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Supercool

Supercool spotlights climate innovations that have moved beyond the lab and into the market.

Hosted by climate-tech founder and author Josh Dorfman, Supercool features CEOs, founders, and operators building businesses that are decarbonizing energy, transportation, food, materials, and buildings. Each episode explores the strategies, execution, and business models behind companies that cut carbon, grow profits, and redefine modern life.

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#114
Wednesday · 36 min
Reprised | Right on Schedule: Zum Gives America’s School Buses a 21st Century Upgrade
Every day, 27 million kids ride 500,000 school buses—the largest transit system in America. And yet, this 80-year-old relic is stuck in the past: buses are late, routes are inefficient, and parents have no clue where the bus is or when it’s coming. Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of Zum, decided to fix it. All of it. With real-time tracking, smarter routes, and electric buses, Zum has modernized student transportation for 4,000 schools, including the school districts of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston. In Oakland, Zum introduced the nation’s first fully electric school bus fleet, slashing emissions and cutting the number of buses needed nearly in half. Zum isn’t just about buses—it’s a tech, Human Resources, logistics, and infrastructure company rolled into one. The result? Parents can breathe, kids get to class on time, and school districts finally have a system that works. Ritu joins Supercool this week to discuss how Zum is making school buses smart, sustainable, and better for everyone. Show Notes Guest: Ritu Narayan, founder & CEO Company: Zum For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#113
September 23 · 45 min
Reprised | Clean Energy Meets Its Match: Crux Accelerates Deal Flow
There are trillions of dollars of clean energy projects ready to be built—and trillions more in capital waiting to fund them. But the system connecting the two is too slow, fragmented, and expensive. That gap is what Alfred Johnson set out to close. A former Treasury official who helped steer markets through the 2008 financial crisis and later served under Janet Yellen, Johnson co-founded Crux to build the financial software layer the energy transition was missing. Crux connects developers, manufacturers, and investors across a marketplace for clean energy finance. In just two years, it’s closed over 120 transactions worth billions—turning a bureaucratic tangle of documents into a liquid market built for speed, trust, and scale. This conversation explores how liquidity, intelligence, and automation are accelerating capital into hard infrastructure—and how Crux is becoming the financial engine powering today’s clean energy industrial revolution. Show Notes Guest: Alfred Johnson, Co-Founder & CEO Company: Crux For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#112
September 16 · 8 min
The Planet Needs Better Products, Not Better People
People aren’t looking for a mission. They’re looking for products that improve their lives. In this Supercool episode, host Josh Dorfman takes us back to China 30 years ago, when a billion people rode bicycles but nobody wanted one. Everybody wanted a car. He realized China would have a billion of them—and wondered where all the oil would come from. Three decades later, China is still getting its cars. But the cars are changing. During the first half of 2026, almost half of all vehicles sold there were electric or plug-in hybrid. Two-thirds of its fully electric cars cost less than their gasoline-powered equivalents. Josh explores how the EV revolution is moving beyond cars, from electric school buses and 18-wheelers to boats and soon the skies. Climate tech entrepreneurs aren’t asking people to want less. They’re giving people more of what they want while using less of what the planet can’t afford.
#111
September 9 · 41 min
Boats That Fly: 5x More Efficient Across Four Continents
How do you make boating an extremely efficient form of transportation? You lift the boat out of the water. Vessev’s electric hydrofoils use underwater wings to raise almost the entire boat above the surface, dramatically reducing drag. The result is a new class of commercial passenger vessel that’s three to five times as efficient as a conventional boat, cheaper to operate, and feels like flying. The opportunity goes beyond electrifying today’s boats. Cities around the world are crowded with cars and trains while the waterways they were built around remain largely unused for transportation. Vessev sees a future where waterways become fast, efficient transportation corridors. CEO Eric Laakmann joins Josh to discuss the technologies making electric hydrofoils possible, why commercial boat operators care about lower costs and a better passenger experience, and what happens when a climate solution wins because the product is simply better. Show Notes: Guest: Eric Laakmann, CEO Company: Vessev For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#110
September 2 · 44 min
They Called Him Nature Boy. Now 45 Climate Tech CEOs Call Him for Advice.
