The world looked bleak for startups in the spring. According to figures from Crunchbase, venture capital deals were down 44 percent from March to June compared with last year. Seed-stage deals took the biggest hit, down nearly 60 percent. But series B deals also took a hit. It was difficult at any stage of funding.Deals are finally coming back. Obviously, travel startups won’t be a hot category for a long time. But what about climate and cleantech? Are they insulated? And what does the reorientation tell us about who’s still all-in on the category?We’re joined by Abe Yokell, managing partner and co-founder of Congruent Ventures. He and Shayle dig into a wide range of venture capital trends:COVID impacts on the “climate tech” venture revolution. We’ll check back in on what we talked about last time, given the new state of the world.The rise of the tech company mega-climate-fundPublic market madness. What, if anything, does this say about exit prospects for climate tech startups?Hot sectors: where is the smart tech talent going?The Interchange is brought to you by Fluence, a global leader in battery-based energy storage technology and services. From commercializing the first grid-connected battery systems in 2008 to the multi-gigawatt fleet being deployed for customers globally today, the Fluence team is ensuring that storage is the cornerstone of the electric future. Learn more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coronavirus is reshaping the way we move around. Will we emerge from this pandemic with smarter planning? Or will it dismantle already-weakened public transportation systems?When economies across the world shut down all at once in March, the impact on transportation systems was immediate. According to the International Energy Agency, activity on roads globally was down 50% compared to the 2019 average. Commercial flights were down 75% compared to 2019. Many cities saw a more than 90% drop in public transport ridership. And leading ride sharing companies saw between an 80-90% drop in usage.Activity has since picked up, but people are still moving around a lot less. The pandemic will likely shape behavior long-term, which will influence how we design our roads, bike lanes and public transit systems.Our guest is on the front lines of these changes: Tiffany Chu, the CEO and co-founder of Remix. Remix works with hundreds of cities around the world to help them better plan multi-modal transportation in an environmentally sound and equitable way.The Interchange is brought to you by Fluence, a global leader in battery-based energy storage technology and services. From commercializing the first grid-connected battery systems in 2008 to the multi-gigawatt fleet being deployed for customers globally today, the Fluence team is ensuring that storage is the cornerstone of the electric future. Learn more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Earlier this month, Sunrun, the largest residential solar company in the U.S., declared its intent to acquire Vivint Solar, the second largest installer. It’s an all-stock transaction that would value the combined entity at over $9 billion.It's a big deal -- literally. The enterprise value attached to Vivint is $3.2 billion, which makes it the largest single transaction in the history of the distributed energy market. It’s also a big deal because of what it says about the state and future of distributed solar, plus adjacent markets like energy storage and maybe even electric vehicles.So that's what we're going to talk about today. Shayle sits down with Austin Perea, a senior solar analyst for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, to talk about the strategy behind this deal and what it tells us about the next phase of the market.Assuming the acquisition goes through, how big will this new entity be?The Interchange is brought to you by Fluence, a global leader in battery-based energy storage technology and services. From commercializing the first grid-connected battery systems in 2008 to the multi-gigawatt fleet being deployed for customers globally today, the Fluence team is ensuring that storage is the cornerstone of the electric future. Learn more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: is carbon transparency finally coming?Electronics maker Logitech became the most recent company to offer carbon labels on its products. Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell called carbon “the new calorie.”It’s one of many attempts by food and consumer goods producers to make the lifecycle emissions of their products clearer to consumers. In this episode, we’ll examine the new generation of climate labels. We’ve seen attempts at carbon labeling before. What makes these newer ones different? And will they stick?Plus, we’ll try to answer listener questions about renewable natural gas, vehicle-to-grid, ESG standards, and COVID predictions.This episode was recorded live in front of hundreds of listeners (remotely). Thanks to everyone who joined us!The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. Get your system today.We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy, an open-access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There is a widely-held perception that data centers -- the giant facilities that hold networks of society’s supercomputers -- are an out-of-control energy suck.We’ve all seen headlines like this: “Your Netflix binge may be frying the planet”“Cut back on email if you want to save the environment”“Every Google search you do contributes to climate change”“Bitcoin could be the final nail in the coffin for climate change”It’s actually not true, says our guest. These myths are rooted in bad projections and false statements from coal advocates, dating all the way back to the 1990s.Yes, data centers collectively use a lot of energy. But they’re becoming hyperefficient. They’re a magnet for renewables development. And they’re helping us unlock the powerful software, algorithms and heavy computational tasks that run the clean energy economy.Our guest has been researching data centers for decades. It is