37:31 Apr 27, 2026
This Algae Tech Could Replace Wastewater Treatment | Martin Gross, CEO @ GWT
Martin Gross turned a lost oil-industry job in 2016 into GWT, which now uses algae to replace chemicals and bacteria in wastewater treatm...
Agriculture sits at the center of two urgent problems: it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and it is one of the systems most threatened by a changing climate. That tension is exactly why this topic keeps coming up on The Grove.
Across episodes, the throughline is regeneration. Guests working in this space are not just trying to make farming less harmful. They are exploring whether soil, water, and biological systems can actively draw down carbon, restore degraded land, and produce food more efficiently at the same time. Biochar, a form of charred organic material, appears repeatedly as a tool that connects these goals. It can lock carbon into soil for centuries, improve water retention, and reduce the need for synthetic inputs.
The conversations go beyond soil amendments, though. Episodes like the one featuring Martin Gross of GWT show how biological innovation is reaching into adjacent systems, including wastewater treatment through algae technology, with direct implications for agricultural nutrient cycles and resource recovery.
If you found this page through search, what you will find here is a curated set of conversations with founders, researchers, and operators who are building at the intersection of food systems, carbon removal, and biology. You will come away with a clearer sense of where real capital and real science are meeting, and why agriculture is increasingly central to serious climate strategy rather than an afterthought to it.
37:31 Apr 27, 2026
Martin Gross turned a lost oil-industry job in 2016 into GWT, which now uses algae to replace chemicals and bacteria in wastewater treatm...
38:41 Mar 2, 2026
Daniel Russek built Atarraya over 17 years to prove shrimp farming can close its nitrogen loop without poisoning the ocean.
36:09 Feb 19, 2026
Aukrit Unahalekhaka built a million-farmer AgTech platform in Thailand, then walked away to bet on biochar.
44:26 Feb 4, 2026
Vik Chaudhry beat GE and ABB in a 2021 New York Power Authority RFP by spending three years building AI models before talking revenue.
1:15:48 Jan 19, 2026
Yangbo Du traces how 48 U.S. utilities bankrupted themselves chasing bespoke reactor designs, and why that still shapes nuclear's odds to...
45:56 Jan 14, 2026
Emily Moini explains why transmission planning, one of NERC's 14 reliability categories, is the silent bottleneck for every new solar and...
1:16:00 Dec 22, 2025
Hampus Jakobsson of Pale Blue Dot argues the planet's inefficient 'operating system' is the largest investable opportunity humanity has e...
42:28 Dec 15, 2025
Russell Schindler turned a Michigan regulatory change in 2001 into a software company by listening to customers who wanted the tool, not...
35:58 Dec 15, 2025
Nili Persits shrunk a $100,000 refrigerator-sized Raman spectroscopy sensor to cell-phone scale to put real-time water monitoring within...
34:40 Dec 9, 2025
Louie Woodall argues climate adaptation is the unavoidable reality most climate media is still choosing not to look at directly.
46:58 Dec 8, 2025
Dr. Liz Whitney's PhD compared carbon movement across forest, agricultural, and urban coastal sites in the mid-Atlantic, where sea level...
33:22 Dec 8, 2025
Freya Burton turned steel mill pollution into ethanol, proving a 'biologically impossible' process commercial by 2018.
40:49 Dec 4, 2025
Ben Silton built TrelliSense's laser-based methane tracking by treating every sales call and forklift shift as founder training.
39:52 Dec 4, 2025
Sophia Xu's Carbon Bridge makes microbes 500% more productive by solving a physics problem, not a biology one.
46:50 Nov 25, 2025
Celine King founded GreenIRR at 20 and argues the startup narrative hides the emotional cost that actually determines who survives.
48:37 Nov 20, 2025
Rob Avis built 5th World after teaching 10,000 people permaculture, arguing beavers increase biodiversity 28x and humans can too.
38:34 Nov 20, 2025
Ben Soltoff's MIT book on climate entrepreneurship argues startups are one route to impact, not the only one.
36:20 Nov 20, 2025
Austin Riesenberger built SWERV's first five ERV units for $2,000 total, then turned down a Hawaii relocation to keep the company.
34:56 Nov 19, 2025
Agabas Agudor built AppCyclers from a 2019 hackathon with no e-waste knowledge into a nine-person AI marketplace connecting Ghana's infor...
36:17 Nov 19, 2025
Quantum Wei built Harmony Desalting's first prototype over a year of trial and error, then validated it at a 2019 conference in New Orleans.