Zero: The Climate Race

Weather patterns have always had an impact on people and civilizations. Historians argue that El Niño may have contributed to the French Revolution, and climate variability could have led to weakening the Ottoman Empire. But as anthropogenic emissions make the planet hotter, faster, Berghof Foundation Executive Director Andrew Gilmour says the risk of conflict is growing. In the 30 years he spent working with the United Nations, Gilmour repeatedly saw how competition over resources such as land and water led to conflict, but he also sees opportunities for aligning peace-building with climate solutions. “The common solutions could be, for example, a solar powered irrigation scheme,” Gilmour tells Akshat Rathi. “It could be joint management of a wildlife reserve, it could be a desalination project.” 

Explore further:

• Past episode with Harvard Medical School emergency physician Renee Salas about public policy approaches to mitigating the health impacts of heat waves
• Past episode about the dramatization of the fight to represent developing nations’ interests at COP 3 in a new play called “Kyoto”  
• Past episode about the life of climate scientist and activist Saleemul Huq

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Jessica Beck, and Monique Mulima. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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After years of research and development and billions in investment, autonomous flying taxis are finally poised to take off. Companies working on these pilotless vehicles have been quietly working on prototypes. In this bonus from The Big Take, Bloomberg reporter Colum Murphy takes a test flight in one of the first models operating in China, and his colleague Angus Whitley explains why it’s a make or break moment for the industry.

Plus: Hear a past episode episode of Zero about flying cars with Venkat Viswanathan, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has been working to create a battery that can power an aircraft on a trip over 200 miles.

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Achieving net-zero carbon emissions is a massive challenge for every industry, but some have it harder than others.  This week, Bloomberg Green senior reporter Akshat Rathi spoke with two Australian startups that are tackling carbon emissions in sectors whose carbon footprints are particularly intractable. Inspired by shark skin, MicroTau is creating a plastic film that makes airplanes more aerodynamic, reducing their fuel consumption.  Novalith, meanwhile, is redesigning lithium battery  manufacturing to make it cleaner. Both have received funding from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation in Australia. Rathi sat down with MicroTau founder Henry Bilinsky and Novalith Chief Executive Officer Steven Vassiloudis  to understand the challenges their startups face and where they find optimism. 

Explore further:

• Past episode with  Australia Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) chief executive officer, Ian Learmonth 
• Past episode about carbon-removal startups with Nan Ransohoff, head of climate at Stripe
• Past episode with Bill Gates about investing in nuclear power and other green energy plants

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Mythili Rao, Oscar Boyd, Tiffany Tsoi, Sommer Saadi and Magnus Henriksson. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Will Mathis. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Before he founded the geothermal startup Fervo in 2017, Tim Latimer was a drilling engineer for the oil and gas industry — a job he loved. “Honestly, if it wasn't for climate change, I probably wouldn’t have ever changed my career,” he says this week on Zero. Now Latimer is applying his drilling know-how to Fervo’s wells, supercharging their energy production in the process. The company opened its first power plant in Nevada late in 2023, and is now in the process of opening another plant in Utah. Latimer and Akshat Rathi chat about opportunities in geothermal, the infernal permitting process, and why Fervo has its sights on expanding into Kenya, Indonesia, Turkey and the Philippines.

Explore further:

• Past episode with the National Grid’s Sanjeet Sanghera about the need to update the grid on the path to net zero
• Past episode with Bill Gates about investing in nuclear power and other green energy plants
• Past episode with BNEF’s Claire Curry about how clean energy technology startups can succeed in a difficult investment climate 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Monique Mulima. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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The “cold chain” that delivers our food is inconspicuous but vast. The US alone boasts around 5.5 billion cubic feet of refrigerated space; that’s 150 Empire State Buildings’ worth of freezers. Now, the developing world is catching up. On Zero, Nicola Twilley, author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, discusses how refrigeration became so ubiquitous and what our reliance on it means for our palates and the planet. 

Explore further:

• Past episode with Stacey Abrams on how kitchen-table decisions can cut emissions
• Past episode with journalist George Monbiot on how the world’s food system needs a radical rethink 
• Past episode with two vertical farming companies taking agriculture indoors

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Aaron Rutkoff and Monique Mulima. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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This week on Zero, reporter Akshat Rathi sits down with Renee Salas, an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and a leading expert on the health impacts of global warming. The intersection of health and climate change is a growing area of research, and an increasingly urgent one: Heat deaths among seniors, for example, are projected to increase 370% by mid-century.  But even the young and relatively healthy are at risk. “The take-home I want everyone to go away with is that we all are at risk for this,” Salas says, “especially as we get into more and more extreme conditions.”

Explore further:

• Past episode with climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe about how higher temperatures results in “global weirding”
• Past episode with John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: A True Story from A Hotter World
• Past episode with Eleni Myrivili, Global Chief Heat Officer at UN-Habitat about designing cities to face extreme heat

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Matthew Griffin, and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Upgrading the grid for a net-zero world isn’t just a matter of building new infrastructure. Yes, miles of additional cables will be needed, as will more transformers, more substations and more engineers and technicians. But plenty of existing technology will also need to be updated. On the third episode of Zero’s grid series, TS Conductor founder Jason Huang discusses the material science breakthroughs that have enabled his company to create cables that have twice the conductivity of existing cables — and just as much strength. 

Explore further:

• Past episode with grid expert Sanjeet Sanghera about the global challenge of updating the grid
• Past episode with Scottish Power CEO Keith Anderson about the kinds of government interventions that can speed the march to electrification 
• Past episode with Bill Gates about the tech startup investment landscape

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Matthew Griffin, and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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As the world moves away from fossil fuels, the electricity grid will need to be able to handle a greater and greater load. In the second installment of Zero’s grid series, Akshat Rathi sits down with Scottish Power CEO Keith Anderson to talk about what that looks like in the UK. They discussed the promise of GB Energy, the challenges of hiring qualified engineers, and what the new Labour government can do to speed up the UK’s energy transition. 

Explore further:

• Past Grid Series episode with National Grid’s Sanjeet Sanghera about the challenges of updating the grid around the world
• Past episode about the role of the UK’s Climate Change Committee in shaping net zero policy
• Past episode with Vesta’s CEO Henrik Andersen about the wind industry’s hurdles

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Matthew Griffin, and Anna Mazarakis. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Even before we turn on a light switch or plug an appliance into an electric outlet, the atoms that power our daily life have traveled a long journey across the grid to reach our homes. And to meet the demands of a net zero future, that grid will need an upgrade. BloombergNEF analysis estimates that the world will need to nearly double its grid network to 111 million kilometers– a distance almost three quarters the way to the sun– by 2050. How will we get there?  Former BNEF grid expert Sanjeet Sanghera, who is now working on strategic futures at the National Grid, tells Akshat Rathi about the challenges and opportunities presented by the enormous transformation of the world’s biggest machine.

Explore further:

• Past episode with Stacey Abrams on how Americans can switch to electric heating and appliances in their homes
• Past episode with Jenny Chase of BNEF on how the world can triple renewables by 2030.
• Past episode with MIT’s Priya Donti on how AI’s climate change applications may include grid optimization
• Past episode with Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen on the recovery and growth of the wind industry 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Siobhan Wagner and Matthew Griffin. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Lucie Pinson is a climate activist focused on the banks that fund fossil fuel projects. But she doesn’t march, chant, picket corporate headquarters, or glue herself to the road. Instead, she and her team at the Paris-based nonprofit Reclaim Finance get to know Corporate Social Responsibility officers, trawl through company statements and portfolios, and join shareholder calls. Reclaim Finance’s strategy is all about finding ways to pressure big financial institutions from the inside– and it works. She tells Akshat Rathi about some of the successes her organization has had, and why even bank employees who don’t care about green issues might find reasons to work with her.

Explore further:

• Past episode with Richard Curtis of Make My Money Matter about the push to make retirement plans greener
• Past episode on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and what happens when a “climate bank” goes under 
• Past episode with Brynn O’Brien of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a shareholder activist organization focused on publicly traded companies with net zero targets 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Matthew Griffin, Natasha White, Alastair Marsh, and Mohsis Andam. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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At the Bloomberg Green Festival, Akshat Rathi sits down with voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams and Ari Matusiak, who leads the nonprofit Rewiring America. Together, Abrams and Matuisiak are trying help middle and low-income families access the tax breaks that can help them affordably electrify their homes. They discussed why household emissions are such a big deal, how to connect existential questions about the future of the planet to kitchen-table decisions, and whether Joe Biden is still the right Democratic candidate for 2024. 

Explore further:

• Past episode with Bill Gates about what another Donald Trump presidency could mean for green investments
• Past episode with Bill Gates about the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act
• Past episode with political scientist Leah Stokes on whether the US could become a global climate policy leader

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Matthew Griffin. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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In fractured times, what does it take to reach agreement? That’s the question writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson set out to explore in a new play about the drama of climate negotiations. Kyoto, now running at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, tells the story of the 1997 Kyoto Summit as seen through the eyes of Don Pearlman, a notorious fossil fuel lobbyist and chain-smoking lawyer dubbed “the high priest of the Carbon Club” by der Speigel. Actor Stephen Kunken, who plays Pearlman, tells Akshat Rathi why he was drawn to the character, and what Kyoto can teach us about how agreement is achieved.   

Explore further:

• Past episode with Al Gore about breaking the petrostates stranglehold on climate progress
• Past episode about climate change storytelling with Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Ministry for the Future
• Past episode with Extrapolations writer and executive producer Dorothy Fortenberry about the growing demand for climate stories

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Alicia Clanton, Anna Mazarakis, and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Tackling climate change now requires not just reducing planet-warming emissions to zero, but also finding a way to draw down existing carbon dioxide from the air. Over the past few years, tech companies have taken the lead to seed hundreds of startups that want to sell carbon removal credits and help companies meet climate goals. But the failure of a major startup, Running Tide, has raised questions about the long-term viability of the market. This week on Zero, we hear from Nan Ransohoff, head of climate at Stripe, and pioneer of the carbon-removal market.