Climate tech CEOs are running a long, consequential, high-stakes race. Where do they go when they hit unfamiliar terrain? Chris Wedding created Entrepreneurs for Impact so they could turn to each other. Through Entrepreneurs for Impact, he brings together 45 CEOs of investor-backed climate companies to candidly share what’s working, what’s broken, and what they’ve already learned the hard way. Chris brings an unusual combination of experience to the room: a PhD in environmental science, a background in private equity and finance, more than 15 years teaching climate tech, investing, energy finance, and strategy at Duke and UNC, and significant time practicing meditation in Thai and Zen monasteries. We talk about how CEOs navigate capital, focus, changing markets, customers, and the moments when they realize the thing that actually needs to change may be the way they’re leading. Guest: Chris Wedding For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#109
August 26 · 57 min
Artifacts from the Future: Reimagining Sustainable Interiors with David Bergman
We think of a building as something permanent. Its interior is anything but. A lease comes up. A new tenant moves in and renovates the space. The building may last for 100 years, but its interiors will be updated again and again. Old materials get ripped out and thrown away. New materials take their place. David Bergman has spent decades working to change how the industry approaches sustainable interior design. He teaches Sustainable Systems at Parsons and directs the world’s only degree program dedicated specifically to sustainable interior design at the New York School of Interior Design. Now he’s launching the Center for Circularity in Interior Design to continue moving the industry forward. David joins Supercool to talk about circularity, embodied carbon, designing for disassembly, and training the next generation of designers to build the future we actually want. Show Notes: Guest: David Bergman For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#108
August 19 · 44 min
When It’s Time to Power: Critical Loop Gets Electricity Where It’s Needed
In America today, it can be faster to build a factory than to get enough electricity to run it. Time to power has become a major bottleneck for factories, data centers, EV charging depots, and other infrastructure being built across the country. After more than a decade at SpaceX—including serving as launch chief engineer for Demo-2 and Director of Flight Safety—Bala Ramamurthy turned his attention to the electricity grid. His company, Critical Loop, combines batteries, software, controls, automation, and generation to help customers get power faster. It’s indicative of a trend we often see on Supercool: building the low-carbon future is as much about breakthrough business model innovation as new hardware or software. Critical Loop has already powered an 80,000-square-foot factory for nine months, operates a microgrid at San Diego Airport, and is helping customers unlock more power from the grid we already have—while enabling more renewable energy along the way. For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#107
August 12 · 47 min
Reprised | Alloy Built Brooklyn’s First All-Electric Skyscraper — Wall Street Wants More
By fusing architect and developer, Alloy Development is proving that the riskiest choice in real estate isn’t electrification or Passive House — it’s clinging to the past. CEO Jared Della Valle joins Supercool to share the company’s journey to developing Alloy Block in downtown Brooklyn—an effort to create the most sustainable block in the city. It’s anchored by 505 State Street, New York’s first all-electric skyscraper; two Passive House–certified public schools; and soon, One Third Avenue—the tallest Passive House tower in the world. Della Valle describes how Alloy built investor confidence project by project—staying nimble, controlling risk, and executing at a standard that pulled institutional capital toward climate performance. He explains why going all-electric lowered long-term risk, how policy and pricing dynamics shifted investor expectations, and why the most competitive real estate today is also the cleanest. Alloy is shifting how Wall Street perceives risk and return—redefining climate performance not as the exception, but the expectation. Show Notes Guest: Jared Della Valle, CEO Company: Alloy Development
#106
August 5 · 45 min
Reprised | Built for the EV Generation: Formula E Energizes 561 Million Global Race Fans
When Roger Griffiths first heard about Formula E in 2014, he was intrigued but skeptical. A veteran of IndyCar, Le Mans, and Formula 1—and a self-described petrol head—he wasn’t convinced electric racing could deliver credible performance. Then he saw who was signing on. Michael Andretti. Alain Prost. Emerson Fittipaldi. Frank Williams. Plus early backers like Richard Branson. Racing legends and global brands were putting their reputations behind an all-electric series built for city streets, digital-native fans, and a new kind of mobility. That’s when Roger knew: failure wasn’t an option. He joined Andretti Global to help lead its Formula E team. Today, he’s Team Principal and Chairman of the Formula E Teams Association. Just over a decade later, Formula E is the fastest-growing motorsport on Earth. It races through city centers, draws 500 million fans, and connects with a global audience that legacy motorsports can’t reach. Roger takes us inside how Formula E became the sport brands chase, fans love, and the future demands.
