Climate Confident - Stories And Strategies That Cut Emissions

Get in touch - leave me a message AI isn’t weightless. Every model, token, and workflow sits on land, water, power, heat, and governance choices. In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Sophia Mendelsohn , who leads SAP ’s Global Sustainability Platform. We look at AI not as abstract software, but as physical infrastructure with real consequences for climate tech, decarbonisation, the...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if electrification is no longer just a climate solution — but an energy security strategy? In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Gavin Mooney , an independent energy transition advisor working across utilities, electrification, and energy markets. We look at Australia as a live test case for the energy transition: a country rich in coal, gas, su...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if AI’s biggest climate impact isn’t chatbots, but cutting real energy waste in buildings, grids, and factories? In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Philippe Rambach , Chief AI Officer at Schneider Electric , to unpack one of the sharpest tensions in climate tech today: AI is increasing electricity demand, but used well, it may also be one of...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if one of the biggest climate risks in your portfolio is hiding in plain sight — in food, land, methane, and animal-dependent industries? In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Claire Smith , founder and CEO of Beyond Investing , to unpack why climate finance cannot stop at fossil fuels. Claire has spent years building investment products that sc...

Get in touch - leave me a message No one wants to ship water around the world. That one line says a lot about the next phase of energy storage. In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Min Tang , Director of International Business at Rongke Power , one of the world’s leading vanadium flow battery companies. We get into why long-duration storage is moving from climate tech side-story to...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if the biggest greenwashing risk isn’t bad intent, but business-as-usual marketing? In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Helen Neal , founder of HN Communications , to dig into one of the most under-discussed risks in decarbonisation: how companies talk about sustainability when regulation is tightening, public trust is fragile, and every net z...

Get in touch - leave me a message Fake people. Fake comments. Real clean energy projects killed. This is what climate delay looks like in the AI era. In this episode of Climate Confident , I’m joined by Leah Qusba , CEO of GoodPower , an organisation working at the intersection of climate tech, culture, policy, and decarbonisation. We explore a hard truth about the energy transition: solar, wind,...

Get in touch - leave me a message Carbon data is no longer just something companies report. Increasingly, it may decide whether products can be sold at all. In this episode of Climate Confident , I’m joined by Stephen Jamieson , Chief Marketing Officer for SAP Sustainability , to explore why sustainability is moving from the ESG report into the systems businesses use to run supply chains, finance,...

Get in touch - leave me a message Streetlights sound boring. Until the grid fails and they’re the only lights left on. In this episode of Climate Confident , I’m joined by Liam Ryan , CEO of Streetleaf , a climate tech company rethinking one of the most overlooked pieces of public infrastructure: the streetlight. And yes, I know. Streetlights. Hardly the sexiest corner of the energy transition. Bu...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if better buildings are one of the most practical climate resilience tools we already have? In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Darren Macri , Co-CEO of Wythe Windows and rising president of the Passive House Network . We talk about why passive house is not just a building standard, but a practical climate tech pathway for decarbonisation, emi...

Get in touch - leave me a message Jet fuel isn’t just dirty. It is astonishingly good at its job. That is what makes aviation decarbonisation so hard. In this episode of Climate Confident , I’m joined by Dan Sutton , co-founder and CEO of Syntholene Energy , a climate tech company working on clean, drop-in synthetic aviation fuel, or eSAF. We talk about one of the thorniest challenges in the energ...

Get in touch - leave me a message Concrete alone accounts for around 7-8% of global emissions. So what happens when the real climate problem in buildings is no longer just energy, but the materials themselves? In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Alexander Sexsmith , architect and founder of Sexsmith Architects , to unpack what regenerative architecture means when stripped of the fl...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if fossil fuels aren’t energy security at all, but exposure dressed up as realism? This war is making that harder and harder to ignore. In this bonus episode of Climate Confident+ , I unpack why the US and Israel’s war against Iran is forcing a faster rethink of fossil fuels, renewables, EVs, and electrification. This is a solo episode with me, Tom Raftery ,...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if one of the most effective climate tech moves in hospitality isn’t flashy at all, but simply wasting less food with far better data? In this episode, I’m joined by Olaf van der Veen , co-founder of Orbisk , to unpack a climate tech story that sits right at the intersection of decarbonisation , operational control, and the energy transition . We talk about f...

