MUSIC

Change is coming, oh yeah

Ain’t no holding it back

Ain't no running 

Change is coming, oh yeah!

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

This is Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers from Environmental Defense Fund. I’m your host, Yesh Pavlik Slenk. For the better part of the last decade, it’s been my job to help students use their talent and passion to get experience and jobs that serve the planet.

Today on the show: Mia Diawara, a partner at Lowercarbon Capital, an investment firm focused on equitable, impactful climate tech.

This spring, Lowercarbon Capital announced a new $350 million dollar Carbon Removal Fund! Partner Mia Diawara and her colleagues will invest that money in climate tech designed to remove billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere -- like CO-2-sucking vacuums, carbon-guzzling supertrees, and a robot-run kelp farm.

Along with carbon removal startups, Lowercarbon also invests in two other areas: businesses that will help us adapt to the rising dangers of climate change and those looking to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

And they’re betting that what’s good for the planet will be good for the bottom line. Lowercarbon’s urgency is infectious. 

For our guest today, Mia — that urgency has been pumping through her since she was a teenager.  

Mia Diawara:

So I can track my entire climate journey to this class in high school. 

So I was a freshman in high school. I was in biology class and we watched An Inconvenient Truth. And I remember, you know, Al gore up on stage and the hockey stick chart kind of kept going up into the right with greater acceleration and was kind of off the charts. And having this almost out of body experience where I kind of saw that the whole future flash before my eyes and the fact that this felt like a runaway train, and thinking how is not everyone focused on this problem? This issue is going to exacerbate just about every other inequity, every other social and environmental issue that we're focusing on. 

I really remember having this feeling of like, oh my gosh, it feels so obvious that this is the thing that we need to solve. And kind of was climate nerd from there.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

An Inconvenient Truth, does that ring a bell? In our first episode, this same movie was the impetus for John Doerr’s massive pivot into climate investing. For Mia, though, the climate crisis was personal. 

Mia Diawara:

The other thing that flashed through my mind is, I'm the daughter of an immigrant. My father came to the US from West Africa, from Mali in the eighties to study agronomy. And, the vast majority of my extended family still lives in Mali, in Bamako and other cities. And that region of the world is going to see something like 1.5 times the warming than the global average as a result of climate change. 

And all I could think about while watching Al Gore point to this CO2 concentration going up was just how unlivable parts of that world would become if we didn't do something about it -- and are already becoming. And so it felt also like a personal call to action.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Choosing a career in climate became no brainer. The next question was… where in this enormous, ever-changing field to focus?

A college class, called Understanding Energy, would spark her passion. 

Mia Diawara:

And it was kind of this pivotal moment for me where I realized the lever that I think I want to pull in climate is energy. Energy is kind of the lifeblood of the entire economy and like how we power things. And it's also one of the biggest opportunities to really reduce emissions and get to zero quickly.  

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Then, she did fellowships at the Natural Resources Defense Council and Rocky Mountain Institute. But her first jobs? Well, they weren't really green. At least, not on the surface. She went to work in consulting, and then in private equity, a multibillion-dollar firm called TPG, which invests in dozens of companies you probably know, like Airbnb, Burger King, and Uber. But as we’ve said before – you can make a big impact working for a mainstream business! In fact, Wall Street and the Fortune 500 companies need you, if we’re going to have a prayer of reaching net zero. 

Case in point: TPG presented Mia with a pretty amazing opportunity — to help decarbonize billions of dollars in their portfolio. And to work on TPG’s seven billion dollar climate-focused investment fund, Rise Climate.

Mia Diawara: 

And the light bulb that went off is that ultimately we need to just make the solutions and the technologies and the decisions that are most aligned with the net zero future, also the ones that make the most economic sense, that are the best business decisions possible. And so that really drew me to wanting to work on building the solution set rather than kind of focusing on the problem set. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Mia didn’t just want to figure out how to measure emissions in, say, existing supply chains. She wanted to help create the technologies and the jobs of the future and that led her to where she is now, Lowercarbon Capital.

Let’s pause Mia’s story for a second, and place Lowercarbon Capital in the growing constellation of climate investing firms.

