The REM Podcast - Renewable Energy Movement
The REM Podcast - Renewable Energy Movement brings together the most successful project development and delivery leaders in utility-scale renewable energy to share their stories and insights. Hosted by Tom Essex, the show offers authentic conversations from within this niche industry. Episodes explore market challenges, how leaders plan to navigate them, and what happens behind the scenes of large renewable projects. It serves as a go-to resource for professionals working in utility-scale renewable energy development and delivery.
Episodes
Grace Kankindi: A Good Asset Isn't Always a Good Investment
Grace Kankindi is Deputy Head of Investment Management at Aquila Clean Energy. She grew up in Rwanda, where once a month everyone, even the head of state, comes out to clean up their community. That stayed with her.In this episode, Grace walks us through her career. A biodigester project in Canada that showed her how much money decides what gets built. A master's at Yale. Four years in Washington
Ypatios Moysiadis: Victims of Our Own Success
Ypatios Moysiadis has spent more than 20 years working in renewable energy across over a dozen European markets. His career started around the time of Greece’s first feed-in tariff, and today he leads sales across the UK, Ireland and Denmark at BELECTRIC.In this episode, Ypatios shares his view on where the renewable energy industry stands today and why its rapid growth has also created some big c
Joaquín Aparicio: Delusional Until It Works
This week on the Renewable Energy Movement Podcast, host Tom Essex is joined by Joaquín Aparicio, founder of Energía Circular. Joaquín's career started almost by chance, from a mining project on his family's land in Spain to seven years building grid connections in Scotland, to helping stand up Scottish Power's solar and battery business from just two employees.Joaquín and Tom talk through his pat
Carmelo Bongiovanni: Building a Solar Giant Across Three Continents
Carmelo Bongiovanni is Managing Director of Enevo Group and CEO of Enevo Spain, and his career started with a stroke of luck: two weeks after joining his first company in Milan, it got bought out, putting him in the room with international clients and investment banks before he'd even finished training.From there it's taken him through the UK and then to Japan, where at just 27 he set up an entire
From Banana Farms to Battery Storage: Roberto Jimenez's Unlikely Path to BW ESS
Roberto Jimenez is Executive Director of BW ESS in Germany and previously spent more than 13 years at Shell, most recently as VP of Onshore Power Europe.In this episode, Roberto takes us through a career that started far away from renewables. He grew up between the Philippines, Brazil, Guatemala and Cameroon because of his father’s work, before starting his own career at a small engineering compan
Alvaro Sanz (Enerside): Why Chile and Spain Keep Having the Same Blackout
This week, Tom sits down with Alvaro Sanz, Director of Development at Enerside, who has worked on renewable energy and grid challenges across Chile, Mexico, Spain and Italy.They talk about the blackouts in Chile and Spain, why similar grid problems keep showing up in different countries, and what the industry can learn from them.Alvaro also shares how he helped grow Enerside’s storage pipeline fro
James Innes: 20 Years Building UK Wind, Solar & Battery — and the £100bn Grid Problem Ahead
This week on the Renewable Energy Movement Podcast, Tom sits down with James Innes, Head of UK Development at Elmia.James started out in oil and gas before moving into renewables in 2005, joining Iberdrola as the UK onshore wind market was starting to grow.Since then, he’s seen almost every side of the UK renewables market, from developing wind projects with Iberdrola and Scottish Power, to moving
Are Flexible Data Centers Better Than Batteries? | Lukas Pfeiffer
What if the answer to grid congestion isn’t always a battery? 👀This week, Tom sits down with Lukas Pfeiffer, CEO and Co-Founder of Gridmetry, to talk about why flexible data centres could be one of the most overlooked tools available to renewable energy developers.Lukas took a very different route into the industry... From telecoms and data centre consulting, to Bitcoin mining, and eventually to b
