The Net Zero Business Podcast

This week, Chief Sustainability & External Affairs Officer at Suez UK Dr Adam Read MBE joins me for a freewheeling and fun conversation broadly around waste/resources management and Net Zero. We talk about: The evolution of waste policy Public understanding, engagement and behaviour The practicalities of a circular economy How infrastructure can evolve from linear to circular applications Sell...

This week I'm joined by Freddie House of the Sustainability data management platform Sweep to talk data. We discuss: The connection between Sustainability and employee engagement Reducing the data/reporting burden AI: risks and opportunities Current volatility in ESG The importance of auditability Sweep's Climate Contribution Framework and the power of league tables A white paper on the Climate Co...

Happy New Year! In today's episode of the pod, I make five predictions for Net Zero in 2026 and, spoiler alert, they are much more optimistic than you might expect! This episode is brought to you by Terra Infirma Ltd, Bringing Sustainability to Life Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Twixmas I share my pet political theory: that the over-interpretation of the 2023 Uxbridge by-election has led to some terrible and self-defeating decision-making by the UK's Conservative Party and the shattering of the UK's long-held political consensus on climate action. Enjoy - if it's not too painful... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the seventh of 10 special episodes to mark the publication of my guide '10 Rules for Corporate Sustainability' where I sum up the lessons I have learnt delivering Sustainability over the last 25+ years. In this episode, I talk about a personal passion of mine as it covers the subject of my first proper Sustainability job, Rule 7: Design the Future You Want to See. Click here to download 10...

It's that time of year to have a look back at the previous 12 months and reflect on what has happened in the world of Sustainability. I'm joined by James Murray, Editor in Chief of Business Green and Lucy Siegle (The One Show, books, magazine articles, podcasts and more), and we try not to just scream into the void in despair, but pick over the pieces of 2025 to find a way forward for the Sustaina...

One of my favourite quotes comes from Mike Monteiro: "the world is not broken, it is working exactly how we designed it to." To discuss how to redesign the world along Sustainable lines, I'm joined by Vicky Lofthouse of EN:ABLE Sustainability to chew over the power of design, how to drive innovation, the role of product-service systems, industrial symbiosis and so much more. Vicky tells me "contex...

This week, I'm joined by Duncan Peake, CEO of Raby Estates, to talk about Sustainability and land management. We cover a huge range of topics, including Green tourism, regenerative farming, peat upland management, forestry, retrofitting heritage buildings – all the things that are involved in running a large estate. One cross-cutting theme is that the various stakeholders involved – employees, ten...

This is the 104th episode of the Net Zero Business Podcast, making it our second birthday! To be honest, I wasn't expecting for it to go on so long, I originally started doing the interviews to get content for an as yet unwritten book and thought, hey, it's 2023, why not put them out as a podcast? The pod took over! This time last year, I listed 5 lessons I'd learnt from the first year of the pod....

Professor Marcelle McManus has a huge range of clean technology research projects under her leadership at Bath University, but believes strongly that they must be cognisant of the very people that we expect to adopt them. In this episode, she explains the type of work her People-Led Net Zero centre is undertaking, before we talk through some of the technologies she's involved with including hydrog...

While much of transport is going electric, Philip Fjeld, CEO of ReFuels, believes that biogas has a major role in decarbonising heavy goods vehicles. In this episode we discuss the business model for the sourcing and supply of bioCNG, the economics of bioCNG vs diesel vs electric drive chains, market penetration of CNGs and a fascinating dive into the complexities of developing new infrastructure...

By day, Alex Hilton is Director of Policy and Public Affairs at Beyondly, a compliance scheme and consultancy which supports businesses with environmental legislation such as the extended packaging regulations. But in the evening he heads home to his 16th Century farmhouse which he has retrofitted with a heat pump, solar panels and a battery. Yes, 16th Century, you read that right! Alex and I chat...

This is the sixth of 10 special episodes to mark the publication of my guide '10 Rules for Corporate Sustainability' where I sum up the lessons I have learnt delivering Sustainability over the last 25+ years. In this episode, I talk through what is probably the most important of the ten rules, Rule 6: Leadership must own your Sustainability Strategy The biggest threat to your Sustainability progra...

