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Impact Unicorns with Dr. Indranil Ghosh
#19: Investing in the Natural Economy
In this week's episode of Impact Unicorns, we turn our attention to Investing in the Natural Economy. The past couple of years has seen an explosion of interest to invest in sustainable land use practices (e.g., reforestation, regenerative agriculture, peatland restoration, rewilding & biodiversity restoration). Many of these natural economy business models are negative-carbon and could avail of the expanding market for voluntary carbon credits.
Under the natural economy banner, there is also excitement around technology-enabled businesses (e.g., vertical farming, nature-based construction materials) that produce food and other materials much more efficiently than traditional pathways. These businesses can often be located in farming and forestry communities, thereby bringing high paid jobs to the region.
In this podcast, Jane Morrison-Scott and Martin Valenti from the South of Scotland Enterprise - a regional development organization - talk about how they are supporting Natural Economy projects that help the environment, while bringing jobs and prosperity to local communities. We were also joined by David Farquhar, CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions, who builds community-based vertical farms that can produce a wide range of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and saplings for local consumption.
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#25: The Many Wonders of Biochar
23:01|Welcome to another episode of Impact Unicorns, today I am delighted to have Fred Murrell on our show. We previously heard about bamboo and the amazing company Rizome, from David Sands, Fred's co-founder.Rizome has given us the miracle of growing, using and converting bamboo into structural materials. Fred comes from the energy world and has been looking into energy and biochar, as well as their vital impact on the environment and sustainable technologies.#24: Miracle Bamboo - the Planetary Climate Solution
41:41|Welcome to Impact Unicorns. Today, I am delighted to have David Sands as our guest. David is a real pioneer in the use of bamboo in construction. He is an architect and he has been using bamboo for over 40 years and today, he is going to tell us about his journey and about Rizome, an amazing company that does the entire value chain of growing bamboo forests using carbon funding, converting the material into sustainable construction materials, and also is able to produce biochar as an additional product from the process.#23: High Efficiency Electrical Transmission and Distribution
32:15|Welcome to another episode of Impact Unicorns! I’m Indranil Ghosh, your host. Today, I’ve got a very exciting guest – Jason Huang, CEO and Founder of TS Conductor.This company is a high-efficiency, electrical cable company that just achieved a very impressive Series A funding round. Jason has a PhD in Material Science and comes from a very scientific and technical background. He has also been a CEO and CTO of CTC Global, an Industrial company, as well as a Vice President of BAE Systems. We look forward to you tuning into this week’s episode, which is full of engaging insights relating to energy efficiency and sustainable technologies.#22: Carbon Removal
37:05|I’m delighted to introduce Patricia Da Silva as our special guest.Patricia is a civil engineer by training and she’s had a long career in sustainability. She developed and built wind farms in Eastern Europe and sustainable buildings in South America, before becoming an entrepreneur and investor in the energy transition and impact space.Today, we’re going to focus on Patricia's work in the negative carbon economy.#21: Building a Carbon Offset Procurement Platform
41:11|Welcome to Impact Unicorns! This week, I’m delighted to welcome Maria Filmanovic to the podcast. Maria has been an impact investor for almost a decade with a great track record from top institutions like Goldman Sachs Asset Management. She has been involved in all forms of ESG investing, in real assets, private equity, infrastructure as well as carbon removal. Recently, she started her new company Abatable, which is a carbon offsetting procurement platform backed by Y-Combinator. In this podcast, Maria and I discuss the importance of the Voluntary Carbon Markets as a way to offset the emissions from hard-to-abate sectors of the economy.#20: Bringing Access to the Bottom of the Pyramid
50:07|In this week’s episode of Impact Unicorns, I speak with Florian Kemmerich. Florian is Managing Partner of Bamboo Capital, a leading Emerging Markets impact investor. Bamboo Capital invests in businesses that increase access for people at the bottom of the pyramid to energy, financial services, education, and healthcare. In this podcast, Florian and I will talk about the importance of partnerships between the public and private sectors to invest in transformative companies, while also developing the skilled workforce and infrastructure that these companies need to succeed. We will also discuss why it is proving easier to build scalable businesses that bring energy and financial services to poor people in rural areas, than to replicate the same success for education and healthcare.