One of the firm's founders, Chris Sacca, has been in the VC game for quite some time. He was an early investor in Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Stripe, and a host of other startups that are now multi-billion-dollar household names. He also spent two seasons on the TV show Shark Tank.

His star power and connections combined with what the company calls its kick-ass companies have all led Lowercarbon Capital to emerge as one of the preeminent climate tech investment firms in the business today. Which is not a bad place for a Stanford-engineer/dancer/change-the-world-advocate to find herself.

Just to name a few portfolio companies, Lowercarbon Capital has invested millions in Carbon Engineering, which makes armies of vacuums that suck CO2 out of the air. 

Living Carbon’s genetically engineered supertrees which are trees that grow faster than normal, due to their artificially boosted photosynthesis. They guzzle more carbon than normal trees. 

I love these off-the-wall, make-you-think-twice technologies. It’s like the Jetson’s meets Harry Potter meets Black Panther. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

But not everything she and her team invest in are as off-the-wall. They also fund companies that help decarbonize existing technology. 

Mia Diawara: 

So if you look at the pie chart of the 50 plus gigatons that we spew across different sectors of the economy on an annual basis - all of those are also fair game. And so whether that's decarbonizing industry by finding new ways to produce steel and cement that are less emissions intensive, to electrifying the built environment and transport, to making sure that we're generating that electricity in a zero carbon way, with things like nuclear fusion. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Mia told me about one of their portfolio companies, called Zanskar. Zanskar makes a geothermal energy technology – which is tech that taps into, as they say, the “big magma energy” in the earth’s core. 

Mia Diawara: 

Geothermal is the heat that exists beneath the crust of the earth and that we can make use of for generating electricity in a way that is potentially highly efficient. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

According to Lowercarbon Capital’s website, the earth’s core contains enough heat to supply global energy needs for 2 MILLION years. The problem is actually figuring out where on earth, literally, to access it. 

Mia Diawara: 

But it's been historically a very cost intensive process because it requires drilling before you know that the resource is going to be there. And so Zanskar through a suite of technologies is allowing for fast identification and less resource intensive identification of the most high potential geothermal resources. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

We can’t get to that big magma energy just anywhere. So Zanskar’s technologies use imaging and sensing tools to find good locations. The alternative -- drilling and drilling and drilling until they find heat -- is expensive and it only works some of the time. Mia says the company is saving time and money -- and has a higher rate of success -- by finding geothermal potential much closer to the earth’s surface. 

For Mia, this company ticked all of Lowercarbon Capital’s boxes. 

Mia Diawara: 

The market opportunity is huge. You have the potential here for base load electricity. So the market is there, the tech mote is there and you have a team that is best positioned to do this, given the team's backgrounds and expertise. And so all of the right pieces have come into place and that's part of why we are so excited about it. And then the cherry on top is the fact that the IRA presents some support for geothermal technologies in the form of tax credits that will help accelerate deployment of these technologies. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

That's really exciting. How will someone experience this technology when it comes to market and when it's actually out in the world?

Mia Diawara: 

Yeah. I mean, it'll be the technology that's powering your lights. It's one of those things where it'll be a little bit invisible, right. I think we, at this point, have come to expect the lights to be on, our air conditioning to work. There's been a heat wave across many parts of the United States and world. And in the Bay area, we had some really hot weather earlier this week and there was an alert sent out: Okay, everyone, please try to conserve energy and unplug things. 

You know, if you can have any load that you can shed for this period to help us avoid rolling blackouts, please do so. And so it's almost something that you notice more acutely when it's going wrong. And having power that you can throttle versus uh, so you're not having to ask folks to make changes and do the demand response. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

The third kind of business Lowercarbon Capital invests in – companies helping communities become more resilient, more capable of surviving the blows they’re taking from climate change. In effect, buying time. 

Mia Diawara: 

The communities that will be impacted first and worst are communities of color, poor communities, communities in the global south. And thinking about ways that we can increase water efficiency of farming with a company that we've invested in like Coda tech to help to automate irrigation and save water given water's gonna be harder and harder to come by and access. Or companies that are working on parametric flood insurance to help those impacted by floods recover more quickly and leveraging satellite technology to do so.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

So, how does Lowercarbon Capital figure out what to invest in? With billions of dollars and the planet on the line? It’s a lot of pressure to choose wisely. 

