The Earth Set Podcast

If two thirds of the public believe climate change is real, support renewables, and want government action… why does it feel like net zero is suddenly on shaky ground?

At February’s Earth Set Live, we took on one of the most consequential shifts in the transition right now: the rise of climate opposition inside mainstream politics.

This was a serious look at what’s actually driving the backlash. Energy bills. Industrial decline. Security fears. Media narratives. Political realignment.

Fiona Howarth was joined by:

Luke Shore, Deputy CEO at Project Tempo

Alex Carr, Deputy Director at Clean Air Task Force (CATF)

Sam Hall, Director of the Conservative Environment Network

Together, they unpacked what’s really happening beneath the headlines.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why public belief in climate change remains high — but urgency has slipped behind cost of living pressures
• How energy prices became the fault line in UK climate politics
• Why “net zero” polls worse than “climate action” — and what that means for communication
• What’s behind the growing divide between Conservative voters and Conservative leadership
• Whether Clean Power 2030 is a strategic masterstroke or a political vulnerability
• The industrial trilemma facing Europe: decarbonise, stay competitive, keep industry
• Why renewables curtailment has become such a powerful symbol in the debate
• Whether moving levies from electricity to gas would ease the pressure or inflame it
• How media framing shapes public perception more than most climate advocates admit
• And whether democracy is capable of delivering long-term climate strategy in short political cycles

Key threads that emerged

Affordability now drives the politics.

The debate has shifted. It is no longer primarily about whether climate change is real. It is about who pays, when, and how much.

Climate is now industrial strategy.

Energy security, supply chains, clean manufacturing and geopolitical competition are shaping climate policy as much as emissions targets.

Market design may matter more than targets.

Grid reform, storage, electrification incentives and pricing structures could determine whether the transition accelerates or stalls.

Public support is not collapsing.

Despite louder opposition voices, broad support for climate action remains resilient. The challenge is reconnecting the transition to tangible everyday benefit.

Episode Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by the Clean Air Task Force (CATF).

CATF is a global nonprofit working to safeguard against the worst impacts of climate change by accelerating the development and deployment of low-carbon energy and other climate-protecting technologies. With more than 25 years of internationally recognised expertise in climate policy, CATF is known for its pragmatic, non-ideological approach, focused on what works at scale.

From industrial decarbonisation and clean firm power to methane reduction and advanced technologies, CATF works across policy, innovation and markets to help deliver durable climate solutions.

Learn more about their work at:
https://www.catf.us/

Join Earth Set live

Earth Set convenes founders, policymakers, investors and operators shaping how the green transition actually happens.

We meet monthly in London. First Tuesday of every month.

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The transition will not be decided by technology alone.

It will be shaped by politics, economics and public trust. See you at the next event.

What actually happened in UK climate tech investment last year?

At our second live recording of Season Two, hosted at HSBC Innovation Banking during the Blue Earth Investment Forum in January, we brought the data to the table. No anecdotes, no gossip. Just numbers, trends and a candid look at what they mean for 2026.

Amy was joined by Sarah Mackintosh, Director at Cleantech for UK, and Sammy Fry, Head of Climate Tech at Tech Nation. Between them, they track thousands of startups, billions in capital flows, and the policy frameworks shaping the sector.

The headline? 2025 was not the collapse some feared. Total equity funding reached £3.9bn, debt and project finance continued to grow, and the UK remains surprisingly stable relative to its size.

But beneath that surface stability, there are deeper shifts. Early stage deals are down. Hardware investment has fallen sharply. The Series A and B “valley of death” remains a structural challenge. Meanwhile, AI continues to absorb a growing share of venture capital.

This conversation unpacks what is actually happening, where the pressure points are, and where opportunity may be building quietly.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why 2025 was stronger than many expected, yet still worrying beneath the surface
• What the decline in seed and Series A funding means for the pipeline
• Why hardware startups are facing a 70%+ drop in investment
• How energy and power continue to dominate climate capital flows
• Whether AI is crowding out climate tech, or simply reshaping it
• The role of Innovate UK, the British Business Bank and the new National Wealth Fund\
• Why food, agriculture and human health may be the next frontier
• What investors should actually focus on in 2026

From patient capital to policy gaps, from energy prices to food security, this is a grounded look at the mechanics behind the green transition.

