Episodes

This week, Bryony speaks with Jason Anderson, Senior Program Director at ClimateWorks, who oversees the Governance & Diplomacy and Super Pollutant programs. His work spans efforts ranging from implementing the Paris Agreement to cleaning up dirty shipping and preventing methane leakage. Jason has over 25 years of experience in climate and clean energy, beginning in the solar energy conversion office at the U.S. Department of Energy, which led him to promote photovoltaics for rural electrification in Central America. Jason then worked in a range of climate organizations in Brussels for 15 years, ranging from Climate Action Network Europe to the Institute for European Environmental Policy to the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF). Jason was a lead author of the IPCC special reports on ozone and climate interactions, and on carbon capture and storage; in 2007 Jason was acknowledged for his contribution to the IPCC’s Nobel Peace Prize. Jason holds a Masters in Public Policy degree an…

Professor Avinash Persaud is special envoy to the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and emeritus professor at Gresham College in the UK. He, along with PM Mottley, helped design the Bridgetown Initiative in 2022 which laid out a path for reforming and ramping up the mobiliisation of climate finance to the developing world. The initiative has gathered vast international support and he’s heading to COP28 in Dubai to work on advancing the climate development agenda.

Mateo Jaramillo is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Form Energy, a company developing, commercializing, and manufacturing breakthrough low-cost, multi-day energy storage solutions that will enable the electric system to be 100% renewably powered. Mr. Jaramillo was formerly Vice President of Products and Programs for Tesla’s stationary storage business, an effort he started. In that role, he was responsible for Tesla Energy’s product line and business model definition, as well as global policy and business development. Mr. Jaramillo joined Tesla in 2009 as the Director of Powertrain Business Development, serving as commercial lead and primary negotiator on over $100M in new development and $500M in production contracts signed for electric powertrain sales. Prior to Tesla, Mr. Jaramillo was Chief Operating Officer and part of the founding team at Gaia Power Technologies, a pioneering distributed energy storage firm. Mr. Jaramillo serves on the Board of Directors for the America…

This week, Bryony’s guest is Johannah Christensen, CEO of the Global Maritime Forum. The GMF is an international not-for-profit organization, committed to shaping the future of global seaborne trade to increase sustainable long-term economic development and human wellbeing. To do so, it facilitates a wide variety of initiatives and convenes key stakeholders at the Annual Summit. Bryony met Johannah when she was working on shipping for the Environmental Defense Fund. Before becoming CEO in 2021, she was Managing Director, Head of Projects and Programmes, also at GMF. She was also previously a Programme Manager at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Johannah has a BSc in Business Administration and Modern Languages from Aarhus University and and MSc in Economics and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School.

This week, Michael is back in the host seat to talk to Alex Grant all about the groundbreaking work going on at Magrathea Metals. Alex is co-founder and CEO at Magrathea, developing a new generation of electrolytic technology for making magnesium metal. He was a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Energy for 2021, and former Lithium Partner at Minviro where he built environmental impact models of lithium-ion battery supply chain mineral and metal conversion processes including the first embodied carbon model for Tesla's batteries. Alex co-founded Lilac Solutions, a lithium extraction technology company. Alex has an M.S. from Northwestern University in Chemical Engineering and a B.Eng. from McGill University in Chemical Engineering & Philosophy. He is based in beautiful San Francisco, California.

This week, Michael has invited his good friend Baroness Bryony Worthington to guest-host Cleaning Up! Bryony was the lead author of the UK’s ground-breaking 2008 Climate Change Act, and is now on sabbatical from her role in the House of Lords, where she has been scrutinising legislation. She’s now over in California. See the shownotes below for a link to her appearance on Cleaning Up (episode 25!) Bryony is interviewing Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. A world-renowned earth scientist, historian and public speaker, she is the author of the best-selling book, Merchants of Doubt (2010) and a leading voice on the role of science in society, the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the role of disinformation in blocking climate action. Her new book, with Erik Conway, is The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market, p…

This week, Michael’s guest is Quentin Draper-Scrimshire, co-founder and CEO of Modo Energy. Modo, founded in 2019, are accelerating the energy transition by enabling companies to make better, data-backed decisions hyper-focused on energy storage. Modo is used by 75% of participants in the GB market, with over 3000 subscribers. Quentin was formerly Head of Energy Storage at KiWi Power Ltd.

This week, Michael’s guest is Henrik Stiesdal, former CTO of Siemens Gamesa and a pioneer of wind turbine technology. Nicknamed "the godfather of wind power", this Danish inventor is behind many of the sector's most important innovations. He is responsible for over 175 inventions and is named in over 1,000 patents. Today, he runs Stiesdal, a startup which innovates in floating offshore turbine foundations, thermal power storage and hydrogen.

