Breakthrough Energy: Ashely Grosh

Jesse Reimink: Welcome to PlanetGeo the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works and why it matters to you.

 You always say you're recording, but then you're not really ready yet. You you're,

Chris Bolhuis: Well, I know, but look at me, go here. Let me

Jesse Reimink: there's a whole process.

Chris Bolhuis: Let me test that.

Jesse Reimink: I had something to say. now I've forgotten. There's a whole process. You know what, you know what, this is the problem, Chris, you tell me you're ready to go. And then there's like five minutes of you faffing around. And I lose my train of thought. Like I had something really important to say to you and now I've forgotten it.

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, I, I bet I bet the how rapidly you lose information out of that little pea brain that you call ahead of yours is It's an amazing thing, actually. So,

Jesse Reimink: it's very impressive.

Chris Bolhuis: Hey, let's get the ball rolling here.

Jesse Reimink: Yeah, let's do it today. We had the great pleasure. I mean, I always say this, but this actually we meet it. We really made it. This was an amazing interview. Ashley Grosh, who is the vice-president of the breakthrough energy fellows. And we're not going to describe that because she gives a very good description of what this program is and what it's all about. And as way better at explaining it than us trying to explain it. But I'm going to give a little bit of a history here, Chris of her resume and why we wanted to interview her. Ashley worked at Wells Fargo for about 15 years, led and managed, an ESG, which is environmental, social, and corporate governance investing fund there at Wells Fargo. She's now the vice president of the breakthrough energy fellows program. She's a director at gates ventures. She coaches soccer, the Colorado elevation FC. She has a bachelor's in economics and finance from Colorado Boulder. She was actually named to the 40, under 40 in Colorado and recognized as a top woman in the energy industry by the Denver business journal. And she's on several advisory boards, energy related and, Cleantech industry related advisory boards. And this was really fun. I had a great

Chris Bolhuis: It was, yeah, it was awesome. and hopefully we will do this again, right. The door was left, open.

Jesse Reimink: I always like it when we end a great interview and you know, the person we're interviewing is like, Hey, we should do this again. I always want to just jump at the fact and be like, let's do it now. Come on. Let's do it. This is great. It's so fun. I mean, we could have talked for hours with her, but what's the point? Like, why did we interview actually, who's not a geoscientist.

Chris Bolhuis: right, right. I have this little, little thing that I wrote and you told me not to, to read it. Okay. And I'll do my best not to read it. And like, but here we

Jesse Reimink: Great. Get your soap box. Take your soap box off the shelf and put it under so you can stand on it a minute.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay, I can do that. Um, well, here we go. So since the industrial revolution, humans have added a lot of fossil fuels, which have immensely increased the quality of our life. this isn't a horror story, right. It's just, that's the way it is.

Jesse Reimink: They're super energy dense and very valuable.

Chris Bolhuis: right? We've gotten to the point though, where the world is adding over 50 billion, tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere every year and the science of how these gasses trap heat that is re reradiated by the air surface has been settled for a long time. And I'm, we're just going to say that, like, this is a settled issue.

Jesse Reimink: we had an episode on what the greenhouse effect actually is way back when, when we started a geo,

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. That was a long time ago. It was fun. John Tyndall, Joseph They measured their heat trapping abilities back in the 18 hundreds long before there was any political debate about, this whole topic. and so the breakthrough energy fellows program identifies and supports the best and brightest individuals and teams across the globe to develop scale. Commercialized technologies that have the potential to reduce carbon emissions by at least 500 million tons per year by the year 2050. That's a lofty goal.

Jesse Reimink: that is an incredibly high bar for somebody trying to get to this program. That really astonished me. I didn't know that they were, aiming for this really high bar of transformative technology.

Chris Bolhuis: So let's just jump right into the interview. What do you think Jess?

Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Let's do it here. Comes Ashley Grosh. Great interview. But before we do that, follow us on all the social medias we're @planetgeocast.. Visit our website planetgeocast.com. Send us. planetgeocast@gmail.com. we've gotten some amazingly great listener questions recently, keep them coming. We love that stuff. And we're putting together a listener question episode, here in the near future. So

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. Hey, share planet.

Jesse Reimink: yeah,

Chris Bolhuis: Well, somebody that you think would like it,

Jesse Reimink: absolutely. With that, let's get to Ashley Gross.

 Hey, just to note, we were struggling with the audio on Ashley's end for a very brief period of time, right away during this interview, but it fixes itself pretty quick. So apologies for that and enjoy the interview.

 Today we are extremely excited to have Ashley Grosh vice president of the breakthrough energy fellows program here on planet geo Ashley. Welcome.

Ashley Grosh: Well, thank you for having me.

Jesse Reimink: We are very excited to dive in. Chris, do you want to lead us off? We got like way too many questions. Hopefully we

get to all the interesting ones here,

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. All right, Ashley, you have spent your entire career in sustainability and impact investment, but what, brought you in that direction? Can you give us some background on that

Ashley Grosh: Yeah, it's a good question. I think, you know, I've always been interested in more of the math and science side of things. So I was a finance and economics major in college. Uh, just an incredibly curious person overall, but really I went into banking right out of college. And so I went to Wells Fargo. I moved to Chicago and was working in alternative assets in alternative investments. And so I was a research analyst and basically, you know, looking at a bunch of different topics and I was fortunate enough to be put on some energy, some offshore wind forestry projects. We were looking at a tilapia farm. So I just was learning all kinds of things. I was looking at switchgrass. I was looking at biofuels and I hadn't really spent a lot of time in those areas, but I sort of say that was my first led moment, that went off is I felt that, you know, renewables were going to be the way of the future. And so I really got my hands on everything I possibly could in that sector. And, came up the curve pretty quickly in terms of what the technologies were today and then understanding, , you know, what was the future going to look like in that space? And so I guess I just, in some ways I got pretty lucky because right out of the gate, Something really hooked me that I just couldn't get enough of,

Chris Bolhuis: So that was right out of college.

