Episodes

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.”

Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change has the great privilege of welcoming H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco to launch our ninth season. For our 123rd episode, Michael and Prince Albert have a wide-ranging and insightful discussion, on the work of the Prince Albert II Foundation to safeguard the planet and its oceans; the Prince's lineage and its deep connections to oceanography; the Prince's adventures and the awakening on climate they prompted; and the joys of success - and the perils of failure - in winter sports. The episode was recorded at the Palais Princier de Monaco. Cleaning Up would like to thank the Royal Household and all those inside and outside of the Palace who supported production of this special episode. As always, please like, share, and if you haven't already, subscribe to Cleaning Up.

This time on Cleaning Up, Michael hosts Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, one of the UK's greatest living physicists, for a fascinating and detailed dive into the UK's energy storage requirements as it moves towards a fully carbon-free grid. Sir Chris is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and a former Director-General of CERN. At CERN he steered the funding and commissioning of its Large Hadron Collider, and as a theoretical particle physicist, Sir Chris predicted the existence of the very particle - the Higgs Boson - that the Large Hadron Collider went on to help discover. Sir Chris is likely the only person ever to have been knighted for "services to particle physics." In the last few years Sir Chris has been busy leading a forthcoming Royal Society study on large-scale energy storage as part of the net-zero transition. He and Michael discuss the significance of storage to a newly configured, renewable grid, the likely cost of stored electricity, an…

Michael’s guest for Episode 121 of Cleaning Up is Rob Miller, Professor of Aerothermal Engineering at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Whittle Laboratory. The Whittle Laboratory is conducting world-leading research in pursuit of making net-zero aviation a reality. With the aviation sector looking set to be one of the hardest to abate in the net-zero transition, Michael wanted to know whether electrification or hydrogen represents the best chance to keep the world flying in sustainable fashion. Also on the agenda were the complexities of producing - and defining - sustainable airline fuel, and the scale of the risk posed by aircraft contrails. Like and subscribe to Cleaning Up for more insights and in-depth interviews from the front-line of the net-zero transition.

Today on Cleaning Up, Michael's guest is CEO and Founder of Africa GreenCo, Ana Hajduka. Africa GreenCo are a trading operation and guarantee scheme for power producers in Sub-Saharan Africa to enable and sustain renewable energy investment and development in the region. This episode coincided with International Women's Day, so as well as outlining Africa GreenCo's ambitions to promote renewable energy supply in Africa, Ana ended with some truly fascinating insights into what it takes to be a successful woman in the climate space.

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomes Dr Aneeqa Khan, Manchester-ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Research Fellow in Nuclear Fusion. Aneeqa had insights to offer on the significance of the recent fusion breakthrough at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, some of the challenges facing nuclear scientists and engineers, and the race to bring a raft of fusion technologies to commercialisation and grid integration.

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomed Achim Steiner, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and co-chair of UN Energy. Michael had questions for Achim on UNDP’s roster of initiatives, balancing climate priorities with development goals, and how to clear a path to financing billions of dollars of clean infrastructure in the midst of a global energy crisis. Like, share and subscribe to Cleaning Up for more essential conversations around the net zero transition.

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomes Dr. Nawal Al-Hosany, UAE’s Permanent Representative to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), for a wide-ranging discussion on IRENA’s work promoting an equitable transition, the UAE’s emergence as a renewables superpower, and the significance of COP28 coming to the region later this year.

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomes Tom Samson, CEO of Rolls-Royce SMR. Rolls-Royce SMR are among a raft of new companies innovating in the field of Small Modular Reactors, hoping to provide nuclear energy in smaller, more repeatable modules at a lower price point than traditional gigawatt-scale reactors. Michael had questions for Samson on nuclear’s “desperately poor track record” for price control, the practicalities of factory-building a nuclear reactor, and the feasibility of nuclear finding a role in an energy landscape full of increasingly cheap renewables. Like, subscribe and share for more insights and in-depth interviews from the front-line of the net-zero transition.