This week, Michael’s guest is Carine Smith Ihenacho, Chief Governance and Compliance Officer at Norges Bank Investment Group. Norges operate the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, created to ensure responsible and long-term management of revenue from Norway’s vast oil and gas resources. The fund is the largest single owner in the world’s stock markets, and since her appointment in 2020, Carine has been outspoken in calling for robust emissions targets and climate risk reporting among its portfolio companies.

Cleaning Up is back for its 10th season, and to start proceedings in style, Michael's first guest is Anya Hindmarch. Anya is one of Britain’s most celebrated fashion designers and a leading voice in the industry on sustainability. Anya started her business in London in 1987 and now has 16 stores worldwide, as well as her own retail village in Pont Street, Chelsea. With the launch of her I’m Not a Plastic Bag totes in 2007, she helped kick-start a country-wide debate around single-use plastics, and this year Anya is collaborating with leading supermarkets again to prevent plastics pollution in style. In 2017 Anya was awarded a CBE, and in 2019 she became a Greenpeace Ambassador.

This week's guest on Cleaning Up is entrepreneur, author and philanthropist Jim Mellon. Jim is Executive Director at Agronomics, one of the world’s leading investors in cellular agriculture, or lab-grown meat. Bypassing traditional agricultural methods with precision fermentation could have huge implications for CO2 emissions and the climate, and in 2020 Jim wrote Moo’s Law as a guide for fellow investors into what he calls the ‘new agrarian revolution.’ Jim and Michael discuss the latest developments in cellular agriculture - from pet food to leather goods and restaurant-grade sushi - and how far we are from finding lab-grown products on our supermarket shelves.

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomes Kim Zou, CEO and co-founder of CTVC (Climate Tech VC). Launched in 2020, CTVC is a leading climate innovation resource and newsletter with 50,000 weekly readers, providing data-driven insights and analysis into the latest deals and developments in climate tech. CTVC launched their H1 2023 climate funding update at the end of June, reporting a 40% drop in venture funding. Michael wanted to hear from Zoe whether this was a moment of crisis or correction, and to compare notes on building a market intelligence platform, having jumped through so many of the same hoops building New Energy Finance.

This week’s guest on Cleaning Up is Chris Gadomski, Lead Nuclear Analyst at BloombergNEF and adjunct assistant professor at NYU’s Centre for Global Affairs. Chris joined Michael to discuss the unfolding situation at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which sits on the frontline of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and whose safety is a matter of mounting international concern. Chris' decades of experience analysing the nuclear industry helped make Episode 134 an engrossing primer on a hugely complex geopolitical situation.

This week’s guest is Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency and one of the world’s foremost energy economists. Fatih has been in-post since 2015, and is a returning guest to Cleaning Up, having appeared on Episode 28, all the way back in January 2021. Under Fatih’s leadership, the IEA has expanded its mandate to become a leading voice on clean energy technologies, energy efficiency and net-zero pathways. Few people have as clear a view on the entire energy sector as Fatih, so Michael headed to Paris and IEA HQ to hear insights on surging EV sales, the urgent need for grid modernization and expansion, and a reality-check on hydrogen's role on the path to net-zero.

This week's guest on Cleaning Up is Jon Burke. For six years, Jon was Councillor for the London Borough of Hackney, ending up as Cabinet Member for Energy, Sustainability, Transport and Public Realm. In the role, he oversaw the largest urban tree planting campaign in the UK, an extensive roll-out of low-traffic neighbourhoods, and established the borough’s first publicly-owned energy company in a century. In the process, Jon became a lightning rod for opposing views on urban transformation. Jon and Michael discuss the extraordinary power of trees to provide cooling in urban environments, Jon's shocking treatment at the hands of online trolls, and why he is so passionate about low-traffic neighbourhoods as a means to regenerate localities and protect their inhabitants.

This week's guest on Cleaning Up is Tzeporah Berman. Tzeporah has been leading environmental campaigns in her native Canada and beyond for over thirty years. Today, she is Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, and International Program Director at Stand.earth, the environmental organisation that she co-founded. Tzeporah was formerly co-director of Greenpeace’s Global Climate and Energy Program, and her success campaigning against fossil development has seen her dubbed “Canada’s Queen of Green”. Tzeporah and Michael take in everything from helping turn Meta and other tech giants off coal and onto renewables, fighting fossil and pipeline expansion in Alberta, and whether a non-proliferation treaty could be the solution for a managed decline of fossil fuel use.