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, yeah, so I, I was really lucky to find my passion early, you know, really soon after college.

Chris Bolhuis: That's interesting that you found that after college though, that. your kind of aha moment was when you were actually working in the field. Is that right?

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. I mean, I think I grew up outdoors, right? So I grew up in Colorado. I spent some time in Texas played sports my whole life, but I've climbed fourteeners, I've camped everywhere, so I grew up in a family that we were just always outdoors. So I think I naturally had that already ingrained inside of me. , I also was a biology major starting out freshman year of college. So, you know, there was a little bit of that and then switched over into more of the economics and business side. so always had a passion for the environment, but specifically what I was going to do with it, right. From a finance lens, that being my launching off point and gave me a lot of opportunities, was lucky to find that pretty early.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, That's interesting. Jesse and I both of our dads are, into biology. They're there, they were biology teachers. And so we're geologists and we give them a lot of crap about, you know, look your biology gets in our way. It

Jesse Reimink: that's right. All these plants covering up the rocks. I mean, what's up with this? I mean, oh my goodness. That's really cool. So I, from the outside, looking in, actually, I you work at Wells Fargo, right? Wells fargo for 15 years or so and now you run a you work for a nonprofit. I think breakthrough energy is fundamentally a nonprofit. Is that right?

Ashley Grosh: So it's actually a platform or a network of different initiatives and funding vehicles. Um, we do have a foundation. We have a C3 entity. We have our breakthrough energy ventures group, which is, more of venture fund. and so we are sort of a hybrid in terms of the way that we think about our.

Jesse Reimink: So is there like a time, a point in time or something you read, you kind of alluded to books? Is there something that kind of pointed you in this direction of, oh, focusing on, you know, climate and investing in climate sort of science or research or solutions?

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. So let me give you the history of that. so I, cause I think I've got to go back to Wells Fargo. I was there for 15 years. So, you know, there was a lot of, uh, learnings that happened there. And when I was early in, you know, as a researcher learning about, alternative investments, but there's

Jesse Reimink: So can I CA can I ask you, I always think alternative as alternative energy, but what does alternative investments mean in that?

Ashley Grosh: Yeah, so good point. So, you know, you have your traditional capital markets where you can buy stocks or you can buy bonds, right? So fixed income bonds. and so alternative investments are things that are not readily available usually in the stock market. So they're privately held investments by other different institutions or fund managers. And so it might be not as mainstream of categories. And so energy could be included in there. Certain real estate holdings could be included in there. I mean, fashion, there could be some really interesting fashion technology, so

Jesse Reimink: so it's not just alternative energy space

Ashley Grosh: right. So.

Jesse Reimink: were, you were not focused on that. Okay.

Ashley Grosh: No, but that's really where I've spent the bulk of my time. , but I, really understood early that there's three pillars to make all of this work and it's financial, technology and policy. So I was seated in that finance role. Right. But I knew that technology and policy were going to have to play a key role in us solving climate change and us getting technologies. And that's getting the systems. Right. And so I was fortunate to, you know, deep dive into finance and really understanding as a bank, what were the assets and tools that we had available to support the trig, the energy transition, right? So we provide capital. So we provide loans, we provide investments and services. And so I became really curious about what were we doing, where we funding renewable projects, where we funding sustainable agriculture. And so I went on this journey and I learned that, wow, we were, we were doing a lot, in 2008 Wells Fargo and Wacovia merged. And so they became this bigger entity. They doubled the footprint, they doubled the team. And at that point, they only, they didn't have a chief sustainability office. And so I was lucky enough to be drafted into that. So I was the third hire into this sort of global ESG sustainability group. So I really got to be at the ground floor of building and shaping. What was the environmental kind of commitment going to look like for this now, you know, one of the largest banks in the us and also with some global assets. So I really got a white board. And so, yeah, it was very cool. It was, again, I got to learn so much about our own footprint, where we were deploying capital, where we could grow the business to, in this area. So I became a big champion and I'll connect us to the science in one second. Um, it's my second led moment. So I, I think I have three

Jesse Reimink: No. That's great. Yeah, that's good. I absolutely.

Ashley Grosh: But so I, you know, I kinda got to come in and take a broad look at what the bank was doing. And as we started to make commitments about how we were going to deploy, you know, billions of dollars into the energy transition, how we were going to do our own footprint, get our own footprint to net zero, it was a hundred million square feet of real estate. And what I realized is we didn't actually have the technology available to do that. So there was led light bulbs. but there wasn't the other building management systems. There wasn't the onsite storage technology needed there wasn't all the bells and whistles, the smart windows that you need smart irrigation. And so I said, well, we're not going to meet this goal. Right. We don't have the technology of it.

Jesse Reimink: is this? Is this, what,

Ashley Grosh: So this is 2010 about connect 2008 to 2000. Yep. Yep.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay.

Jesse Reimink: And this is a, So. this is well before, like ESG became mainstream. I mean, it's like blown up now that term, I suppose. Right. And,

Ashley Grosh: Exactly. We w we were sort of like the pioneers of ESG before that term came out. And then I'll connect this to breakthrough energy. Cause it's a really interesting through point. and so I realized we didn't have the technology, so I said, but it's gotta be developed somewhere. Somebody's gotta to be working on this stuff. Right. And so I went around to national labs into universities and lo and behold, there, it was, I found all these brilliant entrepreneurs and scientists and researchers that were working on energy efficiency, the built environment, there was an incredible amount of accelerators and incubators, but we know this is the valley of death. And so they couldn't get the technologies out of the labs into the market. They couldn't get the adoption hard to raise money. This was Cleantech what we call 1.0. Where people had deployed a lot of capital into the space and the returns weren't as strong as we'd hoped. And so at that point, that was my second led light bulb moment where I said, we need a vehicle. We need a funding vehicle to go fund these technologies and de-risk them. And then what if Wells Fargo could be the early adopter first customer? And we could set up an incubator inside of our own. To bring on the technologies, then we'd be an early adopter and then they could maybe have a chance to get to market sooner. So that became my, my passion. And so I launched the Wells Fargo innovation incubator, or I into, and that's exactly what we did is we went out and funded technologies. De-risk them. We installed them in our buildings. And then I went to people like breakthrough energy. And I said, Hey, we've, de-risked this amazing, you know, onsite battery storage technology. It works. Here's what it's doing for us. Would you be interested in coming in and writing some follow on capital to help us really scale into the large business that we can get could be? And so that's what happened in a handful of those technologies that I do risk now are in the breakthrough energy ventures portfolio. So that's how that's kind of my journey about how I, how I learned about breakthrough.

