Everybody in the Pool

You’re doing all the right things to make your home greener: you switched to solar and induction, you remember your reusable bags, and you always compost your scraps. But some of the biggest climate impacts of the building you live or work in? They were locked in the day it was built — in the concrete, the steel, the glass. And that matters, because the built environment accounts for roughly 42% of global emissions.This week on Everybody in the Pool, Molly sits down with Ben Stapleton, the CEO at the U.S. Green Building Council of California, to talk about what it actually takes to make our buildings work for the climate instead of against it. Ben has spent over 20 years at the intersection of sustainability, real estate, and innovation, and he’s got a refreshingly practical outlook: the solutions exist, the business case is there, and the work is already happening, even when the federal government is pulling back.We talk about:Why buildings — not cars — are the biggest source of carbon emissions, and what that means for climate strategyThe difference between operating carbon and embodied carbon, and why that means we need two different performance standards for buildingsHow building performance standards work and why California is building a statewide framework to get there by 2030How to get developers to root for performance standards: sell them on lower energy costs, lower insurance premiums, and higher resale valuesWhat rebuilding after the LA fires could look like if we get it right, and why waiving the all-electric requirement was a missed opportunityUSGBC California's Net Zero Accelerator and the startup trends Ben is tracking in green building techLinks:U.S. Green Building Council of California: https://usgbc-ca.org/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/2EsDhwQC2zSubscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member for the ad-free version of the show (and support future field trips): https://everybodyinthepool.supercast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Home batteries are having a moment, but for years, getting one meant cobbling together a solar panel from one company, an inverter from another, a smart panel from a third, and hoping they'd all play nice. This week on Everybody in the Pool, Molly takes a field trip to Mountain View, California, to visit Lunar Energy, where founder and CEO Kunal Girotra has built the fully integrated solar-plus-battery ecosystem he always wished existed.Plus: a tour of Lunar's working showroom, where we flip a breaker, watch the app react in real time, and find out what happens when you leave the oven on during a power outage.We talk about:Why Kunal left Tesla Energy to build a fully integrated home energy ecosystemHow Lunar's modular, stackable battery blocks work (think Lego bricks for your garage wall)The real math on savings: how a solar and battery system can cut your bill by $2,000/year, and Lunar's AI adds another $500 on topHow "virtual power plants" are actually very real, and why Lunar wants to rename them "distributed power plants"Why Northeastern states are leading on VPP policy, and what utilities in other regions need to change to keep upLinks:Lunar Energy: https://www.lunarenergy.com/Sunrun (Lunar's leading VPP partner): https://www.sunrun.com/Green Mountain Power: https://greenmountainpower.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/2EsDhwQC2zSubscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member for the ad-free version of the show (and support future field trips): https://everybodyinthepool.supercast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Washington and the COP conferences get all the headlines, but some of the most creative and effective climate action in the world is emerging from city halls — and Denver's Office of Climate Action is one of the best examples of what's possible.This week, Molly zooms in on the Mile High City as she talks with Chelsea Warren, Marketing and Communications Manager for Denver’s Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency. Chelsea has spent years building one of the country's most effective city-level climate communications programs, making the case that local government is where climate action gets real.We talk about:Why local government is the frontline of climate action, and why local action matters more than everHow Denver used the rollback of federal climate policies to motivate voters to fund local climate initiatives like solar, e-bike rebates, heat pump programs, and moreUsing the science of behavioral change to effectively promote climate actionGoodwill pop-ups, ice cream collaborations, and other non-traditional ways Denver activated around a climate campaign, and delivered 128 million impressions in the processWhy financial incentives and positive social comparison beat education every time when it comes to motivating climate actionThe perception gap: most people wildly underestimate how many of their neighbors care about climate actionHow effective, human-centered storytelling can combat pessimism and inactionThe co-benefits frame: reaching people through health, savings, and quality of life, not just the environmentLinks:Denver's Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency: https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Climate-Action-Sustainability-and-ResiliencyThe Denver Climate Project: https://www.denvergov.org/Community/Denver-Climate-ProjectAll episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/2EsDhwQC2zSubscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member for the ad-free version of the show: https://everybodyinthepool.supercast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trillions of dollars worth of goods move around the planet every year, and a shocking amount is lost, spoiled, or discarded. That wasted food, medicine, and equipment isn’t just a business problem; it’s a massive, underappreciated climate problem.This week on Everybody in the Pool, Molly talks with Krenar Komoni, CEO and founder of Tive, a supply chain visibility company that helps businesses track and monitor shipments in real time. What started as a GPS tracker for his father-in-law's trucking company has grown into one of the fastest-growing companies in supply chain tech. Tive’s small-but-mighty trackers don’t just follow a shipment’s location — they also monitor temperature, light, and shock along the way, helping businesses intervene before a load of strawberries (or a shipment of vaccines) becomes a very expensive, very wasteful problem.We talk about:Why real-time shipment visibility is a key ingredient in creating a greener supply chainHow temperature monitoring can save hundreds of thousands of dollars of food and medicine from going to wasteWhat "permanent disruption" and climate change means for global supply chainsHow route data is helping companies find faster, more fuel-efficient paths they didn't know existedTive's commitment to sustainability in its own products, including lithium-free trackers and a tracker recycling programWhy AI agents will be hungry for real-time supply chain data, and what that could unlock for global efficiencyKrenar's 10-year vision: tracking 5-10% of all global shipments (and why that would be a very big deal)Links:Tive: https://www.tive.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/2EsDhwQC2zSubscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member for the ad-free version of the show: https://everybodyinthepool.supercast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Data centers don't exactly have a reputation for being climate heroes… but what if they could be? This week on Everybody in the Pool, Molly sits down with Jasper de Vries, co-founder and CEO of Lucend, to talk about the surprisingly wild world of data center optimization — and why the industry has been leaving billions of dollars and millions of megawatt hours on the table.In this conversation, Jasper explains how Lucend’s platform uses machine learning and sensor data to make data centers dramatically more efficient. He also lays out a vision for the industry’s future; one where data centers generate their own renewable power, store it in batteries, and feed flexibility back to the grid on demand.We talk about:Why data centers are sitting on a goldmine of untapped efficiency, and why they haven't captured it until nowHow Lucend uses 280 billion sensor readings to open up the "black box" of data center operations, saving customers an average of 25% on energy and 30% on waterWhy it’s so hard to make even the smallest changes in how a data center operatesHow "transparent AI" builds operator trust by showing every step of the recommendation processThe water vs. energy trade-off in cooling, and why it's more complicated than headlines suggestWhy Scope 3 emissions from hardware are the dirty secret behind Big Tech's broken climate pledgesThe vision for data centers as flexible grid assets, and what’s needed to get them thereLinks:Lucend: https://www.getlucend.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/2EsDhwQC2zSubscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member for the ad-free version of the show: https://everybodyinthepool.supercast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.