If you work in venture, policy, startups or climate innovation, this is one to bookmark.

Guests

Sarah Mackintosh
Director, CleanTech for UK
CleanTech for UK is a policy and advocacy group representing UK clean tech investors.
https://www.cleantechforuk.com

Sammy Fry
Head of Climate Tech, Tech Nation
Tech Nation supports high growth tech founders across the UK, including climate and deep tech ventures.
https://technation.io

Referenced Reports & Resources

Cleantech for UK Annual Investment Reports
https://www.cleantechforuk.com/publications

Tech Nation Climate Tech Report
https://technation.io/research-news/

Net Zero Insights
https://www.netzeroinsights.com

Innovate UK
https://www.ukri.org/innovate-uk

British Business Bank
https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk

National Wealth Fund
https://www.nationalwealthfund.org.uk

Blue Earth Investment Forum
https://blueearthsummit.com

Zinc VC
https://www.zinc.vc

Join Earth Set Live

Earth Set hosts monthly live events in London featuring founders, investors, policymakers and operators shaping the transition to a resilient, regenerative economy.

First Tuesday of every month.
Tickets and details: https://earthset.co

If you enjoyed this episode

• Leave a rating
• Share it with someone building or backing climate tech
• Join us in person at a live event

Thanks for listening. See you at the next recording.

Coal feels like history. Steam engines. Sooty faces. Museums and memorial plaques.

And yet it still generates around a third of the world’s electricity and accounts for roughly 37 percent of global carbon emissions. Every year, we burn close to one tonne of coal per person on Earth.

In this live recording from Octopus Energy & Octopus EV HQ, Fiona Howarth unpacks why coal refuses to fade quietly into the past.

Joining them are two exceptional guests:

Lucy Shaw
Energy investor and advisor. Founder of an energy and climate investment consultancy. Former infrastructure investor at Blackstone, Actis, Vena Energy and the IFC (World Bank Group). Former BCG consultant and ExxonMobil engineer. Fulbright Scholar with an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. Lucy is currently writing a book titled Slow Burn on the global persistence of coal.

Dr Sam Geall
Associate Fellow at Chatham House and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Former CEO of Dialogue Earth (formerly China Dialogue). Specialist in China’s climate and energy transition, with a PhD in Social Anthropology and deep expertise on how energy, politics and industrial policy intersect in China.

Together, they explore a question that sounds simple and turns out to be anything but:

If coal is dirty, deadly and increasingly uneconomic, why are we still using so much of it?

• Why coal still supplies around one third of global electricity

• Why absolute coal use keeps rising, even as its share of the mix falls

• How coal contributes an estimated 37% of global carbon emissions

• Why China is simultaneously building record amounts of renewables and new coal capacity

• How energy security, industrial policy and political legitimacy shape China’s coal strategy

• What’s driving India’s continued expansion of coal

• Why coal has become a culture war issue in the US

• The role of jobs, identity and community in coal regions

• Whether the UK really has “moved on” from coal, or simply offshored it

• Why carbon capture is unlikely to rescue coal at scale

• What a just transition actually looks like, and why most countries are still struggling to deliver one

Coal is declining in some regions. It is expanding in others. In many places, it is both shrinking and growing at the same time.

One thread ran through the entire conversation: coal is not just an energy source. It is a social system.

The question is not simply how to shut coal down. It is how to do so without hollowing out the places that built their lives around it.

Lucy Shaw
Follow Lucy on Substack

Dr Sam Geall
Chatham House – Environment & Society Centre

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies
https://www.oxfordenergy.org

Dialogue Earth
https://dialogue.earth

Further reading on China’s energy transition
Dialogue Earth – China energy coverage
https://dialogue.earth/en/tag/china-in-the-world/

Earth Set is a growing community of founders, investors, policymakers and operators shaping the business of climate.

