The Angry Clean Energy Guy

On Monday, 28 April 2025, a major power blackout occurred across the Iberian Peninsula affecting Portugal and Spain. The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the history of blackouts since the 1960's; why we won't know the cause for months or even years; the solutions we are literally drowning in; and how the ultimate cure is to go bigger and faster on solar and batteries. 

We are in the midst of an organised assault on climate action, climate science, the environment, diversity, equity and inclusion and more generally, on decency, equality and morality.  The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the "passwords" which may help to understand the "why"; and how this assault is destined to fail. 

Recently, President Trump apparently sought to stop wind power expansion in the US and withdrew from the Paris agreement, in a barrage of orders aimed at boosting fossil fuels and reverse policies that address climate change. The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why it's very good news that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris agreement (don't worry about it); and why the global energy transition is not something President Trump or anyone else is going to stop. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy's Top 10 Good Climate News Stories of 2024

On Monday 2 December 2024, the mother of all climate lawsuits began at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Unprecedented, it's also the largest ever case seen by the world court, with a record number of 97 States and 11 international organizations speaking in the oral proceedings. The ICJ is being asked to provide clarity on international law with respect to climate change.The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why what the ICJ says could change the world.

You may have heard that a "nuclear renaissance" is gathering pace, driven most recently by something called “small modular reactors” or SMRs. Apparently, SMRs are going to be ubiquitous everywhere and are going to play a key part in decarbonization. The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why this isn't going to happen; and why all this talk about SMRs (and it's mostly talk) pushes back the era of energy abundance which we are on the cusp of, by diverting capital which would have been much better spent on a faster deployment of renewable energy: solar, wind and batteries.

On 14 June 2024, a major oil spill blackened Singapore's coastline, after yet another shipping accident which punctured the oil tank of a fuel ship and spilled at least 400 tons of oil, with large quantities washing ashore.  This episode of the Angry Clean Energy Guy is the beginning of a ten-part series on the history of fossil fuels in South-East Asia, and how the region will shake-off this last remnant of its colonial history - fossil fuels - to get rid of oil spills once and for all; achieve energy independence; strengthen national security; improve the energy efficiency of buildings, vehicles, appliances, and electronics; and protect and enhance the health of all citizens in this process.

 The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the depravity at the heart of climate finance: those who set the house on fire (rich nations) are lining up outside to sell fire extinguishers, or loan them with interest, to the occupants who need them (poorer nations) - and in the process often saddling these occupants with debts, or worse, taking whatever furniture, savings or cash they have left.   

Chinese innovation on steroids: The Angry Clean Energy Guy on some pretty shockingly amazing announcements in the battery energy storage world from China, and on decisive progress on recycling batteries from the United States. Together, these guarantee that oil is on its way out of the transportation sector; that oil and gas are on their way out of electricity generation, forever, much earlier than people think; and that we will shrink the environmental footprint of energy - by exiting oil and gas and coal - by somewhere between 90% and 99%.  

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on two recent, and historic, renewable energy milestones many thought impossible. First, solar, wind and hydro power exceeded 100% of California's electricity demand on an almost daily basis over a sustained period of several weeks. Second, also in California, battery storage became for the first time ever the largest source of supply in the California grid. The evidence is incontrovertible: not only can we power entire countries with almost 100% renewable energy, but we will also get there faster than most people think. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the fraud that is plastic recycling,  perpetrated by Big Oil and their enablers; and on the emerging evidence that the health dangers of plastic - obfuscated for 50 years - could be life-threatening , including substantially raised risks of strokes, heart attacks and other nasty invasions of our bodies by Big Oil.  

 The Angry Clean Energy Guy's "Top 10 Good Climate News Stories of 2023" 

Disinformation, misinformation, deception and propaganda by Big Oil is rife. The number of oil trolls on my social media feeds - and those of so many other climate activists - has seen a remarkable increase, some collecting 1,000+.  The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the "Top 10 Disinformation Tag Lines" peddled by Big Oil trolls and bots, aided and abetted by some of the world's largest public relations firms and assorted politicians, lawyers and consultants on their payroll.

