Climate Money – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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Climate Money

Susan Su

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Fréquence : 1 épisode/63j. Total Éps: 15

Climate Money covers the financing side of climate change -- where the money is flowing, where it isn't, and why it matters. Join us as we cover climate headlines and founders and investors involved in the business of fighting climate change. Season 2 explores a central observation: climate tech financing has reached ~$1.8 trillion annually, but the debt-to-equity ratio is roughly 15:1. This massive tilt toward debt signals sector maturation (bankable assets, proven revenue models, institutional comfort) while simultaneously exposing dangerous gaps that we'll dive into on the show.

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Données mises à jour le 09/09/2026

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$326B is hiding in plain sight – and that's before the IPOs

Saison 2 · Épisode 5

jeudi 11 juin 2026 • Durée 22:07

There's $326 billion sitting in charitable accounts that face no legal requirement to ever pay out a cent — and the 2026 IPO wave is about to add hundreds of thousands more. Donor-advised funds are now 11 of the top 20 charities in the US by contributions, and the same vehicle that could fund the climate transition has spent two decades quietly funding the movement against it.

In this episode, Susan Su reveals how DAFs became the fastest-growing force in American philanthropy, why that should bother anyone who cares about climate, and what donors can actually do about it.

We cover:

How financialization turned a sleepy 1931 community-foundation tool into the biggest charity engine in the country, once Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab got involved in the 1990s
Why DAFs are a regulatory free pass — immediate tax deduction, no payout requirement, near-total anonymity, and a clean way to erase capital gains before an IPO
The real cost to everyone else: the Institute for Policy Studies estimate that every $1 in a DAF carries a $0.74 taxpayer subsidy
What's hiding behind the headline 20% payout rate, and why the median account tells a different story
How DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund moved $479 million in untraceable money into the anti-climate movement — and how Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard routed $171 million to the groups behind Project 2025
Why the IPO wave won't just mint a few whales but half a million minnows — the median Fidelity DAF holds just $23,500, which makes this everyone's problem
Four ways DAF capital is uniquely suited to climate: catalytic first-loss equity, concessionary debt for first-of-a-kind projects, pooled funds, and funding the public goods markets ignore

Only about 3% of US charitable giving goes to all environmental causes combined. Religious causes got 28% in 2020. The tool takes no sides — but right now, only one side is using it at scale.

Read the full essay at climatemoney.substack.com.

Warning: this could radicalize you.

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Climate Money S2 E4: Cheap oil's last, best job

Saison 2 · Épisode 4

mardi 21 avril 2026 • Durée 21:36

Every climate VC post-Trump has said it: we don't invest in companies that rely on subsidies.

But the entire climate transition has been living off the biggest subsidy in human history — 200 years of cheap, abundant fossil fuels that funded low interest rates, scalable manufacturing, global trade, and the financial architecture of the transition itself.

In this Season 2 essay, Susan Su makes the case that energy is upstream of capital, capital is upstream of everything else, and the window is closing faster than the models assume.

We walk through the petrodollar system, why Bitcoin, aluminum and green hydrogen (among other products) are all just energy repackaged, and what it means that 40% of the world's solar polysilicon is manufactured with captive coal in Xinjiang.

The 15:1 debt-to-equity ratio at the heart of climate finance assumes stable energy pricing across a 20-year horizon. That assumption is about to get tested. The Gulf States used their fossil surplus to build sovereign wealth funds. The US used it to subsidize consumption.

Which path the climate finance community takes from here — scenario planning over point estimates, auditing exposure on the energy-repackaged hierarchy, treating energy politics as alpha — will decide who navigates the volatility with options and who navigates it with debt.

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Climate Money S2 E3: Debt is the answer (it always was) — a conversation with Dimitry Gershenson

Saison 2 · Épisode 3

jeudi 26 mars 2026 • Durée 58:11

Venture capital for climate companies is drying up, and early stage companies can't exactly get a loan from the bank. So, who's actually financing the companies that are supposed to become tomorrow's bankable assets?

