The Climate Cycle

• Hunting Gigacorns with Nelson Switzer, Climate Innovation Capital

  Nelson Switzer is the co-founder of Climate Innovation Capital and author of The Gigacorn Hunter. Nelson’s spent his career at the intersection of capital markets and sustainability, helping corporations, institutional investors, and governments allocate dollars where they can drive the greatest climate impactTalking points:(5:11) The fifth industrial revolution. Nelson explains why the decarbonization of everything is not just a trend but an economic and existential shift.(9:34) “Dollars in motion transform entire sectors.” Why Nelson believes capital allocation - not philanthropy or reports - has the greatest power to drive decarbonization.(13:31) The carbon qualification model. A tactical framework using scale, speed, and cost to evaluate whether a climate solution can bend the carbon curve.(21:42) Building trust with investors. Advice for founders on how they can build trust with potential investors - even if they don’t have totally complete data.(31:13) Opportunities in today’s market correction. Why Nelson sees discounted valuations, dry powder, and surging demand as the setup for the next successful vintage of climate funds.(37:40) Canada’s commercialization gap. Why Canadian corporates need to stop piloting and start buying if we want to build global-scale climate companies.Stay in the know on Canada’s clean economy.About Nelson: Before founding Climate Innovation Capital, Nelson led sustainability initiatives inside global giants like Nestlé and advised some of the world’s largest investors on ESG risks and opportunities. His book, The Gigacorn Hunter, lays out a practical playbook for climate investors navigating one of the most urgent - and profitable - frontiers of our time.Show Notes📬 Sign up for our weekly briefing for the latest deals, real-world projects, and policy signals. More→ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Check out the full show notes & resources for this episode⁠→ Support the show with a review on Spotify and Apple!→ Follow us on LinkedIn→ Send feedback and episode ideas to ⁠⁠[email protected]

  --------  

  43:51

  --------

  43:51
• Cultivated Fat and the Future of Food with Emily Farrar, Genuine Taste

  We sit down with ⁠Emily Farrar⁠, co-founder at ⁠Genuine Taste⁠, a startup tackling one of the biggest limitations in plant-based food: flavour.Genuine Taste are developing cultivated animal fats grown from cells in compact bioreactors. Their goal? Deliver the taste, texture, and nutritional profile of real fat - without the emissions or animal suffering.About Emily: With a background in climate tech consulting and civil engineering, Emily co-founded Genuine Taste alongside a biophysics expert to define the future of food and build a more sustainable alternative to animal agriculture. They’ve already secured early partnerships and are scaling toward commercial pilots.We talk about:Why fat is key to unlocking adoption in plant-based foodsLessons they’ve taken from the first wave of alt-protein companiesHow they’re able to produce fats lower costs and 100x smaller footprint than competitorsNavigating regulations and their decision to enter the pet food market firstPositioning cultivated fats and proteins with consumersHow Canada’s biotech ecosystem is giving them an edge📬 Stay in the loop on Canadian climate tech: ⁠⁠subscribe to our weekly newsletter⁠⁠. Get weekly updates on Canadian climate tech funding, industry news, and trends directly to your inbox.More→ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Check out the full show notes & resources for this episode⁠→ Support the show with a review on Spotify and Apple!→ Send feedback and episode ideas to ⁠⁠[email protected]