#105
July 29 · 40 min
The Profitable Climate Solution: Integrative Design for Radical Efficiency — with Amory Lovins
Nearly 50 years after Amory Lovins published his landmark Foreign Affairs article, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?,” we have made enormous gains in efficiency. But we have barely scratched the surface of what better design can deliver. Few people have shaped modern thinking about energy more than Amory. He co-founded Rocky Mountain Institute—known today as RMI—and has spent five decades helping companies and governments dramatically reduce energy use while improving performance and lowering costs. At the center of Amory’s work is integrative design for radical efficiency—optimizing whole systems rather than individual components to use less energy, material, equipment, and capital and achieve far greater efficiency gains. In this conversation, Amory explains how redesigning pipes, pumps, and motors could dramatically reduce global electricity use; why integrative design remains largely absent from engineering textbooks, government forecasts, and climate models; and how his home in the Colorado Rockies stays warm enough to grow bananas without any mechanical heating system. The most overlooked climate solution may not be another breakthrough technology. It may be better design, and one of our most powerful tools for profitably solving climate change.
#104
July 22 · 43 min
Reprised | Rare Earths, Recycled: Cyclic Materials Cuts Into China's 90% Head Start
Rare earth magnets power the modern world and the clean energy transition. They’re inside every electric vehicle motor, wind turbine, MRI machine, and computer hard drive in a data center. But the world throws most of them away. Less than 1% are ever recycled. And today, China controls nearly 90% of the global supply. That’s the crisis Cyclic Materials was built to solve — by turning circularity into industrial reality. In this episode, co-founder and CEO Ahmad Ghahreman explains how his team figured out what the industry long thought impossible: separating rare earth magnets from steel before they’re lost forever. We explore the engineering that makes rare earth recycling commercially viable, the spoke-and-hub logistics model to power urban mining where end-of-life products are abundant, and why companies like Microsoft, Amazon, BMW, and Jaguar are already lining up to work with Cyclic Materials. If the clean economy is going to scale, it needs rare earths. Cyclic Materials found a way to recover them — not from a mine, but from the discarded machines all around us. Show Notes: Guest: Ahmad Ghahreman - CEO, President, and co-founder Company: Cyclic Materials For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#103
July 15 · 45 min
Circularity is Strategy: Why Billion-Dollar Brands Are Betting on Resale
Resale has become more than a sustainability initiative. For billion-dollar brands like Patagonia, Levi's, and Michael Kors, it's become core business strategy. In this episode, Josh Dorfman talks with Terry Boyle, CEO of Trove, the platform helping leading fashion and apparel brands launch and grow their own resale businesses. Terry explains why resale is gaining momentum for reasons that go well beyond climate impact. Done right, it attracts new customers, improves margins, creates revenue from products already in circulation, and gives brands greater control over inventory and supply chains. He also shares how Trove has evolved from operating warehouses into a software platform that enables brands to build resale programs across products, markets, and sales channels. For Terry, the environmental benefits of resale are real. But they're not what gets the deal done. The strongest case for resale is the business case. Show Notes: Guest: Terry Boyle, CEO Company: Trove For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#102
July 8 · 50 min
Twenty Years to Supercool: A Replay with Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle
What do China, a sustainable furniture startup, and a blog called The Lazy Environmentalist have to do with Supercool? This week, we're taking a short summer break from new interviews, but not before sharing the story behind the show. In a special extended introduction, Josh Dorfman traces the unexpected path that shaped his philosophy on climate innovation—from working in bicycle-lock factories in China, to launching a modern sustainable furniture company, to the accidental creation of The Lazy Environmentalist. Along the way, he shares the question that has guided every company he's built for more than two decades: How do you get millions of people to adopt better technologies without asking them to become environmentalists first? Then, we revisit one of Josh's favorite conversations with Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle, whose remarkable entrepreneurial journey began with a simple but radical idea: that waste could become a valuable resource. Show Notes Guest: Tom Szaky, founder and CEO Company: TerraCycle For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#101