Naturally, VCs – even climate VCs – are looking for the largest opportunities. So they start with some tough questions, like: 

Mia Diawara: 

Why now? So what are the technological leaps or the shifts in markets or the shifts in consumer behavior that make this company possible now in the way that it wasn't before? And if you think about the world that this company exists in and where it'll be in five years, ten years, what has to be true about that world for the company to succeed? 

And if you're assuming that an entire industry is going to materialize out of thin air in order for this company to serve that industry or that there are a lot of factors outside of this company's control that have to go perfectly right for this to work out. That probably is going to be a really tough investment to make. And so it’s looking at the broader landscape and making sure all the pieces are in the right place to facilitate this company’s success. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

So for Lowercarbon Capital to make an investment, a company’s success can’t depend on outside factors -- like politics. Hearing that, I was so curious to ask Mia about the new climate bill. 

How will BILLIONS of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act impact climate tech? That’s after the break.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Yesh Pavlik Slenk here. I’m back with Mia Diawara. As a partner at Lowercarbon Capital, Mia’s on a mission to find – and invest in – technologies that slash emissions and save the planet. 

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, known as the IRA, billions of federal dollars are FINALLY going to fighting climate change. Some analysts say the IRA will reduce emissions by as much as 40% by 2030.  It will help expand clean energy –  like wind and solar – and create incentives for carbon capture. 

When it passed and I heard the news, my body felt like I’d just had several shots of espresso. And to celebrate, it made me want to work harder. 

Lowercarbon Capital was stoked too. 

Mia Diawara: 

This is a huge deal and I think a win for everyone in the climate tech ecosystem. And I think it's not an overstatement to say that this is a true game changer. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

She’s excited about things like tax credits and grants and other federal programs that’ll make investing in climate tech easier. But Mia said, even while they were celebrating the climate bill’s passage, Lowercarbon Capital wasn’t waiting around for its implementation.

Remember Zanskar, geothermal tech startup? They didn’t invest in Zanskar with the hope that  the IRA might pass -- they felt the company would succeed whether or not there were any federal incentives for alternative energy. The passage of the IRA? That was the cherry on top.

Mia Diawara: 

We fundamentally do not underwrite technology based on future policy that we hope materializes. Obviously we'll need a favorable regulatory environment for a number of the technologies that we pass but when it comes to things like subsidies and tax credits, we really like to invest in technologies that can get there on their own.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Mia is already looking at what she hopes the NEXT climate bill will include. She says, one issue with this bill is that it’s rewarding companies that are cutting their emissions -- which is good -- BUT it’s not rewarding companies that are clean from the get go. Like tech startups in the steel industry, for example. 

Mia Diawara: But if you look at technologies, say companies that are building very cutting edge technologies to produce steel without emissions in the first place versus the tax credits for carbon capture in industrial facilities. The latter benefits while the former does not. And so this light bulb went off for us around the company -- policy makers, not being able to write policy for technologies they don't know exist.

We're doing a lot to try to educate our companies on the best ways to make sure that folks know what they're working on. So that then in the next round of climate friendly policy, they’re included.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

The IRA will help to build more climate resistant infrastructure. 

Nearly every episode this season, our guests have mentioned how important EQUITY is - as this happens. Gilbert Blue Feather Rosas talking about kids in low-income neighborhoods with super high rates of asthma from emissions; Wes Gobar talking about how the Black community of Union Hill fought the Atlantic Coast pipeline; Christie Gamble talking about rebuilding the infrastructure of low-income neighborhoods with carbon-storing concrete. 

So I asked Mia how her firm approaches equity. She was quick to point out that many communities are already facing the climate crisis. And they need solutions now. 

Mia, can you tell me what is at risk if we don't think about equity and justice in climate investing specifically? 

Mia Diawara:

Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking most recently about the communities in Pakistan and the 50 million people that are being displaced right now as a result of flooding. The impacts of climate change are not going to impact all communities equally. And the loss of place and the trauma and the displacement is gonna be really concentrated in the communities that are already struggling the most. We've kind of powered this entire economy with fossil fuels and the benefits and burdens of that fossil based economy have never been equally distributed. 