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the need to tackle the fantastic quantities of waste and pollution from the healthcare sector - 5 to 7% of global emissions and 5th largest polluter if we thought of it as a country - and how the doctors, demigods everywhere, are in the process of being nudged to evolve to get to zero-waste and zero-emissions medicine. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the sheer quantity of drivel we're bring bombarded with about gas, (such as the world needing more affordable energy (read: gas); or how gas is part of a pragmatic approach to the energy transition; or using the words "low-carbon" in the context of energy systems); and how in reality, it's all deliberate propaganda orchestrated by dark organizations such as the "International Gas Union". Their global playbook of deception to lock-in fossil gas (and make a couple of bucks while setting fire to the world) has been exposed through their own incompetence: it was available on the International Gas Union's own website, by mistake, until the documents were removed six months later. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why our fossil fuel addiction consumes at least 535 times more mining than the renewables economy displacing it - and how we have already all the minerals we need to decisively transition to clean energy lifestyles and economies

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why South East Asia's clean energy future is here already, today: it's all happening, all one needs to see it is to take a quick tour of the behind-the-scenes, massive, renewable energy surge in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why we have all the money in the world to pay for climate action right now (and where that money is), so why the hell are we not getting on with it. 

We need to talk about COP28, the 28th installment of the United Nations Climate Talks, which will take place in Dubai, UAE at the end of this year. For the first time ever, the CEO of an oil company - literally the constituency that must stop all new oil & gas and phase-down existing oil & gas - has been appointed as the President of a COP - literally the global forum which is supposed to phase-down the production of oil & gas. Does this mean that Big Oil has finally succeeded in completing its hijacking of the annual meeting of 198 countries to act on climate? Should the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat be going nuts about it and acting (fat chance, probably)? Or does fighting climate change require all hands on deck, as some prominent voices have argued? Listen, weep or cheer, and make up your own mind. Then do something about it. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy's third episode in a mini-series of podcasts showcasing some of the remarkable environmental progress in Asia, today featuring the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam (after China was featured in Episode 70 and Indonesia was featured in Episode 71). Here's one factoid from this episode: the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, an independent body set-up under the constitution to investigate allegations of human rights violations against Filipinos, released a 160-page National Inquiry on Climate Change with explosive findings against Big Oil. 

 The Angry Clean Energy Guy's second episode in a mini-series of podcasts showcasing some of the remarkable environmental progress in Asia, today featuring Indonesia (after China was featured in Episode 70). The next podcasts will feature Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and India.  Here are two factoids from this episode: Indonesia's fight against plastic waste is much more advanced than that of rich and industrialized Western countries; while its renewable energy industry is about to take off.  

 The Angry Clean Energy Guy's first episode in a series of podcasts showcasing some of the remarkable environmental progress in Asia, starting with China. The next podcasts will feature Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and India.  Here's one factoid from this episode: there were 80,000 environmental lawsuits brought by Chinese prosecutors in 2020 alone, all of which were to enforce environmental regulations. 

The noise from oil trolls, oil bots and Big Oil astroturfing has become deafening. Their aim is to overwhelm the climate movement - and thoroughly confuse the public - by posting vast amounts of misleading information and spreading crazy conspiracy theories as well as general nonsense, in very large volumes. They are a naked attempt at pushing Big Oil's agenda of perpetuating fossil fuels irrespective of the very high risk they pose to society's very survival. The Angry Clean Energy on what they are; what to do about them in an environment where Big Oil's obscene 2022 "profits" will likely power them into hysteria mode; and how this is consistent with Big Oil recently dropping any pretense about their goal of stalling - and then reversing - the energy transition.   

