Leaders in Cleantech
Business & Finance
About
Leaders in Cleantech is a bi-monthly podcast hosted by David Hunt, founder of Hyperion Search. Each episode features candid conversations with the founders, CEOs, and innovators driving the clean energy and mobility transitions. We go beyond technology—diving into the human side of the journey. From early failures to funding wins, we explore what it really takes to lead: building teams, shaping culture, and navigating complexity in a fast-changing world. This is a podcast about cleantech, but it’s also a podcast about leadership. 🎙️ Ranked in the top 1.5% of podcasts globally by ListenNotes. 📍 Topics: #Cleantech #Leadership #EnergyStorage #EMobility #SmartCities #Renewables #ClimateTech smartcities
Episodes
- Howard Johns – CEO POP Energy
Howard Johns, CEO of POP Energy, shares his extensive experience in the clean energy sector, spanning over 20 years. He details his journey from environmental activism to founding companies like Southern Solar and Ovesco CIC, emphasizing c…
- Chris Pritchett – Shoosmiths
Chris Pritchett discusses his extensive experience in commercial Energy and Mobility law, focusing on renewable energy projects in solar, wind, and EV infrastructure. He shares insights from his work advising funders and developers, as wel…
- Pete Armstrong - CEO/CTO of Mixergy
Dr. Pete Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of Mixergy, discusses the development of smart hot water technology and its role in energy management. The conversation covers the transition toward connected energy assets in residential and commerci…
- Philipp Man – terralayr
Philipp Man, co-founder and CEO of terralayr, joins Leaders in Cleantech to discuss his company's focus on energy infrastructure, flexibility, and battery storage. The episode covers terralayr's business model, the state of the European st…
- Adrien Pinsard – Telis
Adrien Pinsard, CEO of Telis Energy, shares insights on the company's decentralized renewable energy development model and the evolving European energy landscape. The discussion covers the growing role of battery storage, grid constraints,…
- Mike Nakrani – VEV
In this episode I’m Joined by Mike Nakrani, CEO of VEV. Mike is an OG in the electrification of transport, and that’s ignoring the milk float joyride! We talk about the challenges, opportunities and many converging technologies and factors…
- Johannes Kirnberger– Delta Charge
In this episode, I’m joined by Johannes Kirnberger, co-founder and Managing Director of Delta Charge, a Swedish-German company building Europe’s next-generation charging and battery infrastructure for electric freight. Johannes shares his…
- Hyperion Q4 Market and Talent Review
In this episode, David Hunt discusses the key insights from the Hyperion Q4 Market and Talent Review, highlighting the significant shifts in the cleantech sector during 2025. The conversation covers the maturation of the industry, the focu…
- Devrim Celal – Kraken
Devrim Celal– Kraken In this episode of Leaders in Cleantech, David Hunt is joined once again by Devrim Celal, Chief Flexibility & Marketing Officer at Kraken, nearly six years after their first conversation in 2019—back when Devrim was CE…
- Juergen Mayerhofer – enspired
In this episode of Leaders in Cleantech, I speak with Juergen Mayerhofer, CEO and co-founder of enspired, the Vienna-based company using fully automated, AI-driven trading to optimise flexible power assets – especially grid-scale batteries…
- Gregory Dewerpe – Noa
In this episode I’m joined by Gregory Dewerpe, Founder of NOA (formerly A/O), to cut through the noise on climate investing. We talk about the shift from abundance to discipline, why Europe and the US are now playing different games, and h…
- Liliane Ableitner – Exnaton
About Liliane Ableitner: Liliane is the co-founder and CEO of the climate tech startup exnaton. In 2019, she graduated with a PhD in information systems from one of Europe’s most renowned universities ETH Zurich. In 2020, she co-founded a…
- Leaders In Clean Tech #156: Andrew Gilligan – Fluence
Join David Hunt, host of the Leaders in Cleantech podcast, as he delves into the future of battery storage with Andrew Gilligan, Senior Director of Global Markets and Development at Fluence. In this episode, Andrew shares his journey from…
- Joachim Lohse – Ampcontrol
In this episode of Leaders in Cleantech, I speak with Joachim Lohse, CEO and co-founder of Ampcontrol, about his journey from writing LinkedIn blog posts as a young consultant to founding one of Europe’s most innovative smart charging soft…
- Emmanuel (Manu) Masini – Mantle8
Hydrogen has for decades been talked about as the fuel of the future, the economics, among other things stand it’s way, producing cheap hydrogen isn’t easy, but what if nature has already done the hard work for us? In this episode of Leade…
- Joe McDonald – TEM
Rewiring Energy: Disruption, Transparency, and Scaling with Purpose – Joe McDonald, TEM In this energised episode, David Hunt is joined by Joe McDonald, Co-founder and CEO of TEM – a fast-scaling UK energytech startup reshaping how energy…
