Ep 105: Varun Sivaram, Senior Visiting Fellow at Columbia University's Center for Global Energy Policy

In today’s episode, we cover:

Varun’s wide-ranging background in academia, startups and public policy
His career as a technologist beginning with Cleantech 1.0
How he moved from science to public policy
How cooperation across sectors is critical to solve climate change.
The need for aggressive increases in federal funding for energy innovation
The lessons of Cleantech 1.0
How the missteps of VC cleantech investing offers insight into future funding models for climate companies
How the complexities of climate change make it different from the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program
Varun’s three-prong prescription for addressing climate change
How climate change in the U.S. should be couched and framed in terms of global competitiveness
How funding needs to be robust enough to demonstrate new technologies
How coordination between R&D and deployment needs to be the cornerstone of energy innovation policy
Varun’s view that VC is not the right model for the new wave of climate innovation technologies
How climate change priorities and challenges are distributed and regional
How the influx of Silicon Valley talent into climate tech can be challenged by lack of domain knowledge
How a “sector-switching” fellowship could help cross-pollinate talent across industries to address climate change
The importance of India’s energy transition

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

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