Dimitry Gershenson, co-founder and CEO of Enduring Planet, joins us for a dispatch straight from the field. His firm lends against government grants and commercial contracts — starting at $100K, at the moment a contract is signed, not after an invoice is submitted. It's a gap that traditional lenders won't touch and most founders don't know exists.

In this episode, we cover:

How Enduring Planet evolved from revenue-based financing to grant advances to commercial contract lending — and the painful lessons along the way
Why the firm has a zero default rate across 100 deals, even post-election
The real math on why founders are "irrationally scared" of debt while happily giving away half their company in equity
What Dimitry is seeing in his pipeline right now: the vibe, the mix of government vs. commercial lending, and where things are headed
Why the companies borrowing $100K today will be the ones borrowing $100M tomorrow
The fractional CFO business that grew out of founders showing up with broken books

Dimitry has been building financial plumbing for the climate transition since his Peace Corps days in Honduras, through deploying catalytic capital at Meta, to founding Enduring Planet.

This conversation is a close up look at what climate lending looks like when you strip away the narratives and look at the deals.

Links:

TAGS/KEYWORDS:climate finance, climate debt, climate tech, enduring planet, dimitry gershenson, grant advance, working capital, early stage lending, climate lending, contract financing, venture debt, climate startups, project finance, fractional CFO, climate VC, season 2

Climate Money S2 E2: $6 trillion in Gulf capital is looking for the exit

Saison 2 · Épisode 2

jeudi 12 mars 2026 • Durée 18:56

The Iran war is dominating oil headlines, but the sleeper story is what happens to the $6 trillion in Gulf sovereign wealth fund capital that underpins the AI boom and the energy transition.

We break down the unprecedented force majeure reviews now underway across Gulf economies, what they mean for climate project finance and fund formation, and why the real disruption isn't barrels — it's balance sheets.

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Climate Money S2 E1: Climate debt is the new climate money

Saison 2 · Épisode 1

jeudi 26 février 2026 • Durée 15:45

Climate Money is back! In the Season 2 premiere, host Susan Su breaks down BloombergNEF's bombshell report: global energy transition investment hit $2.3 trillion in 2025 — a new all-time record and the fourth consecutive record year.

But the real story isn't the headline number. It's what's inside it.

Over half of that $2.3T — a massive $1.2 trillion — was debt. That's a 15:1 ratio of debt to equity issuance, and it tells us two things: climate tech is maturing fast enough to attract risk-averse lenders at scale, and the original cleantech 1.0 equity investors were right.

Susan unpacks what $2.3 trillion actually buys (77 Manhattan Projects, 13 Marshall Plans, 85% of global military spending), why debt is the signal every VC should be watching, and the one number that keeps her up at night — a dangerous mismatch between accelerating debt markets and a shrinking equity pipeline that could bottleneck the next generation of climate innovation.

This season on Climate Money, we're tracking all things debt: where the capital is flowing, where the gaps are, and what founders and lenders on both sides of the table are seeing on the ground.

Topics covered:

BloombergNEF Energy Transition Investment Trends 2026
The 15:1 debt-to-equity pipeline ratio
Why cleantech 1.0 was right
Deutsche Bank, TotalEnergies/Google, and SkyNRG's non-recourse milestone
The equity bottleneck and compounding mismatch
Private capital replacing government-labeled debt

Read the full analysis on Substack: climatemoney.substack.com

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Climate change and the cost of food

Épisode 10

jeudi 28 mars 2024 • Durée 27:10

On today’s episode, we talk about climate change and the cost of food.

New work from researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the European Central Bank is projecting that climate change will drive up food prices around the world by up to 3.2% per year by 2035.

Food will grow to take up a greater proportion of total household income because these price increases will outstrip overall climate-driven inflation. The impact will be disproportionately borne by people in sub-Saharan Africa, where many communities are already living with moderate to severe food insecurity.

