Episodes

Through nearly five years of war, Ukraine has been forced to adapt on the fly as attacks target its energy infrastructure, and the country has been ingenious in finding new ways to generate, distribute and protect power. Its experience has exposed vulnerabilities in the rest of Europe’s energy systems, and raises the difficult question of how well prepared our own energy systems are for disruption. In the fifth episode of our Deep Dive Ukraine series, Michael Liebreich is joined by Ben Parsons,...

Despite the Trump administration's efforts to roll back clean energy subsidies and climate policies, America's energy transition is proving more resilient than many expected. Solar and battery deployment continues, nuclear power is attracting billions in private investment, and demand for electricity is surging. But after a historic set of midterms where does the US go from here? In this episode of Cleaning Up, host Bryony Worthington speaks to David Victor, Professor of Innovation and Public...

Mexico’s energy future is closely tied to its neighbour to the north. It imports much of its natural gas from the US, but could it soon be exporting clean electricity, or even data, in return? With electricity demand surging, Mexico is preparing for a major expansion of its power system, with 30GW of new generation planned by 2030 and more than $40bn in potential investment. This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington speaks to Alberto Estefan, Managing Director of Energy Infrastructure at A...

The grid is one of the most important assets in any functioning energy system, transmitting electricity from where it's generated to where it's needed. In Ukraine, that challenge is enormous. The country is very big, 1,300 kilometers from east to west, almost the distance from London to Rome. And the system is under constant attack from Russia, which targets the grid with everything from tiny drones to ballistic missiles. In this fourth episode of our Ukraine Deep Dive, we're featuring two...

Indonesia is facing a defining question: can it continue to grow its economy while making the shift towards a greener future? In this episode of Cleaning Up, guest host Marie Cheong speaks with Sandiaga Uno, chair of Mutuagung Lestari International and former Deputy Governor of Jakarta and Minister of Tourism, about Indonesia’s potential to become a major player in the green economy, and why the country’s natural resources, growing energy needs and entrepreneurial ecosystem could create signific...

One of the biggest questions when it comes to the brutal and drawn-out Russia-Ukraine war is how it can be brought to an end, and crucially, could it ever be replaced by a stable peace? To understand this, we have to ask not just where we are now, but how we got here. For Episode 3 of our Deep Dive Ukraine, Michael Liebreich is in Kyiv with John E. Herbst, Senior Director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Centre and former US Ambassador to Ukraine, to explore the origins of the Russia-Ukraine...

The world needs more metals than ever before, but can the mining industry deliver the resources responsibly? The energy transition depends on the mining industry, yet the sector faces hard questions over coal, carbon emissions, environmental damage and the rights of the communities whose land and resources it extracts. This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich puts those questions directly to Rohitesh ‘Ro’ Dhawan, President and CEO of the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM). C...

Can you make energy investments work in a country at war? Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, repeated attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have devastated its power system. By spring 2024, the country’s dispatchable generating capacity had fallen from 38 GW before the war to just 12 GW, leaving electricity in short supply and heating disrupted for many households. For this week’s Deep Dive Ukraine, Michael Liebreich is in Kyiv speaking to Andrii Gerus, Chair of the Ukrainian Pa...

The world is facing a new era of geopolitical instability, rising energy costs and declining development finance. For many countries, access to reliable, affordable energy is no longer just an economic priority, it is a question of security. Recorded in New York during the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week, this episode of Cleaning Up sees guest host Ana Rovzar, Chief of Staff at the Global Renewables Alliance, speak with Alexander De Croo, former Prime Minister of Belgium and ...

It's been over four and a half years since Russia unleashed its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and still the war shows no sign of stopping. This week on Cleaning Up, we launch a new Deep Dive looking at Ukraine and how its people and energy systems cope through the war. In this first episode, Michael Liebreich travels to Kyiv to find out what is happening on the ground. How are people coping with these desperate and difficult circumstances? How is the energy system coping? What can we in the...

There's an old joke that energy from nuclear fusion is 30 years away and always will be. For many decades, the industry did little to spoil the fun, running mammoth and unwieldy research projects, hoovering up a few billion dollars every science funding cycle and announcing breakthroughs that were scientifically interesting, but did little to move us towards actual production of electricity. Then three things happened. First, perhaps emboldened by Elon Musk's successful disruption of the space ...

This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington is joined by Peter Cox, Professor of Climate System Dynamics at the University of Exeter and Director of the Global Systems Institute. A former lead author of the IPCC climate reports, Peter has spent decades studying the complex feedbacks between the climate, carbon cycle and natural world. They delve into some of the biggest questions in climate science today: Is the planet warming faster than we thought? What is the role of forcing versus feedba...

