Zero: The Climate Race

In 2024, Ethiopia did something revolutionary. It banned the import of fossil fuel cars and cut tariffs on electric vehicles. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with producer Oscar Boyd and Ethiopia-based EV entrepreneur Yuma Sasaki about the EV boom that ensued and what that tells us about the growth of EVs in rapidly developing countries like Ethiopia.

Read more:

• Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports
• Dodai's website: https://dodai.co 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Fasika Tadesse, Sommer Saadi, Laura Millan, and Sharon Chen. 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.

How can music be used to communicate the climate crisis and its solutions? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Julia Wolfe about her recent work, unEarth, which explores climate change and habitat loss through orchestra, voice and poetry. Wolfe discusses how she did her research, captured the clash between humanity and nature, and what the piece means at a time when her home country of the US seems to be moving ever further from climate action. 

Listen to unEarth:

If you'd like to listen to the full performance of Julia Wolfe’s unEarth, it will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Thursday, 12 February at 7.30pm UK time, and will be available on BBC Sounds, at least for those here in the UK, for the next month. 

Explore further:

• Julia Wolfe’s website: https://juliawolfemusic.com/
• Past episodes in the Imagine series: 
• George Saunders on Climate Guilt, AI and Critical Thinking
• Kim Stanley Robison on Abundance, Adequacy and Better Climate Futures
• Artist Monira Al Qadiri on the End of Oil

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Sharon Chen and Laura Millan. 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.

Major economies around the world are grappling with electricity grids under stress from equipment bottlenecks and workforce shortages. What can be done to solve it? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with Manoj Sinha, CEO of Husk Power Systems, about distributed energy resources and their potential to bring electricity to where it is needed most — from energy-poor regions in the Global South, to energy-hungry data centres in rich countries.

Bottlenecks series:

• Electricity Is Now Holding Back Growth Across the Global Economy

• AI-Driven Demand for Gas Turbines Risks a New Energy Crunch
• The Fix for Solar Power Blackouts Is Already Here
• There Aren’t Enough Engineers to Meet World’s Growing Hunger for Power
• The One Device Throttling the World’s Electrified Future

Other related stories

• Renewables Are Cheap. Why Aren’t People Seeing Their Bills Fall?
• Biggest Mini-Grid Firm Seeks $400 Million, Plans Revenue Surge

Q&A: Got a question for Akshat and the Bloomberg Green team that you'd like to hear answered on Zero? Email us at [email protected] 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Marilen Martin Somer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Laura Millan and Sharon Chen. 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 is the best way to tell a climate story? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Booker Prize-winning novelist George Saunders. His new novel Vigil is an exploration of guilt, told on the deathbed of an oil executive haunted by ghosts.

Rathi asks Saunders what he learned about climate change, his thoughts on whether AI complements or compromises human creativity, and why literature still matters in the era of TikTok.

Explore further:

• In ‘Vigil,’ George Saunders Asks: Can An Oil CEO Repent? — Bloomberg
• The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable — Amitav Ghosh

Other episodes in the Imagine series:

• Building Monuments to the End of Oil — Kuwaiti artist Monira Al Qadiri
• Abundance or Adequacy? Search for Better Climate Solutions — Sci-fi bestseller Kim Stanley Robinson

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Gautam Naik, Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Sharon Chen and Laura Millan. 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.

Decarbonizing energy is just one part of the climate story. The other half is electrifying as much as possible. That is why electrification, not decarbonization, is likely going to be the most important climate story of 2026.

Kingsmill Bond is a strategist at thinktank Ember and the author of a paper called the Electrotech Revolution. This week on Zero, Bond tells Akshat Rathi why he believes electrification is inevitable, and what happens to those that are left behind.

Explore further:

• India Is Electrifying Faster Than China Using Cheap Green Tech
• Read Ember's Electric Revolution report.
• Read Ember's analysis of India's electrification.
• Read Bloomberg's Bottlenecks series.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Sharon Chen and Laura Millan. 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.

For the last decade, since the Paris Agreement was signed, governments have been trying to nudge big financial players to move more money into climate solutions. The idea was to drive action through data disclosure and net-zero goals, but that hasn’t yielded the results they hoped for. Have we got our approach to climate finance wrong? Lisa Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Center on Sustainable Investment, makes the case this week on the Zero podcast. 

Explore further:

• Mark Carney’s full Tragedy of the Horizon speech - Bank of England
• There’s a $10 Trillion Antidote to Trump’s Climate Backlash - Bloomberg 
• Best Coffee Substitute? We Gave "Beanless" Brands a Try - Bloomberg 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Alastair Marsh, Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Sharon Chen and Laura Millan. 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.

President Donald Trump wants US companies to rebuild Venezuela's oil fields after the capture of Nicolas Maduro.

This week on Zero, US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse joins Akshat Rathi to discuss why the US is acting like a petro bully, how countries can resist an increasingly aggressive Trump administration and why Democrats are making a mistake by shying away from talking about climate action.

Read more:

• Venezuela’s New Leader Is the Oil Industry’s Long-Time Ally 
• Venezuela’s Rule by Fear Endures After Maduro Capture: Photos - Bloomberg

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Jennifer Dlouhy, Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Sharon Chen and Laura Millan. 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.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s life project has been imagining utopias. He’s a science-fiction writer best known in climate circles for writing Ministry For The Future, which depicts a future in which the world gets to grips with climate change following an extreme heat event that kills millions. Robinson joins Akshat Rathi this week on Zero to discuss how to create better futures and whether it’s right to pursue abundance.  

Explore more of Kim Stanley Robinson on Zero:

• Kim Stanley Robinson imagines utopia in 2025
• How a utopian sci-fi author writes toward a low-carbon future

Other episode in the Imagine series:

• George Saunders goes inside the mind of a climate denier
• Monira Al Qadiri on building monuments to the end of oil

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Sharon Chen and Laura Millan. 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 episode was originally recorded in July 2025, and updated in December 2025. Happy Holidays from the Zero team. 

When exactly China’s emissions peak will make a big difference to the fate of the planet. That moment has come, according to Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. A combination of factors – including a huge deployment of renewables and electrification of transport – has put China’s emissions into a structural decline. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Myllyvirta how confident he is that this really is a peak? What’s behind the decline in emissions? And how will the trade war with the US affect China’s climate and energy policies in the years to come?

Explore further:

• Lauri's latest analysis for Carbon Brief.
• Global Carbon Budget analysis.  
• Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time - Carbon Brief
• China Set to Reach Peak Emissions Before 2030, Ex-Official Says - Bloomberg
• China’s Solar Industry Gathers as Gloom Deepens Over Demand — Bloomberg

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to: Jess Beck, Eleanor Harrison-Dengate, Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam and Siobhan Wagner. 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.

Despite endless financial difficulties, Argentina has seen a remarkable increase in clean energy over the past decade. It has gone from practically zero to almost 18% of its electricity sourced from renewables. In doing so, Argentina has overcome a challenge faced by many countries that are considered uninvestable by major financial institutions.

Sebastian Kind, former undersecretary at the ministry of energy in Argentina, joins Akshat Rathi on Zero to tell the story of Argentina’s renewables blitz.

Explore further:

• Sebastian’s organisation, RELP: https://www.relp.ngo/
• Sebastian’s TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACC5KCPRt_U

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Sharon Chen and Laura Millan. 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.