 Hello, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to a special briefing about how startup accelerators can drive climate action. This briefing is a bonus installment of our series, Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions. I'm Dan Bresset, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers. More recently, we have also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs to help make energy efficiency, beneficial electrification, and renewable energy more accessible and affordable to their customers. ESI provides informative, objective, nonpartisan coverage of climate change topics in briefings, written materials, and on social media. All of our educational resources, including briefing recordings, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, and podcasts always available for free online at www.mesi.org. If you would like to make sure you always receive our latest educational resources, just take a minute to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. I hope everyone in our audience today has enjoyed our entire briefing series Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions. We covered a wide range of technologies that, if deployed at scale, would help deliver significant emissions reductions and move us closer to meeting our 2030 climate goals. Our series originally had four installments, green hydrogen, direct air capture, building out electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and offshore wind energy. To review presentation materials and summary notes, visit us online at www.esa.org. But as we neared the completion of the series, we were struck with a little bit of extra inspiration. What about the next generation of technologies? We wanted to make room in our briefing schedule to talk with experts who are on the sharpest part of the cutting edge of technologies that will help us meet our climate goals. And specifically, we were curious about the challenges facing researchers and entrepreneurs and the barriers to commercializing new technologies. We were also very interested in the incredible work being done in clean energy laboratories, incubators, accelerators, and fellowship programs, like the Activate Fellowship Program we will hear from today across the country to bring these new technologies to market and ultimately to commercialization. Today's briefing is the first of two bonus installments for our two latest series on Thursday as a culmination of our briefing series, Living with Climate Change, which featured panels discussing the polar vortex, sea level rise, wildfires, and extreme heat. We will convene a special session integrating equity into emergency management. You will not want to miss that. I encourage everyone to visit us online and RSVP right away. Part of what separates these bonus briefings from the others is the format. We will only be together today for an hour. Following our two panelists' presentations, I will be joined by my colleague, Savannah Bertrand, who will help us navigate the discussion today. And we've reserved a good portion of the briefing for discussion and questions. We'll do our best to incorporate questions from our audience. If you have a question, you can send it to us via email. And the email address to use is ask at ask at esi.org or even better, follow us on Twitter at ESI online and send it to us by responding to the live tweeting thread. As always, you can revisit the entire session by watching the archived webcast online at www.easide.org. And now it's my privilege to introduce the first of our two panelists. Andrew Chang is a mission-driven engineer, entrepreneur, and operator. He supports Activate New York's work, which is focused on carbon tech and climate tech innovation across industries, including agriculture, buildings, chemicals, computing, electricity, manufacturing, and transportation. He served at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Obama administration, where he implemented building energy efficiency programs, seeking to identify new innovations for reducing carbon emissions. Andrew has also led successful entrepreneurial ventures in the U.S. and in Singapore. Andrew, it's great to have you on our panel today. I really couldn't be more looking forward to your presentation. I'll turn it over to you. Thank you so much, Dan. And thank you, and excited to be here to talk more about Activate and what we're doing. So give me a moment to share my screen. All right, here we go. So I have the pleasure to talk a bit about Activate and what we're doing, as well as some of the innovations that we're really excited about. First and foremost, Activate is a two-year entrepreneurial fellowship program. We think about ourselves as a fellowship because we invest directly in people, as opposed to investing in the technology or in companies. And that's because at the earliest stage of the cycle from spin-out and inception of technologies, the technologies may change, the markets may change, the company will change, but what stays the same or is consistent is the people. Of course, the people, the entrepreneurs, the founders actually will get better and better over time as they iterate on their product and understand those markets and ultimately figure out what is the right path to take their technology to market. And so with that, we really focus on eight key industries, some of which Dan has mentioned, most of which have a climate angle, whether that be an electric power sector, long-term energy, battery storage, agriculture, chemicals, so on and so forth. And to date, we have seated over 142 Activate fellows across eight different cohorts. We are structured as a nonprofit. We were founded in 2015. And we have fellowship communities in Berkeley, Boston, New York and across the U.S. with a new program called Anywhere, which is a virtual fellowship program. And our mission, our main objective is to empower scientists to reinvent the world by bringing their research to market. And it can be easy to get pessimistic about the state of the world today and our growing climate prices. But because of this, I'm a firm believer that we need scientists more than ever before. And we need them because a lot of those hard problems in climate have yet to be solved and we need new technologies, some that have yet to be developed, some that are at an infancy to scale and ultimately decarbonize our economy. And I believe that scientists will play a pivotal role in bringing these solutions to market and ultimately helping to make our world more sustainable, resilient and equitable. And I have one of the best jobs in the world because I get to work with a lot