  --------  

  43:48

  --------

  43:48
• Decarbonizing Cement with Apoorv Sinha, Carbon Upcycling

  Apoorv Sinha is the co-founder and CEO of Carbon Upcycling Technologies, a Calgary-based startup turning industrial waste and captured carbon into low-cement.Cement is a huge part of modern life but also one of the biggest sources of carbon pollution. Carbon Upcycling helps cement producers lower their emissions by replacing traditional cement with low-carbon alternatives made from industrial or mine waste and reacting it with CO2 to permanently lock away carbon.Their tech slots right into existing plants and helps cement makers localize their supply chains, making it easier and cheaper to cut emissions while building the infrastructure Canada needs.About ApoorvApoorv is a chemical engineer by trade and has extensive experience in conventional energy.Since launching Carbon Upcycling in 2014, he’s built partnerships with some of the biggest cement companies in the world, including CRH, Titan, and CEMEX, and just closed a major funding round led by Builders Vision.Talking PointsHow waste from mining and steelmaking can replace emissions-heavy cement ingredientsWhy working with local materials matters for climate, economics, and supply chain securityWhat it takes to scale a startup in Canada’s hard-to-decarbonize sectorsThe policy and funding tools that could speed up adoptionWhy Canada's infrastructure push is a huge opportunity for climate tech📬 Stay in the loop on Canadian climate tech: subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Get weekly updates on Canadian climate tech funding, industry news, and trends directly to your inbox.More→ ⁠⁠⁠Check out the full show notes & resources for this episode→ Support the show with a review on Spotify and Apple!→ Send feedback and episode ideas to [email protected]⁠

  --------  

  55:04

  --------

  55:04
• Commercializing Climate Chemistry with RXN Hub

  Morgan Lehtinen and Sebastian Alamillo are the co-founders of RXN Hub, a new facility to help ChemTech ventures scale from lab to market.RXN Hub is tackling one of the biggest and least-addressed challenges in climate tech: how to scale chemical technologies from the lab to commercial scale. Whether you're working on carbon capture, energy storage, or green industrial processes, there’s often nowhere to go once your research is too big for a university but too early for a full-scale plant.Morgan and Sebastian have both lived that experience as chemtech founders, and now they’re building the infrastructure they wish they had to make scaling up faster, easier, and more cost effective.In our conversation, you’ll learn about:Why chemistry is at the core of so many climate solutionsWhat’s driving a renewed interest in chemistry techCrossing the capital and infrastructure valleys of deathHow RXN Hub is cutting costs and complexity for first-of-a-kind projectsWhy international ventures are looking to Canada for their first pilotsThe value of founder experience in building better infrastructure📬 Subscribe to the Climate Tech Canada newsletterGet weekly updates on Canadian climate tech funding, industry news, and trends directly to your inbox.→ ⁠⁠Check out the full show notes & resources for this episode→ Support the show with a review on Spotify and Apple!→ Send feedback and episode ideas to [email protected]

  --------  

  59:54

  --------

  59:54
• Industrializing Mass Timber Construction with OD Krieg, Intelligent City

  Oliver David (OD) Krieg is the President of Intelligent City, a Vancouver-based company redefining how we build housing using mass timber, advanced manufacturing, and parametric design. Intelligent City is working to solve Canada’s climate and housing crises.About Intelligent City: Intelligent City manufactures prefabricated building panels out of renewable mass timber. Their platform enables faster, lower-carbon, and higher-quality housing construction that can scale across Canadian cities.About OD: With a background in architecture, robotics, and computational design, OD was one of the earliest team members at Intelligent City. He’s helped guide the company from early research and prototyping to full-scale manufacturing, including recent projects in Vancouver and Toronto. Their work is pushing the frontier of what’s possible in Canada’s construction and climate sectors.In our conversation, we discuss:The carbon math behind mass timber and why end-of-life planning mattersWhat’s slowing down construction, from financing models to permittingWhat it takes to get developers and builders to shift mindsets and start exploring mass timber and prefabThe role of Canada’s forest supply chain in enabling sustainable constructionOD’s vision for local factories building homes across across the countryYou’ll gain firsthand insight into what it takes to bring climate tech into a sector that can be slow to change and adapt, and why prefab construction might finally be ready to scale in Canada.📬 Subscribe to the Climate Tech Canada newsletter Get weekly updates on Canadian climate tech funding, industry news, and trends directly to your inbox. → ⁠⁠Check out the full show notes & resources mentioned in this episode⁠⁠→ Support the show with a review on Spotify and Apple!→ Send feedback and episode ideas to [email protected]

  --------  

  49:15

  --------

  49:15

More Technology podcasts

Trending Technology podcasts

About The Climate Cycle