Jesse Reimink: and when you say de-risk, it's sort of like, um, you know, prove that it works at a very basic level. You're not mass producing it, but you're sort of taking it from, oh, this is an idea to, oh, no. So this is actually a functional thing that we could actually build more of. Is that what you mean? They're

Ashley Grosh: Yes. Exactly. So, , when you install technologies into, you know, a publicly traded company, you've got a lot of firewalls and data and information. And so you've got to really understand how that technology works. , what the risks are of installing it. How does it work with all the other systems you have in place? And so that, was hard, but for the entrepreneur, that was really a good service because we got to fast track them through our procurement. And, I always liked thinking about things differently, so different ways of doing things instead of top-down by just like, how do we think differently about bringing something to market.

Jesse Reimink: Oh, that's very cool. Wow. What an interesting path. That's amazing.

Chris Bolhuis: Jesse, could I jump in here? This whole discussion Ashley's going to center around, you know, how do we get to net zero? what's your role in that, but can you tell us about how this came to be for you when were you first exposed to climate change science? What did that look like? How did that happen?

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. I mean, I think it's, the research I was doing early on, but remember going And seeing Tom Friedman speak. And so his first book, the world is flat. And then shortly after reading Daniel juergen's books, these are 800 page books. The prize in the quest, because I had to understand the history first. I had to understand the history of India. But then I had to understand the risk and that's what Tom Friedman's book right. Is, is really, Hey, if we don't do something, this is the trend pattern that we're on. And so that was a big wake up moment for me reading those books. The third book was abundance by Peter de Montes. And this is where it's the optimist view. So I carry a very optimistic view that technology solves this, right, that human ingenuity, that collaborating one plus one equals three. We've got to do it together. And that's very much bill gates, right. That's why he has been a hero. And, , that's the way he thinks. And in his book, here's the approaches, right? How to avoid a climate disaster is the fourth book. and it is approachable. It's really, really hard, but the sciences. but technology can play such a key role. And we've seen that in other sectors. I also just quickly, I don't think we focus enough on how far we've come in this space. I think we tell a lot of the story about how far we have to go, which, which there is a long distance, but we have been making gains. If you look at the cost of where solar and wind have you look, if you look at some of the things we've done in the food space and the system space in electric vehicles, there's still a lot we have to do, but we have been making gains and that enough.

Jesse Reimink: Yeah. That's, that's absolutely true. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on. yeah, like you said, major leaps forward seem to be going on all the time.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Jessie, I think she brought up a point, that kind of goes with the question that you and I were talking about before we jumped on here.

Jesse Reimink: Okay. maybe before we go to there, Ashley, could you give us just a general high-level structure of breakthrough energy and the, the

breakthrough fellows program that you lead, how those fit together? Can you kind of your elevator

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. Yeah. So in 2015, out of the Paris accord, that's when breakthrough really was born, that's when others came together and launched breakthrough energy ventures that I talked about. And so that is the

Jesse Reimink: key. What is the difference between those two breakthrough

energy and breakthrough ventures?

Ashley Grosh: so breakthrough energy ventures was started to fill a gap. To fund climate tech, deep science, hard tech. So industrial technologies like batteries and steel meant there wasn't enough venture capital focused in those areas. So they launched breakthrough energy ventures with bill and a number of other high net worth individuals to put together this fund that really didn't exist to just focus on these areas and with patient capital. And so they are investing in series what we call series a to D and so companies that are have a technology, but they need a lot of scale up. And so that was formed will then in about 2020, when the book came out, , bill and other leadership on our side realized, you know what, there's these other gaps we have to fill. And so breakthrough energy expanded its mandate. And so in addition to the ventures group, we've launched the fellows program, which is the one I'm leading. I'll talk about. We launched our catalyst group, which is another fund that we have. And then we strengthened our policy, government relations and advocacy group. And so you had fellows ventures, catalysts now with this underpinning of policy work across the platform. And so that's how now this has broadened, right? The mandate is broadened. And what I really appreciate about it is this, now this end to end approach. So fellows is now working on the early stage, again, back into the labs. What are scientists doing? Right? Because we need more capital to be taking more shots on goal in the early stage. So we can have these leapfrog technologies. So, and not enough money is flowing into that high risk space again in the industrial. So I'll tell you all this stuff we're doing and fellows hydrogen, electro fuels, fertilizer. So all deep tech and then our catalyst program is sort of the other bookend that once the technology works like a hydrogen electrolytes, to produce energy cleanly, how do you build 20 of those factories and plants because banks today, haven't, done that before. They haven't underwritten that type of a facility. So they don't really know the track, record, the bankability of it. And so we need a different model. So the catalyst program has a different funding model. Fellows also has a very different funding approach to scaling these technologies. So now you can think about us end to end technology building, scaling, deploying, and then policy

Jesse Reimink: Okay.

Ashley Grosh: all those sectors.

Jesse Reimink: So, okay. I, Chris, could I I'm I have so many

Ashley Grosh: It's yeah. Yeah. I know. Go, go for it.

Jesse Reimink: a good, Chris, do you want to take one or do you want me to, can I go, go for it here?

Chris Bolhuis: Go ahead.

