Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

⁠Stop Worrying About Clean Power, Start Electrifying Everything | Ep238: Lord Adair Turner

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Dec 17, 2025

Adair Turner, Chair of the Energy Transitions Commission and former head of the UK Climate Change Committee, shares insights on the complicated landscape of climate change and energy transitions. He discusses technological advances in batteries and electrification as pivotal in decarbonization. The conversation explores China's industrial strategy, the importance of smart tariffs, and the challenges of global emissions. Turner also critiques US politics' impact on climate efforts and emphasizes the need for accessible electrification solutions.

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INSIGHT

Technology Outpaces Politics

Emissions and politics are deteriorating while clean technologies keep improving rapidly.
Adair Turner calls battery progress 'extraordinary' and a key source of optimism.

INSIGHT

Electrification Is The Core Transition

Electrification is the dominant route to deep decarbonisation across sectors.
The electrotech stack (batteries, PV, power electronics, grids) will feed off itself and accelerate change.

INSIGHT

LFP Batteries Changed The Game

LFP batteries and cheap solar+battery combos shifted storage economics dramatically.
The global sunbelt can produce the cheapest low-carbon electricity, reshaping production geography.

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What will be the long-term impact of the US’s great leap backward on clean energy? How will the emergency of China as an electrotech giant reshape geopolitics? And what will be the defining trends and technologies of 2026?

In this end-of-year episode of Cleaning Up, Baroness Bryony Worthington is joined by Lord Adair Turner, Chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, for a wide-ranging, candid, and occasionally fiery conversation about where the energy transition truly stands.

Looking back on a decade since the Paris Agreement and ahead to the road beyond 2025, Turner delivers a clear-eyed diagnosis: emissions and politics are heading in the wrong direction, but technologies — including solar PV, batteries, and the wider “electrotech stack” — are advancing faster than almost anyone expected.

Together, Bryony and Adair unpack why electrification is emerging as the central lever for decarbonising transport, industry, and heat; how China’s clean-tech machine is reshaping global energy economics; and why abundant, ultra-cheap electricity could fundamentally change prosperity, geopolitics, and climate outcomes.

They also grapple with the harder questions: affordability versus ambition, the limits of carbon pricing, the challenge of decarbonising steel, cement, aviation and shipping, and the disruptive impact of US politics on global climate cooperation. They debate whether COPs still matter, why “nearly clean” power may be smarter than chasing absolute purity, and what breakthroughs could surprise us next.

Leadership Circle:

Cleaning Up is supported by the Leadership Circle, and its founding members: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP, 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.

Discover more:

Energy Transitions Commission: https://www.energy-transitions.org/
Power Up: How Clean Energy Is Putting Fossil Fuel Demand in Doubt: https://www.energy-transitions.org/publications/power-up-fossil-fuel-demand-in-doubt/
Lord Turner’s previous appearance on Cleaning Up: https://youtu.be/xxTngGxpeW0
Why Is It So Hard to Clean Up Global Shipping? | Ep229: Tristan Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdUCidkeDto