Redefining Energy

In May 2026, our co-host Laurent Segalen had the privilege of chairing a high-profile panel hosted by SolarPower Europe at its annual Solar Power Summit in Brussels, one of the leading gatherings for the European solar and energy storage sectors.   In this episode, we bring you highlights from the hour-long conversation, featuring two distinguished industry leaders: Fredrik Andrén Sandberg from RW...

Gerard and Laurent welcome Michel Boutouil, co-founder and CEO of Polarise, a leading European AI infrastructure provider and NVIDIA Cloud Partner based in Berlin. After discussing about what happens outside of a datacenter, it is time to dive inside one.   Polarise is one of the few genuinely European NeoCloud companies — essentially a European counterpart to CoreWeave — specializing in GPU infra...

At the Eurelectric Power Summit 2026 in Helsinki, Laurent had the opportunity to sit down with Catherine MacGregor, CEO of ENGIE and Vice President of Eurelectric, for a wide-ranging discussion on the key issues shaping Europe's energy future.   We began with the themes at the heart of Eurelectric’s agenda this year: security of supply, affordability, competitiveness, and the challenges and opport...

The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) have made significant progress in recent years. Yet they remain largely top-down institutions shaped by policy priorities. When trillions of dollars in investment decisions are at stake, investors and operators increasingly turn to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) and its team of more than 400 specialist...

Gerard and Laurent have the pleasure of welcoming Fintan Slye, CEO of NESO — Great Britain’s National Energy System Operator.   In a lively and wide-ranging discussion, we explored NESO’s governance and its critical role across the British energy system: from real-time system operation — balancing supply and demand every second — to whole-system planning, market design, and transmission network op...

The global auto industry is splitting into two very different worlds — what legendary auto expert Michael Dunne calls “a tale of two countries.” Dunne, CEO of Dunne Insights LLC , has spent decades at the centre of the industry, including leadership roles as President of General Motors Indonesia and Managing Director of JD Power China.   On one side stands the United States, increasingly resemblin...

The BESS market is growing at a phenomenal pace. You would think battery management is becoming easier. The reality? It is becoming increasingly complex.   Between data risks, a growing number of suppliers, vertically disintegrated component chains, and constantly evolving software stacks, investors can quickly lose control of their battery fleets.   Only a handful of companies truly operate in th...

Where is Climate Tech heading? Certainly not dead — but constantly reinventing itself. So much so that you begin to wonder whether the label itself has outlived its original meaning.   Laurent and Gerard welcome Kim Zou, co-founder and CEO of Sightline Climate , the data and research platform mapping the climate-tech economy, and author of some of the sector’s most influential newsletters, includi...

The power system is aging and poorly equipped to handle the rapid, large-scale shift toward renewables. According to Philipp Schröder, CEO of 1KOMMA5°, the real solutions lie “behind the meter.”   Gerard and Laurent sit down with Schröder to unpack what it will take to unlock the so-called “Behind the Meter” revolution.   Schröder is among a small group of European founders aiming to build a verti...

Gerard and Laurent welcome Tinne Van der Straeten, CEO of WindEurope—the leading voice of the wind industry in Europe, representing more than 600 members across the entire value chain. Tinne brings a distinctive perspective to the discussion. As Belgium’s Minister for Energy during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, she experienced an energy crisis firsthand. Her background in policymaking offe...

Ember released its 2026 Global Electricity Review (GER26) last week—an extraordinary report showing that 100% of new global electricity generation has been met by renewables . At the same time, the decade’s “twin energy shocks” (Russia in 2022 and Hormuz in 2026) are accelerating existing trends.   What do the latest numbers tell us—and what do they mean? Laurent and Gerard are joined by a great f...

In episode 219, we analysed the relationship between hyperscalers and US utilities from the hyperscaler perspective. To complete the picture, we revisit the debate from the utility’s point of view. Gerard and Laurent welcome Rajiv Bazaj, VP of Solutions Sales at Constellation, to understand how utilities approach this rapidly evolving landscape. Spun out of Exelon a few years ago, Constellation wa...

Laurent and Gerard sit down with Paul O’Donnell, Partner at SchrodersGreencoat, a fund manager that has invested more than €13 billion and controls over 400 renewable energy assets across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Paul has spent 17 years at Greencoat and became Partner in 2022, following Schroders’ acquisition of the platform, which itself was acquired by Nuveen in 2026.  Greencoat has a dis...

