Mar 13, 2023
Show Notes
Will Bachman and Nicholas Eisenberger discuss his career path since graduating from Harvard. Nicholas explains that he was always interested in the environment, but there was no real outlet for his interest in school or business at the time. After graduating, he took a year off and a friend of his from Princeton called him from Budapest, Hungary and told him that action around environmental issues were happening there, so he made his way to Hungary where he and his friend started the Environmental Management Law Association in Eastern Europe. The company was a hybrid between a nonprofit and consulting organization. Within a couple of months Nicholas and Peter Kellner were advising the Environmental Minister of Hungary.
They wanted to help the locals catch up to the West in terms of environmental management. They won a contract from the EPA, in conjunction with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in California, to train regional mayors outside of Budapest on environmental management. Nicholas traveled to California from Hungary to meet with the International Director of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund where they talked about how to implement the EPA contract. At the end of the meeting, Nicholas was offered an environmental legal job with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which he knew he should have been elated about since he was accepted into Law school and had planned a career as an environmental lawyer, but he felt deflated.
Inspired to Create Solutions to Environmental Problems
However, he had an epiphany and realized he did not want to be a lawyer and sue people, but rather that he wanted to use the tools of business to create solutions that addressed environmental problems. This became his journey. He was inspired by the post cold war zeitgeist of harnessing the tools of business to solve problems, and he wanted to combine business and environment in a way that was impactful, profitable, and good for people.
Nicholas went back to Cambridge for law school where he learned a lot and could apply it in several ways. He found the professors who had an environmental intersections, including environmental management, environmental economics, and spent his time studying the intersection between environment and business, and in an exchange program, he took an entrepreneurship class at The Business School in Berkeley. At that time in California the Internet was exploding. So, he started an internet company called MyPoints.com, an email marketing company that encouraged people to accept spam. It went public and Nicholas had to make the decision to become an advisor instead of taking a full time position and went back to law and for two years worked in environmental law at a large San Francisco law firm where his goal was to bring together cleantech businesses and investors. He convinced the law firm to sponsor a CleanTech pitch event for companies starting to come up with business concepts to solve environmental problems. After a few positions where he was bringing together business and environmental solutions, he
Businesses Focused on Environmental Solutions
After a few years and positions where he was bringing together business and environmental solutions, he was asked to partner at a small consulting company called Green Water, which focused on helping business institute greener practices and products. They helped to develop a strategy for GE's Ecomagination campaign, the success of which inspired other corporate leaders, who wanted to compete in this space. Ultimately, the company was sold and this led to a new chapter where Nicholas began doing more work in sustainability, including starting the non profit DACCoalition.Org, CircularCarbon.Org, and PureEnergyPartners.Com.
Global Thermostat, a company founded by his father and a partner from Columbia, was created to be a game-changing company that could help with the effects of greenhouse gas. Nicholas was an early investor and advisor. It was realized that simply limiting what we put into the atmosphere is not enough, and that we need to extract billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere on top of stopping the emission of it. This needs to be done in the next 70-70 plus years, which means tens of billions of tonnes a year need to be extracted.
Reducing CO2 Emissions on Global Level
Will and Nicholas discussed ways to reduce CO2 emissions on a global level. Biological methods such as planting trees and mangroves, restoring natural ecosystems, and stopping deforestation are important, but they are not sufficient to address the amount of emissions that have been produced in the last 150 years. Direct Air Capture, a technology developed by Global Thermostat can extract more carbon dioxide than trees can in a single year, per square meter. This technology works like a sponge, using an ultra high surface area material to attract and bind CO2 molecules. Industrial fans are used to suck the air through the material, and then low temperature heat is used to drive the molecules off the contactor and collect them so they can be sequestered or used in products. This technology is helpful in removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.
Inspirational Professors and Courses
Professors and courses that had an impact on Nicholas include Stephen Jay Gould, and the History of Earth and Life, and the scientific magic of our existence; Michael Sandel’s course on justice, and Bob Stevens at the Kennedy School who taught about the discipline of economics.
Timestamps:
06:08 Environmental Entrepreneurship
08:22 Building a Community of Diverse Professionals in Hungary
09:44 Career Paths and Environmental Intersections
20:04 Reflections on the Founding and Sale of Green Order Consulting Firm
33:41 Carbon Capture Technologies
39:16 Discussion on Global Carbon Emissions and Strategies for Reduction
47:58 The Cost and Safety of Carbon Dioxide Sequestration
49:38 Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Carbon Capture and Storage
Links:
circularcarbon.org/market-report/
CONTACT INFO:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/neisenberger/