Manan sits down with Arpit Dwivedi, founder of Cache Energy, to explore how long duration energy storage can finally make renewable energy work 24/7. We unpack why lithium batteries can't scale for grid storage, how limestone—a material buried in the earth for millions of years—becomes the key to storing renewable energy, and what it takes to build a climate tech company with no plan B. Arpit shares concrete insights on taking fossil fuels' best features without carbon emissions, moving from India to Illinois with radical conviction, and why being comfortable with discomfort became his superpower.

• borrowing what fossil fuels do well: low cost, abundant, easily stored and transported
• using limestone and water chemical reactions to produce heat without CO2
• solving the renewable energy gap: solar and wind need 24/7 storage to compete
• why lithium batteries work for 4-6 hours but fail economically beyond that
• producing heat first, then converting to electricity like coal plants
• leveraging existing fossil fuel infrastructure to keep systems operationally simple
• scaling duration from 8 to 24 hours while cost per unit keeps dropping
• eliminating options to find true passion: what you don't like reveals what you do
• no plan B mindset: the best driver of perseverance when building impossible things
• getting comfortable being uncomfortable: the immigrant founder advantage

The power to power the entire globe is already here on Earth and has been for millions of years. Arpit takes us from his undergraduate years in India—exploring everything in engineering through elimination—to his PhD at the University of Illinois, where he asked a first-principles question: can we find a chemical reaction that produces heat like burning fossil fuels, but without producing carbon dioxide? That question led to Cache Energy's limestone-based thermal storage system that can store energy for decades at a fraction of lithium battery costs.

We dig into the technical fundamentals: why solar and wind have fallen dramatically in cost but still can't provide energy every hour of every day, how long duration storage solves the intermittency problem, and why cost per unit stored becomes the critical metric at grid scale. Arpit explains the breakthrough insight—limestone (lime) reacting with water produces heat that can be stored indefinitely and converted to electricity when needed, leveraging existing steam turbine infrastructure from fossil fuel plants.

Arpit discusses moving from India to Urbana-Champaign with no support system, how being an outsider trained his brain to be comfortable with uncomfortable situations, and why that resilience becomes essential when running a company. He shares the mindset shift from seeing energy access as an India problem to recognizing it as a global issue that transcends borders, languages, and backgrounds—and why America provides the best platform to build solutions at scale.

Arpit Dwivedi:
🌐 Cache Energy: https://www.cache-energy.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arpit-dwivedi-0a9970148

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Manan Mehta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mananm/