So yes, we need to get to zero as quickly as possible, but also how we get there matters. And from my perspective, one of the biggest levers that we can pull is having representation in investment circles, at the heads of companies, from communities that are going to be most impacted and giving folks a seat at the table to allow them to advocate for and weigh in on what those communities need. 

If you look at who is leading most investment firms and who is leading most climate tech companies, there is a significant lack of representation from communities of color, from folks coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds. And so doing what we can to increase that  representation is critically important. And I think that something that we as an industry have not done a good job of in the past. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

If equity isn’t baked into climate investment and policy, we are in for a repeat of how COVID has widened inequalities. 

Mia Diawara:

We talked about coming out of Covid, a K shaped recovery where there's kind of this split in outcomes and some people are benefiting while others are being significantly negatively impacted. And there's the risk for the same thing to happen as a part of the net zero transition where the benefits to early investors and the global north, where a lot of wealth is concentrated are extreme. 

And everyone else will bear the disadvantages and the burdens and that accumulation will continue until we see levels of inequity that are kind of untenable as a society. I think we're already seeing those in a lot of ways. 

And so part of that I think is also ultimately investing in parts of the global south and channeling capital toward companies that are founded by folks who are representative of the communities that we ultimately hope to serve.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

And working with communities bearing the brunt of climate change is going to be a really important job of the future. 

Mia Diawara:

I'm thinking of the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, and how important grassroots organizations and community organizations were in helping to kind of fill the gaps that were not addressed by federal and state governments or the public sector. And the creative problem solving at the community level to foster resilience, to help people to know where to go when the heat wave is about to hit or knowing who your neighbors are to check in on them. 

Mia Diawara:

The other one that I think is, even as we move as quickly as possible, working on climate is a marathon, not a sprint. I think there are going to be roles related to mental wellbeing, mental health professionals, specifically focused on two things. One is supporting communities that are suffering from displacement and kind of need support after the really traumatic event. The sense of desolation that people feel from having lost their homes and these places that are really meaningful to them. That area is really important.  

I think also for supporting the growing climate workforce. How we find purpose and maintain optimism, acknowledging that things may get worse -- will get worse -- before they'll get better. And so maintaining motivation, maintaining optimism in light of that, I think there are roles for climate focused mental health professionals to play there. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

You may want a job like Mia’s, as an investor, or in climate tech directly. But what are the skills and knowledge you need to get one of these jobs?   

Mia Diawara: 

We invest a lot in deep tech and frontier technology, and it requires you look at the backgrounds of the folks on our team, they lean more toward the technical side. We've got many scientists and engineers on our team. And I do think that building the technical talent is gonna be critical, not only from an investment standpoint, but in terms of being able to outfit companies to move really quickly and to solve the problems that they're trying to address.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

And that could mean more schooling – Mia herself has a bachelor's degree in science, technology and society from Stanford and a master's in civil engineering. 

But it also means executives must learn to be more flexible if they’re going to fill this growing need. 

Mia Diawara:

Figuring out how to retool workforces to be able to participate in the net zero economy. Whether that's what's necessary for geothermal based electricity generation, and the overlap between that and jobs in the fossil fuel sector and the potential for being able to transition, you know, one workforce from doing one thing to the other.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Well, on the topic of jobs, what is the most important job of the future? Maybe one that doesn't even exist yet, but that we definitely need.  

Mia Diawara: 

Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like the VC and technologist in me says just founders in innovation at large. You're seeing really cool solutions emerge at the intersection of different disciplines, which is to say, a mechanical and a chemical solution. I think just innovation at large and kind of fearlessness and being able to start companies and kind of pursue wacky ideas is just always going to be critical and kind of thinking always about like what the next frontier looks like and how we can improve upon the existing set of technologies. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

The Green careers space suffers from a supply and demand problem. All of this increased private and public investment means there is a desperate need for tech talent. In fact, a coalition of tech startups and VC firms got together to create something called The Climate Draft, to get more folks to work in climate tech. Lowercarbon Capital co-founders Chris and Crystal Sacca are both involved. We’ll put a link to the Climate Draft in the show notes along with Lowercarbon’s jobs board, “Get off the couch!”

