendy Owens is the founder and CEO of Hexas, a clean-tech startup producing and distributing sustainable, plant-based biomass. Their giant grass, called Xanograss, replaces wood biomass and is an exceptional climate-change fighting species because of its low-cost sustainable building material, energy fuel, and carbon sequestration properties. Wendy brings over ...

Bettina Grab, founder and President of Impact B2B, helps climate tech start-ups have a bigger, impact faster through growth and effective sales & marketing strategies. She is also a Zero Waste blogger, speaker & activist. The first part of the episode focuses on Bettina’s shift from corporate marketing to climate-focused marketing and why there is such a need for it today. She offers many great tips for current and aspiring founder...

Did you know that Bamboo Engineered Lumber is stronger, more fire-resistant, and more sustainable than wood, steel, and concrete?

Troy Carter co-founded Rizome, a startup working to make bamboo a primary global construction material. In this episode, we discuss the future of regenerative, climate-positive cities, bamboo forests for carbon sequestration, and the unique elements of bamboo as a construction...

Sean Kidney is the CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, an international NGO working to mobilize debt capital markets for climate solutions. The Climate Bonds Initiative works to create standards and transparency in the green bond market such as by creating a certification scheme, advising the EU, and working with China's central bank to grow green bonds. Sean discusses the climate crises from a holistic perspective, framing the ro...

Deb Kemper is an impact investor and experienced advisor with cross-cultural leadership. She is an angel investor in Golden Seeds Venture Group and the Clean Energy Venture Group and supports innovation in clean-tech, med-tech, and women’s empowerment. Prior to joining Golden Seeds Ventures, she built a portfolio of over two dozen early-stage investments via Libra Global Partners, LLC, and worked in management consulting at McKinse...

Gina Foote is the Director of Fund Development at Conservation Law Foundation Ventures, where she helps cultivate market-based solutions to environmental issues. Gina is an impact investing and finance expert and applies her banking and venture investing experience to social issues. She has woven a fascinating career in international economic development and finance, working in China, Latin America, and the US, serving as COO for a...

Redstone Strategy Group is a boutique consulting firm that helps leading philanthropies, non-profits, and governments solve the world's most urgent social problems. Redstone works in a variety of sectors including education, global development, emerging philanthropy, energy and climate, and the environment, but today’s episode focuses on one specific project. Listen to Sam Greenberg explain how they facilitated a collaboration of N...

This episode is a little different. Rather than doing an interview with one person, I recorded an a panel discussion held at the Delphi Academy for European Studies in Greece. This was a two-week seminar program on Climate Change and the Environmental Humanities I attended in 2019. In this excerpt, we hear from three distinguished professors sharing their different disciplinary perspectives. We have John Barry from Queen's Universi...

Cool Crop is a start-up in India with a mission to improve small and marginal farmer livelihoods and reduce food waste.

In India, there are 240 million farmers, and 3 out of every 4 of them are classified as small and marginal farmers who plant an area roughly the size of a soccer field. The harvested produce waste of these farms can be up to 60% due to lack of proper preservation facilities.

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