Reinvesting in our cities with renewable energy with Donnel Baird of BlocPower (2022)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Donnel Baird was a child, his parents would regularly use the oven to heat their Brooklyn apartment -- a dangerous and energy-inefficient practice that’s unfortunately not unique to New York City. As an adult traveling the country with the Obama for America campaign, Donnel saw countless homes and apartments wasting power and jeopardizing resident safety because of dated infrastructure. He founded BlocPower in 2014 to address this precise problem, focusing on low-income communities so often overlooked by innovative startups.

This week on How I Built This Lab, Donnel talks with Guy about BlocPower’s work to modernize buildings nationwide and transition them to clean energy sources. BlocPower has raised more than $100 million from Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, and has partnered with cities across the country to create greener, safer spaces for their residents.

This episode was produced by Carla Esteves and edited by John Isabella, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today!
0:31.0	Ah, the Bahamas.
0:34.0	What if you could hang out with celebrities living a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean with all your best friends and have it be 100% paid for?
0:42.0	FTX Founder Sam Bankman freed made that dream a reality, but US prosecutors say he was hiding a dark secret.
0:48.0	Barely 30 the young crypto billionaire became a powerful financial figure, but in just one month his exchange would collapse.
0:56.0	An SPF would find himself in handcuffs.
0:59.0	It's one of the most dramatic faults from Grace and represents one of the most spectacular failures of corporate control in American history.
1:06.0	Here exclusive tape of Sam and his former girlfriend and business partner Caroline Ellison, who later admitted something had gone very wrong inside their operation.
1:15.0	From Bloomberg and Wondery comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and fall of FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman Free.
1:24.0	Follow Spellcaster, wherever you get your podcast.
1:27.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
1:31.0	Download the Amazon Music app today!
1:35.0	Hey everyone, the how I built this lab team is taking a little bit of time off this summer, but don't worry, we'll be back in your feed with fresh new how I built this lab episodes in just a few weeks.
1:45.0	Meantime, I hope you enjoy one of our favorites from last year with Denel Bear, the founder of Block Power.
1:50.0	It's a company that's electrifying buildings across the country as a way to fight climate change.
1:55.0	I hope you enjoy. Now on to the show.
2:05.0	Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Roz.
2:10.0	Almost a third of all the carbon emissions released by Americans each year come from buildings, homes, apartments, offices to keep them lit and heated or cooled.
2:23.0	And this is a big problem, but there is a solution which isn't as complicated as you might think.
2:30.0	And the solution is to electrify our buildings and making sure that that electricity comes from renewable sources like wind or solar or hydropower or even nuclear power.
2:42.0	Most of our energy still comes from burning coal and gas, but advances in technology and recent years has made it possible within our grasp to decarbonize all of our buildings and to do it quickly.
	...

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