An international team of scientists has unveiled the largest and most detailed map of the universe ever created using the James Webb Space Telescope, revealing nearly 800,000 galaxies stretching back to almost the beginning of time. The COSMOS-Web project not only challenges long-held beliefs about galaxy formation in the early universe but also unexpectedly revealed 10 times more galaxies than anticipated along with supermassive black holes Hubble couldn t see.
A diabetes drug may soon double as a treatment for liver disease. Dapagliflozin, an SGLT-2 inhibitor typically used for type 2 diabetes, significantly improved liver inflammation and scarring in patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) during a clinical trial in China. Participants on the drug saw better liver outcomes and fewer side effects than those on a placebo. Although more research is needed, especially in diverse populations, this finding hints at a transformative role for existing medications in tackling liver diseases.
Frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians are not just battling habitat loss and pollution they're now also contending with increasingly brutal heat waves and droughts. A sweeping 40-year study shows a direct link between the rise in extreme weather events and the growing number of species landing on the endangered list. Europe, the Amazon, and Madagascar have become danger zones, with amphibians unable to adapt quickly enough. But there s hope scientists are calling for focused conservation efforts like habitat restoration and micro-refuges to help these vulnerable creatures survive.
Shrinking silicon transistors have reached their physical limits, but a team from the University of Tokyo is rewriting the rules. They've created a cutting-edge transistor using gallium-doped indium oxide with a novel "gate-all-around" structure. By precisely engineering the material's atomic structure, the new device achieves remarkable electron mobility and stability. This breakthrough could fuel faster, more reliable electronics powering future technologies from AI to big data systems.
Scientists have discovered that a molecule known for defending animal immune systems called itaconate also plays a powerful role in plants. Researchers showed that itaconate not only exists in plant cells but actively stimulates growth, such as making corn seedlings grow taller. This surprising crossover between plant and animal biology may unlock new, natural ways to boost agriculture and even improve human health.
Scientists have uncovered over 200 new giant viruses lurking in ocean waters that not only help shape marine ecosystems but also manipulate photosynthesis in algae. These massive viruses once nearly invisible to science are now being exposed using powerful supercomputing and a new tool called BEREN. By studying these viruses, researchers hope to predict harmful algal blooms and even explore biotech applications from the novel enzymes found in these viral genomes.
Bronze Age life changed radically around 1500 BC in Central Europe. New research reveals diets narrowed, millet was introduced, migration slowed, and social systems became looser challenging old ideas about nomadic Tumulus culture herders.
Harvard and PSI scientists have managed to freeze normally fleeting quantum states in time, creating a pathway to control them using pure electronic tricks and laser precision.
In this episode, I talk with Taylor Krause, who went from working on hydrogen policy at RMI to finding a quantum physicist husband and unexpected fame on Netflix's Love Is Blind. We unpack her surreal journey from clean-energy wonk to popular influencer and how she's navigating using her newfound influence.
Greetings and salutations, everyone, this is Volts for June 6, 2025, "A journey from clean-energy wonkery to influencer fame." I'm your host, David Roberts. A wonk with an advanced degree in policy working for a clean-energy think tank is a familiar character to Volts listeners.
A wonk with an advanced degree in policy working for a clean-energy think tank who then goes on to feature on a reality TV dating show wherein she meets a man who falls for her and proposes to her without ever having laid eyes on her, and she says yes, and they go on to get married, becoming a popular influencer couple … is, I’m guessing, a much less familiar character to Volts listeners.
Taylor Krause
Yet that is the experience of Taylor Krause, who went from hydrogen policy work at RMI to the show Love Is Blind, in what sounds like a modern fairy tale but is, as millions of people apparently knew well before me, very real.
I heard about this and thought to myself, "What a wild experience. I’d like to talk to her about it!" So, I did. Enjoy.
With no further ado, Taylor Krause, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Taylor Krause
I'm so excited to be here.
David Roberts
This is very, very exciting for me. It's a slightly different thing than I usually do, so I want to kind of take things chronologically. So, how did you end up at RMI?
Taylor Krause
I ended up at RMI. I was at a multi-client firm called Boundary Stone Partners that specialized in clean energy clientele, and I did my master's capstone in hydrogen, and then RMI just got this really big grant to hire a hydrogen manager, and so I was recruited.
David Roberts
And your degree, you got a master's specifically in hydrogen, like science policy. What does the master's in hydrogen look like?
Taylor Krause
I went to Johns Hopkins for their energy policy program, which I did at night, and then worked full time, pretty much as a lobbyist is the best way to describe my job, and then wanted to specialize in a certain clean energy technology. I had also worked in the nonprofit sector at Citizens' Climate Lobby for about five years before that. So, I kind of mixed my specialty in federal affairs, clean hydrogen, and nonprofit advocacy working at RMI, which is a think tank. It didn't. A think tank is kind of a meta thing. Right?
David Roberts
Yes, yes, I'm very familiar with RMI.
Taylor Krause
I'm sure you've heard from a lot of people at RMI.
David Roberts
Yes. So, when did you get bitten by the hydrogen bug? When did that start?
Taylor Krause
So, it's really funny because what happened was a very realistic story. I had to do a capstone for my master's and I wanted to make sure that I was doing something that wasn't just a long paper that I wrote, and then I never looked at it again. I think a lot of people in science can attest to that experience. And so, I asked my boss at the time what would be a prudent topic area to do my capstone in. And he said, "You know, everyone's talking about hydrogen and there's a lot of money going into it, but we have no idea what it is."
And so, I was like, "Great!" And so that's kind of how I got into the hydrogen topic area. Obviously, it was a very, or still is, a pretty exciting clean energy topic. It's very novel. It's kind of the Wild West compared to a lot of other clean energy technologies out there.
David Roberts
Ongoing wild swings in policy on that score. I just heard that the Republicans are thinking about revoking — which is the hydrogen tax credit, is it 45V?
Taylor Krause
45V, yes.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. I think they're thinking about revoking that entirely now. We'll see. Here's a question before we get into the other stuff. Do you remain as excited about hydrogen today as you were when you first got into it?
Taylor Krause
I would say I still remain really excited about the potential for hydrogen. I think everyone that's in the industry has joked that the clean hydrogen economy has been coming for the past 10 years, or the past 50 years.
David Roberts
Really, a century if you go back to the very beginning, it's like Jules Verne or whatever was the first person to describe it.
Taylor Krause
Yeah, I think that hydrogen as a clean energy technology, whether or not it has a supportive policy environment, remains to be seen. But as a technology itself, and in terms of, like, other companies that I think will survive, it still is an exciting opportunity.
David Roberts
So, you were at RMI for several years. This is in the sort of late 2010s, early 2020s. And you were young, single, dating and kind of getting sick of it and getting ready to leave, as I understand it, reading your story. And I'm just curious — as someone who's aged out of that world a long time ago — I'm just sort of curious, like, you know, if you're sort of attracted to, you know, if you go in for the nerdy types, which, you know, sort of spoiler alert that comes up later, it seems like those types are thick on the ground in D.C. and, you know, like, you're young and attractive and gainfully employed. What is —
Taylor Krause
Yeah, what the heck?
David Roberts
What's going wrong with modern dating? I'm just sort of curious, like, what's off with the vibe? Why were you so dissatisfied?
Taylor Krause
You know, D.C., in particular, because the show is based in different cities. Every city has a limiting reagent. And I do feel like — sorry, that's my chemistry background coming out. D.C., as a city, most people that move to D.C. want to change the world or, like, have that kind of internal story at some point. I know I did. And so, not trying to stick this against anyone, but I think that lends itself to a kind of personality type. And the demographic of D.C. doesn't lend itself to the best numbers. But I think, moreover, it's a transient city. And you're working a lot. I think a lot of your personality is tied up in how much you work.
David Roberts
Yeah, the culture of work there is crazy.
Taylor Krause
So, there's a couple of factors of confluence at play where it's like, maybe there was a good pool of guys, but maybe I just wasn't meeting them because I was, you know, working, or they were working and traveling, or we were just not in the same space to meet each other.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. So then you're thinking about leaving, and this crazy idea comes across your radar. How did it come across your radar for the first time? Was this something that you thought of, or did this something that someone else came to you?
Taylor Krause
Well, so they recruit heavily in the city that they're going to. I think anyone in the ages of, like, 23 to, like, 40 knows that this is happening. And so, by the fourth or fifth friend that brought me that, they're like, "There are applications for this. You should apply." I was like, "I don't know if I should be offended that you guys think that I should date blind."
David Roberts
Well, let's back up a little bit. Let's just talk about what we're talking about here. So, this is the show Love Is Blind. It's a reality show. I'm going to proceed as if my audience is full of people like me who don't know much about anything about this. So, pardon me if I ask a lot of dumb, naive questions about it. So, this show, Love Is Blind, the premise is they get a group of guys and a group of women, and they go on "dates" where they're talking with one another, but they never see one another.
Basically, that's the premise. And they were doing it in D.C. They were doing a D.C. season in whatever, 2023. And so, a bunch of people asked you, said you should apply.
Taylor Krause
Yeah. And shot my shot.
David Roberts
And so, what is that? Do you like, film a little thing like an audition? What is it?
Taylor Krause
Oh my God. I hope that they never release whatever audition tape that was. You basically — I filled out a very long, comprehensive questionnaire and I was like, "Oh my God, this took me two hours." And you basically submit all the things that you're looking for in a life partner and your interests, and you do a personality test, and you submit pictures of like people you've dated. So they make sure that like there's people that aren't out there, like that you don't end up meeting someone else on it. So it is a very comprehensive thing.
It's not like a Google form where you fill out 10 things and whatever. Like, they are trying to find regular but impressive people to meet other regular but impressive people that align a lot more on these internal personality life goal things rather than the physical things that kind of cloud, I think, our modern dating.
David Roberts
So, you fill all this out and then what? They call you and say, "Hey, you're on."
Taylor Krause
No, they kind of do, they flirt with you for months. It makes sense because you're also at the same time going through background checks. You're going through —
David Roberts
Yeah, I wondered how much of that stuff they do. Do they do like a psych?
Taylor Krause
They do a psych eval.
David Roberts
'Cause it's a high-pressure situation, you know.
Taylor Krause
Yeah, it's not for someone who is probably in a fragile state. Definitely not. They're also looking to make sure that you have more than one compatible person on the other side. But they're only picking 15 men, 15 women. So that lends itself to, I think, quite a bit of Tetris where, until the day before you go on set, you don't know if you're going to be in that group of people. You also had to take off time from work and, in D.C., that's not... That's why I think a lot of people were actually kind of annoyed that the demographic of people were mostly folks in the private sector or nonprofit sector rather than, you know, the "Special Assistant of blah, blah, blah."
Well, I don't know a lot of offices that would allow that to happen.
David Roberts
Take a few weeks off for a dating show — I don't know if the government has policies for that. So when it is confirmed that you're doing this thing, by that point, had you worked yourself up into being excited about it and really wanting to do it, or were you more scared, having been through some of the early — you know what I mean? Like, at that point where you just, like, fully committed?
