The Climate Cycle

The green fuels transition has a cost problem. Mandates are arriving, corporate targets are being set, but sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel keep stalling on the same issue: price.
Jochem Kamstra is the founder of Secant Fuel, a Canadian startup turning CO2 into syngas, the building block for low-carbon fuels like methanol and sustainable aviation fuel. Secant Fuel uses heat - not electricity - to create its fuels, allowing them to better compete with fossil fuels on price, and a distributed production model that integrates with industry.
That's the threshold that has eluded this space for decades. Hit it, and the addressable market is measured in trillions.
In this episode:
Why Secant can hit fossil fuel price points when green hydrogen couldn't
The surprising challenge of finding CO2 feedstocks, and it’s scarcer than you’d expect
How carbon utilization changes the project economics of carbon capture
The case for distributed, smaller-scale production and selling direct
Why picking the right markets is key to success - and where Secant Fuel is finding traction
What Europe's SAF mandate and Canada's Clean Fuel Regulations mean for the market
Why investors now demand cheaper-than-fossil, not just greener-than-fossil
What the Hard Climate venture builder model gave Secant that a traditional incubator couldn't
Links:
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Since 2015, over 200 new contaminants have entered our water systems. Traditional purification technology wasn't built to keep up.
Diana Virgovicova is the founder and CEO of Xatoms, a Canadian company using AI and quantum chemistry to custom-design water purification materials.
Instead of running months of physical lab experiments, Xatoms models molecular behaviour computationally - predicting how atoms interact to design photocatalysts tailored to specific contaminants. The result is a growing library of materials that slot into existing water infrastructure without rebuilding it, with early traction in mining, agriculture, and textiles.
Diana started this research at 14, won an award from the Swedish Royal Family at 17 for discovering her first material, and recently presented alongside Fortune 500 CEOs at Davos.
What we cover:
Why investors overlook water - and why that's starting to change
How AI and quantum chemistry accelerate materials discovery
The case for industrial water purification over non-profit and community models
What Diana learned speaking to Fortune 500 CEOs at Davos
How Xatoms is commercializing across mining, agriculture, and textiles
Building credibility as a first-time founder through media and social visibility
More:
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Canada's auto sector faces a choice: follow the US away from EVs, or bet on the technology the rest of the world is adopting. We look at Canada’s new auto strategy - dropping Chinese EV tariffs, restoring rebates, and introducing Canada's first independent emission standards - and what it means across manufacturing, minerals, and charging.
Our guest is Denise Lee, a transportation policy advisor at Clean Energy Canada, a leading clean energy think tank. Prior to this role, she was a clean technology consultant in the U.K., helping governments and the private sector deploy low-carbon technologies such as electric vehicles, solar, and energy storage systems. She has also worked Tesla, SDTC, and as a researcher studying carbon capture economics.
What we cover:
Why Canada shifted from 100% tariffs to a quota system for Chinese EVs
How independent tailpipe standards position Canada as the US falls behind
Trade diversification with Korea, China, and the EU
Supply chain implications for critical minerals, EV parts, and charging infrastructure
What exposure to leading manufacturers could teach Canadian automakers - and how it’s worked in the past
Why provincial and municipal policy matters as much as federal action
Links:
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AI data centres are consuming electricity at unprecedented rates, creating anxiety about grid stability, power bills, and backsliding on climate progress by firing up natural gas generators to meet demand.
But done right, this load growth could actually make electricity cheaper, accelerate grid modernization, and pull forward technologies that weren't economically viable two years ago.
We talk to Sam Hasty, a Partner at early stage climate tech fund Active Impact Investments, about what’s actually happening with data centre energy demand, why load growth could actually lower electricity prices, and what it takes to sell to risk-averse utilities.
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Links
Lawrence Berkeley study
ThinkLabs
The Power Law
eBoys
The Courage to be Disliked

Electrification depends on critical minerals — but mining and processing them remains one of the dirtiest, most constrained parts of the clean energy transition.
While countries like Canada are rich in mineral resources, much of what’s mined still ships overseas as raw concentrate, leaving refining - and control - elsewhere.
We talk to Mohammad Doostmohammadi, CEO of pH7 Technologies, to unpack an overlooked bottleneck in the critical minerals value chain: processing and refining.
His team has developed a closed-loop process that extracts critical metals with near-zero emissions and no wastewater - replacing chemical consumption with electricity.

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