Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change30 Huhti 2025

Uniper Rising: Can Germany's Gas Giant Go Green? Ep206: Michael Lewis

When Russia unleashed its illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, gas prices in Europe spiked by a factor of 10, driving a wave of bankruptcies and restructurings of European energy companies. Uniper was one of those.

Uniper is one of Germany's largest energy companies. It is active across more than 40 countries and has 19.5 GW of power generation capacity to its name. It was one of the funders of the built-but-never-used Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that connects Russia to Germany and, for most of its history, was heavily reliant on Russian gas.

So when the gas taps from Russia were turned off, Uniper reported losses of $40 billion — the highest losses in German corporate history — and was subsequently nationalised by the German government. The company has since returned to profitability under its new CEO, Michael Lewis, our guest this week on Cleaning Up.

Michael Lewis joins Michael Liebreich to discuss the company's rise from the ashes, and how it plans to reach its climate targets and overcome the dunkelflaute.

Leadership Circle:
Cleaning Up is supported by the Leadership Circle, and its founding members: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP of Portugal, Eurelectric, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on the Leadership Circle, please visit https://www.cleaningup.live.

More from Cleaning Up:

The Sierra Leone documentary: https://youtu.be/z-5QjSfy2SM
Ep164 — Leonhard Birnbaum, CEO of EON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-DHuPNEDg
Episode 175 — Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl-cRh35Hm4
Episode 190 — Lord Adair Turner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxTngGxpeW0

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Are Fossil Fuel Cars About to Have Their Kodak Moment? Ep248: Fiona Howarth

What happens when millions of electric cars become part of the energy grid? And could the key to cheaper, cleaner power already be sitting in your driveway? And why are so many automakers pushing back...

11 Maalis 1h 9min

Iran Will Reshape Oil, Gas & Clean Energy For Years To Come | Bryony Worthington & Michael Liebreich

Bryony Worthington and Michael Liebreich give their analysis of the impact of the conflict in Iran on global energy markets. How will it impact the Middle East, Europe, Asia, the US, and will it force...

6 Maalis 52min

⁠⁠How To Build Quickly In An Era of Fossil Fuel Shocks | Ep247: Hilde Tonne

How can we build out clean energy and infrastructure faster? Is Europe engineering its way to resilience, or pricing itself out of competitiveness? And can we redesign the entire system fast enough to...

4 Maalis 53min

The Audacious Plan To Build a Transatlantic Electricity Cable | Ep246: Laurent Segalen

This week on Cleaning Up, host Bryony Worthington sits down with investor and energy strategist Laurent Segalen, co-host of the Redefining Energy podcast, for a sweeping conversation that spans carbon...

25 Helmi 51min

Why Renewables Are Booming Despite the Politics | Ep245: Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, CEO of EDP, one of the world’s leading clean energy companies.From the front lines of the energy transition, Migue...

18 Helmi 1h 3min

The Billion-Tonne Promise of Carbon Dioxide Removal Isn't Working Out | Ep244: Robert Höglund

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich sits down with carbon removal insider Robert Höglund, CEO of Marginal Carbon, co-founder of CDR.fyi and architect of MilkyWire’s Climate Transformation Fund...

11 Helmi 1h 9min

The World Decides: Clean Energy or Oil & Gas? | Ep243: Damilola Ogunbiyi

What if the future of clean energy isn’t decided in Washington, Brussels, or Beijing, but in Lagos, Nairobi, and Addis Ababa? Are we underestimating how fast the Global South is leapfrogging fossil fu...

4 Helmi 56min

The State of the Climate 2026 | Ep242: Zeke Hausfather

How do we model the climate system? How warm will 2026 be? And can geoengineering be anything more than a bandaid? This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington sits down with leading climate scientis...

28 Tammi 1h 11min