Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change8 Loka 2025

The £60 Billion Plan To Rewire Britain | Ep227: John Pettigrew

What does it take to rewire a nation’s energy system? Can we make the grid cleaner, smarter, and more resilient — without driving up bills? And how will the explosion of AI data centres reshape the future of electricity demand?

This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Liebreich sits down with John Pettigrew, outgoing CEO of National Grid, for a candid conversation marking the end of his 35-year career. Together they explore the UK’s £60 billion plan to deliver Clean Power by 2030, the race to build transmission for offshore wind, the growing strain from AI-driven electricity demand, and lessons from major outages in Spain and Heathrow.

Pettigrew reflects on the evolving “energy trilemma” — balancing decarbonisation, reliability, and affordability — shares reflections from his 35-year career: what’s changed, what went wrong, and what comes next for the grids powering our clean energy future.

Leadership Circle:

Cleaning Up is supported by the Leadership Circle, and its founding members: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Arup, Cygnum Capital, 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.

Links and more:

John’s first appearance on Cleaning Up: https://youtu.be/1HVcJuO9dNI
Roger Dennis on Cleaning Up 'The Price of Resilience': https://youtu.be/CELQT31riDE
National Grid’s £60 billion plan: https://www.nationalgrid.com/gridforgrowth
National Energy System Operator (NESO): https://www.neso.energy/
Final report from what happened to the Heathrow substation: https://www.neso.energy/news/final-report-review-north-hyde-substation-outage

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Why Are We Electrifying So Slowly? The Electrification Staircase | Ep256: Adrian Hiel, Silvia Madeddu, William Drake & Thomas Butler

Every single scenario for the future that looks at a cleaner energy system has electrification growing to 60, 70, 80% or more, and yet we don't make rapid progress. Why? One of the reasons we don't ma...

6 Touko 55min

Europe Needs Clean Tech More Than Ever | Ep 255: Thomas Pellerin-Carlin

This week Cleaning Up is back in Brussels, with a deep dive into European energy policy as the continent grapples with the reality of ambitious climate targets, very high energy prices and the vulnera...

29 Huhti 1h 15min

The Era Of Fossil Fuel Unreliability Has Begun | Ep 254: Jennifer Granholm

What happens when global energy supply chains can no longer be trusted? Has the U.S. given up its edge in the clean energy race to China? And can politics keep up with the speed of the energy transiti...

22 Huhti 45min

The Mother of All Energy Crises | Ep253: Fatih Birol

The news agenda this year has been entirely dominated by energy related stories, whether it's the war in Europe being pursued by Russia — formerly Europe's most significant energy provider — the U.S. ...

15 Huhti 27min

⁠Energy Shocks, Inflation & Risk: How a Central Bank Responds to Crisis | Ep252: Pierre Wunsch

How should a central bank respond to energy shocks? Will high oil and gas prices bolster the uptake of renewables? And what is the true cost of net zero 2050? This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Li...

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What happens if we’re underestimating the speed and scale of climate risk? This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington sits down with Ricken Patel, Principal at Climate Hub & Founder of activist netw...

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Heavy Engineering Solutions for High-Emission Problems | Ep250: Emmanouil Kakaras

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined by Emmanouil Kakaras, engineer, academic, and Senior Advisor at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries EMEA, for a grounded, technical conversation about the...

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Can We Stop Data Centres Breaking The Grid? Ep249: Varun Sivaram & Steve Smith

This week on Cleaning Up, host Michael Liebreich sits down with Varun Sivaram and Steve Smith to explore one of the most urgent, and overlooked, challenges of the AI revolution: how to power it withou...

19 Maalis 1h 6min