Climate CEOs

Recent Episodes

1. The $230M Bet on Turning Homes Into Power Plants | Lunar Energy

   Jul 21, 2026

   Kunal Girotra, founder and CEO of Lunar Energy, discusses how the company is building integrated home energy systems combining solar, batteries, load controls, and AI-powered software to turn homes into distributed power plants. Lunar's GridShare software manages 650+ megawatts across 150,000 homes, enabling customers to save 30-60% on electricity bills, achieve 24/7 backup power, and earn money through virtual power plant programs—all with zero upfront cost through lease financing. Girotra shares lessons from his time leading Tesla Energy and advises on fundraising strategy, team resilience, and habits for sustainable entrepreneurship.

2. The Climate Tech Leadership Trap: Staying In Founder Mode Too Long

   Jul 17, 2026

   Chris Wedding, CEO coach, investor, founder, and professor, delivers a minisode on a critical leadership challenge in climate tech: the tension between founder mode and manager mode. Drawing from a debate at the EFI climate CEO peer group gathering in Seattle, Wedding explores how switching between speed-focused founder mode and scale-focused manager mode creates friction, misalignment, and decision paralysis. He provides a framework for CEOs to explicitly name their operating mode, clarify decision authority, and define processes to prevent organizational confusion.

3. The Robot Crew Building Solar Farms Faster Than Humans | Luminous

   Jul 14, 2026

   Jay Wong, founder and CEO of Luminous, discusses how AI-powered robotic fleets are reshaping solar construction by automating module installation and logistics. Luminous deploys 4,000-pound tracked robots on active solar sites to increase labor efficiency by 4X while improving safety (0 injuries to date), reducing panel defects by 15-20%, and locking in labor costs on a per-watt basis as hardware prices continue to fall. Wong emphasizes that the company's competitive advantage lies not in engineering sophistication alone, but in designing for customer adoption through a heterogeneous fleet architecture that creates a 'virtual conveyor belt' for continuous installation.

4. 15 Climate Startups To Watch: Out of 105

   Jul 10, 2026

   Chris Wedding hosts a minisode covering three climate tech topics: a curated watchlist of 15 early-stage climate startups selected by Trellis from 105 candidates across data center solutions, climate adaptation, and materials innovation; the mindset balance between extreme patience and extreme decisiveness in climate tech entrepreneurship; and four pieces of wisdom from BIPOC climate CEOs on leveraging pattern matching, operational excellence, community integration, and authentic diverse leadership.

5. Data > Hardware: 190% Net Revenue Retention for the Operating System for the Power Grid | Texture

   Jul 7, 2026

   Sanjeev Sangavi, co-founder and CEO of Texture, discusses building an operating system for the power grid that integrates fragmented utility software, meter data, and distributed energy resources into unified workflows. Texture targets underserved municipal utilities and cooperatives, achieving 190% net revenue retention through a $1-per-meter pricing model and rapid customer expansion driven by measurable operational payback. Sangavi shares lessons from founding ClassPass and working at Arcadia, emphasizing consultative sales approaches that reduced sales cycles from 9 months to 3 months.

6. Climate Urgency Is Distorting CEO Decision-Making

   Jul 3, 2026

   Chris Wedding, CEO coach, investor, founder, and professor, delivers a minisode on how urgency is distorting climate CEO decision-making and strategy execution. The episode explores trade-offs between urgency and strategy, accessibility and authority, and presence and perspective, arguing that constant reactivity prevents strategic leadership. Wedding offers three concrete actions: Total Focus Tuesdays, Future Back Fridays, and bottleneck audits to help climate tech leaders reclaim strategic clarity.

7. I Answer Four Important Questions | Advice, Habits, Books

   Jun 30, 2026

   Chris Wedding, CEO coach, investor, founder, and professor, answers four key questions typically posed to podcast guests: advice for younger self, health/wellness habits, recommended books, and influential people. Wedding shares insights on avoiding red ocean competition through skill stacking, building lifestyle businesses, the bottom 5% differentiation strategy, internal entrepreneurship, relationship compounding, radical ownership, identity diversification, and believing in the impossible. He discusses daily practices including sleep, meditation, rucking, sauna, and journaling, and recommends eight books spanning systems thinking, focus, perspective, and leverage. He concludes by reflecting on three mentors who shaped his leadership: Dr. Sam McFarlane, Doug Crawford Brown, and Thich Nhat Hanh.

8. 10 Climate Startups Raised Nearly $1B. The Patterns Matter More Than the Dollars.

   Jun 26, 2026

   Chris Wedding, CEO coach, investor, founder, and professor at Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI), hosts a minisode covering three topics: a roundup of 10 climate tech startups that raised $941 million in May (including Living Carbon, Grid Care, Nexus, Pantalasa, Starcatcher, Boston Metal, and others); three AI tips shared by EFI peer group CEOs during a screenshare session on automating brand consistency, spreadsheet formulas, and searching customer conversations beyond CRM data; and a framework on avoiding local optimization and silo thinking, drawing from business books 'Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars' and 'The Goal.' The episode emphasizes that investors are backing hard tech infrastructure, and AI should be used operationally to free teams to focus on company bottlenecks.

9. Cradle to Cradle, AI, and the Future of Climate Tech | William McDonough

   Jun 23, 2026

   William McDonough, renowned sustainable design thinker and author of Cradle to Cradle, discusses how climate tech and business leaders must shift from reducing harm to creating genuinely beneficial systems. McDonough challenges the prevailing net-zero narrative, advocating instead for 'net positive' thinking, insetting over offsetting, and designing for 'next use' rather than end-of-life. He explores how natural wisdom—from local sourcing to biomimetic design—should precede artificial intelligence, and highlights geothermal energy, green infrastructure, and regenerative economics as practical pathways to scale climate solutions.

10. The CEO Sabbatical Test

    Jun 19, 2026

    Chris Wedding discusses climate startup lessons with Fiona Sproul, CEO of OverStory, a vegetation management technology company that uses satellites to reduce power outages and wildfires for utilities. The episode covers five key business lessons including killing optionality, selling value over virtue, avoiding AI hype, curating cap tables strategically, and creating space for strategic thinking. Wedding also explores four sabbatical models for climate leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their organizations.