Spark Club Podcast
33 episodes - English - Latest episode: 17 days ago -Spark Club brings entrepreneurs in the energy field together with a common objective, to build energy businesses. We draw on each others experience to support, learn and grow energy businesses. The podcasts are hosted by Grant McDowell and are recordings of our Fireside chat with leaders in the energy transition.
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Episodes
How PERC Changed the World
June 23, 2024 07:04 - 1 hour - 105 MBHi and welcome to the Spark Club podcast. In this podcast, How PERC changed the World, we'll hear from Professor Martin Green from UNSW and how he and his team invented the PERC solar cell. PERC's global success has unlocked the lowest cost of energy in history. We’ll hear the back story from Martin and then hear what the future holds for SPREE at UNSW from Professor Renate Egan. A truly amazing story, from the humble team that developed the humble solar cell, that indeed changed the world...
US State Dept - What's Next for Climate
December 05, 2023 07:21 - 55 minutes - 63.9 MBIn 2023 Australia and the United States have taken strong action on climate to accelerate the transition to a global clean energy economy. In May, President Biden and Prime Minister Albanese jointly declared that climate and clean energy are the third pillar of the U.S.-Australia alliance. The Australia-United States Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact commits our countries to expanding and diversifying clean energy and critical minerals supply chains, to d...
Energy Transition Tsunami - David Roberts & Saul Griffith
August 23, 2023 06:02 - 54 minutes - 75.5 MBIt’s an exciting time in cleantech as global macro trends, decarbonisation ambitions and public investment transform the energy sector. Which is why it was a great opportunity to host David Roberts from the Volts Podcast and Saul Griffith from Rewiring America and Rewiring Australia in front of a live Spark Club audience at Fishburners in Sydney in August 2023. In this robust conversation, David and Saul discuss the politics and policy of clean energy the US and Australia and the scale of...
Infravision - Drones for Transmission + Danny Kennedy
December 01, 2022 03:56 - 57 minutes - 52.7 MBInfravision co-founder and CEO Cameron Van Der Berg believes technology will play a vital role in revolutionising high voltage grid transmission lines. Infravision set out to drag a traditional slow moving trillion dollar transmission industry into the future, by using drones to string. Cameron and his team are innovating by partnering with progressive grids, moving the industry forward, faster, cheaper and safer applying the 10X rule to a slow changing industry. Danny knows the Infravisio...
Verge22 - USA is Turning ON - Podcast
October 31, 2022 23:32 - 53 minutes - 49.5 MBIn this Spark Club podcast we’ll hear how United States is turning on. I recorded interviews in the last week October at the Verge22, the largest climate tech conference in North America held in San Jose California. Climate tech bucking the investment trend and the Binden Administration unlocking an enormous amount of government funding. We’ll hear an opening address from Secretary Granholm and then have perspectives from Danny Kennedy from NewEnergyNexus, followed by Mick Liubinskas from...
Lithium Battery Ecosystem Podcast
June 13, 2022 06:40 - 58 minutes - 53.5 MBIn this Spark Club podcast, recorded live at EnergyLab in June 2022, we shine a light on the Lithium Battery sector. Australian raw materials are playing a key role in this vital industry in the energy transition, but can we do more? We have an amazing panel, Danny Kennedy from New Energy Nexus, Katja Digweed from the CSIRO, Mark Chilcote CEO at Energy Renaissance and Christiaan Jordaan from Sicona and Novolith join us for this fascinating conversation on the Lithium Battery ecosystem Austra...
Independent Energy Event
May 15, 2022 10:06 - 1 hour - 66.8 MBIn this election Spark Club podcast we are joined by three leading Independent candidates for the up and coming Federal election on the 21st of May 2022. Allegra Spender from Wentworth, Kylea Tink from North Sydney and Georgia Steele from Hughes join Saul Griffith and I on stage for a conversation on the key issues on energy and the opportunity the clean energy transition holds for Australia in jobs, fuel cost savings and National prosperity.
The Big Switch Event - Saul Griffith
March 28, 2022 08:39 - 58 minutes - 67.1 MBIn this exciting Spark Club podcast Saul Griffith is back. He joined us live at Fishburners in Sydney to discuss his new book, The Big Switch. The energy transition is moving at a clip and so is Saul as breaks his new big idea which you’ll hear on the podcast. It was a great event and I’d like to thank Young Henrys for sponsoring the beer.
FFS Event - Danny Kennedy & Saul Griffith
May 31, 2021 10:50 - 1 hour - 87.1 MBThis is a particularly exciting Spark Club podcast as Danny Kennedy and Saul Griffith join us live at Fishburners to share their views on the future of the electrification of everything. We cover the big levers needed to deliver bold ambitions in reducing carbon emissions. Wartime language helps describe the urgency and scale of the challenge to electrify everything with the message of jobs, jobs, jobs.
