Cleaning Up. Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

Episodes

April 24, 2024

How China Became a Green Finance Superpower - Ep160: Dr. Ma Jun

Welcome to Season 12 of Cleaning Up! If you want a sense of the trajectory of climate action, you have to understand China, and you have to understand finance. There is no one better to share insights on both than Dr Ma Jun, Founder and President of the Institute of Finance and Sustainability in Be…

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April 3, 2024

Rounding Up Season 11 - Ep159: Michael Liebreich & Bryony Worthington

Bryony and Michael round up the eleventh season of Cleaning Up this week. They explore the themes running through the episodes, from theories of change to innovation, and discuss the things that surprised them, the moments they liked (or didn't) and reasons for optimism for the transition.

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March 27, 2024

Absolutely Electrifying - Ep158: Saul Griffith

Michael chats with Saul Griffith, Australian-born engineer, inventor, advisor, author and 2007 MacArthur "Genius". He specialises in clean and renewable energy technologies, and has founded a dozen technology companies across 20 years in Silicon Valley, as well as authoring 3 books, including `Elec…

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March 20, 2024

The Methane Hunters - Ep157: Dr. Sebastien Biraud & Sharon Wilson

Bryony speaks to two fascinating guests, both specialising in methane emissions, their causes and impacts: Dr. Sebastien Biraud and Sharon Wilson. Dr. Biraud is a biogeochemist, leading the Climate Sciences Department. Sebastien's work has taken him to the tropical rainforests of the Amazon, the…

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March 13, 2024

Audioblog 12: The Five Superheroes of the Transition

This week, Michael presents the second part of his two-parter for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, exploring the bear and bull cases for the net zero transition. This week is the bull case: the "5 superheroes" of the transition, 5 forces/trends even more powerful than last week's "5 horsemen", which c…

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March 6, 2024

Audioblog 11: The Five Horsemen of the Transition

Michael is solo this week on Cleaning Up, outlining the "5 horsemen" of the net-zero transition - the five greatest obstacles to the net zero transition. These 5 horsemen are: the economics of energy solutions, the electrical grid, the demand for critical mineral, political and social inertia, pred…

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Feb. 28, 2024

A Magnificent Woman And Her Flying Machines - Ep156: Bonny Simi

Bryony returns with Bonny Simi, President of Operations at Joby Aviation, where she's working on bringing to market a new civilian electric VTOL (eVTOL) aircraft. Prior to joining the team at Joby, Bonny held several operational and strategic roles at JetBlue Most notably, she founded and led JetBl…

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Feb. 21, 2024

Extreme Electrochemistry for a Sustainable Future - Ep155: Prof Donal…

Michael returns to talk with legendary educator and inventor, Donald Sadoway, Professor Emeritus of Materials Chemistry at MIT. After earning his PhD in chemical metallurgy in 1977 at the University of Toronto, he joined the faculty at MIT in 1978 where he spent 44 years. For 16 of those, he taught…

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Feb. 14, 2024

Green Heat (And Cooling) Under Our Feet - Ep154: Tamsin Lishman

Tamsin Lishman joins Bryony this week to talk heat pumps. Tamsin is CEO of Kensa Group, a Cornwall-based manufacturer and installer of ground source heat pumps. Kensa is the UK's only manufacturer of ground source heat pumps. Both air source and ground source heat pumps are rapidly growing technolo…

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Feb. 7, 2024

Shedding Light on Energy's Dirty Secrets - Ep153: Lauri Myllyvirta

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…

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Jan. 31, 2024

Can We Have a Habitable Planet? - Ep152: David Wallace-Wells

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 i…

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Jan. 24, 2024

Redesigning Mining - Ep151: Mark Cutifani

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 collier…

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Jan. 17, 2024

Selling Sustainability - Ep150: Solitaire Townsend

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, Solit…

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Jan. 10, 2024

Material World - Ep149: Ed Conway

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 starte…

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Dec. 20, 2023

The Second Coming of the Lord Turner - Ep148: Lord Adair Turner

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, …

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Dec. 13, 2023

Not the End of the World - Ep147: Dr Hannah Ritchie

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 defores…

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Dec. 6, 2023

Tackling Super Pollutants - Ep146: Jason Anderson

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 h…

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Nov. 29, 2023

The Bridgetown Initiator - Ep145: Prof Avinash Persaud

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 fi…

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Nov. 22, 2023

Iron-Air Man - Ep144: Mateo Jaramillo

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 o…

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Nov. 15, 2023

Is Shipping the Easiest "Hard-to-Abate" Sector? - Ep143: Johannah Chr…

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…

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Nov. 8, 2023

Metals Refining - From Mining to Brining: Ep 142 - Alex Grant

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…

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Oct. 25, 2023

Lifting the Curtain on Climate Change Denial - Ep 141: Prof Naomi Ore…

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 …

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Oct. 18, 2023

Power of Data, Data of Power - Ep 140: Quentin Draper Scrimshire

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…

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Oct. 4, 2023

The Dane who Harnessed the Wind - Ep139: Henrik Stiesdal

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 power", this Danish inventor is behind many of the sector's most important innovations. He is responsible for over 175 inventions and is named in ov…

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