Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

Michael sits down this week with Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder and lead analyst at CREA - the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. After working as a campaigner and then as an analyst at Greenpeace, Lauri helped set up CREA, an NGO that produces research reports on the trends, causes, health impacts, and solutions to air pollution. Importantly, CREA makes extensive reference to local-langua...

This week, Bryony is back, this time to talk to David Wallace-Wells. David is an American journalist and author who often writes about climate change. His 2017 article "The Uninhabitable Earth" for New York Magazine was the publication's most-read article in history. David then turned the article into a book of the same name, which was chosen as Book of the Year, 2019, by The Sunday Times, The Spe...

This week, Michael's guest is Mark Cutifani, chairman of Vale Base Metals and formerly CEO of South African gold mining company, Ashanti, and British mining company, Anglo American.  He was born and grew up in Wollongong, Australia. After leaving high school in 1976, he joined Coal Cliff colliery and enrolled in the University of Wollongong to complete a degree in Mining Engineering. He graduated...

Bryony returns in Season 11 this week, sitting down with her longtime friend Solitaire Townsend. Solitaire is Co-founder & Chief Solutionist at Futerra, and Trustee of the Solutions Union. She is a renowned sustainability expert and solutionist. From Google to the United Nations, Ikea to WWF, Solitaire works with the worlds’ most influential organisations to activate social justice and environment...

Kicking-off 2024 and Season 11 is Ed Conway. Ed is the Economics editor at Sky News, covering major UK and international economics, business and political stories. He is also economics columnist for The Times, and has been one of the longest-running economics editors in UK journalism, having started covering the sector in 2003. He is the author of the book on Bretton Woods, The Summit: The Biggest...

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...

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 pan...

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 off...

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 headin...

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,...

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 Johanna...

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 lithiu...

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!)...

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.    Links...

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", 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 foundatio...

This week, Michael’s guest is Carine Smith Ihenacho, Chief Governance and Compliance Officer at Norges Bank Investment Group. NBIM 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 h...

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...

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 i...

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...

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. Make sure you li...

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, energ...

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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 Energ...

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 comp...

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...