Kathy Hannun is the co-founder and President of Dandelion Energy, the US leader in geothermal heat pumps for home heating and cooling. From an idea emerging at Google X in 2017, Dandelion Energy has now installed over 1,000 geothermal systems and raised a total of $60M.

Building heating is a truly massive climate challenge with ~20% of emissions globally due to energy use in buildings, with most of this energy going to space heating (the rest going to power appliances primarily).

In this episode, we talk with Kathy about:

• her early childhood and what drove her interest in climate
• how the Dandelion Energy idea originated at Google X and how it grew into an stand-alone startup
• how do heat pumps work and how can they reduce building heating emissions
• how to scale heat pumps to hundred million of houses

Enjoy the show!

To learn more about Dandelion Energy and heat pumps:

• Introduction to heat pumps (Rewiring America, ~15mn read)
• Geothermal cost vs. fossil fuel heating (Dandelion Energy, ~15mn read)