Jonathan Koomey, an expert on sustainable IT. Jon was previously a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and a lecturer at Stanford. Today, he runs his own research and consulting outfit on the environmental impacts of information technology. We’ll talk with him about the different ways that data centers are at the cutting edge of energy and sustainability.The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. Get your system today.We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy, an open-access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A boisterous CEO who brags of “out-Eloning” Elon Musk; a reverse merger that makes a little-known fuel cell trucking company as valuable as Ford; and no actual cars or trucks in production.This week, we try to make sense of Nikola Motor. Nikola Motor went public last week through a reverse merger, achieving a ~$13 billion valuation. As the markets closed on Wednesday, the company’s market cap was at $23 billion. But with a non-traditional IPO, an enigmatic CEO, and zero revenue or actual vehicles, it’s become one of the more befuddling stories in cleantech in recent memory. We’ll dig into the company’s claims and business model. Is this just another overhyped penny stock, or is there any substance to Nikola’s plan?LA Times: Electric Truck Maker Nikola Looks Like Tesla 2.0 — Except Even RiskierCNBC: Meet Nikola, the Speculative Electric Vehicle StockBarron’s: Truck-Building Tesla Competitor Nikola Draws the Attention of a Short SellerThe Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. Get your system today.We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy, an open-access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We use the term “energy transition” to define markets, technology, business models. But what about people?The transition away from fossil fuels isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have. The hardest part isn’t building the clean resources. It’s shutting down the dirty stuff at a pace the science demands.And that means disrupting entire classes of employment and communities that depend on fossil fuel extraction -- in other words, helping people find work somewhere else.The often-used phrase is the “just transition.”We have a guest who’s been researching and writing about this subject for years: Sandeep Pai. Sandeep the author of “Total Transition: the Human Side of the Renewable Energy Revolution.” He’s a former journalist and a current PhD student and public scholar at the Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. We’ll talk with Sandeep about his analysis of the strategies for transitioning fossil fuel workers in economies around the world. The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. Get your system today.We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy, an open-access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Greed is good. At least, it’s good for decarbonization.This week on The Interchange podcast, we have a new edition of the fantasy decarbonization draft -- this one focused on acquiring and restructuring public companies. We’re joining the ranks of corporate raiders like Carl Icahn, T. Boone Pickens and Gordon Gekko by taking over public companies and bending their strategies to our will. (For benevolent reasons, of course.)Shayle and Stephen will pick their portfolio of companies. And then listeners choose who has the best investment strategy. (Vote over at @InterchangeShow on Twitter.)Here’s how it works:We each have $25 billion to spend We can acquire a maximum of eight companies each. There’s no minimum.The cost of any given company is its market cap at the time of choosing.Our acquisition targets must be publicly tradedOnce we’ve acquired a company, we can control its strategy. The goal is to accelerate decarbonization in our chosen sectorOur geographic focus is North AmericaMake sure to listen to our first and second decarbonization drafts.The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. Get your system today.We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy, an open-access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, we’re talking about the new wave of carbon offsets. Will startups and corporates be able to solve accountability problems?Right up until the global economy stopped working in March, the carbon offset market was surging. In 2019, offset sellers saw a 5-fold increase in purchases, after years of low demand in the wake of the financial crisis.Flight-shamed consumers were demanding them. The world’s top companies were buying them in record numbers.But then came the coronavirus shock. The steep drop in fuel and electricity consumption has slowed consumer demand for carbon offsets in the short-term, but there are still underlying trends that may herald the return of carbon offsets.Is this time different? Can new players improve the quality and traceability of carbon reductions?The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with “The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy,” an open access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: where does the COVID detour take us as we map the energy transition?We’re once again thinking through the practical and theoretical consequences of the pandemic, in the near-term and well into the future. Shayle and Stephen talk with Ramez Naam, a futurist, science-fiction author and energy expert. Ramez joined us last August to talk about some future scenarios for energy. The world is a dramatically different place today, so we’re bringing him back to recalibrate our sights.We’ll talk about a wide range of subjects, including: oil consumption, behavior changes, demand for electric cars, and whether we’re delaying the energy transition.The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. We’re also brought to you by the Wood Mackenzie power team. WoodMac is delivering actionable real-time data on how our new reality is shaping power markets. Learn more about how we can help you understand the future of energy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.