Paolo Tusa: From Coal to Clean | Why Joining Early Changed Everything | Part 2
In Part 2 with Tom Essex, Paolo Tusa gets into what’s really happening in the Italian renewable energy market.They talk about why the market is heading towards more consolidation, why trying to operate across too many countries doesn’t always work, and why Paolo walked away from Enfinity Global when the pressure around the IPO became too much.Paolo also explains why he sees renewable energy as a m
Paolo Tusa: From Coal to Clean | Why Joining Early Changed Everything
Paolo Tusa didn't plan a career in renewable energy.He started out managing one of Europe's biggest construction sites, a coal power plant just outside Rome with nearly 4,000 people on site. Then, in 2009, he made the move into the Italian solar market when the industry was still in its early days.In this episode, Paolo shares how that decision shaped the rest of his career, from building teams an
Roland Flaig — The HR Guy Who Ran Half of Europe's Wind Portfolio | Part 2
In Part 2 of our conversation with Roland Flaig, CEO of ANEO, we get into what happens after the big mergers are done and the real work beginsRoland walks us through what it was actually like to merge the RWE and E.ON operational teams across 12 countries, what separates a good site manager from a truly great operations leader, why psychological safety on a multi-contractor construction site is ha
Roland Flaig — The HR Guy Who Ran Half of Europe's Wind Portfolio (Part 1)
How does someone go from working in HR to running massive, heavy-duty engineering operations for one of Europe's biggest energy utilities?In Part 1 of this special two-part episode, Tom Essex sits down with Roland Flaig, CEO of Aneo. Roland shares his incredible career pivot and breaks down his unique leadership philosophy: treating your assets like people, and your people like assets.If you want
Abel De Voogd - The Political Scientist Who Builds Solar Farms
Abel de Voogd is Head of Project Development at ABO Energy in the Netherlands. He didn't come from an engineering background. Instead, he studied political science before finding his way into renewable energy, where he's now spent more than 10 years developing solar projects, mainly for the Dutch farming sector.In this episode, Tom and Abel talk about the real challenges of agri-solar. They discus
Structuring For Success!
This week on REM Rewind, Tom Essex pulls two episodes from the Season 1 archive that were recorded months apart but tell opposite sides of the same story.Laurens van Ochten is Head of BESS at R.Power, where he oversees a centralised team across six European countries. He breaks down how grid access works differently across each market, why Germany's ultra-easy access quietly flooded the system wit
REM Rewind: The Local Conviction of Global Scaling
I recorded these conversations months apart and genuinely didn't plan this but when I went back into the archive to pull them together, I couldn't believe how much they were saying the same thing from completely opposite ends of the industry.Mathieu Lassagne walked away from 15 years inside ENGIE and EDF to co-found ZE-Energy from scratch. Without any safety net or corporate playbook, just seven y
The Reality of Global Mobility: Rewriting the Renewable Career Playbook
Two careers built by saying yes when the answer should have been no. This throwback compilation brings together two of the most listened-to conversations from Season One of the Renewable Energy Movement. Ilona Nemeth-Kiss and Alexandros Kalargyros have almost nothing in common on paper.One is a Hungarian lawyer who accidentally built a career in offshore wind after moving to Germany with zero Germ
Say Yes and Move: A Throwback ft. Natalia Paraskevopoulou and Filippo Ricci
Two careers built by saying yes when most people said no.Natalia Paraskevopoulou, Head of Wind Business Development for EMEA at LightSource BP, discovered renewables in a classroom in Athens in 2004. She went on to move to Johannesburg as a 20-something woman in a field dominated by men, earn respect on construction sites by physically doing the job, and build a career that now spans Greece, South
Read the Instructions First: Maria del Puy on Spain’s Energy Future
