🌎 Welcome back to the CleanTechies PodLetter.
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Today, we are talking with Adam Goff from 8 Rivers
This convo should be especially interesting to Policy nerds because of Adam’s background. We cover…
The policy landscape and how it affects the development of clean technologies 🏛️
How a technology development shop operates and makes money ⚙️
The tailwinds and headwinds to the deep tech space 🌬️
Adam has a lot of knowledge and an interesting perspective on the landscape, so we are confident you’ll enjoy this (if you don’t, please let us know, and we will send Adam some stinky socks 🧦 in the mail 😉)
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The Guest: Adam Goff
Adam started his career in DC, working on policy with the ClearPath Foundation. He did this from 2015 to 2018. After the passage of the bill allowing the 45Q tax credit, knowing the landscape of climate tech innovators, he joined 8 Rivers.
During his time there, they have gone from about 20 employees to now over 70.
The Company: 8 Rivers
Carbon Capture, DeepTech, Hydrogen, IP Licensing,
One-liner: Developing technologies that make a positive impact on the climate by combining various de-risked technology in new ways, and then commercializing it.
Context: For many years, there have been companies working on developing new technologies in hardware realm to solve the climate issue. In particular, a lot of focus has gone into developing carbon capture technolgies that work at low costs to prevent or pull out of the air, the carbon emitted. This is requried because we are on track to blow right through our reduction targets.
What: They identify a particular problem, finding as much existing, de-risked technology as possible, and then putting it all together to solve the problem. Then proving it works at scale. Once all of this is done, they license out the IP to others so the impact can be scaled.
Traction: As of today, they have commercialized 3 technologies and successfully built several pilot projects. They continue to work on additional technologies.
Future: Because they have proven their capacity to bring research to the operating scale, they have a bright future. The tech they are currently developing in their pipeline includes, Direct air Capture, Post-combustion Carbon Capture, Zero-carbon Fuels, and Clean Ethylene. Certainly there is a lot to expect out of these folks.
📝 Show Notes:
Topics
2:10 Intro
4:00 Climate x Policy
10:00 How to Pass Legislation Faster
12:40 History and Structure of Eight Rivers
18:00 The Process of Proving New Tech
22:15 Their Current Technologies
28:30 Raising Money for a Tech Developer
33:20 Commercialization and Revenue Generation
36:45 Selecting your First Site
39:40 How to Understanding Global Regulatory Markets
42:30 Systematizing Building a Hardware Climate Startup
44:00 Future Plans for Eight Rivers
Links
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🙏🏽 Thanks for tuning in, and see you all next episode!
#152 Commercializing DeepTech, Policy Tailwinds, Carbon Capture, & More w/ Adam Goff (8 Rivers)