S7E81: Tim Hade / Scale Microgrid’s - Tackling Climate, Energy, & Hunger Through Vertical Farming

Episode Summary

Tim Hade is Co-founder and COO of Scale Microgrids, an organization that builds and invests in the world’s most cutting-edge microgrid solutions. Today, Harry and Tim discuss the importance of making our energy infrastructure cleaner, more affordable, and more resilient. Tim speaks to the vulnerability of our power grids, the concept of decentralization, and the actions we must take to address the biggest problem facing humanity: climate change.

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Key Takeaways

07:13 – Tim Hade joins the show to recall his time serving in Air Force and his passion for solving the biggest problem humanity has ever faced: climate

15:09 – The vulnerability of our power grids

19:23 – Decentralization and Tim’s career in the energy industry

25:16 – Challenges to overcome as a first-time founder and the impact Elon Musk has had on climate

32:29 – Microgrids, explained and the work Tim and his team are doing at Scale Microgrids

35:35 – How Tim got involved in vertical farming and the story behind collaborating with Fifth Season

45:02 – What vertical farmers should consider when it comes to energy usage

49:24 – Lithium-ion batteries and other innovations that are exciting to Tim

52:58 – The tribal lands initiative and the genesis of the capital solutions business

1:00:50 – Future opportunities for Scale Microgrids

1:03:14 – A specific ask Tim has for his colleagues in the energy and vertical farming industries

1:04:12 – Harry thanks Tim for joining the show and lets listeners know where they can go to connect with him and learn more about Scale Microgrids

Tweetable Quotes

“Being in the military is what also got me very inspired to work on climate. It’s one of the things we don’t talk about a lot, but for the last twenty-five or thirty years, the Department of Defense has looked at climate change as the number one national security threat over time.” (10:40) (Tim)

“We want to be a little piece of this global effort to try to solve the biggest problem humanity has ever faced, which is climate.” (14:55) (Tim)

“If you’re going to build decentralized electric generation, solar and storage weren’t really at the maturity point from a technology standpoint that they needed to be at in order to do it in an economically viable way.” (22:50) (Tim)

“The reality is that Elon Musk is the most important climate-tech founder of all-time. Tesla is the most important clean-tech company that’s ever come.” (29:56) (Tim)

“You think about how people have always received electricity and it’s been from the grid. So, there’s a powerplant a few hundred miles away that generates electricity which comes through the wires and that’s what you use. And a microgrid is really taking that electricity generation and making it locally.” (32:52) (Tim)

“I think vertical farming represents at least a partial solution to that problem. If we can figure out how to sustainably grow crops in a controlled environment, we don’t have to have a population that starves.” (38:39) (Tim)

“If you’re gonna build a vertical farming system, energy needs to be a core competency of what you do.” (45:26) (Tim)