of activate fellows such as Garrett, who you'll have a chance to meet later today. And I'll tell you, I've never been more optimistic about our ability to solve and meet these challenges because of the amazing people that are coming into the space, the amazing scientists, entrepreneurs that are really coming and building the next generation platforms for decarbonization. So how does our activate fellowship work? We have three main components. The first is we provide time and funding to allow our early stage science entrepreneurs to understand the market, to test, to iterate and ultimately figure out and define a path forward for its product and service and ultimately secure a follow on financing. In addition, we work with partners to provide world-class tools for our scientists. And that's in two key parts. One is access to research facilities and equipment to help and allow for the maturation of the technologies that are still at the early stages. And we also provide education and mentorship to help our fellows learn new skills. And finally, and perhaps maybe the most important is we're building a really powerful community of advisors, partners, champions, other scientists and entrepreneurs and investors on the harder tech side of the entrepreneurial spectrum that can support our fellows. And many of these folks have gone through similar challenges in the past and are familiar with the long development cycles or the long learning cycles as well as the higher upfront capital expenses that are indicative of building hard science technology companies. And our fellowship program is a proven path for scientists entrepreneurs to help really move that breakthrough research into the market. And we give them those two years because it can take time. And we don't do it alone. We work with a lot of key partners that includes government both at the state and federal levels that includes our national lab partners or university partners and our foundation partners. And in addition to that, we also work with a lot of other partners in the innovation ecosystem on the corporate side on the venture capital side that can help in the continuity of the development cycle of these companies and to help support them as they evolve and grow and scale. And today we have supported over 140 activate fellows that has led to 106 science-based companies, many of which will go on to change the world. And they've commutatively raised over 860 million dollars in follow-on financing already and have created over 700 jobs in the US. And given some of the webinars that you've had in the past, I thought it would be great to share a couple of different companies in our portfolio, starting with Resident Link, which has come up with a novel wireless charging platform that is three times more efficient than the traditional wireless charging mechanisms. It's also eight times cheaper and can be done with a 50% footprint. And right now they are working on bringing this technology to market in medical places and implants, but their technology can scale to many other applications, including scaling up to help support the electrical charge infrastructure. In addition, we have another company our portfolio called Entora Energy, and they are helping to decarbonize heavy industry with their zero carbon heat and power system. And what they do is they found a really novel and affordable way to store the excess wind and solar electricity during the day as thermal storage, and then they can reconvert that energy back into electricity during times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, but they can also pipe out that heat as an industrial grade process heat to support a lot of various heavy industries. And so we're really excited about them because they're showing a pathway to decarbonize heavy industries, which has typically been really difficult to do and understand. And finally, we have another company in our portfolio called Takachar, and they have built a platform for taking any type of waste biomass and turning it into fertilizer and other high value end use products. And they can do this in a decentralized fashion. They can do this onsite and offer new revenue streams to farmers and other organizations that can leverage this technology. And I will take a moment to dive a little bit deeper into the Takachar journey through a case study with how they've been able to leverage our Activate Fellowship and really kind of explore the breadth of where this technology can be expressed. And so Kevin Kung is the co-founder CTO he did his PhD at MIT and really started to generate this technology back when he did his PhD. They were initially exploring agriculture as a end market. And first they were looking at biofuels and turning waste biomass to biofuels. And they realized that the biofuel market might not be the right and the best one. So they pivoted, they moved into Char and then they moved into fertilizer. And with the Activate Fellowship program we've been able to help them explore different additional markets as well as different business models to really think about how do they potentially scale this technology and scale this business. And the exciting part is that this technology taking biomass and then converting it into fertilizer as a technology platform that can be used in many other applications. So for example, they can use the same technology with of course different treatment conditions and temperatures and such and convert the waste biomass into additives that can go into concrete and help bring down the carbon intensity of concrete. They are also exploring using this as a mixture into plastics and then make bioplastic. And additionally, they're also looking at this as a replacement for coal in coal fire power plants. So really excited to see all these different novel pathways that this technology is now can express. And the final one, because I heard that the webinar series also was touched on the climate impacts, including wildfires. Well, this particular company with Taka Char they also now have a partnership with the California Department of Forest Management because they can also use this technology to help reduce the potential wildfires in the future. So they've raised $5 million or so in financing so far mostly in federal, state, government, some philanthropy and then they were the recipients of the Prince William earth shot prize last year and then most recently about a month ago or so they were named one of the Elon Musk carbon removal XPRIZE winners. Very excited about this technology where they started and where they're going and this is not just Taka Char this is many other companies that