Zero: The Climate Race

As Florida reels from the impact of Hurricane Milton, some Wall Street investors appear to be on track to profit from catastrophe bonds tied to the storm’s outcome. Cat bonds are a specialized insurance tool that can help people who've lost their homes find money to rebuild– or deliver big profits to investors who are willing to gamble on big natural disasters. As Bloomberg’s Gautam Naik has reported, last year cat bonds were the most profitable strategy for hedge funds. Naik tells Akshat Rathi about how these financial instruments differ from ordinary insurance, and why they have become an appealing proposition for climate vulnerable nations desperate for any kind of help they can get.

Explore further:

• Read the Big Take story on how catastrophe bonds are helping Florida but not Jamaica
• Past episode about compound climate impacts with Texas Tech University professor Katharine Hayhoe
• Past episode with Avinash Persaud, special adviser on climate change for the Inter-American Development Bank, about the fight brewing over what money richer nations will pay to help poorer nations face climate change

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Aaron Rutkoff, Siobhan Wagner, Jim Wyss, Jessica Beck, Ethan Steinberg, 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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Next month, when delegates from around the world meet in Baku, Azerbaijan at COP29, the biggest questions on the table will have to do with money. Can rich nations find a way to meet developing countries’ demand for up to $1 trillion each year in climate finance? Avinash Persaud, special adviser on climate change for the Inter-American Development Bank, has spent his career looking for ways to make global markets work to unlock climate financing. He says the biggest challenges arise from a simple reality: “The people who benefit and the people who pay are different.” Persaud tells Akshat Rathi why he believes climate change is an “uninsurable” event, and discusses the kinds of financial instruments and commitments that can help poorer countries contribute to the energy transition and adapt to a warmer world.   

Explore further:

• Previous episode with Avinash Persaud about pressuring the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to accelerate the roll-out of clean technologies in developing countries
• Past episode about the significance of the COP28 text  
• Past episode with African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina about financial instruments the bank is using to encourage investors to fund green development projects

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Siobhan Wagner 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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What if major economies all just agreed to quit fossil fuels  — together? To date, 13 countries have signed a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty. The biggest is Colombia, which has a $40 billion economic transition plan to build up green sectors and replace oil and gas revenue. Now Colombia is hoping to recruit other large economies to follow suit. 

During a conversation at Climate Week in New York, Akshat Rathi sat down with Colombia’s environment minister, Susana Muhamad, and Brazil's chief climate negotiator, Liliam Chagas, to talk about what it will take for more nations to combat climate change. Brazil has not joined the treaty, yet, but as the designated host of COP30 in 2025, the country has signaled that it, too, wants to be a leader on climate change. 

Explore further:

• Past episode about what Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are planning to do when it comes to climate
• Past episode with Reclaim Finance’s Lucie Pinson about how to get banks to stop investing in fossil fuel projects 
• Past episode about the significance of COP28’s resolution to transition away from fossil fuels

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scientists have been trying to understand — and mimic — the way the sun produces energy for centuries. But recreating the energy-generating process of nuclear fusion here on Earth presents an array of technical challenges. Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, began working on some of those challenges as a doctoral student at MIT. Now backed by more than $2 billion, CFS is well on its way to making the long-held dream of nuclear fusion a reality. On this week’s Zero, Mumgaard breaks down the science behind CFS’s bagel-shaped tokamak reactor, and explains why he believes the nuclear fusion industry is just getting started.

Explore further:

• Past episode with Bill Gates on why he is investing big in nuclear power
• Past episode with Tim Latimer about why he founded geothermal startup Fervo
• Past episode with BNEF’s Claire Curry about how startups can succeed in a difficult investment environment

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Monique Mulima, and Jess Beck. 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.

In a little more than six weeks, Americans will cast their votes in a presidential election that has enormous stakes for the future of the planet. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with energy and environment reporter Jen Dlouhy to talk about how Kamala Harris could advance US climate policy — and how Donald Trump could chip away at it.  “Starting on day one, he's already said he intends to direct federal agencies to begin repealing and replacing climate regulations,” she says.

At this stage of the campaign, Harris’s plans are still somewhat opaque. But if elected, her administration is expected to keep quietly pushing forward policies passed under President Biden. “There's still tremendous work to get the IRA's programs running to get dollars flowing,” Dlouhy says. “The Treasury Department still hasn't finished writing rules for how people can claim tax credits under the law, including those governing hydrogen production and clean electricity. So there's just a lot of administrative work to be done to kind of unstick this process to accelerate deployment.” 

Explore further:

• Past episode with voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams on how middle and low-income families access the tax breaks that can help them affordably electrify their homes 
• Past episode with former Conservative Minister Chris Skidmore on how the UK’s Conservatives have given up on climate policy
• Past episode with John Kerry, former US special presidential envoy for climate

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.