Around two-thirds of the energy we put into today’s energy system ends up as rejected heat. So are we measuring the energy transition all wrong? Professor Jan Rosenow joins Michael Liebreich to unpack the “primary energy fallacy”: why focusing on the energy going into the system can obscure the useful energy we actually get out. They explore why electrification can dramatically reduce energy demand, and what genuine systems thinking means for efficiency, waste heat and infrastructure. They...

More than 80% of the world’s advanced AI compute is concentrated in the US and China. For Europe and other middle powers, the question may no longer be how to win the AI race, but how to avoid becoming dangerously dependent on those that do. This week on Cleaning Up, James Cameron, Chair of Cleaning Up’s Editorial Council, takes over as guest host. He speaks with Sam Winter-Levy, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Afonso Salema, CEO of Exus Digital and founde...

Can Mexico build an electric car for $8,000, and use it to create an entirely new domestic industry? This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington visits Mexico City to sit down with Roberto Capuano, director of the Olinia Project, and discuss the state-backed effort to develop a new generation of affordable electric mini-vehicles. Roberto explains why Olinia is designing small EVs specifically around the needs of Mexican cities, how partnerships with Chinese suppliers could accelerate technol...

Can the Philippines become a testbed for Southeast Asia’s clean-tech future? Kicking off Season 19 of Cleaning Up, guest host Marie Cheong meets Jaime Z. Urquijo, Urban Estates Group Head at Ayala Land, one of the Philippines is largest real estate and development companies. Ayala Land is a subsidiary of the Ayala Corporation, which has been part of the Philippines' economic story for almost 200 years, and ACEN, its energy platform, has gone from a standing start in 2011 to more than 7GW o...

Australia has become a laboratory for the energy transition, what can the rest of the world learn? After two weeks travelling across Australia and meeting the leaders shaping its energy transition, Michael Liebreich got a close up view of the country’s transformation. For the final episode of Cleaning Up’s Deep Dive Australia series, the host becomes the guest as Anna Freeman of the Energy Efficiency Council turns the tables and puts Michael in the hot seat to ask him what he has learned. ...

Around the world, factories making food, drink, pharmaceuticals and other everyday products rely on steam, often produced by fossil-fuel boilers. James Macnaghten, founder and CEO of Caldera, is betting that thermal batteries can provide a cheaper and more flexible alternative that stores electricity as heat, and delivers steam on demand. This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington visits Caldera's factory to see how it makes its heat batteries: combining recycled aluminium and iron ore pell...

Solar was once dismissed as a marginal technology. Today, it is transforming the global energy system, and few people have done more to make that possible than Professor Martin Green. Innovations developed by Green and his research group can now be found in over 90% of all the solar panels in use today One of the pioneers of modern solar power, Green’s research has helped make solar panels dramatically more efficient and cheaper to produce. He joins Michael Liebreich to discuss how he got int...

Will AI break the grid? As hyperscalers race to build ever-larger data centres, electricity demand is soaring. The question is no longer whether power demand will grow, but by how much, how quickly, and whether the grid can deliver. This week, Michael Liebreich is joined by Arshad Mansoor, President & CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), one of the world's leading energy research organisations. Together, they tackle one of the biggest questions facing the global energy system:...

Australia has one of the world's fastest-moving electricity systems. It leads the world in rooftop solar, has deployed grid-scale batteries at extraordinary speed, and is now starting to replace its ageing coal fleet with cleaner sources of energy. But as renewable costs rise and electricity demand grows, can the transition remain affordable while maintaining a reliable power system? This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined by Paul Simshauser, CEO of Iberdrola Australia, and one ...

Microbes rarely feature in discussions about climate change, yet they play a central role in regulating greenhouse gases through the Earth's carbon, methane and nitrogen cycles. As the climate changes, understanding these natural processes is becoming increasingly important to develop new approaches to clean energy, agriculture and emissions reduction. This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington speaks with Professor Emeritus David Kirchman of the University of Delaware, one of the world's l...

David Pocock is one of Australia's most influential politicians, working as the Senator of the Australian Capital Territory. He brings a distinctive perspective to some of the country's biggest debates, from climate policy and energy security to democratic reform and the future of work. A former captain of the Australian rugby team, David entered politics after years of speaking out on issues including climate change, equality and environmental protection. Four years into his Senate career, h...

The UK is heavily exposed to global energy markets and has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. At the same time, vast amounts of heat generated across industry and infrastructure go unused. Whether it should be called "waste" is a matter of debate, but could making better use of the energy we already produce be one of the biggest untapped opportunities in the energy transition? This week, Michael Liebreich is joined by Jonathan Maxwell, founder and CEO of SDCL, a specialist inve...