Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change30 Apr 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

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(306)

The Scandal at The Heart of The Energy Transition | Ep275: Jan Rosenow

Around two-thirds of the energy we put into today’s energy system ends up as rejected heat. So are we measuring the energy transition all wrong?Professor Jan Rosenow joins Michael Liebreich to unpack ...

23 Sep 1h 5min

The Race Is On To Control AI | Episode 274: Afonso Salema & Sam Winter-Levy

More than 80% of the world’s advanced AI compute is concentrated in the US and China. For Europe and other middle powers, the question may no longer be how to win the AI race, but how to avoid becomin...

16 Sep 1h 5min

Mexico Wants To Build An $8,000 EV For Everyone | Ep273: Roberto Capuano

Can Mexico build an electric car for $8,000, and use it to create an entirely new domestic industry? This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington visits Mexico City to sit down with Roberto Capuano, d...

9 Sep 57min

The Testbed for Asia's Clean-Tech Future | Ep272: Jaime Z. Urquijo

Can the Philippines become a testbed for Southeast Asia’s clean-tech future? Kicking off Season 19 of Cleaning Up, guest host Marie Cheong meets Jaime Z. Urquijo, Urban Estates Group Head at Ayala La...

2 Sep 1h 4min

The Good, Bad and Downright Ugly of Australia's Energy Transition | Deep Dive Australia 09: Anna Freeman & Michael Liebreich

Australia has become a laboratory for the energy transition, what can the rest of the world learn? After two weeks travelling across Australia and meeting the leaders shaping its energy transition, Mi...

26 Aug 1h 3min

The Next Frontier of Electrification? Industrial Heat | Ep271: James Macnaghten

Around the world, factories making food, drink, pharmaceuticals and other everyday products rely on steam, often produced by fossil-fuel boilers. James Macnaghten, founder and CEO of Caldera, is betti...

19 Aug 39min

How Much Better Can Solar Get? Deep Dive Australia 08: Martin Green

Solar was once dismissed as a marginal technology. Today, it is transforming the global energy system, and few people have done more to make that possible than Professor Martin Green. Innovations deve...

17 Aug 52min

AI Has An Electricity Problem | Ep270: Arshad Mansoor

Will AI break the grid? As hyperscalers race to build ever-larger data centres, electricity demand is soaring. The question is no longer whether power demand will grow, but by how much, how quickly, a...

12 Aug 1h 8min