Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI): Climate Tech CEOs & VCs

In this discussion, James McGinniss, CEO of David Energy, delves into empowering consumers in the energy sector, likening his company’s mission to David vs. Goliath. He explains how they function as a wealth manager for energy assets, notably through battery monetization. By leveraging data from customers' devices, David Energy optimizes energy consumption, allowing consumers to save on bills. The conversation also covers the shift towards distributed energy resources and the importance of collaboration in tackling climate challenges.

ZERO is a weekly newsletter about climate finance, startups, and personal development. In this issue, we deliver the spoken podcast version, which covers the following: 75+ environmental monitoring startups (market map). $100B in savings to retire coal. Green steel? Carbon-free oil? LCA on EVs. 6 emerging tech trends. It's 100% your fault. Got "Think Time?" For more trends, check out other issues of our free weekly newsletter ZERO: Climate Finance via Entrepreneurs for Impact: https://zeronewsletter.substack.com

Led by Emily Morris, Emrgy is deploying high capacity factor next-generation distributed and modular hydropower technology. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "To understand Emrgy’s approach to hydropower, first, forget everything you think you know about hydro! Most people think of hydro as a mature technology that requires large waterways and big construction budgets and long timelines. We change that by focusing on low-cost, standardized, and durable projects installed with an emphasis on distributed and modular generation facilities." "Our modular generation facilities are each about the size of a large SUV and cost between $35,000 and $50,000. These modules generate electricity with a spinning turbine in much the same way that a windmill would generate electricity. Our primary market to this point has been in the Western US, where the relative lack of accessible water creates the need to move water longer distances, thus creating canals and surface water infrastructure sites in which we can generate electricity. We believe that water has an important role to play in the future of energy for its capacity factor that is higher and more predictable than both solar and wind." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by CEO Mike Jha, AgShift reduces agriculture and food waste through better quality control by using AI and the Internet of Things. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "Our mission is to reduce food waste. We apply the latest innovations in technology such as the Internet of Things, computer vision and artificial intelligence as a means of expression intended to achieve this mission. We automate the quality assessment and grading process for the food industry. Quality is a fundamental concept for the food industry, and we are designing the protocols to make this process better, faster, more consistent and digitized. Ultimately, it is much easier to reduce food waste than it is to increase food production." "We primarily offer our solutions as a software as a service model (SaaS) with an annual subscription. Because our technology is based on artificial intelligence algorithms that run in the background and perform much of the quality assessment analysis, we think this model makes the most sense. We are flexible with customers who may prefer to pay more upfront and less over time, and we can also lease our hardware rather than sell it directly to customers." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by General Managing Director Amy Francetic, Buoyant Ventures seeks to invest in early-stage digital climate mitigation and climate adaptation-focused companies. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "We are focused on early-stage digital climate tech solutions. We are looking for software and low-cost hardware that can be layered upon existing infrastructure. In addition to our digital focus, we are also unique in our focus on both climate adaptation and mitigation." "I started working in the high-tech industry in California. My first job out of school was working at a video game company. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about software. I then worked at Hasbro before running a toy company that we then sold to Lego in 2000. Around the same time, I was diagnosed with cancer which forced me to focus on what mattered to me. After beating cancer and having our daughters with my husband I decided to devote my career to the climate tech space given both the financial opportunity but more importantly the chance to make a positive impact on the world. In many ways, this is what I most respect about the young people looking to get into the space now. They have been able to have this dual mission of doing well financially while keeping the bigger impact picture in mind." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by CEO Jacquelyn Dadakis, Green Coast Enterprises is a sustainable infrastructure developer focused on the construction, remodeling, and certification of green commercial buildings in the Southeast. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "We are a triple bottom line real estate development and green building services company based in New Orleans. We've built nearly $100 million worth of real estate here in the city of New Orleans over the last 13 years. We also provide LEED certifications, Enterprise Green Community certifications, and green building retro-commissioning to other building owners throughout Louisiana and Mississippi." "We work really well with a large portfolio owner of buildings that are commercially metered. Our typical customer relationships are an affordable housing developer that has many multifamily buildings, a school district, or a municipality. Looking forward, we hope to work with more utilities in the Southeast on their commercial building programs, in which they invest money in retrofitting these facilities in order to realize the potential of energy efficiency." