Episodes

Australia's electricity networks are entering a new era. As rooftop solar, battery storage and electric vehicles demand reshape the grid, the role of distribution networks is changing from simply delivering electricity to actively enabling a smarter, more resilient and affordable energy system.For the third episode of our Deep Dive Australia series, Michael sits down with Marc England, CEO of Ausgrid, one of Australia's largest electricity distribution businesses, to explore what that transf...

South and Southeast Asia face a different challenge to many developed economies. As the regions continue to grow, so too does demand for energy, transport and industry. The question is whether that growth can be powered by cleaner technologies from the start.In the second of our episodes recorded from Singapore, Michael meets Marie Cheong, founding partner at 100x100, a climate tech venture builder and VC for South and Southeast Asia. Previously, Marie co-founded WaveMaker Impact, where she ...

Australia is navigating an extraordinarily complex energy transition. It is both a major exporter of fossil fuels and a global leader in rooftop solar, while recent disruption to fuel supplies has reinforced the importance of energy security alongside decarbonisation. As the country prepares to co-host COP31 alongside Türkiye, the choices it makes will have implications well beyond its borders.This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with Chris Bowen, Australia's Minister for Cl...

Singapore is one of the smallest countries in the world, yet plays a unique role as one of Asia’s main financial and oil refining hubs. So how is it using its influence to help or hinder the transition?Ravi Menon has spent his career at the heart of Singapore’s economic and financial strategy, serving as Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (the country’s central bank) before becoming the country’s Ambassador for Climate Action.In this conversation with Michael Liebre...

Today, Cleaning Up launches its Deep Dive Australia series. Featuring conversations with nine leaders of the climate and clean energy scene, the series explores where Australia is leading the world, where it is not, and how it got there.This is an important moment for Australia. The country was extraordinarily exposed to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, being the largest per capita importer of diesel in the world. It's also uniquely dependent on China as the destination of its mineral ex...

Since Donald Trump returned to the Presidency in 2025, the US has become increasingly isolationist. It has pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and the IPCC, left the World Health Organisation, as well as a whole host of other international organisations and agencies. So, when President Trump leaves the White House, will the US be able to rebuild trust on the international stage?This week on Cleaning Up, former US Secretary of State and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry ...

Professor Ning Li has spent decades at the intersection of energy, technology and industrial strategy. A nuclear engineer, complexity scientist and founding Dean of the School of Energy at Xiamen University, he is also credited with coining the term "Small Modular Reactor" nearly 20 years ago.In this wide-ranging conversation with Bryony Worthington, Ning Li explains why China has weathered recent global energy shocks better than many expected, how electrification is transforming economic re...

Today, wind power accounts for just under 10% of all electricity globally, around the same as solar, recently overtaking nuclear power. 20 years ago, the figure was under 1%.In that time, the sector’s leadership has moved around from Europe to the US to Asia, but one specialist European manufacturer has stayed in the leading group throughout: Vestas — a member of the global wind energy aristocracy.This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined by Henrik Andersen, CEO of Vestas, to...

For more than 15 years, the RCP8.5 climate scenario has shaped headlines, policy decisions, financial stress tests and public understanding of climate risk. Now, the scientific community has declared it implausible. So what comes next?This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich welcomes Professor Roger Pielke Jr. back to explore why RCP 8.5 became the dominant "business as usual" climate scenario, and what its demise means for climate research, policymaking and public debate.They discuss...

As electricity demand rises and renewable generation continues to expand, the same question keeps arising: how do we keep power systems reliable, affordable and resilient?This week, Michael Liebreich is joined by Håkan Agnevall, CEO of Wärtsilä, to discuss the changing role of flexible generation in modern electricity systems, the growing importance of grid stability, and why balancing technologies will be critical as renewables become an ever-larger share of the global energy mix.They e...

In this special episode of Cleaning Up from San Francisco Climate Week, Michael Liebreich and Bryony Worthington unpack the geopolitical shocks reshaping the global energy transition.From escalating tensions in the Gulf and their impact on oil and LNG markets, to China’s accelerating electrification revolution, the conversation explores how energy security, industrial strategy and climate ambition are colliding in real time.Bryony and Michael debate whether the West can realistically com...

The energy system is not about supply and exports and generation and distribution. It's about how we use energy in our daily lives and workplaces.The so-called energy trilemma, affordability versus reliability versus environmental performance looks very theoretical in the boardrooms of an NGO or a consulting company. But it's not theoretical at all for someone struggling to run their life, do their job and pay their bills. What we need is a system focused on usage, not on supply.Joining ...