we have in our portfolio. So as activators whole, we think about the priorities that we can focus on. The first foremost priority is addressing climate change. We think that this is one of the most defining challenges of our time and we have been encouraged by all the scientists and entrepreneurs that are stepping up. We know that we need multiple shots on goal and we think that our scientists, entrepreneurs are going to be playing a pivotal role in inventing and scaling a lot of the future decarbonization platforms of the future that really get us there to solving the climate crisis and getting to net zero and also in terms of removing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere as well. So that's one on climate change. Another one is in the US innovation ecosystem. We think that being here in the US is some of the best place in the world for science-based entrepreneurship. We're continuing to work with partner and find additional partners to really help in growing this ecosystem. And lastly, we focus a lot on diversity equity inclusion. We think that this is a huge important opportunity and a big unlock for the US in terms of tapping into the brilliant and diverse talent pools that we have here of scientists and entrepreneurs and our goal is to help bring down some of the barriers so that everyone, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, location, can really participate in the innovation ecosystem. And we don't do this alone. We do this with a network of national partners that starts with academia with our national lab and university partners that really provide that backbone for our fellowship as well as government partners, both state and local that have that long-term horizon. And then a lot of companies that are now leaning into working with early stage technology companies, a lot of our activate portfolio companies and helping with things like pilots and figuring out where those decarbonization pathways may present themselves. And then of course philanthropy that have been helping to provide that catalytic funding to support a lot of that high-risk, high-reward research and technology that we invest in. And because of the audience that would be remiss if I didn't spend a little bit of time to talk about how critical it is for our government, playing a role in supporting our hard tech science entrepreneurship ecosystem. And it starts with those early investments by a lot of the federal agencies already, such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, which has shown tremendous success in supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem on the hard tech side, including our activate fellows. And that's through programs such as the NSFiCorp program has a amazing pipeline of scientists and entrepreneurs, as well as the DOE lab embedded entrepreneurship program. We're also very encouraged by the new early stage innovation programs that are being discussed right now, such as the National Science Foundation's TIP Directorate, as well as the DOE Foundation, which is currently being proposed in the innovation package. We believe that both of these types of programs can help accelerate the commercialization of early stage technology. And then finally, we also wanted to mention that it's important that we preserve a lot of tools that work today and work really well. And one of them is the SBIR and STTR grant program, which is currently facing a potential lapse in financing and is in danger of expiring if Congress isn't able to come up with a compromise by the end of September. And the SBIR grant program is probably one of the primary financing mechanisms for supporting our hard tech science entrepreneurship ecosystem. Almost every single one of our fellows and portfolio companies apply for these grants. And the companies such as Takachar, Resonant Link and Antora Energy that we talked about all for recipients of these SBIR grants. And if some of our companies and our portfolio may not actually exist today, if it wasn't for this program. So to summarize, we invest in people. We provide the education, the time and the tools for our fellows to grow into leaders and company operators. We're also building a community of hard science entrepreneurs, mentors, investors and alumni, more and more alumni, which is fantastic. That can help provide that guidance to our cohort and help them learn and grow together. And we don't do this alone. We work with partners all across the innovation ecosystem that includes state and local government, that includes universities, deep tech investors, a lot of corporations and other accelerators and innovation programs that can further support the arc and trajectory of our companies. So we look at ourselves as a bridge from the basic science and first experiments to first pilots. And so far, we've taken over 140 scientists from zero to one and we look forward to working with hundreds of others to come. Thank you so much. Thank you, Andrew. That was an awesome presentation. If anyone would like to go back and revisit Andrew's slides and the same will go for Garrett slides, you can visit us online at www.esi.org and check out all of the presentation materials as well as the archive webcast. We are going to go from, Andrew was just talking about going from zero to one, we're going to go from panelists one to panelists two. And that means it's my pleasure to introduce Garrett Boudinot. Garrett is a climate scientist and activate New York 2022 fellow working to scale up verified land and water-based carbon dioxide removal. Garrett also serves on the New York State Climate Impact Assessment. Garrett, welcome to our briefing today. Turn it over to you. Oops, we're having a hard time hearing you, Garrett. I think you might be muted. Oh, there it goes. You're better. Can you hear me now? Loud and clear. Okay, great, great. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, so for those of us in the fellowship, we talk all the time about how great activate is. So I'm really glad to have the opportunity to show more about that with all of y'all today. I'm going to get into my personal experience and perspective. Hopefully that will illuminate some of the kind of details of what Andrew was just outlining from a higher up point of view. Particularly some of the struggles that we kind of early stage science entrepreneurs face and some of the existing resources that are there, some of the existing successes that we can benefit from and most notably activate being one of the champions of those. And I do want a nuance that my perspective is unique. I'm only six weeks into the activate fellowship. As Andrew said, it's a two year fellowship. So certainly there's a lot of benefits from activate that I'm yet to see and challenges to entrepreneurship broadly that I've yet to see, but also I think given how close I am to still emerging from academia, from a research only position into this entrepreneurship, I think I'm particularly aware of how important a fellowship like activate is for those of us very early stage getting off the ground and bringing our research to market. So here's a bit of my story, what led me to activate and then I'll also go into some of the specific resources activates provided that have really been helpful for me at this early stage. So my background, as Dan said, is in climate science and specifically geochemistry. So using analytical chemistry tools to probe the environment and really understand in my earliest days, how is the climate changing and then how is that impacting people and ecosystem? So I've studied everything from sea level rise, ocean acidification, forest fires, warming, carbon cycle, really getting into the weeds on the problem. And that culminated into my PhD at University of Colorado Boulder. Again, really into analytical chemistry to answer these broad questions about the extent of the problem. And just a personal decision for me was, okay, now I'm going to take these skills and focus on solutions. And so I joined a research program here at Cornell where I focused on carbon dioxide removal research. So that's the CDR in agriculture, specifically in Cornell, a great place to do that as a land grant institute and really looking at how does it work? What does it take to facilitate carbon dioxide removal in an industry like agriculture to kind of follow through on the promises that we're hearing about potential climate solutions from agriculture. But then thinking as a scientist, what are some of the challenges that the market might face and actually verifying that there is carbon dioxide removal. And then how does that translate into practice? And it was through that that I started thinking, well, this cartoon illustrates some of my thinking. So this is a meme, essentially modification of a cartoon. Some people sitting around a campfire in a post-apocalyptic world. One of them saying, yes, the planet got destroyed, but for a beautiful moment in time, we created lots of research we didn't act on. This summarizes where I was thinking in doing some of that research on carbon dioxide removal solutions. Okay, it's great to do the research, but there's a big leap between that and actually bringing that into a solution for our climate. And that's really what I'm passionate about. And so I started thinking about my research less in terms of scientific questions and more in terms of solutions that could be brought to market. And so I started engaging in some existing resources that were available to me as a researcher at Cornell. One of those was the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps, or ICOR. And Andrew mentioned that I took the regional course there. It's a four-week, several hours a week where you're, as a scientist, taught some of the principles of a business plan, but also some of the principles of market research. So you actually start talking to potential customers, different potential partners to think, how could my technology or research actually play out into economies of scale? And I wanna highlight that was really helpful. That was something that it was only four weeks it felt like a second PhD in terms of being given a whole new set of skills that can then apply moving forward. There were also a number of resources in Cornell and that are available at academic institutions that I wanna highlight. So EIRs, entrepreneurs in residence are common and I was able to connect with a few of those at Cornell who are part of different incubators. And their job is as folks with experience and entrepreneurship to provide advice and mentorship to researchers thinking about commercialization. And again, that was incredibly helpful. This is, in my capacity, it was generally informal and then it can become as formal as you'd like it depending on how involved you get in these different incubators. But that was something I wanna highlight and then working with the actual tech transfer office at Cornell to start thinking about issues of IP, issues of kind of the technical side of bringing research to market. That was another resource that was really helpful. Those were kind of all of the resources that I had available. I felt like I had really exhausted the institutional resources that were there. And then it started getting into informal phone calls with people that I thought might have some insight, really recognized, okay, I need some formal support because as a scientist, I have not been trained in any of this entrepreneurship. And so that's when it was actually out of the NSFICOR, one of my instructors, the day that that course concluded, sent me the information about Activate. That highlights how important that networking aspect is of having folks who are in the know. There was no Activate poster in the hallways at Cornell to let folks know about it, but I was turned on to it and went through the application process there. And even before being accepted as a fellow, there were many weeks of putting together pitches, working with folks in the Activate network. Just most importantly, Andrew, just to get through, okay, we recognize you're a researcher. Now we're asking you to think as an entrepreneur, here are some ways that you can improve that even before you're a fellow. I found that incredibly helpful and it just highlights again, all of the resources that Activate provides and the need for my end and for a researcher's perspective to get there. So thinking about how Activate helps scientists scale up climate solutions, there are kind of two aspects of what Andrew highlighted that I want to underscore here. So particularly at this early phase that I'm in, there's just a transition from an academic or research-focused perspective, culture, goal, objective to those of entrepreneurship and of business that Activate is, that I feel necessary for facilitating that transition. And so as Andrew said, a lot of us early fellows, we have an idea, we maybe have some data or a concept, but we're motivated to bring that to the market, to actually have solutions, have an impact, bring that to economies of scale. And there's a big bridge there that Activate helps us build. And even more specifically into just building a company, there's a lot that goes into that. And as Andrew said, I mean, we as fellows, as scientists, are the lead entrepreneurs, are often