We host monthly live events in London featuring people building the transition in real time.

First Tuesday of every month.
Find upcoming events and tickets at:
👉 https://earthset.co

Please consider:

• Leaving a five-star rating

• Writing a short review

• Sharing the episode with someone interested in energy, geopolitics or the future of climate policy

It helps more people discover the show and join the conversation.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you at the next live event, or back here in your feed soon.

Earth Set is back! Can you believe we're on season 2 already?! We can't!

Season 1 started as an experiment. A few live conversations. A microphone in the room. A question about whether the climate transition could be discussed with more depth and less theatre.

Ten episodes later, it became clear there was an appetite for honest conversations about how the green transition actually happens.

Season 2 builds on that momentum.

In this trailer, Fiona and Amy reflect on some of the standout moments from Season 1, from Jamie Arbib’s expansive vision of a world shaped by abundant clean energy and artificial labour  to sharp, data-led debates on net zero progress, geopolitics and environmental destruction.

Then we look ahead.

Season 2 opens with a hard look at coal. Despite progress in countries like the UK, coal still accounts for 37% of global carbon emissions . We unpack why China continues to rely on it, what that means for the global energy system, and why this conversation still matters.

We dive into climate tech investing in 2025, hosted alongside Blue Earth and Zinc at the Blue Earth Investment Forum . Which sectors are attracting capital? Where is early stage funding tightening? What does the data suggest about 2026?

We explore the politics of climate language and the surprising gap between public perception and reality. In the UK, people believe net zero will cost around 14,000% more than official estimates . At the same time, public concern about climate change remains strong. The challenge is clarity, cost and credibility.

Coming up this season:

• ​ Susannah Fisher on global adaptation and what happens if 1.5°C slips out of reach• Henry Sanderson on critical minerals, geopolitics and the supply chains behind the energy transition• A live conversation on carbon removal and the funding pathways shaping its future

Earth Set brings together founders, investors, policymakers and thinkers working at the centre of climate and business. The aim is simple: understand what is working, what is not, and what needs to happen next.

Season 2 launches on 16 February.

Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.Join us live in London - www.earthset.coAnd if you find value in these conversations, share them with someone building in this space.

Environmental destruction is often framed as harm, oversight, or bad practice. But what if we started calling it what it really is. Crime.

In this season finale of the Earth Set podcast, we are joined by Dr Julia Shaw, criminal psychologist, author, podcast host, and presenter, for a conversation that reframes how we think about crimes against the planet.

Julia is the author of Green Crime, a global investigation into the psychology behind environmental crime. Drawing on cases from around the world, she explains why these crimes keep happening, who commits them, and why society consistently underestimates their severity.

From corporate scandals like Dieselgate to illegal mining, poaching, and organised crime at sea, Julia shows how environmental crime is systemic, enabled by weak enforcement, social norms, and very human behaviour.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why environmental crimes are treated as lesser crimes, and why that matters

• The six psychological drivers behind environmental crime

• How corporate and organised environmental crimes really operate

• Why enforcement and regulation are critical to accountability

• How psychology can help change behaviour, not just policy

This episode marks the end of Season 1 of Earth Set. Thank you to everyone who has listened, shared, and joined us so far. Season 2 and more live events are coming in the new year.

📚 Resources & Links

• Green Crime by Julia Shaw

🎟️ Join Earth Set Live

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• First Tuesday of every month.
• Tickets at earthset.co

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In this episode we continue our Green Skills audio only series. Fiona speaks with Mat Ilic, CEO of Greenworkx, an organisation building the workforce needed to deliver the transition. Mat’s work sits at the intersection of industry, social impact and public policy, and he brings one of the clearest views on what the UK must do to avoid a skills bottleneck that could slow climate progress for years.