 The Angry Clean Energy Guy's "Top 10 Positive Climate Actions of 2022" 

The global legal construct around climate change was born in 1992, when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was negotiated at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, more commonly known as the Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro.  In this podcast, we take a tour through a short history of UN climate talks (now in their 27th year at what's called a "Conference of the Parties", in short a COP) - whereby the Angry Clean Energy Guy concludes that climate action is happening everywhere, except at the UN climate talks 

Sustainable aviation fuels are a fraud. Study after study say that no matter how you look at the data, their production will fail to meet aviation needs no matter how much money is thrown at the problem. Not only does the industry have to be created from scratch, creating enough "sustainable" fuels to replace jet fuel by 2050 assumes we can convert all of the planet's grasslands to biofuel crops. Worse, they give airlines, aircraft manufacturers and oil & gas companies public relations cover to continue to do incredibly little to tackle their emissions and pollution, while increasing the use of jet fuel as the growth of air travel continues unabated. 

 Climate optimism is in short supply, so this is a podcast about ten BIG, BIG reasons to be optimistic that we are pushing back against global warming. I put this podcast together because climate anxiety is real: distress related to worries about climate impacts is widespread. We feel powerless in the face of crisis of epic proportion manifesting itself through biblical floods, epic droughts, powerful heatwaves and cascading consequences on our daily lives and livelihoods. Indeed this is so far the decade of words such as “since records began”, “for the first time in human history”, “millions affected”, “breaking multiple records”, “has no parallel in recorded history” and possibly the word of the decade, “unprecedented” - all the more reason to focus on why we can be optimistic about the future, at least in a relative sense (it could have been worse and warming of 2°C for example is a lot better than warming of 2.5°C!). Yes, some warming is already baked-in, probably 2°C or more, but the judgment is out on where we will end up and YOU can do something about it. 

 In the midst of a global climate crisis touching everyone and everything, there are new, sophisticated and dangerous forms of greenwashing making the rounds, courtesy of the oil & gas industry and their stooges. The Angry Clean Energy Guy exposes two particularly pernicious ones: oil companies "announcing" renewable energy projects to fund more oil & gas; and "carbon management", aka carbon capture and storage + direct air capture, an elaborate and insidious excuse to keep pumping more oil and gas and worsen the climate crisis, while almost always using other people's money: yours. 

 Many people struggle with climate anxiety - the feeling of distress, uncertainty and loss of control which is a natural reaction to the magnitude of the climate crisis and how apparently little our individual actions matter in fighting it. Climate anxiety highlights the enormous importance of the following question: what can an individual do that would actually make a real, tangible, measurable difference in the fight against climate change? We need action and a sense of achievement when facing seemingly intractable environmental problems. In this podcast, the Angry Clean Energy Guy shares five ways anyone can use to take climate action. These include announcing his new book, "Saving the Planet Without the Bullshit", in bookstores near you in September; as well as the launch of a platform he co-founded, Reneum.com, built to allow anyone to take tangible, transparent and measurable climate action by participating in a movement to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy worldwide.  

 There is something sordid taking place out there. Over the past few weeks, shareholders – that is, investors, asset management firms, banks and pension funds - blocked proposals to accelerate carbon emission reductions at oil & gas producers including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, Shell and TotalEnergies. But, wait: aren't we in a climate emergency with clarion calls by the IPCC and the IEA to have zero new oil, gas and coal developments anywhere in order for the world to have a chance to reach net zero by 2050? The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why a far harsher light should be shone on what institutional investors are actually doing, rather than wasting time listening to their rivers of words about climate “action”, “responsible” investing and ESG “policies”. 

While India was roasting under a record heatwave; the Amazon was recording record after record of deforestation destruction; dust storms were sending thousands to hospital in Iraq; Ethiopia was facing its worst drought in at least 40 years; and global average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were reaching their highest level on record for any calendar month in April, consultants McKinsey were busy preparing yet another report obfuscating the reasons why climate finance flows continue to be appallingly inadequate.Perhaps the McKinsey consultants should consider stopping to "research" and publish reports that waste hundreds of people's time and are filled with platitudes, and consider instead quitting to act on climate instead. Enough with the time wasting: we should be developing and implementing tools which allow citizens to take direct climate action at scale. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why your "luxury cruise" is just a floating garbage trash can; how the shipping industry in its entirety has gone rogue in terms of climate action, ocean pollution and public health impact; and why the International Maritime Organization needs to be either fundamentally restructured or closed: it's not fit for purpose and it's doing everything in its power to do absolutely nothing at all. 