- Danijel Višević – World Fund
🎧 Episode and guest overview In this episode of Leaders in Cleantech , David Hunt is joined by Danijel Visevic, Managing Partner of World Fund, Europe’s largest climate tech VC. Danijel shares his personal and professional journey — from…
- Monica Collings – Cleantech Chair & NED
What’s it all about? In this episode, I’m joined by Monica Collings—former CEO of Vattenfall UK and ESB Energy, and now a board chair, non-exec, and strategic advisor across the energy transition space. We discuss her journey from executiv…
- Jan Lozek – Future Energy Ventures
🎙 Episode 150 – Jan Lozek, Managing Director & Founder, Future Energy Ventures In this milestone episode of Leaders in Cleantech, David Hunt is joined by Jan Lozek, a veteran investor and the founder of Future Energy Ventures, one of Euro…
- Leaders In Cleantech #148 Quentin 'Q' Scrimshire – Modo Energy
What’s it all about? Energy Storage, to infinity and beyond! How do you forecast and predict revenues from your energy storage assets, even if not built yet? Modo have a range of solutions to help asset owners, developers and investors to…
- Leaders In Cleantech #147 Joost Kruytzer – Big Circle Ventures
What’s it all about? Building cleantech start-ups, at scale. It can be confusing, the world of Incubators, accelerators and venture builders, also known as start-up studios. Who does what, how and why? In this episode we clarify some of th…
- Leaders In Cleantech #146 Malin Carlstrom – Climentum Capital
What’s it all about? Investing in Hardtech! Yes, it’s true, some VC’s do invest in hardtech/deeptech, knowing the specific challenges of supporting companies of this nature to scale. This week I speak with Malin Carlstrom of Danish VC Clim…
- Leaders In Cleantech #145 Keith Bradbury – Ember
What’s it all about? Clean, efficient, reliable, electric public transport. After traveling by Bus and Coach across five continents, Keith Bradbury and Co-Founder Pierce Glennie made the switch from Fintech to Cleantech, with a solution to…
- Leaders In Cleantech #144 Joachim Rupp – Detra Solar
What’s it all about? Solar, and moving from corporate life to a start up. I first met my guest today, Joachim Rupp at a start-up within a corporate, building Viessmann’s Photovoltaic business, before that he’d been in some big corporate ro…
- Leaders In Cleantech #143 Dr. Ian Campbell – Breathe Battery Technologies
What’s it all about? Batteries. More specifically, software enabled batteries helping to make Electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and wearables, more efficient, providing better customer experiences. I speak to another start-up spun o…
- Leaders In Cleantech Bitesize #142 Federico Cristoforoni – Net Zero Insights - Q1 Funding Trends
In start-up world everyone wants to know about the deals. Who raised what, which VC's are spending some of that 'dry powder' all these things are important, but looking at the bigger trends is perhaps more useful. In this Bitesize episode…
- Leaders In Cleantech #141 David Trainavicius – PVCase
What’s it all about? Solar. Another part of the value-chain explored by this BNEF award-winning, Mega-funding round landing solar SaaS start-up/scale-up. We speak with founder and CEO David Trainavvicius about the journey so far. About Dav…
- Leaders in Cleantech #140 - Davor Sutija – NexWafe
What’s it all about? Solar. But not rooftops this time, the other end of the value-chain. Wafers are not only a large part of the cost of solar modules, producing them is also very energy intensive, and therefore carbon emitting. Through i…
- Leaders in Cleantech #139 - Andres Anijalg – Roofit
What’s it all about? Solar. Beautiful Solar roofs. This harks back to my early days in solar, founding a solar EPC which initially at least focused of residential roofs, before expanding to include large commercial installations. Roofit ha…
- Leaders in Cleantech #138 - Gavin White - About:Energy
What’s it all about Batteries, patents, entrepreneurship, and the founder’s journey. I first met my guest Gavin White at Energy Tech Summit in Warsaw a little over a year ago. So much has happened in that time, and he and business partner…
- Leaders in Cleantech #137 - Akshat Rathi - Bloomberg News
What’s it all about? People, Policies and Technology. Unsung cleantech heroes, why we shouldn’t worry too much about Trump in the Whitehouse, at least where the IRA is concerned. I take a deep dive into the economic and technological drive…
- Leaders in Cleantech #136 - Stephen Brittain - Insurtech Gateway
What’s it all about? The perhaps surprising insurtech solution to unlocking innovation and scaling for clean technology deployment. We've often discussed how business model innovation can be as important if not more so, than technological…
- Leaders in Cleantech #135 - Bill Esterson - MP Shadow Minister
What’s it all about? Policy and government. For a long time I’ve said that the cleantech sector has done well despite, not because of politics and policy. I do however think that to truly scale we do need politicians and policies to suppor…