Get in touch - leave me a message Heat is becoming a business risk in plain sight. And if cooling demand is set to soar, the energy transition has a problem most people still aren’t talking about. In this episode, I’m joined by Rob Atkin , co-founder and CEO of Pirta , a climate tech company developing passive cooling coatings and additives. We dig into a part of decarbonisation and the energy tra...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if fossil fuels aren’t just polluting, but a standing threat to economic stability? This episode makes the case that the energy transition is now as much about security and cost as it is about climate. In this solo Climate Confident+ episode, I dig into a brutal truth too many policymakers and business leaders still avoid: fossil fuels don’t merely drive emis...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if voluntary carbon markets are either a vital climate tool... or a polished excuse to delay real decarbonisation? In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Dr Jennifer Jenkins , Chief Science Officer at Rubicon Carbon , to unpack one of the most contested questions in climate tech and net zero strategy: what role, if any, should voluntary carbon ma...

Get in touch - leave me a message AI may be booming, but the real bottleneck to it's growth may be turbines. And if firm power can’t scale fast enough, parts of the energy transition hit a wall. In this episode, I’m joined by Brad Hartwig , Co-founder and CEO of Arbor Energy , to unpack a part of the climate tech and energy transition story that gets far too little attention: the physical mac...

Get in touch - leave me a message War doesn’t just kill people. It also blows up energy security, drives up emissions, and exposes fossil fuels for the liability they’ve always been. In this first Climate Confident+ bonus episode, available exclusively to subscribers, I unpack the unnecessary, illegal, and profoundly ill-advised war being waged by the US and Israel on Iran, and why its fallout mat...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if one of the biggest climate problems in our buildings isn’t power generation, but the fact we’re still burning fuel in the basement? In this episode, I’m joined by Dan Yates , CEO of Dandelion Energy , to unpack why geothermal may be one of the most overlooked tools in climate tech today, and why building decarbonisation deserves far more attention in the w...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if the real barrier to climate action isn’t a lack of science, but a lack of pressure? And what happens when climate risk collides with political instability, fossil fuel dependence, and public anger in real time? In this episode, I’m joined by Professor Dana Fisher of American University , author of Saving Ourselves and one of the sharpest thinkers on climat...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if the biggest climate lever in fashion isn’t better materials, but simply wearing clothes longer? The fashion industry accounts for roughly 10% of global carbon emissions and 20% of industrial water pollution. In this episode of Climate Confident , I’m joined by Phoebe Tan , co-founder of Taelor , a menswear rental subscription service using AI-driven stylin...

Get in touch - leave me a message Coal produces 4,000–8,000x more waste per MWh than wind. But you can’t take a photo of CO₂, so we ignore it. In this episode, I’m joined by climate futurist and long-term decarbonisation modeller Michael Barnard . We cut through headlines to examine where the energy transition is actually heading - from electrification and maritime shipping to mass timber, industr...

Get in touch - leave me a message AI’s energy demand isn’t a future problem. It’s straining grids today. And most companies aren’t ready. In this episode, I’m joined by Beatrice Clark , Vice President of Sustainability and Social Impact at Turtle and Hughes , a North American electrical distributor and systems integrator working at the sharp edge of the energy transition. We unpack what surging AI...

Get in touch - leave me a message What if the biggest mistake in climate action is that we’re still designing buildings for a climate that no longer exists? In this episode of the Climate Confident Podcast, I’m joined by David Sellers , principal architect at Hawaii Offgrid Architecture & Engineering . David designs net-zero and off-grid buildings on Maui, not as an experiment, but because the...