Season 5

Battery-grade lithium can have a significant carbon impact through its production, refining, and transport stages. Yet, an Australian company with a European project may well have found the solution with its Zero Carbon Lithium: Vulcan Energy Resources. And its product is flying off the shelves… years ahead of its actual production. How’s that possible? Let’s explore:

(Also check my entire Lithium deep dive!)

with 🎙️ Cris Moreno – Deputy CEO at Vulcan Energy Resources

💧 Vulcan aims to decarbonize the transition to electric mobility through its world-first Zero Carbon Lithium Projects for electric vehicle batteries and its renewable energy business.

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Have you ever heard of the Lithium King? That’s the title Shale Magazine gave to EnergyX’s founder and CEO, Teague Egan. So what got him that recognition? It could be the company’s patents along the entire battery supply chain, their differentiated direct lithium extraction technology, or the company’s claim that they offer the best complement to existing evaporation pond. Let’s find out!

(Also check my entire Lithium deep dive!)

with 🎙️ Teague Egan – CEO & Founder of EnergyX 

💧 EnergyX is on a mission to become a worldwide leader in the global transition to sustainable energy

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Veolia Water Technologies refines battery-grade lithium by running its zero-liquid-discharge evaporation and crystallization expertise in reverse, recovering and purifying the metal instead of treating wastewater. The same unit engineered the Naraha spodumene-to-hydroxide refinery in Japan, and sits inside a water business turning over an estimated US$3.4B a year.

Find out more with my entire Lithium deep dive.

with 🎙️ Jim Rieke – VP of Process Engineering at Veolia Water Technologies

💧 Veolia Water Technologies specializes in water treatment solutions while providing a complete range of services for industrial & public authorities

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Standard Lithium shall become the first company ever to run a Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) process at a commercial scale by the mid-decade in El Dorado, Arkansas. How did they manage to fast-track this project? Let’s dive into their DLE secrets.

Find out more with my entire Lithium deep dive.

with 🎙️ Robert Mintak – CEO of Standard Lithium

💧 Standard Lithium coins itself America’s 21st century Lithium Company. They’re expected to become the first lithium developer in the World to produce direct-extracted lithium at a commercial scale in El Dorado

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When you visit a foreign country, it’s often a smart move to start by getting the basics of language and culture. That’s our agenda for today: let us break down the fundamentals of lithium processes!

Find out more with my entire Lithium deep dive.

with 🎙️ Tony Strobbe – EV supply chain Projects Director

💧 Every Monday, Tony compiles a dedicated content piece he shares on LinkedIn that covers one aspect of that said supply chain

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Lithium Mining shall get from 500’000 tons per year to at least 2 if not 3 or 5 million tons by 2030. How will we get there? We’ll need a lot of planets to align… and heavy support from the Water Industry!

Find out more with my entire Lithium deep dive.

with 🎙️ Benjamin Sparrow – CEO and Co-Founder at Saltworks Technologies

💧 Saltworks provides innovative products and solutions for industrial wastewater treatment and desalination.

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Microbial Fuel Cells represent a tremendous opportunity to tap into the hidden energy of wastewater. But beyond that, they could also turn the way we operate our plants on its head!

What if your microorganisms told you live and 24/7 how they feel and what your effluent looks like?

with 🎙️ Carol Maxwell – CEO & Director of MICROrganic Technologies and a Founding Member of ENYA Funds 1, 2, &3

with 🎙️ Brent Solina – CTO of MICROrganic Technologies

💧 MICROrganic Technologies builds a Microbial Fuel Cell platform that aims to change the way the world deals with wastewater.

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Water may well represent less than 1% of the World’s GDP, but it heavily affects the other 99%, turning it into a major economic risk.

Why and How? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ Nicola Lei Ravello – Author and Founder of White Stag Investing

💧 White Stag Investing is a research platform for responsible investments, focusing on sustainability as a source of value and stability in the long term.

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Imagine H2O is a non-profit water innovation accelerator founded in 2009 out of Harvard Business School and run from San Francisco. It began as a business plan competition, then evolved to help water startups win customers and capital, and to push utilities toward faster technology adoption. The organization invests directly too, recently co-investing US$875K in CivilGrid.