Jesse Reimink: you touched on kind of the, key that transition, those conversations between of setting up the fellows program of like, oh, we need more technologies because there are people. And I think most people probably look around and say, you know, we have solar panels, we have nuclear power. We have wind farms. Where's the technology that we're missing? Can you kind of fill that in for me? Like, because there are people who argue, you know, we just need more political will to do this stuff. We can do it. We just need to actually do it. But you're saying sort of, no, we, we still need to develop new stuff, I guess. Can you kind of point in a few directions where we need to develop new stuff?

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. And there is this great debate of innovation versus deployment, right? That happens. I sit in the camp of both. The problem is so large. We have to deploy. What we already have. So we have to continue to have smart policy and continue to be able to deploy wind and solar. That works well right now, there's, there's a problem with supply chain and geopolitical and all the other issues we can't get semiconductors. so, that's a little bit stalled out in our ability to, deploy what we have, but in the innovation side. So one thing to think about is in the industrial space like steel and cement, 90% of the power that goes to those big industrial sectors comes from fossil fuel. So those are big sectors, right? And so we have to transition the power supply and that's where innovation, you can do some of that with renewables, but you really need things like cheap hydrogen to come online, to be able to get to an energy transition. And within hydrogen drilling down into like, what do we need there? When you . Take water, you guys probably know some of this, right. And they'd run it through an electrolyzer and a membrane and you split the water. So then you'd have hydrogen and oxygen, right? So you can get it to a gas. You've got to capture that gas, reuse it as power. When you run that process, the membranes we use today to do that include materials like titanium. Platinum really expensive. And they also degrade very quickly. So what we need are low cost, abundant materials that we could use in a membrane to make it more efficient, more durable. So the cost can come down. So that hydrogen becomes a real economical solution, right? On the power supply. You can do a hydrogen. We spend a lot of time at breakthrough energy because it's an enabling technology. If you figure out hydrogen for power generation, you can use it as a fuel in aviation. You can use it in long haul shipping. You can use it in trucking. You can use it to make ammonia for fertilizer. So we spend a lot of time in hydrogen, but, but there are so many pieces of this in advanced new ways. We think about advanced materials, new battery technologies. That's a big topic, The lithium story. Isn't the silver bullet because of the mining, where it comes from. So, what we're doing in fellows is exploring what are other materials? What are other ways, what are other things that we could be using in replace of lithium to build better membranes? So those are some examples.

Chris Bolhuis: so Ashley, do you see, how do I phrase this? Um, are you looking for an innovation that is just going to totally change the whole game?

Ashley Grosh: So we are so at breakthrough and, and across our ventures and with catalyst and with fellows, we have a really high bar for impact. And so what we mean by that is everything that we look at. Has to demonstrate that it can abate 500 million tons of CO2 per year at scale. Now, if you're a really early membrane company, how do you know? Right. But you've got to demonstrate to us that you have a scale and a plan that if your technology works, you have to demonstrate to us through a proposal in a model, you have to give us a model that shows, Hey, if I'm able to do this and it reaches scale that I can abate that significant amount of carbon on an annual scale. So we differ in that way because a lot of other people are working on smaller, incremental gains. And we need those too. Don't get me wrong again. I'm a both person. We need the big swings. High-risk we also need people working on more of the incremental gains, but what we're doing at breakthrough, our mandate is really to look at the carbon impact, the carbon reduction of these technologies.

Chris Bolhuis: So you said 500 million tons. So that's about roughly what, 1% of what we globally put in to the atmosphere. Right. Okay. Okay. And they have to like,

Jesse Reimink: He every once in a while he does something good. I mean, it's rare. so

Chris Bolhuis: And they have to prove this to the fellows right before they move on to the ventures. Right. They have to get through you first. Oh, wow. wow. That is a high bar.

Ashley Grosh: I'll talk a little bit, about why the need for the fellows, if that's helpful to just, and how we think about this continuum, but you know, there's a lot of great programs available. The ones I worked with before universities, national labs, incubators accelerators That are fostering. Innovators working in the space, but one thing that's unique is the cost. And so if you're working in steel, if you're an innovator, you've got a PhD, you've studied material science and geology and some other things. And you have a Thermo chemical idea for how to make steel. It can't just be you and your garage tinkering around. You have to get, I mean, maybe that's where it starts in a lab at university, but you have to get into a facility that has the right type of equipment testing facility. You need other smart engineers around you to work on your project. You need third parties to, to be validating what you're doing. So how do you come up with the money right out of the gate when you start to scope, Hey, I have this idea. But in order to meet the first technical milestone to build a kilogram of this holy cow, it's going to cost millions of dollars just to even get to that. It's very different than what we see in the software space. Right? You can code something out, you can build an app. and so when you're doing deep tech, right from the very beginning, it's so expensive. And so that's where we've really put some expertise into the place. And luckily we have resources to, to be able to support that. And so we bring fellows in, I'll talk about the application process in a minute, but we are able to unlock the funding that they need early on. And so it doesn't slow them down because otherwise they're going to have to go all to these pitch competitions in all kinds of, they're going to have to do 10 to 20 different applications for funding. They're going to have to cobble together. You know, here and there to get what they need to actually be in the lab. It's a very broken process. So what we're saying is, Hey, if you're committed to this, we believe in the technology and the impact potential. We believe in you. We're going to give them right now. It's a non-dilutive grant. So we give them a grant , and we tie it to their milestones and we say, go get into the labs. We help them get into labs. We put all those equipment and smart people around them so that they can hit the ground running and start to chase the most impactful technology milestones. And so that's a big difference in how we, how we think about funding these guys early

Chris Bolhuis: wow. That is that's really interesting. So you have fellows then that you put around the people that you decide to fund that, meet your benchmarks, that meet your, your respects.

Ashley Grosh: reframe that. So.