Gerard is invited by Ana Conde from PVcase to make the case for solar paired with storage as the economic foundation of the future energy system. We are in the midst of a technological revolution driven by electrification and AI. But building the energy system that can power this shift requires more than adding new capacity — it demands system-level thinking, new coordination mechanisms, and new f...

Laurent and Gerard speak with Dr. Michal Meidan, Head of China Energy Research at the China Energy Research Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, about the profound transformation reshaping China’s energy system. At the heart of the discussion is the country’s pivot from “molecules” to “electrons” — a structural shift from fossil fuels toward electrification powered by renewables,...

Gerard and Laurent host Ira Joseph, a leading expert on gas and LNG markets at the Columbia Center on Global Energy, to explore how the Middle East conflict is reshaping the industry. In normal times, LNG supply is led by Qatar, the U.S., and Australia, with prices anchored to benchmarks like Henry Hub, TTF, and JKM. Before the war, markets were relatively well supplied, keeping prices stable. Thr...

Six years after her last appearance on the podcast (Episode 28, 15 June 2020), Natasha Luther-Jones  returns to join Laurent and Gerard for a lively catch-up on how both her career and the energy sector have evolved. What began with her being dubbed the “Queen of PPA” has expanded into a far broader role — prompting the hosts to crown her the “Energy Empress” as she now operates across the full sp...

While Gerard is fixing his knee, Laurent invites Chris Seiple, Vice Chairman of WoodMac Power & Renewables group, to try to make sense of the scale of the coming power demand surge and the strain it is placing on today’s US market structures. AI-driven datacenter growth is pushing the US power system into uncharted territory. Roughly 180 GW of U.S. electricity commitments tied to datacenters r...

Last month, Gerard Reid joined Shayle Kann , Managing Partner at Energy Impact Partners , for a world class and fast-moving conversation on the state and future of Climate Tech.   The discussion was organised by Carbon Equity and led by its co-founder Liza Rubinstein Malamud. Originally it featured a third guest, Will Dufton of Giant Ventures, whose contributions were fully edited for this episode...

Lithium has doubled in three months. Copper is printing record highs. Silver went vertical—then collapsed. The move was fast. The reversals were faster. Volatility isn’t elevated. It’s systemic.   But this isn’t just another commodity cycle. These metals sit at the core of the energy transition. They’re embedded in batteries, EVs, transmission lines, datacenters, wind turbines, and solar modules....

Clean Energy equities have comfortably outperformed the major indices in 2025.   Laurent and Gerard are joined by friend of the show Shanu Mathew, an equity portfolio manager everyone in the sector knows to unpack what’s really driving this performance.   We begin by putting recent returns into a longer-term context — and by flagging an important caveat: some of the strongest results are coming fr...

Luca Pedretti, Co-Founder, Pexapark, returns to discuss how volatility, market design, and new contract structures are transforming power markets and renewable economics. What begins with PPA pricing quickly evolves into a broader conversation about where value is now created in the clean energy system. We start with the growing importance of IFRS 13 fair value accounting . In increasingly volatil...

Resilience is the buzzword of the moment—from Gerard’s personal resilience on display in Davos last week to the critical issue of grid resilience.   The great Doug Houseman draws a useful distinction between reliability and resilience. “Reliability is about how well you keep the lights on, while resilience is about how quickly you can restore power after an outage.”   Over the past year, blackouts...

The infrastructure fund industry has become one of the most powerful engines behind the rise of renewables and datacenters. With Zak Bentley, Americas Editor, Infrastructure Investor (part of the PEI Group), Laurent and Gerard cut through the noise to deliver a clear-eyed view of where the infrastructure market really stands today.   2025 smashed fundraising records, with c. USD300bn raised, but i...

Heat pumps sit at the heart of Europe’s strategy to cut emissions and reduce dependence on imported gas. Under the EU’s REPowerEU plan, the bloc is targeting 60 million heat pumps by 2030. By the end of 2025, almost 30 million units were already installed — progress, but still only halfway to the goal. Gerard and Laurent are joined by Paul Kenny , Director General of the European Heat Pump Associa...