Zero: The Climate Race
Zero is about the tactics and technologies taking us to a world of zero emissions. Each week Bloomberg’s award-winning reporter Akshat Rathi talks to the people tackling climate change – a venture capitalist hunting for the best cleantech investment, scientists starting companies, politicians who have successfully created climate laws, and CEOs who have completely transformed their businesses. The road to zero emissions has many paths and everyone’s got an opinion about the best route. Listen in.
Episodes
More than AI, this century’s growth story is climate action
It’s 20 years since the Stern Review declared that the costs of inaction on climate change are much higher than the costs of action. So why are emissions continuing to rise? Lord Nicholas Stern tells Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi why he is optimistic about our ability to tackle climate change and what makes those actions the growth story of the 21st century. Explore further: Read for free:
When climate change threatens national security
The impacts of climate change are becoming not just unignorable, but unbearable. Yet the political consensus around climate action is fracturing, as leaders debate the speed and scale of the changes needed. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Caroline Lucas, the former head of the UK’s Green party and a member of parliament for 14 years, about the increasing threat climate change pos
The Iran war revealed that China has a new energy weapon
The Middle East conflict is now in its fifth month, deepening the oil and gas supply shock. Early in the war, analysts worried that the oil price would rise to $200 a barrel, causing a global recession and widespread panic, but that didn’t happen. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas to discuss why oil prices stayed around $100 per barrel and w
When AI and climate anxieties collide to make beautiful stories: Imagine Series
How should we navigate a world in which anxieties about AI, climate change and capitalism collide? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Helen Phillips, author of Hum and the second-ever winner of the Climate Fiction Prize. Rathi asks Phillips how she’s transformed her anxieties into captivating prose, how her relationship to technology has changed through writing and what humanity los
Bloomberg Australia: Lessons from the world's cleanest air
On a windswept cliff at the edge of Tasmania, scientists are quietly tracking the future of our planet. This week, host Rebecca Jones speaks with David Stringer, managing editor of climate and ESG news in Asia, about Kennaook/Cape Grim — home to some of the cleanest air on Earth and one of the world’s most important climate monitoring stations. Learn how decades of data are reshaping o
Ditching net zero to win the climate argument
Andy Burnham has become the UK’s sixth prime minister in just 10 years. When it comes to energy and climate, Labour Party’s Burnham will inherit many of the same challenges of his predecessors: high energy prices, security of supply and an increasingly polarized debate over the UK’s ambitions to reach net zero. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with Dale Vince, founder of
The selfish case for supporting foreign aid
Hundreds of millions of people around the world have no access to reliable electricity, a problem that doesn’t seem to be going away. Since US President Donald Trump started his second term, Western countries have cut development funding, including for climate projects. This week on Zero, Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi asks Philippe Valahu, chief executive officer of Private Infrastructure D
Is the world prepared for the 'super' El Niño?
The great famine of the 1870s killed 50 million people – and El Niño was a key driver. Another El Niño phase has just begun and it’s expected to be among the strongest. There are five times as many people in 2026 as there were in the 1870s and the planet is 1.4C hotter. So are we better prepared? Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi speaks with Mingfang Ting, professor of clima
Is the world becoming too hot for summer sports?
From hydration breaks at this year’s FIFA World Cup to the Tokyo Olympics moving its marathon 1,000km northward, climate change is affecting sport. And sport is affecting climate, as events grow in size and carbon emissions. To talk about the future of sport on an overheating planet, this week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Jessica Murfree, professor at the University of North Carolina,
Solar and batteries are thriving — even in Trump’s America
The common narrative is that the US renewables industry is struggling. But that’s not the case for the whole sector. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with Kevin Smith, chief executive officer of Cypress Creek Energy, which recently secured $3.5 billion in financing to build one of the biggest solar and battery projects in the US. Even as the current American administration dismantles cl
The energy transition debate we need to have
The key to tackling climate change is moving away from burning fossil fuels to using renewable energy. But in his book More and More and More, French historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues that the world has never actually managed a successful energy transition before and current plans are unrealistic. Many have taken his writing to mean that stopping global warming is impossible, however, he tell
Ice cream fight: Can companies have a social conscience in 2026?
Ben & Jerry’s isn’t just known for ice cream, but also its support for social causes. With over $1 billion in sales last year, it’s an asset for its owner Magnum. So why has one of its founders quit, and the other launched a campaign to make Ben & Jerry's independent? Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi sits down with co-founder Ben Cohen to ask about the Free Ben & Jerry&
How Asia’s ‘Ukraine moment’ is supercharging the energy transition
It's been more than three months since the US attacked Iran, leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that carries 20% of the world's oil and gas. The shock to energy markets has been so intense that some countries are taking longer-term measures to cope. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi and Peter Guest explore the history of policy responses to energy shocks and what’s different in the
The countries plotting the end of the fossil-fuel era
At COP28 in December 2023, the world committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels. Yet in the years since, there’s been little progress. A meeting in Colombia last month hoped to change that, gathering ministers and climate envoys from 57 countries to try and chart a path to end the use of fossil fuels. This week on Zero, Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treat
Reform’s Richard Tice wants to end decades of UK climate action
Reform UK is currently the most popular party in Britain. If voted into government, it wants to end all subsidies for renewable energy, ban battery energy storage, end net-zero targets, drill for more oil and gas in the North Sea and encourage fracking on British soil. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice about the party’s climate and energy plans, a
Electrons will be central to the next era of geopolitical stability
With wars raging and supply chains blocked, we’re in an era of geopolitical chaos. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with Gerald Butts, chairman of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group and former chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They discuss how investors and companies are responding to the energy shock, where the green transition might falter and who will emerge
The Iran war shows why clean energy is the more secure choice
Everywhere you look, you see two types of technology existing side-by-side. One that runs on fossil fuels and one that runs on clean electricity. There’s an ongoing struggle between the two, a tug of war between two very different futures. Some call it the mid-transition, and it comes with costs that make it politically fraught. This week on Zero, Emily Grubert, professor of sustainable ener
A new world order is emerging. Can it tackle climate change?
We are living in an increasingly divided world. It took two decades to get to the Paris Agreement, and then global cooperation really lasted only for a decade. One key reason for this fragmentation is US President Donald Trump, who has taken an axe to the rules-based international order that America helped build. This week on Zero, Gordon LaForge, senior policy analyst at think tank New America, t
London’s mayor on lessons from one of the world’s greenest cities
Sadiq Khan is about to complete 10 years as London’s mayor. He’s seen the city affected by Brexit, the pandemic and two energy crises. That hasn’t deterred him from deploying some of the strongest air-quality regulations in any city. But he hasn’t yet succeeded in getting enough homes built and struggled to keep improving the train network. As cities keep growing, Khan talk
Caution, not ambition, will shape the next decade of climate action
In the past month, we've seen two major plans from two of the world's biggest polluters. In March, China approved its 15th five-year plan, which gave us a clearer sense of how the government makes progress on its climate goals. A few weeks after that, India published its climate plan for 2035. This week on Zero, Bloomberg Green’s Lili Pike and Akshat Rathi discuss those climate plans, and wh
How the Iran war will reshape the future of energy
Since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global energy markets have been frenetic, prices swinging up and down with each new headline. Even with the prospect of the Strait of Hormuz reopening, prices of oil and gas have risen around the world, and we’re starting to see impacts on local economies, particularly in Asia. This week on Zero, Bloomberg opinion columnist D
Climate tech makes Europe more resilient to Iran War shocks
Will the Iran War finally be the moment where countries move to renewables en masse, or will they rely more heavily on fossil fuels? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Aurore Belfrage, a tech investor, geopolitical risk advisor, and sustainability strategist, to look at how the energy investment landscape is changing with a fresh war in the Middle East, and how climate tech is making cou
Here's Why: The Iran war resets the energy transition
Here's Why is Bloomberg’s short explainer podcast, where we take one big news story and break it down in just a few minutes with help from our experts across the newsroom.We're dropping into your feed with a special episode featuring Akshat Rathi, who joined us to discuss why the Iran war is making a new argument for renewable energy.The war in the Middle East has roiled oil and gas mar
Zack Polanski’s plan to tax billionaires and make energy affordable
Zack Polanski is challenging the notion that you can’t be Green and a popular politician. Since he became the leader of the UK’s Green Party in September 2025, he has run a campaign that’s pushed his party ahead of the incumbent Labour Party and opposition Conservative Party in some polls. It’s a remarkable rise in a short span of time – how did he pull it off and wha
Big Take: The energy crisis is speeding up clean tech adoption worldwide
As the war with Iran drags out and oil prices remain turbulent, it raises the question of whether — and how — prolonged conflict in the Middle East might impact global fossil fuel dependence and the future of renewable energy. This week on Big Take podcast, Bloomberg reporter Todd Woody and Zero podcast host Akshat Rathi join Sarah Holder to discuss early signs that the high cost of oi
The future of climate science without US support
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is responsible for collating our shared scientific understanding of how global warming is impacting the planet. But the body now faces a challenge after the US withdrew funding for its scientists to participate. Professor Jim Skea, who chairs the IPCC, joins Akshat Rathi on Zero to talk about the body’s future, whether the organisa
‘Everywhere I looked, climate change bled’ Abi Daré on writing fiction: Imagine series
In the latest episode of Zero’s Imagine series, Akshat Rathi is joined by Abi Daré, winner of the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize. Abi is the bestselling author of And So I Roar, which tells the story of the teenager Adunni as she confronts superstition, lack of education and the impacts of climate change on the rural communities of Nigeria. Abi joins Zero to talk about the role clima
War with Iran is a nightmare for oil and gas. What does it mean for clean energy?