Explore further:

• Past episode with Jennifer Wilcox of the US Department of Energy’s two gigantic carbon removal hub projects 
• Past episode with Mark Trexler of The Climatographers about what’s wrong with carbon offsets and how to fix them
• Past episode with Notre Dame professor Emily Grubert about the state of carbon capture

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Alicia Clanton, Anna Mazarakis and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Earlier this month, tech billionaire Bill Gates broke ground on a new nuclear plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming– a historic coal town. Gates tells Zero why he hopes the plant, which uses sodium for cooling, rather than water, will be the first of many in the country– no matter who wins this year’s election. “The idea of the US being more energy secure and US innovation allowing us to export, those things are still somewhat bipartisan in nature,” he says. Plus, he weighs in on AI as both a major generator of emissions and as a potential source of climate solutions.

Explore further:

• Past episode with BNEF’s Claire Curry on how energy startups can dodge the valley of death
• Past episode with Brookfield Asset Management CCEO Connor Teskey on making renewables a profitable bet
• Past episode with Bill Gates on the significance of the Inflation Reduction Act

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Kate Evans, and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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We are living through the hottest year on record. That’s not news, but growing climate impacts make bigger and bigger news. At 1.3C of warming beyond pre-industrial levels, people are reckoning with a planetary system that’s out of whack. It’s not like the scientists didn’t see worsening impacts coming, but many of them have been surprised by the ferocity with which some have played out. On this week’s episode of Zero, Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi speaks with his colleague Eric Roston, and Texas Tech University professor Katharine Hayhoe explains why we’re all experiencing “global weirding.”

Explore further:

• Past episode about the role fire will play in shaping the 21st century.
• Past episode with UN’s global chief heat officer about redesigning cities.
• Past episode about finding trillions of dollars needed for climate adaptation.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Anna Mazarakis and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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The 2016 fire that encircled the oil-producing town of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, forced more than 80,000 people to evacuate and left billions of dollars in damage in its wake. It was a disaster of record-breaking proportions, but also an inevitable byproduct of mankind’s obsession with burning fossil fuels. In this episode, John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: A True Story from A Hotter World, explains how Canada’s fossil fuel industry came into being, why its existence made the Fort McMurray disaster more likely, and what our collective obsession with fire means for the future of our species.

Explore further:

• Past episode about the COP28 text and the significance of agreeing to transition off fossil fuels
• Past episode with Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling about whether the world has reached peak crude oil demand
• Past episode about how wildfire smoke and air pollution affect your health

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Anna Mazarakis and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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All of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors were shut down after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. As the country's energy needs soar, debate is heating up over whether to bring the world’s largest nuclear plant back online. In this bonus from The Big Take Asia, host K. Oanh Ha speaks to reporter Shoko Oda about her visit to the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant and the challenges to rebooting it.

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Over the past 18 months, Tesla has missed its sales goals, seen its share price fall and waded through a series of dramatic decisions from Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who cut car prices, fired much of the Supercharger team and announced nebulous plans to release a robotaxi. All of that looks like a pivot away from the original mission of making mass-market electric cars, but does Tesla going off course really matter to the EV transition? On this week’s Zero, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Liam Denning digs into Tesla’s strategy and what its evolution means for global adoption of electric cars. 

Explore further:

• Past episode with Carnegie Mellon University professor Venkat Viswanathan on the futuristic promises of flying cars and emission-free aviation
• Past episode with Bloomberg NEF’s Colin McKerracher on why China has been successful in the EV transition where others haven’t been
• Past bonus episode with Bloomberg NEF’s Colin McKerracher on electrifying vans, trucks, and buses.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Brendan Newnam, Anna Mazarakis and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Depending on who you ask, AI is either going to save the world or end it. The technology’s capacity for data-crunching and problem-saving can help predict weather events, making it easier to optimize power grids, prepare for natural disasters, and maximize crop output. But artificial intelligence is also energy intensive – and easy to apply to ethically questionable ends. For all of these reasons, Priya Donti, professor of electrical engineering and AI at MIT, decided to found Climate Change AI, a group dedicated to applying AI to tackle climate problems.  

Donti tells Akshat Rathi about some of the projects the group is funding around the world, and what the democratization of AI would look like in practice.  

Explore further:

• Past episode about Microsoft’s rising AI emissions, and President Brad Smith’s claim that the AI will do more good than harm
• Past episode with African Development Bank president Akinwumi Adesina about climate innovation projects across the African continent
• Past episode with climate scientist and  champion for developing countries Saleemul Huq

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Anna Mazarakis and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Microsoft’s recent push to capitalize on artificial intelligence has made it the world’s most valuable company. But according to new figures, that ambition is coming  at the expense of its climate goals. In 2020, the company pledged to be carbon-negative by the end of the decade. Instead, its emissions rose 30% between 2020 and 2023. Microsoft President Brad Smith says the company isn’t giving up on its green goals — and that the good AI can do for the world will outweigh its environmental impact. 

Akshat tells Zero producer Mythili Rao about his conversation with Smith, and how other tech giants will be making similar calculations.

Explore further:

• Past episode  with BNEF’s Jenny Chase on how to triple renewable energy by 2030
• Past episode with Notre Dame professor Emily Grubert about the possibility of carbon capture
• Past episode with Electra CEO Sandeep Nijhawan on making zero emissions steel

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Dina Bass, and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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After 14 years as a member of Parliament for the UK’s Conservative Party, Chris Skidmore quit the government in January — an act of protest over Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to allow new oil and gas licenses. Skidmore says the party has lost its way when it comes to climate issues, costing the UK lives, jobs and opportunities for economic growth. In this episode, Skidmore also discusses the Net Zero Review he published while in office, and talks through climate solutions emerging outside of Westminster. 

Explore further:

• Past episode with Chris Stark of the UK’s Climate Change Committee about whether the era of climate consensus is over 
• Past episode with Bryony Worthington, one of the authors of the UK’s Climate Change Act 
• Past episode with three US governors– Republican and Democrat– about how they  navigate partisan politics and the need for climate action. 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Five years ago, the Green Party celebrated its best-ever results in European elections, ushering in a new era of legislative progress But Covid-19, inflation, supply chain woes and Russia’s war in Ukraine stalled its ambitions. Now, in the face of lagging poll numbers, Dutch Member of European Parliament Bas Eickhout is trying to convince voters that the party’s vision of an equal and ecological Europe is still relevant – and isn’t too costly. 

Explore further:

• Past episode with Daniel Fiorino on the challenge of democratic consensus-building when it comes to prioritizing climate policy
• Past episode exploring the government interventions that allowed Danish fossil fuel giant Orsted to become the world's largest developer of wind power
• Past episode with Europe's top industrialist Jim Hagemann Snabe on helping industrial behemoths reach climate goals

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Alicia Clanton and John Ainger. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Africa currently loses between $7 billion and $15 billion a year because of climate change. If that trend continues, the sum could reach $50 billion by 2030. But African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina sees a way forward. He describes the financial instruments the bank is using to encourage investors to fund green development projects across the continent. Adesina talks about making climate investments more attractive globally, and unpacks the projects the bank is already funding – from solar panels in the Sahel to a hydroelectric dam in Mozambique. 

Explore further:

• Past episode with Avinash Persaud on simplifying the complexities of climate finance
• Past episode exploring how Brookfield Asset Management is making renewables profitable all around the world
• Past episode discussing how to get big money to invest in projects that help people adapt to a world that's already hotter than ever before

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Mythili Rao, Magnus Henriksen, and Oscar Boyd. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Denmark’s Vestas has been making wind turbines exclusively since 1989 — well before the notion of an energy transition was commonplace. But that foresight hasn’t made for smooth sailing: When Henrik Andersen joined Vestas in 2013 as a board member, the company was deep in debt and shareholders were worried. A decade later, Andersen is CEO and has pulled Vestas out of trouble yet again, just as wind power is starting to play a critical role in the global energy transition. Andersen describes some of the government policies that have hindered or helped the growth of this sector, and describes the innovations making wind harvesting even more efficient. 

Explore further:

• Listen to last week’s episode on the wind industry’s struggle and how one big player remains bullish.
• Read about how the wind industry is breaking free of European bureaucracy.
• Listen to an earlier episode on how to make the renewable energy industry profitable in developed and developing countries.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Mythili Rao, Sommer Saadi and Magnus Henriksson. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Will Mathis. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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If you've paid much attention to the wind industry lately, the news isn’t great. Building new projects is getting more expensive and getting government permission to do it is taking longer than ever. Even major players like Orsted, Vestas and Siemens are struggling. 

But it's not all negative — there are still big players winning in wind. One of them is Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. This week, Bloomberg Green senior reporter Akshat Rathi speaks with CIP founder and managing partner Jakob Baruël Poulsen to understand how the industry is dealing with its many challenges, why CIP is still profitable and what will be needed for wind deployment to keep pace with climate goals. 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Tiffany Tsoi, Sommer Saadi and Magnus Henriksson. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Will Mathis. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Clean energy technologies saw a record influx of investment last year: $1.7 trillion in total. But that still falls short of what’s needed to meet climate goals. With venture capital investment now falling, it’s increasingly difficult for startups to gain traction. 

Claire Curry, global head of technology, industry & innovation at BloombergNEF, follows the journeys of many young companies in the clean-tech space. On this week’s Zero, Curry tells Akshat Rathi about the kinds of innovative pathways that have proven successful. LanzaTech, for example, a nine-year-old carbon recycling technology company, works with Chinese steel companies looking for low-emissions solutions. H2 Green Steel also scaled quickly, in part through agreements reached with Mercedes Benz, IKEA and other big brands looking to access low-carbon steel. Curry explains how these approaches could be replicated by other startups.

