Eric Rubenstein is an oil and gas banker turned climate tech investor based in Houston. As founder of New Climate Ventures, he focuses on bridging the gap between traditional energy and climate innovation, bringing a pragmatic perspective shaped by his background in finance and fossil fuels.

In this episode we talked about:

🌡️ The critical need for more power generation capacity and why we need both renewable and reliable energy sources with built-in redundancy

📊 How the ability to measure and monitor carbon impacts drove Eric's interest in technologies like carbon capture, bioplastics, and carbon utilization

🔄 Practical advice for professionals looking to transition into climate tech, emphasizing gradual, deliberate steps and community engagement

🍸 How to turn CO2 into vodka

#climatetech #carbontech #energytransition #renewableenergy

Julia Bialetska is the founder of S.Lab, a Ukrainian company creating sustainable packaging solutions from agricultural waste.

In this episode we talked about:

🌱 How S.Lab transforms agricultural waste into packaging that can be used in food, pharmaceuticals, electronics, furniture and fashion

📊 The impact of EU regulations requiring all packaging to be recyclable or reusable by 2030, and why that means companies are rushing to find sustainable alternatives

⚙️ The parallels between today's sustainable materials evolution and the plastic revolution of the last century

🇺🇦 The resilience of Ukrainian startups operating during wartime and the growing recognition they're receiving globally

💰 S. Lab’s impressive pipeline worth approximately 20 million euros in monthly revenue and their current fundraising round of 2.5 million euros

#ClimateTech #SustainablePackaging #Packaging #Mycelium

Jannik De Winter is an investor at PT1, a Berlin-based VC focused on greening the built environment. He recently co-authored a white paper on adaptation tech—the technologies we’ll need now that we’ve officially blown past 1.5°C. We talked about why climate resilience is an investment opportunity, not just a government expense, and why adaptation tech is still so poorly defined.

We touched on:

🔥 How climate adaptation tech is more than just seawalls and sandbags—it includes urban cooling, climate risk modeling, and even giving EV batteries a second life
💰 The trillion-dollar adaptation funding gap and why most of it isn’t coming from the private sector (yet)
🌍 Why Europe, and especially Germany, is ahead on adaptation policy, and what that means for startups and investors
🚰 The wild inefficiencies in water infrastructure—40% of Italy’s piped water just disappears—and the startups trying to fix it
🛰️ AI-powered disaster detection, from wildfire monitoring via satellite to real-time flood tracking
🎙️ PT1’s upcoming event on adaptation tech in Berlin, plus their podcast series diving into specific adaptation challenges

#AdaptationTech #ClimateFinance #ClimateTech