Climate Adaptation Investment with Sanjay Wagle

In this Climate Chat episode, we interview The Lightsmith Group co-founder and Managing Director Sanjay Wagle about his firm's focus on investing in climate adaptation and resilience opportunities. Sanjay Wagle is co-founder and Managing Director of The Lightsmith Group, a private equity firm investing in growth-stage technology companies that address critical societal needs, with a current focus on climate change adaptation and resilience. Sanjay is also a member of the board of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. Wagle’s experience includes 12 years investing in venture capital and growth equity. As a Principal at VantagePoint Capital Partners, he helped to launch the firm’s CleanTech Group, which invested over $1 billion in 25 cleantech companies—most notably, in the first institutional investment round in Tesla Motors. In the first three years of the Obama Administration, Wagle served as a senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy, overseeing the implementation of $15 billion of investments in clean energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Wagle was part of the founding team for ARPA-E and served as the agency’s first Associate Director for Commercialization, launching ARPA-E’s “tech to market” program to commercialize breakthrough energy technologies. Earlier in his career, Wagle was an Investment Officer at the World Bank/International Finance Corporation, where he led equity investments in private transport, power, and water infrastructure projects in developing countries. Wagle holds a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley. The Lightsmith Group website: https://lightsmithgp.com Sanjay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaywagle/ Woodwell Climate Research Center: https://www.woodwellclimate.org Please Like and Subscribe! Dan Miller has been giving talks around the world on the need for urgent climate action for over 20 years. He is co-founder of The Roda Group, a climate-tech venture capital group, and he serves as an advisor for other climate funds and climate-focused non-profit groups. He started Climate Chat in 2021 on Clubhouse and added YouTube in 2023. Follow Dan Miller on X/Twitter: @danmiller999 Follow Dan Miller on Bluesky: @danmiller999.bsky.social and @climatechat.bsky.social Leon Simons is a climate scientist based in the Netherlands. He was a co-author with James Hansen on the 2023 "Global Warming in the Pipeline" paper that discussed the recent acceleration in global warming. Leon's work has focused recently on changes in aerosol emissions from ships and the impact of those changes on climate change. You can access Leon's research writings here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leon-Simons Follow Leon on X/Twitter: @LeonSimons8 and Bluesky: ‪@leonsimons.bsky.social‬ Follow Leon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/LeonSimons/home Follow Stacey Randecker on X/Twitter: @DrivingMzStacey and Bluesky: @bikingmzstacey.bsky.social Follow Eli Rabani on X/Twitter: @radsci and Bluesky: @radsci.bsky.social You can leave a question in the YouTube Live chat. Please begin your question with "Question:" to make it easy for our mods to spot it. For more Climate Chat episodes, see our YouTube home page: https://www.youtube.com/@climatechat For recent YouTube Live Climate Chat programs: https://www.youtube.com/@climatechat/streams