Chris Bolhuis: You said That you surround these people with really smart people? Are, are you talking

Ashley Grosh: Okay. So there are great points. So we again think about our network too, right? So just being breakthrough energy, we've got all kinds of resources and human capital and people from industry and people from academia, national labs from business. And so we fund two types of fellows. We fund innovator fellows and business fellows in our program. That's another unique part is this business piece. So innovator fellows come to the program with an idea. They're typically the scientist. They have the PhD, they have an idea. They may have some initial IP intellectual property on a membrane. Let's say that they've brought. And what we do is then we also fund these business fellows. And these are folks that may have spent 20 years in commercialization. At an industry at an oil and gas company at a materials company, they've taken things through the commercial value chain. So they'd seen things come from a lab, come into the market, get funded and completely get into the market. And they've got all kinds of other understandings of customers, regulatory hurdles. How do you set up the right entities? How do you bring in follow on funding and investment? So they really round out the skill sets. That the innovator fellow has, right? Because the scientist doesn't understand the full business impact. So we fund these two types of fellows and then we match make them. And so now you have an innovator fellow and a business fellow working together on this thesis. And then around that, we also bring in other advisors, we bring in access to our breakthrough energy ventures, team access to other corporates, access to financial industry institutions, to talk about how they, how they would underwrite some of these technologies. So we, bring them in and then build sort of, um, a team around them to help them move the technology.

Jesse Reimink: I mean, this is really interesting. I, you know, I live in the university research sphere at Penn state and, like you said, it's a very exciting place. It's there are people who do everything look around and you'll find an expert on some random stuff, like on a university campus or these national research labs, but you really described it very well. That funding you have to apply many times and cobble together a few hundred thousand dollars there, maybe 50 K over there to get to something reasonable. So, yeah, this is, if this resonates, I guess, would be my point,

Ashley Grosh: Yeah, Jesse, if you live in that, in that world, you get it right. It's very competitive. It's hard to unlock that money.

Jesse Reimink: I mean to get a million dollar grant requires a lot of stuff to, to do, even to run. I mean, I'm not doing climate change research or anything near the scale of this technology, but even just to run our little lab where we date rocks, you know, requires a lot of, a lot of effort. the question is are you seeking people out they're coming to you? I mean, how does that work? I suppose, and I guess the broader question is, are there fields that you do not look at? Like I'm thinking of something like carbon sequestration where probably an oil and gas company is going to be way better at carbon sequestration, just to, because of their full stack of skillsets, then you know, somebody at a research university or other places where you think you can compete more, you have an efficiency edge or something like that in this tech space. was a

Ashley Grosh: Yeah,

Jesse Reimink: Chris is looking at me like I'm an idiot.

Chris Bolhuis: I'm lost.

Jesse Reimink: Yeah, sorry. That was very confusing.

Ashley Grosh: no, no. I'm actually, I'm following you there. So a couple things about who, you know, we're looking for how we find them. I'm going to start. There is, so through our network, we use a nomination and refer. Process. And so we've got connections, great group on my team that does recruitment and selection has all of this outreach into universities, research facilities, and, you know, research hubs around the world. And basically we understand what labs, you know, what professors are working on certain topics. So we outreach, we build relationships with them. And so we, we nominate them to nominate a postdoc or PhD or, or a potential fellow, but then we also

Jesse Reimink: you do have you have like direct

connections to university or national lab, groups like sort of broader research groups in there. Okay.

Ashley Grosh: Although we do need more. So let's talk after, cause we

Jesse Reimink: Yeah, this would be I mean, this would be great. I mean, if you're handing out money, I'm on

Ashley Grosh: Yeah, so we need to, we need to go knock around the labs there. So, um, but we are always, we are always casting a wider net, so that is a lot of it is spending the time to understand where the research is happening. So that's one piece of it. But then we also do have an intake form that we get intake ideas. So people from around the world that hear about our program can go and they can submit some information and then we can start to build a relationship that way we've launched our first cohort of fellows last year. So we've nine projects. We have 17 fellows. Those are a mix of those innovator and business fellows that I talked about. We've got people working on, as I mentioned, hydrogen steel cement. Electric fuels fertilizer. , and so, really, again, these deep tech areas and in that cohort, and now we're, getting ready to launch our second cohort. And it's really interesting, the people that have applied because some have again come through our network, some through the nomination process, but some people just found us through this intake form. And so that's really exciting just to see the accessibility that, you know, people we want the best and brightest minds to come in, to apply. And we want them to think very outside of the box. This is a place in fellows. I call it bowling with the bumper lanes. Because you can take risks, right? You can, you really take risks here. We will support you. And then once you start to make advancements on a milestone, then you want to go out and look at what's the next step. It could be breakthrough energy ventures. It could be working with, shell. It could be doing a public private partnership. So there's a lot of different launch off points. Once the technology has been proven the areas maybe that you were getting at Jesse, that we're not doing directly, , gosh, you know, more, more, I would say somethings in the built environment, although, you know, we do, we actually do have a built environment technology in the second cohort. Some of the things in traditional.

Jesse Reimink: Can you w

Ashley Grosh: Oh, so just like in buildings, you know, so the technology, making buildings more efficient, well, that's stuff we're using that. We're doing the infrastructure side of that, but like I was doing before at Wells, that hardware, software layer of, kind of the smart windows, for example. or let's see, I'm trying to think where we're not. You know, w pretty broad in our mandate because when you think about an area that I want to get deeper in, that I have a real passionate around is agriculture. So I did spend, a lot of my career in ag tech and in agriculture. And so, ag tech is again combining the software and the hardware. So that's drone technology, sensor, soil, sensor technology. but there's so much to be done in agriculture, if we're going to feed people sustainably. Right? So we look at a lot of alternative protein, but we also look at on the farm, so how to make more efficient fertilizer locally and modularly how to get improved yields, but do it organically sustainably.

Chris Bolhuis: Do you look at irrigation practices?

Ashley Grosh: yes.

Chris Bolhuis: I mean, that's a big deal.