• Listen to Zero’s episode about green-iron startup Electra.
• Listen to Switched On’s episodes on clean-energy investments and plastic recycling.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Mythili Rao, Magnus Henriksson, and Sommer Saadi. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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When the UK’s Climate Change Committee was formed in 2008, it both signaled the country’s seriousness about its environmental goals and gave other nations a template for setting their own climate policy. More recently, though, the UK appears to be backpedaling: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has approved new oil and gas licenses and pushed back a ban on fossil fuel cars. To understand how we got to this contentious moment, and how the UK can reclaim leadership, Zero host Akshat Rathi sat down with the CCC’s chief executive, Chris Stark. 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Mythili Rao, Sommer Saadi and Magnus Henriksson. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Jessica Nix. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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The plastic problem is everywhere: in our oceans, communities, even inside our bodies. Plastic is abundant and very cheap, and the amount we produce is expected to triple by 2060 from 430 million tons a year to 1.2 billion tons, according to the OECD. The large amount of plastic could produce four billion tons of greenhouse gases, so a fix is becoming increasingly necessary. This week, Bloomberg Green senior reporter Akshat Rathi sat down with Inger Andersen, head of the UN’s Environment Program, to talk about an upcoming treaty that tackles increasing levels of plastic. You can read the transcript of this conversation here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Leslie Kaufman and Tiffany Tsoi. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you inside what’s shaping the world's economies with the smartest and most informed business reporters around the world. The context you need on the stories that can move markets. Every afternoon.

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When Brookfield Asset Management launched a $15 billion fund to expand clean energy in 2021, it was the largest private fund of its kind in the world. Now Brookfield is starting a second fund with billions from Alterra, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates. Zero host Akshat Rathi sat down with Brookfield Renewable Partners CEO Connor Teskey to talk about making climate finance work. You can read the transcript of the conversation here. 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Tiffany Tsoi, Sommer Saadi and Magnus Henriksson. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Jessica Nix. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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It is now cheaper to save the world than destroy it. But is capitalism up to the challenge of preventing the climate crisis? 

In his new book Climate Capitalism, Zero host Akshat Rathi introduces a dozen people who are already steering capitalism to solve the climate crisis: from the engineer who shaped China's electric car policies and the politician who helped make net-zero a UK law to the CEO who fought off a takeover attempt so he could stick with a sustainability strategy. Akshat argues that not only is capitalism capable of taking on the climate crisis, but harnessing it is the only way to solve the climate crisis in the time we have available. 

And yet while some improvements have been made over the past few years, the world is off track to meet its 2050 climate targets. So today on Zero, Bloomberg’s Greener Living editor Kira Bindrim sits down with Akshat to discuss his new book, and asks him: If climate capitalism is so doable, why does it seem so difficult? 

Read more: 

• Order Akshat’s new book, Climate Capitalism
• Listen to the interview with Fatih Birol that Akshat mentions 
• Hear Akshat and Kira talk about the reality of carbon footprints
• Read a transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Anna Mazarakis, Gilda di Carli and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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John Kerry is the Forrest Gump of climate. The guy you’ll find at every important turn in history doing something impactful. For the last three years, he has been the US special presidential envoy for climate and tasked with restoring the US’s global credibility on climate action. In a conversation with Akshat Rathi, Kerry reflects on those efforts, his frustrations and what still keeps him going at 80.

Read Bloomberg Green's feature looking at Kerry's work in the envoy role.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Tiffany Tsoi, Sommer Saadi and Magnus Henriksson. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Jen Dlouhy. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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The Deal, hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, features intimate conversations with business titans, sports champions and game-changing entrepreneurs who reveal their investment philosophies, pivotal career moves and the ones that got away. From Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals, The Deal is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, Bloomberg Carplay, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch The Deal on Bloomberg Television, and Bloomberg Originals on YouTube.

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Tom Steyer is a hedge-fund billionaire who made his money investing in distressed assets, including fossil fuel projects. He’s also an avowed climate activist and a major donor to US politicians seeking to tackle climate change. After a short-lived run for president, Steyer in 2021 set up Galvanize Climate Solutions, a firm that invests in companies and technologies promising emissions reductions this decade. It recently raised $1 billion. 

Zero host Akshat Rathi spoke with Steyer at COP28 in December, to ask why he got out of fossil fuels, the consequences of bad carbon accounting, and what the return of Donald Trump would mean for global climate ambitions. 

Read more: 

• Tom Steyer Launches New Climate Tech Investment Fund With $1 Billion - Bloomberg
• Greening US Apartments Is New Project of Billionaire Tom Steyer - Bloomberg  

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Tiffany Tsoi. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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This January, Davos will once again host the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting and bring together the world's business and political elite. In recent years, climate change has climbed ever further up the agenda at this high-altitude event. How did it happen? Akshat Rathi talks to Gail Whiteman, one person responsible for it. Gail is the founder of the Arctic Basecamp, and since 2017 has camped out for the week of Davos to deliver the urgent message about climate risks and the immense dangers it poses to the world economy.

Read more about the state of snow in Davos and why the business elite are starting to care.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Are fossil fuel companies needed in a clean energy future? Is the UK really backsliding on climate progress? And how can you find out more about solar? In the last episode of Zero for 2024, host Akshat Rathi and producers Oscar Boyd and Christine Driscoll talk about some of their favorite statistics that show people taking action on the climate crisis.

Read more: 

• World Energy Employment 2023 – Analysis - IEA 
• Annual North Sea oil and gas licences - Energy Live News
• The Godfather of Solar Predicts Its Future - Bloomberg
• How to Quit Your Job for the Climate
• How to Crisis-Proof Climate Action

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green.

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Today we're sharing an episode from another climate podcast that you might like, Drilled. Zero’s host Akshat Rathi was a guest on Drilled earlier this year talking about his book, Climate Capitalism, and we’re dropping that episode in the feed today. If you like what you hear you can follow Drilled wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Today we’re sharing an episode from another climate podcast that you might like. It’s The Anti-Dread Climate Podcast from KCRW. If you like what you hear, check them out wherever you get podcasts. 

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COP28 comes to a close. 200 countries came together, 100,000 people flew in, and what did they produce? A piece of text. But sometimes that piece of text can have real world consequences. In this week’s episode Akshat speaks with producer Oscar Boyd about what is in the final COP28 text and the significance of agreeing to transition off of fossil fuels. 

Read More: 

• COP28 Nations Reach First-Ever Deal to Move Away From Fossil Fuels
• Climate Fight Takes Aim at Food in First Ever Net-Zero Plan
• Sign up to the Green newsletter

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Four billion people live in countries where climate change-related disasters are becoming more severe and frequent. Spending money to adapt, known as “climate adaptation finance” is a fraught topic. Who will pay for those adaptations and how, as well as a global goal on adaptation are all being discussed at COP28. To find out more, Akshat speaks with Patrick Verkooijen, head of the Global Center on Adaptation about the history of climate adaptation finance, what negotiations are taking place, and why the money promised still hasn’t arrived.

Read More:

• A quick Q&A with Patrick Verkooijen at COP28
• A UN report shows that the climate adaptation gap is growing 
• Sign up to the Green newsletter
• Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Former US Vice President Al Gore has been going to COP summits since the beginning. But he’s much more than a COP-goer. Many of today’s climate activists say that Gore’s climate documentary An Inconvenient Truth was the reason they became activists. The movie won an Academy Award in 2007 and also bagged him that year’s Nobel Peace Prize alongside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Gore has become the de facto spokesman for climate change. In recent years and especially before COP28, he’s become much more vocal in calling out the villains. He has castigated the role of petrostates and oil companies who shape the COP agenda, saying they’ve “taken the disguise off” and are not good faith partners.

Bloomberg Green senior reporter Akshat Rathi spoke with Al Gore at the Bloomberg Green Summit at COP28 in Dubai to ask him how to break the stranglehold petrostates have over COP, why tackling climate change solves many other major problems, and why big emitters can no longer hide. 

Read more: 

• Al Gore Wants to Weaken Petrostates’ Power Over Global Climate Decisions — Bloomberg
• Akshat Rathi's book of essays about climate activists inspired by Al Gore
• Sign up to the Green newsletter
• Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Tripling renewables is one of the goals the COP28 discussions are circling around. It sounds good, but what will meeting it actually entail? Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF joins Akshat to break down where more investments are needed and why decarbonizing energy is the easy part. 

• Listen to our previous episode with Jenny Chase on solar's explosive growth
• Sign up to the Green newsletter
• Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Today is the start of COP28. And for the next two weeks, Zero will be in the United Arab Emirates, along with more than 70,000 people who will come for the year’s biggest climate conference. These are set to be difficult negotiations. Getting every single country to agree to one common text is a gargantuan task. So for this first episode from COP, we wanted to hear from someone who’s been on the inside; someone who has helped forge global climate agreements from the ashes of broken diplomacy. 

Christiana Figueres is the cohost of the podcast Outrage & Optimism, and was formerly the head of the UNFCCC, the body tasked with running COP meetings. She took over the role at a low point in global climate negotiations in 2010 and her efforts culminated in the signing of the Paris agreement in 2015.

Now, the world is way off track to meet that goal. So we wanted to hear from Christiana about what can be expected from COP28, the role the fossil fuel industry plays in negotiations, and whether the climate summit is still fit for purpose.

More:

• Listen to Christiana's podcast, Outrage and Optimism
• Sign up to the Green newsletter
• Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kate Mackenzie and Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Trillions of dollars are needed to shift the world to a low-carbon future, but where will all that money come from? While momentum is growing in rich countries, developing countries are still struggling for finance. Without significant increases in the amount of money spent, the world is unlikely to meet its climate goals, and yet international negotiations are at a deadlock. 

Avinash Persaud has a plan: the Bridgetown Agenda. He’s the special envoy on investment and financial services for Barbados and is working with his country’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, to transform the global financial system. Together they are putting pressure on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to turbocharge the roll-out of clean technologies in developing countries.

This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with Avinash to discuss his plan, and why he thinks now is the time these aging financial institutions can finally be reformed.

Read more: 

• A deep dive on the Bridgetown Agenda
• Mia Mottley’s full speech at COP27
• Making polluters pay for loss and damage
• Cheaper currency risk hedging could unlock trillions
• Read a transcript of this episode
• Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kate Mackenzie and Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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The UN Climate Conference COP28 starts next week. Before Akshat heads to the conference he’s joined by Aaron Rutkoff, the editor of Bloomberg Green, to talk about what COP’s current controversial president Sultan Al Jaber has accomplished so far and what he must achieve.  They also decode COP jargon like “orderly decline,” discuss the stakes for the UAE’s biggest diplomatic exercise and expectations for the final communiqué.