the executives of these startup companies, but we did not have training in that. And so having access to mentorship, resources on the legal side of that, some of the corporate side of that, even the cultural aspects of building a company that are really important, but often overlooked, if you're just going to a bootcamp, these are all things that Activate provides. And I think the most useful tool that Activate provides through that is this training, this mentorship, this advising. And so that comes everything from several times a week, we have formal coursework to actually having just a really informal network of experts, entrepreneurs and mentors to call upon whenever we need them. And I imagine Andrew's smiling behind the camera there because he knows when I come into a problem, I can call him anytime and we can talk through things. And as someone taking a big step out into the abyss, that's incredibly important. And so some of the things that we are able to get that training and guidance on are things like fundraising for research and development, but also for scaling, thinking about strategic partnerships and advising outside of the Activate network. So whether that's Activate helping connect us to folks or just turning us on to what we should be looking for. Of course, the bread and butter of entrepreneurship, these business model, identifying value proposition, thinking about product-market fit, again, none of this you'll find in a geochemistry textbook. And so all stuff that's really helpful to have. And then I really wanna underscore, Andrew said this a number of times that Activate invests in the person, not the idea. And that is so critical for those of us in this early stage who, sure, we've done an SFI core, we've done some market development, but as our technology develops and as the world around us changes and as we learn more about that world, having the freedom to be able to pivot in this early stage and that not impact our fellowship or our future opportunities. And that actually empower us to then take a more educated step forward into a different direction is absolutely critical. And I've really benefited from that. And it's worth mentioning that, as Andrew said, none of this is done alone. So this is all complementary to the other training, advising, incubators, entrepreneurs and residents that I can get and I really feel encouraged to seek out as many resources as possible. So those are some of the really helpful things. And then I just wanna conclude with highlighting the Activate New York cohort that Andrew is the Managing Director of. So it's myself and five or six other fellows all focused on carbon dioxide removal. So all focused on this overall goal of accelerating emissions reductions. And what's really critical about that is we have in New York City an ecosystem of, yes, there's some state policy and local and national policy momentum that we can build on that's focused on New York City, but also outside of that policy from other startups in the area that can be partners or examples, a lot of climate tech incubation, a lot of investors who are focused on this all in that New York City ecosystem that's really been helpful. And then one of the hardest things for those of us in climate tech world generally, particularly carbon dioxide removal even more. Is that this is an incredibly nascent field. And so if I'm looking for a mentor who's gone through a successful company or two in my field, I'm just not going to find one because this is such a new field of carbon dioxide removal. It also means it's constantly changing. So there are new ways that the market can unfold today that we didn't foresee even six months ago. And so having this intense support guidance, the network and even a cohort of other fellows going through the same thing is really important. And I think the two words that I keep going back to when I think about what Activate does is supporting and empowering, which for those of us scientists who are on a mission to help drive down emissions or remove carbon dioxide, we've got the tech, we've got the science. What we really need is the entrepreneurial support and the empowerment that our mentors, the network and that training provides. So that's it from me. Really appreciate the opportunity and looking forward to the questions. Thanks Garrett. That was an awesome presentation. One quick reminder to folks in our audience, if you have a question for our panelists, you can send us an email and the email address to us is ask at esi.org that's ASK at esi.org. Also follow us online on Twitter at ESI online and ask us a question that way. Speaking of questions, I'm going to introduce my colleague Savannah. Savannah is a policy associate here at ESI and was a big part of pulling, not just today's briefing together but basically all of the briefings we've done in the series together. So she's joining me today to help us to lead us through the discussion. So Savannah, I'll turn it over to you. Great, thanks Dan and wonderful presentations, Andrew and Garrett. I learned so much. So my first question is, why are university researchers uniquely suited to participate in a fellowship program like Activates? And what makes the Activate Fellowship unique to help overcome barriers to commercialization that are frequently encountered by university researchers? Great, I'm happy to- I'll turn that first to Andrew. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to kick that off and then Garrett feel free to fill in any particular details. Firstly, I would probably take a step back and say that higher level, our goal with this fellowship program is to help empower technical scientists and help them transform into entrepreneurs because we fundamentally believe that their research can really have a huge impact on the world. And in this case, really helped to find those and build those decarbonization platforms of the future. And we've designed this so that we can, which we have with over 140 fellows now, showing that this can be done by technical founders and scientists. And it's not just limited to, let's say, MBAs that are the ones that traditionally start companies. But also on the research front, I would say that a lot of these technology companies that we work with on the hard sciences really require a deep understanding of the technical pieces. And a lot of researchers have spent years becoming the world expert in this particular piece of technology and are usually the best position to then help express that technology into the world. And we as Activate, we really helped them figure out, okay, what is that path to figuring out how to best express