 The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the top 5 climate action myths busted by the Ukraine war: the different ways governments and big business had justified, sometime for decades, why they couldn't take this or that climate action, then suddenly took them in days in a different context. And on why we should label “non-sense” anything we read about why we should not immediately break our addiction to oil and gas and coal and instead – as argued by fossil fuel stooges – we should ramp up destructive fracking or build LNG terminals  

 Greenwashing - drowning consumers with vague or false claims to deceive them into believing that a business' products or image are green - has gone viral: Most businesses are at it, irrespective of their sectors, some more vociferously than others.  Here are the Angry Clean Energy Guy's "Greenwashing Top 15:" the Top 15 ways we are being deceived - on a daily basis if not more frequently - by Big Oil, businesses, the financial sector, politicians and many others.    

 The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why the blockchain is possibly one of the most powerful tools for citizen climate action, in particular for those angry about how little their governments have been doing for 30 years about climate change. We (citizens!) can leverage its power and potential to drive hundreds of billions more to accelerate the renewable energy revolution, fight deforestation, clean up the oceans, push back on the plastic epidemic and so on - all because it allows us to do what we want to, as opposed to what big governments, politicians, banks, the capital markets and corporations are prioritizing and doing. 

We need to talk about corporate evil: companies knowingly doing harm.  In this episode, the Angry Clean Energy Guy features a massive company many around the world don't know about which is overtly trying to greenwash its deeds by using children, while simultaneously –  and boldly - trying to fry the planet. 

 The Angry Clean Energy Guy on a little known, secretive, stealthy tool undermining climate action, the innocuously called the Energy Charter Treaty, - such an unthreatening name, on a par with "natural" gas or "plastic", don't you think? – threatening to ensure global heating exceeds 2 degrees Celsius by driving tens, or even hundreds, of billions of dollar more to Big Oil, Big Gas and Big Coal  

 "COP26," the 26th year pretty much all the countries in the world convened in an annual conference to talk about what to do about the climate catastrophe, will result - just like its preceding 25 editions - in talk, then in some more talk. That's because real climate action doesn't happen at these annual climate meetings: It takes place instead elsewhere, at individual country level, when local action results in stopping deforestation; in accelerating renewable energy deployment and electrifying everything; and in stopping any new oil, gas or coal projects. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on pretty much everything you really need to know about nuclear energy. That's for example the fact that conventional nuclear energy is not only finished, but has also become a massive distraction in our climate emergency, diverting precious dollars away from sun, wind and water. Or the fact that nuclear fusion is worthy of investing enormously more money and careers in, even if we won't have a result for 50 or 100 years (who knows), because limitless, clean and around around-the-clock power will most likely be our most amazing scientific achievement ever, and because it's already made more progress than expected   

 The IPCC released a hugely important scientific report this week. However, in this episode, I would like to talk about biodiversity instead, and in particular, biodiversity loss in the oceans.  On climate change, it's crystal clear that what we desperately need is action because the evidence is all around us. However, we rarely talk about action to counter biodiversity loss. Yet, the mutually reinforcing nature of climate change and biodiversity loss means that satisfactorily resolving either issue requires consideration of the other, and action: In the real world, the multiple impacts of climate change everywhere increasingly add to the enormous human pressure on biodiversity loss, which to put it bluntly, is about how we're wiping out, or certainly trying to wipe out, pretty much everything on Earth, from trees to fish to insects to birds to mammals and more. Much more.  

