We published 22 episodes of The Climate Cycle over the last year, here are six that we think are worth a second listen. This recap covers data centre energy demand, the state of carbon markets, Canada’s critical minerals value chain and more.

We’re taking a short break after this episode, and I hope you enjoy this look back!

In this episode

• (01:15) Sam Hasty, Active Impact Investments: what's driving the electricity demand shock, and what people get wrong about load growth. (Ep. 34)
• (08:36) Stephen Lake, Jetson: why more homeowners aren't switching to heat pumps, and whether millions of them could help the grid instead of straining it. (Ep. 41)
• (15:44) Sarah Goodman, NorthX: the trust gap in early-stage climate tech, and why Canadian companies should be global by design. (Ep. 31)
• (20:28) Sumreen Rattan, Moment Energy: tapping into data centre demand, and what unlocks or stalls energy storage in Canada. (Ep. 39)
• (26:40) Na'im Merchant, Carbon Removal Canada: government as a buyer, and whether carbon removal is in trouble or just maturing. (Ep. 38)
• (33:10) Mohammad Doostmohammadi, pH7 Technologies: why processing, not mining, is the bottleneck in critical minerals. (Ep. 33)

Full conversations with each guest are linked below.

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Full Episodes:

• Sam Hasty - How Data Centres Are Reshaping The Grid
• Stephen Lake - Closing The Heat Pump Adoption Gap with Jetson
• Sarah Goodman - NorthX's Playbook For Scaling Climate Tech
• Sumreen Rattan - Turning Retired EV Batteries Into Domestic Energy Storage with Moment Energy
• Na'im Merchant - The Economic Case for Carbon Removal with Carbon Removal Canada
• Mohammad Doostmohammadi - Can We Scale Critical Minerals Without Scaling Pollution? with pH7 Technologies

This episode is part of a larger project exploring Indigenous partnerships for climate tech startups with Climate Door. More to come soon.

Chad Rickaby is the CEO and co-founder of ClimateDoor. Through it’s Unify Partners practice, Chad has spent years helping put together meaningful partnerships between climate tech companies and Indigenous entrepreneurs and Nations.

Many climate tech founders know there's an opportunity to work with Indigenous communities - as project partners, technology co-developers, or as adopters and buyers. But few know where to begin - and are afraid to get it wrong.

As a result, companies pursue other markets and partners, or burn trust before projects start.

In this episode, Chad shares his perspective on what it takes for companies to build meaningful partnerships, the failure modes that keep showing up, and why co-developing technology deserves more attention than it gets.

MORE

• Show notes:
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• Feedback and guest suggestions hello [ at ] climatetechcanada.ca

CRWN.ai helps utilities prevent wildfires sparked by failing grid infrastructure.

These fires are rare, but they're catastrophic. In 2018, a single failure on PG&E's grid sparked California's deadliest wildfire, killed 85 people, and pushed the utility into bankruptcy. The fire made wildfire liability a board-level risk for utilities everywhere.

And it keeps getting harder: transmission lines are aging, wildfire seasons are getting more intense, and rising electricity demand means even more infrastructure needs to get built.

Most utilities still catch failing lines the same way they did fifty years ago: a lineman driving the corridor once every one to eight years, looking for problems.

Brittany Courvoisier-Nicol, co-founder and Head of Product, and James Playford, Chief Operating Officer are working to close this gap at CRWN.ai.

CRWN.ai builds sensors that clip onto power poles and listen, using acoustic and radio-frequency data to catch a failing insulator months or years before it sparks. Instead of one data point every several years, utilities get continuous, real-time awareness of what's actually at risk, and where to send crews first.

TALKING POINTS

• Why CRWN.ai pivoted out of a defence-tech sister company and back into grid resilience

• How wildfire liability, EV load, and data centre demand are colliding on utility boards' risk radar right now

• What it actually takes to get a risk-averse utility to put their hardware on live infrastructure

• Why the funding model that works for defence doesn't exist yet for Canadian climate tech

• How CRWN.ai incorporates Indigenous knowledge into wildfire-risk modelling, and where it's outperforming Western data

• What validating sensor readings against a lineman's lived experience on the ground actually looks like