Every single scenario for the future that looks at a cleaner energy system has electrification growing to 60, 70, 80% or more, and yet we don't make rapid progress. Why?One of the reasons we don't make progress lies in narratives and culture wars. We hear about heat pumps that don't work, we hear about electric vehicles that don't work, we hear that electrification can't work for high temperature heat and so on, and then we hear a narrative that there is a false solution that will work much ...

This week Cleaning Up is back in Brussels, with a deep dive into European energy policy as the continent grapples with the reality of ambitious climate targets, very high energy prices and the vulnerabilities of first Russia's attack on Ukraine, and Israel and the US's recent attack on Iran. Michael Liebreich sits down with a rising star of the European Parliament, Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, for a timely conversation at the intersection of energy, geopolitics, and climate strategy.What begins a...

What happens when global energy supply chains can no longer be trusted? Has the U.S. given up its edge in the clean energy race to China? And can politics keep up with the speed of the energy transition and the rise of AI?This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with former U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of global energy, politics, and clean technology.They explore how geopolitical tensions, from disruptions in the Strai...

The news agenda this year has been entirely dominated by energy related stories, whether it's the war in Europe being pursued by Russia — formerly Europe's most significant energy provider — the U.S. capturing the head of state of Venezuela — which has some of the biggest oil reserves in the world — or the ongoing attack by Israel and the U.S. on Iran and all its ramifications.But there is also another story, which is the long term rift between the U.S. and the rest of the world about whethe...

How should a central bank respond to energy shocks? Will high oil and gas prices bolster the uptake of renewables? And what is the true cost of net zero 2050?This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Liebreich sits down with Pierre Wunsch, Governor of the National Bank of Belgium and member of the European Central Bank’s governing council, for a candid, behind-the-scenes discussion about how central banks should and can respond to inflation, energy volatility, and climate transition.From th...

What happens if we’re underestimating the speed and scale of climate risk? This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington sits down with Ricken Patel, Principal at Climate Hub & Founder of activist network Avaaz, to explore how to build successful climate movements, and the case for research into geoengineering.Ricken argues that companies have been accidentally geoengineering since the turn of the Industrial Revolution, as a byproduct of their pollution, and says ‘it’s crazy’ that research in...

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined by Emmanouil Kakaras, engineer, academic, and Senior Advisor at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries EMEA, for a grounded, technical conversation about the intersection of emissions and engineering: gas turbines pushing the limits of thermodynamics, the trade-offs between hydrogen, ammonia, and synthetic fuels, and why carbon capture keeps coming back into the conversation.Kakaras draws on decades in both academia and industry to explain how decis...

This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Liebreich sits down with Varun Sivaram and Steve Smith to explore one of the most urgent, and overlooked, challenges of the AI revolution: how to power it without breaking the grid.As AI demand explodes, hyperscale data centres are emerging as massive, inflexible loads, rivaling entire cities. But do they have to be a burden on the grid?This conversation dives into a groundbreaking trial led by Emerald AI in partnership with National Grid and NVIDIA...

What happens when millions of electric cars become part of the energy grid? And could the key to cheaper, cleaner power already be sitting in your driveway? And why are so many automakers pushing back against EV targets?This week on Cleaning Up, host Bryony Worthington speaks with Fiona Howarth, founder of Octopus Electric Vehicles, about the rapid transformation of the global car industry and the powerful role electric vehicles are beginning to play in the energy system. From her early fasc...

Bryony Worthington and Michael Liebreich give their analysis of the impact of the conflict in Iran on global energy markets. How will it impact the Middle East, Europe, Asia, the US, and will it force countries back to coal, or accelerate the clean energy transition?This episode was recorded Thursday March 5.Leadership Circle:Cleaning Up is supported by the Leadership Circle, and its founding members: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP, Eurelectric, the Gila...

How can we build out clean energy and infrastructure faster? Is Europe engineering its way to resilience, or pricing itself out of competitiveness? And can we redesign the entire system fast enough to keep up with AI, electrification and rising demand?This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with Hilde Tonne, Chair of Arup and former CEO of Statnett, to explore the hard realities behind the energy transition. From offshore wind and nuclear to grid bottlenecks and data centre dem...

This week on Cleaning Up, host Bryony Worthington sits down with investor and energy strategist Laurent Segalen, co-host of the Redefining Energy podcast, for a sweeping conversation that spans carbon markets, uranium trading, battery innovation, and Laurent’s bold plan to connect Canada and Europe with a 5,000km subsea electricity cable.Laurent shares the personal moments that shaped his obsession with energy security, from witnessing Cold War division in Germany to cleaning an oil spill of...