 I've had it with the bashing of bitcoin, the blockchain and crypto miners for their energy usage. This is all, in one word, noise and should be ignored. 250 million people already think bitcoin is useful. In addition, the world consumes approximately 160,000 TWh / year of energy and wastes, along the way, at least one-third. What bitcoin consumes is 0.07% of that energy and 0.002% of what we waste. Most importantly, the disruption of information technology created by bits is an excellent preview of what electrons are in the process of doing, once increasingly massive amounts of excess energy compared to existing electricity demand, at near-zero marginal cost, are delivered: Entirely new business models and applications will emerge, alongside the electrification of everything. We can already see the harbinger of the electron abundance era in the increasing electrification of cars, scooters and buses as well as heating for example, and this will extend to multiple other sectors such water treatment, green cement and green steel, waste processing and many others.  Bitcoin miners are just the vanguard.  

This Episode is a slightly longer version of a TEDx Talk I gave at Singapore's National Gallery on 28 April 2021 about ESG.What Bill Gates calls the “Green Premium”, the extra cost we have to pay because most zero-carbon products currently appear more expensive than their fossil-fuel equivalents, doesn't in fact exist. We only have a “green premium” because we have been "cooking the books," mis-stating the earnings of corporations worldwide by letting them get away with not pricing their environmental destruction through their income statements. As a result, based on mis-stated and incorrect corporate profits, we have diverted trillions over the past 40 years which could have moved us to a safer planet much faster, but instead were spent digging and burning more coal, oil, and gas, producing more plastic and paying everybody handsomely along the way.  The "cooking the books" pandemic needs to be stopped right now. 

The Angry Clean Energy Guy on pretty much everything you need to know about ESG, starting with the need to be very suspicious whenever you see an ESG label on an investment product.  ESG has become a huge business, with one dollar out of every 3 professionally managed dollars in the US for example labelled “ESG” (and an even greater proportion in Europe).  The trend is clear and pretty much 100% of funds under management will have an ESG label soon. But in order for this to have a material impact in the fight for clean air, against climate change and against environmental destruction, we need global ESG standards and we need to divorce the “E" from the "S" and the "G". Then, we need to price the "E": Climate risk isn't just a disclosure issue and should be priced into earnings, as should other environmental risks. Then we would have a chance to change the world. 

 If you want to get elected, requirement number one is to come up with a meaningless tagline while pretending everything is going pear-shaped, e.g. “Take Back Control” or “Make America Great Again.” Adopting tactics from that playbook, today's requirement number one to continue to pollute at will (while everything is actually going pear-shaped) is to announce “NET ZERO by [insert date, the more distant the better],” then to keep polluting at will, hiding behind voluntary carbon offsets.  So I am just going to come out and say it: Voluntary carbon markets should be cancelled.  All of them. Corporations buying carbon offsets when not required by law, in other words voluntary carbon credits, are greenwashing. Some know it, some don't – it doesn't matter in any case: They need to stop. Individuals buying carbon offsets on a voluntary basis (to offset their flights or the pollution from their gas-guzzling SUVs) are mostly being abused.   

Over the past year, multiple oil and gas companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in planting trees, or threatening to do so, to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. There are, however, several fundamental problems with what they are doing, or probably more accurately, pretending to do. First, most are planting trees to earn carbon offsets, as if they are at Church, confessed, received a penance – the carbon offsets – and were imparted absolution.  But even if they could be absolved by planting trees, which they can't, surely they can't then go and sell that absolution to consumers, which is exactly what some of them are doing. Shell for example has an entire effort trying to get petrol car drivers to pay a premium at the pump to buy carbon offsets from Shell, at a profit. Second, generating the carbon offsets from planting trees, even if this was real (it's not, in most cases) does not mean they can keep burning down the house.  They should be decreasing their emissions, not greenwashing. Finally, not much attention is being paid to what trees are being planted, how and where.  The reality is that planting trees is largely unnecessary. Far more critical is to stop global deforestation and to re-grow the global forest by preparing the ground, understanding our limitations and getting out of the way. 

