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

Michael Liebreich  00:10

Hello, I'm Michael Liebreich and this is Cleaning Up. Welcome to the last episode of season 11. Now this episode is going to be a bit different from anything that we've done before here on Cleaning Up. You've got me, and you've also got Baroness Bryony Worthington, my co host. And what we're going to be doing is reflecting back on season 11: The things that we liked, the things that we loved, the things that we learned, the things that surprised us. And then we're going to be looking forwards a little bit to the year ahead, and some of what we've got lined up in season 12. So Bryony you get to say the immortal words.

Bryony Worthington  00:49

Hello, I'm Bryony Worthington. And this is Cleaning Up.

ML  00:52

Before we start, if you're enjoying Cleaning Up, please make sure that you like, subscribe and leave a review. That really helps others find us. Follow us on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn to participate in the discussion. And make sure that you sign up for the Cleaning Up newsletter on Substack — it contains alerts about upcoming episodes and thoughts from Bryony and me on the issues covered. You'll find it at cleaninguppod.substack.com. That's cleaninguppod — all one word —  dot substack dot com. Finally, visit our archive of over 150 conversations with the world's climate leaders at cleaningup.live. That's cleaningup dot live. Cleaning Up is brought to you by our lead supporter, Capricorn Investment Group, the Liebreich Foundation that Gilardini Foundation and EcoPragma Capital.

BW  01:52

Good to be with you, Michael.

ML  01:55

It's very good to see you as always. And I think this is your first full season as a formal cohost. So how have you been finding it?

BW  02:05

Yeah, it has been. It's been fantastic. I mean, there's nothing nicer than just spending time with really fascinating people and getting them to answer questions and learn as you go. And the themes that we've taken on have been super interesting. I've learned a tonne. So yeah, it's been great.

ML  02:21

And of course, now you're on the other side of the camera. When you first came on Cleaning Up, it was- you were actually one of our guests, it was episode, you were there for episode 25. It sort of feels not only have you changed sides of the camera, but you know, it was kind of a different time period. That was in the middle of COVID, it was January 2021. It was before Glasgow, Cop 26. It was only something like I don't know, maybe less than a year after the UK moved to net-zero as its 2050 goal. Do you feel sort of older and wiser now?

BW  03:00

Well, yeah, you're right. It was different. It's very different being on this side of the camera. I mean, you make it look very easy. But as I've said before  it's quite hard to sustain an hour long conversation with almost no edits. So I've been learning that trade. And it's been fun learning from you. And in terms of my outlook, I mean, I think I've continued to be relatively optimistic at our human capacity to stand up to this challenge. But I'm increasingly pessimistic that we'll do it in time. And I think some of the themes that we've looked at through the season and previously... Yeah, it's a combination of kind of slightly despairing at what's ahead of us in terms of the impacts, but also hopeful about the number of people who are working on solutions. So yeah, fear and despair are there but I'm actually quite optimistic by nature. And certainly the people I've met through the season have made me more optimistic.

ML  03:51

So these conversations, they are snapshots that, you know, it is an hour long conversation, it's quite in depth. And they really do bear listening to again, because our conversation back in January 2021, it is a snapshot of a certain time. And if those people in the audience have not listened to it, I really do encourage them to do so because it does capture the moment. And we were both quite optimistic. I mean, it's now a lot harder to sort of just say, oh, well, you know, net zero. And there were all these countries at the time signing up for net zero by 2050. You know, at worst, it was netzero 2060 or 2070. You know, we went through that incredible surge of inflation at the end of COVID. After that, that made things difficult, the energy prices soaring. And then, of course, you had this horrendous, unprovoked attack on Ukraine, which is continuing today, by Russia. And you're seeing in politics, I don't want to say some cracks appearing, but it's definitely not as straightforward as perhaps you and I saw it back in 2021.

BW  04:58

Yeah, I mean the external conditions have changed radically right? I mean, to have a war on the doorstep of Europe, and now in the Middle East and  all the uncertainty that's there. I mean, it does feel like a gloomier backdrop for sure. And the politics have been challenging, but, and certainly in the UK context they've been challenging. In the US, I think we've had really quite an interesting turnaround in some some cases, I'm sure we'll get onto this, but the confidence in the US seems to be growing that climate is something that they can benefit from. So, ya know, it's definitely a different world to that we could have predicted. I mean, we recorded in the middle of COVID right. So we were already in interesting times. And it hasn't really stopped. The world continues to be an interesting place.

ML  05:46

That's right. I suppose, you know, we have also seen the Inflation Reduction Act. And we've seen essentially a doubling, just in that last couple of years, we've seen a doubling of the installations of clean energy. So there has been good news as well. Maybe I'm just feeling a little jaded here after, you know, a tough few months. Here we are, a quarter of the way through the year, and it already feels like a long year. So, if we look at the episodes that you did... We're not allowed to have favourite episodes, rght, that's one of the rules. So what are your favourite episodes?

BW  06:17

Well, I think in terms of uplifting conversations, I really enjoyed my conversation with Bonny Simi at Joby. Okay, this is a small aircraft, and it's displacing really helicopters, which are not a massive source of greenhouse gas emissions. But what I liked about it was just the attitude, the kind of, if the world's not right, I'm going to fix it. And the fact that, you know, she had this amazing background, and now is, you know, leading this really fascinating company, just down the road here in California. So I just found that was really one of one of my favourites.

ML  06:54

Now, I was listening to that. And I had two observations. One was: Ask her how it's going to decarbonize the world! Because it is short distance, electric flight. And of course, the worry there that I was having was, well, if it just makes it easier for rich people to get to airports to jump on jets, it could actually be entirely bad for the planet. But the other thing that happened while I was watching that episode, I suddenly thought, "Oh my God, I know this woman. I've met her." And here's the thing. So she was in the US Olympic luge team. And she did her three Olympics. And around the time that she was active, I was on the British freestyle ski team. I was skiing moguls, and I was at Lake Placid for the World Championships in 1991. And I got injured, I smashed my heels, I really bruised them badly. And I had to go to physiotherapy and I had to put them into an ice bath. And in an adjoining ice bath, who should I meet? And I only worked it out, I only suddenly realised this when I was watching your episode. But Bonny Simi, who wasn't called that at the time, I don't think. And I suddenly realised, I know this extraordinary woman, and we've exchanged a message or two afterwards. And yes, indeed, we did meet 30 years ago, in adjoining ice baths.