Demand Response Event - Marija Petkovic
May 02, 2021 01:56 - 43 minutes - 60.4 MBSpark Club is hosting Live Events again! We will hear from Marija Petkovic from Energy Synapse about the Demand Response rule change to come in on the 24th October 2021. Grant McDowell interviews Marija to explore the global context for Demand Response and the impact the rule change will have on commercial industrial electricity consumers, retailers and aggregators entering the market. This is a fantastic insight to the Demand Response rule change to come through in the Australian National E...
OpenSolar - Maaike Gobel
September 23, 2020 01:34 - 21 minutes - 29.6 MBWelcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. This is program seven in the series with my conversation with Maaike Gobel from OpenSolar.
David Morgan - Iron Matrix
September 15, 2020 03:00 - 40 minutes - 56.2 MBWelcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. This is program six in the series with my conversation with David Morgan from Iron Matrix.
Fulcrum3D - Jo Hume
September 08, 2020 03:03 - 25 minutes - 34.9 MBWelcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. This is program five in the series with my conversation with Jo Hume from Fulcrum3D.
Energy Renaissance - Mark Chilcote
September 01, 2020 03:08 - 30 minutes - 42 MBWelcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. Our four conversation in the series is with Mark Chilcote from Energy Renaissance.
MGA Thermal - Alex Post - Export Series
August 25, 2020 06:17 - 35 minutes - 48.8 MBWelcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell interviews founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. This is our third conversation in the series with Alex Post from MGA Thermal.
Enosi - Steve Hoy - Export Series
August 18, 2020 04:15 - 25 minutes - 34.9 MBWelcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets.
SwitchDin - Andrew Mears - Export Series
August 11, 2020 03:14 - 32 minutes - 30 MBWelcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. We kick off the with the first conversation with Andrew Mears from SwitchDin.
Mega Trends & Big Levers - Andrew Birch - OpenSolar
May 03, 2020 10:41 - 55 minutes - 51.1 MBIn mid-March this year, just days before lockdown in Australia, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Birchy, as he's known, to talk about what he's been building at OpenSolar and SolarApp. In our conversation Birchy shares his views on the mega trends in energy and the work he’s doing on the big levers with the objective to bring about big change in the energy transition. Birchy and his team have bold ambitions for OpenSolar, the online solar design tool they are developing for the g...
5 Minute Settlement Event Podcast
April 08, 2020 11:49 - 1 hour - 59.2 MBHow our world has changed in a simple matter of weeks. On the 4th March 2020 the Spark Club community came together at EnergyLab in Sydney to hear a panel discussion on the biggest rule change in the Australian electricity market in decades. We are now in a new world and the impacts have stretched to include the 5 minute rule change start date. In this podcast you'll hear a broad consensus that the rule change, whilst contentious, was on target to meet the 1st of July 2021 start date, now ...
Raising Capital Masterclass - Fiona Waterhouse - Utilitas
November 30, 2019 05:46 - 1 hour - 56.9 MBWe sat down for a live Fireside chat with Fiona Waterhouse, founder and CEO of Utilitas, to learn about what it takes to be a startup founder in the energy sector. We discuss Fiona’s early life and this formative time was instrumental in building the resilience she would need as a startup founder. We also discuss Fiona’s Four M’s to raising finance. And I recommend listening through to the end where Fiona shares her Three Whys on her hardest lessons learned as an entrepreneur. The Rais...
Let's Raise $1 Billion - Glenn Platt - CSIRO
September 29, 2019 21:23 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBAt Spark Club we believe Australia can take our natural advantage in Energy Tech and do the same. Glenn Platt from CSIRO joins us for the Fireside Chat and then the panel shares the stage. Glenn story provides an insight to the challenges in energy, the importance of the work given climate change and a foundation to the panel conversation. Darren Miller, Jon Jutsen and Marten Duursma come up onto the stage and discuss raising a fund to build an export industry in Energy Tech, to harne...
Raising Money in Energy Tech
July 07, 2019 09:01 - 52 minutes - 48 MBEnergy Tech startup funding Raising investment for a Startup in the energy tech sector is challenging and demands a dynamic approach. Kyle Bolto brings a fresh perspective to the energy sector and with it a unique approach to raising investment. Kyle shares fantastic lessons learned as an industry outsider with experience in the way Silicon Valley sees the world. An absolute must podcast for energy entrepreneurs.
100% Renewables - Is California Dreaming
March 03, 2019 03:48 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBCalifornia has set a bold target of powering its electricity grid with 100% renewables. The Californian Assembly passed the historic SB100 bill in August last year setting the Golden State on an ambitious decarbonising journey. SB100 has an initial milestone of 60% by 2030 with the objective of carbon free electricity generation by 2045. We've invited Danny Kennedy from the Californian Clean Energy Fund, CalCEF, to join us on the Spark Club stage and share his view on this ambitions ...