We need to talk about lawyers and about law firms. One of the strongest weapons in the fight to do nothing at all about climate change is the anti-climate-action litigation carried out by most, if not all, of the largest law firms in the world.  Law firms, quietly and below the radar, do three big, bad things: By a ratio of 10 to 1, they love to work on cases that make climate change worse; they adore helping the fossil fuel industry, petrochemical companies and plastic polluters with whatever they may require; and they are enthusiastic lobbyists for the destruction of the planet.They need to be called out. New graduates should avoid the worst of them (that's 80% of top law firms). Lawyers employed there should push to change them. Corporations, governments, service providers, investors, banks, insurance companies, development finance institutions and any corporate making a net-zero commitment should scrutinize their credentials, hire those that are helping in the fight against climate change and force a change in the appalling behaviors of most of that industry, the law firms destroying the world. 

 With an estimated $30 trillion in assets under management, the insurance industry is a huge (but mostly invisible) force in influencing the direction of the global economy. Yet insurance companies are doing incredibly little to fight climate change -  and get away with it: Out of the largest 30 insurers in the world, 29 pretty much do not take the Paris Climate Agreement at all into account and continue to back new oil, gas and coal as well as collect vast premiums from existing oil, gas and coal projects. Collectively, their Paris Climate Agreement-related policies, where these exist at all, amount to not much more than a giant pile of  green-washing guff.  

If you listen to banks and their explanations of they are doing about climate change, you might get the impression that most "get it" and are fighting it shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of humanity. In fact, banks are funding enough carbon-intensive projects and companies to guarantee a 4°C rise or above in global warming, with their eyes wide open and in full cognizance of the facts.This episode on banks is the first in a series by The Angry Clean Energy Guy focused on the key actors in our global financial system - from banks to insurance companies, accountants, lawyers, rating agencies and institutional investors - and exposing who is really fighting climate change and who is pretending to while in reality putting short-term profit over people, health and planet.

"Fresh air" is a myth. In reality, 90% of us (worldwide) are breathing dirty air on a permanent basis. Because we can't see the pollution in our air, we don't tend to think about it enough.  But our air is weakening all of us and killing 7 million a year, as well as placing an undue burden on health systems in every country. This has to stop and it can: No more petrol or diesel cars, trucks, buses, two- and three-wheelers, or trains - all of which can be replaced today by clean alternatives.  Soon, no more petrol or diesel ships and planes too.  Let's get going.  

The latest, newest attacks against clean energy, namely “Oh my God, what are we going to do with all those solar panels and wind turbines and batteries at the end of their lives” and "Oh my God, what about the mining practices employed to get the materials necessary for clean energy ” are, in one word, bollocks.In Episode 42 of The Angry Clean Energy Guy, you will hear how the take-back and treatment of solar panels, inverters and batteries is already mandatory in the EU and is going global; how technologies to recycle solar panels are today everywhere around us and some reach an astonishing 96% recycling efficiency; how you can already recycle 85 to 90% of the total mass of wind turbines; and how 95% of lithium-ion battery components are being turned into new batteries or used in other industries. Most importantly perhaps, you can also see why the DNA of the clean energy industry is about building a circular economy around its products, in contrast to the DNA of Big Oil, which is about destroying, free of charge to them, our habitat. 

October, 2020 marked the end of an era: The world's largest solar and wind power generator, the US utility NextEra, surpassed ExxonMobil - literally the embodiment of Big Oil's recklessness and once the most valuable company on earth - in stock market worth: It took a pandemic to show the markets that the time for clean energy and clean air is right now, and here we are.Major announcements around new renewable energy plans were being made in the same period that NextEra was eclipsing ExxonMobil: Apparently, oil companies including Total, Shell and BP and oil traders including Vitol, Trafigura and Mercuria are intending to unleash hundreds of billions of dollars in new investments in renewable energy and battery storage.In this episode, The Angry Clean Energy Guy attempts to weigh the depth, breadth and sustainability of the wall of money about to pour into clean energy and to assess the implications on Big Oil's future and on renewable energy markets around the world.