#188 Decarbonizing Steam, Drop-In Replacement, Building in Stealth, & More w/ Ashwin Salvi (AtmosZero)

Ashwin Salvi is the Co-Founder and COO of AtmosZero. They create electrified boilers to replace traditional fossil-fuel-burning boilers in industrial settings.

Steam touches a huge amount of products that we, as consumers, use every day, and AtmosZero is helping decarbonize that. 

Today, Ashwin shares his story, and we discuss:

• How they solved the cost issue by making a drop-in replacement 
• How they built their pilot at the same scale as their commercial unit 
• The tradeoffs of building in stealth
• How they are building to win even without subsidies 

And much more.

Enjoy the episode!

Resources Mentioned
Book Recommendation: Empires of Light by Jill Jonne
Podcast Recommendations: Founders Podcast by David Senra AND How to Take Over the World by Ben Wilson
Connect with Ashwin Salvi: Email: ashwin@atmoszero.energy

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Topics:
**01:58 Introduction and Background
**10:03 Creating a Standardized Solution for Decarbonization
**24:03 Return on Investment and Future Plans
**25:42 De-risking and Mass Manufacturing
**29:23 Challenges and Objections
**39:32 First Commercial Deployment
**48:48 Opportunities in Electrical Availability and Funding
**51: 38 Takeaways

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Links:
**Ashwin Salvi | AtmosZero
**Follow CleanTechies on LinkedIn:
**@Silas & @Somil_Agg on X 

Chapters

• 1:58 Introduction and Background
• 10:03 Creating a Standardized Solution for Decarbonization
• 24:03 Return on Investment and Future Plans
• 25:42 De-risking and Mass Manufacturing
• 29:23 Challenges and Objections
• 39:32 First Commercial Deployment
• 48:48 Opportunities in Electrical Availability and Funding
• 51:38 Takeaways

Transcript

**Ashwin Salvi:**  
If you're looking for a decarbonized steam source, what are your options today?
There's two real options available today. One is too costly to implement. The other one is too expensive to operate.

We looked at that and we said, okay, well, if we take the best of both worlds, we can now create a drop-in plug-and-play solution, also operate with such high efficiency that the cost to electrify is as close to natural gas boilers as possible today.

We're talking about nearly 200% efficiency because we're pulling in heat from ambient air and supplementing the rest through electrical.

**Silas Mähner:**  
Welcome back to Clean Techies, the number one podcast for climate tech entrepreneurs. Today, I'm speaking with Ashwin Salvi, COO and co-founder of Atmos Zero.

**Silas Mähner:**  
Yes, that's right. The same Atmos Zero that just closed a $21 million series A round in February of this year.

**Silas Mähner:**  
A lot of people talk about decarbonizing industrial production, but let's be honest, most of us have no idea what that means.

**Silas Mähner:**  
Well, today we learn a little bit about that, including that used in a huge number of things is steam, including production of paper, textile production, pharmaceuticals, the food and beverage industry, and a lot more of those heavy industrial use cases that you're familiar with, like plastic, metal, and chemical production.

**Silas Mähner:**  
Yeah, it's crazy. Steam is used in so many things. Well, steam is produced by boiling water, obviously, and a lot of these boilers use some form of gas or coal, and Atmos Zero is electrifying that.

**Silas Mähner:**  
In today's conversation, Ashwin tells us how they are solving the cost issue by making a drop-in replacement, how they built their pilot at the same scale as their commercial unit, the trade-offs between building in stealth versus building in public. They chose to build in stealth. And he finished us off with some business ideas that were actually pretty interesting.

**Silas Mähner:**  
So before you start the show, if you listen on Spotify or Apple, leave us a review. It's immensely helpful. And if you're listening on Substack, drop a comment with your favorite moment. Okay, enjoy the episode.

**Silas Mähner:**  
All right, welcome to the show, man. How are you doing today?

**Ashwin Salvi:**  
I'm doing well. It's good to see you again. Thanks for inviting me here.

**Silas Mähner:**  
Yeah, absolutely. Super excited to have you on and discuss what you guys are working on. So give us a quick intro for people who are unfamiliar. Who are you and what are you working on?

**Ashwin Salvi:**  
Yeah, sure. Hey, my name is Ashwin Salvi. I'm one of the co-founders, the chief operating officer, and the head of business development for Atmos Zero. At Atmos Zero, what we do is we create drop-in electrified boilers to replace today's boilers in the industrial setting. Today's boilers burn natural gas or coal, depending on where you are, to make water hot into steam and use that steam for other processes like bringing beer to a boil, using that to sterilize different processes, doing it for cleaning in place, etc. We've been making the steam the same exact way for the last 200 years. And it's about time that we go ahead and revolutionize that. It accounts for 8% to 12% of global CO2. So it's a huge, huge impact. What we're creating is a standardized drop-in plug-and-play solution to help decarbonize that.

