Episodes

For a second consecutive year-closer, Michael welcomes Lord Adair Turner of Ecchinswell back to Cleaning Up. Lord Turner has combined careers in business, public policy and academia. He chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, a global coalition of major power and industrial companies, investors, environmental NGOs and experts working out achievable pathways to limit global warming to well below 2˚C by 2040 while stimulating economic development and social progress. He was chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking until January 2019, where he remains a Senior Fellow. He is Chairman of Chubb Europe and on the Advisory Board of Envision Energy, a Shanghai-based group focussed on renewable energy, batteries and digital systems. He became a cross bench member of the House of Lords in 2006.

Dr Hannah Ritchie is a data scientist and science communicator. Her focus is on the largest problems that shape our world, and how to solve them. Most of her work focuses on environmental sustainability, including climate change, energy, food and agriculture, biodiversity, air pollution and deforestation. She is Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data, where, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she built the Our World in Data COVID-19 information dashboard. She is also a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme in Global Development. Her new book, Not the End of the World, is out in January 2024.

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.