July 1 · 52 min
50,000 EVs Later: How Amazon Is Remaking Delivery
In 2019, Amazon made one of the biggest EV bets in business: 100,000 electric vehicles by 2030. Today, it is halfway there. Amazon now has more than 50,000 EVs on the road globally, including 40,000 Rivian delivery vans. But getting to that number has required much more than replacing gas vans with electric ones. It has forced Amazon to rebuild delivery around the realities of electricity: where vehicles charge, how far they can go, how weather, hills, elevation, route density, and time of day affect range, and which vehicle actually fits each market. That is why Amazon’s electric fleet now includes more than vans. It includes heavy-duty trucks moving containers out of ports, e-bikes delivering Whole Foods groceries in New York City, scooters in India, and other formats chosen for the way deliveries actually happen. In this episode, Josh talks with Emily Barber and Tom Chempananical about the operating discipline behind Amazon’s push to remake delivery at global scale. For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#100
June 24 · 36 min
Everyone Inside Agrees—Net Zero Building Is Just Better
If net zero is better, why isn’t it normal? We have the technology and the know-how. Schools, hospitals, and skyscrapers are already being built that are beautiful, cheap to operate, and carbon-free. And yet less than 1% are net zero. Drew Shula is founder and CEO of Verdical Group, whose team has worked on green building projects for clients including Apple, Meta, and NASA. He also founded the Net Zero Conference, now in its thirteenth year, bringing together more than a thousand building professionals annually. In this episode, Josh and Drew talk about Malibu High School, embodied carbon, California’s building policies, and the debate running beneath it all: what gets us to a net-zero world faster—better solutions or better rules? Show Notes Guest: Drew Shula, founder and CEO Company: Verdical Group For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#99
June 18 · 42 min
Verse Raises $54M Series B to Help Data Centers Get Power Faster, Cheaper, Cleaner
Some of the biggest, most sophisticated companies in the world have almost no real visibility into one of their largest costs: power. Contracts are complex. Prices swing. Grid capacity is scarce. Costs are rising. For some companies today, electricity can account for 30% to 40% of OpEx. For data centers, access to power determines whether a project begins operating or waits for years in a queue. Verse gives large power buyers visibility into their electricity use, so they can see what they use, what they pay, and where they can reduce costs. For data centers, Verse goes further. Its new product, Dispatch Intelligence, uses on-site batteries and software to make demand more flexible for the grid, helping projects begin operating faster without slowing down compute. This week, Josh talks with Verse co-founder and CEO Seyed Madaeni, who has spent his career at the intersection of power markets, grid software, and large-scale batteries — from PG&E to Tesla to Fluence. Today, Verse announced a $54 million Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Google Ventures, NVIDIA, and others. Seyed also explains how the fastest, cheapest path to power is often the cleanest. Show Notes Guest: Seyed Madaeni, Co-founder & CEO Company: Verse For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#98
June 10 · 35 min
High-Performance Passive House Windows, Made 20 Miles From Midtown NYC
