Zero: The Climate Race

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.