Maria del Puy Ayerra started her career in 2001 at GAMESA, developing wind farms in Spain when "renewable energy" was barely a household term. Over the last two decades, her career has spanned Spain, the UK, and the United States, navigating every market cycle thrown at developers, investors, and consultants.In this conversation with Tom Essex, Maria provides an insider’s view of the Spanish energ
Ksenia Balanda: Building Italy’s Floating Offshore Wind Future
There Is No Going Back: Ksenia Balanda on Floating Offshore Wind in Italy!Ksenia has spent nearly 20 years at the absolute edge of the energy business. She started with building a 45-person team in nine months in Russia to mastering Italian in "survival mode," her career has been defined by rapid scale and frontier markets.Now, as the Head of Offshore Wind Italy for Nadara, Ksenia is leading one o
Build the Relationship First: Stefano Girolami on Solar, Leadership and Scale
Stefano Girolami arrived in London from Naples nearly 15 years ago planning to stay six months. He stayed for over a decade, built a career across five countries, and eventually joined a six-person startup that has since scaled to over a hundred people across Europe.He is now the Group CTO of Innovo Renewables. But this isn’t just a conversation about technology todays episode taps into a mastercl
$20B of Projects: Alexis Gonzalez on Infrastructure Leadership
Alexis Gonzalez graduated as a mechanical engineer in Venezuela in 2001 and walked straight into one of the biggest petrochemical projects in the country’s history. That early exposure to scale and complexity shaped everything that followed.Over the next 25 years he worked his way through oil and gas, biofuel, offshore wind, hydro and now data center infrastructure. He has managed over $20 billion
Serious Projects Only: Philipp Walther on What Survives in Germany
Philipp Walther didn't plan to work in renewables.A conversation with a headhunter after a career in sales leadership opened the door and he didn’t hesitate to walk through it.What followed was a journey through the biggest names in German renewable energy, Notus, Uniper, Aukera. Each role added a new perspective concerning development, leadership, and what it actually means to build something lon
From ABB & Siemens to MICIM: Why Andrea Sivini changed sides.
Andrea Sivini has spent more than 25 years on the vendor side of infrastructure projects. ABB. Siemens. Schneider Electric. Wind farms in Italy. Solar farms in southern Italy. A three-year substation project in Uganda. Data centers across Poland, Israel and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. And in 2024 he crossed the table.He is now Country Manager for Italy at MICIM, a UK company building c
She Fixed the Problem Herself: Julia Ward on Renewables, Mentoring & FLISS
What do you do when the support you need doesn’t exist? You build it!This week I sit down with Julia Ward, Project Director at Xela Energy and founder of FLISS a free UK-based mentoring charity supporting women in STEM. Julia’s career spans chemical engineering, carbon capture, solar development, coal asset operations, batteries, and private wire renewables. And somewhere in the middle of all of t
Season 2 | Episode 4 | Rooftops to Gigawatts: Yvonne Strzys Reshaping German Solar
Yvonne Strzys didn’t plan to spend her career in solar but a rooftop system she spotted at a friend’s house in 1999 set everything in motion.Today she’s Head of Project Development at MaxSolar GmbH, leading a Berlin office that scaled from 3 to 30 people in three years, overseeing a pipeline of ground-mounted solar and multi-utility projects across Germany.In this conversation Yvonne gets honest a
Season 2 | Episode 3 | Two Insolvencies. One Vision. How Bernd Kipping Built Chint Solar Europe
How do you go from navigating two insolvencies to building one of Europe’s most resilient solar developers? This week I sat down with Bernd Kipping, VP Finance, Procurement, Innovations & Technologies at Chint Solar Europe. His career is basically a timeline of everything this industry has been through. We get into:The Solar Valley Era: What it was really like at Q-Cells when Chinese competiti
Season 2 | Episode 2 | Why would a veteran engineer take a junior role 17 years into their career?
For Kim Collins, Director of Project Development for Clear Light Energy, the answer was simple: She wanted to put the puck in the net.In this week’s episode, Kim shares how she deliberately stepped back from seniority to master the technical "weeds" of protection and control. It’s a move most wouldn't have the humility to make, but for Kim, it was the catalyst for everything that followed.She’s si
Season 2 Ep 1 Moritz Duhm on Why Germany's Wind Oversubscription Triggered a Market Crash
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom speaks with Moritz Duhm, Regional Manager Onshore Wind & PV at ENERGTRAG, about how Germany’s wind market got to where it is today.Moritz shares hard-earned lessons from over a decade in the industry, including the unintended consequences of the 2017 tender reform, the risks of developer saturation, and how the legal framework is shaping the onshore wind
Season 1 | Ep18 Mathieu Lassagne on Moving from Utility M&A at ENGIE to Building ZE-Energy's Hybrid Solar & Storage Model
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom speaks with Mathieu Lassagne, CEO of ZE-Energy, about building a hybrid solar and storage company before it was mainstream.Before founding ZE-Energy, Mathieu spent several years at ENGIE, where he worked on corporate strategy and led the acquisition of Solairedirect, a successful solar developer in France at the time. Now, with ZE-Energy, he’s applying the l
Season 1 | Ep17 Nikolaos Karagiovanidis on Moving from EPC to Development and Building Local Teams Abroad
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom speaks with Nikolaos Karagiovanidis, Director of Project Development at Chint Green Energy, about what it really takes to build successful solar and battery projects across multiple European markets.Nikolaos shares lessons from a career that’s taken him from EPC work in Greece and Turkey to leading development across the Balkans, Baltics, and Nordics , inclu
Season 1 | Ep16 Filippo Ricci on Why Quality Projects and People Are the Assets That Matter
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom sits down with Filippo Ricci, General Manager Italy at Recurrent Energy (subsidiary of Canadian Solar), to talk about what really drives success in renewable energy: projects and people.They cover:- Why “projects and people” are the two real assets in renewable energy- How M&A experience shapes leadership and commercial decisions- What growing a team fro
Season 1 | Ep15 Luca Marini on Being the Only Developer Offering Embedded Renewables and Data Centres in Italy
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom sits down with Luca Marini, CEO of LIO DC - the data centre platform of LIO Factory, a real estate holding company investing in infrastructure, renewables and beyond.Luca shares why LIO is one of the few platforms in Italy designing renewables and data centres together from day one, rather than treating them as separate industries. He talks about what it mea
Season 1 | Ep14 Rodolfo Bigolin on Scaling Solar, EV Charging & Data Centres - While Keeping Low Churn
In this first ever in-person episode of the REM Podcast, host Tom Essex speaks to Rodolfo Bigolin, CEO of Innovo Group - a true serial entrepreneur who’s built multiple infrastructure companies across renewables, EV charging and data centres.He explains why his team took construction in-house, how they managed to deliver 11 solar plants at once, and why retention and culture have been key to scali
Season 1 | Ep13 Carlo Drazen Toic on Why IPPs Shouldn't Own Land and How to Design Exit-Friendly Projects
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom speaks with Carlo Toic, Co-Founder and COO of SOL-R Global Infrastructures, a real estate platform specialising in land strategies for renewable energy projects.Carlo makes a bold case: IPP ownership of land is bad finance. From tax inefficiencies to illiquidity, he explains why mixing real estate and energy assets on the same balance sheet hurts returns, co
Season 1 | Ep12 Laurens van Ochten on How R.Power Centralised Their BESS Team and Why Easy Grid Access is Not Always a Good Thing
In this episode of the REM Podcast, host Tom speaks with Laurens van Ochten, Head of BESS at R.Power, a fast‑growing European renewable energy developer specialising in large‑scale solar and battery storage.Laurens shares deep insights into the challenges of scaling battery storage across multiple countries, while managing market differences, grid bottlenecks and team structure. He also explains w
Season 1 | Ep11 - Francisco Díez Quiralte on Building a 100+ person team in LATAM and Why India is in a league of it's own
In this episode of the REM Podcast, host Tom Essex speaks with Francisco Díez Quiralte, former Global Head of Business Development at Zelestra.Francisco’s career spans three continents, having originated large-scale renewable energy projects across Spain, Germany, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, India and more.They talk about:How he built a 100+ person team across Latin America from scratchCompeting with g
Season 1 | Ep10 Alexandros Kalargyros on Building Projects Across 4 Continents and How Greece is Becoming an Energy Hub
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom sits down with Alexandros Kalargyros, Head of Engineering & Construction at EDP Renewables.Alexandros’ career has taken him across four continents, from small villages in Zambia, to large solar farms in the US.They discuss:His experiences delivering renewable energy projects in Africa, the US and Europe.How Greece is positioning itself as a strategic ene
Season 1 | Ep9 Roderik von Meyenfeldt on How Changing Local Consumption can Help the Grid, and What the Netherlands Didn't Plan For
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom sits down with Roderik von Meyenfeldt to discuss his journey from real estate to his current role as Regional Director of Development at Sunrock.Roderik explains:Why the Dutch grid is overwhelmed by going too far too fast with solar developmentWhat Germany got right a decade ago that the Netherlands failed to plan forWhy energy transparency on a consumer lev
Season 1 | Ep8 Ilona Németh-Kiss on Delivering the World's First Subsidy-Free Offshore Wind Farm and Diversity at Vattenfall
In this episode, Ilona Németh-Kiss shares her journey from a legal career in Hungary to becoming the Commercial Project Director in the offshore wind sector at Vattenfall in Germany. She discusses the challenges of transitioning to a new industry and country, the changes in the industry post-covid, and the importance of diversity in the workplace. Connect with Tom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tome
Season 1 | Ep7 Nick Lagrilliere on Building his Career in Renewables after 10 years in Oil & Gas, and What We Can Learn from the Danish Energy Market
In this episode, Tom Essex talks to Nick Lagrilliere, the European Director of Project Delivery at GreenGo Energy.Nick has an unconventional transition from the oil and gas industry to renewable energy, driven by personal values and the desire for a more sustainable future. He shares insights on the challenges and opportunities in the renewable sector, particularly in Denmark, and some of the more
Season 1 | Ep6 Barrie Davies on The Carbon Economy, Decentralised Energy and Owning the Full Project Chain
In this episode, Tom Essex talks to Barrie Davies, Founder and Entrepreneur of Beyond Green and New Energy Integrations. Barrie shares his journey from finance to renewable energy, discussing his roles at Jinko and Trina Solar, where he built teams and established strategic relationships with investors.Barrie highlights the importance of carbon markets and the need for a decentralised market to me
Season 1 | Ep5 Natalia Paraskevopoulou on Gender, International Leadership, and Why Disagreement Builds Better Projects
In this episode, Tom Essex chats with Natalia Paraskevopoulou, Head of Wind Business Development for EMEA at Lightsource bp.Natalia shares her journey into the renewable energy sector, starting from her education in Greece to her experiences working in South Africa and the UK. She discusses the challenges and opportunities she faced, the importance of cultural adaptation, and her current role in e
Season 1 | Ep4 Tom Moon on solar mounting systems and scaling into Europe by building trust, brand and expertise
In this episode of the REM Podcast, Tom Moon, Head of Business Development for Solarport, shares his journey into the renewable energy sector, the importance of events in the industry, and the challenges and opportunities of expanding a UK company into the European market. He discusses the significance of quality in project development, leveraging LinkedIn for business growth, and the future trend
Season 1 | Ep3 Jan Rosenow on how he helped shape UK and EU climate policy
In this episode of the REM Podcast, host Tom Essex chats with Jan Rosenow, a leading expert in the energy sector with over 20 years of experience. Jan shares his journey into sustainability, the evolution of renewable energy over the past two decades, and the critical role of government and collaboration between sectors in driving the energy transition. He discusses the importance of universities
Season 1 | Ep2 Dirk Holzrichter on what it really takes to scale solar across borders
In this episode of the Renewable Energy Movement podcast, Tom Essex interviews Dirk Holzrichter, Head of Market Entry & Intelligence for Goldbeck Solar. Dirk shares his journey from a legal background to leading market entry strategies for countries like the UK, South Africa, Turkey, UAE, Iran, Italy, and Romania among others . He discusses the challenges and opportunities in international mar
Season 1 | Ep1 Nicolas Sadon on how he built and sold a solar company to ENGIE for €750M
In this episode of the Renewable Energy Movement podcast, Tom Essex interviews Nicolas Sadon, a seasoned expert in the renewable energy sector. Nicolas shares his journey from working in governmental roles to co-founding Solairedirect, a leading solar company in France. He discusses the challenges he faced in the early days of solar energy, the expansion of his company into Latin America, and the
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