that technology? And as you heard from Gary, he spent years and years and years as a researcher. It's studying climate from multiple angles as a geochemist and now looking at various things in agriculture and other areas. And so we really think about it from that perspective. Gary, do you wanna mention anything else? This question is there's even a paradigm that this question has that I think is challenged by a lot of folks. I think there are some folks who would say, researchers are uniquely unsuited for entrepreneurship. And even in my experience with, when I was first kind of exploring this idea and would go to some of the existing institutional resources, the first thing that I was told is, oh, we'll find you a CEO. We'll find you something who will take care of that because you're a researcher, this isn't stay in your lane. And I think what Activate has shown is that's absolutely not the case. And what Andrew just said of researchers knowing their tech best, knowing the ecosystem that it's in best and thus having a unique app or bringing a unique asset to the company that can build is something that, that's why I think the word empowering comes up so much when I think about Activate. It was by looking at Activate's former fellows, looking at the companies that have come out to Activate for me to actually see in myself, oh, even though I've never gotten this training, even though I don't have an MBA, this is actually something that I can learn how to do and be successful at. So that's the biggest thing for me. All of the training that I've gotten is still useful for commercialization. Now it's Activate filling in those gaps and providing the support for me to make it happen. Great. And so what partnerships and collaborations have come about as a result of Activate's fellowship program and how have these spurred further innovation to advance climate solutions? And maybe Garrett will start with you this time. Absolutely, so it's relatively early for me and even we had an orientation back in early June where within a week after the orientation I had over a dozen emails from potential partners, potential investors, government agencies, folks really interested in the work and saying, how can we help? How can we be supportive? And that in and of itself was, again, in like the first week, like, okay, we're here, we're making it happen. And so some of those were potential partners. They were folks or industry partners who said, hey, I'm working in this area, I think I can, I'm interested in some of the value that your idea could provide to what we're doing. Some of them were investors saying, hey, we think you would be well in our portfolio, or we think we could provide some insight and resources that would be helpful. And some of them were potential advisors, folks who said, I've worked in this area for a while, I'm looking for something new. I'd love to just be a resource for you. And again, that was like first couple of weeks. I'm sure Andrew can speak to some of the longer term opportunities here as well. Yeah, sure, I would just say, come talk to us in a year, because active in New York is only six weeks old. Based on just the velocity right now and speed that all of our fellows are working in, there's gonna be so many exciting stories to share about the collaborations within Activate New York and the new opportunities that we'll play out in the future. I can talk about a couple of companies that going back to the initial presentation where we talked about Takachar, for example, they started off in the agricultural space looking at biofuels and then moving to biochar and then fertilizer. And it was through the Activate Fellowship Program where they started to explore different new markets and opportunities. And one of them through the Activate Fellowship Program led to a partnership with California and the Department of Forestry around how do we use this technology to enforce management and help reduce the potential wildfires in the future and also create a new revenue stream for the Forestry Department. So that's ongoing. They also have now a pilot, I believe, with PG&E, the big utility company there too, because there is that interface between the electrical power sector and what the high voltage transition lines and so we're excited to see what they do and accomplish there. And then the other company that I can also speak briefly about that other company and Tora Energy, they are working on decarbonizing the heavy industry space. They actually came in as two separate companies in Activate. They met in Activate and they realized that there are synergies in their technologies as well as their values and alignment. They decided to merge and since then the rest is history. They've just raised, I think, over $70 million and are working on their first pilot plant right now. So we have a lot of success stories within our Activate ecosystem and then so many more to come in the next year with Activate New York. Sounds like really interesting stuff is coming towards both of you. That's awesome. I'm gonna turn it over to Dan for a couple of his questions. It sounds like, Andrew, you're trying to tee up another briefing next year in about this time, which you never know. There might be something to that. I have a question just to help our audience understand what the sort of the potential is here. And I'm curious and Andrew, maybe we'll start with you this time and then we'll hear from Garrett, but what's the ceiling for all of this? Like how high could this go? What's the potential ceiling for clean tech and carbon tech to contribute to greenhouse gas emissions? And I think I'm also curious once we sort of define what that ceiling is and I have a hunch, I know what the answer is, but how do we do a better job enabling more organizations like Activate, enabling more researchers and entrepreneurs like Garrett? How do we do a better job allowing these technologies and supporting these technologies to reach scale? That is a really, really good question. Let me answer the first part. First, I think that with regard to a limit, I don't think there is a limit. I think that every day I just get so inspired by a lot of the work and innovation that is being developed right now by scientists all around the world. There are so many really talented people now moving into climate and working on these new decarbonization technologies that didn't exist a couple of years ago and we never even realized the connection potentially to how that can help address our climate crisis. And I've been in the climate space since for 15 years now and back then there wasn't anything like carbon removal, all of these