Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

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 tra...

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 sta...

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...

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. We're growing fast on LinkedIn, and we'd love for you tell your professional network about us: https...

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...

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...

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...

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 commissi...

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 kn...

Today on Cleaning Up, Michael's guest is CEO and Founder of Africa GreenCo, Ana Hajduka. Africa GreenCo provide 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 renewa...

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...

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomes Achim Steiner, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and co-chair of UN Energy. Michael had questions for Steiner 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...

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. Links and Related Episodes:  Learn more about the Inte...

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 pri...

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, whil...

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. Relevant Guest & Topic  James is evangeli...

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:  inv...

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 C...

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, i...

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.   The original version of It’s A New Year...

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell, is Chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, a global coalition of major companies, investors and experts identifying pathways to limit global warming to well below 2˚C by 2040. From 2008-2013, Lord Turner chaired the UK’s Financial Services Authority. He was Director General of the Confederation of British Industry (1995-2000); Chairman of the UK Pensi...

This week's episode is a recording of Michael's latest blog post for BloombergNEF:  https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-the-unbearable-lightness-of-hydrogen/ Our thanks to BloombergNEF for allowing us to record it and share it with our Cleaning Up audience.

Dipender Saluja and Ion Yadigaroglu are Partners at Capricorn Investment Group. Capricorn is a sustainable investment group, one of the largest mission-aligned investment firms in the world, and our sponsor on Cleaning Up. Dipender Saluja is a Partner of Capricorn Investment Group, and a Managing Director of Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund. Prior to Capricorn, Saluja was Chief of Staff at Caden...

Meredith Adler is Executive Director of Student Energy, a global youth-led organization empowering young people to accelerate the sustainable energy transition. Adler has served as Executive Director of Student Energy since 2015, during which time the organization’s network has expanded to comprise 50,000 young people in 120 countries. Adler was Global Community Manager at Student Energy before co...

David Cebon is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cambridge, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight, and a founding member of the Hydrogen Science Coalition. Prof. Cebon leads Cambridge University Engineering Department’s Transport Research Group and the Department's research theme 'Energy, Transport and Urban Infrastructure'. Prof. Cebon’s research covers the me...