Ashley Grosh: Absolutely. Yeah, I just was looking, I mean, that's, what's so interesting about my job. I'll say I'm so fortunate yesterday. I had two calls with, you know, somebody was working on an enzyme technology for hydrogen production and then somebody was working on an irrigation project in Africa. So I was learning about that. It's just, it's really great.

Jesse Reimink: Wow. What a fun job you just get to learn about all the most interesting stuff in the world. I mean, that is a great job right there, man.

Ashley Grosh: well, but I need a lot of smart people around me to interpret it. Right. So I I've coming from the financing side. I know enough now. And that's very much bill and breakthrough energy, right. Is always be learning and surrounding yourselves and then, asking the right questions. And so I ask a lot of questions.

Chris Bolhuis: Ashley, you said that nine made it through in your first cohort. Can you give us an idea how many didn't make.

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. So in the first cohort, we didn't do that open intake form. It was more of a curated process. I think we had close to a hundred applicants in the first cohort. So it is a very competitive process. , in the second cohort, you know, hundreds, I want to say 400 applications came in and we use an incredibly rigorous scientific process to down select and review. So we use, it's actually another kind of fascinating thing we do is we go out to hydrogen experts all over the world and they become our technical reviewers. We use people internally as well. All of our networks, we use university professors. And so we pulled together people that know a lot about this, and then we go through a process of rating. Then we also look at the business side though, because if this works, is there a market there may not be yet, but what's the price target, they're trying to get their technology down to, is it realistic in a timeframe that matches with breakthrough energy's vision? And so it's an art and a science actually, when you do these down selects because the other third and most important piece is who is the individual? Is this person a hundred percent committed? Are they coachable? This goes Chris, back to our coaching days, right? you know, people do the work. We're not there to robots doing all this yet. So, people are doing the work. And so is this person committed this is a laundry. And there's going to be hard times and, you know, are they committed and are they coachable? Are they willing to take feedback because they're not always going to be right. And so those are the sort of the three pieces is the technical side of what we're looking at, the finance and all those metrics and the market conditions. But who's the person leading it. That's . Incredibly important.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, ashley. I don't know if you can answer this question and if you, if you can't then don't, do you have something in your first cohort or the cohort coming up that you are like really excited about?

Ashley Grosh: Oh no. Now you're asking me to pick my favorite child. Um, can you, so let me think about it for a minute. me come back to that.

Jesse Reimink: Okay. What's uh, can I ask about the finances of this? Like, is there a return on investment expectation? And if so, what's the timeframe and what does it cost for, you know, what'd you say nine projects in 17 people in the first cohort or something like that? Like, you give me some insight of that?

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. So, the fellows program is structured with philanthropic dollars today. So that means that these are grants, which again is another huge asset for the entrepreneur that they're not giving up any equity early on. And we believe that it's important at this stage to de-risk with philanthropic dollars. And so, we're fortunate to have those resources from bill and others providing philanthropic dollars. So there is not a return expectation. In the fellows program today, they come into the program for two years and we fund their full salary benefits, travel, you know, any of the other infrastructure access, they need to IHS reports or certain tools. So we really give them all of that. So they can be a hundred percent dug in. And then our research grants range from one to $3 million per project per year. And so if you're talking about over 24 months, right. And so pretty significantly. Grant funding right out of the gate that they can get. And the goal of the fellows program, you know, we're getting into our second cohort, believe it or not, next week, I'm already scoping for cohort three, looking at things like nuclear.

Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Cool.

Ashley Grosh: and so, you know, the goal is to get a hundred plus projects in this over the next couple of years. So it's really a portfolio approach. And, , something that I think is important to that, that bill is really passionate about is not all of these are going to work, right? The, this is the high risk sandbox that we're in. But what we hope that happens is if some of these entrepreneurs come in and the technology doesn't work, it hits what we call a showstopper. , they'll have the confidence to do it again. They'll go try something else. They'll join another team. They'll maybe come to work with us or one of our other partners, but we keep them in the climate sector. Right. So we want to be attracting all of these minds to keep working on these solutions, even though their first thing made may have not worked, but we know they'll have learned a lot growing their network. So that's another way we measure success is how do we keep them going? Keep them trying

Jesse Reimink: Okay. Interesting. Yeah. That's great. Chris, did you have another question

Chris Bolhuis: I do actually. Ashley can, can I ask you a soap box question? I want you to, like, I, want you to preach. Okay. What. At breakthrough energy is all about getting to zero carbon. What is our greatest obstacle? How does this happen?

Ashley Grosh: people. you know, honestly, because what did I say at the beginning, there's three pillars for this to happen. Technology, policy and finance, but people coming together. And working in a coordinated way is what it's going to take. Everybody in the, you know, the people working on the technology side on the finance side and the policy side are going to have to make some sacrifices and we're going to have to learn, but we're gonna have to do it together. It's not going to be, you know, I know we all hope that it's Elon Musk or bill gates, or somebody has this one silver bullet that solves everything. I don't think that's how this plays out. I think we're going to have multiple solutions in hydrogen and nuclear, and it's going to take deep collaboration with people to work together. And even though it may be hard and uncomfortable and you know, not directly square with one of your mandates, but it's the right thing to do. And we just don't have the time. We don't have the time. For, the bureaucracy, frankly, we have to work together and we have to work cross border, cross ocean. We've got to find technology in the U S or south America that's needed in India. Right. We've got to be able to quickly move technologies around, move finance and capital around and have really aggressive policies. I believe people have to find a way to work together. And that's what I think the power breakthrough energy is actually, because we'd come in as a neutral player as a private institution and with significant resources, but a lot of expertise in Intel where we're deploying capital. And if you look at our catalyst program, We've been able to pull together the European commission, governments, the technology field, the industry partners like American airlines and shell. And so we are a great facilitator to bring all those people together, to work on a project, to work on a mission and we can do it quickly. So, you know, I think models like ours really can be at the forefront, but, the people have to work together and think out of the box,

