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PODCAST

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.

business natural sciences

All Episodes

42:43

Reprised | Trust Scales: Veo Is the Micromobility...

Supercool ·

2026/10/07

In an industry that moved fast and defied cities, Veo chose a different path: partnership over disruption. Co-founder and CEO Candice Xie is building one of the only profitable micromobility companies in America by leading with discipline, transparency, and respect for the people shaping urban life. While competitors flooded streets and flamed out, Veo continues to earn trust — winning 90% of city RFPs and operating in over 50 markets nationwide. Candice joins Josh Dorfman to unpack how

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36:58

Reprised | Right on Schedule: Zum Gives America’s...

Supercool ·

2026/09/30

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

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45:06

Reprised | Clean Energy Meets Its Match: Crux...

Supercool ·

2026/09/23

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,

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8:12

The Planet Needs Better Products, Not Better People

Supercool ·

2026/09/16

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

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41:37

Boats That Fly: 5x More Efficient Across Four Continents

Supercool ·

2026/09/09

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

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44:28

They Called Him Nature Boy. Now 45 Climate Tech CEOs...

Supercool ·

2026/09/02

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

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57:01

Artifacts from the Future: Reimagining Sustainable...

Supercool ·

2026/08/26

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

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44:53

When It’s Time to Power: Critical Loop Gets...

Supercool ·

2026/08/19

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,

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47:20

Reprised | Alloy Built Brooklyn’s First All-Electric...

Supercool ·

2026/08/12

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

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45:50

Reprised | Built for the EV Generation: Formula E...

Supercool ·

2026/08/05

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,

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40:14

The Profitable Climate Solution: Integrative Design...

Supercool ·

2026/07/29

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.At the center of Amory’s work is integrative design for radical efficiency—an approach that looks beyond improving individual technologies and redesigns the entire system to use less energy, less material, less equipment, and less capital.In this

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43:17

Reprised | Rare Earths, Recycled: Cyclic Materials...

Supercool ·

2026/07/22

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

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45:14

Circularity is Strategy: Why Billion-Dollar Brands...

Supercool ·

2026/07/15

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

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50:22

Twenty Years to Supercool: A Replay with Tom Szaky,...

Supercool ·

2026/07/08

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

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52:16

50,000 EVs Later: How Amazon Is Remaking Delivery

Supercool ·

2026/07/01

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

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36:52

Everyone Inside Agrees—Net Zero Building Is Just Better

Supercool ·

2026/06/24

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

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42:53

Verse Raises $54M Series B to Help Data Centers Get...

Supercool ·

2026/06/18

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

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35:25

High-Performance Passive House Windows, Made 20 Miles...

Supercool ·

2026/06/10

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. More surprising, Wythe manufactures them 20 miles from Midtown Manhattan.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

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41:28

Renters Delight: How One of America's Largest...

Supercool ·

2026/06/03

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

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42:03

New Home Tours Start in the Basement: Dandelion...

Supercool ·

2026/05/27

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,

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