TED MCKLVEEN
Co-Founder, Verne
Ted is co-founder and CEO of Verne and a Breakthrough Energy Business Fellow. With his Verne team, Ted is tackling the challenges posed by hydrogen storage. Typically, hydrogen is stored as a liquid or as compressed gas, making it costly to store and transport. The team at Verne is developing a new way to store hydrogen in its cryo-compressed state, offering high-density storage and low costs to unlock more applications for hydrogen fuel cells. With support of the BE Fellows program, Verne’s technology will rapidly increase the use of fuel cells and hydrogen power in heavy-duty transportation, helping to abate 10% of CO2 emissions.
As a business leader, Ted brings strategy, operations, corporate finance, and management experience to the team. Having grown up in Minnesota, he is an avid outdoorsman. He enjoys downhill and cross-country skiing, hiking, cycling, and backpacking. Like his teammates, Ted is passionate about mitigating climate change and protecting the environment. He received a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University.
Q&A
What inspired you to go into this field?
Within climate change mitigation, I wanted to work on the most difficult-to-decarbonize sectors. I was previously working in renewable power. This work was meaningful, but I noticed the large portion of emissions that were receiving relatively little attention, including industry, buildings, and transport. I decided to pursue methods to address these sectors and was inspired to work on hydrogen following a talk by Thomas Jaramillo at Stanford.
What do you hope to achieve through the BE Fellows program that you would not be able to accomplish without it?
The BE Fellows program allows us to accelerate innovation on our core products: the hydrogen tank and hydrogen preparation method. Without the R&D support, we would need to focus on deploying an immature technology and spend significant time raising funds. With the Fellows program, we can innovate on the tank design to develop a hydrogen storage system that truly meets the needs of the heavy-duty transport industry and significantly accelerate the development timeline of our hydrogen preparation process.
What is your favorite word and why?
Contentment. It expresses a peaceful, satisfied form of happiness. It also reminds me to depart from comparison and competition and find peace and happiness in my current state.
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