Taylor Krause
I think I was just open to it happening and I didn't really want to get my hopes up and I didn't really think that I would get picked. I just kind of was like, my name's in the hat. If this doesn't work out, I'm actually moving out of D.C. I'm moving back to San Diego. And had, like, kind of one foot out of the city. So I was just ready for the next chapter. And then when it ended up getting the green light, I was like, "Okay, let's do this thing."
David Roberts
Do they. Is this the type of thing where they take you all and you go out to some remote location and you're sort of like quarantine there for a set period of time? You can't call out that kind of thing?
Taylor Krause
Correct. You are treated very well. Obviously, there's a demanding schedule and you don't have a cell phone, which I loved.
David Roberts
How long was the sort of quarantine?
Taylor Krause
Three weeks.
David Roberts
Three weeks. Oh, faster than —
Taylor Krause
But the whole process is six weeks. So halfway through, depending on if you're still in the show, you will. Because obviously, if you don't make it, for those that don't know, you basically, for the first 10 days, are in what are called pods, where you are talking to a viable, like, mate. I'm so scientific about this. You're dating through a wall and you get engaged or you don't get engaged, or you decide that the process isn't for you and you could leave, or you continue on and then you go on to a trip. We went to Mexico, which is basically like your honeymoon, where you get to spend time with this person on vacation, which lends itself to, like, you know, a very romantic, whimsical kind of experience.
And then you come back to what we call the real world, which was basically apartments that you and your person, like, cohabitate. Ours were in Ballston, so it wasn't actually like in D.C., but maybe that was more economical. And then you continue on meeting, like, friends and family, and then you're planning a wedding at the same time, which is nuts to say now, like, but it ended up working out, like, obviously super well for my husband and me.
David Roberts
What a crazy thing. Like, did you think going in, "I literally might come out of this married?" Did that seem like a realistic possibility?
Taylor Krause
You know, I went in — to be perfectly honest, and I've said this across the board — I went in thinking, "I'm going to learn a lot about myself in this experience," and "I'm probably going to have a more open mind about dating and find my person because of the things I learned in this experience." I did not think that Netflix would go through thousands of men to find a compatible great guy for me. I was like, there's a 1%, 0.01% chance that this is going to work out for me. But there were, you know, there were girls that went in, they had wedding dresses on hold.
And I was like, "Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?" But luckily, I mean, my husband said no to the experience twice.
David Roberts
Oh, they tried to recruit him too.
Taylor Krause
Well, they don't have a problem recruiting women. They have difficulty getting guys to do it. So, I feel very confident that they were recruiting him for me.
David Roberts
Oh, like they wanted to be sure that someone in that pool was fit for you on paper, basically.
Taylor Krause
Yes, basically.
David Roberts
And I'm sort of curious, you know, you studied science in school and sort of science-minded people who love science tend to be sort of, you know, rational, left-brained types and you're thrust into a situation where A) you're making a lot of sort of instinctual rapid judgments and B) just also like emotionally very heightened, intense situations. Did you expect the level of sort of emotional involvement? Did it end up being more intense than you expected? Like, I wouldn't have any idea what to expect going in.
Taylor Krause
It was very emotionally intense, and obviously, I didn't think that I would get as far as I did. I honestly thought I'd go do this crazy thing for a couple of days and then be done. But it really did challenge you to sit with yourself and trust yourself. Because I feel like when we are dating, it's not just a solo choice a lot of the time. You are depending upon what your friends think, what your family thinks, what, you know, unfortunately for this generation of "What's their social media like?" or things like that that like shouldn't matter but they play a factor into it.
And so, for me, it was highly emotional and it was really fast. Like, to your point of being a more rational, scientifically logical person, you're like, "I'm feeling all of these things, but this just is nuts. Like, this does not make sense." But they do kind of structure it in a way that you are asking all these questions and getting to know this person in a way that accelerates the timeline of how you would have met them in the real world, where you're talking about finances, kids, and where to live.
David Roberts
Do they tell you what to talk about? How structured are these pod conversations?
Taylor Krause
You are not told what to talk about at all, but they do give you a structure of, like, "Today's theme is this." You can go in and talk about your favorite amusement parks all day if you'd rather do that and not take it seriously. But you'll probably be asked to leave if you aren't taking it seriously and you're not getting to know the person. And that's kind of a recipe for disaster. But you are given some structure and you can kind of follow it the way that you want to follow it. And, yeah, we have these journals that they provide, like, those questions and certain topics to touch on that we have in.
You'll see in the show, and it has our name on it and stuff. And, yeah, so there is some guidance, but there are no prescriptive rules.
David Roberts
So, it's like today's theme is whatever, family or religion, finances. You can see how that could strip away a lot of the extraneous stuff and get really intense really quickly. So, you meet this guy, "meet this guy" Garrett, who — I'm curious. On normal reality shows, there's some sort of process whereby people get eliminated, voted off the show, some counsel, something rejected, something. How do people get booted off Love Is Blind? Is there some sort of vote? Is this something the producers decide?
Taylor Krause
Oh, they should add that. That would make it — I'm just kidding. It's just the way that you're matched with each other. So on day one, you go on 15 dates because there are 15 other people on the other side. And then it's kind of like fraternity/sorority recruitment, where you rank each other and then they have an algorithm. My husband is a quantum physicist, and so he was like, "I need to know the algorithm," which is so funny. We met with the creator of the show afterward, and he's like, "The way that you guys would ask similar questions each day when I would talk to you guys and tell you what was going to go on for the day was just, you guys are both like, type A and clearly science people." So funny.
David Roberts
How does this work?
Taylor Krause
How does this work? And if you don't have a viable match, which kind of becomes clear, people start to break up and they don't continue on. As fewer people are there, stakes and emotions get higher because you are living with the other people that you are supposedly dating the person that you'd like to marry.
David Roberts
So does it come up a situation where, like, two of the women are after the same guy or vice versa? Or does everybody sort of pair off pretty early?
Taylor Krause
No, there are some triangles that happen, and it makes great television. I was not in a triangle.
David Roberts
Oh, lucky you.
Taylor Krause
I got very lucky.
David Roberts
So, you start talking to Garrett. You guys hit it off. You both have a science background. When did you get to see him? How does that process — you sort of checked his box. And then, what happens?
Taylor Krause
Then, they basically have you guys do what's called a reveal. So, you actually get engaged, not seeing each other.
David Roberts
So, you said "yes" to marrying Garrett, without ever having laid eyes on him, and vice versa.
Taylor Krause
Yes, I don't recommend doing that.
David Roberts
It is very crazy to me.
Taylor Krause
It's not sensical whatsoever. I do believe that I went into some metaverse and I called it, I kept calling it the simulation. Because, I mean, when you're going through it, I also had just a lot of these weird — I'm not a woo-woo person, I can't even tell you what my astrology sign is. But there's different, I don't know, different moments of when I felt like the universe, in a lot of ways, was telling me that this was something to keep going for. And there wasn't a reason to say "no" other than the logistical, logical, like, situation. But after nine days of talking through a wall, you see your fiance for the first time, which is an overstimulating experience.
David Roberts
I bet. Good God. Especially on camera.
Taylor Krause
Oh, yeah, there's like, 70 cameras watching you have this super awkward encounter and, like, your first kiss. And where do I, "Is he taller than me?" Or, like, "Do I smell good?" Like, just certain things that — I think awkward is actually really honest.
David Roberts
How could that conceivably not be awkward? I can't imagine that not being awkward for any human being.
Taylor Krause
I think, if it's not awkward, it might be a little dishonest, to be perfectly honest. Like, you might just be continuing on to be on television, which I don't knock against anyone. It's an experience that does not lend itself to always being a successful outcome. And it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And, like, how you want to spend it just really depends on the person.
David Roberts
So, I'm curious, is it built into the show, the marriage proposal thing, like, he couldn't just say, "I like you. Let's date more." Like, what's required by the show?
Taylor Krause
Yeah, there's no requirement. There's plenty of people that say, "This isn't for me, and I think we should just meet in the real world." Like, that happens pretty much every season.
David Roberts
So a marriage proposal is not, like, routine or built in, then?
Taylor Krause
No, it is. It's routine. It's part of the process. Like all the couples that continue on to the honeymoon and through the show, sometimes some people don't get engaged. They kind of just come back because there are those love triangles that happen. But for the most part, the people that continue on through the experiment, as it's referred to, are required to get engaged. I don't know if that's — I don't think they've ever had anyone that's continued in a way that they haven't been engaged. But I could be wrong.
David Roberts
And so, then the wedding and all that is all that. Also on camera, followed part of the show.
Taylor Krause
Yep.
David Roberts
And it's all wrapped up in one season. Like, if I went and watched this whole season, I would see that whole arc from you meeting to getting married at the end.
Taylor Krause
Yeah, you'd go to my wedding.
David Roberts
Well, I'm curious. Since you're not allowed to call out or communicate with the outside world while this is going on, you kind of disappear into this black hole and pop out with a husband. What did your parents think? What did your friends think? I mean, your friends must have been like, "I told you so."
Taylor Krause
I mean, they kind of know that if they don't hear from me by a certain amount of time, I got engaged.
David Roberts
Oh, right.
Taylor Krause
And so, all of my friends, I think after they met Garrett, they were just like, "Oh, wow. Yeah, this person's very compatible for you. I get why. This is still really insane. We trust you. We think you, of all of our friends, like, you would be the person that we would trust to do this and, like, have a good head on their shoulders about it." And I was like, "I mean, uh, okay." But my parents — my dad was not cool with it at first. He kind of freaked out.
David Roberts
Are your parents immigrants?
Taylor Krause
My mom is from Hong Kong.
David Roberts
So, this whole thing must have just been like Mars to her.
Taylor Krause
You know, she's very chill and she's been in the States since she was really young. So, she's very Americanized and very open-minded. She kind of basically got my dad on board, which was interesting because now they love Garrett and they think it's a wonderful blessing and a cool story and are very supportive now. But obviously, when it was happening, they were just like, "Absolutely not. What are you doing? We let you, we thought you would go do this thing and it would be fun. And now this has gone too far."
David Roberts
Well, you present them with this handsome outdoorsman, quantum physicist. You know, what are they going to do? What are they going to say?
Taylor Krause
They don't care. They were like, "No, no, no." I think it's also, you know, it speaks back to what building relationships, especially a marriage, can be to some families and like how participatory you are in something like a wedding. It really deconstructed the meaning of a lot of different things, which I really appreciated about the experience. Like, a wedding is about the two people that are getting married and it should be — you know, we eventually would like to do a bigger one, like ceremoniously like to bring our families together.
David Roberts
Did you do like a runoff elope by yourself kind of thing?
Taylor Krause
No, we did a big, on the show, you'll see at the end, they basically have the people who make it to the final stages. You've been planning your wedding this entire time, which Netflix completely pays for and was a beautiful, wonderful event for us. There's some couples that go and one person says "no." Both people say no. So they pent it up where you show up to the altar and you're saying yes or no. But Garrett and I knew. I was like, "I'm not getting in a dress in front of my family if I'm saying no or you're saying no."
