Episode 060 — with Gustaf Alstromer of Y Combinator — On Climate Change — Part 3 — Carbon Capture

“When it comes to climate change, we all need to work on it, but we don’t all need to work on it the same way.”

Adam J Kerpelman

Published in

Zengineering Podcast

3 min readJun 12, 2018

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Hey there Zengineers!!

Thanks for coming back for another great convo. This week, our guest is Y Combinator Partner (YC — Y Combinator) partner and Carbon Removal Technology advocate and investor, Gustaf Alstromer. He’s the first guest in our three part (so far) series on Climate Change, Green Tech, & Earth Systems Science.

Check out our other episodes in this series: Part 1 — What the fuck is Climate Change? … Climate Change Part 2 — Carbon, Cooking, & Chemistry

These are wildly interesting topics to discover and discuss, but they can also be very heavy. This week’s conversation, however, is nothing short of thrilling. There’s never been a bigger need for new tech in this space, and one could argue there’s never been a bigger business opportunity, either. What a great place to find yourself as an entrepreneur or investor.

We start this convo with Gustaf discussing Y Combinator in general and his role as a partner. YC is a unique investment group that’s dedicated to education and open source as much as making wise and profitable investments. Gustaf is no exception. He’s found a passion for the green tech space, specifically carbon removal technologies, and is leading this wildly important initiative at YC. We discuss the need for carbon removal above and beyond renewable energy and other green tech, business and policy incentivisation systems, and touch on some of the exciting projects that are underway already.

It’s a crazy time for investment in Silicon Valley as the reach of entrepreneurs has never been more grand. It’s not just computers and software, like you might think. There are billions flowing into self driving cars, aviation, space exploration, 3D manufacturing, and now, technologies that will help to terraform our planet to save the world as we know it. Wow. This is fantastic. Gustaf is no stranger to the challenges here, either. They are as grand as the opportunities, but we like to think this conversation shares our excitement and confidence that humanity is coming together to tackle, perhaps, our most ambitious initiative yet.

We really enjoyed talking to Gustaf and we all hope this episode inspires you to explore climate change technologies a little deeper, and to get excited about the technological opportunities to make money while doing good. That’s a combo we can all get behind. Planet, People, Profit … in that order!

As always, let us know what you like, or dislike in the comment below, rate and review Zengineering on iTunes, and support Zengineering on Patreon.

Cheers,

Adam & Brian