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

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

• Bio at Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA: https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/dr-varun-sivaram
• “Taming The Sun”: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/taming-sun
• Nano Solar: http://www.nanosolar.com/
• Perovskite Solar Cells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perovskite_solar_cell
• AAAS Fellowship: https://www.aaas.org/fellowships

Get connected with MCJ: 

• Jason Jacobs X / LinkedIn
• Cody Simms X / LinkedIn
• MCJ Podcast / Collective / YouTube

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