Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change9 Jun 2021

Powering Canada Past Coal - Ep45: Catherine McKenna

Catherine McKenna is a Canadian Liberal politician serving as the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities since 2019. Before that she was the Minister of Environment and Climate Change for 4 years.

Her ministerial mandate includes ensuring infrastructure investments support just economic growth and the clean energy transition. Her ministerial mandate includes, inter alia, delivering of “accessible affordable, active and zero-emissions transit options”, “investing in large-scale building retrofits and clean power” and “continuing to close the infrastructure gap in Indigenous communities, particularly with respect to affordable housing”.

Before taking the infrastructure and communities portfolio, Catherine was in charge of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. She was appointed just before COP21 in Paris and played a significant role during the summit.

Catherine is a lawyer by education: she co-founded Canadian Lawyers Abroad, now called Level, a charity through which Canadian lawyers are able to work on pro bono cases around the world. She has also worked in leading Canadian and Indonesian law firms and was a negotiator with the United Nations mission in East Timor.

Catherine holds degrees from the University of Toronto, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and McGill University’s Faculty of Law. A mom of three, avid swimmer and canoeist, Minister McKenna is a long-time resident of the Glebe in Ottawa.

Episoder(278)

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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 Apr 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 Apr 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 Apr 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...

8 Apr 1h 7min

Can We Cool The Planet, And Should We Try? | Ep251: Ricken Patel

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...

1 Apr 1h 7min

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...

25 Mar 1h 10min

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 Mar 1h 6min