ClimateForce Podcast

This podcast with Chris Creed is about a super influential and vital funding program for climate related projects to make the world healthier.

Chris is the Chief Investment Officer at the Loan Programs Office. The Loan Programs Office (part of the Department of Energy) invests hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy related projects (like Tesla) that have a major impact on our climate.

The Loan Programs Office was established in 2005 to provide loans for energy projects. But it now has been all over the news because they have huge loan capacity to help to lead the charge to fund critical energy projects.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn about in this podcast:

• What investment criteria does Chris and his team need to fund a project?
• What stage of development does a tech need to be to get funded? I’ll spoil the surprise a bit because we didn’t mention the TRL in the podcast but it’s around TRL 8+.
• What are some innovative projects they are funding?
• What type of due diligence do they do? It’s very impressive.
• How do they ensure the money is being well spent?

We hope you enjoy it.

This podcast just blows my nuclear fusion mind. Todd Asmuth (President and CSO) and his colleagues at SHINE Technologies have done an incredible job commercializing products around nuclear fusion.

It’s one of the greatest startup stores no ones really knows about. And I’m not overstating here.

I’ve known about this nuclear fusion company since they started many years ago. I think technically SHINE in 2010 but they had their roots in a prior company started by Greg Piefer before that.

When I would hear about their future plans, I thought there was no way they would pull off their plan. Just insane.

Well, I was wrong. They are pulling it off. And they’re doing step by step, changing the face of imaging and nuclear medicine, and next up is nuclear recycling and then nuclear fusion for energy production.

Todd is quite a leader and does an amazing job articulating what they’ve done and their future plans. It’s inspiring.

Todd share some stories how they’re optimizing their nuclear fusion methods. He also shares the price for a gram of the isotope they are producing for nuclear medicine, mind boggling. And you thought gold was expensive.

Check this podcast out if you want to learn a lot about nuclear fusion and that fusion can be used for more than just creating energy. And maybe, most helpful for general business knowledge, is how to commercialize a technology in a stepwise fashion starting with something that’s doable now (stage 1: imaging) but with the end goal of something planet changing (stage 4: fusion energy).

Enjoy.

Hold on to your energy hats. This podcast is tells the story of how of one startup is working on methods to access and use super deep geothermal energy across the world. Everyone is always talking about solar, wind and nuclear. But what if geothermal is the source that changes everything?

This podcast is with Matt Houde (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-houde-71a4215b/) who is the co-Founder and Project Manager at Quaise Energy (embed url). Quaise is developing technology that will drill down 12 miles (about 20 km) below the Earth’s surface to where temperatures are around 900 degrees F (yeah, that’s hot).

This will allow them to tap into this inexhaustible supply of energy across the world. But to drill that far is a huge engineering effort. Keep in mind the deep hole ever drilled on Earth is just 7.6 miles. And they want to drill hundreds or even thousands of these holes.

Check out this podcast to hear what they’re working on.