The scale of the challenge is stark: around 4 million workers will need to retrain in the next five years if the UK is to stay on track for net zero. Some jobs will disappear. Others will transform. Entirely new sectors will emerge, from low carbon heating to home energy upgrades to the electro technical work that underpins everything from data centres to EV charging.

This conversation dives into what it will take to build a workforce capable of meeting that moment.

🔍 In this episode you will learn:

• Why the workforce gap is becoming one of the biggest risks to net zero
• Why electrical skills sit at the heart of almost every part of the transition
• The real barriers stopping people from retraining, from cost to confidence to information gaps
• Why employers need policy stability to hire and invest in skills at scale
• What a fair and inclusive transition looks like for workers at every stage of their career
• How Greenworkx is creating new pathways into roles that did not exist a decade ago

Whether you are an employer, policymaker, L and D leader, or someone exploring a move into the green economy, this is a practical and ambitious guide to one of the most urgent challenges of the transition.

📚 Resources and Links

Explore Greenworkx:
https://greenworkx.org

🎟️ Join Earth Set Live

We host monthly live events in London featuring founders, policy leaders and thinkers shaping the transition to a resilient, regenerative economy. First Tuesday of every month.

Grab tickets here:
https://earthset.co

⭐ If you enjoyed this episode

Please take a moment to:

• Leave 5 stars
• Write a quick review
• Share it with someone interested in green careers or the future of work

It really helps more people discover the show. Thanks for listening, and see you at the next live event or in your feed soon.

In this live recorded episode, Amy sits down with Michael Liebreich — founder of New Energy Finance, CEO at Liebreich Associates, co-managing partner at EcoPragma Capital, adviser to governments and industry, and host of Cleaning Up — to explore his call for a Pragmatic Climate Reset.

Michael argues that the climate conversation has drifted into extremes. Doom on one side. Techno-optimism on the other. His reset calls for something different: more realism, less noise, and a clearer focus on the solutions already working at scale.

This conversation moves through politics, COP, UK energy strategy, grid bottlenecks, hydrogen hype, data centres, and the economics of electrification. Michael brings a rare mix of engineering logic, market insight and straight talking honesty — offering one of the clearest explanations of where the transition stands today.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why the climate debate needs a reset

• What Michael means by a Pragmatic Climate Reset

• Why electrification becomes inevitable when you follow the economics

• Why the hard “4 percent problem” distracts from the easy “96 percent”

• How political narratives shape the pace of climate action

• Why locational pricing could avoid billions in grid waste

• What data centre growth really means for energy demand

• Why hydrogen has become a seductive distraction

• Why behaviour change and public sentiment now matter more than ever

• What a realistic, practical path to faster deployment looks like

• What Michael is genuinely optimistic about heading into 2026

📚 Resources & Links

Michael Liebreich – Cleaning Up podcast

The Pragmatic Climate Reset – Part 1 and Part 2

🎟️ Join Earth Set Live

We host monthly live events in London featuring founders, policy leaders and thinkers shaping the transition to a resilient, regenerative economy. First Tuesday of every month. Tickets: earthset.co

⭐ If you enjoyed this episode:

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• Share it with someone working on the transition

What if the biggest story of the net zero transition isn’t technology, policy or investment, but jobs?

Jobs that disappear, jobs that transform, and millions of jobs that don’t exist yet.

In this episode, Fiona sits down with ⁠Julian Critchlow⁠, advisory partner at ⁠Bain & Company⁠, former Director General for Energy Transformation & Clean Growth in UK government, and one of the architects of the UK’s Net Zero Strategy.

Julian’s work at Bain on green skills reveals something most people haven’t yet grasped: the transition to a clean economy is going to reshape around 4 million jobs across the UK. That includes roughly 1 million entirely new roles, and 3 million people who will need significant reskilling as industries electrify, retool and reinvent themselves.