Many consider a widespread war in the Middle East the worst-case scenario for the global oil and gas markets. That war is here, and it could have wide-ranging, long-lasting impacts on energy and climate policy. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and former energy and climate advisor to President Barack Ob
Lessons to avoid societal collapse, from 5,000 years of history
Societal collapses happen more often than you think, and there’s much we can learn from the past to avoid or, at least, delay another one. This week’s guest on Zero is Luke Kemp, author of Goliath's Curse, which draws lessons from the rise and fall of societies over 5,000 years of human history. Akshat Rathi asks Luke whether our current moment — with climate change and AI &
(Sponsored Content) Evolving Money: Blue Chip Meets Blockchain
Crypto has become increasingly integrated into the financial system, from the use of stablecoins for payments, to the trading of tokenized equities on blockchains, to the adoption of crypto holdings by corporate treasuries. We explore how PNC Bank, one of the first movers in this space, has been expanding access to crypto and the challenges it has had to overcome. This episode is sponsored by Coin
Ethiopia’s fossil fuel car ban is a vision of the future
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
Do artists have a duty to be political? Imagine series
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 ti
Electricity is now holding back growth across the global economy
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 So
George Saunders goes inside the mind of a climate denier: Imagine series
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
Electrification – not decarbonization – is the climate story of 2026
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 elec
Did we get climate finance all wrong?
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 Cent
America the bully becomes the supreme petrostate
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.
Abundance or adequacy? The search for better climate futures: Imagine series
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
Update: Have China's emissions finally peaked?
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 re
How cash-strapped Argentina became a bright spot for renewables
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 minist
Is this the end of Canada's climate ambitions?
When Canada elected Mark Carney as prime minister, there was hope that the country would pursue climate policies. That hope was crushed after Carney signed a deal with the oil-producing province of Alberta that will roll back or dilute green regulations. As a result, Steven Guilbeault, Carney’s culture minister has resigned from cabinet. He was the environment minister under Justin Tru
How China’s engineering mindset won the clean-tech race
In his new book Breakneck, tech analyst Dan Wang argues China’s engineering mindset has given it an edge in all sorts of domains, including climate technologies, while America’s lawyerly mindset is holding it back. This week on Zero, Wang tells Akshat Rathi what the world can learn from China and how the US could start to compete on green tech in the future. This episode was reco
Bloomberg Australia: How Australia’s climate fight was rekindled
Australia has suffered a major climate setback, losing its bid to host next year’s COP summit in Adelaide. At the same time, the Coalition has reignited Australia’s climate wars by abandoning its commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 – a reversal that resets the political debate just as the world pushes for faster decarbonisation. In this episode, Rebecca Jones asks Bloomberg&
Climate summits are working as they were designed: poorly
Over the last two weeks, tens of thousands of people took to the city of Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon river, for the annual United Nations climate summit: COP30. Alongside tense negotiations, there were indigenous protests, daily rainstorms and even a fire at the COP venue. But at the end of it all, what did COP30 achieve? Bloomberg Green’s Jennifer Dlouhy joins Akshat Rathi on Zero, to
Al Gore: Fossil fuel companies are destabilizing democracy and environment
Climate solutions are here, they’re just not evenly distributed. So says former US Vice President Al Gore, who remains staunchly optimistic that we can move faster to tackle climate change, even at a time of increasing political resistance in some parts of the world. This week on Zero, Gore joins Akshat Rathi to discuss what it means to be a climate realist, the ways to move more finan
Al Gore says 'We may have passed peak Trump'
Former US Vice President Al Gore is one of the grandees of the climate world and knows just how much power America can wield on the international stage. So with President Trump on the warpath against climate action, how should other nations deal with an increasingly rogue US? Gore joins Akshat Rathi on Zero to talk geopolitics, polarization, and energy-hungry artificial intelligence. E
Exxon thinks it can count carbon better
Most oil company CEOs have turned their back on COP30, but not ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, who this year attended his third COP conference in a row. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Woods why Exxon is backing a new carbon accounting idea, what his plan is now that the Inflation Reduction Act has been gutted, and why Exxon wanted the US to stay in the Paris Agreement. Explore further: Z
Searching for climate solutions in the Amazon
COP30 negotiations have officially started, and began with a fight about what to put on the agenda. While not completely unexpected for these enormous multilateral gatherings, it’s a rockier start than the Brazilian hosts in Belem would have wanted. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Rachel Kyte, the UK’s Special Representative for Climate, to talk about how to forge climate
At COP30, the economic logic of climate action is up for debate
World leaders are gathering in Belem, Brazil, for the COP30 climate negotiations, but what will be achieved? Brazil hasn’t given much indication of what it hopes will emerge from the negotiations, other than implementing the many promises of previous COPs. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with COP30 President, André Corrêa do Lago, to try and figure out how the negotiat
What did 10 years of the Paris Agreement actually achieve?
The Paris Agreement was a huge deal when it was signed in 2015 at COP21. But after 10 years and $10 trillion dollars invested into decarbonizing our economies, what has it accomplished? As we approach COP30 in Belem, Bloomberg Green’s Laura Millan and Akshat Rathi look back at a decade of the Paris Agreement, and speak to Christiana Figueres and Laurence Tubiana, two of the architects of the
The world’s biggest consumers of electricity are hidden in plain sight
Just three companies control the lion’s share of the $120 billion global market for industrial gases: Linde, Air Liquide & Air Products. And because the production of these gases is so energy intensive, each company consumes as much electricity as some small to medium-sized European countries. This week on Zero, Sanjiv Lamba, CEO of Linde, tells Akshat Rathi how he sees electricity deman
The ‘science’ behind economics explains the big problems we face
From trade wars to skyrocketing tech valuations, governments and investors seem to be making economically irrational moves. As the world heads into another global climate summit, there is a need for fresh thinking to bring countries back to work on the urgent challenge of climate change. This week on Zero, political economist Abby Innes tells Akshat Rathi what governments are getting wrong about a
What climate tech is overhyped and what's not
There's always big ideas in the climate technology space, but it can be hard to get your head around all the different types of technologies making waves. What’s real and what’s low-carbon smoke and mirrors? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi teams up with venture capitalist and Catalyst podcast host Shayle Kann to talk about which climate technologies are working, and which are going now
US fossil fuels vs. Chinese clean tech, who’s winning on exports?
There’s a battle underway to win the energy export market between the world’s two largest economies: The US wants the world to buy its fossil fuels, while China wants to sell the world its clean energy technologies. For now, there is a clear winner: China. How did that happen? Akshat Rathi and Oscar Boyd discuss. More: Read Akshat’s newsletter Read Ember’s report on elect
Renewables promised to be cheap. Why aren’t people feeling it?