This week, Michael invites Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, CEO of Hydrogen Europe, to debate the importance of hydrogen in powering Europe and the world towards a decarbonized economy. Hydrogen Europe is an industry association of more than 400 members that promotes the role of hydrogen in reaching carbon neutrality in Europe. Chatzimarkakis holds hydrogen to be the miracle molecule of the transition, while Michael’s Hydrogen Ladder has a far narrower view of its likely uses on the path to net zero. What follows is a comprehensive, robust – and at moments, fierce - discussion of hydrogen in the transition, covering electrolyzers, fertilizers, freight, transportation and heating, as well as following the “pots of money” behind hydrogen infrastructure and lobbying in Europe. Spark more healthy debate around net zero pathways by liking and sharing the episode, and don’t forget to subscribe. Guest Bio Chatzimarkakis was a Member of European Parliament from 2004 until 2014 for Germany’s Free …

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael is joined by James DeMuth. James is co-founder and CEO of Seurat Technologies, a specialist in 3D metal printing, or Additive Manufacturing. With their own licensed laser technology, their aim is to decarbonize traditional, emissions-intensive manufacturing processes by competing with them, and ultimately, displacing them. James is evangelical about the potential of Seurat’s technology to transform the manufacturing industry for the better: “Our goal is to make hardware production as simple to do and as cheap to produce as it is to write code and software... I don't think we have any concept, at all, for the explosion in applications that we would see when that happens.” Guest Bio: Since co-founding Seurat in 2015, DeMuth has served as the company’s CTO, and as of 2020, their CEO. DeMuth spent six years at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as a Research Associate, then as a Mechanical Engineer working in Advanced Manufacturing an…

This week’s episode of Cleaning Up sees the return of Jonathan Maxwell, Founder and CEO of Sustainable Development Capital Limited (SDCL), one of the world’s biggest investors in energy efficiency. Jonathan is back for the first in a series of 'checkpoints' on Cleaning Up, as we invite guests back to the show to give an update on their sector or specialism on the path to net zero. Guest Bio: Jonathan Maxwell is the CEO of Sustainable Development Capital (SDCL), an investment firm that set up the UK’s first listed investment trust investing exclusively in energy efficiency - Sustainable Energy Efficiency Income Trust (SEEIT). Jonathan chairs the Trust’s Investment Committee. Jonathan has over two decades of experience in the financial sector – he spent early days of his career at HSBC Infrastructure and led the IPO process of HICL Infrastructure Company (formerly HSBC Infrastructure Company) – one of the biggest infrastructure funds listed on the London Stock Exchange. …

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael hosts Bob Litterman, founding partner at Kepos Capital and Chairman of the Kepos Capital Risk Committee. Litterman spent 23 years at Goldman Sachs, during which time he became a partner and established himself as an outstanding authority on financial risk. Since co-founding Kepos and joining the boards of the World Wildlife Fund, Ceres and the Climate Leadership Council, among others, he has become a leading voice on climate policy and risk as it relates to climate change and the transition. From this unique vantage, Litterman is acutely aware of the time-sensitivity of climate risk: “We have to create incentives globally to reduce emissions, and we have to do it very quickly. When you're managing risk, time is a scarce resource. If we have enough time, we can solve almost anything. When you're managing risk and you run out of time, a risk management problem becomes a catastrophe.” Prior to founding Kepos Capital, Litterman had a 23-year …

Cleaning Up begins the new year and its eighth season in conversation with Daniel Yergin. Yergin, Vice Chairman of S&P Global, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and one of the world’s leading authorities on energy. Alongside discussing the latest edition of his best-selling book, The New Map, Yergin also provided some fascinating predictions for the future of global energy supply and demand, its international nuances, and its historical echoes. Daniel Yergin is the author of a trilogy of books on energy and is seen by many as America’s foremost energy expert. He was co-founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and currently serves as Vice Chairman of S&P Global, one of the world’s largest research and information companies. Yergin is the author of several bestselling works of history, most notably The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil Money and Power (1990), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has been translated into 20 languages. His latest book is The New Map…

This week, it's a special, bonus episode of Cleaning Up. Michael has some essential messages to keep in mind at the dawn of the new year: 1. Climate action is neither doomed nor a sure thing. 2. People who disagree with you may share your goals, but put facts and priorities in a different order. 3. We will never get to declare victory over climate change.