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by CEO Tom Arnold, Gridium aims to reduce the carbon intensity of the built environment with energy efficiency solutions ranging from software optimization to deep retrofits for commercial and industrial real estate providers. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "Gridium is the leading partner for companies looking to navigate the energy transition. We provide useful software that enables companies to manage energy more effectively with the equipment they already have. In the last year, we have expanded our offerings to help companies upgrade their existing equipment to increase operational efficiency while reducing carbon impact. We service about 3,000 commercial buildings and about a half-billion square feet of office space." "If you look at any city in America and see the high-rise apartment or office buildings, you are looking at billion-dollar assets. However, none of these assets, as incredible as it may seem, are credit-rated. If the asset is not credit-rated, you cannot do the typical ESCO model which is needed to finance a retrofit at this scale. We were able to figure out a financial solution that has enabled us to do ten million dollars of deep energy retrofits in the last year or so. I am not talking about 5% energy savings that you might get from our software solution; I am talking about 30%, 40%, or 50% energy savings from a fundamental transformation of the building." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by CEO Kiran Bhatraju, Arcadia Power is a platform that provides consumers various clean energy choices to decarbonize their homes. With options ranging from renewable energy credits to community solar and a guaranteed seamless billing experience, Arcadia power makes clean energy accessible and affordable for the residential sector. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "We are a new nationwide digital utility platform. We give clean energy access to everyone across the country no matter where you live -- home or apartment. Our business is against the backdrop of an industry with a monopoly structure that does not provide a lot of options, and we aim to change that. We have been in the market for five years, but we have been adding new products to the platform over time. We came to the market with a basic 100% renewable energy plan in which homeowners would purchase credits against their bill, and we have become one of the largest virtual power plant platforms in the country." "We are a team of product developers, data scientists, and engineers whose singular focus is to make the customer experience as simple as possible. The reality is that if a single customer would try to go out into the market to purchase clean electrons for themselves whether from a community solar perspective or otherwise, it is nearly impossible." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Aaron Ratner, President of Cross River Infrastructure Partners, a sustainable infrastructure developer, delivering next-generation climate positive projects, including carbon, hydrogen, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "Cross River Infrastructure Partners is a platform of development companies deploying climate technology and capital into sustainable infrastructure projects. We do two things. We co-develop projects with development teams that have very focused expertise in a particular vertical, and we also partner with technology providers to become a developer of their technology as a service into the market. We currently work across carbon, hydrogen, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy, which are increasingly intertwined. The model is to have a platform to catalyze early commercialization of projects and technologies. Our goal is to bring together corporate partners, investment capital and talented technology developers to get early players accelerated up the technology adoption curve." "Our vision is to have built a platform that enables nascent but proven climate technologies to accelerate their deployment and get more projects in the ground by bringing together corporate customers and institutional finance. An additional aspect of the platform would include systematized vetting of technologies, which is a very difficult task. There is really a small window of opportunity, in which a technology is neither too early, risking relationships and capital, nor too late, wasting time and market opportunity. We are going to continue to refine our criteria for this type of project and technology evaluation." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by Jennifer Wagner, CarbonCure Technologies is deploying carbon sequestration retrofit technology for existing concrete plants as it aims to ultimately reduce 500 megatons of CO2 annually. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "We are one of the fastest-growing companies in the carbon removal industry. We offer a retrofit technology for concrete manufacturers that enables the production of the same reliable, durable concrete but with a reduced carbon footprint. Our solution is unique for its scalability and immediacy. There are many great carbon reduction strategies for an industry that require huge capital expenditures and long timelines for implementation, but we aim to make an impact more quickly and economically. Our solution works with existing infrastructure and regulations and can be installed in a single working day, without disrupting operations." "I am a chemist by training. After completing my undergraduate degree in Montreal, I continued to graduate school where I learned that I did not particularly enjoy lab work. After a particular presentation, I was told by a professor that he did not like the scientific aspect of my presentation, but if I were selling him something, he would buy it. This partially motivated me to pursue an MBA (chuckling). Through conversations with peers, I met CarbonCure’s founder founder Rob Niven who had a consultancy company and was beginning to launch what would become CarbonCure at the time. The rest is history." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.