Today’s episode looks at exactly what these numbers mean for communities around the world, how it relates to markets, and how the actions of some larger players to mitigate food waste could contribute to a solution.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-14/google-is-trying-to-reduce-its-food-waste-without-irritating-employees

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/global-food-waste-solutions/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-29/rising-cocoa-prices-drive-mars-hersey-to-use-less-chocolate

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/?topicId=1afac93a-444e-4e05-99f3-53217721a8be#:~:text=Average%20annual%20food%2Dat%2Dhome,is%202.5%20percent%20per%20year

Climate Money Ep. 9: The True Cost of Direct Air Capture

Épisode 9

mardi 12 mars 2024 • Durée 24:59

Welcome to the Episode 9 of the Climate Money Podcast.

In this episode, we look at:

New research that shoes Direct Air Capture won’t be able to hit the magical $100/ton cost benchmark, and why this flies in the face of everything we’ve been told
How a billion-dollar CO2 pipeline project is a secret force opposing EV adoption
The blossoming frenemy-ship between Big Oil and Big Ag
And how all this underscores the wicked, systems problem of climate change

As always I welcome your feedback and reflections.

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Climate Money Ep. 8: The EU vs Fast Fashion

Épisode 8

mercredi 28 février 2024 • Durée 25:21

Welcome to the Episode 8 of the Climate Money Podcast.

In this episode, we look at:

The EU’s newly revised Extended Producer Responsibility proposal, and how it’s taking on food waste and fast fashion.
Why linear capitalism’s days could be numbered
The real numbers behind the climate wealth gap and what it means for builders and investors

As always I welcome your feedback and reflections.

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Climate Money Ep. 7: Big Wind Faces a Big Setback. The Reasons Might Surprise You.

Épisode 7

mercredi 21 février 2024 • Durée 24:51

Welcome to the Episode 7 of the Climate Money Podcast.

In this episode, we look at:

Enel Energy’s $500M+ wind farm loss, and what it teaches us about energy history, tribal sovereignty, and knowing your audience
Why culture, not money, is the tide that floats all boats — or sinks them, as we’ll see

This is a particularly thorny issue so we’ve dedicated the entire episode to this topic. As always I welcome your feedback and reflections.

Links and resources related to this week’s episode:

Large Wind Turbine Facility in Oklahoma Ordered to be Dismantled https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/large-wind-turbine-facility-in-oklahoma-ordered-to-be-dismantled/
Enel faces huge bill to dismantle 84-turbine wind farm as US judge backs tribal nation https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/enel-faces-huge-bill-to-dismantle-84-turbine-wind-farm-as-us-judge-backs-tribal-nation/2-1-1577066
Federal Judge Sides With Osage Nation, Orders Removal Of 84 Wind Turbines https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/federal-judge-sides-with-osage-tribe (Warning: Robert Bryce’s work is controversial for its anti clean energy bias and funding from conservative think tanks, but this post presents details not available elsewhere.)
Osage Nation back in court in latest bid to rid mineral estate of wind farm

Climate Money Ep. 6: The EU’s Big Hairy Climate Goal

Épisode 6

mardi 13 février 2024 • Durée 24:29

Welcome to the Episode 6 of the Climate Money Podcast.

In this episode, we look at:

The European Commission’s new recommendation to cut emissions by 90% by 2040, and what Chinese labor has to do with it
The EU’s upcoming Parliamentary elections and how they could effect European Climate Money
A revised look at Kenya’s carbon credits fee and how regulation can help markets, even if they impose costs

Links and resources related to this week’s episode:

European Commission calls for 90% cut in EU emissions by 2040

https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-european-commission-calls-for-90-cut-in-eu-emissions-by-2040/

EU rebuffs European solar industry’s plea for emergency help to fight cheap China imports https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3251047/eu-rebuffs-european-solar-industrys-plea-emergency-help-fight-cheap-china-imports

A sharp right turn: A forecast for the 2024 European Parliament elections https://ecfr.eu/publication/a-sharp-right-turn-a-forecast-for-the-2024-european-parliament-elections/

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