The Green Blueprint

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The scrappy beginning of Tesla’s energy business Apr 23, 2025

Show notes

In 2014, Drew Baglino was helping build Tesla's energy division with a passionate, scrappy team. Using parts from Tesla's vehicles, they created the first Powerwall home battery. But as demand grew, they hit a critical bottleneck: cell shortages.

Customers across multiple markets were already excited about the new product, but Drew’s team struggled to keep up with demand. With Powerwall 2 already announced, pressure mounted while the supply chain faltered. And with Tesla prioritizing vehicles,, the energy team was left to "get the scraps and figure it out".

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Drew Baglino, former senior vice president of powertrain and energy at Tesla, about building a new product category through bootstrapping and creative resource sharing. Drew shares how a couple dozen "Swiss Army knife" engineers created a residential battery system that would ultimately define the market.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering 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 podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

LineVision's quest to win over utilities Apr 09, 2025

Show notes

In 2018, LineVision was a young company with revolutionary technology for electric transmission lines. Its dynamic line rating sensors and software could increase the capacity of existing power lines by up to 40% without building new infrastructure — a critical solution for integrating renewables and meeting growing electricity demand.

But to prove its tech, it needed to win over notoriously cautious utilities. When a crucial project worth $750,000 went to a competitor, LineVision's leadership made a last-ditch appeal that changed the company's trajectory.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with LineVision’s vice president of customer success, Karthik Rao, about navigating utility cybersecurity requirements, escaping “pilot hell,” and how LineVision became the partner behind the world's largest DLR project.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

Nextracker's blueprint for 100 gigawatts of solar trackers Mar 26, 2025

Show notes

Dan Shugar has been trying to move solar panels around since the 1980s. What started with a few experiments as a young engineer has turned into one of the biggest solar tracker companies in the world.

In 2012 he founded Nextracker with a single product. Since then, Nextracker has revolutionized tracking technology through an array of innovative products.

This week, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Nextracker CEO and founder Dan Shugar about product innovation and customer relationships, and how Nextracker made it through the pandemic.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering 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.

Electric Hydrogen’s bet on supersized electrolyzers Mar 12, 2025

Show notes

When Raffi Garabedian co-founded Electric Hydrogen in 2020, he saw existing electrolyzers as too small and expensive to make green hydrogen economically viable. Instead of building standard sub-megawatt units, his team aimed for 100-megawatt systems at half the industry cost.

Initial market enthusiasm brought millions in capacity reservations, fueling construction of a Massachusetts manufacturing plant. Then came the "trough of disillusionment" – a global cooling on hydrogen as projects faltered under high costs.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Raffi about taking big technology risks while building a factory during market volatility. He explains why startups, not incumbents, are best positioned to drive the cost reductions needed to make green hydrogen competitive with fossil alternatives.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering 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.

How supply chain chaos sank Sunfolding Feb 26, 2025

Show notes

Leila Madrone founded Sunfolding in 2012 with an innovative idea – build a solar tracker using pneumatic "airbags" instead of motors and torque tubes. By 2015, the company was deploying the technology in a field test in Davis, California.

Over the next six years, Sunfolding iterated on the technology’s design, built out the supply chain, and tried to prove bankability. Then, in 2021, the company found themselves faced with a major decision: take on a utility scale solar project during a global pandemic, or pass.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Leila about SunFolding's journey from breakthrough technology to shutdown, exploring the critical decisions that shaped the company's path and ultimately led to Sunfolding shutting down in 2023. Leila also shares the broader lessons for climate hardware startups navigating the complex intersection of innovation, manufacturing, and venture funding.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

Open Circuit: Jigar, Katherine, and Stephen are back Feb 19, 2025

Show notes

This week, we’re featuring an episode of Open Circuit, a new show from Latitude Media that reunites Jigar Shah, Katherine Hamilton, and Stephen Lacey.

Many listeners may remember them from The Energy Gang, a show they co-hosted for eight years.

They are back together, co-hosting a weekly roundtable that will cover the latest news – to explain what's really accelerating the energy transition, from technological leaps and supply chain shifts, to market upheavals and policy uncertainty.

If you like what you hear, go to your podcast app and subscribe to Open Circuit. You can also hear every episode and read transcripts at Latitudemedia.com.