**Silas Mähner:**  
Nice. So just to kind of clarify, you're saying that there's quite a lot of industrial settings where steam boilers are used?

**Ashwin Salvi:**  
That's right. Yeah. So what's interesting is, you know, and notionally why this has been such a long-term problem is because industry was always deemed hard to decarbonize. We make so many different products in the industrial sector, if you will, that you can't just decarbonize one and have that process scale to something else. For example, you know, the beers you had for dinner last night, the toothpaste you used this morning, the clothes you're even wearing today, all touched by steam in some way. And so it's, you know, if you look at industry as a whole, all these different products end up being a different way to approach decarbonization. But the real unifying thread is that all of these processes use heat of some sort. And in general, they use steam. And if you can decarbonize that steam process of how do you make steam today, you can have an outsized impact on global CO2.

**Silas Mähner:**  
And just to clarify, the process you're decarbonizing is the heating of the steam or you're decarbonizing the production of the steam, generally speaking?

**Ashwin Salvi:**  
Yeah, decarbonizing the production of the steam. So, you know, replacing boilers today that burn a fossil fuel and that transfer that heat to water to make into steam. And again, that's used, you know, in the food and beverage industries, chemicals industry, pulp and paper, district heating, pharmaceuticals, etc. Steam is just this huge, huge lifeline of the industry.

**Silas Mähner:**  
That's pretty fascinating. I mean, I guess it's not that obvious to somebody who's not in the space that steam is involved in so many things. I mean, everybody knows that there's energy and there's different raw materials, but it's quite fascinating. So maybe we'll learn a bit more about that. I am curious, you know, everybody who becomes an entrepreneur usually has some kind of like origin story. Like what was your specific earliest, you know, first hustle or where did you first get your taste of actually making money for your things that you come up with?

**Ashwin Salvi:**  
Yeah, well, interesting question. Yeah, I guess my early influence is probably my dad. You know, he started a company. He's a physician, and he just started a company around a subset of a specialty, primarily because what he was doing just didn't fit right with him. You know, he didn't like the lifestyle. He didn't like the stress he was putting on his family. But more importantly, he just had more to contribute to that by making his own company out of that. I think that's kind of what's translated to me. I've never quite really fit into the status quo of different companies or different opportunities. I didn't look to be an entrepreneur just to be an entrepreneur. I think a lot of people fall prey to that. They think it's sexy. It's, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. But it's really like kind of how I ended up coming this way because it just it felt right. We saw an opportunity that no one has been doing this before. And we filled a gap in the market that said, okay, well, hey, look, if we can do this, this could be really impactful. And that's what's really driving the mission of Atmos Zero is to have an impact on industry, on decarbonization. This is a world I lived in. I've been living in for 20 years on how do I work on something in the clean tech or energy space and actually have it commercialize and do some positive good out in the world while still providing a service for our customers that they ultimately need to have a business that's cost effective as well as achieving the goals they're striving to achieve.

**Silas Mähner:**  
Yeah. And I guess something I haven't asked a lot of people on the show yet, but I'm going to try to do it more is who are the people in climate tech that you generally look up to? Are there any particular role models or people you follow?

**Ashwin Salvi:**  
Yeah. Okay. That's an interesting one. I guess for that, I can give you a two-part answer. First part, like current climate tech entrepreneurs or businesses really. And when I think about that, it's really the people that are out there doing something. It's not talking the talk. It's not what it is, but it's also walking the walk. Like the folks that are actually taking technology from lab, from research and transitioning that into the marketplace, because that's where you really make impact. And that's what's really been driving me. That's what I really got into when I was at ARPA-E. I used to be a fellow at ARPA-E about 10 years ago at Department of Energy. Really, really got turned on to commercialization. Got to work with a lot of fantastic companies and learn about how do they take some of the advanced concepts they're working on and look at the marketplace, the opportunities there, and then transition that product or that technology they're working on to something that can actually commercialize and make real-world impact. Whether that's what they originally had started off as a project or an idea in their mind or they pivoted to something else. And that's fundamentally what's been a big part of my career since then. I went and joined another startup after Department of Energy before Atmos Zero and really learned a lot about how do I interact with clients and learn about their needs and their skill sets and how that can play in with what we're offering as a product too. And so that was part one of the answer. Part two is I kind of look historically for some of the other folks that have influenced me. And what I really think about