Battle of the Batteries - Dr Lachlan Blackhall & Colin Gillam
October 01, 2018 06:37 - 58 minutes - 53.6 MBThe Battle of the Batteries event was recorded on the 26th September 2018, just ten months after the Tesla big battery was installed at Hornsdale in South Australia. Spark Club thought it timely to hear from the experts on this fast changing technology. We invited Lachlan BlackHall from ANU in Canberra to represent the Lithium ion technology and Colin Gillam from RedT Energy to represent Flow batteries. We were at EnergyLab again and had a great turnout for this event. Enjoy the podcast.
Taking our Energy Tech Global - Murray Hogarth
July 19, 2018 01:38 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBToday we're with Murray Hogarth from Wattwatchers sharing his experience competing in two European Energy Tech competitions, Free Electrons in Lisbon and Start up Energy Transition in Berlin. Murray talks openly about the Wattwatchers start up journey sharing lesson learned along the way. Interestingly, returns from Europe with a new found appreciation for Australian networks as their preparedness to engage with the digital disruption seems far better than their European counterparts. W...
Communications for Start-ups - Jonathan Englert
June 13, 2018 11:34 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBJonathan Englert was inspired by the founders journey and how critical communications is in shaping the start-up destiny. The lines between marketing and communications can be blurred which is why I invited Jonathan Englert onto the podcast to discuss communications and the book he co-authored, No Dead Monkeys. Jonathan helps draw the lines between marketing and communications and shares some of his insights from his book and how he believes communications shapes your destiny. Jonathan is ...
ClimateLaunchPad - Chris Lee from ClimateKIC
May 07, 2018 00:04 - 21 minutes - 20 MBClimateKIC are running the ClimateLaunchPad program, deadline is the end of May 2018. In this short podcast Chris Lee introduces the program, how Australia fits into the global context and provides the detail on the application and the process. The competition is open to any Australian resident – being a start-up, SME, researcher, student, public organisation, consultant or anyone else with an innovative green idea, whether it’s fully fledged or sketched on the back of a coaster. Partici...
Sales and Marketing - Jo Stevens Kramer and Sidney Minassian
April 15, 2018 12:11 - 1 hour - 66.5 MBOur Sales and Marketing podcast brings two leading lights to the stage for our Fireside Chat in March 2018. Both speakers draw on deep experience during the tech boom in Silicon Valley and are applying lessons learned here in Australia. Spark Club Members and Elders will learn key Sales and Marketing insights from Joanna and Sidney. More importantly we will learn and how the Silicon Valley ecosystem created billion dollar companies as our boom time in energy tech kicks off.
Matt Hale - Blockchain in Energy
April 05, 2018 02:02 - 1 hour - 61.6 MBBlockchain is coming to energy at hyper speed. In the podcast Grant McDowell interviews Matt Hale as he unpacks the fundamentals of blockchain specific to energy. The podcast is a great entry point for blockchain in energy, both here in Australia and in other global energy markets.
Danny Kennedy - Startup Ecosystems
April 04, 2018 12:08 - 19 minutes - 18.6 MBDanny Kennedy is Managing Director at California Clean Energy Fund and is at the centre of energy disruption. Grant McDowell has 'hallway' discussion with Danny about the clean tech startup scene in the US and Australia and how they compare.
Ulric Ferner - Right Click Capital
April 04, 2018 02:56 - 47 minutes - 43.8 MBIn our third Fireside Chat Grant McDowell interviews Ulric Ferner. Ulric shares his own journey from entrepreneur at MIT in Boston to VC with Right Click Capital here in Sydney. Ulric sees energy tech start-ups from a unique vantage point and shares key insights for clean tech entrepreneurs.
Paul Fox - Silicon Valley to New Energy
April 03, 2018 08:34 - 1 hour - 55.8 MBIn the second episode of the Spark Club podcast series, Spark Club co-founder Grant McDowell interviews Paul Fox, investor, strategist, business builder, technologist. Paul offers great insight through his time spent in Silicon Valley and then back here in Australia working at AGL New Energy. Paul shares invaluable lessons learned along the way and a rare glimpse into how the big players see the market.
Stefan Jarnason - Solar Analytics
March 28, 2018 06:49 - 57 minutes - 53.4 MBIn the first episode of the Spark Club podcast series, Spark Club co-founder Grant McDowell interviews CEO of Solar Analytics, Stefan Jarnason. Grant asks the questions that every entrepreneur ponders, giving Stefan an opportunity to share his knowledge in navigating the difficulties in establishing a startup, and overcoming the common challenges faced by entrepreneurs in this space. He also discusses the complexity of financial planning and stable business development.