The Green Blueprint

Climate tech companies are often forced to rely on expensive equity to bridge the gap between government grant awards and the cash needed to get projects off the ground. But for founders building the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition, dilutive capital isn't always the right tool. For many, it’s not even an option.

Dimitry Gershenson, CEO and co-founder of Enduring Planet, is proving that a specialized approach to debt can fix that.

By underwriting government grants and providing working capital to climate startups, Enduring Planet is solving a critical, often-overlooked friction point in the transition. Its model, which hinges on operational efficiency and profitability, provides a blueprint for how climate-focused debt can scale without the pitfalls of traditional venture debt. But also, according to Dimitry, it isn’t always wrong to accept venture debt, contrary to widespread belief.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Dimitry about the dynamics of climate debt, the "brutal reality" of fundraising in a volatile macro environment, and why Enduring Planet's approach to working capital is more critical than ever for the next generation of climate founders.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon, Anne Bailey, and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for global food security, yet its production is a hyper-centralized, fossil-fuel-intensive process that accounts for 5 to 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As geopolitical instability threatens traditional supply chains, the vulnerability of this industry has never been clearer.

Nico Pinkowski, CEO and co-founder of Nitricity, initially set out to decentralize fertilizer production with compact devices that farmers could use right on their fields. But market realities demanded a pivot. Today, Nitricity is producing liquid organic fertilizer from recycled almond shells at a centralized facility in California.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Nico about the "brutal reality" of scaling a new solution for a mature industry, the intricacies of financing a first-of-a-kind commercial plant, and why their mission to decarbonize a critical global commodity is more urgent than ever.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon, Anne Bailey, and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized energy storage, but inexpensive, truly long-duration batteries may still have a significant role to play in backing renewables and decarbonizing the grid. Form Energy is tackling that challenge with a new class of iron-air batteries. By oxidizing and reducing iron — essentially rusting and unrusting the earth's most abundant metal — Form is creating low-cost, multi-day storage that competes directly with natural gas peaker plants.

Mateo Jaramillo, CEO and co-founder of Form Energy, has spent over two decades in the battery industry, including building Tesla’s storage business. At Form, he’s leading the charge to bring these "E-peakers" to utilities across the country. The company recently achieved a major milestone: completing a 550,000 square-foot factory on the site of an old steel mill in Weirton, West Virginia.

In this episode, Mateo talks with host Lara Pierpoint about the grueling realities of scaling up manufacturing, why they chose to build in West Virginia, using AI to drive material science discovery and dig a data moat, and the immense logistical challenges of building the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon, Anne Bailey, and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

If you’re building a consumer software startup, your investors may expect you to project hockey stick-style growth. But if you’re building the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition, you’re likely in a very different position.

Frank O’Sullivan, Managing Director at S2G Investments, argues that the climate finance ecosystem is suffering from a structural mismatch. While there is plenty of capital for early-stage innovation and mature infrastructure projects, there is a "missing middle" — a gap where hard tech startups are generating revenue but aren’t yet bankable enough for infrastructure investors.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Frank about why we’ve been trying to finance infrastructure companies like they’re software startups, the concentration risks in venture capital, and why large infrastructure allocators should be stepping into this growth-stage gap to seed their own pipeline.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

Silicon solar panels have led the market for decades but will soon hit a ceiling around 25% efficiency. Perovskite, a frontier material once dismissed for degrading too fast, is now being called the holy grail of solar.

Saritha Peruri, VP of Commercialization at Tandem PV, is bringing it to market. The company stacks its proprietary perovskite on top of silicon, capturing a wider spectrum of light and pushing efficiency past 30%, a major jump over conventional solar. And because it builds on the silicon PV infrastructure that already exists, the path to scale stays simple.

Getting there wasn't easy. After a long Series A, Tandem PV pulled off something rare in deep-tech hardware: 100% equipment financing for its 40-megawatt demonstration factory. It's now shipping quarter-sized modules to utility-scale customers who want U.S.-made panels for supply chain certainty and the domestic content kicker. It’s potentially a bridge to a post-ITC world that cuts land and labor costs because each installation needs far fewer modules.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Saritha about reaching high durability and the challenges of financing deep-tech hardware.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.