Inevitable

Kathryn Bakos is the Managing Director of Finance and Resilience at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, an applied research center within the faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Our conversation today is all about the inevitable impacts of climate change, including floods, wildfires, and heat waves in particular, as these phenomena are Kathryn's main focus. We talk about the increasing severity of each of these, the preventative efforts that individuals and communities can each take to avoid their worst effects and how risk and insurance industries are navigating these perils. And lastly, we have a conversation about why adaptation measures have seemingly lagged behind decarbonization efforts in the public consciousness about climate change.

Seyed Madaeni is the co-founder and CEO of Verse. Verse develops software that helps organizations understand, plan, and manage clean energy. Their platform simplifies the complex clean energy procurement process, enabling companies to meet their emissions goals in the most economical way possible. MCJ is proud to be a repeat investor in Verse through our venture capital funds, including participation in their recent Series A round alongside GV and Coatue. To us, Verse embodies the inevitable shift where large companies must integrate clean energy management as a core business capability. Hyperscalers have led this trend, driven by their insatiable need for electricity to power data centers—a demand that’s only growing with AI. We believe this focus on clean energy will expand across major corporations, much like the widespread adoption of IT and cloud technologies over the past two decades. But enough from us—let’s hear directly from Seyed about what he’s building with Verse.

Maria Robinson, outgoing Director of the Grid Deployment Office at the U.S. Department of Energy, joins us to share insights from her impactful tenure. Since stepping into the role in 2022, Maria has overseen $22 billion in federal funding to drive the development of new and upgraded electric infrastructure nationwide. Recorded in person at the recent Deploy conference in Washington, DC, hosted by the DOE, Maria and Cody discuss her background, the mission of the Grid Deployment Office, and the initiatives she’s championed. We also dive into the complexities of the U.S. electric grid, including transmission, interconnect queues, permitting reform, and enhancing grid resilience amidst extreme weather and climate challenges.

Arvin Ganesan is the CEO of Fourth Power, which is developing a flexible-duration thermal energy system designed to meet the needs of an electrical grid increasingly powered by renewables. Their system heats liquid tin to extremely high temperatures, circulates it through carbon blocks for heat storage, and converts that heat back to electricity on demand via thermal photovoltaics. The technology aims to address both short-duration energy storage (5–10 hours) and long-duration needs (100 hours or more), with the ability to discharge power within seconds. At the end of last year, Fourth Power raised a Series A led by DCVC, with participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Arvin’s fascinating career includes time in the U.S. Senate as a senior policy advisor to the late Senator Frank Lautenberg, over five years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and nearly six years at Apple as the head of global energy and environmental policy. In this episode, we explore Arvin's career path, his decision to join Fourth Power, and why the company’s work matters for the future of energy storage.

Hannah Bebbington is the Head of Deployment at Frontier, an advanced market commitment created in 2022, that aims to purchase $1 billion or more of permanent carbon removal by 2030. Founded by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey, Frontier has quickly become a leading force in the carbon removal space. Its portfolio includes a "who’s who" of innovators pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in carbon removal—many of whom have been guests on this show. Cody catches up with Hannah to explore how Frontier’s program is structured, what they’ve learned so far, and her perspective on the state of carbon removal today.

Dr. Naomi Boness is the managing director of the Natural Gas Initiative and co-managing director of the Hydrogen Initiative at Stanford University. With a Ph.D. in Geophysics from Stanford and over 13 years in technical and management roles at Chevron, Dr. Boness combines deep scientific knowledge with real-world experience in energy operations. In this episode, we dive into the molecule side of energy, focusing on the evolving roles of natural gas and hydrogen in a decarbonizing world. Topics range from geopolitics and energy security to emissions challenges and the future of these key resources in the energy mix.

Jason Marks is the Co-founder and CEO at TELO. TELO is developing EV pickup trucks in the footprint of a Mini Cooper with a bed the size of a Toyota Tacoma and the power of a mainstream truck. They're focused on urban use cases for pickup trucks, whether that be a weekend adventurer who lives in a city or an organization whose employees need trucks for work in urban environments but are fed up with navigating giant vehicles through traffic, parking, and underground lots. We were eager to hear Jason’s perspective on why now is the right time to build an electric vehicle from the ground up, what makes TELO’s approach uniquely positioned for a significant market opportunity, and why existing truck manufacturers haven’t pursued this segment. Plus, we dive into the fascinating history of why today’s pickup trucks have become so massive in the first place. MCJ is proud to support TELO as an investor through our venture capital fund, backing founders like Jason who are reshaping industries to be cleaner, more profitable, and more resilient.

Mark Lundstrom is the founder and CEO of Radia. Radia is developing the WindRunner, the world’s largest aircraft, specifically designed to transport massive offshore wind turbine blades—some reaching the length of football fields—to onshore sites. This capability, termed "GigaWind," could redefine the scope and scale of onshore wind projects. Radia isn’t stopping at building these groundbreaking aircraft; they also plan to develop wind energy projects to catalyze the GigaWind transformation. This episode dives into Radia’s verticalized approach to addressing a major challenge in wind energy: the physical limitations of transporting turbine blades via the U.S. interstate highway system. By circumventing these constraints, Radia envisions a future where wind farms can reach unprecedented scales.

Tom Montag, CEO of Rubicon Carbon, joins us to discuss the world of carbon credits. Tom has had an illustrious career, previously serving as Chief Operating Officer at Bank of America, President of Global Banking and Markets, and a member of the executive management team. He joined Merrill Lynch as Executive Vice President and Head of Global Sales and Trading in 2008, just before its merger with Bank of America. Before that, he was with Goldman Sachs, co-heading the Global Securities Business and serving on its management committee. He currently serves on the board of directors of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and is a board member of Northwestern University, NYU Langone Medical Center, the Hispanic Federation, Deschutes Land Trust, and the Japan Society. He is also a former BlackRock board member. In this episode, we dive into why, after such an accomplished career, Tom chose to dedicate his next chapter to carbon markets. We have a fascinating conversation about the current state of voluntary carbon markets and how Tom views them in relation to the financial services industry when he started his career in the 1980s. We explore why carbon credits matter, the circumstances under which companies should use them, and the origin of Rubicon Carbon, including the role of TPG’s Rise Fund. Tom also discusses Rubicon's approach to bundled credit offerings and addresses some of the trust challenges facing the carbon markets today, as well as where he believes they are headed.

Hannan Parvizian is Co-founder and CEO of Exowatt. Exowatt turned heads earlier this year when it announced a $20 million Seed round with backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Atomic, and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. The company has developed a novel combined solution for energy generation and storage that concentrates heat from the sun, stores it as thermal energy, and converts it on demand to electricity. They've primarily focused their go-to-market around the data center boom driven by AI and argue that their solution is purpose-built for the massive energy need of data centers. We were eager to hear from Hannan as the rapid increase in energy demand from hyperscalers and AI remains a huge topic in the energy space, especially as we work to transition away from fossil fuels while also meeting AI-fueled demand. In this episode, we explore Hannan's insights on the limitations of "traditional" solar PV and lithium-ion battery storage in meeting these needs—and how Exowatt aims to bridge this gap.