Why and How? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ Scott Bryan – President of Imagine H2O

💧 Imagine H2O is the world leading Water Innovation Accelerator with $800+M raised in early-stage funding and 1.1 billion people (and counting) served.

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Mazarine Ventures treats water as a risk to underwrite, deploying a US$60M impact fund into early-stage startups that cut water quality and quantity exposure across industrial and municipal value chains. The Chicago venture firm, founded in 2018, writes pre-seed and seed checks and backs founders whose tools let any customer measure their own water risk.

Why and How? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ John Robinson – Partner & Co-Founder at Mazarine Ventures

💧 Mazarine is an impact investor backing young technology companies with innovations that address some aspects of water risk, including quality and quantity.

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Xylem Innovation Labs brings outside water technology to market through two tracks, accelerating early-stage startups and signing later-stage ones to reseller, licensing, and white-label deals that route their products through Xylem’s own sales channels. The labs sit inside Xylem, a roughly US$8.6 billion water company that has bought 22 businesses since 2012, so partnering to reach customers marks a deliberate second lane alongside acquiring.

Why and How? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ Sivan Zamir – VP Xylem Innovation Labs

💧 Xylem is one of the largest water and wastewater technology company globally and follows the simple motto: “Let’s solve water”

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Cambi runs the thermal hydrolysis process (THP), high-pressure steam that breaks down sewage sludge before digestion so wastewater plants make more biogas and far less biosolids. The Norwegian firm trades on Euronext Oslo as CAMBI.OL and acquired the Veolia Water Technologies thermal hydrolysis portfolio in 2022, consolidating the technology it pioneered.

What’s inside these appealing thermal hydrolysis processes? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ Eirik Fadnes – CEO at Cambi Group

💧 Cambi is on a mission to turn sludge into resources thanks to Thermal Hydrolysis Processes (THP)

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BlueTech Forum 2022’s Theme was straightforward: Radical Collaboration for Regeneration. I got to chat with 6 industry leaders about their take at the matter!

with:

🎙️ Menno Holterman (President & CEO @ Nijhuis Saur Industries)

🎙️ Snehal Desai (EVP & Chief Growth and Sustainability Officer @ Evoqua Water Technologies)

🎙️ Ralph Exton (Chief Marketing & Chief Digital Officer @ SUEZ – Water Technologies & Solutions)

🎙️ Kimberly Kupiecki (Director & Global Leader Sustainability ESG, Advocacy, Communications @ DuPont)

🎙️ Jon LIberzon (VP & Head of Business Development @ Tomorrow Water)

🎙️ Kamakshi Sharma (Director of Marketing and Strategy @ Aquatech International)

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ZENON Environmental sold to General Electric for US$689M in 2006, an all-cash exit that capped the Canadian membrane pioneer’s 26-year run under founder Andrew Benedek. His ZeeWeed hollow-fiber technology, generating roughly US$210M in revenue at the sale, seeded today’s multi-billion-dollar membrane bioreactor market.

with 🎙️ Andrew Benedek, Executive Chairman of Anaergia, founder of Zenon and CEO for 26 years, a former member of the IWA board, and the inaugural recipient of the Lee Kwan Yew Prize.

💧 Anaergia aims to convert waste into useful resources, protect the environment, and sustain life for generations to come. Where some see waste, they see resources.

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Lithium Mining is expected to deliver the lithium-ion battery industry 500’000 metric tons a year. Sure, conventional lithium supply will grow by 300% over the next decade but that will still not be sufficient! Hence, it might be an opportunity to get creative and to look for lithium in… water. How? Let’s review.

with 🎙️ Benjamin Sparrow – CEO and Co-Founder at Saltworks Technologies

💧 Saltworks provides innovative products and solutions for industrial wastewater treatment and desalination.

