The Green Blueprint

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.