BW  08:16

Amazing. Well, you see, that's it. The world is full of surprising coincidences. I don't know if you remember, but in the episode, she talks about how she was on a hike, and she just bumped into the person she wanted to speak to at Joby and then sort of the rest is history from that point onwards. So yeah, chance encounters.

ML  08:32

She bumped in to Joeben Bevirt, she bumped into the CEO of a company that she was at the time trying to track down. It is an incredible episode, I think you did a brilliant job of going through all the different issues that Joby will have if they're going to bring this electric vertical takeoff landing aircraft, you know, the eVTOL aircraft, to market. So that was a good one. Yeah, go ahead.

BW  08:56

I was gonna turn the tables and ask you Michael, you're not allowed to have a favourite but what's your favourite?

ML  09:01

Well, yes... Do I have a favourite? I may be too politically correct and I love all my children, I love all my episodes. I think it was more... I don't have a specific favourite so much, as actually a kind of theme that I think really came out this season for me, which was minerals. Minerals, and mining and processing of minerals. Now I think we all realise that there's no transition without a tonne more minerals going into the energy sector. So they call them critical minerals. There are rare earths, there's lots of different sort of combinations. We're talking about everything from... you know there are some kind of weird and esoteric ones, and neodymium and molybdenum and blah, blah, blah, but also things like copper and nickel and obviously lithium for the batteries and so on. So it's a big, big theme. And I've started off the season with Ed Conway, who wrote this fantastic book called Material World. And that was just a kind of a tour of the horizon of the just the physicality of the transition and of the world we live in. There was Mark Cutifani, who I think has been this really impressive ESG leader from within the mining industry. And I kept challenging him and saying, but your industry is pretty crap, isn't it? And he kept giving me examples of things that he'd done, which were hugely impressive and humbling, to be quite honest. But I was still left thinking, "Yeah, that's fine, but not everybody is as good as you are they Mark?" And then I also had Professor Sadoway, Donald Sadoway, looking at these new new batteries, new processes, and he says, "Well, if you want batteries to be as cheap as dirt, make them from dirt." And he's got a few different ways of doing that. So those three episodes I think, worked really well together. But you know, I have no absolute favourite if I'm honest.

BW  09:01

Well I wondered, when I was listening to those, it is obvious that there's a theme there. But I found myself thinking well, the risk of us focusing on this aspect of the transition too much is that we live in a different world where you know, surveillance is everywhere... the attention to detail of everybody's actions is greater. And the reality is that we're going to be doing a lot less mining when we get through the transition, right? In aggregate, if we stop extracting fossils out of the ground, we will be mining, but we won't be mining as much in terms of volume. And so I worry that when that gets lost, there's an awful lot of risk, I think, associated with sort of raising the bar so high that we're not allowing ourselves to take this out of the ground fast enough. And we forget that what we're doing by doing that is displacing a much more impactful industry, which is the fossil extraction industry, which, you know... I think you did challenge Mark Cutifani from Anglo American, but I actually think you gave him a bit of a an easy ride, because that whole sector is responsible for quite a lot of the damage, right?

ML  12:08

Yeah. Throughout the transition, there's always a risk, I think, of the sort of the new stuff has to be perfect, right? The old stuff is ghastly: it's ghastly in terms of what it does to the atmosphere, it's ghastly in terms of what it does to local pollution, it's ghastly in terms of what it does — you can call it the Dutch disease — what it does to economies, what it does to corruption, you know. It's just ghastly on so many fronts. And then you're trying to do something that's enormously better but you're being held to this standard of perfection, which seems entirely unfair. And you know, a lot of mining is just moving rocks around, you know,  the volume — maybe you look at this volume versus that volume — but when you're mining for copper, yeah, you're moving a lot of rocks around, but they are rocks. There are  water impacts and so on, but they don't mess up the atmosphere in the same way that fossil fuels do. And then of course, you know, they're enormously smaller in terms of absolute volumes. You're absolutely right.

BW  13:10

And also, they're recyclable, right. The ultimate thing about fossil fuels is it gets burned, and it's gone. And most of it gets wasted in the process. And yeah, you know, copper is one of the most used... I mean, you said this in a couple of the episodes, one of the most recyclable materials on the planet. And once it's out, we look after it and we reuse it. So yeah, that was my main concern is that if the ESG kind of community gets too concerned or overly focused on this being perfect, it will have a negative effect and blind us to the obvious fact which is once we've stopped digging fossils out the ground, there'll be a lot less mining.

ML  13:47

That issue of recyclable, that was something that I actually explored in— you know, I did also during the season, I did the audio adaptation of the two pieces for Bloomberg. The first was the five horsemen of the transition, five reasons why it's going to be horrible, and possibly even impossible to get to net zero in a fast timeframe. And then the five superheroes... and one of those superheroes is actually the disappearing demand. That at the moment, we think that this is almost impossible from a minerals perspective, because there's such huge amounts required. But actually, not only do you get shrinking demand from the fossil fuel industry, for all sorts of resources — everything from shipping and pipelines and the amount of digging and mining and so on, whatever that we're going to be doing — but also when you're talking about these critical minerals in a clean energy system, that they do actually get recycled. And as long as the efficiency of using them improves in each cycle, even if you lose a little bit during the reprocessing, if in the interim technology has improved, they are actually forever. They actually provide the services forever, which is not in any of the modelling.

BW  15:05

No, no. And, you know, I wanted to ask you about your two audio blogs because I listened to the first one, which was the the horsemen of the apocalypse, this sort of gloom story. And I thought, Michael's doing a really good job here of trying to persuade us that he's pessimistic, but I didn't really buy it. And then when it came to the second one, where you unveiled the five superheroes, I thought it was excellent. I'd encourage everyone to listen to that one, because it's it again, hugely uplifting. But the final superhero, which I loved, was the primary energy fallacy, which I thought you nailed. And not enough people are talking about this in our sector — you know, this just completely crazy idea that we've got to replace like for like in terms of primary energy. So yeah, tell me a bit more about how you felt about that last episode.

ML  15:51

Well so those two pieces, I'm gonna be honest about it. You know, I don't have favourites, but I'm really proud not just of the audio version, I would love it if people listened, in fact, to both of them, because clearly a lot of thought went into them. But also they do synthesise a lot of our episodes... and you went and did this amazing episode on methane, fugitive methane. That's the episode with Sebastian Birauld, Dr. Birauld, and then Sharon Wilson, juxtaposing these two people working... but it's a deep dive, right? Whereas the horsemen, and then the superheroes of the transition, it sort of sums up just a whole load of issues. Why is it that the topic of the transition arouses so much kind of oppositionality and tribalism and also why it's so difficult to know who's right? So I wrote those two to almost... it was almost like channelling my inner Boris right? Because famously, before Brexit, Boris Johnson wrote one piece saying, we must stay in Europe and here are the reasons, and another one saying we must leave and here are the reasons, to see which he found more persuasive. And obviously, famously, you know, historically, of historic importance, he decided that it was Brexit that was more persuasive. So I tried to do the same. I tried to lay out the reasons why the transition can't happen, and the reasons why it must and will happen. But you're right, I wasn't as convinced by the horsemen. In the end, they are sort of, I don't want to say temporary... they're terrible problems, but they are of the here and now. You know, how do we get transmission built out? How do we increase mining for minerals? How do we deal with people who are spreading misinformation? These are all things that we have agency, we can deal with? So, you know, I also didn't want to depress people too much. If I really wanted to tell people why this is never gonna work, I probably could. But I sort of cheated, I guess I'm saying. But then the superheroes was the one I really put, you know, my entire thoughts and soul and being into to write the most persuasive story possible, that says: this is inevitable.

BW  18:08

Well, and you brought your characteristic kind of clarity and an analysis. You know, I thought the ending on the primary energy fallacy was great, because it leaves you feeling "Wow, okay, this isn't as hard as everyone thinks it is." There is this question of replacing the work, the value of energy that we get, that is easier to do when you've got better technologies. So, it just makes the whole thing feel much more tractable. And again, I encourage everyone to listen to it.

ML  18:35

Just one second. So for those who have not listened to the episode yet, or read the actual piece — it was an adaptation of a piece that I wrote for BloombergNEF. And for those who have not listened to it yet, what is the primary energy fallacy? Well, you often hear that renewable energy is so trivial, it only meets, it used to be 1%, 2%, 3%. It's now about four or five percent of global energy needs. And it's always framed as primary energy demand. Those are the words that get used: primary energy or primary energy demand. And the problem with that is it's not actually demand at all. What primary energy demand is adding up is all the energy in all the coal with all the energy in all the gas, with all the energy in all of the oil that's extracted with all the energy that's generated from the nuclear fuel. And of course, only a small, well a minority of that, actually provides what I would call, what is called energy services. So if you look at an economy, what it needs is energy services, it doesn't need coal. It needs lighting, or it needs cold beers or it needs the flying around, the motive power in an aeroplane or in a car. And that is a much, much smaller quantum. And what happens is that wind, solar and hydropower, they produce only electricity, they don't produce this huge amount of thermal waste, which is produced by coal and oil and gas and even nuclear. And so it may be a smaller number that they produce, but it's much more efficient at delivering those energy services. And it's an extraordinary thing, a lot of people just don't realise that if you take that primary energy demand, two thirds of it is just waste. Most of it is thermal waste from oil, gas, coal and a bit of nuclear. So the number when we actually say, "oh we've got to do this transition," the real number we're trying to fulfil is something like 40% of primary energy demand.

BW  20:47

Yeah. And we also touched on it when we talked to Tamsin Lishman from her green heating experiences at Kensa, right? Because a heat pump, as we went into, can deliver you four units of heat, if it's a ground source heat pump, for every one you put in. Super efficient. So there you're not just not wasting all that waste heat from burning something, you're extracting additional value from the surroundings of the ground. So this increase in efficiency means that yes, we're not having to replace like for like. Currently, what we're doing is a very, very wasteful system, based on fossil fuels. And that's hugely optimistic.

ML  21:25

And that's something we've also talked about a lot in episodes in the past with Silvia Madeddu, and we can put links in the show notes. And also, of course, Jonathan Maxwell, who has been financing energy efficiency, and trying to get people to think about: just provide the energy that you need to do the thing, don't try and replace all the wasteful energy that is currently being squandered on an absolutely heroic scale. By the way, you know, with heat pumps... So Kensa, great episode with Tamsin Lishman, but in fact I've been working with an industrial heat pump company called Heaten, and they are looking at applications where nevermind a coefficient performance of four... In some use cases, where you're only lifting the temperature a little bit, we're talking about efficiency or coefficients of performance of seven. Now, that totally blows up the statistics that say you start with coal, and then you kind of waste a whole load of it, and then you end up with heat and electricity, because you're getting just so much free heat from the environment, or your recycling. The whole point about the heat pumps is that they are also circular —those trend towards circularity of heat. So in the five superheroes episode, I talked about the circularity of these minerals, which go on forever and forever providing their services because you lose a little bit, but you become more effective at using them. But also heat, what you can do in an industrial environment is you can capture your waste heat, upgrade it with a little bit of work, a little bit of electricity, and your plant is then heat circular. I mean, it's just so cool. When you start getting your head around that stuff, you can't help but be excited.

BW  23:14

Well exactly, and this will this will please you. I was in a conference just last week and talking about ground source heat pumps. And in latitudes where you have quite a high degree of difference between summer and winter... basically, the ground acts as a battery. So if you're running your heat pumps to cool yourselves in the summer, and you're storing or dumping that excess heat into the ground, when it comes down to winter, and you've got to then heat your home, the ground has stored some of that heat. So you get more efficient as you go through the year. So for me, ground source heat pumps are one of the unsung heroes that I was glad that we were able to profile on this season. And I'm sure it's something we'll come back to, because as you say, the Kensa application is for sort of street by street. But there's industrial applications and there's, there's a huge potential there that I hope people will start to take a lot more interest in.

ML  23:14

So the ground source has always been incredibly elegant. Particularly because the coefficient of performance doesn't drop in winter. The water temperature coming out of the ground is the same winter and summer. So you don't get this... You can have a marvellous SCoP, the seasonal cop, all year round of four. But of course, if it gets really, really cold and it drops to two, then that puts a lot of stress on the grid. Well, if you're using ground source, that doesn't happen. So the CoP will be the CoP, the same CoP all through the year. But they've always been expensive, and I think that's what I really like about the Kensa solution. Instead of doing one borehole or laying out one network subsurface for one building, you're now able to share between buildings, multiple buildings. You can do dense housing, you could do apartment blocks. And I thought that was a really, really interesting episode.

BW  25:09

What I wanted to say was, in your audio blog about the horsemen, you actually did touch on something which was quite political. Because by and large, the essays are looking at technological or physical barriers, but the one that you talked about was this — I don't remember the phrase, you have to remind me — of the power of the incumbents, that there are going to be people seeding headwinds, artificial headwinds to try and slow this down. And that's something I've always been very interested in. So yeah, what was the phrase you used?

ML  25:39

Yeah. So the the first three horsemen of the transition —the first three problems — are very  sort of technocratic ones, if you like. So there's the cost — it's just sometimes the clean solutions are just not cheaper, and can never be cheaper, probably than the dirty ones. And that's a problem. The second one was the transmission. The third one was critical minerals, very technocratic. You know, techno-economic challenges and so on. The fourth one was social and political inertia, that, you know, there's a lot of stuff we could do but no country has really decided in full to do it. The UK, of course, has this thing called the Climate Change Act, which you may have heard of, in fact, you may have written it.

BW  26:25

I hear it's quite good.

ML  26:27

Yeah, it's quite effective. But as the Climate Change Committee would always tell us, there are still gaps. We still don't know quite how we're doing it. But we're committed to the outcome, even if we're not yet committed to all the policy interventions. But most countries, even if they've gone to Glasgow, or Sharm el Sheikh or Dubai, and said they're going to get to net zero, they don't really seem that serious. And the public is not really embracing the measures. They like the theory, but they don't like the practice of maybe spending a bit more. So that was number four: social and political inertia. Number five, was actually regulatory capture and predatory delay, I call it. By the way, I think that is straight out of Naomi Oreskes, one of your interviews, one of your great conversations that you did in season 10. And that was my number five. Which is not only number four, we're not really committed, but number five is and by the way, there's a whole bunch of people out there that are actively trying to slow it down.

BW  27:33

Yep, exactly. And as you say, we went into that in some some detail with Naomi last season. And you know, the playbook that they're using, she's exposed, is very similar to what happened with tobacco. That  there are ways in which you can make things seem less clear, you can muddy the waters, you can cast doubt on the science. And that will mean that we stick with the business as usual case for longer. And so that's exactly what's been happening. And I was quite pleased this season to see how we communicate about climate change and how we communicate about the solutions as a really important theme. And it's not just about trying to educate the public, but it's mostly about educating our politicians, so they know what the right policies are that they need to enact. And that theme of how do we win hearts and minds, whether it's within Parliament or out on the streets, is something that we've looked at a little bit through the episodes we did with David Wallace-Wells, and also with Solitaire Townsend, both who are in the business of communicating — David as a journalist and Soli as a consultant. And it is a really important theme, because so much of what we talk about is quite technical and happens behind closed doors in policy discussions or investment communities, that doesn't touch the public. But it's a very political problem that we're trying to get through right now.

ML  27:36

So I like those two episodes that you mentioned there. So Soli Townsend and David Wallace-Wells as a pair. I think they again, should be listened to as a pair. Because what you've got is David Wallace-Wells is the kind of the champion of trying to communicate using fear. I mean, you know, if you look at what he wrote, was it the Uninhabitable Planet originally? And that was... that catalysed real fear. In fact, you know, if you're going to worry about young people having climate anxiety, something we also touched on in the episode with Hannah Ritchie last season, the fact that there are young people really terrified of having kids and feeling real anxiety. I mean, if you want to find somebody who's behind that, you'd probably come up with David Wallace-Wells in the front row.

BW  29:42

Well, you know...

ML  29:44

But Solitaire Townsend is the sort of the opposite of that. It's change through inspiration, it's the flip side. It's saying we can all depress ourselves and frighten ourselves — you know, it is frightening don't get me wrong — but actually we have agency and we can do stuff. And she just had some brilliant examples of things she had done that were moving the needle. Maybe not enough to solve climate change, but she was moving the needle.

BW  30:15

Well, absolutely. I mean, Solitaire, her strapline is "Making the Anthropocene Awesome." She's leaning into the fact that there's so many things about modern life that are amazing. And there are so many amazing people with great ideas, that if you take a solutionist mindset, then it's obvious we can make progress, and we have made progress. And we will continue to. And she is a living embodiment of that. But to defend David's stance. He really broke through into the scene as a journalist when he did his first essays on climate. And he didn't get absolutely everything right. But I have no problem at all with somebody playing the role of focusing on the long-tail extreme risks of climate change. And far too often we focus on the average, the muddled mean if you like, which actually may not bear any relationship with what the real planet experiences. Average temperatures over time and over the planet don't help you when you've got a heat dome in Canada that's killing people. So it's kind of important that we talk about the extremes. And I think he took a really interesting stance of saying, well, let's just do that thought experiment. What is the worst case scenario? And nothing he said was really very wrong. There are scenarios now, where you've got high climate sensitivity, where we've already blown it right? We've already changed the parts per million to such an extent where we could see very extreme responses. Now, I'm sure you and I will get into conversation about this, but it feels to me that someone should be sounding that alarm. And that we should be treating this as a risk-based problem, where there are some improbable but high-impact risks that we should be taking note of and thinking about when we just have this discourse.

ML  32:00

Yeah, I had a technical issue with what he was writing about. Because when you say that he wasn't wrong, the problem is that what he was doing was reading all of the papers of about how awful it might get by 2100 or even before then. But those papers, almost without exception, were based on this extreme scenario called RCP8.5. Now, fans of the show, or anybody who's followed me on Twitter will know all about my beef with RCP8.5. Because it requires burning seven to 10 times as much coal as we currently burn. And the coal industry, even though China is building coal-fired power stations, as we heard about in the episode with Lauri Myllyvirta, another great episode this season, by the way, for those who have not listened. But the coal industry is essentially flat and has been for a decade, more than a decade. And so you know, this scenario that the IPCC has been using, and I'm sorry, but I'm going to use the word 'promoting' is not a feasible or plausible scenario. And, of course, it's a bit like saying, "Well, I want to know how my cat's physiology would respond to telecom towers and electromagnetic radiation, so I'm going to put it in the microwave." Well, obviously, we know what happens if you put the cat in a microwave. And we know what happens if we burn seven to 10 times as much coal. We know what happens, which is really, really, really bad. And you can do a New York Times best seller, and of course, everybody's very terrified.

BW  33:47

Yeah, but just to come in on that. I mean, the problem is that there are degrees of sensitivity beyond the actual release of fossil fuels. That take you to the same scenarios, right?

ML  33:59

Well, no, they don't take you to the same scenarios. We don't know that. Why? Because what we do is we research using RCP8.5. Now, the thing that I think where we're headed with this is we are essentially on track for not even RCP4.5 right? Not even a medium scenario. We're actually tracking, our emissions are tracking below RCP 4.5 They're tracking below the scenarios that are in the US climate assessment as good, as successful, right. We're doing fantastically on emissions. The problem is the sensitivity, the stuff that's happening is worse, right? You can't research what happens, you can't research what the implications are by putting a cat in a microwave.

BW  34:50

Well you can. You just have to abandon your faith in models as the answer for everything because actually the models are very divergent, if you look at the different ways that they run. And it's because it's an inherently complex problem, like the most complex problem. We're talking about global climate here, where there are so many parameters that the models have to just interpolate or guess or put in holding values because they don't know the answer. So these models are almost certainly wrong. But what you can do is look at observable data that's coming back from the natural environment. And in that observable data, you can see that we're deviating from the norm very fast. And that's a cause for concern.

ML  35:33

100%. The question is, however, whether the way to explore that is by putting the cat in the microwave, right? Another example. If you want to know... say you put some milk in a saucepan on the stove, and you want to understand how do I make sure it doesn't boil over? Right? If you put that stove on 10 and watch it for an hour, it's going to boil over number one, absolutely a bad outcome. But number two, you're going to learn nothing about how to avoid it,  where are those intervention points.

BW  36:12

Right, but I don't think we're disagreeing on that. I don't think the IPCC and the IR models are useful. I honestly think we've taken a wrong turn by relying too much on these oversimplified models that, as you say, are completely wrong in their assumptions. They don't have learning in them in terms of technology uptake. You're asking a bunch of climate scientists to do a job, which is really the job of the economy, to try and predict what happens. And they've got it badly wrong, I'm completely with you on that. But it's perfectly fine, I think, for journalists coming new to this to ask the question, what's at risk here? What are we risking? And he's subsequently carried on studying this, and he now has corrected some of those assumptions. But it hasn't made him any less worried, because what's happened in the meantime, is the physical environment is sending us very strong signals that we're into a very deeply changed situation, where the current recorded anomalies that we're seeing are so far off predicted norms that, it's become scary, right? So therefore, fear is a legitimate response, I think.

ML  37:19

Bryony, you've achieved something I never thought would be achievable, which is I'm now going to defend climate scientists. Because I think rather than say the models are all wrong, I think what we need to be doing is focusing those models on the sort of the future as it really plausibly might be. In other words, we now know what we're emitting and what the likely trajectories are. And we need to spend a lot more time thinking about the sensitivities there. And this is my segue into talking about an episode that I really enjoyed, which was your methane hunters. Because there you've got a scientist who's really getting to grips — this is Sebastian Biraud, you spoke to two people on that episode, scientist Sebastian Biraud first. He is really trying to understand how do you measure the methane? How do you know where it's coming from? How do you know what it's impacts are. This is absolutely fantastic scientific endeavour. And then you spoke to Sharon Wilson, who's going around and actually filming using a thermographic camera and saying the industry is essentially either lying or or failing to measure and can't be trusted. So two sides of the coin on a really immediate problem, a really immediate short-term problem, right?

BW  38:38

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And we were like, the interview with Sebastian was actually longer than that made it into the episode, because you're absolutely right. Sebastian is one of those scientists who's out in the field measuring greenhouse gases. We've got a good handle on concentrations at a global level, but we've really haven't got a good handle on what's happening at a local level in terms of the fluxes. And we emit and then nature absorbs a certain amount. And so far, we've been on a relative... we've been given a bit of an an easy pass, right? At least half of what we emit is being reabsorbed back into the natural world through the oceans or the trees, or through vegetation. That could all start to change quite radically. And it's only through observational data that we'll know that. The models can't cope with this. It's got to come from people like him going out with flasks, or with measurement towers, and tracking what's happening underneath it all. Because what we do know is CO2 is rising. And we know that methane is rising even faster. It's much less concentrated in the atmosphere, but it's a much more potent greenhouse gas, so we should care about it. But when you dig into that methane question, there's still a huge amount of uncertainty about why it's rising quite so fast. They don't even really know where. We've got a limited number of sites that are measuring it. And the reason we focus that episode on methane was because around that time, there was this wonderful satellite that was launched. And it was the first civic society funded satellite, which tells you something about how the cost of technology is coming down. And that had just gone into orbit, and it will soon start beaming back evidence of where we've got big pollution of methane, that sort of super pollutant. But why I like Sharon, and her approach, is that she's like, "Yeah, well, they're all a bit giddy about this satellite. But we've known this data forever." And knowing the data and acting on it, and not the same thing. So it was a really interesting episode to get those two opinions. Sebastian's really kind of deep academic approach. And then Sharon, who is much more of a kind of local campaigner who's very concerned that the industry has been doing this for years, brazenly, and unless something really changes politically, we'll carry on doing so. So it was fascinating.

ML  40:53

It was, and I will say, it's really worth persevering with, anybody who's tried to listen to it. And the first bit with Sebastian, the sound quality, unfortunately, is not where I would like to see us go. But it's really worth persevering. And it does get better with the the section with Sharon. But it was fascinating, because you've got, you've got the satellites that are up there and you've got all of the kind of satellite edge lords, you know, who think that satellites and big data and machine learning and large language models are basically going to solve everything. And then you've got Sebastian, who's got his towers above the forest actually trying to work out — well hang on a second, you've got to kind of link the satellite readings, actually get granular and do some really good science there. And then on the ground, you've got Sharon going, "It's them, it's them." And I can prove that it's them because I've got my camera. So you go from satellite to towers to camera. And you also go from? How can I put it? You know, they're not all edge lords. But you know from the sort of pure technologists to scientists to citizens and pressure. So, you know, it was a fascinating sort of X-ray of that methane problem. What are the levers that we've got? Informational, but also kind of the different theories of change around getting to grips with methane. I don't know that I was left enormously optimistic, but I was definitely more informed afterwards than before.

BW  42:29

Yeah. Well, so you're absolutely right. And what was so apparent was that with the academic approach, and it's probably a temperament thing was that Sebastian wants to work with the companies, he wants to be able to get access, and be able to work with them to identify where there are problems and then fix them. And so his solutions are quite sort of industry friendly. Whereas Sharon, you know, as a recipient of this pollution into her home, in her home and into her environment, is absolutely distrustful of them and wants something much bigger, you know, a kind of regulatory external approach. And the truth is, it's going to need both. We're going to need to have progressive companies doing the right thing, and we're going to have to have something that brings up the floor for everyone, because there's always going to be bad actors. And you need a regulatory standard that they're all kept to. So yeah, it was fascinating, I have to say.

ML  43:22

So I'm going to do a super synthesis or a simple synthesis of your episodes. I was off doing, you know, minerals, and mining and kind of crunchy engineering stuff, other than the horsemen or whatever. But yours... we talked about David Wallace-Wells and fear as the theory of change. Then there was Soli Townsend — inspiration as the theory of change. But then you've got Sebastian Birauld with knowledge as the theory of change. And you've got Sharon Wilson as pressure and agitation and anger, frankly, she's angry about this stuff that has impacted her life, as a theory of change. And I just think that is such a fascinating sort of set there.

BW  44:06

Well, and also in the middle you've got Bonny and Tamsin, who are saying capitalism is the answer, right?

ML  44:14

Innovation, innovation is a theory of change. What a brilliant set of, you know, how did you think of that set of particular interviewees?

BW  44:25

A lot of careful planning. As you know, I worked it all out in advance. No I mean, you know, these seasons come together through a combination of good luck, meeting people and then being available. But these themes are eternal themes, I think, and they're gonna keep coming  back. Thinking back to your episodes, we haven't talked about it very much but one of the ones I really valued was Lauri Myllyvirta's episode where they had a very sober quite, you know, he was didn't get excited about it, I think. A Swede I think, very level headed, but ex-Greenpeace. Spoke five different languages, was essentially compiling all this amazing data on China that no one else knew, thanks to his Mandarin skills, and pushing this out in a way that was really driving people. In fact, drove your opinions, right?  Absolutely. And you call him very sober and very unemotional. But you know, he's actually Finnish. And that is an extremely excitable Finn, by the way. Okay, right, I got the nationality wrong.

ML  45:23

I always feel feel very uncomfortable now, because I've been stereotyping when I shouldn't. I just think he's absolutely an unsung hero of all of this. I mean, this guy starts by delving through the output in Chinese in Mandarin Chinese on air quality, and then joining the dots with data that's coming out of the US Embassy, the air quality monitor on the roof, the one that suddenly started to say that the air quality was crazy bad. But then, you know, it's a combination of extremely good data research and manipulation and combination. And then distributing, getting it out there in ways that people like I can use. So, you know, I get lots of attention, and you get lots of attention, hopefully, more and more through Cleaning Up and so on. But there's these heroes, you know, I would also say by the way, Sebastian Biraud, Sharon, as well, but Lauri, has just done such extraordinary work. And then, of course, what happens is, Russia invades Ukraine, and everybody says, "oh, we should put sanctions on." It's like, okay, sanctions on what? How much gas, how much oil. From where? Being sold to whom? Via what pathway? And guess what? Lauri Myllyvirta and his team have probably done — you know, there may be some shadowy agencies doing that work — but in the world that we inhabit, he is doing the best possible work on that topic. And he's informing a civic debate and a really important one.

BW  47:04

Yeah, no, it was, it was a really great episode, as you say. One we haven't touched on, which I thought was really funny, and it's definitely worth listening to the end of, was your episode with Donald Sadoway. Who I mean, what an extraordinary, another extraordinary character. And what's funny about listening to the very end, I mean I would have loved to have taken his chemistry classes. You know, it sounded like he was a brilliant communicator. And then at the very end, because obviously, his extreme electrochemistry has this capacity to potentially be a new way of producing steel, right — we might be able to get rid of the traditional way. So we use essentially part of electrification story, but then you get to the very end, and he suddenly decides he doesn't like electric cars. And you were so restrained. I loved it. But tell me how that felt.

ML  47:51

So first of all Bryony, if you want to take his course you still can because it's all online. MIT was first in line when it came to these things called MOOCs, massively online something, something courses, they chose his course to pilot it, to pioneer it. And so you can still. And that's how actually I think that's how Bill Gates took his course. Not directly with him, but actually online. But anyway, now he is this again, another almost like a sort of, I don't know, a biblical prophet on making batteries dirt cheap, because you make them from dirt. But also an extraordinary renaissance man, educator. Just such an interesting character. But you're right at the end, he says, "oh, you know, we can't electrify transportation, it's not working, and it's too expensive." Well, but hang on a second. What he's trying to do is really, really cheap, bulk power to sit behind the grids, and enable them to work through when there's no wind, when there's no sun and so on. And I think I'm going to be charitable, I'm just not sure that he has worked that much on the problem of electric batteries for cars, because, you know, I see what's happening in terms of cost reduction, in terms of energy intensity improving, in terms of cycle life increasing. And so I beg to differ. I didn't want to, we just didn't have time in the episode to for me to get into a an argument as we just have in this episode on RCP8.5. I would have loved to have gone there, you know with the great Donald Sadoway. He probably would have explained to me why I'm wrong. But I didn't have time so I just said "I think I would disagree on that" and I was restrained and I moved on.

BW  49:43

You were very restrained. I could feel... Having now been on this side of the mic, I knew exactly what's going through your mind. Like it's 55 minutes in, I don't think the audience wants us to here. But that episode then does highlight, I think for me, sometimes is that there is this great love of the new, the hard to do, the focus on innovation. And actually listening to his explanations of his extreme electrochemistry, I was left thinking, "Gosh, that just sounds like it might just be too extreme." You might have this amazing tool set. And you may find that you're finding these solutions. But they might just never become commercial. And actually in your pursuit of that, you're kind of ignoring the obvious thing, which is lithium ion batteries in cars work brilliantly, and everyone loves them. So you know, for me it highlighted this risk of this obsession with always being on the very frontier of science, to the detriment of what's available today.

ML  50:41

Well, I think that he's solving with his extreme electrochemistry batteries, these dirt cheap batteries, it's a bit different from cars, because cars, obviously they've got to be mobile, and not burst into flames ever, ever, and all those sorts of good things, and be light enough and have the range and so on. So I think he's kind of both-and. But the process that's really impressive, is this Boston Metals process for directly reducing iron ore with electricity. So if that works and can be made to work —and it can be made to work in the laboratory. But if you can make it scale up, then of course, it casts a shadow, or it probably puts all of this hydrogen steel stuff out of business. So that is a really big idea. A pair of episodes that if the the audience is looking for two episodes to listen to on a weekend put together, here's an idea. How about Donald Sadoway, Professor Donald Sadoway and Bonny Simi of Joby, looking through that innovation lens. Because if I said to you that Bonny Simi was going to take over and try and make some of Donald Sadoway's stuff work, you'd probably sit there and go, "Hmm, the likelihood of it actually happening has probably just gone up, right?"

BW  51:58

I don't know. Yeah, that's a good thought experiment, isn't it, that if we got all of our people in a room, what would they come up with?

ML  52:04

Let's just finish, if we can Bryony, by looking forwards. So we've got some episodes lined up, some people we want to talk to. But also we've got an incredible three-quarters of a year left. The kickoff of season 12 is going to be with Dr. Ma Jun. Now, Dr. Ma, most people listening to this probably haven't heard about what he does. He is the, not even just a guru, but he's the leader of green finance in China, and actually through the G20, and through various initiatives. He's one of the leaders of green finance in the world. He's worked very closely with Mark Carney, somebody that we've had on Cleaning Up in the past, and is probably much better known to many of the audience. But there's a fascinating link to this season, which is that he was switched on to the need for finance to become part of the fight against climate change and other sustainability issues, or environmental issues by the same air quality event as Lauri Myllyvirta talked about in his episode. So the Dr. Ma Jun episode is actually a pair with Lauri Myllyvirta. That's going to kick off season 12. I'm just wondering if there's anybody else that we can talk about that we've got lined up?

BW  53:29

Well, we can we could certainly well... Hopefully, because as we know these things sometimes change, but my first episode I'm hoping to doo is going to be with Lily Cole. She's written a book called "Who Cares Wins." And she's an incredibly thoughtful person on the transition. And it continues my sort of theme of how do we communicate this? How do we bring people forward and hearts and minds? So I'm really looking forward to having that conversation with her.

ML  53:54

She's been very vocal about the issue of justice in the transition and the rights of indigenous peoples. So maybe that episode will be a pair with Mark Cutifani, who knows? Let's see how it turns out. And I look forward to listening to that one. And it's a big year politically. Obviously we've got the US election coming up. That will be in November and then possibly a UK election, but some people are calling it the year of elections because there's others around the world.

BW  54:26

Well before that we've got the election in the European Parliament right. Europe goes to the polls and that's likely to return a differently constituted European Parliament. And as Europe's been one of the engines of the green transition, people are gonna be watching that one too.

ML  54:42

Does it actually matter who's in the European Parliament? I mean, I'm not sure.

BW  54:46

I know. Look we could have a really good debate about this, but yes, it does. Three hundred and something million people represented into one parliament. They do still have quite a lot of powers, certainly spending power. But more than that, I think people are watching it because of the backlash if you like, or the rise of populism in certain key economies in Europe. And people use their European Parliamentary elections as a protest vote, so you could see a very diverse and polarised parliament being sent back to Brussels. So one to watch.

ML  55:21

And in fact, the backlash was one of the things that I talked about in the fourth horseman of the five, in the horsemen of the transition apocalypse. Because there are these parties like Marine Le Pen's party in France or the Alternative für Deutschland, in Germany. Mark Rutte just got deposed because of farmers pushing back against — among other things — but farmers pushing back against environmental measures. And obviously we've seen that in the UK, the Conservative government, Rishi Sunak's government — I think it's fair to say signalling more than doing — but at least signalling quite a big pulling back from climate ambitions as a result of pressures being felt by the population. So this kind of push back, this populist push back — France, very famously, the yellow vests, which is where that push back kind of initially bubbled right to the surface, and was mirrored in Canada. So I suppose we could see that you're saying in the European elections?

BW  55:26

Well, yeah, I think I think most people are expecting it. And I think there's a quite high degree of concern. Not to get onto one of my favourite hobby horses. But you know, a lot of this is about the way in which you introduce policies on climate. It's doing it sensibly and doing it in ways that feel fair to people. And I'm afraid Germany, as one of the biggest countries in Europe, hasn't got it right. You know, they've they've tackled climate in a particular way. They've done the world a huge service and they brought forward cost reductions in solar like nobody else. But they switched off perfectly reasonable nuclear power stations, which made them more reliant on fossil fuels. And they've got very high costs of electricity, they've seen industry leaving, and then they tried to move quite hard into home electrification without really educating the populace or taking people with them. And there's been a big backlash. So it's a cautionary tale. And I think getting the policies right, communicating them, and making people aware of why they're needed and why they're fair, is something that needs doing. That's why communications is such a crucial part of this transition.

ML  57:43

So that opens up the potential for an entire season of Germany's mistakes in the Energiewende. Nuclear, of course, among them, by the way, is becoming enormously to the tune of whatever it is 55% of their gas dependent on Russia. So there's plenty of mistakes that we could do. Plenty of... There's a rich seamewe could mine there to use the coal mining analogy, very apt in Germany today. But in Europe, obviously, we've got those elections, then we've got, potentially a UK election — could be at the end of the year, could be in 2025. But the big one, I'm sure we're all, you know, watching with trepidation, frankly, is the US. Is it as important for climate and clean energy innovation as, perhaps you could say, the 2020 election, which really was critical. I guess it's a way of asking: Do we think that the Inflation Reduction Act is so embedded that it really doesn't matter? Even if Donald Trump is elected again? How critical is it when you take all the froth away?

BW  58:54

Yeah, and I mean, it is the big one, and I'm sure it's going to dominate discourse. I mean, as you say, Trump was defeated by Biden, Biden came in and against all odds pulled off quite a significant number of policy wins that have unlocked a lot of money. He had a very narrow majority, didn't look very promising, and yet they pulled it off. And I suspect there are now enough moderate Republicans who can see that we need to hold on to reasons to invest back into the US economy, that the US has been largely focused on financialization and digital platforms for too long, we need to get back to building and back to manufacturing. And that, I think, will probably hold. And because the investment in the green economy is going hand in hand with a huge boom in fossil fuel extraction in the US, that this kind of energy sovereignty or energy independence rationale for investment will continue. Even with Trump in the White House. He may pick some iconic fights that he wants to dismantle, and you might see him leaning against a particular part of the transition, maybe electric vehicles, because he seems to hate those. But by and large, I think the big pieces of architecture that Biden managed to get through will hold because it's mostly benefiting Republican states.

ML  59:06

I'm never convinced by this idea that Republican states, because they get Inflation Reduction Act money, will be persuaded that therefore climate change is real, and that climate change should be addressed and so on. Because, you know, we have seen Trump's voters voting and being, you know, vocal against Obamacare whilst actually benefiting from Obamacare. So there's not a huge amount of rationality there. But what's fascinating, I suppose, a lens to see this through is actually what Lauri Myllyvirta talked about, which was that China's — and it also comes up in the episode with Dr. Ma, which kicks off season 12 —which is that, actually, China's economy was almost precisely becalmed, almost in recession other than the growth of the clean energy sectors: the solar and the wind and the EVs, the electric cars and so on. So, you know, if these industries continue to grow and continue to be dynamic, then it could be very difficult for any politician — just because they are so big — could be very difficult for any politician to then threaten to shut them down, or indeed to take action to try to shut them down or impede them. .

BW  1:01:38

Exactly. And actually, we saw a little micro version of that in the UK, when, as you alluded to, Rishi Sunak decided that — basically on the basis that they'd won a byelection by weaponizing the Ulez, which is a congestion charging policy that was expanding into a bigger area, and they managed to defeat Labour in that byelection. And so they extrapolated from that that "Oh, that's good. So we can beat Labour if we go anti green." And they tried to do a kind of dog-whistle move against climate change. But what they found was that there's actually a high degree of support in industry and investment for continuing on the path we've chosen, because it is driving manufacturing jobs back into Britain. And the policy that I've been tracking in detail was the mandate to sell electric vehicles. And you know, there was a great fanfare that this was going to be stopped or blocked. And actually, virtually nothing changed. That policy came in and started in January 2024, requiring manufacturers to sell a rising percentage of electric cars, It tops out now at 80% of all cars sold will be electric in 2030. That's quite a big policy that a Tory government passed, whilst claiming to be anti green. So the money knows that this is the future and money talks. So it's very hard to unravel this now, once it's gathering momentum.

ML  1:03:06

So when Rishi Sunak announced the changes to these various policies, I wrote something actually on my Substack, which the audience is welcome to find. It's the Thoughts of Chairman Michael, the Substack is called Thoughts of Chairman Michael, no pun intended. And I wrote something about the great climate reset — a big fat nothing-burger, because actually, although they're pushing back the 2030 date for vehicles, and so on, everybody knows that the bulk of land transportation is going electric, and it's over a tipping point. And then there was these other sort of resets around heating. Well the heating has been... That is, at the moment, just so poisonous of a debate in the UK because of the actions of people like the Energy Utilities Alliance with their predatory delay and sparking outrage about heat pumps. Really, there was no alternative but to push some of the dates back. But in fact, what you've really seen since then, or around the same time and since then, has been a doubling down with more money, there's the £7,500 per heat pump of subsidy for somebody installing one, you've seen the new battery factories for EVs being attracted to the UK with, by the way, extremely good support from the government. You've seen the rules on the mix of heat pumps versus boilers, I think it was pushed back by one year, but fundamentally the main policy that's going to actually penalise boilers, is still in place, surviving that. So it's kind of like there's a reset, but it's really a rhetorical reset. It's not a real economic research at all, is it?

BW  1:04:50

No, it's not and the fact that they had to invent policies that had never been proposed to say they were never going to do it. "We're not going to have seven bins for recycling" and "we're not going to force you to have a meat tax." Those were never even policy. And let's not forget the Tory's have been in government for 13 years, so where were they getting these ideas from? Anyway... I think what's happened now is that there is this growing realisation that this transition is unstoppable. Because it's just going to provide us with a better system overall, more efficient. And that there's money to be made now, because you're going to be seeing incumbents contracting and new entrants growing. So it's a hard thing now to stand up against and say, "we're going to scrap it," because people are betting on it.

ML  1:05:34

So are we going to see Labour then spend that famous £28 billion pounds a year that they promised and then they unpromised and they promised it again, and then they've unpromised it? Are we going to see them adhering to your logic and actually making a decision that it's needed, and it's going to go ahead, and it's going to happen?

BW  1:05:51

Well. They don't need to spend public money, Michael, and this is where I think we'd agree. That you can set the rules of the game and the private capital will flow. And if they focus on that, many more than £28 billion will be unlocked. So whether or not you do public spending to stimulate this, I think that's the wrong lens, wrong end of the telescope to be looking at. The problem is how do you get the big flows of capital back flowing into the UK and into our economy? And that's going to be by setting good rules.

ML  1:06:21

So Bryony, we're not going to have time to go through a tour of all the different political situations that I think you and I are keeping an eye on. There's Canada, fascinating. Australia, they've gone absolutely nuclear bonkers in Australia. And you might think that that's a good thing, I might have some extreme scepticism about whether building a nuclear power station in Australia can ever be done.

BW  1:06:43

Economically, they're not gonna need to.

ML  1:06:47

My own view? They should they should get rid of the ban on nuclear, because then nothing will happen anyway. It doesn't matter. Just draw the poison of that stupid tribal warfare that they seem to absolutely be enjoying at the moment. But anyway, we'll have lots more of those. And we will bring in the right guests to enlighten people, entertain people, inform people. And it's going to be enormously good fun. So thanks. I want to thank you, Bryony, for your the work you've done as my cohost, and I think it's been a fantastic season, and I've got high hopes for season 12. And we'll see our audience there, hopefully they'll join us.

BW  1:07:28

Yeah, well I wanted to thank you, Michael. It's been a fantastic opportunity. I've completely loved season 11 and all the guests that we've had, and I'm looking forward to more. So yeah, onwards.

ML  1:07:39

So that brings to the end season 11 of Cleaning Up. We're going to be taking a two week break and we'll be back on Wednesday 24th of April. Now over Easter, we've got two pieces of homework for you. The first is please sign up for our newsletter. You can find that on cleaninguppod.substack.com. And the second Bryony?

BW  1:08:07

We'd really like you to write to us. We would like to hear your feedback, your questions and your guest suggestions. So please find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or on X/Twitter. And we really look forward to hearing from you. He was Mike Liebreich, I'm Bryony Worthington. And that was Cleaning Up.

ML  1:08:27

If you've enjoyed today's conversation, please remember to like, share, and subscribe to Cleaning Up, or leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform. And do please spread the word; tell your friends and colleagues. Cleaning Up is brought to you by our lead supporter, Capricorn Investment Group, the Liebreich Foundation, the Gilardini Foundation and EcoPragma Capital.