Listen to related episodes: 

• Carbon removal's magic number  
• Big promise, little success: The state of carbon capture 
• We need trillions to fix the climate. Finally there's a serious plan.  
• A kingdom built on oil now controls the world’s climate progress

Read articles mentioned in this episode: 

• UAE's Oil Boss Sultan Al Jaber Has a Plan to Fix COP28 
• John Kerry’s Promise of ‘Millions’ for Climate Damages Criticized by Activists 
• COP28: How to Tell If a Climate Deal Will Succeed or Fail
• Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Stacey Wong and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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By 2025, China’s battery production capacity will be three times as much as the rest of the world combined. Why was it able to take such a commanding lead? Listen to an extract from Akshat Rathi’s new book Climate Capitalism to find out. 

Read more:

• How China Left the World Far Behind in the Battery Race - Bloomberg
• Read Climate Capitalism 
• Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If reducing emissions from industry is the first step for carbon capture, then drawing down excess CO2 to reverse climate change is the next. This week Akshat speaks to Dr. Jennifer Wilcox, head of the US Department of Energy’s office that is funding two gigantic carbon removal hubs and many small demonstration projects. They talk about why carbon removal is so complicated, crucial, and hitting the magic number $100. This is the second in a two part series about carbon management.

Listen to the previous episode in this series:

• Big promise, little success: The state of carbon capture 

Read More:

• Bill Gates-Backed Startup Uses Old Wood to Remove Carbon From Air
• Climeworks Battles Big Oil For $1 Trillion Carbon Capture Market

Send us your questions about COP via [email protected] and we’ll try to answer them from the conference

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Brian Kahn, and Michelle Ma.  Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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You may not know Jim Hagemann Snabe by name, but he has been called Europe’s top industrialist. Snabe has held leadership positions at some of the world’s biggest companies like Maersk and Siemens. He is now a chairperson of Northvolt, Europe’s largest battery manufacturer with 4,000 employees, $55B worth of orders and the competitive edge of greener batteries. 

Akshat spoke with Jim Snabe at the Bloomberg Tech Summit in London about how industrial behemoths like Maersk and Siemens can meet climate goals, whether zero-emission shipping will ever be a reality, and whether Northvolt can ever outcompete the Chinese battery industry.

Send your questions about COP to [email protected] and we’ll try to answer them from the conference.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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At Bloomberg, we’re always talking about the biggest business stories, and no one is bigger than Elon Musk.

In this new chat weekly show, host David Papadopoulos and a panel of guests including Businessweek’s Max Chafkin, Tesla reporter Dana Hull, Big Tech editor Sarah Frier, and more, will break down the most important stories on Musk and his empire. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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The U.S. is spending billions on carbon capture as a climate solution, but is it realistic? The method has been around for 50 years and used primarily as a way to extract more oil. To find out how and if carbon capture can work as a climate solution, Akshat speaks with Emily Grubert, a professor at Notre Dame about what tech demonstrations have actually demonstrated and where this precious resource should be deployed.

This is the first in a two part series about carbon management. 

Read More 

• Occidental Quietly Ditched World's Biggest Carbon Capture Plant
• What Carbon Capture Failures Say About Its Future
• Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey

Listen More 

• A kingdom built on oil now controls the world’s climate progress
• Peak oil is here. Well, maybe.
• Vicki Hollub is selling net zero oil, do you buy it? 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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Saleemul Huq was a pre-eminent climate scientist and champion for developing countries. For many years, he was a lone warrior trying to bring the issues of adaptation and loss and damage to the UN negotiating table. His death last weekend caused an outpouring of emotion across the climate world. Ahead of COP28, Zero hears from some of Saleemul’s colleagues about his life, legacy and the hole he leaves behind in climate diplomacy.

Read more:

• Saleemul Huq's obituary 
• Saleemul Huq and Farhana Sultana's Guardian op-ed

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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This week, the International Energy Agency published its flagship report: The World Energy Outlook. It's hundreds of pages long and makes some bold claims. It says in the year 2030, there will be 10 times as many electric cars on the road as today, 80% of all new power generation will be solar or wind, and demand for fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – will have peaked.

The report is dominating climate news because what the IEA says makes a big difference to how governments tweak their energy policies. But how did an organization formed by a handful of countries in response to the 1973 oil crisis come to hold so much influence over our response to the climate crisis?

For the answer, this week we’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes: an interview with Fatih Birol, the head of the IEA. As we approach COP28, hosted by an oil power and led by the CEO of an oil company, it’s good to understand how international organizations can be successfully transformed in the face of climate change.

Read more: 

• Read the World Energy Outlook
• Global Oil Demand to Reach Its Peak This Decade, IEA Says— Bloomberg
• Want to know more about the IEA story? Order Akshat’s book, Climate Capitalism, here.
• Read a transcript of this episode here

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks this week to Eric Roston, Kira Bindrim and Will Mathis. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Cars are only half the electric vehicle story. There are also billions of two and three wheelers that need to be electrified, as well as bigger vehicles like vans, trucks and buses. In this bonus episode of Zero, we’re joined again by Colin McKerracher, BloombergNEF’s head of advanced transport, to look beyond electric cars and hear how electrification is going for other forms of road transport. Are batteries still the answer? 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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Peak oil is here, or is it? Depends on how you measure, but at least one person is sure crude isn’t coming back. This week Akshat speaks with Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling about why he thinks the world has reached peak crude oil demand, what comes next, and what it all has to do with the American soap opera Dallas. 

Read more 

• David’s original article: Peak Oil Has Finally Arrived. No, Really
• Not everyone agrees: The Harsh Truth: We're Using More Oil Than Ever
• Latest IEA forecasts: Global Oil Demand to Reach Its Peak This Decade, IEA Says
• Read or pre-order Akshat’s book Climate Capitalism

Listen

• Listen to the interview with IEA head Fatih Birol 
• Listen to the interview about EVs and oil demand with Colin McKraccher

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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It is now cheaper to save the world than destroy it. But is capitalism up to the challenge of preventing the climate crisis? 

In his new book Climate Capitalism, Zero host Akshat Rathi introduces a dozen people who are already steering capitalism to solve the climate crisis: from the engineer who shaped China's electric car policies and the politician who helped make net-zero a UK law to the CEO who fought off a takeover attempt so he could stick with a sustainability strategy. Akshat argues that not only is capitalism capable of taking on the climate crisis, but harnessing it is the only way to solve the climate crisis in the time we have available. 

And yet while some improvements have been made over the past few years, the world is off track to meet its 2050 climate targets. So today on Zero, Bloomberg’s Greener Living editor Kira Bindrim sits down with Akshat to discuss his new book, and asks him: If climate capitalism is so doable, why does it seem so difficult? 

Read more: 

• Order Akshat’s new book, Climate Capitalism
• Listen to the interview with Fatih Birol that Akshat mentions 
• Hear Akshat and Kira talk about the reality of carbon footprints
• Read a transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Anna Mazarakis, Gilda di Carli and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The rise of electric cars is staggering. In 2016, just 700,000 electric cars were sold worldwide, this year it’ll be over 14 million. However, we are still off-track to meet climate goals. Colin McKerracher, head of Advanced Transport at BloombergNEF, joins Zero to discuss how electric cars can get on track to meet net-zero targets, why China has succeeded where others haven’t, and when we’ll finally see more electric cars on the roads than those burning fossil fuels. 

Read more: 

• China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles
• Electric Vehicle Sales Top $1 Trillion in Wake-Up Call for Carmakers
• Electric Cars Are Winning Out Because of Consumers, Not Politicians 
• Pre-order Akshat’s new book, Climate Capitalism
• Read a transcript of this episode.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brynn O’Brien not only reads corporate climate plans, she crunches the numbers. When they don’t add up, she calls her friends who manage trillions of dollars in assets and they all ask to speak to the manager. Brynn is the Executive Director of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a shareholder activist organization that works to ensure that publicly traded companies with net zero goals are conducting their coal mining, electricity generation, and other activities in a way that ensures we hit the 1.5C Paris target. Recently, ACCR has replaced part of a board, brought forward coal plant closures, and filed a lawsuit that’s taking on greenwashing. 

Listen to other episodes: 

• Listen to an episode about divestment with the writer behind Love Actually 
• Listen to our episode about Australia’s “Climate Election.”

Read More: 

• AGL Plans Massive Expansion of Renewables as it Abandons Coal - Bloomberg
• Order Akshat’s book

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to David Stringer and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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Are two wheels better than four? Can cutting commuting cap carbon consumption? And where’s all the clean energy coming from? There are many climate numbers out there that we don’t get to talk about on Zero but that deserve attention. In this bonus episode, host Akshat Rathi and producers Christine Driscoll and Oscar Boyd talk about some of their favorite stats showing people taking action on the climate crisis.

More Links: 

• Electric Vehicle Output Report 2023 — BloombergNEF
• People who work from home all the time ‘cut emissions by 54%’ against those in office — The Guardian
• Electricity Market Report – Update 2023 — International Energy Agency
• You can pre-order Akshat's book here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Setting world records. Combing through warehouses of old electronics. Seeding the Chinese solar industry from afar. This is the life of Martin Green, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and the director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. Green’s work on solar panel design made the modern solar industry possible: 90% of solar panels made last year were based on his designs. He’s still going strong, too, regularly breaking new records in the pursuit of the perfect solar panel. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with the man many call “the godfather of solar” to hear firsthand how it happened, the next record he wants to break and whether solar panels are destined for space. 

Read more: 

• Making Solar Panels Is 'Horrible' Business. The US Still Wants It. (Bloomberg)
• Listen to Akshat’s conversation with Jenny Chase (Apple Podcasts)
• Solar Power Investment Set to Surpass Oil Production Spending This Year (Bloomberg)
• China Leaves Everyone Behind in Race for Renewable Energy (Bloomberg) 
• A transcript of this episode.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Jill Namatsi, David Stringer, Jenny Chase and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

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Cleantech is hard. Farming is harder. This week, Akshat Rathi visits entrepreneurs doing both. 