The UK used to be a shining example of how to act on climate change. It created one of the world’s first climate laws in 2008, which bound the government to reduce emissions on tight deadlines. That law used to have cross-party support, but that’s no longer the case with politicians trying to make climate a wedge issue. This week on Zero, Greg Jackson, chief executive officer of the UK
Big Take: AI data centers use a lot of energy. You may be paying for it
AI needs a lot of energy — and a new Bloomberg investigation has found that those soaring costs are being passed on to consumers who live near data centers. On today’s Big Take podcast, host David Gura talks to Bloomberg reporters Josh Saul and Leonardo Nicoletti about the AI boom’s impact on power bills, how utility companies are handling surging demand and the implications for
A return to coal? AI’s demand for gas turbines risks a new crisis: Bottlenecks Series
Rising power demand from data centers for artificial intelligence has led to a shortage of the gas turbines needed to generate electricity. This shortage might not seem the most obvious climate story, but it's having impacts across the entire energy sector. This week on Zero, Bloomberg’s Stephen Stapczynski joins Akshat Rathi to look at what’s causing the bottleneck in gas turbines, if
The extraordinary rise of electric cars in developing countries
Something remarkable is unfolding in developing countries. From Nepal to Costa Rica, more people are buying electric cars than fossil-fuel vehicles, as battery prices plummet and cheap home-grown EVs come to market. And in China, more electric cars will be sold in the last quarter of this year than the total number of all cars sold in the US. Colin McKerracher, head of transport at BNEF, joins Aks
Building monuments to the end of oil: Imagine series
Monira Al Qadiri says she is pre-empting the end of oil and building monuments to it. As one of the most important contemporary artists of the Middle East, her work — spanning sculptures, films and performances — throws new light on humanity’s deep interdependent relationship with fossil fuels. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Al Qadiri how art can help make sense of the curr
Formula E shows the mind-boggling speed at which electric cars evolve
You’ve heard about Formula 1, right? But do you know about Formula E, its plucky all-electric sibling? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with Sylvain Filippi, co-founder and chief technology officer of Envision Racing, about why the world needs an electric racing series, how Formula E is improving the experience for consumer electric cars, and why he’s not too concerned about the U
Your questions answered: Is Donald Trump a climate warrior in disguise?
This week, we hear from you. Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi answers questions from Zero listeners: Can a decline in trade help fight climate change? How do we tell if corporations are greenwashing or not? And are we about to enter a new era of global collaboration when it comes to green tech? If you have a question for the show, send us a voice note or message to zeropod@bloomberg.net. Explo
Big Take: How hot is too hot? The latest science on extreme heat
Nearly half a million people die every year as a result of extreme heat. That’s more than the total from hurricanes, earthquakes and floods combined. And as the planet warms, the risk of deadly heat is increasing. On Bloomberg's Big Take podcast, climate reporter Zahra Hirji brings Sarah Holder a dispatch from a lab at the forefront of understanding how heat affects the human body. They brea
Best of: Kim Stanley Robinson imagines utopia in 2025
Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson imagines the future for a living. And the future is very much upon us. Robinson’s seminal 2020 novel Ministry for the Future opens in the year 2025. Robinson tells Akshat Rathi about how our real-life climate politics stack up against what he imagined for this era. They also discuss the dangers of science-fiction thinking in politics and why,
The 100-ton device that can stop blackouts in the renewables era: Bottlenecks Series
In April, Spain suffered a nationwide blackout that lasted nearly a full day. It was a traumatic event for one of Europe’s fastest adopters of solar power, tripling capacity in just five years. The outage sparked a big question: Was solar to blame? And what will it take to avoid blackouts in the renewables era? Bloomberg Green’s Laura Millan joins Akshat Rathi on Zero to unpack the les
Build small, grow fast: Can small modular reactors live up to the hype?
Electricity demand is soaring, and some think the answer isn’t building bigger, but smaller. That’s the idea behind small modular reactors (SMRs): take a large-scale nuclear plant that’s hard to build, and shrink it down to something that’s more manageable, cheaper and easier to replicate. Instead of one huge nuclear plant, you build 10 small ones. Right now these kin
How rich countries can build cheap nuclear power again
Electricity demand is booming, and it’s not just because of artificial intelligence. So much so that many are ready to revisit the idea of nuclear power. Microsoft signed a $16 billion deal to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power their data centres for the next 20 years. But developed countries haven’t built more than a handful of new reactors in decades. When they have
How a bunch of students beat big polluters in the world's highest court
In 2019, a group of law students from Pacific island nations set in motion a case that made it to the world’s highest court: The International Court of Justice. The students wanted answers to two important questions: what responsibility do countries have to stop climate change? And if countries don’t stop polluting, will they have to pay for the damages? Now the ICJ has delivered its v
Trump’s immigration policy is a nightmare for climate tech
Everywhere you look, it seems like bad news for climate tech. Investments are down, the US government has cut incentives and startups are running out of cash. But venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is still bullish, even though the One Big Beautiful Bill cut an estimated $500 billion in green spending. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Khosla to find out when we can expect to see fusion, wh
How to fight against Trump’s attack on clean energy
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts almost $500 billion in US clean-energy spending, just as the country was starting to get serious about its climate goals. Some say the country is acting like a petrostate, waging war against clean energy. Others are more sanguine and believe that the US will stay the course in the long term. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Jigar Shah, a clean energy
Trumponomics: Will Trump’s bill trigger a ‘Big, Beautiful’ energy crunch?
