Zero: The Climate Race

The COP31 climate conference begins in Turkey next week. Can countries make headway in the current geopolitical landscape? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Chris Bowen, Australia's minister for climate change and energy and the president of negotiations at COP31, to ask what breakthroughs he hopes to see at the climate conference, why electrification is so high on the agenda and whethe...

Europe has been in a state of energy crisis ever since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Prices are high, industry is struggling and the world feels increasingly hostile. So what's the way out? Kristian Ruby is the secretary general of Eurelectric, the trade association of the European electricity industry, and he joins Akshat Rathi on Zero to explain why he sees electrification as...

The UK was once a pioneer of rail technology. Now, it has one of the worst electrification rates in the world and relies heavily on diesel for long-distance trains. Battery-electric trains are a solution to change the game. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with James O’Sullivan, product director at Alstom, one of the world's biggest train companies, about a £1 billion ($1.3 billi...

Zero is on a break this week, so we’re bringing you an episode from Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. Hosts Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with Justin Mankin, professor of geography at Dartmouth College and director of the Climate Modelling and Impacts Group, about the enormous impacts El Niño could have on the global economy. This episode was originally recorded in August, but wi...

Zero is on a break this week, so we’re bringing you an episode from the Bloomberg Australia podcast. A shipyard in Tasmania has delivered the world’s largest electric ship, a 130-metre ferry powered by more than 250 tons of batteries. Host Rebecca Jones talks to David Stringer, Asia Managing Editor for Bloomberg Green and ESG, who toured the vessel and met veteran shipbuilder Robert Cl...

China is a hotbed of innovation, filling nearly half of the world’s new patents every year. Much of that work is in the world of clean tech and a whole ecosystem is growing to help make these breakthroughs commercial. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Tonny Xie, chairman of Bluetech Clean Air Alliance, a China-based nonprofit organization that’s helping to grow the next era...

Miatta Fahnbulleh, the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, discusses the country's energy transition, the push for affordable and secure power and the UK’s role in the global climate action with Bloomberg's Aaron Rutkoff at Bloomberg Green New York 2026. Watch the video of this conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdgTzMIgS9g See omnystudio.com/listener for...

How to make electricity cheap is a question that’s bedeviling policy makers around the world, particularly in the US and Europe. Some countries, however, have figured it out, including Iceland, Norway and China. So how do we get to that point? And what is the role of government versus the role of technology? This week on Zero , Akshat Rathi is joined by Arthur Downing, author of Power and th...

When it comes to green tech, China is a list of superlatives. It produces more solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and batteries than anywhere else in the world. But is finance the real climate hero? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Ma Jun, chairman of the Hong Kong Green Finance Association and former chief economist of China’s central bank. They discuss how the count...

Climber Alex Honnold is best known as the star of Free Solo , an Oscar-winning documentary that followed his rope-free ascent of the 3,000-foot (1,000-meter) face of Yosemite’s El Capitan. But he has also established the Honnold Foundation to bring solar power to those who most need it. This week on Zero , Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi asks Honnold how he gets big things done and why helpin...

Energy consumers are used to a pretty simple transaction with utility companies: get electricity to power your home, pay up every month. Now, more consumers are stockpiling their own energy using solar panels and batteries. And some are even making money by selling that energy back to the grid. On last week's Big Take podcast, host Sarah Holder talked with Zero host Akshat Rathi about a new class...

On the morning of August 26, a glacial collapse in the Himalayas triggered a flash flood that sent ice, mud, rocks and fast-moving water through a valley in Nepal, wiping out entire communities. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Lou Del Bello, who has been reporting on the disaster for Bloomberg News from New Delhi. They discuss what can be done to keep mountain communities safe, and wh...

Extreme weather events this year are starting to hurt food production in serious ways, which is likely to push up everyone’s food prices. That’s before the weather-wrecking super El Niño has really kicked in. So how do we build a food system that is more resilient, more secure and has lower emissions? Paul Behrens, British Academy Global Professor at the Oxford Martin School, jo...

It’s 20 years since the Stern Review declared that the costs of inaction on climate change are much higher than the costs of action. So why are emissions continuing to rise? Lord Nicholas Stern tells Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi why he is optimistic about our ability to tackle climate change and what makes those actions the growth story of the 21st century. Explore further: Read for free:...

The impacts of climate change are becoming not just unignorable, but unbearable. Yet the political consensus around climate action is fracturing, as leaders debate the speed and scale of the changes needed. This week on Zero , Akshat Rathi speaks with Caroline Lucas, the former head of the UK’s Green party and a member of parliament for 14 years, about the increasing threat climate change po...

The Middle East conflict is now in its fifth month, deepening the oil and gas supply shock. Early in the war, analysts worried that the oil price would rise to $200 a barrel, causing a global recession and widespread panic, but that didn’t happen. This week on Zero , Akshat Rathi is joined by Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas to discuss why oil prices stayed around $100 per barrel and...

How should we navigate a world in which anxieties about AI, climate change and capitalism collide? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Helen Phillips, author of Hum and the second-ever winner of the Climate Fiction Prize. Rathi asks Phillips how she’s transformed her anxieties into captivating prose, how her relationship to technology has changed through writing and what humanity los...

On a windswept cliff at the edge of Tasmania, scientists are quietly tracking the future of our planet. This week, host Rebecca Jones speaks with David Stringer, managing editor of climate and ESG news in Asia, about Kennaook/Cape Grim — home to some of the cleanest air on Earth and one of the world’s most important climate monitoring stations. Learn how decades of data are reshaping o...

Andy Burnham has become the UK’s sixth prime minister in just 10 years. When it comes to energy and climate, Labour Party’s Burnham will inherit many of the same challenges of his predecessors: high energy prices, security of supply and an increasingly polarized debate over the UK’s ambitions to reach net zero. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with Dale Vince, founder of...

Hundreds of millions of people around the world have no access to reliable electricity, a problem that doesn’t seem to be going away. Since US President Donald Trump started his second term, Western countries have cut development funding, including for climate projects. This week on Zero, Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi asks Philippe Valahu, chief executive officer of Private Infrastructure D...

The great famine of the 1870s killed 50 million people – and El Niño was a key driver. Another El Niño phase has just begun and it’s expected to be among the strongest. There are five times as many people in 2026 as there were in the 1870s and the planet is 1.4C hotter. So are we better prepared? Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi speaks with Mingfang Ting, professor of clima...

From hydration breaks at this year’s FIFA World Cup to the Tokyo Olympics moving its marathon 1,000km northward, climate change is affecting sport. And sport is affecting climate, as events grow in size and carbon emissions. To talk about the future of sport on an overheating planet, this week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Jessica Murfree, professor at the University of North Carolina,...

The common narrative is that the US renewables industry is struggling. But that’s not the case for the whole sector. This week on Zero , Akshat Rathi talks with Kevin Smith, chief executive officer of Cypress Creek Energy, which recently secured $3.5 billion in financing to build one of the biggest solar and battery projects in the US. Even as the current American administration dismantles c...

The key to tackling climate change is moving away from burning fossil fuels to using renewable energy. But in his book More and More and More , French historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues that the world has never actually managed a successful energy transition before and current plans are unrealistic. Many have taken his writing to mean that stopping global warming is impossible, however, he tel...

Ben & Jerry’s isn’t just known for ice cream, but also its support for social causes. With over $1 billion in sales last year, it’s an asset for its owner Magnum. So why has one of its founders quit, and the other launched a campaign to make Ben & Jerry's independent? Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi sits down with co-founder Ben Cohen to ask about the Free Ben & Jerry&...