Felix Krause is the Managing Partner at Vireo Ventures, a European VC fund betting that the future of energy is electric, distributed, and intelligently managed. Based in Berlin, Felix brings sector-specific clarity to the sprawling world of climate investing and makes a strong case for why electrons, not moonshots, will define the next great energy transition.

In this episode we talked about:

🔋 Why electrification isn’t just inevitable—it’s the most capital-efficient climate solution on offer
🔄 What "sector coupling" means, and how heat pumps, EVs, and industry can all talk to each other
🧠 Why AI is the new electrification, and how it makes an increasingly complex energy system legible
⚡ The distributed grid, smart meters, and how regulation is slowing everything down
🔐 Why cybersecurity for backyard solar systems might be our next national security crisis
🔌 The dark horses of climatetech: agrivoltaics and bi-directional EV charging

#climatetech #electrification #energytransition #VC

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

Ismaël Bawah is the SciTech Community Coordinator at the Good Food Institute Europe and the man behind the Alt Protein Project, a global student-powered initiative to transform universities into hubs for alternative protein innovation. Alongside him, we also heard from Lisa Neidhardt of Imperial College London and Jorge Guadalupe of Brazil’s Federal University of Minas Gerais—two campus leaders putting alt proteins on the academic map.

In this episode we talked about:

🌱 How the Alt Protein Project scaled to 63 active university chapters and sparked more than 20 new courses and 40+ research projects
🧬 Why fermentation is Lisa’s lab obsession—and how she’s using microbes to upcycle agricultural byproducts into food
🐔 Jorge’s role in creating Latin America’s first fried cultivated chicken (yes, really) and a new university course that ends with Shark Tank-style startup pitches
🧪 How mentorship, money, and microbes are building the alt protein talent pipeline from scratch
🎓 What it takes to get 13-year-olds (and their grandmas) excited about cultivated meat
📈 Why Brazil’s meat giants are pouring money into cultivated alternatives—and how geopolitics might do more for climate action than vibes ever will

#climatetech #alternativeproteins #futureoffood

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

📈 B2B content to create and capture leads: book 30 minutes with Tom for free at grizzle.io/climate

Veronique Hördemann is Managing Partner and CFO at Future Energy Ventures, a climatetech VC firm investing in the software layer of the energy transition. From her base in Essen (with a side of Berlin), Veronique talked about going from corporate VC to a fully independent impact fund and why they’ve made a deliberate choice to stay clear of hardware.

In this episode we talked about:
🏙️ How they segment their investments across “future energy”, “future cities”, and “future technology”
📉 The real reason they avoid hardware investments (spoiler: it involves capital, time, and regret)
👩‍💼 The diversity problem in VC and why she wants more female-led startups in her pipeline
🔁 What it’s like going from corporate-backed VC to managing a regulated, independent impact fund
🏫 Why she thinks the school system is stifling innovation—and how that’s become personal

#climatetech #impactinvesting #venturecapital #VC

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

Anastasia Pavlovic is the co-founder of Eion, a carbon removal company that accelerates Earth's natural rock weathering process to lock away CO₂—permanently. Eion works with farmers to deploy enhanced rock weathering (ERW) in agricultural fields, creating a carbon sink disguised as soil amendment, with benefits to landowners and climate alike. Anastasia joined the podcast from Detroit to talk about carbon, kids, and the importance of remembering to eat.

In this episode we talked about:

🪨 How volcanic rock dust turns farms into carbon capture sites (and why the best rocks might be in Norway)
🌽 How Eion aligns climate goals with farm economics
🚢 The surprising math that makes ocean shipping rock across the Atlantic more carbon-efficient than it sounds
💰 Why climate tech founders need to think like infrastructure financiers and not just software bros
📉 How Anastasia regulates the highs and lows of startup life—with a side of mac & cheese

#Climatetech #CarbonRemoval #Agtech

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

📈 B2B content to create and capture leads: book 30 minutes with Tom for free at grizzle.io/climate

Nemailla Bonturi is the co-founder of ÄIO, an Estonian startup fermenting fats and oils from yeast instead of palm oil or animal products. A Brazilian scientist-turned-founder, Nemailla now works at the intersection of synthetic biology, circular economy, and baked goods—with an in-house chef, of course.

In this episode we talked about:

🧫 How a “very special yeast” turns sawdust and stale bread into palm oil alternatives
🌍 Why Estonia is a unicorn factory
🥐 A plant-based butter that could make your croissant carbon neutral
🧴 Turning leftover dairy and tea leaves into moisturizers and lip balms
🧠 Mental health, therapy, and the importance of shutting your laptop at 6pm
📺 Why The X-Files may be the most pro-climate tech show of the 1990s

#fermentationtech #climatetech #circularbioeconomy

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

Eugene Beh is the founder of Quino Energy, where he’s commercializing organic flow batteries that are safer, cheaper, and more scalable than their vanadium and lithium-ion cousins. With a background in physics and chemistry from Harvard and Stanford, Eugene has traded academic labs for chemical plants—and he’s betting that petroleum byproducts might just be the unlikely hero of long-duration energy storage.

In this episode we talked about:

🔋 Why Quino's aqueous organic flow batteries don’t catch fire, unlike lithium-ion
💰 How Eugene expects his electrolytes to undercut vanadium on cost—possibly this year
🏗️ Why reusing tank infrastructure could slash battery installation costs
🌍 What makes Quino’s batteries geopolitically boring, and why that’s a good thing
🏥 Why hospitals, factories, and AI-fueled data centers might be early adopters
🛢️ And how coal tar and clothing dye might save us from an electrified future dominated by flammable batteries

#climatetech #energystorage #batterytech

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

Selina Tobaccowala is a Silicon Valley veteran turned climate entrepreneur. With hits like Evite, Ticketmaster, and SurveyMonkey on her resume, she’s now taking aim at one of the biggest sources of residential emissions: energy inefficiency. Through her startup HomeBoost, she’s making home energy assessments as simple as scanning your walls with your phone.

In this episode we talked about:

🔍 How HomeBoost uses AI and thermal imagery to let you run your own home energy audit
💡 Why the humble HVAC filter swap can cut 10% off your energy bill
🧠 Lessons from 20+ years in tech—from dot-com “eyeballs” to today’s LTV/CAC gospel
🛠️ What consumer tech folks can (and should) bring to climatetech
📉 Why climate investing is down, and why some founders might just be labeling things wrong

#climatetech #energytransition #founderstory

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

Leise Sandeman is co-founder of Pathways, a company using AI to make heavy manufacturing more sustainable. Based in Copenhagen, she brings deep expertise in steel production and AI to the challenge of industrial decarbonization.

In this episode we talked about:

🏭 How Pathways is building the data layer for sustainable manufacturing, with their software now deployed across hundreds of plants

⚡ The current reality where sustainability teams spend 90% of their time collecting data and only 10% implementing changes

🤝 The "playground" mindset of being a first-time founder and the importance of co-founder trust

🌍 Taking a strong stance on being a "single planet society" while working with diverse perspectives across regions like Texas

#ClimateTech #manufacturing #sustainability #EPD #LCA

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate