
This was a fun one to record. Finally our two cohost and cofounders, Daniel and David have a chat to discuss the year in review, aspirations, learnings and personal and corporate climate landscape for the new year
Hope you enjoy it
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Daniel Arraiz
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Dec 28, 2021
51 min

Our guest this week is Madhusudhan Rao, who is the founder of Oorja, a company that provides energy efficiency, renewable cooling and heating solutions, mostly in the Indian market. He’s also a mechanical engineer by training and an entrepreneur for most of his working life.
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio Cesar Fernandez.
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Nov 11, 2021
31 min

Our guest this week is Anish Malpani. About 81% of waste in India is left untreated and half of it ends up in landfills. However some entrepreneurs have realised that those landfills actually represent a mountain of opportunities and potential multi-billion dollar business. Anish Malpani from Ashaya is pushing to develop a social impact startup that can improve both the quality of life of waste pickers while tackling heads on the recycling issue.
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio Cesar Fernandez.
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Nov 11, 2021
37 min

Our guest this week is Anirudh, and he defines himself as an idealist, a dreamer who wants to build a better, safer, wealthier planet for all of us. Anirudh was born in South India, moved to New Delhi, lived in a boarding school at the foothills of the Himalayas, moved to the US to study economics and political science at Berkeley, moved to Spain to work with Airbus and then went back to India.
It was when he returned to India that, led by curiosity, he tried to adopt sustainable practices like zero waste, water efficiency and solar systems at home. He managed to install solar panels at his place and he realized the power of sustainable solutions. Anirudh transformed his house into an off-grid solar powered place and that triggered a domino effect among his neighbors. Anirudh’s own sustainable curiosity allowed him to build a database of sustainable solutions providers across India.
“A map of sustainable solutions across India”
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio Cesar Fernandez.
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Nov 11, 2021
45 min

Our guest this week is going to tell us a lot about what his company does in the Energy transparency sector. Based in Sweden, Nils Söderström is the CEO of Renbloc, a company bringing radical transparency to the energy market. We also discussed his motivations, background and how he got into the Climate Tech space. Enjoy!
Nils's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilssoderstrom/
Renbloc's website: http://www.renbloc.com/
David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio Cesar Fernandez.
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Sep 27, 2021
35 min

Our guest this week is going to tell us a lot about what her company, Clean Planet Energy is doing, but perhaps most importantly, she will share insights on her career pivot from the O&G industry into a role that has given her the opportunity to align her values of protecting the environment and maximizing impact. Katerina Garyfalou, is the commercial and business development director at Clean Planet Energy.
We are very excited about this conversation because, for full disclosure, Katerina’s own energy transition from O&G to a clean energy role is quite an inspiration for the program we are building with our partners at Terra.do. We want to help fellow upstream O&G workers to trace their own road map to pivot their careers to clean energy jobs. And to do so, we can’t stress enough the importance of roles models like Katerina. We are delighted that she has kindly agreed to be one of our guest lecturers in the program and as you will read next, we can all learn a lot from her journey
Katerina's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-katerina-garyfalou-mba-42893612/
David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio Cesar Fernandez.
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Sep 2, 2021
36 min