GroGrace in Singapore and Jungle in Paris are two vertical farming companies taking agriculture indoors, and trying to grow crops efficiently and profitably. While the technology to do this has been around since the 1990s, the business model has yet to be perfected, and several other vertical farms have closed down or laid off staff this year. As the world faces rising energy prices, water scarcity, and hotter temperatures, can the entrepreneurs in Paris and Singapore avoid the problems of their compatriots? 

Read more: 

• Akshat Rathi’s reporting on Singapore’s cleantech scene: Singapore’s Building Technology It Needs for a New Climate Era - Bloomberg 
• From AppHarvest to AeroFarms, Funding Is Drying Up for AI-Run Vertical Farms - Bloomberg
• Heat, War and Export Bans: Global Food Threats Are On the Rise  
• Another tale of the Dutch exporting their vertical farming know-how: Saudi City of Future Enlists Dutch Help to Grow Crops in Desert - Bloomberg 
• A transcript of this episode.

Listen to related episodes of Zero: 

• The world's food system needs a radical rethink - interview with George Monbiot

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Sheryl Tian Tong Lee, Natasha White and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Trillions of dollars are needed to fund the climate transition, with both the private sector and governments required to contribute. Australia’s answer is the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the world’s largest green bank. 

Established by the government in 2012 with an initial funding of A$10 billion ($6.5 billion), it was tasked with financing green projects and ambitious Australian climate startups at a time when large-scale investments in things like wind and solar were still seen as too risky for most private banks. Despite early efforts by opposition parties to abolish the bank, over the past 10 years it has made itself an essential part of Australia's energy transition and, in June, received an extra A$20.5 billion to help the country meet its target of 82% renewables by 2030.  

This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with CEFC chief executive officer, Ian Learmonth, to learn how this huge amount of money will be spent, why the CEFC had so many enemies early on, and what kind of innovative startups and clean-tech projects the organization is looking to fund.

For more: 

• Our episode with Jigar Shah, a $9 Billion Deal to Supercharge US Cleantech
• Our episode on Australia’s new climate politics
• A transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Gilda Di Carli and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The concept of a “carbon footprint” began as a distraction from Big Oil: get people to focus on their own actions rather than the impact of large emitters. Oil companies come up with PR campaigns all the time, but the carbon footprint took off because it taps into a question we keep coming back to, can our choices lower emissions? If so, how? And if they don’t, why bother? This week, Akshat is joined by Kira Bindrim, the editor of Bloomberg Greener Living, which focuses on consumer choices, to talk about what she’s noticed in a year of editing stories about products, misconceptions, and how much people just love to read about electric cars. Plus, we break down her carbon footprint.

Read more: 

• P&G Just Wants You to Use Your Dishwasher 
• Why So Many EV Chargers in America Don't Work 
• A Wool Recycling Tradition Offers Lessons for Fast Fashion 
• Canada's Wildfires Expose the Climate Change 'Spiral of Silence'
• A transcript of this episode

Listen to related episodes of Zero: 

• The climate case for flying cars - an interview with the man who will help cut Akshat’s carbon footprint. 
• The writer behind Love Actually wants to green your retirement fund - why you should look into where you store your retirement  

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Gilda Di Carli and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, a visit to the energy startup trying to replace coal with a very cheap battery. Form Energy has attracted nearly $900 million in investments and is building its first manufacturing facility in the US. Its big innovation relies on rust. Really. The materials scientists at Form have taken the same process that’s a symbol of time slowly passing and turned it into electricity. It’s one of the first big bets that batteries could help push the grid closer to running without fossil fuels altogether.

You can read more about Form Energy and see what the battery looks like here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special Thanks to Kira Bindrim and Blake Maples. 

Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 25-year period. However, it also degrades much more quickly than CO2, meaning cuts in emissions now can have a quick and significant effect on reducing global warming. On this bonus episode of Zero, producer Oscar Boyd talks with host Akshat Rathi about the methane problem and the ways to solve it.

Read more: 

• A Cheap Fix to Global Warming Is Finally Gaining Support
• The $75 Billion Climate Solution That’s a Bargain
• Turkmenistan in Talks With US to Tackle Giant Methane Leaks
• Scientists Say They’ve Detected a Huge Methane Leak in Kazakhstan
• A transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to John Fraher, Meg Szabo and Kira Bindrim.  Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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How do you turn climate change into compelling TV? What scenarios do you draw on? And how do you make sure a call for climate action isn’t lost to a feeling that a dystopian future is inevitable? 

When Extrapolations premiered in March, it became one of the first major TV shows to put climate change at the core of its narrative. Packed with A-list actors like Meryl Streep, Kit Harington and Sienna Miller, Extrapolations begins in a not too distant 2037. The world feels all too familiar, and with each episode the temperature becomes a little bit hotter, and the impacts of climate change a little bit worse. The planet is less hospitable, but humanity remains much the same.

This week on Zero*, host Akshat Rathi interviews Extrapolations writer and executive producer Dorothy Fortenberry about the growing demand for climate stories, how reality is overtaking the premise of the show, and how choices made this decade will impact the next.

(*this interview was recorded before the ongoing Hollywood strike action)

Read more: 

• Apple TV’s futuristic climate show is already coming true 
• NRDC Rewrite the Future
• Zero’s interviews with Kim Stanley Robinson and Amy Westervelt

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to John Fraher, Meg Szabo and Kira Bindrim.  Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

True crime is one of the most popular genres in every form of storytelling. But can that pull be used to tell stories about the environment? This week, Akshat speaks with Amy Westervelt, a climate reporter for over twenty years, and the creator of the podcast Drilled - a true crime show about climate change. Westervelt launched it after being turned away by large production companies but found over a million listeners in the first season. 

This is the second of three episodes talking with climate storytellers on Zero. Listen to hear why and how Westervelt decided to use “true crime” as a way to talk about Big Oil, the history of climate denial, and how reporting on the climate crisis has changed for the better. 

Read More:

• Climate Activists Say Big Oil Is Taking Cycling Fans for a Ride
• Check out Drilled 
• Check out the first episode in the series with Kim Stanley Robinson
• A transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To tackle climate change, we need good stories and we need good storytellers. Kim Stanley Robinson is a climate fiction author who has written more than 20 novels, including Ministry for the Future, which was published in 2020. It opens in 2025, with a heatwave that kills millions in India. It’s a grim scene, and what follows is the story of humans striving to cope with an increasingly inhospitable planet — there’s ecoterrorism, high-finance, wild chases over the Swiss Alps. What emerges in Ministry is the a ‘optopian’ roadmap, in which the world gets to grips with the climate crisis and begins to rectify the situation.

In the first of three episodes talking with climate storytellers on Zero, we hear from Robinson about how he crafts a good story out of a desperate situation, what he thinks the limits of climate storytelling are, and how his thinking has changed since publishing Ministry for the Future.

Read more: 

• Kim Stanley Robinson’s columns for Bloomberg Green
• Zero: High hopes for biodiversity, but who will pay? 
• A transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Todd Woody and Abraiya Ruffin. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

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What’s worse for the planet than Big Oil? The world’s food system, argues environmental journalist and campaigner George Monbiot in his new book Regenesis. He makes a passionate case for how current agricultural practices not only damage the environment, but prevent vast amounts of land from being rewilded and restored to its natural state. Monbiot speaks with Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi about his proposed solutions, which include an end to livestock farming entirely and using new technologies like precision fermentation to meet the world’s rising demand for protein.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Stacey Wong. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the next three years, 1TW of solar power will be added to the global grid and competition is driving solar prices even lower. And after years of innovation in China, Japan, and Germany, the U.S. is finally getting in the game in a major way through its IRA which offers incentives to manufacture cleantech in the U.S. In early 2023, the South Korean company QCells announced it would build a domestic supply chain in the U.S. to gain access to enormous tax credits. But in a global marketplace, is this worth doing? Despite solar's potential, manufacturing its parts has never been a reliable business.

This week Akshat talks to Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF and an expert on the solar industry about its boom/bust cycle, why solar's growth means electricity may soon be free during the day, and what QCells is up against. We also hear from Lindsay Cherry of QCells about how the company will achieve its ambitious goal to build a solar supply chain from scratch.

Akshat will be traveling to Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Delhi over the next few weeks. Fancy meeting for a drink? Sign up here. 

Read More: 

• Preorder Akshat’s book
• Preorder Jenny's book
• Biden Push to Spur Solar Production Gets $2.5 Billion Boost 
• Zero: How Europe ditched Russian fossil fuels with spectacular speed
• How solar is making free electricity during the day
• Read a transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Brian Eckhouse, Nayeli Jaramillo-Plata, and Abraiya Ruffin. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Where’s all the oil money going? What’s happening with cycling in France? And how far behind China is the US on solar? There are many climate numbers out there that we don’t get to talk about on Zero but that deserve attention. In this bonus episode, host Akshat Rathi and producers Christine Driscoll and Oscar Boyd talk about some of their favorite stats showing people taking action on the climate crisis.

Akshat will be traveling to Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Delhi over the next few weeks. Fancy meeting for a drink? Sign up here. 

More Links: 

• Big oil’s pullback from clean energy matters less than you might think 
• Stats on US solar installations
• Cycle Lanes in France
• Shell, Repsol, Petronas Ads Banned in UK for Greenwashing

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Dave Sawyer, Gernot Wagner, Nayeli Jaramillo-Plata, and Abraiya Ruffin. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

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Canada is a leading producer of oil and gas. It’s also one of the few G7 members with a carbon tax. As Minister of Environment and Climate Change in 2015, Catherine McKenna was charged with getting Canadians on board with that policy. One of the most important tactics was calling it “a price on pollution.” Carbon taxes are having a moment after the Paris Climate Finance Summit and Cath joins Akshat this week to talk about the political practicalities of passing a carbon tax. She has advice about who to lean on, handling threats, and why focusing on outcomes above all else is the key to climate policy that works.   

Akshat will be traveling to Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Delhi over the next few weeks. Fancy meeting for a drink? Sign up here. 

