The Green Blueprint

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The perovskite bet that could transform solar Jun 03, 2026

Show notes

Silicon solar panels have led the market for decades but will soon hit a ceiling around 25% efficiency. Perovskite, a frontier material once dismissed for degrading too fast, is now being called the holy grail of solar.

Saritha Peruri, VP of Commercialization at Tandem PV, is bringing it to market. The company stacks its proprietary perovskite on top of silicon, capturing a wider spectrum of light and pushing efficiency past 30%, a major jump over conventional solar. And because it builds on the silicon PV infrastructure that already exists, the path to scale stays simple.

Getting there wasn't easy. After a long Series A, Tandem PV pulled off something rare in deep-tech hardware: 100% equipment financing for its 40-megawatt demonstration factory. It's now shipping quarter-sized modules to utility-scale customers who want U.S.-made panels for supply chain certainty and the domestic content kicker. It’s potentially a bridge to a post-ITC world that cuts land and labor costs because each installation needs far fewer modules.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Saritha about reaching high durability and the challenges of financing deep-tech hardware.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

How Supercool Earth's microbes could ease the water crisis May 20, 2026

Show notes

California recorded its second-lowest Sierra Nevada snowpack on record this spring. That's not just a bad ski season, it's a water supply crisis. Snowpack is where California's water comes from. And when it doesn't materialize, agriculture, hydropower, and fire suppression all feel the strain.

Dacia Leon, CEO and co-founder of Supercool Earth, is building a company around a deceptively simple idea: use biology to make it rain and snow where it's needed most, on demand. Her company's core technology involves engineering microbes to produce high quantities of this pure protein cheaply, which is then used in snowmaking machines and for cloud seeding.

Supercool Earth is targeting high-margin markets first, starting with a snow-making additive for ski resorts. It’s a cheaper, greener, and scalable alternative to existing products like Snomax largely because it’s made of pure, biodegradable protein (no bacterial cells), has no smell, and is stable at room temperature. The company is intentionally using natural proteins instead of non-degrading silver iodide used in traditional cloud seeding to streamline the regulatory process through EPA TSCA, which is faster than dealing with GMO regulations.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Dacia about the science and commercial strategy behind Supercool Earth, the lessons she's carrying from Bio 1.0 failures, the public perception challenges around geoengineering, and what she'd do if $100 million landed in the company's bank account tomorrow.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The $6 trillion threat to climate tech finance May 06, 2026

Show notes

The global financial system is undergoing a structural shift into a "volatile new world order," where unpredictability is the norm, and climate tech is uniquely exposed.

Venture investor Susan Su says the war in Iran is complicating the landscape. That's because about 40% of the world's capital comes from just four Gulf states, and those states are exploring whether the war allows them to invoke force majeure to legally exit binding financial commitments to fund billion-dollar projects – including energy projects. It's a move that's creating a chilling effect on large, long-term investments.

Susan's warning for founders? "Be default alive by any means necessary." With the next 18 to 24 months predicted to be a brutal filtering environment, she recommends extending financial runways to three years, if at all possible.

In this episode, Susan talks with Lara about why founders should act urgently and highlights the increasing availability of pockets of catalytic capital and downside-protected debt products as funding options.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is back for a second season! Apr 23, 2026

Show notes

We already have the blueprint for decarbonizing the global economy. We've invented many of the solutions, but much of that tech is still sitting on the sidelines waiting to get financed and built at scale.

But over the last year, we've seen a wave of change that complicates and – in some cases – helps that mission.

In the first season of the Green Blueprint, we heard stories from the entrepreneurs, investors, and experts at the front lines of scaling climate technologies. This season, we're bringing you more candid conversations with the industry leaders who are pushing the boundaries of technology, project development, and deals across clean energy and climate tech.

Join host Lara Pierpoint every other week on a deep dive into the high stakes decisions that companies face when trying to scale.

Season two of The Green Blueprint drops this spring. You can find it on latitude media.com or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Sage Geosystems' bet on underground energy storage Dec 17, 2025

Show notes

About 90% of global energy storage is pumped storage hydropower – which requires a mountain, a lake, and a whole lot of permitting. While lithium batteries have gotten drastically cheaper over the last decade, they’re still expensive for longer durations.

But Cindy Taff and her team at Sage Geosystems are developing geothermal technology that could revolutionize energy storage. Instead of pumping water up a mountain, they pump it deep into the earth, providing cost-effective, long-term storage for intermittent renewable sources. They’re piloting this technology at a new commercial facility in partnership with San Miguel Electric Cooperative, a rural Texas electric cooperative that is transitioning from coal to solar and battery storage thanks to a USDA grant.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems about its groundbreaking new technology, their first commercial facility, and upcoming partnerships with geothermal giant Ormat Technologies.

Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

Inside Microsoft’s plan to remove 50 years of carbon emissions Dec 12, 2025

Show notes

In 2020, Microsoft announced a major goal: by 2050 the company aims to remove from the atmosphere all the carbon emissions it has produced since its founding in 1975.

When Phil Goodman joined the company in 2022, he quickly found that the market for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) was just getting off the ground. That meant that in order to meet its climate pledge, Microsoft needed to help foster the carbon removal market.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Phil Goodman, director of Microsoft’s carbon removal portfolio, about what it takes to structure offtake agreements for CDR, the challenges of fostering an emerging market, and some of the company’s most promising CDR partnerships.

Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Alexandria Herr, Stephen Lacey, and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

Captura's high-stakes gamble Nov 19, 2025

Show notes

Back in January, Captura CEO Steve Oldham was sitting in a conference room in Hawaii, entertaining reps from the company’s first potential customer. What the customer didn’t know was that Captura’s ocean-based carbon removal pilot –the whole reason for the visit – still wasn’t working.

The stakes were high. Steve’s team needed to prove they could pull off a major pilot under intense time crunch — amid broader pressure on the carbon removal sector to show it can scale reliably and fast.

So what did it take to install the pilot and win over a first customer?

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Steve about Captura’s rapid scale-up from a desktop prototype to a 1,000-ton pilot. They also discuss the science behind removing CO₂ from ocean water, and the difficult decisions required to keep the company on track — including walking away from a premier industrial site and racing to rebuild the project half a world away.

Credits:

Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. This episode was produced by Daniel Woldorff and Erin Hardick. Anne Bailey is our senior editor. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

Boston Metal’s path to carbon-free steel Nov 07, 2025

Show notes

This year in the U.S., steel manufacturers will produce more than 71 million tons of steel – enough to build nearly 200 Empire State buildings. It's a stunning statistic, but not surprising. The steel industry has fueled economic growth and innovation in America since the early 1800s.

But for every ton of conventional steel produced, two tons of CO2 are emitted, making the coal industry responsible for about 7% of global emissions.

Steel is widely known as one of those "hard to decarbonize" industries. But Boston Metal's innovations are pointing the way forward to a net-zero steel industry that relies on renewable power instead of coal.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Tadeu Carneiro, CEO of Boston Metal, about the company's first commercial facility in Brazil -- a facility that aims to reach industrial-scale production of critical metals by next year. And Lara asks Tadeu how his team developed and scaled a technology he calls “harder than keeping an ice cream cone frozen in hell.”

Credits:

Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

The thermal battery transforming cold storage for India’s dairy farmers Oct 22, 2025

Show notes

In 2007 Sam White, co-founder of Promethean Power Systems, was traveling through India looking for a rural electrification problem to solve. He and his team had just won a $10,000 grant in an MIT competition, and they wanted to find an industry in India that needed their help. After looking at the sugar industry and the grape industry, they finally settled on dairy.

India is the largest producer and consumer of milk in the world, but poor infrastructure makes getting chilled milk from farmer to consumer difficult. Industry standards require milk to be chilled within four hours of milking the cows, or bacteria spoils it. India averages six hours.

Sam’s team had found their problem. But it would take years of failed designs to solve it. In the end they perfected a 500 liter tank that could chill a thousand liters of milk – a 300% increase in efficiency from previous designs. Today, Promethean had installed 2800 of those tanks across India.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Sam about the evolution of Promethean's thermal battery design, the upsides of slow but steady growth in climate tech, and how Promethean dealt with technology copycats in India.

This VC wants climate tech to play hardball in Washington Oct 08, 2025

Show notes

Clean energy founders love to talk about technology, capital, and scale. But few are prepared for the fourth pillar of success: government.

Shomik Dutta, a co-founder and managing partner at Overture VC, learned that lesson firsthand after a career that spanned Obama’s White House, private equity, and venture capital. His takeaway: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Shomik thinks the next generation of climate startups must treat policy as a core competency, not an afterthought. That means building real influence in Washington, developing a muscle for storytelling, and sometimes even instilling a little fear in politicians.

It’s a strategy Overture has baked into its investment model. The firm partners directly with Boundary Stone Partners, one of DC’s top government affairs shops, to help portfolio companies navigate regulation and shape outcomes.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Shomik about how industrial policy is reshaping venture capital, why crypto offers an unexpected lobbying lesson, and how founders can engage the government as a strategic partner— even in this moment of political backlash.

Credits:

Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

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