types of things. And carbon removal is only a couple of years right now and the velocity and speed in terms of how fast some of these technologies are moving is just incredible. I will also say that we are learning a lot from our fellows because they have really unique insights on the world through the lens of their technology and where they can see that technology having a massive opportunity to unlock for creating a better world. And I will say that in terms of what are some of the barriers here? There are barriers like let's say on the policy side although on the state there has been, we're in New York and so there's been a lot of local leadership both at the state level and at the city level that is encouraging a lot of really interesting and exciting climate companies and I'm seeing a lot of climate companies moving to New York right now and starting businesses here because this is one of the ecosystems that's really supporting this growth. But there are still barriers and one of them I would say from where we sit is there's about $50 billion a year that go into basic science research and really just a fraction of that goes into the commercialization piece. And so if there was a magic wand it would be to get additional financing mechanisms to really help fill that gap from basic science to commercialization. Again, as someone who's trying to scale up in this space of just how nascent the field is. I mean, I know folks use the analogy of flying a plane while you build it for any company but it feels like flying a plane while building it while building the atmosphere for this climate tech field specifically because it's still developing. And I think I said this earlier, the field now and the opportunities that are available weren't, we didn't foresee them six months ago let alone two years ago. And so being in that space and trying to plan what a company is going to look like in two years or what the technology field overall will be able to provide and scale up in two years is really difficult. But the good news is we are seeing one of the clear trends is a lot of funding going into this across the board in kind of climate tech broadly. And I think that's something that wasn't there five years ago has really accelerated and that's really empowering. And I think from the, from federal and state particularly here in New York with some of the state legislation that's been passed and in focus here there's a lot of top-down incentives for this. And so NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is a partner with Activate New York. So that highlights some of the resources helping there. But then at the federal level, ARPA-EDOE has been putting a lot which helps guide how companies think about this moving forward. And USDA as well. I think from the market overall, top-down policies on how again me thinking in terms of carbon dioxide removal specifically there's just so many, the phrase that comes up with this is we're still in the wild west. And so having some top-down policies to prescribe how things should be done will really help accelerate that world. But then that field-specific help like I mentioned with Activate having a cohort specifically on this or some of the other folks in this industry. So Climate Tech VC, for example, as a resource for folks to go to see kind of from a holistic perspective on what's going on in this market is all really helpful to fill that gap of what we need to be doing to scale up. Savannah, back to you. Thanks so much. That was a great end. So maybe Andrew can take the first stab at this question. But how does Activate measure the success of its fellows whether it be emissions reductions or dollars or maybe something else? And Garrett, how are you measuring your own success through this fellowship? Oh, okay. This is a good question. There's a couple of different answers to talk through here at the highest level. Highest level, when we look for Activate fellows, we do look for how this technology can scale and what is that potential carbon dioxide removal potential in this case. A lot of what we do is really looking at, OK, can we get to that 500 million, half a gigaton, one gigaton scale in the future? And of course, at what time scales? So we are looking at greenhouse gas emissions at the over the long term. It takes time to build these businesses, years, decades. And so over the long arc, we do look at those metrics. We also look at things like follow-on financing, jobs created, and so on and so forth. But there's also this opportunity to understand how are these industries evolving? How do they reinvent themselves as we move into some of these carbon utilization pieces? Because there's a whole new industry that's really forming. Once you have CO2, you can convert that into other fuels. You can convert that into other chemicals. You can convert it into other plastics. And so there's just a whole new industry that's starting to come up and form. And that's really the exciting part in the longer term. And then in the shorter term, one of the things, and this will be lovely to hear how Garrett thinks about this, is we also look at, with each individual fellow and entrepreneur, how do they define success? Where do they see their arc going? Because some companies are at wildly different stages. Some are at very early, early, early development. Others are closer to the commercialization. And so how do they look at that? And then how do we then figure out a path to supporting them and help them achieve those goals? Yeah, I mean, for me, my North Star is emissions reductions, is climate impact. And so for me, success is I'm having a contribution to overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And functionally, I think that means having a product that's to market, however that product is defined. But that's certainly the top line measurement of my success. But Andrew also mentioned job creation. And I do think that's something that's a big motivation for me or a huge opportunity that I see from this type of industry development. We talk all the time about the opportunity in this sector for green jobs creation. And in seeing other fellows or other companies have come through Activate, actually being the catalyst for green jobs creation, seeing my own company as a potential green jobs creator is actually one of the things that makes me really hopeful about the future and is also tied to that success. That, yes, we're having an impact on our climate, but that's coming with the impacts to society that we know climate action can't bring. That's a great answer. Thanks so much. I'm gonna turn it back over to Dan for one last