Heat pumps are having a moment. Last year, the U.S. passed China to become the world's number one market for heat pumps—and they're not slowing down. But while heat pumps are efficient and effective on paper, they haven't always been objects of desire. Until now.

This week, Molly talks to Paul Lambert, CEO and co-founder of Quilt, about building a heat pump company that's equal parts climate solution and consumer product. Paul explains how his team is reimagining the mini-split heat pump—not just as an HVAC system, but as a piece of technology you're proud to have on your wall.

We dive into:

• How heat pumps work: Why an AC is basically "a half-broken heat pump" that only runs in one direction
• The two types of heat pumps: Ducted systems vs. ductless mini-splits, and why room-by-room control is a game-changer
• Design as climate strategy: How Quilt spent half their initial capital on a domain name and invested heavily in industrial design to create pull, not just policy push
• The installer advantage: Why partnering with contractors (instead of doing it all in-house) unlocked national scale
• Smart grid integration: How Quilt's internet-connected system enables demand response without sacrificing comfort—curtailing load in empty rooms while keeping occupied spaces perfect
• The data center opportunity: How replacing electric resistance heating with heat pumps near data centers can free up 75% of the energy load—without building new generation capacity
• Why incentives help but aren't required: 60% of America is primarily cooling-driven, and heat pumps are just better air conditioners
• Pricing reality: Quilt is competitive with high-end Japanese mini-splits, not luxury-priced like early Nest thermostats or Teslas
• The personal mission: How Paul's Alberta roots in the fossil fuel industry and his commitment to his kids' future drove him to climate tech

Key insight: Space heating and cooling represent half of all home energy use and 70% of fossil fuel consumption in homes—making HVAC the single biggest lever for decarbonizing buildings.

Links:

• Quilt: https://quilt.com
• Find a Quilt installer: https://quilt.com (click "Find an Installer")
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/
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Buildings account for a third of America's greenhouse gas emissions, yet until recently, we've been flatlined on progress. That's changing—fast. This week, Molly talks to Panama Bartholomy, founder of the Building Decarbonization Coalition, about how an unlikely alliance of utilities, manufacturers, installers, and nonprofits is transforming the way we heat, cool, and power our homes.

Panama explains how finding 80% common ground among competitors created unstoppable momentum—and how the U.S. just became the global leader in heat pump sales for the fourth year running.

We dive into:

• The coalition model: How businesses, government, and nonprofits work together through "shuttle diplomacy"
• Why buildings matter: They represent ~33% of U.S. emissions and are the largest source of air pollution in California's worst air basins
• The heat pump revolution: How the U.S. went from third place to global leader in just five years—heat pumps now outsell furnaces
• The gas infrastructure trap: Why we're spending $50 billion annually on aging pipes while gas bills rise twice as fast as electric rates
• Neighborhood-scale solutions: How utilities are offering $35,000 checks to electrify entire neighborhoods instead of replacing gas pipelines
• "Stove Gate" as a paradigm shift: How controversy over gas stove safety created "sticky facts" that changed public perception
• What "pollution" means: Why language matters—moving from "decarbonization" to a term everyone understands
• The path forward: Why installers are the real heroes, and what political will looks like in action
• Key stat: Space heating and water heating represent 90% of building emissions—and heat pumps can do both jobs 2-4x more efficiently than gas?

Links:

• Building Decarbonization Coalition: https://www.buildingdecarb.org/
• BDC's 2025 Wrapped Report: https://buildingdecarb.org/2025-wrapped-decarb-edition
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/

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What if the solution to our energy challenges isn't building more—but applying new thinking to the grid we’ve already got? This week, Molly talks to Quinn Nakayama, the senior director at PG&E’s Grid Research Innovation and Development, also known as GRID, division. (Clever, right?)

After years of controversy over wildfires that led to the utility’s eventual bankruptcy, PG&E is moving forward with dedicated R&D, pitch competitions, and monetary investment to figure out how to use new technologies to meet growing demand without compromising California’s clean energy goals.

We cover:

• The massive energy demands from data centers and electrification
• Innovative strategies to manage load growth without building massive infrastructure
• How electric vehicles and smart charging can actually reduce electricity rates
• California's unique challenge of meeting net-zero goals while supporting economic growth
• Creative solutions like using data center backup generators as temporary grid support

In upcoming episodes, we’ll talk with some of the startups PG&E has identified as particularly promising reinvention partners!

Links:

• PG&E’s GRID initiative: https://www.pge.com/en/about/pge-systems/research-and-development.html?vnt=innovation
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/
• Visit our sponsor, Climatize, and get $50 in investment credits when you create a profile!