David Roberts
What a crazy thing. So you haven't had a chance then to sort of like do, do the big family quasi — cause my wife and I kind of did the same thing. We got married on one coast and a bunch of our family couldn't make it. So we just got married again a week later on the other coast.
Taylor Krause
So, ah, you're onto something.
David Roberts
Everybody else could come.
Taylor Krause
Yeah. So we did our wedding here in Virginia, which was really fun. I mean, thinking it was 80 person wedding, it's obviously like all televised and probably the wildest wedding that most people will ever go to. So it was a cool experience.
David Roberts
Yeah. It must be super schmancy, right? With Netflix money, right?
Taylor Krause
It was great! I mean, and so we would love to do one back in California when it makes sense. Like, we just bought a home in D.C. and weddings are very expensive. And obviously, the show came out about six months ago, and so we have kind of just been thrown through a whirlwind, and I've never met anyone that's, like, planned a wedding and said, "Wow, this is really easy." So we're just waiting.
David Roberts
Well, I mean, you have all the time in the world now. You can do it at your leisure now. Last question about the mechanics of reality TV, which I've always sort of wondered, like, you are not seeing dailies or whatever. So, one of the things you hear about reality TV is, they're filming all of you for just dozens and dozens and dozens of hours. And so, once you have all that raw footage, you can edit it together in a number of different ways. And I know that, like, on reality TV, they need characters, you know, they need drama, they need whatever, so they can edit.
They edit certain people to make them into a character, basically. And some people come out of this complaining, some people don't. But I'm just sort of curious, like, did you know how you and Garrett were being portrayed, or did you just find out with everybody else when you saw the finished show? Like, did you? Were you completely throwing yourself on the mercy of the producers the whole time?
Taylor Krause
Yeah, I mean, you basically sign away all of your rights to the narrative. For me, I knew that I like the person I am. I know who I am. I'm always going to act, I think, out of integrity, and if I mess up, I will take full accountability. And for myself, I just did my best. And I knew that at the end of it — I sat there for a year because you get married and then you're in hiding for a year. Yeah, it's crazy that whatever ends up happening, if I get a bad edit, then the people who know and love me know who I am, and that's all that matters.
But to your point, like, yeah, you hear these horror stories, like, "This was edited this way, and they could twist my words and take things out of context." So, when the show came out, I was like, "Oh, okay, that wasn't so bad."
David Roberts
Maybe not even bad, but did anything sort of strike you about like, did you feel like watching the show "Yes, that's recognizably me?" You know, they sort of, got it pretty well right. Or was it just sort of, like, odd to see yourself? You know, there's a certain sort of out-of-body experience to all this. Like, seeing yourself as a character. Like, did the character you were on the show, did that approximate how you think of yourself?
Taylor Krause
I think, yeah. I mean, I genuinely thought I was going to be considered very boring and that no one would really care about me because I was so — you're surrounded by all of these relationships that are going through a rollercoaster of drama. And I was like, "Oh, my God, babe, we are so boring. Like, no one's gonna —"
David Roberts
Well, honestly, like, in the context of reality TV, a normal, psychologically healthy person is a little bit of a novelty. You know what I mean? Like a person who's just normal. Like, they do look for dramatic personalities. So, like, I can imagine there being a novelty to it. Like, "Gosh, she's just like a normal, nice person." You know, how odd.
Taylor Krause
A lot of my friends were like, "It felt like hanging out with you. It didn't feel as though we were watching someone on television. It felt like you were just being yourself." And I'm glad that that came through. You know, the other thing too, about the experience that I really learned about myself is that I am a bit more soft-spoken. When you're in the experience, a lot of the way that you have dialogue is by people just talking over each other, and that's just not my vibe at all. And I'm a bit more concise and to the point about certain things, which I just thought that maybe they wanted something more dramatic and ranty and crazy.
David Roberts
If I ended up in a situation like that, I would feel pressured to sort of, like, be more dramatic, you know, be a character.
Taylor Krause
Be a character, exactly. By the end of it, I was just like, or midway through, you really have to just be yourself because there's so much going on and I was filming at night while working full time and planning a wedding. So, yeah, I don't recommend doing that, but it was a blast. I met my person through it, I learned a lot about myself. I'm glad that I ended up being the fan favorite.
David Roberts
Do you have a good explanation for yourself in your head why you and Garrett ended up being such fan favorites? Is it just because you're, like, nice, intelligent people and got along?
Taylor Krause
It's funny, I was just talking with the Netflix PR team, talking about wanting to do this podcast. "Oh, just a reminder, like I'm doing this podcast, it's probably going to get nerdy." And they're like, "We love it and we need more nerdy people on cast." And I got a lot of feedback from people in STEM fields or policy fields that were so excited to see representation and from climate people. Like, people don't really know what a climate job is.
David Roberts
You know, maybe this will be what the reality TV producers of the world will take away from this. We need more nerds. We need more nerds on TV.
Taylor Krause
Yeah.
David Roberts
Well, speaking of the green thing, like, this is one of the main questions I wanted to ask you. You know, you went into a public-minded career, you care about climate, obviously, which is why you ended up in the profession you ended up in. And here you are going into this situation where millions of people will be paying attention to you, which might not ever happen again. No one understands how these things work. You know, it could well be a one-off thing. Did you think consciously going in about trying to convey some sort of green messages, like trying to work that in?
Did you ever talk to the producers, like, you know, like, "How nerdy am I allowed to get here?" Like, "Am I allowed to go on and on about climate change?" How did you think about or did you think about how much message to work into all this?
Taylor Krause
Yeah, I don't know if I thought too hard about messaging because, again, they have thousands of hours of footage and what they pick and choose is not up to me. But obviously, being someone from a clean-energy field, I went to school for it, I've volunteered for it, I've worked in it for almost a decade. It's pretty fundamental to me as a person. So being able to talk about that and convey that to a potential life partner was incredibly important to me. And so I knew that I would be talking about it. And if you didn't believe that climate change was real and we should do something about it, then you're not my person.
David Roberts
Yeah, I guess that came up with Garrett early on.
Taylor Krause
It came up with all my people early on.
David Roberts
Were there any — I'm just so curious —were there any, like, deniers? Were there any guys who failed that particular test?
Taylor Krause
No, I was — maybe they're lying to me, I don't know. But I was delighted that every single time I talked about my profession and climate change being important to me, everybody across the board agreed. But there are 15 people, so I don't know if that's a correct sample size.
David Roberts
Did you dare to? I'm always, like, one of the sort of recurring jokes on this pod is like, people who know a lot about this stuff completely lose their ability to gauge how much other people know. You know what I mean? Like, what the background level of knowledge among normal people is like. Did you ever get all the way into like, hydrogen and why it matters, or was this all just like, oh, it's like climatey stuff. How geeky did you get?
Taylor Krause
I got pretty geeky with at least the two. Which one is Garrett? And then the other person I was dating because it was my — I have a hydrogen tattoo on my wrist and it's the topic that I said 45V more than my own name last year. So, it was really important.
David Roberts
Did 45V, like if the words "45V" were actually spoken on the final broadcast show that would just be like the most thrilling thing for me in all of history.
Taylor Krause
It did not make it, but hydrogen did. Hydrogen did make it.
David Roberts
Oh, that's awesome.
Taylor Krause
Hydrogen did make it. I mean, my husband probably explained to me what a quantum computer is, and I can't convey that, so that's okay if he can't tell me about how the hydrogen tax credit should be structured.
David Roberts
What does he do? I mean, what is a quantum physicist? Is he in, like a lab somewhere?
Taylor Krause
So, he used to be an actual — he used to work in a lab, but now he works for a private company. He manages a bunch of technical people and engineers in building a quantum computer.
David Roberts
Interesting. Yeah, I just had the Governor of Illinois on a few weeks ago and he's very excited about quantum computing, although he didn't seem to totally understand what it was either. Nor did I when we discussed it.
Taylor Krause
You can have my husband on.
David Roberts
So, at some point, maybe I'm going to have Garrett on, and we could figure out what the hell quantum computing is once and for all. So, you are now a year out of this. Two years.
Taylor Krause
Year and a half.
David Roberts
A year and a half out of this, I guess probably the actual, like, "Love Is Blind" related hubbub, has died down somewhat?
Taylor Krause
I mean, every season, I think that will come out after you do. I think, reflect back on the people that get married and are successful from it. And so, that does come up. But yes, my time, the most relevant I will ever be, has passed.
David Roberts
Your peak cultural relevance.
Taylor Krause
I'm good. I did it. I don't know how people that are actually famous do it.
David Roberts
So you are leaving RMI now?
Taylor Krause
I have left RMI. Yes.
David Roberts
You left RMI. What was the thinking behind that? And what are you doing now? Like, what are your plans?
Taylor Krause
Yes. So, at RMI, my job was being on the federal policy team. And so, for everyone that doesn't know...
David Roberts
I almost appended to the question "and how much does Trump have to do with these answers?"
Taylor Krause
I think there was kind of a nexus and a confluence of factors that happened for me where, like, we had a big election. Obviously, it changed what my day-to-day looked like dramatically. And for content creation from being on a reality television show, I had zero clue. I had no idea what the opportunities were from it. I didn't realize that I had this, this really creative, fun side of me that enjoyed creating content. Like, I've always kind of been more of a behind-the-scenes lobbyist person that's been, you know, generating influence in a different way. And so, making more of a salary doing content creation versus working at a nonprofit became very clear very quickly. And I really loved doing it. I mean, I'd love to hear your tips on, like, content creation, but I'm very new to this space.
David Roberts
Well, I meant to ask, like, before you went on this show, did you ever, prior to that, have any sort of, like, thoughts or aspirations, like, "I want to become a content creator. I want to become an influencer. I want to be better known. I want more attention." Like, was any of that in your brain before this actual opportunity came up?
Taylor Krause
No, I thought I'd like to go be the Director of Federal Affairs at some hydrogen startup. Like genuinely. And so, being able to talk about sustainability in a different way, because obviously the federal avenue to do that is very fraught. The opportunity to have an impact in that way very much changed.
David Roberts
It's all grinding, defensive, depressing work for the foreseeable future.
Taylor Krause
Yes, and so, being able to work with other companies and create content about things that I care about and think are impactful or creative or fun, I'm very lucky to have that opportunity. When I told my colleagues that I think I want to make the transition into doing this full time, when the Institute and most people working in climate and clean energy are tightening their belts and being very diligent, I was like, "I don't want to take the space of someone else that I know can give, like, 200% when I'm interested in maybe making a pivot." So, it just kind of became pretty clear after six months under that administration that I wanted to take content creation full time.
David Roberts
Totally understandable instinct there. So, like, now you're an influencer. What does that mean exactly? What is, like...
Taylor Krause
It's a great question.
David Roberts
You have this now, attention. You have this fan base. You have a lot of people who know who you are and care what you think and have developed this parasocial fondness for you through this experience, and you can take that and use that attention for good, is what you're saying. What does that mean, though, concretely? Companies that are selling sustainable goods come to you and you...