- Leaders in Cleantech #134 - Anton Arts SET Ventures
What’s it all about? An end of year reflection on the cleantech funding landscape during 2023, and a view of a leading European Cleantech VC on what will be the defining technologies for investment in 2024. Some tips for founders who need…
- Leaders in Cleantech #133 - David Watson – Ohme
What’s it all about? Flexibility, the energy transition, the mobility transition, convergence, entrepreneurship, luck, customer focus and Apples!! There is a whole lot to unpack in this episode, and some great insights and advice into the…
- Leaders in Cleantech #132 - Joshua Aviv – SparkCharge
What’s it all about? Speeding the mobility transition where grid connections and EV infrastructure are lacking, expensive or flaky. Award winning entrepreneur Josh Aviv has developed both a unique product and business model that delivers e…
- Leaders in Cleantech #131 - Alexander Helling – Baseload Capital
What’s it all about? Geothermal. How big is the opportunity to exploit this renewable resource for heating, cooling and for power generation? Where are the hot spots (excuse the pun), what are the business models and use cases? How can we…
- Leaders in Cleantech #130 - Ulrich Seitz – Climate Impact Investor
What’s it all about? The A-Bomb- No not that one. Why does no one talk about Adaptation? Of course we should and must keep working on inventing, scaling and investing in technologies that combat climate change, and help prevent the worst o…
- Leaders in Cleantech #129 - Hannah Scott – Climate Tech Supercluster
What’s it all about? Innovation and University spin-outs! In particular we look at the UK scene and support in the Oxford, Cambridge, London triangle. I had a great conversation with CEO of Oxfordshire Greentech, Hannah Scott about the sup…
- Leaders in Cleantech #128 - Marc Multin - Switch
What’s it all about? A seamless e-mobility experience! From Phd to Founder, solving some of the key technical aspects of a fully integrated user experience for changing at all scales, public, fleet, residential and all of these combined. W…
- Leaders in Cleantech #127 - Christoph Berger - vilisto
Christoph Berger - vilisto What’s it all about? Renewable Heat, as we’ve featured recently, so often the elephant in the room. Addressing the needs of decarbonising heat is critical to the clean energy transition. In this episode we addres…
- Leaders in Cleantech #126 - Helen Czerski
Helen Czerski What’s it all about? Letting lose my inner nerd! I’ve known Helen for some time, known in a loose sense, we shared a panel session at a Fully Charged event some years ago, and I’ve watched with enthusiasm much of her TV and F…
- Leaders in Cleantech #125 - Jo-Jo Hubbard - Electron
What’s it all about? Flexibility, curtailment and how to use software, as well as new infrastructure to create the resilient, flexible, fit for purpose grid we need now and for the future. We also talk co-founding a company at 21, the chal…
- Leaders in Cleantech #124 - Christophe Williams - Naked Energy
What’s it all about? The often overlooked issue of renewable heat. I take dive into the world of solar thermal with Hyperion client Naked Energy. Co-founder and CEO Christophe Williams has a great founder story too, from inventors genes to…
- Leaders in Cleantech #123 - Jørgen Erdal - Evyon
What’s it all about? Batteries, smart use of second life batteries. There is of course so much demand for new batteries, and that won’t go away, but soon we have a lot of batteries too useful to recycle just yet, but not useful for electri…
- Leaders in Cleantech #122 - Tore Harritshøj - Spirii
What’s it all about? Seamlessly easy EV charging and the evolution to a full stack of revenues and grid services, the mobility transition supporting the energy transition. Also, the challenges and motivations of a co- founder CEO, and his…
- Leaders in Cleantech #121 - Will Tope
What’s it all about? Sodium metal batteries have hit the headlines of late, with major announcements from BYD and CATL for use in electric vehicles. I speak to CCO or LiNa, a UK start-up developing Sodium batteries for stationary storage,…
- Leaders in Cleantech #120 - Uri Levine
What’s it all about? Entrepreneurship, and the journey of failures. Uri Levine is the founder of not one, but two Unicorns, Waze and Moovit. He continues to be an active entrepreneur and investor, but his passion to help create more start-…
- Leaders in Cleantech #119 - Domenico Traverso
What’s it all about? Innovation and Intraprenuership! How can large organisations be disruptive, innovative and avoid the challenges of inertia that so often exist in corporations. Domenico has been doing this for many years, in more than…
- Leaders in Cleantech #118 - Zena Everett
What’s it all about? Company culture, high performing teams and leadership. I speak with long time friend and collaborator Zena Everett about these topic and more as we dig into our personal and client experiences in this field for many ye…