question. Thanks, Vanna. So Andrew, in your answer, you were talking about the arcs that each one of your fellows has and the companies has. And I'm gonna, my last question is, I'm gonna ask both of you to define or imagine what you would like your arc to be. It's a question we've asked a lot of panelists in this briefing series and it's to help our audience imagine sort of what July 12th, 2032 looks like. So Andrew, for you, what's your 10-year vision for Activate? What would you like to see happening 10 years from now? And Garrett, where do you see your arc? Where do you see your technology, your job growth potential? How many employees do you have? What's your vision for sort of that 10-year horizon? Andrew, maybe we'll start with you once again. Sure. Garrett said his North Star is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our North Star at Activate is supporting our fellows, figuring out how they define success and finding more fellows like Garrett, because we are inspired every day by the work that they do. And so with Activate, our goal in the next five years is to try to get to 100 fellows per year. Right now we're about 40, so we're 40% away there. And in terms of that fellow mix and expanding access to innovation, we wanna support as diverse a cohort as possible. That includes the technology that includes on the geography, on the gender, on the race, ethnicity, culture. We wanna support everyone. We believe that this can be a huge unlock for the US and for the world. And in addition to that, help us get to those multiple shots on goal that we need to help our world decarbonize. And over that arc, hopefully as we follow some of these alumni over the company building process, many of them hopefully will turn into really large pillars of decarbonization that the world will need as we transition to that sustainable economy. I mean, I think in 10 years seeing my technology being a critical component, a key to the ecosystem of carbon dioxide removal projects around the world, right? And so that's providing a service to folks who want to create carbon dioxide removal, folks who want to buy offsets or insets or carbon dioxide removal as a project, and in kind of empowering that having moved the market forward. So for me, verification, having scientific or reliable science behind the climate impact and being able to actually measure that, improve that is really important if the overall carbon dioxide removal market moves in that direction with my technology being in there. That will be a huge success for me. Dan, I know you mentioned in terms of numbers of green jobs, I'm not sure I have a good, again, just six weeks into the program. So maybe in a year I'll have a better answer. But for me, I'm even thinking of, yes, there's the direct employees of who my company will hire to help create this, but there's also just the economic impact that a sector like carbon dioxide can remove. Removal can provide to employees or workers across sectors. That's something that's really exciting for me and something that I hope to see my company having played a role in empowering a full, again, a full ecosystem of carbon dioxide removal. Thanks, Garrett. And I noticed that you put another little plug in there for coming back a year from now and maybe doing another briefing about how things are going. So noted. This was an awesome panel. Andrew and Garrett, thank you so much for being really tremendous panelists. And anyone in our audience would like to go back and revisit the presentation materials. Everything's available online at www.esi.org. Can also go back and watch the webcast. It'll be up probably pretty soon, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but it'll be up pretty soon. We'll have some written summary notes as well. But Andrew and Garrett, thanks. Every once in a while I'll give a little peek into what the internal ESI Slack channel is saying about the briefing. And I think one of the keywords is hopefulness, that there's just so much potential that activate in all the work that the fellows are doing. So just congratulations on all of that and Garrett to you, congratulations on your fellowship. And good luck. Maybe we'll be back in touch. That'd be really nice. Savannah, thank you for so adeptly leading our discussion today. It's always great to have one of the other members of the ESI team join me on one of these briefings. So thanks so much for that and all of your work for all of these briefings. I have two quick plugs. Wouldn't be the wrap up of an ESI briefing without plugs. The first is we will be back on Thursday at noon Eastern for the bonus briefing in our living with climate change series. That's special sessions called Integrating Equity into Emergency Management. It will be awesome. And so I encourage everyone to come back, RSVP, if you haven't, so you get all the follow up materials, but that would be really good. And then just within two weeks on Monday, July 25th, we will be having the 2020 Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo. This will be four panels. We're gonna be looking at the infrastructure bill and infrastructure policy from all sorts of different angles, buildings, workforce, transportation. We'll also be talking about national security, energy security, energy independence. We have an amazing lineup of panelists. I hope everyone will come and join us for that on the afternoon of July 25th. A really good show and really excited about it. I'd also like to thank the other members of the ESI team who helped make today possible. That includes Dan O'Brien, Omri, Emma, Allison, Anna and Molly. And of course, once again, thank you, Savannah. We also have four awesome summer interns, Christina, Stephanie, Abbey and Nathan. And they're very busy behind the scenes with all of the different stuff that makes these things possible. So thanks again for that. My colleague, Dan O'Brien, just put a slide up. This is a link to a survey. The folks in our audience have two minutes to take our survey. We really appreciate it. We read every response after every briefing. If you had any audio problems, video problems, problems with the website, if you have ideas for future sessions, please let us know how we did and we'll do our best to improve going forward. We're a couple of minutes over. Hope everyone had a great briefing today. I know I learned so much about the right way to encourage researchers and entrepreneurs to do what they need to do to get their companies off the ground and at scale. So once again, thanks to Andrew and Garrett and we'll see everybody back on Thursday for integrating equity into emergency management. Thanks so much.