Taylor Krause
Yeah, so to be fully transparent, I'm dependent upon income from different companies that want me to basically put together endorsements for their product. And I'm still in the process of creating what is my brand, because I'm just my brand. And what does that mean? And what is, like, the clear messaging of that? And, like, obviously, climate and clean energy was such a core tenant of mine. Being able to promote sustainable things is something that I'm prioritizing. I can't endorse it. I don't think I've gotten a deal yet for a hydrogen car or something.
Which shouldn't be used for light-duty vehicles anyway.
David Roberts
It'd be like a hydrogen reduction steel furnace.
Taylor Krause
Just, everyone should have an electrolyzer in their home.
David Roberts
Sponsored by an electrolyzer company. That's some influencing I'd like to see.
Taylor Krause
That'd be great if I could pivot into. It's been mostly things that are, you know, for example, Subaru, which is a great. They are the first zero-waste automaker and they're generally just a leader in the conservation space for automakers. I just did a partnership with them where they had an Earth Day campaign with the Arbor Day Foundation. And there's, for example, another company that, that's my favorite, which is Ritual, which is a supplements company that is woman-founded and they basically have done like a full analysis of their Scope 1 to 3 emissions and trying to decarbonize their supply chain with actual tangible targets and clear roadmaps, which is much more granular than I think an average influencer probably is getting.
And there's other things like a hair care company called Kitsch that reduces plastic by using shampoo bars and different accessories from recycled plastics. So like there's very — it's very new to me what sustainability is and being wary of greenwashing.
David Roberts
Yeah. Do you have help? You're sort of like you are your own brand, your own company. Now you are Taylor Krause Inc. Do you have employees to help you sort of like filter through this stuff? Because I'm sure everyone's coming at you.
Taylor Krause
I did my due diligence. I had a lot of agencies coming at you that they'll bring you different partnerships for a certain amount of money and they take a commission. But I, the type A person that I am, I interviewed probably a dozen different agencies and then I took my top two and I had them basically compete against each other for a certain amount of time and then went with that agency. And so now they manage, I'm exclusive with them, they manage the different partnerships. And I've said that these are the kinds of companies that I am trying to work with.
And obviously most people working at an influencer agency, they're not — they don't know what Scope 1 to 3 emissions are and things like that. So we work together to do that kind of vetting. But they know where I stand in terms of who I'm trying to partner with. And just because something's labeled eco-friendly doesn't necessarily mean that it's an authentically like, sustainable brand. But I think there is kind of this gray area that I'm figuring out in real time of, okay, where are companies that are genuinely trying to do better and the right thing, but maybe they're not like at a true net-zero place.
And so, yeah, it's tricky. And my brand is a lifestyle brand, so it's not necessarily just sustainable, eco-friendly, clean energy, climate things at all. I don't think that that's for me necessarily the holistic part that I want to convey. Like I want to convey that a person can be a multifaceted person and still care about these things and still want to travel and still like, want to talk about their home decor, you know?
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. I honestly think that like, you know, I'll never forget — this might be dating me —but back in the mid-2000s, NBC had Green Week. You might remember the first Al Gore wave of sort of green hype.
Taylor Krause
And everyone got light bulbs.
David Roberts
Yes, everyone got light bulbs. All the magazines did a green issue. It was the mid-2000s, but I remember NBC basically told all their producers, "Put something green on your show this week with clearly no further guidance." And so what popped up again and again is a character on the show got obsessed with green stuff, became annoying and naggy about it, irritated everyone else, and then eventually got over it. Right. So it's like, I think this has always been part of the public's perception of like, people who care about this stuff only care about this stuff and they're self-righteous about it and they're annoying.
Taylor Krause
Yes, exactly. Thanks for saying that better than I could say.
David Roberts
I do think there's value in showing that you can be like a normal person, you know, like a normal aspirational person. And care about this stuff organically.
Taylor Krause
Thank you. Trying to be as authentic as possible and sharing parts of a normal life that are in some ways inspirational to other people, but not in an oversaturated way is something that I'm really trying to just figure out so.
David Roberts
Well, this is, you know, Chris Hayes, the MSNBC host, has a book out on attention recently and I interviewed him about it on the pod. And you know, it's just all about sort of how attention is sort of like the coin of the realm these days. Everybody's got a million different competing demands for their attention. Screens everywhere. And it's also about sort of the kind of mind-f that is involved in suddenly getting a lot of attention, you know, all the different ways that it can mess you up.
And, you know, I just sort of wondered, like, how self-aware or how self-conscious are you going into this about the sort of danger of, like, you know, it's one thing if you're just, like, showing people your life, but, you know, the danger is always there of, like, "Am I crossing a line where I'm sort of, like, performing now? Am I performing all the time?" Like, what still is my normal life versus me performing? You know, just like, the psychology of it all is so daunting to me.
Like, are you thinking proactively about sort of how to, like, keep your wits about you, how to keep your sanity about you?
Taylor Krause
I think I was really lucky to have gone through the experience and sat there for a year.
David Roberts
Yeah. That's so weird. Can you just describe that? So you went through it and got married and did all that, and as yet, no one knew.
Taylor Krause
Yeah.
David Roberts
So you had to, like, basically be in hiding with your new husband for a full year before the show came out.
Taylor Krause
Yeah, yeah. We just didn't have a digital footprint. But you could still do, like, Christmas with, like, your family somewhere, go to dinner. But when the show came out, you couldn't be out in public together until it was done airing. And I'll just say that, like, the Internet, like, just people are the FBI. Like, it's crazy.
David Roberts
No kidding. Especially on, like, reality TV. I mean, these. Like, everybody's a sleuth about these things.
Taylor Krause
Yes. And most people that watch reality TV are women. And I now believe that if women solely ran the CIA, there'd be no crime. No crime in this country.
David Roberts
Did you get sussed out? Did you get exposed? Did someone track you down?
Taylor Krause
People, yeah. They went through every nook and cranny. And luckily, I think I'm just a good person that hasn't done anything terrible, that nothing happened. But to your earlier question, like, I just was myself, because clearly you're making the biggest decision of your entire life. And so I just showed up as myself with my husband. I would be doing myself a disservice by not doing that and to him, obviously, as well. But I thought that I would just be perceived as, like, a very boring person. So when it turned out that, like, just being myself and being celebrated for, I think, an authentic kind, genuine person that's really stuck with me.
And I'm lucky that that was my experience, that I'm carrying that forward. And for me, that's the only way that I'm gonna be able to do this sustainably. But to your point, I have not figured out or thought too much about the fear of whenever you put anything out there, that people — you probably have this all the time — have opinions.
David Roberts
Yes, people, I mean, are at least just judging my professional work. Once you become an influencer like this, people are judging your life, you know, and there's like millions of them doing it. That's part of what's such a mind screwer about it.
Taylor Krause
The human brain is not supposed to undergo that much attention. No, let alone — it was very positive for me and it was overwhelming. So having it be a majority negative, like I feel for my colleagues and I have bad days, I still, I'll get mean messages or things that really, you know, make you question yourself sometimes. And that's okay. Like, I think it'd be super weird to not have those moments of really questioning things or not feeling good. I think that's just human nature. But being able to pick myself back up over those moments and try to be better.
I do appreciate when people call me out, especially as I'm learning how to do this. And this is an extension of myself in a lot of ways that I've gotten a lot better at not taking things as personally and taking it as feedback to get better and increase my influence and impact. Because if I'm not constantly learning and taking feedback from the people that follow me, I don't think I'll be successful at this. So that's what I'm trying to do. Maybe let's circle back in a year.
David Roberts
How about Garrett? Is he equally enthused about the life of influencing or is he sort of like, along for the ride? Does he still have his day job? What's his disposition towards the influencing game?
Taylor Krause
So for, I guess, more from a brass tax perspective for influencers, women just tend to be able to make a living from it much more easily than guys can.
David Roberts
Huh. I guess if you're a guy influencer, you gotta, like, eat meat and whatever, like pump, pump iron. I don't know what that you gotta get into that you make protein shakes or whatever the hell that all that is.
Taylor Krause
Yeah. And I mean, even looking at our Instagram, I think is kind of the most tangible metric for whatever influence means coming from a show. And we went through the same exact experience with the same exact outcome, and I have twice as many followers than he does from it. I think the opportunities are not the same. So it has to make sense for him, too, where, like, I'm able to, I think, authentically show up and be able to monetize that more than he is. And so we're still doing brand deals together, and we'll be doing maybe different shows in the future together.
And, like, we'd love to start a podcast or something else together. So I think there's more opportunities. We just have to create them.
David Roberts
Well, I've been told by several people online that I'm supposed to ask you about his glow up. I had to Google what a glow up is, but he's looking quite dapper these days.
Taylor Krause
Thank you, my little model husband.
David Roberts
Did you. Are you are we thanking you for that?
Taylor Krause
No, he genuinely was just a person that lived in Fredericksburg and just did physics and went fishing and didn't really care about how he looked. But he kind of always has had this, like, flair for fashion and stuff. And, I mean, he had this, like, haircut that was this, like, this military haircut. And I was like, I don't care. Love is blind. I don't care what you look like. But I'm someone that, I like to dress up and I like to travel and I'm from D.C. which is very different than Fredericksburg.
And so, I think it gave him the opportunity to do that stuff. Like, there was no opportunity to do that before. And so, in terms of his glow up, like, I just say this, like, if a woman went on and, like, had a "glow up" and they attribute it to her husband, like, people would, be raked over the coals. So, my husband makes his own choices, and I'm very supportive of it.
David Roberts
Well, everyone's pleased with the results, so I think that's the important thing. Well, final question, then. You have been catapulted from one life into a very different life, a life now which sort of lives or dies by attention. And it's sort of kind of a law of the universe that anyone's tumble in that particular barrel is limited. Right? No one knows. No one ever knows how limited. You know what I mean? I think particularly these days, the sort of fickle nature of attention. I don't think anybody really has a handle on the whys and how's of it.
So, have you — I mean, and maybe this is premature since you're just getting your feet under you — but have you thought at all about the lifespan of this life, of the life of the influencer? Do you know what I mean? Like, how long could it last and are you going to be pushed out of it, clinging the whole way? Or have you thought about, like, what is the end state of this? Like, what is a graceful exit from this? What does the lifespan of this look like, start to finish?
Taylor Krause
So, I did think maybe not the way that you're framing the question. But I thought about it obviously, like, really long and hard before leaving a great job, a great place, like something that I've worked really hard to have a position in, to kind of take this leap into of way more risky career. Career is maybe not the right word, but opportunity. And so, I think I understand that I probably have, I think I understand that I have an opportune Overton window of like, influence.
And I really have the opportunity to make whatever it is that I do into, have a following from it that's sustainable, that can maybe materialize into other opportunities for the next year. And so, I was kind of like, I'm gonna give it as much as I got and do something that I think is fulfilling and interesting and cool. And then if it doesn't work out, I'll hopefully, like, in the next couple years, like, could come back to a different, like, environment. But yeah, it's a great question. I know that there's finite time to really make something of it.
And so, I'm kind of in that window of really giving it a go and making it into something that's successful.
David Roberts
Still is fascinating. Yeah, I'd love to come back and talk again in a couple of years just to hear, like, what is the, you know, as you sink into it and learn more about it.