More Links 

• Interview of Justin Trudeau
• Carbon taxes at the Paris Climate Summit
• Transcript of this conversation with Catherine McKenna
• The World Bank 2023 Report on the State and Trends of Carbon Pricing

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Dave Sawyer, Gernot Wagner, Nayeli Jaramillo-Plata, and Abraiya Ruffin. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China is the world’s factory, and has the emissions to match. But in a planned economy, with weak environmental regulation, can anyone take on this pollution? Today’s guest, Ma Jun, did. In 2006 he began publishing “Pollution Maps” online that detailed levels and sources of air and water pollution. Ma Jun faced pushback, but his work made it possible for people in China to discuss pollution and climate change in a serious way. His work has since gained acceptance from the government and the corporations like Apple and Nike that he tracked down as sources. Ma Jun joined Akshat in Davos for a conversation about the power that data can have, how environmentalism has changed in China, and the role the rest of the world must play in asking questions. 

Read more: 

• Ma Jun’s book China’s Water Crisis 
• A case study of Ma Jun’s work and its effect on environmentalism in China from Columbia University 
• A recent history of air quality in China from University of Chicago 
• Panel at Columbia: Meeting the Energy and Climate Needs of Emerging Economies
• Bonus episode: How wildfire smoke and air pollution affect your health

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Dan Murtaugh. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

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Policy can make or break climate action. Usually, national policy gets the most attention, but what local and regional governments do can make a bigger difference, especially in large countries like the US, India and China. This week, Akshat Rathi speaks with three US governors – Jay Inslee of Washington, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, and Eric Holcomb of Indiana – about how they navigate partisan politics and the need for climate action. As governors who control state budgets and priorities, their decisions now could supercharge national climate action, or hinder it.

More on the topic: 

• How solar is becoming the midwest’s new cash crop
• Podcast: How wildfire smoke and air pollution impacts your health
• Zero’s episode with Leah Stokes about working on the IRA with Gov. Jay Inslee
• Crash Course: Conservatives vs. EGS with Saijel Kishan
• A transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Brian Eckhouse, Aaron Clark, Jen Dlouhy, Gilda Di Carli and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last week, 50 world leaders met in Paris with the goal of moving trillions in climate finance to developing countries. What was achieved, and what is still left to do? Akshat Rathi was on the ground and gives Oscar Boyd his key takeaways.

More:

• Climate Change and Poverty Are Our Era’s Existential Battles
• We need trillions to fix the climate. Finally there’s a serious plan.
• Five Takeaways From the Paris Summit to Fix Global Climate Finance
• A transcript of this episode. 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Natasha White and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

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Tesla is a household name, but few people have heard of the Loan Programs Office (LPO), one of Tesla’s crucial early backers. Part of the US Department of Energy, the LPO is tasked with awarding government-backed loans to clean-tech. In 2010, it loaned Tesla $465 million to help it weather the fallout from the financial crisis and build out the production of the Model S. With the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act last summer, the LPO was supercharged. It now has more than $400 billion to help the US achieve its climate goals.

Jigar Shah is the director of the LPO and joins Zero to give an exclusive on the organization's biggest ever loan: $9.2 billion to BlueOval SK, a joint venture between US auto giant Ford and South Korean battery manufacturer SK On. The money will be used to build battery factories for Ford’s growing line of electric vehicles. Jigar explains why he chose to make this loan, how it fits into President Joe Biden’s electric vehicle ambitions, and how he deals with the risks of investing in pioneering technologies.  

Read more: 

• Read Bloomberg's deep dive on the Ford loan.
• The Department of Energy’s liftoff reports
• Article: Tesla’s shrewdest product is proving to be its charging network
• Article: Ford’s electric pickup is built from metal that’s damaging the Amazon
• A transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Ari Natter, Keith Naughton, Gabriella Coppola and Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Trillions of dollars are needed to shift the world to a low-carbon future, but where will all that money come from? While momentum is growing in rich countries, developing countries are still struggling for finance. Without significant increases in the amount of money spent, the world is unlikely to meet its climate goals, and yet international negotiations are at a deadlock. 

Avinash Persaud has a plan: the Bridgetown Agenda. He’s the special envoy on investment and financial services for Barbados and is working with his country’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, to transform the global financial system. Together they are putting pressure on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to turbocharge the roll-out of clean technologies in developing countries. Next week, he’ll be presenting the latest version of the agenda to world leaders in Paris, at a summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with Avinash to discuss his plan, and why he thinks now is the time these aging financial institutions can finally be reformed.

Read more: 

• A deep dive on the Bridgetown Agenda
• Mia Mottley’s full speech at COP27
• Making polluters pay for loss and damage
• Cheaper currency risk hedging could unlock trillions
• Read a transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kate Mackenzie and Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A hotter planet is also a smokier one, as residents of New York City are finding out this week. As the intensity and size of wildfires grows, more and more people are being exposed to dangerously unhealthy air. Just how dangerous? Oscar Boyd asks Akshat Rathi to explain the health effects of exposure to intense air pollution. It’s not a new problem, but it’s a growing one and many of us will need to learn how to deal with the risks.

Related stories from Bloomberg Green:

• How wildfire smoke affects human health
• Justin Trudeau on the Zero podcast
• The Australian climate elections on the Zero podcast
• A documentary on Australia’s bushfire babies
• The Big Take podcast on the Black Summer bushfires 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Janet Babin, Kira Bindrim, Zahra Hirji, Kendra Pierre-Louis and Todd Woody. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green 

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How often do you think about how much your pension or 401(k) is contributing to climate change? Chances are not much, but a growing movement wants you to do just that. 

Richard Curtis is the writer behind Love Actually, Mr. Bean, Blackadder and Four Weddings and a Funeral. His latest project is not a movie, but a campaign group called Make My Money Matter, which wants to make British retirement plans and banks greener by raising awareness about the trillions of dollars in pensions that are invested in fossil fuel companies.

This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Richard about how he went from writing for the screen to making your retirement money green, what can be done to stop greenwashing in the financial sector, and whether he'll ever write a climate romcom.

Read more: 

• Make My Money Matter’s film with Rose Leslie and Kit Harrington
• Natasha White’s article on Gabon’s carbon credits
• A transcript of this episode. 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Alastair Marsh, Natasha White and Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Dipender Saluja is the Managing Director of Capricorn Investment Group, a venture capital firm with $9B under management. He was an early investor in Tesla. Today Dipender leads Capricorn’s clean tech investments effort and is betting on nuclear fusion, next gen batteries and electric aviation as the next moneymakers in decarbonizing the economy. Dipender has worked in Silicon Valley for 35 years. This week, Akshat talks with him about why he got interested in venture capital, climate tech, and how his start in the semiconductor industry informs his investment strategy.

Listen to the interview with Rebecca Shirley of World Resources Institute and Makthar Diop of International Finance Corporation to learn more about clean energy financing in developing nations here. 

Read more: 

• Leslie Kaufman’s story about TerraCycle here.
• A transcript of the episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Venkat Viswanathan, and Dashiell Bennett. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week a new report was released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that says we are likely to exceed 1.5C of warming for a single year at some point in the next five years. It’s a big deal for many reasons, especially because limiting global warming to within 1.5C of pre-industrial temperatures is a key goal of the Paris Agreement.

In this bonus episode of Zero, Akshat Rathi and Oscar Boyd talk about what the WMO report says and why it matters.

Read more about the WMO report: 

• Breaching 1.5C threshold temporarily in next five years ‘more likely than not’
• Climate pledges reach threshold to keep warming below 2C
• Read a transcript of this episode

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Zahra Hirji, Olivia Rudgard and Kira Bindrim. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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At their best, cities can be a climate solution: densely packed places with good public transport, effective health care, and plenty for everyone to do. Combined with clean energy, they become carbon-efficient centers. But cities can also be a climate disaster: Low levels of vegetation, big concrete buildings, high traffic and poor airflow create the perfect conditions for extreme heat waves. As cities grow and an ever greater percentage of the population become urban dwellers, the impacts of these heat events will be felt by more and more people. 

This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with Global Chief Heat Officer Eleni Myrivili, about how cities can be made more resilient to heat, and why aircon is not a solution we can rely on.

Read more: 

• A profile of Eugenia Kargbo, Chief Heat Officer in Sierra Leone.
• Olivia Rudgard’s article on Happisburgh’s disappearing coastline. 
• A full transcript of this episode.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Laura Millan. Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s been eight months since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act. Already the hundreds of billions of dollars it contains for clean energy and slowing climate change —alongside private venture capital investments — are funding a wide array of climate technology projects, from decarbonizing infrastructure to rust-based battery storage.

This week we are sharing an episode of the Bloomberg podcast The Big Take that looks at where all the money in U.S. President Biden's signature climate bill has gone. Bloomberg climate reporter Eric Roston and senior reporter Akshat Rathi talk with Big Take host Wes Kosova about how climate tech is no longer a corner of the economy–it’s fast becoming the economy. And reporter Zahra Hirji joins to talk about some of the ways the IRA’s spending is starting to show up in our everyday lives.

Read the story by Akshat Rathi and Eric Roston here. Find more from The Big Take, here. And help out Zero by taking our listener survey, here. 

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and The Big Take team. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amazon made Jeff Bezos very rich. In 2020, he decided to pledge a portion of that wealth — $10 billion — to launch the Bezos Earth Fund. It is the largest commitment to climate philanthropy ever made and, by most measures, a vast amount of money. But it is also a small fraction of the $3.5 trillion that is needed annually to hit net zero by 2050. To make an impact, it has to be spent strategically and attract a lot more money from governments and corporations. 

This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Bezos Earth Fund CEO Andrew Steer how the fund spends its billions, what counts as success, and how competition between billionaires is shaping climate philanthropy.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, as well as Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum for arranging studio space. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The world is in the middle of the sixth mass extinction and this time it's being driven by human activity. Slowing it down will provide benefits for tackling climate change, and solutions to reign in global warming will help stem biodiversity loss. But this win-win scenario isn't straightforward to put into action.

In December, world leaders gathered at COP15 in Montreal and agreed upon a new global biodiversity framework, with 23 targets including a goal of protecting 30% of all land, waters and oceans by 2030. The details on how that target will be implemented, however, are vague, and vast amounts of money will be needed to fund nature protection in biodiversity-rich, economically poor countries. 

Akshat Rathi speaks with Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at the World Wildlife Fund; Monica Medina, the US assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs; and Bloomberg Green’s Eric Roston, about what it means to protect biodiversity, and who will fund it.  