This week’s guest on Cleaning Up is Paddy Padmanathan, the person who may have done more than any other to usher in the age of low-cost renewables. As CEO of ACWA Power, Paddy was instrumental in reducing the cost of clean energy across the globe, continually breaking records for the price at which solar power could be delivered. From 2004 until his departure earlier this year, Paddy led the company from startup to energy giant, with an investment value of $62.6 billion. More recently, Paddy is co-founder of both Xlinks and new venture Zhero BV, developing renewable power and hydrogen projects. Michael and Paddy discussed what it took to deliver solar at a price previously thought impossible, the importance of pricing investment risk in the developing world correctly, and Paddy’s vision for a faster, more interconnected path to net-zero around the globe.

This week’s guest on Cleaning Up is Matt Ferrell. Matt is host of the hugely popular Undecided YouTube channel and the podcast Still to be Determined, both of which explore the impact of smart and sustainable technologies on our daily lives. Matt and Michael discuss how they came to focus on the net-zero transition from different starting points, why hydrogen is so divisive, the joys and perils of going net-zero at home, and share their predictions for the coming years in the energy sector.

This week’s guest on Cleaning Up is Bent Flyvbjerg. Bent is Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford and is the most cited scholar in the world on the subject of megaprojects. Bent’s latest book, released this year, is How Big Things Get Done, on the science of successful project delivery. Michael and Bent discussed the many, substantial implications of Bent’s research for the net-zero transition, including the stark fact that solar and wind projects sit at the top of the tree when it comes to arriving on time and on budget, with nuclear languishing at the very bottom.

This week’s guest on Cleaning Up is Emily Kirsch, Founder and CEO of Powerhouse and Managing Partner of Powerhouse Ventures. Powerhouse, based out of Oakland, California, is an innovation firm that pairs startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate with some of the world’s largest corporations and investors. Emily is also managing partner of Powerhouse Ventures, directly backing seed-stage start-ups innovating on decarbonization. Michael and Emily spoke about building Powerhouse and adding value to its huge startup database, some of the hits from Powerhouse Ventures' first funding round, and ended with a wider discussion about the role of VCs - and pioneering women - on the path to net-zero.

Today’s guest on Cleaning Up is Marco Alverà, CEO of TES. TES are hoping to accelerate the clean energy transition by supplying green hydrogen at scale to clients in the mobility, industry and power sectors. TES’ first major project is Wilhelmshaven Green Energy Hub, which hopes to supply 250 TWh per year of carbon-neutral energy to Germany by 2045. By 2030, TES hope to have produced one million tonnes of what they call ENG, or electric natural gas, as a like-for-like replacement for LNG. Michael had plenty of questions about ENG, TES’ ambitious plans, and the generous subsidies they’re set to take advantage of through the US’ Inflation Reduction Act.

This week's episode is a recording of Michael's latest blog post for BloombergNEF: The Next Half-Trillion-Dollar Market – Electrification of Heat Our thanks to BloombergNEF for allowing us to record it and share it with our Cleaning Up audience. Make sure you like, subscribe, and share Cleaning Up, and leave us a review on your chosen podcast platform.

This time on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomes Kirsty Gogan back to the show to update us on developments across the world of nuclear energy. Kirsty is co-CEO and founder of TerraPraxis, an NGO and climate solution accelerator, and a leading expert on nuclear power. It’s been three years since Kirsty’s last appearance on the show in August 2020, during which we’ve seen new reactors come online across the globe, as well as supply dropouts and wholesale nuclear phase-outs. Kirsty walked Michael through the headlines, as well the rise of SMR (Small Modular Reactor) technology and its potential applications. Michael and Kirsty end discussing whether nuclear is offering too little, too late on the path to net-zero in the coming decades, as renewables continue to rise to meet global energy demand. As a one-stop update on all things nuclear, today's Cleaning Up is not to be missed.

Today’s guest on Cleaning Up is Damilola Ogunbiyi. Damilola is CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, the UN partner organization dedicated to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) – access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030. Damilola is a returning guest on Cleaning Up after first joining us for Episode 62 in 2021. She’s back to tell us how SEforAll is progressing in its mission to bring electricity to the whole world. After talking Michael through a raft of SEforAll’s new initiatives – across everything from clean cooking to carbon markets - Damilola ends with a passionate plea to change the conversation around the energy needs of the developing world: “What is happening is you're using a conversation of no fossil / fossil to fund nothing… The crux of it is, if you look at the money that's going in to Africa, 1.5% of all renewable investment? It's absurd, it is embarrassing.”