Taylor Krause
Yeah, I'm gonna have to read Chris Hayes', his book on attention because —
David Roberts
Well, he doesn't — spoiler — he doesn't have it. He doesn't have any great answers. There's not really anything to be done about it. It's just the nature of the world these days. We're all being called upon to deal with levels of attention, even people, you know, like me, who's like modest niche podcast, like everybody who's got any kind of online presence is getting more attention than humans are built for. So we're all. Almost everybody has to deal with it on some level or another.
Taylor Krause
Well, if it's any consolation, when you reached out, I was over the moon because obviously being a climate and clean energy nerd, you're like, "Oh my God, David Roberts. Like, this is crazy."
David Roberts
Oh, well, thank you. Vice versa. Yeah. Let's reconnect in a couple of years and see how things are going.
Taylor Krause
Okay. I won't disappoint you.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.
We forecast crude oil production in the Federal Offshore Gulf of America (GOA) will average 1.80 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2025 and 1.81 million b/d in 2026, compared with 1.77 million b/d in 2024, in our most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). We expect GOA natural gas production to average 1.72 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2025 and 1.64 Bcf/d in 2026, compared with 1.79 Bcf/d in 2024. At these volumes, the GOA is forecast to contribute about 13% of U.S. crude oil production and 1% of U.S. marketed natural gas production in 2025 and 2026.
Supermassive black holes might naturally replicate the colossal energies of man-made particle colliders possibly even revealing dark matter offering a cosmic shortcut to discoveries that would otherwise take decades and billions to pursue.
In this episode, I chat with Johanna Wolfson, co-founder of Azolla Ventures, about their unique philanthropic-backed VC model tackling the tough problem of sustainable mining for the clean energy transition. We explore the promising tech Azolla is backing to reduce mining's impact, from using electrochemistry to refine copper without dirty smelting to advanced techniques for processing low-grade ores and even waste.
Hey everybody, this is Volts for June 4, 2025, "How to reduce the impact of mining." I'm your host, David Roberts. When it comes to the subject of mining and the clean energy economy, it is important to keep two truths in mind at once: First, relative to the fossil-fueled status quo, a clean energy economy will involve vastly less disruption of the Earth's crust via digging, drilling, and mining.
The materials that compose clean energy technologies only need to be extracted once. When you build a fossil-fueled machine, you have to keep extracting fuel for it as long as it runs. There's no comparison.
Johanna Wolfson
That said, it is also the case that clean energy technologies involve much more of certain minerals and metals than fossil energy technologies, and will require much more of certain kinds of mining. As listeners surely know, that mining — of copper, lithium, rare earth metals, etc. — can have extremely damaging social and environmental consequences. Clean energy advocates shouldn't wave those consequences aside or ignore them. They should think about how to reduce them!
Obviously, a comprehensive approach to mining will involve social movements and public policy, not just technology, but it's still worth seeking out the technologies that could help. That is what Johanna Wolfson set out to do when she co-founded Azolla Ventures, a VC firm that is distinguished by deploying, in part, philanthropic money, for explicitly pro-social purposes. The mining industry is one of Azolla's main targets, so I thought it would be illuminating to talk with Wolfson about the kinds of promising mining tech she's funding and how it might help.
All right then, okay. With no further ado, Johanna Wolfson, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Johanna Wolfson
Thank you. It is awesome to be here.
David Roberts
So we are here to talk about mining, but what tell us your life story and how did you end up where you are and where are you? What is it that Azolla does?
Johanna Wolfson
So, I'm with Azolla Ventures. I'm a co-founder there and we are bringing a different way of investing forward in climate tech. What makes us unique is we are impact-first investors. That's not because we're such great people — though we like to believe that — it's really because we aggregate philanthropic tax-exempt capital as the heart and soul of our fund and that lets us take on outsized risk relative to what other venture funds can and really should do. And it requires that we're impact-first in our mindset and methodology and deployment of capital. And so, we're out after big swings in climate and taking on pretty meaningful risks.
Most often, that means science and engineering risks. That can also mean market and other sorts of risk. But we've gotten to do some interesting things along the way. And the way I got here was, I'm a scientist by training, physical chemistry, and came to think that all the amazing science getting done in lab benches around the world didn't have the right way out. That's not an original thought, but I really wanted to do something about that and wanted to spend my career on it. And so, found my way through working at initially an industry lab, then spent some time at the Department of Energy in D.C., getting to know what government can and can't do, and decided to work on the capital problem for early-stage companies and probably wouldn't have been that compelled to go to an investment firm for its own sake.
But the idea to build something different in terms of what types of things we could do and invest in, and bring a different model forward, was super compelling. So, we've been at it for coming up on eight years now.
David Roberts
This went by really quickly, but let me just pull it back up. You are deploying exclusively philanthropic capital?
Johanna Wolfson
Not exclusively. So, we have built a fund structure that pairs philanthropic capital with more typical impact-aligned but not tax-exempt capital. And by drawing on those two different pools side by side, first weighted toward the higher risk and then later when companies graduate from that especially high-risk zone, pulling on the more conventional capital, we're able to both kind of launch, catalyze, and then scale companies that we partner with.
David Roberts
You know, when I threw this out there online, a lot of people's questions were related in one way or another to "How does the VC model line up with this?" So there's sort of a broad discussion in our space. I'm sure you've followed it, that like the limitations of the VC model. The VC, they're looking for unicorns, they're looking for 10x, you know, etc. And they're looking for relatively quick payouts. Whereas lots of infrastructure-type things, you know, that type of capital doesn't work well in this type of business. And I would think intuitively that mining is sort of paradigmatically conservative, slow, doing investments that are multi-decadal.
You know what I mean? It's like big and conservative and slow. So, the match between the VC model and mining is not obvious to me. So, maybe talk through a little bit about how you think about that.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, how long do we have here? Okay, so lots to say there. For one, climate tech generally, yes, absolutely, all of those critiques about venture are true and make a lot of sense. And yet, over the last five plus years, a great deal of climate tech capital, as I'm sure you've known, covered extensively, has shown up. And some of those sources of capital have more patient structures associated with them. We're the only one I know of that has this tax-exempt philanthropic angle, but lots of them have longer timelines, so that helps somewhat.
David Roberts
So as far as you know, you're the only fund that is doing this blending of philanthropic and private capital?
Johanna Wolfson
As far as I know, we're the only fund doing this blending in climate tech at this scale. So, there's a couple of other kind of smaller, earlier efforts. But yeah, we're a $250 million fund and we'd like to see more, but as of now, not yet. So, we do see increasingly more patient capital coming into heavy infrastructure technologies, which you could say about a lot of climate tech, not just mining. On the mining front, all of those challenges are super real. So, I could speak from experience with many of our portfolio companies starting to pilot with mining majors or starting to get out in the field.
I mean, it is slow. The challenges are real. Not a sector historically known for quick innovation. You can imagine all of the things that make it hard. So those are all true. Over the last couple of years, I've actually seen more of our peer investors start to make mining investments and that is probably driven by a recognition of both the extraordinary need for securing critical materials in light of a coming clean energy transition, which I'm sure we'll talk more about, coupled with, you know, mining is a pretty stable and reliable sector. And so if you were canvassing across all the different things in cleantech, it's actually, I would argue, one of the more reliable places you could invest.
Now that said, it doesn't make any of the challenges around integrating with existing legacy infrastructure or selling to mining majors that might be fine with the way things are going now. It doesn't make any of those problems go away. But in across all the areas that we invest in, some of which are more challenging for VC to engage in, I wouldn't say mining is among the most challenging. Now, the other thing I'll say — just in terms of where we're seeing other capital show up — this is kind of my bugbear issue about clean tech investing in general. Where I really wholeheartedly agree with those questions and maybe the critique that's coming behind them is that just because you can find technologies or companies to invest in with a venture mindset doesn't mean that you're going after the biggest set of problems that we need for achieving a clean energy transition.
These are two totally different mindsets. And I think the venture community can get caught up in a story that, "Oh, because I'm able to put together this company markup or this narrative, therefore look, venture is working!" It's like, well, we're not looking across the broad swath of emission sources.
David Roberts
The worry, I think, is that the set of things that are receiving investment, that set is being shaped more by the sort of character of the investors than the shape of the problem. Do you know what I mean? It's like it's the VC susceptible problems that are getting invested in.
Johanna Wolfson
I'm like raising my hands in cheer right now that you said that. And this is a whole separate area that I'm looking into and working on with some like-minded colleagues at other places. It's just, you said it so well. The places where money is going are being shaped by the venture mindset and we're leaving a lot of impact on the table. And by the way, I'm not supposed to say that as an investor.
David Roberts
Well, I guess my follow-up question is the answer then to broaden the types of things that VCs are comfortable investing in or is the right answer to bring in other types of funding that aren't VC?
Johanna Wolfson
I fall into Camp B. I think that you can only push the VC model so far, and that's not because of closed-mindedness or anything. It's because of the type of capital that's being aggregated, the expectations that sit behind that capital, and the nature of running a conventional VC fund which is, you know, I'm going to go ask these folks for more capital in a few years and they're going to want to see what I've done with it. And you know, so it's very all natural in terms of the incentives and there are some things that we can do that I think we're experimenting with at Azolla successfully about changing that model or pushing it or prodding it or making it extend in a different direction.
But can that get at the whole of the impact that's being left on the table? I don't think so, unless you come at it with a new set of capital constraints.
David Roberts
Yeah, someday I want to do a pod on what those alternative investing vehicles are.
Johanna Wolfson
Because everyone says venture is not the only path and then you say "Great, what are the other paths?"
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah, that's right. There's a lot of hand-waving around that.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, yeah, I have more thoughts on that. We can keep talking about it. I kind of am assembling a group of people who want to figure this out, and I'm happy to keep in touch about it.
David Roberts
I mean, it comes up on this pod again and again and again. We just need capital that will hang out longer and accept lower returns over longer periods of time, basically. Like that comes up over and over again.
Johanna Wolfson
Right. And as excited as I am about our model, and I think it's extraordinary, the premise is not quite that it's, we're taking higher risks. But we don't think it's practical at this point, where there aren't other pools to draw from, to go after lower returns. There could be other capital that is suited for that. But we're saying, "Let us take on the highest risk right now, the risk that something might fail is higher." But the potential that it has extraordinary impact is higher too. So let us underwrite that risk where other funds aren't able to go, and we'll get something ready for more mainstream VC.
David Roberts
Right. It would be nice, I mean, in some bright future, to have a funding ecosystem where there's a smoother sort of like, "We'll help you on this bit, hand you off to these people who will help you through this bit." It's a little scattershot right now and every company is sort of wandering in the wilderness trying to assemble its own contract. But anyway, let's not get too diverted. Let's talk about mining.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, we should do that.
David Roberts
So share, as you see it, an overview of the mining challenge and in particular, sort of which materials you have your eye on, either sort of as problems or as opportunities?
