Energy Seminar: Gigaton Challenges in Climate-Tech Innovation, David Danielson, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Stanford University
Event Details:
David will put forward grand challenges to the Stanford community in energy & food/agriculture technology that represent opportunities to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by more than 0.5 Gtons/year CO2-equivalent, from 1,000 hours grid batteries to zero-emissions cows and everything in between. He will also discuss a new set of approaches that today’s climate-tech entrepreneurs are taking (a new “playbook to significantly increase their probability of success versus what happened in the cleantech venture capital boom and bust of the late 2000’s.
Speaker Bio:
David Danielson is a Managing Director at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a new $1B+ climate-tech investment fund backed by Bill Gates and more than 20 other highly successful business leaders from around the world. Previously, David served as Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he led the largest government clean-energy innovation funding agency in the world. At EERE, he directed the U.S. government’s innovation strategy in the areas of sustainable transportation, renewable power, energy efficiency and clean-energy manufacturing, investing about $2 billion annually into American clean-energy innovation
Prior to serving as Assistant Secretary of EERE, David was a co-founder and employee #1 at the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), a highly successful funding agency that focuses on the development of high-risk, high-reward clean-energy technologies. Prior to his government service, he was a clean-energy venture capitalist at General Catalyst Partners and was also the founder and president of the MIT Energy Club. David is also an Adjunct Professor and Precourt Energy Scholar at Stanford University, teaching a course on New Energy Ventures. David received a PhD in Materials Science from MIT and BS in Materials Science from U.C. Berkeley.
https://energy.stanford.edu/energy-seminar/upcoming-energy-seminars