We’ll be back with a normal episode of The Green Blueprint next week.

The first commercial construction project for low-carbon cement Feb 05, 2025

Show notes

In May 2024, Yanni Tsipis was watching as his team prepared to pour a low-carbon version of concrete — one that had never been used in a commercial project. As senior vice president of WS Development, he was in charge of the team building Boston’s largest net-zero office building for operating emissions (not embodied emissions), and he had spearheaded an effort to use a new type of low-carbon cement from a startup called Sublime Systems.

It's hard to understate how big of a deal it is for the construction industry to try a new version of cement. It’s the glue that holds concrete particles together, and the recipe used today has barely changed since 1824. It's incredibly versatile stuff, but making it accounts for nearly 8% of global emissions, so there's pressure on the industry to clean up. But with the literal foundations of buildings, bridges, and roads at stake, you can understand why the industry might be slow to change.

But Yanni's team wanted to try.

In this episode, Lara talked to Yanni about the journey to the first commercial deployment of this low-carbon cement. He talks about the economics of cement, securing enough material in time to meet construction deadlines, and earning buy-in from WS Development’s internal team, plus their long list of contractors and subcontractors. It’s a case study in finding the right customer for a first-of-a-kind climate tech project.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Daniel Woldorff and Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

On February 19th, join Latitude Media and Crux Climate for their upcoming Frontier Forum to unpack Crux’s 2024 Transferable Tax Credit Market Intelligence Report. Learn how tax credit transferability is accelerating investment in energy, and gain insights into what is shaping the market’s growth through 2025 and beyond. Register today for this virtual event.

Pioneering one of the first IRA tax credit transfers Jan 22, 2025

Show notes

When Chris Taylor and his team at GridStor were building Santa Barbara county's largest battery storage project in Goleta, CA they saw an opportunity: become one of the first companies to transfer tax credits under the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act. But there was no playbook to follow.

Instead of working with smaller, specialized investors, GridStor took an unconventional approach. They went straight to JP Morgan, one of the largest tax credit investors in the country, to prove that battery storage projects could work with mainstream financial institutions. The strategy involved navigating complex legal requirements, securing specific opinion letters, and creating a framework that other companies could follow.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Chris Taylor, CEO of GridStor, about executing this groundbreaking financial deal while simultaneously building a 60-megawatt battery storage facility. They discuss the challenges of pioneering new financial territory, working with major financial institutions as a startup, and what successful tax credit transfers could mean for scaling clean energy projects.

Building the world’s biggest DAC facility Jan 08, 2025

Show notes

On Christmas Eve 2023, Doug Chan wasn't celebrating with family. Instead, he was in Hellisheiði, Iceland with his team, preparing to commission Mammoth — what would become the world's largest operational direct air capture facility.

Getting there wasn't easy. After building two successful smaller plants, Climeworks faced its biggest challenge yet in attempting a 10x scale-up of its Orca plant. When the team broke ground, they discovered issues with their newly designed equipment that forced tough decisions. And Iceland's harsh winter conditions complicated both construction and operations.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Douglas Chan, chief operations officer at Climeworks, about proving and scaling direct air capture technology. They discuss managing technology risks, choosing the right partners — and what's next as Climeworks plans for an even bigger facility in Louisiana.

A complex path for building heat batteries Dec 11, 2024

Show notes

In 2022, John O’Donnell and Peter von Behrens figured out how to design a heat battery that would deliver heat at very high, constant temperatures. The breakthrough came on the heels of two years of research and development, some of which took place in Peter’s garage.

Now, John and Peter were ready to prove their technology at commercial scale. So they approached a long-time innovation partner, Calgren Renewable Fuels, about deploying a 2-megawatt-hour heat battery for industrial heat delivery in Calgren’s Pixley, California plant.

That’s when the next wave of problem solving started. It turns out, designing the technology was just half the battle. Manufacturing and installing a commercial scale demonstration proved harder than expected. In October 2023, they started on a six-month construction project that threw a myriad of challenges at the new start-up.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to John O’Donnell, co-founder and chief innovation officer at Rondo Energy, about the bumpy road of building a first-of-a-kind commercial demonstration. They cover things like the structural engineering challenges of scaling a new technology, and finding the right construction partner. Plus, John explains what new design specs mean for the company going forward.

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