Although people often think of energy storage as a battery that uses a chemical reaction to release energy in the form of electricity. Chemical storage is just one class of a bigger spectrum. There are many other ways to store energy for later use, fossil fuel is a form of long term energy storage, hydroelectric dams and pumped-hydro are also forms of storing potential energy in water reservoirs and releasing it by dropping it and passing it through turbines.
Over the last decade, chemical energy storage has had great improvements in efficiency and capacity, lithium-ion batteries are currently in the spotlight of energy storage technology, accounting for 80% of energy storage VC funding, but the energy storage landscape is bigger than the teslas and the NIOs. Chemical batteries are a form of short-term storage and so far they are applicable at the household level. We need a form of longer term and larger scale energy storage that can leverage the surplus of renewable energy created at peak times.
There are a lot of startups working in the energy storage space, this map from our friends at Contrarian Ventures shows a comprehensive market map of it.
The spectrum in gravity energy storage is small. Some notable examples are:
Energy Vault that is storing energy by using an automated group of cranes that lift and drop heavy blocks;
Gravitricity is building a system with cables that lift weights from mine shafts and;
New Energy Let’s Go, who acquired the patent of Heindl Energy GmbH (recently bankrupted) that uses hydraulic power to lift masses of rock.
However a new crop of players is coming to the scene. Terrament is a startup that is tweaking existing technologies to develop an innovative approach using potential energy stored at height, taking advantage of gravity, wind turbines and mining tech. We had the pleasure to interview Eric Chaves, Terrament’s CEO in our ClimateTech Talks podcast to discuss his upcoming techno-commercial plans, and the future of energy storage. Enjoy the conversation.
Terrament website: https://www.terramenthq.com/
Eric's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erchaves/
Daniel's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielarraiz/
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio Cesar Fernandez
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Aug 4, 2021
24 min

Welcome back! Today we have a very special guest, Rokas Peciulaitis, managing partner at Contrarian Ventures, an innovative venture capital firm set up to disrupt the energy landscape. We explored the inspiration, the meandering pathways, the role models that Rokas has followed to start the firm with a core climate focused component before it became hype. We explored questions like: How and why he created the energy Tech Summit or the Climate 50 VC benchmark ? It was a fascinating discussion on innovation, on excelling at being a David surrounded by Goliaths coming from the VC world and represented by the multiple incumbents in the energy space. At the end, we geeked out on hydrogen, the expected decline in production technology costs and it will open up multiple industrial applications; i.e. cement, steel manufacturing, among others. Enjoy!
Contrarian Ventures website
Rokas' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpeciulaitis/
David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Daniel Arráiz.
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Jul 19, 2021
48 min

In today’s episode we explore with Joey Moreau how Startupbootcamp is playing a key role as an accelerator in the ClimateTech ecosystem in Europe and globally. We discussed what value the company is bringing to corporates and to the founders themselves.
Joy told us about the recent IPO of the sustainability program that they're putting together this year. Sustainability being a core tenet for the near mid-term future of the company. And for the investors themselves that are looking for an ESG and climate focused companies to diversify their portfolios. It was a great conversation and we hope you enjoy it.
Joey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeymoreau/
Startupbootcamp website: https://www.startupbootcamp.org/
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio Cesar Fernandez.
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Jul 2, 2021
38 min

In today’s episode we explore how Madison Rifkin and Mount as a cool micromobility startup is rapidly expanding, in the crowded and competitive space of e-scooters and bikes. But ...
Micromobility can play a significant role in decarbonising the passenger road transport emissions in big cities and even in smaller towns across the globe. But,Why is decarbonising the road transportation sector (so) important? Well, because it is one of the major CO2 contributors. In fact road transport (passengers and freight combined) alone makes up to 15% of CO2 emissions. The electrification of that space is accelerating in every single transport category, and in our view even long-haul freight is very likely to be part of the “electrification-of-everything” revolution (vs other potential contenders like hydrogen-based alternatives).
Zooming in at the city level, one of the best ways to decarbonize the transport sector is to provide the end-consumer (let’s say you, the driver) with options to NOT take your ICE (or even electric) car at all when you’re exploring a city. We as society must prevent, abate and mitigate C02 emissions as much and as fast as we can. Having access to e-bikes or in this case an e-scooter in strategic places (maybe your next Airbnb as we’ll find out with Madison) can help in this endeavour. And besides, it is a LOT of fun as well.
Madison's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madison-rifkin-23037712a/
Mount's website: https://mountlocks.com/
Daniel's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/danielarraiz
Our Substack - Explorationists: https://explorationists.substack.com/
Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi
Editing, mixing and mastering by: Daniel Arráiz.
Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.
Jun 10, 2021
18 min
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