This week, we explore how the legislation’s attack on renewable energy may push up electricity bills and damage US competitiveness in AI. The tax credits in President Joe Biden’s sprawling Inflation Reduction Act were introduced to help the US keep up with rising electricity demand by making clean power sources cheaper. But now the big bill has changed all that, and an executive order
Why militaries can no longer ignore climate change
The world’s militaries are incredibly polluting, collectively accounting for some 5.5% of global emissions. Western economies are now gearing up for a big expansion of their militaries, with members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) agreeing to increase defense spending to 5% of their gross domestic product by 2035. That will commit trillions of dollars more to an enormously c
(Sponsored Content) Stewards of Compassion: Doing Business With Compassion
What does it mean to do business with compassion? How can a company marry purpose with profit? We explore that and more with B.Grimm--the Thai conglomerate that has been doing business compassionately for nearly 150 years. https://sponsored.bloomberg.com/media/bgrimm/the-stewards-of-compassion-podcast This episode is sponsored by B.GRIMM.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The UK now has a state-owned clean-energy champion. Can it succeed?
When the UK handed the Labour party a parliamentary majority last July, it promised to build a new state owned energy company called Great British Energy. It's almost exactly one year since its creation, and GB Energy now has a budget of £5.8 billion to get the organization off the ground. It sounds like a lot of money, but is it? And what exactly will the organization do with all of it? On
What a venture capitalist does when climate tech loses its shine
Climate tech is not the hot investor thesis it once was a couple of years ago. After several record breaking years, and billions of dollars being poured into climate startups, venture capital investments are way down. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Mike Schroepfer, who runs Gigascale Capital, a venture firm focusing on climate investments, and used to be Meta’s chief technology
Have China’s emissions finally peaked?
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
There aren’t enough cables to meet rising electricity demand: Bottlenecks Series
High-voltage electricity cables are in huge demand around the world, so much so that a lack of cabling has become a bottleneck throttling the clean energy transition. So why are cable manufacturers so hesitant to expand? Also, how are these giant cables made? And is China about to eat everyone's lunch? Claes Westerlind, chief executive officer of cable manufacturing company NKT, joins Zero to disc
A skilled worker shortage is becoming an ‘existential’ problem for the energy transition: Bottlenecks Series
Western economies need to electrify and fast, but where are all the skilled workers going to come from to install the heat pumps, solar panels and batteries needed? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with Olivia Rudgard about the shortage of labor in electrification industries, and why some experts are calling it an ‘existential’ crisis. This is the second episode in Bottlenecks, a
The device throttling the world’s electrified future: Bottlenecks Series
To slash emissions fast, the formula is simple: electrify everything and clean up the grid. But in practice, progress is slowed by all sorts of bottlenecks — from arcane permitting processes to sky-high electricity costs. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with producer Oscar Boyd to spotlight a surprising culprit slowing the transition: a global shortage of transformers, and why it h
How carbon removal pioneer Climeworks is tackling its first major layoff
Scientists are clear that meeting climate goals means ending carbon pollution and drawing down excess CO2 from the air. That’s why carbon-removal technologies have proliferated over the past decade. But with the US government slashing climate incentives and programs, some companies are being forced to cut costs. This week Akshat Rathi speaks with Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder of Climeworks, a s
A trillion-dollar fund manager on climate investing in 2025
Low-carbon tech investments reached $2.1 trillion last year. But with the whole world trying to work out how to navigate US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable policy agenda, is 2025 still a good time to invest in climate tech? This week on Zero Akshat Rathi interviews Greg Wasserman, head of private company climate investment at Wellington Management, which oversees more than $1 tr
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