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Jacobs Engineering Group runs an estimated US$3.7 billion water business as a single connected system, its One Water approach uniting drinking water, wastewater, conveyance, and industrial water under one global team instead of treating each in isolation. The NYSE-listed firm frames that integrated water-cycle management as the spine of any credible climate response, since flooding, drought, and reuse pressures move through all of it.

with 🎙️ Susan Moisio – Global Water Director at Jacobs, where she leads a team of 9,000 water professionals across all regions.

💧 Jacobs pledges to push the limits of what’s possible, continually challenging today to reinvent tomorrow.

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When it comes to the race to net zero water, Water UK leads the charge. Not only did it set ambitious goals, but also in a quite timely manner: the routemap leads to 2030! The cherry on that cake? It’s not only about “net zero.” They’re before and above all aiming for a GOOD one.

with 🎙️ Maria Manidaki – Net Zero Technical Lead and Principal Water Investment Planning Advisor at Mott MacDonald

💧 Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy, that places social outcomes at the center of all it does.

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The Asian Development Bank has put together a Screening Tool for the Energy Evaluation of Projects. As a result, it can guarantee that the water and wastewater projects it backs are fully aligned in the race to net zero water!

with 🎙️ Stephane Bessadi – Senior Procurement Specialist for the Asian Development Bank

💧 The Asian Development Bank (ADB) commits to a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and Pacific Region.

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Xylem cuts wastewater carbon by attacking its biggest power draw, aeration, through Sanitaire energy-efficient aeration systems and over 4 million Flygt pumps running adaptive variable-frequency drives. The New York Stock Exchange-listed (NYSE: XYL) supplier backs these with 43 audited water-treatment product lines across pumping, biological treatment, and digital optimization.

with 🎙️ Austin Alexander – Vice President, Sustainability and Social Impact at Xylem

💧 Xylem is a leading water technology company with the famous “solving water” motto – and a finalist for this year’s Net Zero Carbon Award at the Global Water Summit

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What levers can you play on to promote greater water reuse? Well, you can act on the money side of the equation, for instance, by incentivizing the deployment of new technologies through grants and loans. But also by making the wrong behavior more expensive. Wanna find out more? Let’s review it…

with 🎙️Jon Freedman – Senior Vice President – Global Government Affairs at SUEZ WTS

💧 SUEZ WTS provides industry-leading water technology and process expertise to solve the toughest water, wastewater, and process challenges

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Have you ever attended a business meeting that seemed to drain your soul out of your body? Or happily slept in a water conference, to digest the jet lag and be in a good shape for the real conference content, aka the late drinks at the

with 🎙️ Annyse Balkwill – Founder of the LuminUS Group and Program Director for the upcoming BlueTech Forum

💧 The LuminUS Group crafts an events formula that has participants engaging, again and again, sharing with their colleagues and offering this feedback. Wanna see it applied? Make sure to attend the upcoming BlueTech Forum!

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with 🎙️ Victoria Edwards – CEO & Co-Founder of FIDO Tech

FIDO Tech detects water-network leaks at over 92% accuracy using a sensor-agnostic artificial-intelligence engine trained on 2.4 million field recordings. The system finds each leak, sizes it, and ranks it for repair, filtering the false positives that send utility crews on dry digs and attacking the non-revenue water lost across distribution networks.

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with 🎙️ Katrina Donaghy – CEO & Co-Founder of Civic Ledger

💧 Civic Ledger is an award-winning blockchain company that builds trust layer solutions for the markets of tomorrow

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with 🎙️ Christopher Gasson – Owner of Global Water Intelligence and authority on water finance and markets

💧 Global Water Intelligence is the leading publisher and events organizer serving the international water industry.

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SKion Water built the 2021 Water Company of the Year by acquiring water-technology firms worldwide, closing 20 acquisitions between 2012 and 2023. Its flagship move privatized Canadian player Ovivo for US$141.6 million in 2016, a deal it ran with Quebec pension fund CDPQ and no investment bank.

💧 SKion Water is an international water technology platform, that aims to empower water technology companies to make a difference.

Update, June 2026: this story kept compounding. Three years, a $1.4 billion turnover milestone, and one $1.8 billion carve-out later, I replayed all of Reinhard’s tapes against my deal database.

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