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Now it’s time for Ask Yesh, where I help you with your biggest green career challenges. If you have a question, write to me on Twitter, at Yesh Says with the hashtag Ask Yesh. 

Today, how to decide if you should work at a big company or a small start up or grassroots organization? 

Well, I’m so glad you asked. It is something a lot of people struggle with!

Remember, Mia had many different experiences before she became an investor at Lowercarbon Capital. And with each new experience, a job, a college class, or a fellowship, she learned something new. Not only about the planet, but herself. 

It reminded me of a great metaphor that I LOVE from my friend at EDF, Katie Anderson. It’s a little wacky but trust me, it’s totally helpful. 

So think about your ideal organization or company for your career and if that employer were metaphorically a boat, would it be an ocean liner or a speed boat? The ocean liner is like being part of a big organization, trying to move a big needle. It’s gonna be slow but you have potential to make a huge impact. 

Or, maybe you'd be better on a speed boat, perhaps at a startup where everyone wears many hats and spins many plates. You excel at making quick decisions. You like zipping around. You might only move the needle a little bit, but you have the opportunity to move a lot of little needles all at once, and often. 

I actually posed this to Mia, after she told me about her time working with TPG, the giant investment firm. 

Mia Diawara: 

I think I was definitely a little boat person on an ocean liner, who also saw the value of being on the ocean liner and even a small movement of the needle can have a really massive impact when you're in these large organizations. But it's just a lot harder to achieve versus being places that are smaller and more agile, where change can just happen a lot more quickly. And I think you can also be on a little boat within an ocean liner. You're kinda the dinghy on the side and there are teams that are really fostering innovation within these larger organizations and really moving the needle in smaller ways within the behemoth. 

But I definitely did come to this realization that I was more of a small boat person and liked the agility and agency that you see in smaller organizations to build things in a really effective way from the beginning. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

For me, I am a speed boat person, which led me to Climate Corps. So it’s like I’m on a speedboat working for the ocean liner that is EDF. 

So Mia’s experience at TPG led her to realize she didn’t want to be in a large company forever, trying to make big change slowly. She wanted to be at a smaller company, where she could move lots of needles quickly. That made Lowercarbon Capital a smart move. For her.   

So maybe you are an ocean liner, or a speed boat person or maybe you are the dinghy on the side of the ocean liner. The point is you can’t realize what type of organization you want to be in -- or where you would excel -- if you don’t have some experiences that teach will you. So jump on the boat -- any boat -- and get to work! 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

And that's it for this episode! Make sure to listen and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. And share this podcast with a friend so you can both tune in each week and hear how you can help fight climate change. And learn where the jobs are and how you can make a difference. 

In the next episode of Degrees; Reliable charging infrastructure for electric vehicles is a missing piece in our effort to electrify transportation. I talk with Kameale Terry, co-founder of Charger Help, about how her company is filling this need and growing the green workforce.

Until then, check out our Green Jobs Hub to find all the resources you need to jumpstart your green job career search. If you want to learn more about the latest trends in climate tech from innovators and entrepreneurs, sign up for EDF’s newsletter, Climate Tech Brief. 

Degrees is presented by Environmental Defense Fund. Amy Morse is our producer. Podcast Allies is our production company. Tressa Versteeg [ver-STEG], Elaine Grant, Matthew Simonson and Rye Taylor worked on this episode, with help from Elizabeth Miller. Our music is Shame, Shame, Shame from my favorite band, Lake Street Dive. And I’m your host, Yesh Pavlik Slenk. But the foundation of this show, dear listener, is you. Stay fired up y’all.

MUSIC

Change is coming, oh yeah

Ain’t no holding it back

Ain't no running 

Change is coming, oh yeah!

Mia Diawara: 

It's been historically a really tricky process to identify where the best geothermal resources exist [dog barking] and a very cost intensive process. [dog barking] 

Sorry, I’ve got noodle in the background. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

What's your dog's name?

Mia Diawara:

Noodle.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

That's a great name!  I love it. Well, Noodle is welcome to join the podcast if that is necessary. 

Degrees is produced with Podcast Allies. The artwork is by illustrator Bee Johnson. Degrees theme music is by the amazing band Lake Street Dive. We love their powerful video and song Making Do, all about climate change.