Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Climate Money

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.

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.

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:

• Enduring Planet
• Enduring Planet case studies
• Climate Money newsletter  

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

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.

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

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.

Related links: 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01173-x

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

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.   

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.   

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 https://www.kosu.org/energy-environment/2023-09-20/osage-nation-back-in-court-in-latest-bid-to-rid-mineral-estate-of-wind-farm 
• The Real History Behind ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-history-behind-killers-of-the-flower-moon-180983086/ 
• OSAGE ARE RICHEST PEOPLE.; Greatest Per Capita Wealth in World Results From Oil Deal https://www.nytimes.com/1921/06/25/archives/osage-are-richest-people-greatest-per-capita-wealth-in-world.html 
• OSAGE LANDS & MINERALS - 1872 to TODAY https://osagenation.s3.amazonaws.com/B/B.5.a.Lands&Minerals1872-TodayFactSheet.pdf 
• There's a big climate cost to failing to recognize Indigenous sovereignty https://www.corporateknights.com/leadership/big-climate-cost-of-failing-to-recognize-indigenous-rights/  Norway to pay Sámi reindeer herders millions for violating their human rights https://grist.org/global-indigenous-affairs-desk/norway-to-pay-sami-reindeer-herders-millions-for-violating-their-human-rights/ 
• Osage Wind Farm, US — Power Technology market data https://www.power-technology.com/marketdata/osage-wind-farm-us/ 

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/ 

European Union Greenhouse Gas Emissions 1990 - 2024 https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EUU/european-union/ghg-greenhouse-gas-emissions 

A Dark Spot for the Solar Energy Industry: Forced Labor in Xinjiang https://www.csis.org/analysis/dark-spot-solar-energy-industry-forced-labor-xinjiang 

The Powering Past Coal Alliance https://poweringpastcoal.org/ 

‘They’re drowning us in regulations’: how Europe’s furious farmers took on Brussels and won https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/10/theyre-drowning-us-in-regulations-how-europes-furious-farmers-took-on-brussels-and-won 

China’s Carbon Emissions Are Set to Decline Years Earlier Than Expected https://kanebridgenews.com/chinas-carbon-emissions-are-set-to-decline-years-earlier-than-expected/ 

Welcome to the Episode 5 of the Climate Money Podcast. 

In this episode, we look at:

• New research that sheds light on climate deniers, the mental models that do — and don’t — fuel their skepticism, and what it has to do with climate money, especially as more climate companies and jobs are flooding otherwise climate unfriendly red states in the US
• Two important food labeling updates and what they mean for our transition to a cleaner, lower carbon, and lower cruelty food system. 

Links and graphics referenced in this episode:

• Global Warming's Six Americas — Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
• A representative survey experiment of motivated climate change denial — Nature Climate Change
• Fatwa on Cultivated Meat — Islamic Religious Council of Singapore

Welcome to the Episode 4 of the Climate Money Podcast. 

In this episode, we look at:

• Five big takeaways from the IEA’s newly released 170-pg Electricity 2024 report, including the structural success of renewables, where the biggest emissions reductions are happening, and nuclear’s big moment
• AI’s climate footprint and who’s poised to profit. Private equity firm and landlord of the nation Blackstone just shared Q4 earnings, buoyed by the stellar performance of its data center holdings where value has grown 250% in just two years. But what’s the climate cost of all this new compute power, what role do renewables play, and how else might technology help? 
• The new climate subsidy wars, and what Europe getting in the game means for the global climate technology ‘space race’

Welcome to the Episode 3 of the Climate Money Podcast. Follow the climate headlines — and the climate money — with me, Susan Su. 

In this episode, we look at:

• $200B in climate losses and the climate narrative problem. New data out from global reinsurer Munich RE shows that 2023 was the biggest year on record for climate-related losses. So why are we still talking about the “weather?”

• Tesla’s Hertz problem, Ford’s Lightning layoffs, and why China is exporting millions of combustion vehicles even as it becomes the biggest market in the world for EVs. We’re joined by special guest and mobility expert Olaf Sakkers, of RedBlue Capital, to learn more about what’s really behind all the bad news for EVs, and why there’s still reason to be bullish on an electric future

Welcome to the Episode 2 of the Climate Money Podcast. Follow the climate headlines — and the climate money — with me, Susan Su.

In this episode, we look at:

• Kenya’s carbon cash cow, a plan to charge a new 15%-25% take rate on all carbon credits minted in the country, and whether this is good, bad or meh for Kenya’s climate ambitions and for global carbon markets

• Solyndra 2.0, a fraud-hunt that’s animating Republicans and threatening the $400B DOE Loan Program Office that is or will be key to many climate companies’ deployment success

• Yikes, JBS. The world’s largest meat processor and Amazon deforester extraordinaire might get blocked from the NYSE, on climate grounds; why it matters

• Italy and France are set to ban cell based agriculture — and why this is a warning for every climate company that regulatory capture might be worse than climate denial

Welcome to the Episode 1 of the Climate Money Podcast. Follow the climate headlines — and the climate money — with me, Susan Su. One of the central ideas behind my work as a climate investor, and that of many others like me, is that solving climate change is the value creation opportunity of a lifetime. In this episode, we look at: - The UAE's new $30B climate fund and what it means for climate investing - A big development for carbon sequestration in... Louisiana? - India's solar and wind story, the good the bad and the tricky - First Solar's $700M revenue bump from tax credits courtesy of the IRA