Supercool

Fun: Why Sustainability Needs It And How To Have It At Work

Nobody wants to be policed. Not even sustainability advocates.Charlie Sellars has spent six years as a Director of Sustainability at Microsoft. He's the author of What We Can Do: A Climate Optimist's Guide to Sustainable Living. His TEDx talk is titled "Make Sustainability Fun Again." His argument: the movement has spent too long trying to be right at the expense of being effective. And that mistake is costing us.But making sustainability fun is only half the equation. The other half is knowing where to aim. And that means lifecycle analysis — the ability to measure the true environmental cost of anything from cradle to grave.Here's what that reveals: 80 to 90 percent of a device's lifetime emissions — like the one you're reading now and listening with — occur before you ever turn it on. Which means the single most impactful thing you can do with the phone you're holding right now has nothing to do with how you use it.It's how long you keep it.Show Notes:Guest: Charlie Sellars, Award-Winning Author and Microsoft Sustainability DirectorBook: What We Can Do: A Climate Optimist's Guide to Sustainable LivingFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

320 Boreholes Below Brooklyn: How Geothermal Replaces Fossil Fuels in Cities

* Sign-up for Johnson Controls Webinar: Evolving Building Codes *The largest geothermal residential building in New York City just opened in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. 834 apartments. 320 boreholes drilled hundreds of feet underground — enough to heat and cool every unit in the building. Even the rooftop pool.Geosource Energy drilled it. This conversation is about how they did it, and what it takes to build geoexchange systems at scale in dense cities, where there's already a city's worth of infrastructure below: water, gas, electric, telecom, subways, and foundations.Geoexchange is simple to explain and hard to execute. No combustion. No fuel. Fully electric. The physics are straightforward. The delivery is not.Building owners choose geoexchange for the operating savings. And for every dollar saved at the building level, the grid saves eight or nine — because geoexchange cuts peak demand when electricity is most expensive and most scarce.That's a true decarbonization driver. And why cities from Toronto to Boston to New York are leaning in with more to follow.Geosource has completed more than 400 projects. The infrastructure they install is designed to outlast the buildings it serves. Stan calls it 500-year pipe. He's seen a building come down and the borefield stay put, ready for the next one.Show Notes:Guest: Stanley Reitsma, CEOCompany: Geosource EnergyFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

20 Million Acres Later: Regenerative Ag Has Its Business Model

People assume farmers are conservative by nature. Cautious. Set in their ways.Ryan Jones, VP of Sustainability at Indigo Ag, has a different read: farmers aren’t risk-averse. They’re risk-saturated.Consider factors like weather, debt, input costs, labor, and fluctuating commodity prices. One bad season can set a farmer back years. So when someone shows up and says, “Change how you farm,” the first question any farmer asks is: who’s carrying the risk?That’s the problem Indigo was built to solve. Pay farmers to adopt regenerative practices. Quantify the outcomes. Connect them to buyers through carbon markets or corporate supply chains. Today, Indigo operates in 15 countries and manages a portfolio spanning 20 million acres, delivering over a megaton of greenhouse gas reductions/removals and conserving nearly 100 billion gallons of water—and it recently announced a 12-year offtake agreement with Microsoft for 2.85 million tons of carbon removal credits.But this conversation is about more than keeping carbon in the soil. It’s also about water. In the Mid-South rice belt, companies face an existential sourcing risk and farmers face an existential livelihood risk. And with a shared aquifer, one farmer conserving water doesn’t move the needle if everyone else keeps pumping.The only way through is everyone moving together. And Indigo’s bet is that you get there by making the most practical thing the most profitable thing—fast enough to matter.Show NotesGuest: Ryan Jones, Vice President of SustainabilityCompany: Indigo AgFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Solar for 45 Million Renters: How Shine Gets Building Owners to Say "Yes"

Forty-five million Americans live in apartments. Almost none have solar—not because the technology doesn't work, but because building owners pay for installation while tenants get the savings. It's the split incentive conundrum holding the sector back.Owen Barrett saw this problem when he started investing in apartment buildings. Nobody in multifamily was thinking about energy—just paint colors and new countertops. He tried consulting. Nobody listened. So he raised capital, bought buildings, and installed solar himself.The breakthrough: software that tracks each tenant's solar usage and bills them for it. Owners earn revenue. Tenants save money.That became Shine, a company that installs solar on apartment buildings and handles everything from design to maintenance.Shine went from 100 units in 2024 to 3,000 in 2025, projecting 20,000 in 2026. They're working with two of the five largest apartment owners in America.Owen and Josh discuss why execution beats innovation, how rising electricity prices make subsidies irrelevant, and why doing what you promise became a competitive advantage.Show NotesGuest: Owen Barrett, CEO Company: ShineFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn

Cash Beats Climate: Crowdfunding Millions for Clean Energy

In 2019, Will Wiseman watched 100,000 people march through Barcelona for the global climate strikes. He felt hope. Then the obvious truth: everyone was going home, and nothing would change. So, he built Climatize, an SEC-registered investment platform that allows anyone to invest as little as $10 in clean energy projects across the United States.Climatize specializes in projects ranging from $250,000 to $5 million, which are traditionally too small for institutional lenders to fund. The company's proprietary AI tools compress due diligence from weeks to minutes. Some projects raise hundreds of thousands of dollars within 24 hours.The crowdfunding platform's progress to date: $14 million deployed across 33 clean energy projects—solar, battery storage, EV charging, and energy efficiency—in 14 states.Will and Josh discuss why finance-first messaging outperforms climate-first messaging, how AI has made small deals viable, and why speed to finance has become Climatize's competitive moat.Show NotesGuest: Will Wiseman, Co-Founder & CEO Company: ClimatizeFor more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our:* Weekly Newsletter* Climate Adoption Playbook* Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn