Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

Professor Ning Li has spent decades at the intersection of energy, technology and industrial strategy. A nuclear engineer, complexity scientist and founding Dean of the School of Energy at Xiamen University, he is also credited with coining the term "Small Modular Reactor" nearly 20 years ago.

In this wide-ranging conversation with Bryony Worthington, Ning Li explains why China has weathered recent global energy shocks better than many expected, how electrification is transforming economic resilience, and why solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles have become China's most important exports.

They explore whether the world is really swapping...

Today, wind power accounts for just under 10% of all electricity globally, around the same as solar, recently overtaking nuclear power. 20 years ago, the figure was under 1%.

In that time, the sector’s leadership has moved around from Europe to the US to Asia, but one specialist European manufacturer has stayed in the leading group throughout: Vestas — a member of the global wind energy aristocracy.

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined by Henrik Andersen, CEO of Vestas, to discuss the extraordinary growth in the wind energy industry, the challenges it faces with rising inte...

For more than 15 years, the RCP8.5 climate scenario has shaped headlines, policy decisions, financial stress tests and public understanding of climate risk. Now, the scientific community has declared it implausible. So what comes next?

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich welcomes Professor Roger Pielke Jr. back to explore why RCP 8.5 became the dominant "business as usual" climate scenario, and what its demise means for climate research, policymaking and public debate.

They discuss the origins of the scenario, how assumptions about coal consumption drove projections beyond plausible futures and ask whether fear-based climate communication has...

As electricity demand rises and renewable generation continues to expand, the same question keeps arising: how do we keep power systems reliable, affordable and resilient?

This week, Michael Liebreich is joined by Håkan Agnevall, CEO of Wärtsilä, to discuss the changing role of flexible generation in modern electricity systems, the growing importance of grid stability, and why balancing technologies will be critical as renewables become an ever-larger share of the global energy mix.

They explore how rapidly growing electricity demand, including from data centres, is reshaping investment decisions, why flexible gas generation may pla...

In this special episode of Cleaning Up from San Francisco Climate Week, Michael Liebreich and Bryony Worthington unpack the geopolitical shocks reshaping the global energy transition.

From escalating tensions in the Gulf and their impact on oil and LNG markets, to China’s accelerating electrification revolution, the conversation explores how energy security, industrial strategy and climate ambition are colliding in real time.

Bryony and Michael debate whether the West can realistically compete with China’s manufacturing dominance, why electrification is becoming the defining energy strategy across Europe and Asia, and whether hydrogen has any meaningful role...

The energy system is not about supply and exports and generation and distribution. It's about how we use energy in our daily lives and workplaces.

The so-called energy trilemma, affordability versus reliability versus environmental performance looks very theoretical in the boardrooms of an NGO or a consulting company. But it's not theoretical at all for someone struggling to run their life, do their job and pay their bills. What we need is a system focused on usage, not on supply.

Joining Michael on Cleaning Up this week is Harish Hande, a Bangalore-based social entrepreneur, co-founder...

Every single scenario for the future that looks at a cleaner energy system has electrification growing to 60, 70, 80% or more, and yet we don't make rapid progress. Why?

One of the reasons we don't make progress lies in narratives and culture wars. We hear about heat pumps that don't work, we hear about electric vehicles that don't work, we hear that electrification can't work for high temperature heat and so on, and then we hear a narrative that there is a false solution that will work much better: hydrogen.  So how do we electrify things faster? By focussing o...

This week Cleaning Up is back in Brussels, with a deep dive into European energy policy as the continent grapples with the reality of ambitious climate targets, very high energy prices and the vulnerabilities of first Russia's attack on Ukraine, and Israel and the US's recent attack on Iran.  Michael Liebreich sits down with a rising star of the European Parliament, Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, for a timely conversation at the intersection of energy, geopolitics, and climate strategy.

What begins as a discussion on EU energy policy quickly broadens into a much bigger conversation: a blueprint for Europe’s sur...

What happens when global energy supply chains can no longer be trusted? Has the U.S. given up its edge in the clean energy race to China? And can politics keep up with the speed of the energy transition and the rise of AI?

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with former U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of global energy, politics, and clean technology.

They explore how geopolitical tensions, from disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz to shifting alliances, are reshaping global energy markets...

The news agenda this year has been entirely dominated by energy related stories, whether it's the war in Europe being pursued by Russia — formerly Europe's most significant energy provider — the U.S. capturing the head of state of Venezuela — which has some of the biggest oil reserves in the world — or the ongoing attack by Israel and the U.S. on Iran and all its ramifications.

But there is also another story, which is the long term rift between the U.S. and the rest of the world about whether and how fast we should be addressing climate...

How should a central bank respond to energy shocks? Will high oil and gas prices bolster the uptake of renewables? And what is the true cost of net zero 2050?

This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Liebreich sits down with Pierre Wunsch, Governor of the National Bank of Belgium and member of the European Central Bank’s governing council, for a candid, behind-the-scenes discussion about how central banks should and can respond to inflation, energy volatility, and climate transition.

From the recent surge in oil and gas prices to the lessons learned from post-COVID inflation, Wu...

What happens if we’re underestimating the speed and scale of climate risk? This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington sits down with Ricken Patel, Principal at Climate Hub & Founder of activist network Avaaz, to explore how to build successful climate movements, and the case for research into geoengineering.

Ricken argues that companies have been accidentally geoengineering since the turn of the Industrial Revolution, as a byproduct of their pollution, and says ‘it’s crazy’ that research into deliberate forms of geoengineering isn’t being allowed.

Ricken has a long history as a campaigner and activist w...

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined by Emmanouil Kakaras, engineer, academic, and Senior Advisor at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries EMEA, for a grounded, technical conversation about the intersection of emissions and engineering: gas turbines pushing the limits of thermodynamics, the trade-offs between hydrogen, ammonia, and synthetic fuels, and why carbon capture keeps coming back into the conversation.

Kakaras draws on decades in both academia and industry to explain how decisions actually get made inside large engineering companies, and why the energy transition isn’t about picking a single “winner,” but deploying a mix of solutions at sca...

This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Liebreich sits down with Varun Sivaram and Steve Smith to explore one of the most urgent, and overlooked, challenges of the AI revolution: how to power it without breaking the grid.

As AI demand explodes, hyperscale data centres are emerging as massive, inflexible loads, rivaling entire cities. But do they have to be a burden on the grid?

This conversation dives into a groundbreaking trial led by Emerald AI in partnership with National Grid and NVIDIA—demonstrating that data centres can dynamically adjust their power consumption in real ti...

What happens when millions of electric cars become part of the energy grid? And could the key to cheaper, cleaner power already be sitting in your driveway? And why are so many automakers pushing back against EV targets? 

This week on Cleaning Up, host Bryony Worthington speaks with Fiona Howarth, founder of Octopus Electric Vehicles, about the rapid transformation of the global car industry and the powerful role electric vehicles are beginning to play in the energy system. From her early fascination with clean energy to building one of the UK’s most innovative EV businesses within Oct...

Bryony Worthington and Michael Liebreich give their analysis of the impact of the conflict in Iran on global energy markets. How will it impact the Middle East, Europe, Asia, the US, and will it force countries back to coal, or accelerate the clean energy transition? 

This episode was recorded Thursday March 5. 

Leadership Circle: 

Cleaning Up is supported by the Leadership Circle, and its founding members: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP, Eurelectric, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, Schneider Electric, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more infor...

How can we build out clean energy and infrastructure faster? Is Europe engineering its way to resilience, or pricing itself out of competitiveness? And can we redesign the entire system fast enough to keep up with AI, electrification and rising demand? 

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with Hilde Tonne, Chair of Arup and former CEO of Statnett, to explore the hard realities behind the energy transition. From offshore wind and nuclear to grid bottlenecks and data centre demand, Hilde brings a uniquely systems-level perspective shaped by decades leading infrastructure transformation across telecoms, energy a...

This week on Cleaning Up, host Bryony Worthington sits down with investor and energy strategist Laurent Segalen, co-host of the Redefining Energy podcast, for a sweeping conversation that spans carbon markets, uranium trading, battery innovation, and Laurent’s bold plan to connect Canada and Europe with a 5,000km subsea electricity cable.

Laurent shares the personal moments that shaped his obsession with energy security, from witnessing Cold War division in Germany to cleaning an oil spill off the beaches of Brittany, and how those experiences led him to the heart of Europe’s carbon trading system and into high...

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, CEO of EDP, one of the world’s leading clean energy companies.

From the front lines of the energy transition, Miguel explains why electricity demand in the United States is exploding, driven by AI, data centres, and re-industrialisation, and why this could make renewables one of the most attractive investments of the decade. He also shares how EDP transformed itself from an 80% coal-based utility into a company generating over 90% of its electricity from renewables.

But the transition hasn’t been entirely smooth...

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with carbon removal insider Robert Höglund, CEO of Marginal Carbon, co-founder of CDR.fyi and architect of MilkyWire’s Climate Transformation Fund, for a deep dive into what’s working and what’s not in carbon dioxide removal and corporate climate action.

Drawing on five years of hands-on experimentation funding everything from biochar to direct air capture and policy advocacy, Höglund challenges the dominant “speed and scale” narrative. Instead, he makes the case for a new phase: prove and learn. 

Together, Michael and Robert unpack why th...

What if the future of clean energy isn’t decided in Washington, Brussels, or Beijing, but in Lagos, Nairobi, and Addis Ababa? Are we underestimating how fast the Global South is leapfrogging fossil fuels? And what happens when clean energy becomes the cheapest, fastest path to development, not a climate sacrifice?

In this episode of Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined for a third time by Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and UN Special Representative for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of UN Energy. Together, they explore how Africa and the wider Global South are quietly reshaping the gl...

How do we model the climate system? How warm will 2026 be? And can geoengineering be anything more than a bandaid? 

This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington sits down with leading climate scientist Dr. Zeke Hausfather on the day the 2025 global temperature data is released. Despite a La Niña year, the planet has just experienced one of its hottest years on record — pushing us ever closer to the 1.5°C threshold.

Zeke explains why recent warming has accelerated, how declining air pollution may be unmasking hidden heating, and what disappearing cloud cover could mean for clima...

Why does Africa, home to 18% of the world’s population, receive just 1% of global energy investment? What’s stopping money from flowing to the continent when it has such good wind and solar potential? And what would it take to unlock an energy boom that benefits both Africa and Europe?

Spread across 54 countries and with a combined GDP the size of Italy, Africa's population is young and growing rapidly. It is set to grow from 1.5 billion people today to 2.5 billion by 2050. And it could reach 4 billion by 2100, accounting for two out of every five people on the plan...

How do we build a clean energy system while bringing UK bills down? Can the UK’s landmark Climate Change Act stand up to a fractured climate politics? And does increasing global instability make home-grown energy more important than ever?

This week’s episode of Cleaning Up comes to you from inside of the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, where last week Bryony Worthington sat down with Katie White MP, the UK’s recently appointed Climate Minister, to discuss her new role, what she’s excited about, and current challenges that she’s facing.

Is the link between oil and geopolitics starting to diminish? Has climate consensus fractured just as clean energy hits escape velocity? And are batteries, not barrels, becoming the true source of power and security?

In the first episode of Season 17 of Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich and Bryony Worthington unpack a turbulent start to 2026. From shock geopolitical moves in the Americas and riots in the Middle East to the curious calm of a $60 oil price, they explore whether fossil fuels still move the world the way they once did. 

The conversation ranges from the collapse of c...

This episode was originally broadcast in June 2023, watch the episode on YouTube here. Cleaning Up will return with new episodes January 7th, 2026. 

Tzeporah Berman has been leading environmental campaigns in her native Canada and beyond for over thirty years. Today, she is Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, and International Program Director at Stand.earth, the environmental organisation that she co-founded. 

Tzeporah was formerly co-director of Greenpeace’s Global Climate and Energy Program, and her success campaigning against fossil development has seen her dubbed “Canada’s Queen of Green”. Tzeporah and Michael take in everything...

This episode was originally broadcast in June 2024.

As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, one of the biggest challenges is decarbonizing industrial processes that require consistent, reliable sources of energy to produce high-temperatures. Typically these processes run on fossil gas, but now thermal batteries offer a solution by using electricity to store renewable energy in the form of heat. 

Anand Gopal, Executive Director of Policy Research at Californian think tank Energy Innovation, joins Baroness Bryony Worthington to discuss his team's research on using thermal batteries to provide heat for manufacturing. Or as he calls t...

What will be the long-term impact of the US’s great leap backward on clean energy? How will the emergency of China as an electrotech giant reshape geopolitics? And what will be the defining trends and technologies of 2026?

In this end-of-year episode of Cleaning Up, Baroness Bryony Worthington is joined by Lord Adair Turner, Chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, for a wide-ranging, candid, and occasionally fiery conversation about where the energy transition truly stands.

Looking back on a decade since the Paris Agreement and ahead to the road beyond 2025, Turner delivers a clear-eyed diagnosis: em...

What happens when clean energy starts to outgrow fossil fuels at scale? Is it right to call China an electrostate? And how long will we be reliant on hydrocarbons?

This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Liebreich sits down with Lord Browne of Madingley — former CEO of BP and one of the earliest voices inside Big Oil to publicly call for emissions reductions from fossil fuels.  

Recorded in front of a live audience in London, the discussion explores how geopolitics, energy security, AI, and rising global anxiety are reshaping the path to decarbonisation. Lord Browne ref...

What happens when a nation’s energy security rests on volatile global gas markets? Why does the UK pay market prices for some of the world’s cheapest-to-produce gas? And is now the moment to rethink decades of “leave it to the market” dogma?

This week on Cleaning Up, Baroness Bryony Worthington sits down with Seb Kennedy, energy journalist and founder of Energy Flux, to unpack the turbulent geopolitics of natural gas, the coming LNG glut, and why the UK–Norway relationship sits at the heart of Britain’s energy affordability crisis.

Drawing on their recent joint...

What does it take to build Europe’s largest and most sustainable data-centre campus, from an empty plot of land to a 1.2-gigawatt giant of AI? How do you future-proof a facility when chip technology is evolving at breakneck speed? And what happens when the site of former coal-fired power plant becomes a global hub for AI?

In this special, on-location episode of Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich visits Sines, Portugal, where Start Campus is transforming the site of a decommissioned coal plant into a next-generation data-centre campus that once finished will be Europe’s largest data centre. 

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What happens when the world’s most ambitious climate state runs head-on into a hostile federal government? Can California still lead the clean-energy transition while battling rising costs, wildfires and the Trump government’s sweeping tariffs? And what does a “pragmatic reset” on climate policy look like when the stakes have never been higher?

This week on Cleaning Up Bryony Worthington sits down with Liane Randolph, former Chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and longtime public servant, shaping California’s climate, energy, and air-quality strategy. Across roles spanning the Public Utilities Commission and state natural resources...

What does it take to future-proof Europe’s electricity grid? How do you finance €65 billion in infrastructure without driving up consumer electricity costs? And can the permitting process be sped up to become fast enough for the energy transition?

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with Tim Meyerjürgens, CEO of TenneT Germany, the country’s largest transmission system operator, to explore the physics and finance behind decarbonising Europe’s power networks.

From billion-euro transmission lines to the domestic and international politics of connecting the North Sea’s vast offshore wind potential with German...

Is green hydrogen a ‘miracle fuel’ or an expensive illusion? Can we decarbonize without it? And what happens when hydrogen hype meets hard economics?

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich debates Erik Rakhou, author of Touching Hydrogen Future, in a no-holds-barred discussion moderated by Andrew Critchlow of S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Together, they contest one of the most contentious topics in energy today: hydrogen. Liebreich argues that hydrogen is plagued by physics-driven cost barriers and limited real-world applications, while Rakhou defends its potential as a critical tool for industrial decarbonization, energy resilience, and long...

What if the energy transition isn’t about sacrifice and belt-tightening, but abundance? Are electrified technologies ready to replace the polluting fossil fuel system we’re so reliant on? And what will it mean for western nations if they can’t keep up with China? 

In this special bonus episode of Cleaning Up, recorded live in Berlin, Michael Liebreich sits down with Kingsmill Bond, strategist at Ember, to unpack The Electrotech Revolution, a powerful new framing of the global shift from a fossil-fuel economy to an electrified, efficient, and inevitable clean energy system.

Together, Kingsmill and Mic...

This week on Cleaning Up, we welcome back Rachel Kyte, the UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change, for a deep dive into the shifting landscape of global climate diplomacy ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil.

Rachel brings decades of experience — from leading Sustainable Energy for All under Ban Ki-Moon to senior roles at the World Bank and IFC — to unpack how countries, investors, and institutions are navigating the new era of implementation.

Together, Michael and Rachel explore:

Global shipping contributes about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to the total emissions of Japan or Germany. The sector, including its contribution to climate change, is governed by the International Maritime Organisation or the IMO, which is a UN agency based in London in the United Kingdom.

Last week, the International Maritime Organisation gathered to vote on a proposal to reduce emissions from ships that had been agreed to in principle earlier this year. And ahead of the gathering, most people intimately involved in the process thought the proposal would pass. But that wasn’t the ca...

This summer, Michael Liebreich wrote two essays under the title of the Pragmatic Climate Reset. The first challenged the idea that the clean energy transition has failed. And the second challenged the clean energy and climate community to a reset, exploring eight areas which he thinks the transition has gone astray.

In this special episode, Bryony Worthington sits down with Michael Liebreich, to unpack Part 2 of “The Pragmatic Climate Reset.”

Michael lays out a bold vision for cutting through the noise — replacing ideology with realism, and paralysis with progress. From net zero targets and critical minera...

What does it take to rewire a nation’s energy system? Can we make the grid cleaner, smarter, and more resilient — without driving up bills? And how will the explosion of AI data centres reshape the future of electricity demand?

This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Liebreich sits down with John Pettigrew, outgoing CEO of National Grid, for a candid conversation marking the end of his 35-year career. Together they explore the UK’s £60 billion plan to deliver Clean Power by 2030, the race to build transmission for offshore wind, the growing strain from AI-driven electricity demand, and les...

What does it take for India to deliver electricity to hundreds of millions while simultaneously building a fast-growing clean energy system? Can it overcome its fossil dependence to secure its energy futures with renewables? And how will India’s development choices shape the global climate fight in the decades ahead?

India, like China, is home to over a billion people, and is highly reliant on imported fossil fuels and domestic coal. But unlike China, it still has a very rural population and has not yet experienced the rapid rise in per capita energy consumption that accompanied China’s re...