A lot can change in a year. At this point in 2022, the world had yet to experience what has now become the hottest summer on record, Ukraine was just six months into combating a Russian invasion that permanently changed the world’s energy landscape, and the US Inflation Reduction Act’s promise of billions of dollars to reduce emissions was little more than ink on a page. The Zero podcast from Bloomberg Green had just published its first episode.
Since then, billions of dollars of IRA money have started to flow in earnest, and sky-high energy prices have helped push clean-tech like never before. Solar generation grew 26% in 2022, and is set to overtake both natural gas and coal as a source of electricity by 2027, according to the International Energy Agency. EVs are responsible for more than 5% of new-car sales in nearly two-dozen countries, a milestone figure on the way to mass-adoption. And Zero has produced more than 50 episodes, covering everything from the high-octane world of clean-tech venture capital to the role of property destruction in climate activism.