Johanna Wolfson
So, at the highest level, the mining challenge stems from the fact that we're going to need a lot more of certain materials to enable the clean energy transition that we are striving for. And in terms of which materials, I will tell you top, top, top of that list are copper and lithium, and I would probably say copper even higher, because copper is the backbone of electricity. So whether you're talking about the grid, wind, solar motors, batteries, electric vehicles, everything requires copper. And that is set against a background where to meet clean energy demands that are forecast — you know, demand will double, which means we need to, some estimates say, double mining production and triple recycling, something like that.
Ore grades are declining, so we're, we've gotten the easy stuff already. The harder stuff is what's left. Permitting is really hard and takes forever. And that's for some not-so-good reasons and some very good reasons, which is that the backdrop, as you know, of the mining industry, is in many ways incredibly problematic in terms of environmental justice issues. Not a great record. And so, and then you add, there are other things bound up in the copper ball.
Like, because copper smelting, which is the majority of how we process copper today, is incredibly hazardous to the environment using traditional techniques, we actually have closed down most of the copper smelters in the US, which is a good thing for people who breathe that air. But it also means that we are taking, you know, copper mined in Arizona and we're offshoring it for refining and then sending it back, you know, as refined copper ore in products. And so that is challenging from a global supply chain risk standpoint, not to mention emissions associated with that transport. And so there's just a ton bound up with, "Okay, we need more copper, but..." And then there's a long list of buts for why getting more copper is hard.
David Roberts
And more lithium. Just briefly, because I want to talk about copper a little bit more, but briefly, it's striking that you don't include, I think, what a lot of people think about when this comes up, which is these allegedly rare earth minerals. The word "rare" is so unfortunate in that term because people think that those are kind of the linchpin.
Johanna Wolfson
Well, rare earths are interesting, and we haven't invested in that area yet. We may, but you're right that they didn't top my list. So we're talking about things like neodymium. Right. And the materials that go into magnets. And then, depending on your definition, you may or may not be including nickel, cobalt, manganese, and other things that go into battery chemistries, which I put those in the second tier only because, you know, I think we have more tunability and flexibility in battery chemistries on the margins. But rare earth elements, to your point on the word "rare", we are actually not at a global deficit on those, but 80% of the materials are in China.
And so, until recently, there was a risk and now, recently, a reality that, you know, China might withhold rare earth exports into the US, and that is what we're now seeing. And that, you know, probably will upscale domestic efforts. But on the other hand, then there's always the possibility that China will flood the market and disrupt the pricing, and it's just incredibly fraught. That's why they didn't top my list.
David Roberts
For instance, China might withhold them if we slap them with 100% tariffs.
Johanna Wolfson
Just as a forensics.
David Roberts
I always think it's hilarious. We're like, "What's China going to do?" And then we just go like, punch China in the nose, "Well yeah, they're going to do it."
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, absolutely.
David Roberts
Our worst fears will come true if we go force them to come true. In the larger sort of policy community, there's all this concern about reshoring and all this concern about China dominating supply chains. Those are, though, economic security, political security, national security concerns. Do you adopt those? Is reshoring and securing supply chains part of something you think of as a goal of yours?
Johanna Wolfson
Not explicitly for that reason. I mean, we see geopolitical constraints and risks as something that could hold back the clean energy industry as a whole. So, in that sense, yes. But it is not a principal goal of our fund to specifically have a US mineral supply, although we think it's a good idea for a lot of reasons in terms of having optionality. So, I guess that's how I would thread that needle.
David Roberts
Yeah, let's talk about copper then. And taking a kind of step back, I'm just sort of curious, as a VC, when you approach something like copper, you know, you get these stats, "We're going to need twice the copper," "Copper ore quality is declining," etc. Copper is a problem. How do you go about approaching that sector? Because I'm sort of like all my training and the way I think about it is from a policy perspective, like that's sort of how I think, but that's not your angle. So when you approach something like copper, are you going and looking for companies that are just getting started, are you going to an area where you think there needs to be a company and sort of planting a flag and looking around saying, "Hey, somebody come start a company here." — like what is a VC methodology when you approach something like copper?
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, that's a great question because it is so wide open. So, I'll say a couple of things. One is that we tend to, just as a firm, seek opportunities both ways, both opportunistically, "come one, come all," we kind of want to look at everything. And then we also do a lot of thesis-driven work and, in particular, an associate on our team, Cass Vickers, put together a pretty comprehensive look at copper over the last couple of years in terms of "Where should we be looking?" Because of our unique vantage point in the venture investment scene, that also means we're looking, where are others funding already? We don't need to go there, but let's go where others are not funding.
So, to take one example of that, there's a process called heap leaching where mining companies take degraded ores that are uneconomic assets, put them in a heap, it's called a heap, and they leach, you know, an acid through it. And there are companies like Jetti and Ceibo who have been very well funded. It's very exciting, actually, for the sector that these companies have been well funded by climate tech VC, not us. And those are kind of novel leachates that they're putting into solution to get more out.
We looked at that and we said, "We're not really needed there." But guess what, this whole idea of a heap leach process is really a data-starved process overall. They're not distributing those assets correctly.
David Roberts
It's extremely analog; one might even say, kind of gross.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, absolutely, yes. They don't even try. Right, with the word. It's heap leaching.
David Roberts
Yeah, they don't even try to disguise how gross it is.
Johanna Wolfson
So, we invested in a company, you know, just very, very pre-seed stage that, you know, in many ways we partnered with hand in hand to just get a narrative together around, you know, instrumenting that heap and being able to — I know I'm trying to make it sound more glamorous and it's just not going to happen. And being able to, you know, actually achieve the yield enhancements that should be possible if you're treating that like an instrumented asset, which it's traditionally not done. It's like an 18th-century technique.
David Roberts
What was that one? It's called Muon, right?
Johanna Wolfson
It's Muon Vision.
David Roberts
They're shooting muons, which are what? Subatomic particles? What the heck are muons?
Johanna Wolfson
The universe is shooting muons. We don't have to do anything to get them. We just need to bury a scintillator under the heap and watch the muons come in and see how the liquid density is varying as a result.
David Roberts
So, what it's telling you is like, where is the liquid in the heap coming down through? Like, where is it coming faster and slower? Where do you need more liquid? Basically, it's like telling you a little bit about what's happening inside.
Johanna Wolfson
Exactly, yes, exactly. And to put this in the broader context of the copper industry, you've got pyrometallurgy, which is the traditional way of mining copper, hard rock mining, and you put it in a smelter and you go, there's more work to do there. And I mentioned earlier that smelters are pretty bad, so there's more to do there. And we've actually made another investment on that side into a company called Still Bright. But the industry as a whole is actually wanting to shift more to what's called hydrometallurgical processing, which is how they might be able to get at some of these lower-grade ores that aren't as much using the traditional methods, but they're going to need help to do that.
And that's part of why we see, you know, a lot of opportunity here.
David Roberts
And just broadly, we don't have to get too deep into it. But pyrometallurgy is basically like, you burn things to separate them. Basically, you're trying to get something out of the material and you burn it off, burn it with the presence of various chemicals that separates it.
Johanna Wolfson
You got it.
David Roberts
Super dirty, super energy intensive — just like the iconic, unpleasant industrial process.
Johanna Wolfson
It is the iconic, unpleasant industrial process. It is the reason we barely have any smelters left in the US. Like, that is a good thing. But, we need alternatives.
David Roberts
But hydrometallurgy, just to orient people, is basically, you are immersing the stuff in a solution of liquids that contain various chemicals that leach the materials apart. So, you don't require heat. I mean, basically, it's like a room temperature process. Is that one of the big advantages?
Johanna Wolfson
You don't require heat, although it's interesting that you get more out if you do heat it. And so, some companies are looking at, you know, siting geothermal alongside heap leaching to, you know, make it even better. But it kind of needs to be geothermal to make it worth it. You can imagine it's always, you know, a spreadsheet exercise. But that's right, that's a good description. And you know, it should be said, just because I'm so focused on the environmental justice aspect of all this stuff, is that heap leaching is not, you know, it's not some glorious alternative that doesn't touch people either.
You know, it takes up a lot of space and, you know, it leaves behind an asset.
David Roberts
It's a giant pile of waste with acid running through it.
Johanna Wolfson
It's exactly, yeah. Look, none of this stuff is what we might choose to do just for fun. It's all about what, you know, what are the cost-benefit trade-offs that we have to make if we decide we are prioritizing and how do we minimize damage in doing that? And I want to, if I can just go to one other thought on, you had asked me how do we think about scoping the space and how do we think about making investments? And as I was reflecting on the investments we've made, I realized something, which is that while the high-level point to do any of this is what we started our conversation around, which is to enable the energy transition because we're going to need all these materials.
That almost ignores this big thing underneath, which is how emissions intensive all these processes are. And you went there on the smelting side. But we've actually, because when we make an investment, we underwrite not just to an eventual financial outcome that we know the financing sector will pay attention to, but we underwrite to a gigaton scale of impact. And we've decided to, when we do that underwriting, focus on the process emissions, not whatever downstream enablement and unlocking of a clean energy industry might occur. And I think that's important because it keeps us focused on making sure whatever we do, it has to be better than what's been done before.
David Roberts
Right. Although, it is worth saying, just as a bit of information, that the emissions of the copper-making process are relatively modest in the grand global scheme of things, especially compared to all the clean energy, you know, technology that it enables. Like, if you're going to spend emissions, you know, getting copper is pretty good.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah. They are certainly modest in the scheme of what could be avoided and unlocked by the industries they are enabling. Otherwise, I hope we wouldn't be even doing this. But they're not tiny. They're meaningful enough to clear our bar, which is the gigaton scale bar on process emissions alone, which in some cases I was surprised by.
David Roberts
Let me get into a few of the nooks and crannies of copper here. First, I want to talk about electrochemistry because here at Volts, we love ourselves some electrochemistry. You mentioned a company that is using electrochemistry.
Johanna Wolfson
Still Bright.
David Roberts
Still Bright, yes. Talk a little bit about what they're doing and what it is substituting for.
Johanna Wolfson
Great. So, we talked a little bit about the traditional pyrometallurgy and the smelting process. And so, Still Bright is essentially taking out the smelting process, which is really awesome. So, they are going after what's called chalcopyrite, which is part of the universe of sulfide ores that pyrometallurgy traditionally goes after, although chalcopyrite is generally considered a lower-grade ore. So, there's a lot of it lying around. And it's been challenging for smelters to extract copper from, not least because it's a dirtier, lower-grade ore. And so, when you put it through a smelter, it emits all sorts of nasty stuff, notably arsenic, which is like, could you think of a worse thing to be, you know, gasifying and spreading into a community?
And that is one reason why it's just not done. But again, if we're going to meet this demand, we need to find clean ways to go after the ores that we do have. And so, Still Bright has — this is a spin-out from Columbia University, tremendous technology — they essentially react copper concentrate through a vanadium redox flow battery and they're able to produce solid copper through that electrochemical process and have demonstrated pretty extraordinary efficiency. And they're going to market with the case that we can do processing of sulfide ores right here in the US and we don't have to smelt them and we're not going to emit anything.
David Roberts
So this is an alternative to smelting?
Johanna Wolfson
This is an alternative to smelting, which makes it pretty powerful.
David Roberts
Yeah, we can take these ores and produce copper with them on site. So, you don't have to ship anything away for processing. And this is just a gleam in someone's eye, what's the state of it?
Johanna Wolfson
This is excitingly, you know, a few steps beyond that. So a couple of years ago it was. And Jon Vardner, who's the founder of this company, was kind of working on it after his PhD postdoc at Columbia University and realized he had a pretty powerful concept here. And so, in the last couple of years, he spun that into a company. He got some preliminary funding from us and others, and he recently, I don't think it's been announced yet, but closed a pretty meaningful series seed round and is going to be building the first demonstration of this at a demonstration but still meaningful non-lab scale.
And that's going to be for the world to see within about 18 months from now. So, a lot of exciting things to watch there. And they've seen really promising results in the lab. Of course, new engineering challenges do emerge when you take it up the next level, but the numbers that we're seeing are pretty promising and we're excited to be able to see that at the next scale.
David Roberts
Yeah, I'm so excited about electrochemistry. It seems like the solution to all the most difficult problems. I've had someone who's making steel with electrochemistry on the pod, someone who's making concrete with electrochemistry, basically substituting electrons for carbon molecules. What a beautiful thing. You just need a lot of cheap electrons.
Johanna Wolfson
To me, it is the most exciting way to interpret "electrify everything" because once you see it, you can't unsee it.
David Roberts
For all the "difficult to abate" sectors, electrochemistry is the answer. Almost every one of those, I think, in the long term, we'll see.
Johanna Wolfson
And we've made a number of electrochemistry-focused investments and the challenges are hard. Like the engineering, it really, truly is very hard and I don't want to dismiss that. But they are tractable. It's not an intractable set of challenges.
David Roberts
Interesting. And what about something I sometimes hear about mining in situ, mining underground? Are you invested in that? And how the heck does that work?
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, so we have not invested in that. I've sometimes heard that term applied to heap leaching, but I don't think that's what you mean. I think you might be referring to an electrostimulation approach that we've seen, it's called ISR mining. Where you can sort of stimulate to the surface the ore that you're after. But I don't know a ton about it. We haven't made an investment in that area.
David Roberts
And what about these two different methods of basically mining waste? One is mining what are called tailings. Are you getting involved in that and how much promise is there in that? Because there's a lot of mining tailings lying around the world.
Johanna Wolfson
It is a huge opportunity. It is a tricky one to crack because typically the tailings are what's left behind. And sometimes those are, you know, inactive sites. And there's a question of who owns it and how do you get access. But putting that aside and just thinking about an active mining operation with tailings, we think about separations there. So another one of our portfolio companies, SiTration, which has developed a silicon-based membrane that shows really tremendous selectivity for multiple of these elements that we care about, copper, lithium and others, it can be tuned and be highly selective to not only size but valence of the ion you're after.
So, some of these technologies that were actually, they have flexibility in how they can go to market in mining. You could think about them as technologies to deploy in the secondary recovery market, which we didn't talk about yet. But we need to, we should do just a ton more of because it is maybe the one way we avoid some of these most thorny community and justice issues. And then secondly, they could go to market on the tailings front, you have these waste streams on site at mines and you should be able to valorize them.
And that's, you know, kind of, it's in many ways it's a variation of the heap leach concept. I have now what I have designated as uneconomic or what previously, according to my prior technology toolkit, was uneconomic and it's just a calculation of what's my ROI on bringing this new tool on board and whether I can reliably valorize what was previously written off as a waste stream. So there's quite a lot happening there. And also on the, we talked briefly up top about the rare earth elements. I've seen a lot of companies going after mining tailings to find the little stuff.
This might be a copper, a silver, a gold, or a lithium mine, but there's other stuff in there. You know, the earth's crust is very interesting that way. And so, if you can find cheap enough ways to go get after it and recover, you know, smaller amounts of still valuable materials, if you haven't invested all the upfront, you know, CapEx to mine those, the mining company did that for its main thing, but it can have secondary revenue streams. That's where we're seeing a lot of activity and there's quite a bit of innovation on that front from, you know, materials innovation like the one I mentioned to biological leaching microbes that secrete kind of an especially effective leachate for some of these rare earth minerals.
So there's quite a lot happening there.
David Roberts
And the other waste stream to mine that gets discussed, which I've always thought seems promising, is just landfills. Like, people throw away a lot of metal. A lot of processed pure metal in devices and so little of that gets separated, so little of that gets recaptured. I just feel like we're in a world with tons of landfills with tons of valuable materials in them. But then I also think, what is the cost structure of schlepping through a landfill picking out good stuff? Is that a reasonable thing that we are ever going to be able to do?
Johanna Wolfson
Well, I love that you went there. I was just on the phone yesterday with an entrepreneur who I was asking some of these questions to, not for the metal waste reason but because she's working on — to keep it the heap topics — instrumenting landfills to find where RNG pipes might need to be rerouted to capture methane. But anyway, so I was asking some of these questions about landfill economics and operations and probably not a shock, but it's not like the most innovative sector. And so, you can imagine sets of drone-based scanning or, you know, AI-driven imagery deduction that's saying, "Well, look here, you know, there's something promising and you know, go send a robotic arm to pick it up and then send it through, send it through a line that can do some visual analysis" and we have seen companies by the way doing that visual analysis of waste not from landfills but just online and recycling facilities.
And so, that technology is developing. And so, I can certainly invent in my mind a future where what you describe is real, but it's probably not an especially soon thing. Although, I will say that this is an area where I think in the US, we're pretty far behind Europe as an example. People just, I think, care more about separating and the landfill setup, and actually, the innovation landscape in Europe is quite a bit more evolved from what I understand. So, maybe we need to go over there first and see what our future looks like.
David Roberts
One thing I thought was interesting in your sort of investment thesis document about copper was that you are going to steer clear for now of the seafloor stuff, which is a hot topic now because Trump, I don't know exactly what he did, it's just all these executive orders. I think he, at one point, it was either an executive order or a Truth Social post. It's hard to keep them distinct where he's like, "Yeah, go mine the seafloor." But you for now are staying away from that. What's the thinking there?
Johanna Wolfson
Well, and we haven't made any definitive, "we will never" kind of statement about it. I will say we do talk to companies doing that. We find it interesting. As of yet, we haven't made an investment in that area. My thinking is maybe twofold. One is that there is, we were talking earlier about how mining is a data-starved industry and we were just talking about landfills where the same is true. And I think if you think about low-hanging fruit, there is quite a lot of it on land or I guess out of the sea.
And so, in terms of just like where to focus time and energy in dollars, it hasn't been our focus. It would be reasonable for someone to make a different decision. But that's true as of now. And then secondly, we do a fair amount of active investing in ocean tech. It has tended toward shipping and carbon removal. And so, we know a little bit about, and I emphasize a little, about maritime regulation and international waters and the complexities associated with that and I think are under no illusions about, you know, what would need to be sorted to responsibly and reliably do deep sea mining.
And it's not to say that it's an intractable problem. It's just again, like we're, you know, I'm always staring down the clock, I feel at 2050, and thinking about what this trade-off between we're, we're a risk-embracing fund that can do really big swings, but we're increasingly hurtling toward some points of no return here. And so we have to make tough trade-offs about what is likely to come to fruition in time. Oof, that got dark.
David Roberts
Yeah, let's talk about a more pleasant topic, which is recycling. I think everybody holds out hope when they think about the far future, you know, that we can get to a place — I mean, this is the idea, right — eventually we get to a place where we've mined enough and we are recycling and we've created something close to a closed loop. I mean, this is sort of like the dream. It's pretty far off. I noticed a note of caution about recycling in the document. So, how are you thinking about recycling?
Just, I mean, physically and environmentally, obviously, it's a dire need. But in terms of like VC, you know, targets, where do you find in there?
Johanna Wolfson
Well, we actually see a lot of activity. So, I don't know if that note might have been referring to less critical need for catalytic capital. I would have to look back to see if that's maybe what it was referring to. But because there are a number of companies that are out there and doing a lot and, you know, looking successful. Redwood Materials and lithium would be the prototypical example — Glencore. But there are others. And then we see emerging companies and Cycle is a good example that I think are going to maybe give some of those a run for their money.
And so, there's some promising activity. And I think the revenue model is tough. It's a tough nut to crack, but again, probably a tractable one. And I think some of those founders and entrepreneurs are really paving the way to figure some of that out.
David Roberts
There's some cool electrochemistry.
Johanna Wolfson
There's electrochemistry everywhere.
David Roberts
I know once you start, once you start seeing it.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, and I mentioned earlier, SiTration, who plays in that space. But I think recycling is so interesting because, you know, keep in mind for these mining and materials calls to action, it's still a little bit future looking. It's, you know, over the next 10 years or out to 2030 or 2040, copper demand will double and lithium will quadruple or whatever it is.
David Roberts
But copper demand has not. I mean, you make a note of this in the document. Copper demand has not gone up yet. So, this is all "probably."
Johanna Wolfson
It's all predicated on predictions, which are just that. Right. So, well, I'll come back to that. But to finish the recycling, I think it's interesting. Let's assume for a moment that those predictions do come true. It's actually very hard to see, see permitting and the ores in the quality that they are, really meeting that. And so, the demand for secondary materials will probably skyrocket in a way that we don't yet feel today. And so, I love those companies that are kind of getting ready for it because I think they're going to be really well positioned. It's just we're not feeling it yet.
But to your point, this is all predictive and they're just that. And so, it's kind of this strange thing that we're doing when we invest in this space. We're sort of warding off a future what could be a lock in the future, but it's not an active unlock. And so, one of the things I think about while this space is really important to me, and I think there's a lot that can be done especially to clean up the mining industry in the scheme of climate tech investing. It's just one prong. And when it's an indirect prong that is predicated on a future thing, we're always weighing — when you compare that to, you know, taking a molecule of methane right out of the atmosphere, you know, how should we be weighing that?
Which is, you know, that doesn't have a simple answer. But it's an interesting question.
David Roberts
Yeah, a certain amount of skating to where you think the puck is going. You talk to the people in the long-duration storage crowd, those poor people who are hearing simultaneously, "There's no current demand for your product. But yeah, don't you worry, in 10 years there's going to be so much." It's sketchy. Tell us about lithium. So, copper is the big one. I don't really feel people get that the need for more copper. So, I'm glad we're highlighting that. But also lithium. And as a background to this question, this is also a general question about materials.
So, I frequently, I've been doing this for 20 years now. You frequently hear like, "This or that material is rare." You know, "There's going to be exploding demand and there's not enough supply. There's going to be a giant choke point. It's going to stop everything." And like, it just inevitably never happens. Like, somehow or other, we innovate or substitute around materials challenges and so like this, all these projections of like in 10 years, you know, "X material is going to be $2 billion a pound," they just never come true. Which seems to me, it makes it tricky to invest in this area.
And so, this brings us to lithium. Like you undoubtedly recall, it was not that long ago that people were saying, "Lithium's price is skyrocketing. Everybody wants lithium. We're heading up to a giant, a giant lithium shortage that's going to grind the whole industry to a halt." And now, lithium's like dirt cheap again.
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, it's dirt cheap. But will it go back up?
David Roberts
Yes, well, again, who knows? So how do you think about that in terms of investing? Are we going to need a ton of lithium? Is it going to be cheap? Is it going to get scarce? How do you begin to approach that?
Johanna Wolfson
So, that is totally true, that deep and staggering uncertainty. But that's no different than anything else we should be looking at as good venture investors in terms of whether we're talking about carbon markets or something even further afield. So I guess, you know, there's comfort in that discomfort. But I think your point is right and the, you know, the way we've thought about this and you know, we actually made our first lithium investment back in 2018, which is a long time ago and not many people were talking about it. That was in Lilac Solutions, which is, you know, doing direct lithium extraction from brines.
And then, more recently, we invested in a company called Rock Zero, which is doing hard rock mining of lithium, which is sort of a different part of the landscape. But we think that there will be, even if you don't get into the game of what exactly will the demand curve look like and when, what you can be pretty sure of, or at least I think so, is that if you have an extraordinarily better way of doing something, then you're going to be able to unlock value in that. And the market projections that may or may not come to pass are kind of unbounded upside on that. So that's a little bit about how we think of it.
And we have to remember that this is a long game. So, lithium prices crashing are unhelpful for a lithium company out raising money during that time. But it's not probably a statement about yes or no on the long-term target. But I do value your point that we tend to find a way, and that's probably what is behind my statement about in the grand portfolio of technologies to be supporting, I think this has a role. I think it's a role that needs to be kept in balance to all the other problems we're chasing after for those of us who care about achieving this transition.
David Roberts
So then, mining-wise, you guys are all over copper. You're in several early stages, sort of improving copper mining. You're in a couple of lithium. Are there other mining... is it just copper and lithium? Mostly like those are the big buckets. Are there others in this general area that you are excited about?
Johanna Wolfson
So, in terms of investments that we've made, it's copper and lithium and the company that's going after secondary extraction, SiTration, that can be deployed across many materials. We've also looked at others. We may make other investments, but it's no accident that we focused in on copper and lithium. And I displayed my bias upfront that those are the two that are really most critical. I would say there are others that we'll continue to look at. There are other companies though in our portfolio that touch on mining, even though they're not part of this critical or rare material conversation.
And those interestingly tend to fall into the carbon removal space where we're talking about, you know, doing some form of enhanced rock weathering or accelerated weathering of limestone, where if those approaches are successful, and I'm thinking, you know, in our case companies, Calcarea going after decarbonizing shipping and Vesta, which is doing coastal carbon capture. But there are many others, you know, going after different iterations of that carbonate chemistry. Basically, if those types of approaches are successful, there are some meaningful mining implications there too, in terms of where those materials are being sourced from, how they're transported, grinding costs, grinding emissions and so forth. So it really does, I think, underline how foundational the mining industry is to a lot of what we care about, even if we don't always look directly at it.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. And I should make my point that I always make when mining comes up. It is true that clean energy technologies require more per unit of generation of these materials than fossil fuel generating energy generation technologies require. But what you don't have to do is mine a continuous supply of fossil fuels to dump into those machines. So, you just need the materials once and then you're done. As opposed to needing fewer materials to build the machine, but then needing a continuous stream of fossil fuel to put in the machine, which does more landscape, social, whatever damage you want, whatever kind of damage you want to talk about, lots more being done by fossil fuel, you know, digging up than there is by materials mining.
So, yes, more mining of these materials, but less overall disruption of the Earth's crust, let's say.
Johanna Wolfson
Right, but I'm so glad you brought up that point because just the truth that there is more of these materials in the renewable energy and electric energy sector, you know, it just, it drives home the point that we have to do mining better. And I know we've said it, but I just, I do worry about sometimes the conversation in climate tech around mining seems to be, you know, just, "Let's get more." And it's like, no, that's not it. "Just get more" hasn't served us that well as a human race, so we have to do it better.
David Roberts
Yeah, there's like, there's two unproductive sides of that conversation, which I saw online when I threw this out there. One is just like, "Why are we worrying about these relatively modest impacts when the whole fate of the planet is on the line? Blah, blah, just mine what you need to mine, et cetera." That's that attitude. And then there's the sort of like, "Mines are bad, they ruin communities, they ruin landscapes. Let's get rid of them. Just recycle." Yeah, I got, I got that one thrown at me several times. And it's worth saying that, like, if you're gonna need 2x the copper, even if you recycle 100x of the copper that you currently have, you're not gonna turn it into 200x. So, like, just reinforcing your point, like, there's a lot of mining needed, no matter which direction you face, no matter what you want to do. So you might as well do it better.
Johanna Wolfson
You might as well do it better, and you might as well kind of throw yourself into the learning of that. So, if there's one thing that I would say that I've really benefited from, it's kind of throwing myself headlong into what is hard about mining and not looking away from it, and, you know, talking to folks in the communities affected and visiting them. And that's what I advise portfolio companies to do when we make an investment: go there, feel it, and talk to people. So, this is not academic for you, because if it's academic, you're going to make the wrong choice.
You're not going to be able to fully value the complexity of what you're engaging in. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. Like, let's grapple with it, but let's grapple with it for real.
David Roberts
Yeah, final-ish question. I think maybe energy, in a way that is unlike sort of digital tech, which is the tech that everybody's kind of more familiar with, kind of what they think of when they think about tech. Like if you're developing apps, it's kind of a wild west, you can kind of do what you want. But in energy, everywhere you turn, there's policy, there's politics and policy that are incredibly relevant and germane to a lot of these industries. You know, depending on which way the policy winds blow, entire industries in this area can be sort of like created out of whole cloth or shut down.
Johanna Wolfson
Totally. I mean, I saw the announcement yesterday, "Coal designated as a critical material." No, I'm serious. Because of metallurgical steel.
David Roberts
Hilarious.
Johanna Wolfson
Metallurgical coal for steel. So yeah, there you go.
David Roberts
Yes, yes, I know. So, but just like my impression is from the tech and investor community that they're super informed on tech and tech risk and business risk, but maybe aren't super savvy when it comes to politics. Of course, I think that about everyone, I yell at everyone about that. But like, how do you think about policy risk? Is that a big column in your spreadsheet or is that, do you just sort of treat that like, you know, acts of God that you can't, that you have no control over?
Johanna Wolfson
Are you asking for mining in particular or for our investing practice in general?
David Roberts
Well, let's start with mining in particular, but I'm interested in the general answer too.
Johanna Wolfson
It's probably different between the two. So for mining in particular, I think by and large, in terms of the march of history and mining, hopefully getting better over time, currently lax regulations notwithstanding, I think that in general, policy forces will be tailwinds for most companies innovating in this sector because they're doing things better, cleaner, more efficiently. And that's where all the pressures over time are going to point things. So there will be differences in terms of which geographies is that true in first? And by the way, there's a cautionary tale there because startup companies need to, we often say everyone needs to go fast. But in areas where there's kind of really heady, fraught issues, you sometimes need to go slower now in order to go faster later.
And so, don't go necessarily to the place to deploy where you have the most lax regulations. Right. So, either apply more strict regulations to yourself elsewhere or actually start in a place with stricter regulations so that you have kind of a squeaky clean reputation from the start. So, that's just kind of a side note of the playbook. But, I think in general, the policy factors will be tailwinds for startup companies in the sector generally.
And I guess that does map to how we think about policy risk more generally at Azolla, which is, we both eschew and totally welcome policy risk on different timescales. So, on the near-term timescale, what we probably will never do is underwrite an investment that requires a subsidy of any kind to be economic because it's not reliable, it's not durable, and it's not the way we think people are incentivized, and it's just not the political system that we've seen. But in the longer term, we have made a declaration that in certain cases policy will land.
We may not know the specifics, but we know that in the arc of time, mining regulations will tighten or regulatory carbon markets will grow. That kind of macro confidence we do sometimes have about the policy environment and —
David Roberts
The arc of history bends towards justice?
Johanna Wolfson
Yeah, there we go. Absolutely.
David Roberts
Yeah, well, let's hope so. I mean, and in a certain sense, like if it isn't, we have bigger problems, we're all screwed anyways. Might as well fill your time with something. Mining, as you say, as I think everyone acknowledges, globally, mining is a grim, not just grim physically, but like the industry has a terrible record. It's been rapacious, it's destroyed a lot of landscapes, destroyed a lot of communities and has a sort of established a history of "We're gonna do the cheapest thing, come what may." So, I guess just like an actual final question which is just like until and unless these things you're investing in become cheaper than the alternatives, do we have any reason to believe that the mining industry is going to make sort of good faith efforts that they will spend extra money to clean themselves up or they're just going to...
In some sense, you almost need policy to force them to clean up to make these things you're investing in viable. Do you know what I'm saying?
Johanna Wolfson
So, I mean, look, good faith efforts, probably. I mean, I think that there are good people who work on the community engagement sides of mining companies that are kind of trying to do the right thing. Like, I really believe that. And you know, you look and you learn about the programs going on at say, the Resolution Copper Mine in Arizona, which has met with a lot of challenges and they're not doing negative things in the community alongside the mine, they're doing positive things. How does that weigh? Well, the community should decide. But just to say that there are good faith efforts, but I would say good faith efforts are probably not enough.
And so, I just agree with your actual conclusion that you probably need policy to force it. And that's because every incentive, by the way, for a mining company is to kind of promise the world and then it's actually very, very hard to deliver the world because reality intervenes. And so, you're just like setting up for this huge disparate outcome in terms of what the vision was and what the reality was. But I do think that policy and regulation is totally critical here because I don't think mining companies really have the incentive to go as far as absolutely possible, which is what's necessary.
You know, it's not necessary to do a little bit more here or there. And then, maybe a final thought here, and this is where I'm going to start to sound like an optimist, which is that these companies that we support and others support and that are bringing in many ways the new front of mining technology, whether that's cleaner or more efficient or more intelligent, they actually have an extraordinary opportunity to sort of demand a different set of behaviors from the mining companies that will be their customers if their technologies prove successful. And so, if you have the most, you know, the most promising electrochemical approach to refining copper and you are licensing that out or deciding where to site your facility, you are going to call the shots. Now, the startup companies that are developing those technologies today, they're not yet in a position to call the shots, but if they are successful, they will be.
And that's why, to me, it's so important to kind of, from the start, think about what kind of business you are trying to build and what is the change you're trying that you might be able to demand just by dint of having a better solution.
David Roberts
Yeah, the landscape looks different when there's no other way of doing it but the bad way. Like the minute there's a different way of doing it, even if the new way is more expensive, the whole sort of social and political landscape shifts.
Johanna Wolfson
That's right. But I think, I mean, for a lot of these companies, the new way of doing it won't be more expensive. It's actually a win on many levels.
David Roberts
Well, your lips to God's ears. All right, well, Johanna, thank you so much. It's really fascinating. I'm glad you've dived into this, you know, sometimes unpleasant area. I appreciate it.
Johanna Wolfson
Absolutely, I had a lot of fun. Thanks for the discussion.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.
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