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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we're diving into the world of protein production — in reverse. Recently, the USDA released a new food pyramid that controversially places red meat and dairy at the top. That, combined with the global and particularly American obsession with protein, make it a great time to talk to Ross Milne, CEO of Leaft Foods. Leaft is developing a groundbreaking technology that extracts protein directly from alfalfa leaves, potentially reducing emissions by 97% compared to traditional animal agriculture.

Leaft Foods isn't just creating a protein alternative - they're reimagining the entire food production system. By isolating RuBisCO, the most abundant protein on the planet, they've developed a nutritional powerhouse that outperforms eggs, whey, and beef in amino acid profile. Their first product, LeafBlade, packs 18 grams of protein and 58% of daily iron intake into a tiny 100ml pouch.

We talk about:

• How extracting protein directly from leaves could transform agriculture
• The nutritional superiority of RuBisCO protein
• Why efficiency matters in solving the climate crisis
• How this technology could improve both human nutrition and animal farming
• The potential for scaling a more sustainable protein production method

Links:

• Leaft Foods: https://www.leaftfoods.com/
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/

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Here’s a bonus episode for you to kick off 2026. Back in episode 97, we interviewed Kate Danaher of S2G Investments about investing in the ocean economy. S2G are actually investors in a few of the companies we’ve had on Everybody in the Pool, including Matter, Moleaer, and Sofar Ocean. So this week, we’re featuring one of their interviews as they prepare to launch their new season.

The S2G Podcast is hosted by the team at S2G Investments, and looks at what it will take to scale the food and agriculture, oceans and energy transitions. Episodes launch every two weeks with a range of guests, including company leaders, innovators, investors, and policy experts. Season 3 starts on January 15 and you can find the S2G Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

• S2G Episodes: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast
• Subscribe to the S2G Podcast: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/podcast
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/

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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re starting the year with an audacious question: what if we reinvented one of the most basic materials in the world?

Decarbonizing the built environment means tackling the stuff we use everywhere — wood, concrete, and steel — at the same time we’re trying to build millions of new homes, strengthen supply chains, and reduce our exposure to geopolitical and climate risk. That’s a tall order. But it’s also unavoidable.

My guest is Nathan Silvernail, co-founder and CEO of Plantd, a company building a tree-free, carbon-negative alternative to engineered wood. Designed as a drop-in replacement for OSB (oriented strand board), Plantd’s material looks and behaves like conventional wood — but without cutting down trees. And they’re not stopping at the material itself: Plantd is building the machines, manufacturing process, and agricultural supply chain needed to produce it at scale.

We talk about:

• Why “sustainable wood” isn’t always as sustainable as it sounds
• Why trees can’t scale fast enough to meet demand and climate goals
• What it takes to replace a commodity material without asking builders to change how they build
• The co-benefits: turning waste into biochar and high-purity carbon for adjacent industrial markets
• The hard realities of scaling hardware, agriculture, and manufacturing at the same time

LINKS:

• Plantd: https://www.plantdmaterials.com/
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/
• Visit our sponsor, Climatize, and get $50 in investment credits when you create a profile!

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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re diving into one of the biggest bottlenecks in the clean energy transition: critical minerals—the lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, and precious metals we need for EVs, batteries, and the grid. The problem isn’t that we’re running out. It’s that extraction and refining are expensive, polluting, and increasingly constrained by geopolitics.

My guest is Adam Uliana, co-founder and CEO of Chemfinity Technologies, a startup spun out of UC Berkeley that’s building a modular “metal-selective Brita filter” for refining. Chemfinity’s system takes messy inputs—like e-waste, catalytic converters, industrial wastewater, and even mine tailings—and separates out high-purity metals one at a time using tunable “nano-sponge” materials. In other words: a potential way to recover critical minerals with dramatically fewer steps, less energy, and a much smaller footprint.

We get into:

• What “critical minerals” are and why the supply chain is such a vulnerability
• The climate and human costs of mining—and why recycling and recovery matter
• How Chemfinity’s process works (liquify the feedstock, then filter metals out in sequence)
• The real technical unlock: highly selective nanoscale materials that can distinguish near-identical metals
• What scaling looks like: pilots now, modular systems later—including shipping-container deployments at mining sites
• The business model question: when Chemfinity sells equipment vs. when it makes sense to sell recovered metals

Links:

• Chemfinity Technologies: https://www.chemfinitytech.com/
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/

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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking about one of the biggest blockers to real climate action: amazing solutions that never scale because no one pays for them. My guest is Grant Canary, founder and CEO of Mast Reforestation, a company rebuilding forests after catastrophic wildfires — and reinventing carbon credits so that reforestation can actually fund itself.

Mast takes the most expensive part of post-fire recovery — dealing with hundreds of dead, unstable, methane-emitting trees — and turns it into a high-integrity carbon removal credit. The fire-killed biomass gets buried in engineered clay “vaults” that lock away carbon for centuries, and the revenue pays for restoring forests with native seed, nursery-grown seedlings, and good old human labor. It’s the super-sexy carbon accounting we desperately need.

