Episodes

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...

Across huge swathes of the global economy, clean solutions are already cheaper than their fossil alternatives, and so a carbon price isn’t needed. But in other sections of the economy, the costs of green tech are higher, and so carbon pricing will be needed to make them cost competitive. But what should that price be, and how can it be successfully implemented? This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined by Professor Ross Garnaut, a towering figure in the debate about how to impleme...

At the beginning of 2022, Europe was sourcing around 40% of its gas from Russia. By the end of this year, no more gas should be flowing from Russia into Europe. Much of that shortfall has been replaced by production from the vast oil and gas fields of Norway's North Sea continental shelf. And this year, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz again highlighted the importance of Norway to Europe's resilience. But how does one of the world's largest oil and gas producers balance energy security wit...

Victoria is undertaking one of Australia's most ambitious electricity transitions. The state is aiming for 65% renewable electricity by 2030 and 95% by 2035, replacing ageing coal-fired power stations with renewable electricity, batteries and offshore wind while keeping the lights on and consumers' bills down. This week on Cleaning Up’s Deep Dive Australia, Michael Liebreich is joined by Lily D'Ambrosio, Victoria's Minister for Climate Action, Energy and the State Electricity Commission, who ...

China transformed solar from one of the world's most expensive energy technologies into the cheapest source of electricity in just a couple of decades. And now it’s doing the same with batteries, with prices plummeting around the world. This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington is joined by Alex Shoer, Managing Director of GridVest, who spent almost a decade building renewable energy businesses in China before bringing those lessons back to the United States. They discuss the lessons be...

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...