While companies across the construction industry were raising prices because of tariffs last year, Wythe Windows did the opposite: it lowered prices on high-performance, energy-efficient windows. Even more striking, Wythe manufactures them 20 miles from Midtown NYC. Darren Macri came to construction after film school at NYU and built the first passive house in New Jersey. That project exposed the bottleneck: getting the right windows in the U.S. meant importing them from Europe through middlemen, and when orders arrived wrong or incomplete, there was no one local to call. So he started making them in his hometown of Ramsey, New Jersey. Today, Wythe ships coast to coast for projects ranging from high-end new construction to affordable housing retrofits in places like the South Bronx, where better windows mean an immediate quality-of-life upgrade: lower energy bills, quieter rooms, cleaner air, and greater comfort. Now Darren is pushing the same idea further: from high-performance windows to high-performance retrofits for entire buildings. Show Notes Guest: Darren Macri, CO-CEO Company: Wythe Windows For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#97
June 3 · 41 min
Renters Delight: How One of America's Largest Property Owners Cuts Energy Costs
Utility costs are among the largest expense categories in multifamily real estate; they have been rising in the double digits year over year. The industry's attempt to answer has largely been technology. Smarter systems. AI-powered optimization. Devices that promise to cut costs by plugging into aging infrastructure. Kyle Hendricks, VP and Head of Sustainability at Equity Residential, one of America's largest apartment owners, took a different approach. He tied energy performance to the annual compensation of every employee in the company — from the executive suite to the person turning over a unit between tenants — and turned a small corporate team into an army of part-time energy managers across 300 communities. The first answer from leadership was a hard no. Then a maybe. Then show us the measurement. Where does this break down? In this episode, Kyle explains how he built the case, why operating discipline outperforms silver bullet technology in a portfolio of old buildings, and what climate tech startups need to understand about multifamily real estate before they walk in the door. Show Notes Guest: Kyle Hendricks, VP and Head of Sustainability Company: Equity Residential For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#96
May 27 · 42 min
New Home Tours Start in the Basement: Dandelion Brings Geothermal Mainstream
Geothermal should be an easy sell. It is quiet, efficient, comfortable, and cheap to run once installed. The problem has been the upfront cost of putting it in the ground. Dandelion spent years proving residential geothermal could work house by house. Now CEO Dan Yates is taking it into new home construction, where whole developments can be built with geothermal from the start. Dandelion’s partnership with Lennar in Colorado puts geothermal into 1,500 homes. Not luxury homes — starter homes, entry-level homes, homes for everyday Americans. At that scale, the cost to a builder can compete with conventional HVAC. In some cases, it can beat it. New federal tax rules also opened the door to geothermal leasing, turning a large upfront expense into a small monthly payment for homebuyers. In this episode, Dan explains why new home tours now start in the basement and how Dandelion is bringing geothermal into the mainstream. Show Notes Guest: Dan Yates, CEO Company: Dandelion Energy For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
#95
May 20 · 42 min
How AI-Powered Robots Rescued Recycling: AMP’s Dirty MRFs and Garbage Waterfalls
Americans think they recycle. Mostly, we don’t. More than half of all recyclable materials never reach a recycling bin. They go straight into the garbage, where the waste industry has historically had little economic incentive — and limited technology — to recover them. Matanya Horowitz founded AMP to build AI-powered robots that sort cans, bottles, and other valuable materials in recycling facilities, eventually deploying hundreds of robots across the country. Now AMP is building AI-powered mixed waste facilities — the modern version of what the industry calls dirty MRFs — that sort valuable materials directly out of the garbage stream. Trash moves down a conveyor belt, drops into what Matanya calls a “garbage waterfall,” and air jets fire in milliseconds to knock milk jugs, aluminum cans, and other materials onto separate conveyors. In this episode, Matanya explains why traditional recycling economics are broken, why the waste industry gave up on dirty MRFs decades ago, and how AMP’s full-scale facility in southeastern Virginia points to a different future: a recycling system that doesn’t require a recycling bin. Show Notes Guest: Matanya Horowitz, Founder & CTO Company: AMP For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

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