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steel is the backbone of modern society, and it’s also responsible for 7% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Last summer, Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi visited a US startup that says they can clean it all up. Operating in a suburban office park in Colorado, Electra claims to have developed a way to get through the most energy-intensive part of steelmaking at temperatures lower than fresh coffee. Akshat dives into the science and story of Electra with CEO Sandeep Nijhawan. 

This episode first ran in October 2022. This week, Electra was awarded BloombergNEF's Pioneers award for its research into low-carbon steel. Read more about the award and see all 12 winners of the 2023 Pioneers Award here. Read the full feature about Electra here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our senior producer is Christine Driscoll and our producer is Oscar Boyd. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Electric aviation fulfills two futuristic promises – flying cars and emissions-free air travel. This week, meet the professor who is working to make it happen. Venkat Viswanathan, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is working to create a battery that can power an aircraft on a trip over 200 miles. Venkat talks to Akshat about the network of people involved in electric aviation, how long it will take to develop such a light and powerful battery, and why aviation is the most important problem for batteries to solve. 

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Blake Maples, Stacey Wong, Sharon Chen, and Kira Bindrim.

Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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When Sultan Al Jaber was made president of COP28, the year’s biggest climate summit, there was outrage. How can the head of a giant oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. – think Exxon and BP combined – convince the world to cut emissions faster? But Al Jaber isn’t an oil boss cut from the same mold. He spent a decade as a renewables executive. 

This week on Zero, Bloomberg Green Executive Editor Aaron Rutkoff talks to Senior Reporter Akshat Rathi about his new in-depth profile of Al Jaber exploring a world of contradictions. You can read the full article “The Oil Sheikh’s Climate Fixer”.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks this week to Gilda Di Carli, Stacey Wong, and Kira Bindrim. 

Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, a visit to the energy startup trying to replace coal with a very cheap battery. Form Energy has attracted nearly $900 million in investments and is building its first manufacturing facility in the US. Its big innovation relies on rust. Really. The materials scientists at Form have taken the same process that’s a symbol of time slowly passing and turned it into electricity. It’s one of the first big bets that batteries could help push the grid closer to running without fossil fuels altogether.

You can read more about Form Energy and see what the battery looks like here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special Thanks to Kira Bindrim and Blake Maples. 

Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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How do you rebuild an international organization for the climate era? That’s what the Paris-based International Energy Agency has done over the past decade. Founded in 1974 to secure oil supplies for its members, the IEA has become a leading voice on the need to cut emissions. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, when global emissions will peak, if it’s possible to get there sooner, and why India’s solar revolution is keeping him optimistic. 

Want to know more about the IEA story? Pre-order Akshat’s book, Climate Capitalism, here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks this week to Eric Roston, Kira Bindrim and Will Mathis. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report is out and it makes for sober reading. Published roughly every seven years, IPCC reports are the most established body of knowledge on climate change and unique in that their summary gets a signoff from every country on the planet. The report’s findings feature in everything from government policy to investment decisions. In this bonus episode, Akshat Rathi and Oscar Boyd talk about what the latest IPCC report says, and why it matters so much.

Read more about the latest IPCC report, about how one sentence in an IPCC report changed the climate game and about how IPCC reports become a showdown between science and global politics.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks this week to Eric Roston and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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What happens when a "climate bank" goes under? This week, Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi interviews the CEO of an AI battery startup that had just received $3 million in funding about the stresses of recovering money from Silicon Valley Bank as it collapsed. Then, Bloomberg reporter Mark Bergen explains what made SVB so important to climate tech funding and which institutions might be poised to take its place.

Read more about the collapse and its impact on climate tech, here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks this week to Venkat Viswanathan, Brian Eckhouse, Mark Bergen, Coco Liu, Olivia Rudgard, Josh Saul, David Baker, Sommer Saadi, and Kira Bindrim.

Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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If you’ve got the technology that can change the world, are you the best person to implement it? Investors pay careful attention to the CEO of any company, but in climate tech, they deserve special scrutiny – much of the science has never been brought to scale and they are competing against the status quo, massive trillion-dollar industries. It takes business acumen to launch a profitable business and the stakes are high, so some investors prefer a seasoned entrepreneur to a scientist. 

Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi talks to Katie Rae, who has a different philosophy. Katie is the head of The Engine, a venture firm affiliated with MIT that invests in early stage climate tech companies, often helmed by scientists. How does she make the case to investors and what does she teach the scientist wanting to be a CEO?

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Since the Human Development Index was established in 1990, it has trended gradually upward, as people’s health, wealth and opportunities have improved. But in 2019, it went into a decline then made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine. The impacts of these events on reversing human progress could be dwarfed by climate change, says Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Programme. However, the solutions to the climate problem also offer the potential to build a more inclusive and fair future that allows humanity to thrive. 

Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi asks Steiner about the opportunities and threats climate change poses to global development, how countries can plan for more climate refugees, and what rising inequality means for a world facing multiple crises.

Read Oxfam’s report on inequality and climate change, here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Sommer Saadi and Stacey Wong, as well as Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum for arranging studio space. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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When Russia attacked Ukraine last year, it expected to win in a three-day blitz. Instead, it’s become a protracted war with impacts felt far and wide — disrupting food systems, supply chains, geopolitics and the global economy. Europe’s most remarkable response to the war isn’t to do with sending in tanks or billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. Instead, it’s been the surprising speed with which it has ditched Russian fossil fuels and strangled the source of funding for Russia’s war machine. In this episode, Zero’s producer Oscar Boyd asks Bloomberg News reporters Will Mathis and Akshat Rathi how Europe managed this feat, and what that means for the continent’s climate goals.

Read Akshat and Will’s full article, complete with charts and graphs that show the speed of the transition. This is what a LNG tanker looks like.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Todd Gillespie, John Ainger and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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As Germany’s climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan stands alongside John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua of China as one of the world’s top climate negotiators. But she is no typical bureaucrat. Jennifer considers herself an “activist diplomat,” and before taking up the position of envoy, she headed up Greenpeace, known for its political activism and climate stunts. Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi sat down with Jennifer at the World Economic Forum in Davos to ask her whether the EU needs to compete more aggressively with the US on climate tech, how Germany is justifying the expansion of its coal mines, and why reforming the World Bank is vital for helping developing countries deal with climate impacts.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Laura Millan, John Ainger, Petra Sorge, Olivia Rudgard and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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This summer, Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi visited Imprint Energy, a Silicon Valley startup that prints batteries. Using the same tools as screenprinters, Imprint Energy prints thousands of batteries to power shipping labels that can report the movement, temperature, and even humidity that packages are exposed to. Imprint’s batteries are being tested by companies that ship food, crop seeds and even vaccines. Akshat speaks with founder and inventor Christine Ho about how she bootstrapped the company, raised $25M, and why these small batteries made of a glue-like goo can cut down waste and reduce emissions. 

What do Imprint's batteries look like? Check them out here. 

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Venkat Viswanathan and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Sweden is known for its climate ambition, and was the first country to set a goal to reach net zero by 2045. Yet a new government aligned with the far-right Sweden Democrats has thrown that commitment into question. Enter Romina Pourmokhtari who, at 26 years old, became the country's youngest-ever cabinet member when she was chosen as climate minister in October. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Romina whether Sweden will still meet its climate commitments, how her first 100 days in office have been, and what she hopes to achieve on climate now that Sweden is chairing the European council.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green. Special thanks to Niclas Rolander, Lars Paulsson and Kira Bindrim.

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In 2020, Silicon Valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya said he wanted to create a holding company for climate tech and asked for people to submit their frameworks for making it happen. Whoever was chosen as a finalist would help implement it. He got over 1,500 submissions, but he never ended up making that holding company. Why? Will this ever be possible? Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi talks to Chamath about the difficulty of learning to invest in climate tech, the future of his investing kingdom, and how much you can teach yourself about batteries. 

In this episode, we talk about Warren Buffett, investing, and what makes a climate investment. If you want to hear why Buffett thinks an oil company can be a climate bet, check out our episode with Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub: 

Oil boss Vicki Hollub is selling 'net-zero oil'. Do you buy it?

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green. Special thanks to Bailey Lipschultz, Kira Bindrim, and Brian Eckhouse.

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The wind industry is exploding, growing from just 2% of global electricity supply to 7% in a decade. But to achieve net zero by 2050, we're going to need a lot more wind turbines, both on land and out at sea. On this week’s episode of Zero, Orsted CEO Mads Nipper tells Akshat Rathi how the company transformed itself from a fossil fuel giant into the world's largest developer of offshore wind power, and the challenges the industry faces. It’s not just a story of clear corporate strategy chasing an opportunity, but also of heavy government intervention and many happy accidents. 

Read energy reporter Will Mathis’ story on the pressures faced by the wind industry here, and what 2023 has in store for renewables, here.

Want to know more about Orsted's story? Pre-order Akshat’s book, Climate Capitalism, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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This January, Davos will once again host the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting and bring together the world's business and political elite. In recent years, climate change has climbed ever further up the agenda at this high-altitude event. How did it happen? Akshat Rathi talks to Gail Whiteman, one person responsible for it. Gail is the founder of the Arctic Basecamp, and since 2017 has camped out for the week of Davos to deliver the urgent message about climate risks and the immense dangers it poses to the world economy.

Read more about the state of snow in Davos and why the business elite are starting to care.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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What causes a restaurant critic to trade the gourmet for the green? Why does a Shell geophysicist leave their decade-long career working on oil and gas fields? What makes a war-crimes lawyer want to pursue a career in climate? And why would a travel executive become a solar installer? This week on Zero, listeners tell us why they quit their jobs to work in the climate space, and what advice they have for others who want to do the same.

A special thank you to everyone who sent in their story.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Throughout history, no social movement has succeeded without utilizing property destruction as a tactic, and if the climate movement is to be effective it will have to do the same. So says Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, on this week’s episode of Zero. But how do you delineate between justifiable sabotage and unacceptable violence? And is there a risk that escalation backfires as a strategy?