This conversation connects the dots between climate ambition, industrial strategy and the real human workforce behind the transition.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why the UK is one of the most fossil-fuel-exposed economies in the world
• The surprising sectors where green jobs will appear — including finance, transport, construction and home energy
• How electrification will transform everything from car servicing to grid engineering
• Why the biggest blockers to net zero may not be technology — but skills, training and workforce capacity
• What past transitions (like the decline of coal) teach us about avoiding social and regional disruption
• How employers can prepare for a future where their entire workforce requires new capabilities
• Why retraining at scale will demand corporate-led learning, not just universities and colleges

Whether you're an employer, policymaker, student, or someone thinking about your next career move, this is one of the clearest explanations of the real workforce implications of net zero you’ll hear.

Resources & Links:

⁠Bain & Company – Green Skills Report⁠

Join Earth Set Live:

We host monthly live events in London featuring founders, policy leaders and thinkers shaping the transition to a resilient, regenerative economy. First Tuesday of every month.

Grab tickets here: 👉 ⁠earthset.co⁠

If you enjoyed this episode:

Please take a moment to:

• Leave 5 stars
• Write a quick review
• Send it to someone interested in green careers or the future of work — it really helps more people discover the show.

Thanks for listening — see you at the next live event or in your feed soon.

In this bonus episode, we step behind the headlines of the latest UN climate talks with writer, editor, and climate activist Grace Pengelly — collaborator on the late Peter Betts’ remarkable book The Climate Diplomat: A Personal History of the COP Conferences.

Recorded in the immediate aftermath of the most recent COP, this conversation digs into what really happened, why the negotiations felt particularly fraught, and what Pete’s decades of experience can teach us about multilateral climate diplomacy — even when it looks messy, slow, or “on life support.”

Grace shares:

• How she came to work with Pete Betts during the final year of his life

• Why Pete believed COP — for all its flaws — is still the only global forum capable of delivering progress at scale

• What he might have made of the latest summit

• How “side processes” and quiet relationship-building often drive real breakthroughs

• Why reforming COP doesn’t mean abandoning it

• And the role civil society, media, finance, and long-term negotiators must play in what comes next

If you’ve ever wondered whether the COP system is still fit for purpose — or why anyone keeps turning up — this is a thoughtful, human, and deeply grounded look inside the world of climate diplomacy.

📚 Resources & People Mentioned

• Follow Grace Pengelly’s Substack 
• Forest & Climate Finance Initiative (Brazil’s ‘Forest Future Finance’ / TFF)

🎟️ Join Earth Set Live

We host monthly live events in London with founders, thinkers, policy leaders, and climate innovators. First Tuesday of every month.

Grab tickets here: 👉 https://www.earthset.co

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In this powerful live episode filmed at Bain & Company London, Earth Set co-founder Fiona Howarth sits down with Neil Shearing, Group Chief Economist at Capital Economics and author of The Fractured Age, to unpack one of the biggest economic shifts of our time: the end of globalisation as we’ve known it.

From the rise of China to the role of semiconductors, rare earths, green tech, and the geopolitical tug-of-war reshaping supply chains, Neil offers a clear-eyed look at how the world is dividing into competing blocs — and what that means for business, climate, and global security.

Together, they explore:

• Why the last 30 years of global cooperation are over — and what replaces them

• China’s economic model, Belt & Road strategy, and dominance in green tech

• How the US is reshaping alliances, tariffs, and industrial policy📉 Why Taiwan is the global economy’s most vulnerable chokepoint

• The critical minerals race: cobalt, rare earths, aluminium, and EV supply chains

• How fracturing could reshape the energy transition — for better or worse

• What Western governments must do now to stay competitive

• Who the winners and losers could be in a world split in two

Neil brings nuance, data, and clarity to a topic often dominated by headlines. If you want to understand the forces reshaping the global economy — and the future of climate action — this is essential listening.

🎧 Listen if you’re curious about:

Economics, geopolitics, supply chains, China, the US, semiconductors, industrial strategy, climate tech, the energy transition, and how global politics will shape the next decade.

🎟 Join our live events

Earth Set hosts monthly conversations in London with the people accelerating a net-positive future. Be part of the room where ideas collide and solutions emerge. Visit earthset.co for information and tickets