Zero: The Climate Race

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.

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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. 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.

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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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.