Chris Bolhuis: So are you saying then that it's, are we fighting a buy-in? Is that what you're suggesting

Ashley Grosh: I think. Yeah. I think in some ways that you think about these huge utilities in these big players, for the energy transition, right to happen, think about all the pipeline infrastructure that has to be retrofitted or convert. Just think about the number of stakeholders. Right to really transition this. And many of them have had just the way they've been set up. They're not incentivized really to think about innovation and disruption. They're just there day to day, they've got shareholders, they've got all of these other competing priorities. And so they're not putting the urgency at the top, right. They're just day to day. And so we need, we need leadership in these organizations to say, Hey, we need to kind of shift this big boat that we're steering and get laser focused on the energy transition. We need to have a seat at the table, put dollars to work in partnership and get some of these projects going so that the cost can come down. Then the market can absorb it. But if people just do the, you hear the business as usual. Right with these big stakeholders, you're not going to get there. And the other thing is these big companies and these big institutions need to come up with a way to be able to absorb the incoming technologies. Right? And so if there is a pioneering thing that comes through fellows and it's in the steel market, we need the steel players to be able to absorb that quickly and, get that technology into their systems. And so today just haven't done a ton of that. And so that's what I think about these big stakeholders, making a commitment, to onboarding new technologies and to be laser focused on innovative.

Jesse Reimink: Hmm. That's that's really interesting answer. Not one I was expecting. but I like it, it resonates a lot. I think, you know, the other aspect that really resonates a lot is this willingness to fail. And didn't realize that fellows was a philanthropic endeavor, but that makes complete sense, actually, you know, the grants I applied for the philanthropic private foundation ones have so much more flexibility and willingness to have an idea, not work out. I think than some of the federal or the sort of more to government based granting agencies where they, they want deliverable products. So that really kind of resonates. So you kind of touched on this in regards to the people in the buy-in thing. And I'm interested in your answer cause you don't have a geo-science background, but Chris and I are both educators fundamentally. what are the few, one or two things that you think everybody needs to know about this problem, with either data points or ideas or concepts? what would you say that Chris and I should be telling everybody in our classes that they need to know.

Ashley Grosh: Great question. it really goes back to the basics of, I mean, I think when I came in, I didn't even understand what it meant when I flipped a light bulb, right. When I turned on a switch. And that's why I went and read the prize and the quest to understand the history of energy, but I think everybody needs basic understanding of how the energy system works. and, and then from there the water system, just think people don't really understand the grid. How it works today. many people don't anyways. Right. I try to teach my kids a lot of the basics and I actually teach an elementary school course on solar 1 0 1 here in Denver. but, so I just, I think. You really have to understand the fundamentals and you guys get this like natural resources where things come from, how are things made. Plastic, all of that, how much water goes in to what we're using? And there's a lot of great statistics on, food systems on clothing, on energy, in all the different inputs. And how that gets made , is really important. I've also toured landfills. I've toured recycling facilities. I think if you can take people out into the field, if you can go to a natural gas, you know, you got to get access to do all this stuff, but I'm also an incredibly visual learner. And so when all the smart engineers are explaining things to me, I need a lot of visualization. And, um, but I think going out and seeing I've been to, I spent a ton of time on farms. I've been in central California. I've seen mass produced lemon farms, , mass produced cattle. And so I think you've got to go out and see, and really understand the systems and where things are made, how they're made, what the impact is. And then you can start to, then you start to think about innovation, where is the inefficiency in what I'm saying? Oh my gosh, we still do it this way. That's crazy. The grid still looks the same. That's insane. So then you start to build this curiosity. Right, but for me, I think you got to go see it. And you got to understand the basics.

Chris Bolhuis: Ashley, can you pick one or two examples of wait, wait, we really do it this way. Still that you've seen, that really shook you.

Ashley Grosh: Well, just as we're on the agriculture. I mean, if you go out and you drive through Fresno and Bakersfield and you look at the way we harvest. It's back-breaking, it's terrible. Right? And it's, it's actually the most expensive piece. Right. So labor, and it's just the condition of that, right? I just am still shocked when you see that strawberries for specifically, and I worked on a project at UC Davis, , where they developed a machine that could go through the field using smart AI, using smart sensors and x-ray technology, and it would go over the field and it would sense whether something had ripened, it would look at the roots, it would look at the color it would, and in real time it could pick up right. And it would leave other things. but what was great about that is then it would, you know, harvest it into this large trunk. And then all of the people that were in the fields, they would go inside and do quality control. Right. And so then you could repurpose their jobs and then they learned about robotics. this was a great program at UC Davis on workforce development. And how do we shift that? But this was an amazing technology that had been developed. And then you could shift around the workforce and it was more efficient. It was more humane. learning was a important part of it. And so you know, in agriculture, there's still a number of things that shake me. that's one example.

Chris Bolhuis: perfect. That's a good answer. actually I can't help, but think of this, with the talk that we've had and how like interesting your job is, and you know how important it is to I mean, two years ago we're hit with this pandemic. They developed a vaccine at lightning speed. Nobody, nobody thought that was possible. I can't help, but see a parallel with what we're talking about you know, is, is that kind of thing possible with, climate and climate change?

