The Green Blueprint

For decades, the promise of new nuclear power in the West has been stifled not by the technology itself, but by the “construction problem.” Massive, multi-billion dollar mega-projects plagued by schedule creep and labor shortages have made nuclear a financial non-starter for commercial project finance.

To build nuclear at scale, we need a paradigm shift.

Jake Jurewicz, CEO of Blue Energy, believes the solution lies in treating nuclear plants less like bespoke civil engineering projects and more like manufactured products. By borrowing techniques from the offshore oil and gas and LNG industries, Blue Energy is building nuclear plants as massive, prefabricated modular blocks that can be built in shipyards and barged to their final destination—a strategy Jake likens to assembling "Duplos" rather than the complex LEGO sets.

But construction efficiency is only half the battle. To de-risk the capital stack, Blue Energy is introducing a "gas-to-nuclear" strategy, where the plant begins its life as a natural gas facility before transitioning to nuclear, allowing for early revenue generation and a more attractive risk profile for institutional lenders.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Jake about why he thinks nuclear engineers don’t need to be reinvent the wheel, how to bring fixed-price contracting to nuclear builds, and why this hybrid approach might be the "missing middle" that finally enables commercial project debt in the nuclear sector.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon, Anne Bailey, and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

Climate tech companies are often forced to rely on expensive equity to bridge the gap between government grant awards and the cash needed to get projects off the ground. But for founders building the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition, dilutive capital isn't always the right tool. For many, it’s not even an option.

Dimitry Gershenson, CEO and co-founder of Enduring Planet, is proving that a specialized approach to debt can fix that.

By underwriting government grants and providing working capital to climate startups, Enduring Planet is solving a critical, often-overlooked friction point in the transition. Its model, which hinges on operational efficiency and profitability, provides a blueprint for how climate-focused debt can scale without the pitfalls of traditional venture debt. But also, according to Dimitry, it isn’t always wrong to accept venture debt, contrary to widespread belief.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Dimitry about the dynamics of climate debt, the "brutal reality" of fundraising in a volatile macro environment, and why Enduring Planet's approach to working capital is more critical than ever for the next generation of climate founders.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon, Anne Bailey, and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for global food security, yet its production is a hyper-centralized, fossil-fuel-intensive process that accounts for 5 to 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As geopolitical instability threatens traditional supply chains, the vulnerability of this industry has never been clearer.

Nico Pinkowski, CEO and co-founder of Nitricity, initially set out to decentralize fertilizer production with compact devices that farmers could use right on their fields. But market realities demanded a pivot. Today, Nitricity is producing liquid organic fertilizer from recycled almond shells at a centralized facility in California.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Nico about the "brutal reality" of scaling a new solution for a mature industry, the intricacies of financing a first-of-a-kind commercial plant, and why their mission to decarbonize a critical global commodity is more urgent than ever.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon, Anne Bailey, and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized energy storage, but inexpensive, truly long-duration batteries may still have a significant role to play in backing renewables and decarbonizing the grid. Form Energy is tackling that challenge with a new class of iron-air batteries. By oxidizing and reducing iron — essentially rusting and unrusting the earth's most abundant metal — Form is creating low-cost, multi-day storage that competes directly with natural gas peaker plants.

Mateo Jaramillo, CEO and co-founder of Form Energy, has spent over two decades in the battery industry, including building Tesla’s storage business. At Form, he’s leading the charge to bring these "E-peakers" to utilities across the country. The company recently achieved a major milestone: completing a 550,000 square-foot factory on the site of an old steel mill in Weirton, West Virginia.

In this episode, Mateo talks with host Lara Pierpoint about the grueling realities of scaling up manufacturing, why they chose to build in West Virginia, using AI to drive material science discovery and dig a data moat, and the immense logistical challenges of building the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon, Anne Bailey, and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

If you’re building a consumer software startup, your investors may expect you to project hockey stick-style growth. But if you’re building the physical infrastructure of the clean energy transition, you’re likely in a very different position.

Frank O’Sullivan, Managing Director at S2G Investments, argues that the climate finance ecosystem is suffering from a structural mismatch. While there is plenty of capital for early-stage innovation and mature infrastructure projects, there is a "missing middle" — a gap where hard tech startups are generating revenue but aren’t yet bankable enough for infrastructure investors.

In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Frank about why we’ve been trying to finance infrastructure companies like they’re software startups, the concentration risks in venture capital, and why large infrastructure allocators should be stepping into this growth-stage gap to seed their own pipeline.

Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.