We get into:

• Grant’s origin story: the high-school teacher, the brutally honest friend, and the maggot factory (this is a true story)
• From DroneSeed to Mast: why drones weren’t enough and what really unlocks reforestation
• What high-severity “Mordor” fires do to ecosystems — and why invasives take over
• How biomass burial works: clay soils, lasagna layers, 24/7 monitoring, and 5 different verification processes
• Why high-quality carbon credits are hard — and why they matter
• Who buys these credits (tech, airlines, real estate, Shopify, consulting firms) and the incentives behind each
• Why relying on altruism won’t scale — but pricing ecosystem services will
• How modern carbon accounting sets the stage for the actual holy grail: a price on carbon

Link:

• Mast Reforestation: https://www.mastreforest.com/
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/

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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re starting in full aspirational mode (with one of my least climate-friendly obsessions) — with iconic classic cars rebuilt as state-of-the-art EVs. Think: vintage Porsches, Land Rovers, Pagodas, even a GT40… all stripped to bare metal, fully restored, and reborn as clean-air electric machines. Yeah, I’m dying over here.

My guest is Justin Lunny, founder and CEO of Everrati, a company that electrifies beloved classic cars while also building a cutting-edge EV powertrain platform used by new low-volume automakers around the world.

It’s a story about craft and circularity — giving existing cars a new, zero-emission life — and about how aspiration drives climate adoption. Wealthy early adopters (and their garages) help prove what’s possible, push down cost curves, and build social permission for the EV future.

We get into:

• How Everrati “redefines” classic cars using full CAD modeling, advanced engineering, and hand-built restoration
• Why their EV powertrains use motors and components normally found in hypercars and Formula E
• The economics: donor cars, bespoke builds, and why the least-loved 964s are perfect candidates
• Why keeping old cars alive — electrically — is a circularity win
• The B2B side: powering new sports cars and specialty vehicles for low-volume OEMs
• Why electrifying halo cars helps drive broader consumer aspiration
• Battery modularity, future upgrades, and designing for long-term sustainability
• Justin’s personal journey from tech entrepreneur to climate-driven car nut

Links:

• Everrati: https://everrati.com/
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/

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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking about one of the least-visible but largest waste problems in the world: food processing waste. Every time fruits or vegetables are peeled, chopped, juiced, or processed, mountains of perfectly good plant material get thrown out or sold for pennies. It’s expensive, it’s inefficient, and it’s a huge climate problem.

My guest is Michelle Ruiz, founder and CEO of Hyfe, a company unlocking the massive value hidden in this “waste.” Hyfe has developed a clean, water-based technology that can deconstruct food waste into high-value ingredients—like natural antioxidants that can replace carcinogenic petrochemical additives, fibers for gut health, and eventually the bio-based molecules that could power the broader bioeconomy.

Instead of paying to get rid of waste, food processors can turn it into a whole new revenue stream — while reducing emissions and building real circularity into the food system.

We get into:

• Why food processing waste is one of the biggest untapped feedstocks in the world
• How Hyfe’s process “unlocks” the compounds inside plant material without toxic solvents
• The clean-label antioxidants that can replace petrochemical additives already being banned in multiple states
• Why fibers are booming — and how food companies want cleaner, more functional sources
• How this technology could one day replace a chunk of the petrochemical industry
• The business model: why food processors, not consumers, are Hi-Fey’s real customers
• Michelle’s journey from oil refinery engineer to World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer
• The role of circularity, resilience, and adaptation in the future food system

Links:

• Hyfe: https://hyfe.tech/
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/

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This week on Everybody in the Pool, more power, right beneath our feet. Even as the United States has been attempting to stop or divest from renewable energy sources, there’s one kind of baseload power that doesn’t make anyone mad: geothermal.

So this week we’re talking not just geothermal, but next-generation geothermal.

My guest is Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems, a company developing flexible, modular geothermal systems that can provide both baseload renewable power and incredible long-duration energy storage—all using the existing skill sets and drilling expertise of the oil and gas industry.

We get into:

• Why geothermal is finally ready for prime time—thanks to new drilling techniques, better geologic modeling, and the lessons of shale
• Sage’s “heat harvesting” approach that works in far more places than conventional geothermal
• How their Geopressured Geothermal System doubles as ultra-affordable long-duration energy storage
• Why geothermal could be the clean firm power the grid desperately needs
• The role the oil and gas workforce can play in building the energy transition
• What it will take to finance and deploy geothermal at utility scale

Links:

• Sage Geosystems: https://www.sagegeosystems.com/
• All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
• Subscribe 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/

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