Ashley Grosh: A hundred percent. And the reason I say that is I have a lot of friends and family and they get pretty doom and gloom. When they think about climate, right. They kind of read the headlines or. Where I live in Colorado. Now the wildfires have become so prevalent and constant. And so they, they feel very hopeless. , or what can I do? And they come to me, you know, and I am very fortunate that like, I told you, every day I am seeing and surrounded by people that are a hundred percent committed to solving and we are just on the brink there's. So the pipeline that I'm seeing is incredible. If it works, it's going to matter. And, and the number of shots on goal that we're taking, a few of those are going to stick, right? You don't hit a home run every time, but if you take a number, you know, it's a numbers game, right. And so you got to keep coming up to bat and swinging, and that's what we're doing. And so I am just so incredibly optimistic. That people are going to innovate us through this. And I'm already starting to see, even in cohort one, this week we were at the department of energy are the east summit. Luckily it was in Denver and my backyard. There was 2000 people from around the world all here. Presenting ideas on climate change solutions from a technical standpoint, 2000 people now, not all of those were innovators, some were investors and policy folks, but I just spent this week alone immersed looking at alternative mining, looking at ocean technology, looking at hydro technology. I mean just the amount of people that are working on this day in and day out the national lab system in the U S and what they're doing. And so I know it's hard for the everyday person to grasp that and feel that, but they should feel comforted that it is happening, that we are close just like in, in the life science, what we saw with, with vaccines. Right. I do think that . People in this sort of next. 2 3, 4, 5 years, we are going to have these incredible breakthrough solutions, um, that are going to help us and give us a lot of hope and time. And like I said, some of that's already happening now. You're just not reading about it. Right. So we do, we need to, I taught well, so I talked about one of the biggest problems being people, right? The other is communication. I think that we have to do a better job of telling these stories and educating. What are the big problem statements people are working on? , I mean, we don't have the, the full-time today. We should do a part two, and I can bring in, I can bring in, um, another colleague of mine, Ben Gaddy, who's our, PhD that he can really get into with you guys. Um, how close are we. Yeah, so you can do a breakthrough 2.0, but

Chris Bolhuis: is that a part of breakthrough to do that,

Ashley Grosh: yes, exactly, exactly. So, that's the other piece of our platform is we've launched cipher. If you're not following that, it's our climate newsletter in publication, but our goal is to really start pushing information. What are we seeing? What are we learning? as part of the philanthropic mandate as a public good in a service, that is a huge goal of what we're doing. And so, um, I'll be doing that now more with fellows, right? What are we learning? Where are these technologies at? What are the bottlenecks? so communication needs to get significantly strengthened in this.

Jesse Reimink: that's a, that's exciting. I mean, and I can't think I can speak for Chris that we would love to talk you fellows are. You got anything interesting, you know, send them to us, send them our way. We love talking

Ashley Grosh: Oh, yeah, we should do that. You should talk with, uh, the peop the resident PhDs I have on my team. And then, the fellows I'd love to have you, cause I couldn't pick one of my favorites here today, but I'd love to,

Jesse Reimink: we will make you do that. That's

Ashley Grosh: I'd love to have one. I think, I think having a fellow come on your show and explain how they got into this, what their journey is, you know, I'm the connector. That's what I love to do is connect the right people together. But having the scientists talk about what's their journey and what are they getting through the fellowship and where do they expect to be in a year or two years from now?

Jesse Reimink: Yeah. That'd be totally exciting. That'd be awesome. Well, All right. Actually, before we let you go, we have to ask our

like traditional closing question here. And we usually say what's, you know, your single best day as a scientist, but let's change it to what has been your single best day in ESG investing. If we can put it that way in your field, let's say,

Ashley Grosh: Oh, my goodness, the single, the single best day Well, I got to give to, sorry. Um,

Chris Bolhuis: okay.

Jesse Reimink: That's allowed.

Ashley Grosh: I mean, you know, one, I think is when I, I talked about that program at Wells Fargo, the very first technology that we installed on the building, um, was a sensor technology. And we installed it, we plugged it in and immediately it worked. And immediately it gave us the diagnostics reading that we needed on lighting and HVAC. And over time, just in that branch, we had a 30% reduction in energy efficiency just from this unit. But, but when that vision came to life of, wow, this was just in the lab at UC Berkeley. And it was just an idea and that we had spent the time and investment to get it de-risk and now put it in the building. We were all there, we turned it on and it worked. so actually just again, seeing that happen and knowing, and then now I built other models off of that. Right. So that was a pretty special day. the second.

Jesse Reimink: cool. Yeah. Very

Ashley Grosh: Yeah. So that, that was very rewarding, right. Just to kind of see, um, the impact. And then I'm, I'm just, I'm going to say this week, so I've been at this for almost 20 years. This week is I told you I was at the department of energy RPE and for the first time in two years, my entire team and all of the fellows from around the world for cohort one were all together and I've hired people over the last two years. I've never met them. Right. That's just so strange. And so we all came together and I can't explain, you know, the power of bringing that community together, the impact that they're going to have. The incredible work that my team has done to get them there, to find these people, to fund them, to make connections for them, to help move their technologies in a rapid way, just all being together, just having that community. that was a pretty special moment because we've all been remote and there's just something about being together. So for me, that was, a very pinnacle moment. And just also seeing how excited I personally am to continue to grow what we're doing and thinking the next time we get together, it'll be 50 and then a hundred. And, so just, I'm really excited about the momentum that breakthrough energy has, you know, our mission and the people, the people that we are working with and supporting, you know, everyone should have hope. There's some brilliant people out there working on this.

Jesse Reimink: Very cool. Well, those are two pretty damn good answers. I would say. Yes. Well done. Well done. That's great. Well, thank you very much. Actually, this has been a real pleasure having you.

and we look forward to,

part two coming up

Ashley Grosh: Part two. Yeah. We'll bring some other people back. So you guys have been so great. Thanks for what you're doing, would love to learn from you and, and let's talk Penn state. We need to, we need

Jesse Reimink: yeah, come to Penn state. You know, if you get into the nuclear industry, I think we have research reactor at Penn state. If you're ever, uh, if you ever come into campus, look me up. Absolutely.

That'd be great. Could show you the lab and everything. Thanks Ashley. Take care of this has been great.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, it has

Jesse Reimink: All right. Take care.

Ashley Grosh: Thanks, bye.

Jesse Reimink: Hey, thanks for listening to planet geo.

You can follow us on all the PLA you can follow us on all the social medias, where at planet geo cast, send us an email. Visit our website, give us a rating and a review. Those really help the algorithm and reach out. If you have questions, we'd love that stuff. Take care.