Derrick Emsley started his career in nature restoration in Canada as a teenager, before launching the TenTree clothing brand (ten trees planted for every product bought) and then building the Veritree verification platform for nature-based solutions. All of this has led to the planting of a whopping 100 million trees. In this episode, Derrick and I chew over the whys and wherefores of nature-based...

I'm always very conscious that the pod tends to feature European or US guests, so this week I'm delighted to reach across the equator to Zimbabwe to talk to sustainable entrepreneur Maureen Vere. Maureen's company Verager grows cowpeas alongside maize as a living mulch to protect the latter from climate impacts, and then processes those cowpeas into a range of vegan food products, all the while pr...

Impending doom, eco-anxiety, sackcloth and ashes – Sustainability is often portrayed in very negative terms, but are Sustainable organisations happier organisations? Who better to ask than Richard Lupo, a Sustainability Consultant and the author of the book "Happiness by Numbers"? Here's what we discuss: Happiness by numbers – measuring well being Sustainability and Maslow's hierarchy of needs The...

This is the fifth of 10 special episodes to mark the publication of my guide '10 Rules for Corporate Sustainability' where I sum up the lessons I have learnt delivering Sustainability over the last 25+ years. In this episode, I talk through what is probably the most important of the ten rules, Rule 5: Don't try to convert people; find buttons to press Most attempts at Sustainability engagement fal...

Offsetting is often described as a distraction from decarbonisation, or, worse, a scam or greenwash. At best, organisations often say "we will concentrate on carbon reductions first and only offset what we can't get rid of." But what if we've got it all wrong? Can 100% offsetting drive your Net Zero programme by acting as an internal carbon tax? Matteo Deidda of Tide , the all-in-one finance platf...

If the internet was a country, it would be one of the top 5 polluters. What's that got to do with you? Well, if you have a website, then part of that is part of your carbon footprint. In this wide ranging conversation with Digital Sustainability expert James Chudley, we cover: Building your Sustainability career on non-Sustainability skills Trends in the digital and their impact on global emission...

When Jeremy Leggett decided to abandon the fossil fuel industry in favour of fighting climate change, he didn't take half measures. Cutting his teeth in Greenpeace, he founded the Solar Century business, the associated charity SolarAid, sat on a huge range of advisory panels and most recently founded Highlands Rewilding to bring nature based solutions into the mix. No wonder he was awarded the pre...

Through August the podcast will feature themed compilation episodes featuring hot takes from our wonderful guests over the last year. This week the theme is leading change for Sustainability featuring the combined wisdom of a stunning cast of characters: Profs Knut Hanaess and Julia Binder of IMD on 'head, heart and hands' and future-back thinking Solitaire Townsend of Futerra on the march of the...

Through August the podcast will feature themed compilation episodes featuring hot takes from our wonderful guests over the last year. This week the theme is clean energy – production, distribution and consumption – featuring the combined wisdom of a stunning cast of characters: Richard Black of Ember on the Future of Energy Michael Liebreich on why the hydrogen economy has never taken off (disagre...

Through August the podcast will feature themed compilation episodes featuring hot takes from our wonderful guests over the last year. This week the theme is small/medium sized businesses (SMEs), featuring the combined wisdom of: Jo Holmes and David Knight on the challenges faced by small businesses and the upsides and downsides of Sustainability frameworks for smaller companies Jasper Steinhausen...

Through August the podcast will feature themed compilation episodes featuring hot takes from our wonderful guests over the last year. This week the theme is ESG Investing, featuring: Georgia Hall on the definition of ESG and separating the signal from the noise Marga Hoek on the Trillion Dollar opportunity presented by the Sustainable Development Goals John Friedman on why ESG investing increases...

This is the fourth of 10 special episodes to mark the publication of my guide 10 Rules for Corporate Sustainability where I sum up the lessons I have learnt delivering Sustainability over the last 25+ years. In this episode, I talk through what is probably the most important of the ten rules, Rule 4: Culture and strategy are two sides of the same coin. What many Sustainability professionals fail t...