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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The task of cutting emissions is becoming more urgent by the day. Are democracies up to the challenge? Do we have time to let the usual course of consensus-building and debate play out, or should governments around the world prioritize climate action at any cost? In this week’s episode of Zero, Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi puts these questions to Daniel J. Fiorino, director of the Center for Environmental Policy at American University and author of Can Democracy Handle Climate Change?

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll.Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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Carbon offsets are everywhere – a $2 billion dollar industry that’s set to grow even more as the US is even incorporating them in its effort to fulfill international climate pledges. Yet in the thirty years since they were created, they have not been proven to work. How did such a good idea go wrong and why is it so sticky? In this episode of Zero, Akshat talks to Mark Trexler of The Climatographers, who helped build the first carbon offset program in 1988, about what went wrong with offsets and if there’s any way to fix them. 

Read more about the dodgy world of carbon offsets in Bloomberg’s three part investigation. 

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit www.bloomberg.com/green.

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What’s worse for the planet than Big Oil? The world’s food system, argues environmental journalist and campaigner George Monbiot in his new book Regenesis. He makes a passionate case for how current agricultural practices not only damage the environment, but prevent vast amounts of land from being rewilded and restored to its natural state. Monbiot speaks with Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi about his proposed solutions, which include an end to livestock farming entirely and using new technologies like precision fermentation to meet the world’s rising demand for protein.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Stacey Wong. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit www.bloomberg.com/green.

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COP27 ended with a historic agreement on loss and damage, but other major challenges remain — including the gap that has long existed between energy needs in Africa and the funding that the continent receives. As the “Africa COP” comes to an end, Akshat speaks with two experts about the continent’s unique financing challenges: Rebekah Shirley, director of research, data and innovation at the World Resources Institute Africa, explains the “chicken and egg problem,” and IFC Managing Director Makthar Diop, who talks about the institution's strategy for reaching $60B in funding by 2025. We’re also joined by Bloomberg News editors Siobhan Wagner and Will Kennedy to discuss what happened on the sidelines of COP27. 

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Stacey Wong. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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Lewis Pugh has swum across seas and in between melting sea ice, but the hardest part of his work is what comes after – contributing to negotiations to protect those same bodies from development. And he’s been successful: In 2016 he got the Russians to sign a pact to create a marine protected area in the Ross Sea – one of the few healthy seas left, and the size of Britain, France, Germany, Italy put together. A negotiation should be an exploration, not a battle, he tells Akshat Rathi. Pugh also talks about how he got his start, the swim that made him into an environmental advocate and what he wants to come out of COP27. Akshat speaks with Salma El Wardany, a Bloomberg News energy and commodities reporter based in Cairo, and Zero producer Oscar Boyd, about their experiences of COP27.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Stacey Wong. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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Whether the so-called implementation COP will live up to its promise will be answered this week as negotiators begin to do the work of writing the final agreement. Bloomberg Green Reporter Akshat Rathi spoke with young climate activists about their engagement with this COP, the difficulty of activism in a repressive country and how they are making change in their own nations. We’re also joined by Bloomberg News reporters John Ainger and Jen Dlouhy to discuss the latest announcements from the conference regarding loss and damage.

Read our story on the difficulties climate activists faced at COP27.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Stacey Wong. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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As week one wraps up at COP27 in Sharm El Sheik in Egypt, Bloomberg Green Reporter Akshat Rathi talks with Patricia Espinosa, who until August 2022 was the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, the body charged with organizing the annual COP climate conferences. Espinosa tells Zero what goes on behind the scenes at COP to get the 200 participating member states to agree, and why the global platform is vital for making any progress on climate issues. We’re also joined by Yinka Ibukun, Bloomberg News West Africa Bureau Chief, to hear about whether the “African COP” is living up to its name. 

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Laura Millan and Stacey Wong. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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We are rapidly approaching the end of week one at COP27 and all eyes are turning to the US, with President Biden to make a visit on Friday. Bloomberg Green Reporter Akshat Rathi sits down with White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi to talk about the Biden administration’s climate accomplishments in climate policy and how the US will make its impressive commitments reality. We’re also joined by John Fraher, the head of ESG and energy at Bloomberg News, to talk about how shifting domestic and international politics are playing out at COP27.

You can watch Bloomberg Live’s COP27 coverage here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Stacey Wong. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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After a frenetic two days of discussions at COP27, with hundreds of leaders arriving in Egypt, the demands of vulnerable countries are clear: show us the money. On Zero’s second episode from Sharm el-Sheikh, we’re joined by Prime Minister Philip Davis of the Bahamas, to hear about the impacts of climate change on the low-lying archipelago nation, why he wants developed countries to pay for the protection of Bahamian oceans, and Caribbean nations’ demands for a levy on oil exports. We’re also joined by Bloomberg Green executive editor Aaron Rutkoff, who updates us with the latest from COP27. 

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and Stacey Wong. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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COP27 has begun, with 45,000 delegates expected to attend the two-week conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. One of the key discussion points is financing for “loss and damage,” the idea that developed countries with high historical emissions should pay for climate damages in developing countries. On Zero’s first episode recorded at COP27, we’re joined by Professor Saleemul Huq, Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development and a champion of climate vulnerable countries. With loss and damage being formally on the agenda of this year’s climate negotiations, Huq explains what’s at stake. We also hear from Bloomberg contributing editor Allegra Stratton, the UK’s spokesperson for COP26, on how COP27 can build upon the achievements of last year.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

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While the United States fancies itself a global climate leader, the country is coming off a decade of tumultuous policy: It signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, withdrew two years later, and didn’t rejoin until 2021. Now, as the country counts down to midterm elections and the start of COP27 climate talks in Egypt, Americans are taking stock of whether US President Joe Biden has lived up to his promises. Akshat Rathi talks to Leah Stokes, a political scientist who contributed to the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest US climate bill. They also talk about how the IRA came together, her wish list for additional green policies, and how the IRA will affect US standing at COP27.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Weather data is invaluable. It influences the decisions of governments and companies around the world. It’s used to predict energy consumption, harvests, and even when countries might go to war. So what does it mean when vast portions of the world have insufficient weather data in an era of worsening climate change? This week on Zero, Bloomberg Green reporter Laura Millan tells the story of weather stations 61223 in Timbuktu, and what its sudden closure means for climate science across the African continent, and the upcoming negotiations at COP27.

Read Laura’s full story on weather station 61223 and Africa’s lack of climate data here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Finally made to reckon with the climate crisis, most oil companies are turning to clean-energy technologies. Not Occidental Petroleum. Akshat Rathi talks to Oxy CEO Vicki Hollub to find out why. Under Hollub’s leadership, Oxy became the first US oil company to set a science-based target to reach net zero. The road it has chosen to get there is an atypical one. Rather than reducing oil and gas production, Oxy wants to make net-zero oil by investing heavily in carbon-capture technology. Rathi asks Hollub how exactly Oxy will build out this technology, how it will pay for it, and why she believes her company’s oil is the way to tackle climate change.

Read a full transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pitches the country as a leader on climate and says it is on track to reduce emissions 45% by 2030. The reality is different. Canada has the second highest per-capita CO2 emissions in the G-20, its oil industry is booming, and its emissions remain persistently high. On this week’s episode of Zero, Trudeau joins Zero host Akshat Rathi to discuss when Canada’s emissions will start to fall for real, and how it can achieve its climate pledges when its economy and politics remain so tied to oil and gas. 

This conversation was recorded live at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa at an event hosted by the Canadian Climate Institute and the Net Zero Advisory Body.

Read a full transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Climate was the defining issue of this year’s elections in Australia, with independent and green candidates promising climate action sweeping into power. Now the country has a new climate law, enshrining a 43% cut in emissions by 2030. But does it live up to what the science demands? Joining Zero this week are two politicians that were instrumental to passing the bill: Adam Bandt, leader of the Australian Greens, and David Pocock, whose journey from Australia’s rugby captain to politics has made him a deciding vote in the country’s senate. 

Read a full transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steel is the backbone of modern society, and it’s also responsible for 7% of global greenhouse-gas emissions every year. This summer, Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi visited a US startup that says they can clean it all up. Operating in a suburban office park in Colorado, Electra is coming out of stealth mode. It claims to have developed a way to get through the most energy-intensive part of steelmaking at temperatures lower than fresh coffee. Akshat dives into the science and story of Electra with CEO Sandeep Nijhawan.

You can read the full feature about Electra here.

Read a full transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our senior producer is Christine Driscoll and our producer is Oscar Boyd. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What role will the landmark climate bill in the US play in spurring innovation? Is cutting emissions in rich countries enough to solve the climate crisis? Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi talks to Bill Gates about what’s needed to create zero-emission economies, how Europe should face up to its energy crisis, and how he helped persuade Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to sign the Inflation Reduction Act.

Read an in-depth story about all the people who influenced the passage of the climate bill.

Read a full transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our senior producer is Christine Driscoll and our producer is Oscar Boyd. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What role does venture capital have in bringing carbon-cutting technologies to reality? Does it prop up bad ideas or free outrageous ones? In this episode, Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi talks to Gabriel Kra of Prelude Ventures about the role venture capital plays in boosting the US cleantech industry and how the new US climate bill is changing the startup landscape.  

Read more about the battery startup QuantumScape that Kra mentions as a key success story for VC funding.

Read a full transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our senior producer is Christine Driscoll and our producer is Oscar Boyd. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The UK’s Climate Change Act was one of the first in the world to be passed in 2008 and is part of the reason the nation became a leader in cutting emissions. But now, as the UK faces an energy shortage, has a new government in power, and a climate-champion King, the Act’s strength and flexibility will be tested. Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi talks to Baroness Bryony Worthington, one of the authors of the Act, about the unique political moment that led to its passage, how she envisions it will face up to multiple crises, and why other countries have copied the framework. 

Read more about a key institution that keeps the UK on track to meet climate goals. 

Read a full transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. It is produced by Christine Driscoll and Oscar Boyd. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Zero explores the tactics and technologies taking us to a world of zero emissions. Each week, Bloomberg Green’s award-winning climate reporter Akshat Rathi talks to the people who are making it happen. Episodes launch September 15.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. It is produced by Christine Driscoll and Oscar Boyd. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.