Caleb Boyd
Chief Technology Officer, Molten Industries
Caleb joins Breakthrough Energy’s Innovator Fellows from Molten Industries in Stanford, California. He is an expert in designing and using breakthrough materials to make energy production and industrial processes more sustainable and efficient. At Molten Industries, Caleb and his team are working to produce low-cost, carbon-neutral hydrogen using methane pyrolysis technology, which has the potential to be more energy efficient and scalable than existing approaches to hydrogen production.
The Molten Industries solution uses seven times less energy than electrolysis and can benefit from the existing natural gas distribution network to produce clean hydrogen at points of consumption. The clean hydrogen produced will be used to decarbonize critical, yet hard-to-decarbonize industries such as cement and steel production, aviation, long-haul trucking, and shipping. Through the Fellows program, Caleb will work to scale his technology to commercial readiness and begin working with commercial partners as quickly as possible.
Caleb grew up on a small ranch in California and holds a Master of Science in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley as well as a Doctor of Philosophy in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University. While obtaining his Doctor of Philosophy, Caleb split time between Stanford and the National Renewable Energy Lab where he developed some of the world’s highest-efficiency perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells. Previously, he worked on a team in Kolkata, India developing affordable air purifiers and at a European deep-tech venture capital fund investing in early-stage climate tech startups.
Q&A
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
Why do what others can or will do when you can try what others can’t or won’t do
What beliefs drive you?
I believe that the most important and fulfilling things I can do are to love God and love other people, and basically my entire life drives from these two points. I work on climate tech, because I believe that during our lifetimes [climate change] probably will have the most adverse impact on the most people, especially the poor and marginalized.
What’s a fun fact about yourself?
In addition to English, I’ve been proficient in Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, and German. I say “been” because right now German dominates all the other languages as it’s what I’ve been learning most recently.
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