Episodes
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The 2026 World Cup has kicked off - bigger than ever, more global than ever, and possibly more carbon-intensive than ever.
With 48 teams, 104 matches and host cities spread across the US, Canada and Mexico, this tournament is a celebration of football’s global reach. But it also raises an uncomfortable sustainability question: can the world’s biggest sporting event keep expanding in a warming world?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, Wrishi and Carmine look beyond the pitch to explore the climate and energy story behind World Cup 2026. We discuss why fan travel is likely to dominate the tournament’s carbon footprint, why using existing stadiums is positive but not enough, how extreme heat and humidity could affect players and fans, and whether FIFA’s sustainability strategy goes far enough.
We also ask what a genuinely sustainable World Cup would look like — from regional scheduling and transparent carbon accounting to heat-aware match planning, public transport, credible offsets and host-city legacy.
This is not an episode about feeling guilty for watching football. It is about asking whether the world’s game can adapt to the world it is played in.
Listen now for a practical, human and analytical look at football, climate risk and the future of global sport.
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In this episode of Sustainability Forward, we introduce a new type of content: a story-led sustainability deep dive.
Instead of our usual conversation format, we step back into one defining moment in environmental history: the Great Smog of London.
For five days in December 1952, London was trapped under a thick, toxic blanket of coal smoke and fog. Streets disappeared. Transport stopped. Hospitals filled. Thousands of people died. And eventually, the disaster helped force a political and social reckoning that led to the UK’s Clean Air Act.
But this is not just a story about air pollution in the past.
It is a story about what happens when environmental harm becomes normalised. It is about systems that appear to work until their hidden costs become impossible to ignore. And it is about the role of policy, public pressure and leadership in changing what society is willing to tolerate.
As cities, companies and governments today confront climate change, air pollution, water stress, biodiversity loss and other sustainability challenges, the Great Smog offers a powerful reminder: sustainability failures rarely arrive out of nowhere. They build slowly, often in plain sight.
This episode asks a simple but urgent question: what are we breathing in today without noticing?
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Electricity is becoming the backbone of the modern economy — powering transport, heating, industry, cooling, digital infrastructure and increasingly, AI. But as demand grows, can we really build a power system that is 100% decarbonised?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, Wrishi and Carmine explore what “100% clean electricity” actually means, and why the final stretch of decarbonisation is often the hardest. They discuss the role of wind and solar, storage, grid expansion, demand flexibility, firm clean power, geothermal, market design and public acceptance.
The conversation also looks at real-world examples, including Uruguay’s near-100% renewable electricity system and South Australia’s rapid shift towards high levels of wind and solar. The episode opens with a striking comparison between a proposed 9 GW AI data centre campus in Utah, the Boeing Everett factory, and the electricity consumption of the entire state of Utah — a reminder that the clean power challenge is not just about today’s grid, but the much larger grid of the future.
A practical, accessible conversation on whether 100% decarbonised electricity is possible — and what it would actually take to get there.
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In this episode of Sustainability Forward, we speak with Jennifer Motles, Chief Sustainability Officer at Philip Morris International, about what sustainability leadership looks like inside a complex global business undergoing transformation.
Jennifer shares her journey into sustainability leadership and explains how she sees the role of a CSO: not as a side function, but as a driver of long-term value creation, resilience, and business transformation. The conversation explores why sustainability must start with a company’s most material impacts, how systems change requires action far beyond one company alone, and why transformation should be understood not as a project with a clear end point, but as continuous “change in motion.”
We also discuss what it takes to drive change across a large organisation, how senior leadership alignment shapes progress, and why credibility comes from outcomes, evidence, and transparency around both achievements and limitations. Jennifer offers a candid perspective on trade-offs, accountability, and the realities of working on difficult sustainability challenges where change is often slower and messier than outside observers expect.
This episode will be especially relevant for sustainability professionals, business leaders, and anyone interested in how real transformation happens inside large organisations.
Topics covered:
Jennifer Motles’ journey into sustainability leadership
Why sustainability matters in the context of business transformation
Systems change and the role of business in tackling complex challenges
How to drive change across strategy, operations, and leadership
Credibility, accountability, and evidence in sustainability
Why transparency about trade-offs and limitations matters
Advice for people trying to create meaningful change inside complex organisations
A thoughtful episode on leadership, realism, and why the hard work of sustainability happens from within.
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In this episode of Sustainability Forward, we turn our attention to one of the most practical — and often underestimated — parts of the climate challenge: buildings.
After previously exploring the carbon footprint of individuals, we saw that while transport dominates, the home is not far behind. And unlike transport, buildings are one area where change can happen now.
To help us unpack the challenge, we are joined by Ascanio Vitale, a sustainability science expert with more than 30 years of experience in environmental advocacy and decarbonisation. With a background spanning engineering, policy, and consulting, Ascanio has worked with Greenpeace, WWF, the European Commission, and now leads Stop CO2, where he advises on sustainability and ultra-efficient buildings.
Together, we explore why building retrofit is still moving too slowly, what households can do first to reduce energy use and bills, why commercial buildings struggle with split incentives, whether current grants and subsidies are working, and which technologies are genuinely promising.
This is a conversation about more than carbon. It is about comfort, health, resilience, affordability, and how better buildings can become a real part of the transition.
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In this episode of Sustainability Forward, Wrishi and Carmine explore the new logic of clean resilience.
Against the backdrop of the current Middle East crisis, they examine why the implications go far beyond oil prices. The conversation looks at three connected themes: how renewables are coming into sharper focus as an energy security lever, why water resilience and desalination can no longer be separated from power-system design, and how disruptions to critical commodities such as fertiliser and helium reveal the fragility of global supply chains.
Rather than treating clean energy as only a climate solution, this episode asks a bigger question: are we entering a period in which clean energy, clean water and diversified supply systems become essential pillars of resilience?
A timely discussion on energy, infrastructure, security and what the future may demand from more resilient systems.
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AI is everywhere in sustainability right now — but what’s genuinely changing on the ground, and what’s still hype?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, hosts Wrishi Sutradhar and Carmine Fiume sit down with Carlos Silva Willson, a global technology and partnerships leader at Microsoft Middle East with prior experience across GE/Baker Hughes and AWS.
Carlos brings a practical, “been-in-the-room” perspective on what AI and cloud can realistically deliver for sustainability — and what leaders should be cautious about as adoption accelerates.
In the conversation, we cover:
Where AI + cloud are already creating measurable sustainability value (beyond dashboards and buzzwords)
Why partnerships and ecosystems matter if climate solutions are going to scale
The hard questions around AI’s footprint: data centres, energy demand, and water use
How to think about trust, accountability, and credible impact claims
The changing talent landscape: the skills that will define climate-tech careers in the years ahead
If you work in sustainability, climate-tech, energy, or digital transformation, this episode will help you separate signal from noise — and focus on what’s scalable, credible, and useful.
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What if the modern version of a UK allotment isn’t a patch of land—but a classroom?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, we speak with Alex Tyink, co-founder and CEO of Fork Farms, whose unlikely journey from opera singer to urban farmer began on a rooftop in Brooklyn—and turned into a mission focused on food access with dignity.
We explore why food is one of the most practical entry points into sustainability: it’s daily, personal, and deeply connected to health, community, and resilience. Alex explains why Fork Farms focuses on enabling others to grow (rather than operating farms themselves), why highly perishable foods like leafy greens matter most, and what changes when students grow food that ends up on the school lunch line.
We also get into the real-world side of scaling: what breaks in deployments, how you design for people who have never grown anything, and where AI can genuinely help day-to-day operators without becoming hype.
In this conversation:
Alex’s Brooklyn rooftop turning point—and how growing food reshaped purpose and wellbeing
Food access beyond price and calories: dignity, trust, and control
Why schools are the best place to start—and what happens when kids eat what they grow
Scaling distributed indoor growing without the “giant vertical farm” trap
Where automation and AI can improve consistency and operational confidence
If you’re looking for sustainability that feels human, practical, and achievable, this episode is for you.
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As energy systems become more complex and data intensive, organisations face a critical challenge: how to scale reliability, throughput, and decision quality without proportionally scaling headcount.
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, hosts Wrishi and Carmine explore how agentic AI represents a shift from AI as a productivity tool to AI as a trusted teammate embedded directly into operational workflows.
Joined by Subodh Kumar, they discuss:
Why cognitive load is the real constraint inside modern energy organisations
The difference between traditional AI copilots and agentic AI systems
Real world applications across maintenance diagnostics, process safety, engineering handovers, and operational decision support
How to design human oversight and accountability in AI enabled environments
How leaders must rethink organisational structure and governance to deploy AI safely
The episode draws from Subodh’s book, Agentic AI for Leaders, which offers a practical executive framework for integrating AI into enterprise decision making while preserving accountability and safety.
📘 Book link: https://a.co/d/0aNdOMSK
If you are a leader in energy, oil and gas, renewables, utilities, or industrial operations, this episode explores how AI can strengthen system resilience and unlock sustainable performance gains.
Subscribe to Sustainability Forward for more conversations at the intersection of energy, sustainability, technology, and leadership.
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What happens when the world doesn’t just face water scarcity — but water bankruptcy?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, we unpack a stark new warning from the United Nations: many of the world’s freshwater systems are now so over-used and degraded that they may never recover to their historical levels.
We explore what “global water bankruptcy” actually means, why this framing is different from how we’ve talked about water crises before, and what the implications are for food systems, economies, geopolitics, and climate resilience.
From collapsing aquifers and rivers that no longer reach the sea, to the hidden role of groundwater in global food production, this conversation connects water to some of the biggest challenges facing societies today.
Most importantly, we discuss what can still be done — and why managing water bankruptcy requires political courage, hard limits, and a fundamental rethink of how we value water.
This episode is for anyone interested in sustainability, climate risk, food security, and the invisible systems that underpin modern life.
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We often think individual climate action is about small, visible choices — what we eat, what we recycle, or whether we switch off the lights.
But do those actions really matter most?
In the first episode of the new year, Wrishi Sutradhar and Carmine Fiume take a data-driven look at where personal emissions actually come from. Using concrete examples, we walk through the biggest drivers of individual climate impact: cars and mobility, flying, home energy and heating, food choices, and consumption.
Along the way, we unpack why some actions dominate emissions while others receive disproportionate attention — and why context matters so much. Where you live, how your energy is produced, your travel patterns, and your housing all shape your footprint in very different ways.
This episode isn’t about being a “perfect green consumer.”
It’s about understanding impact, prioritising the right levers, and moving the conversation away from guilt and toward agency.If you’ve ever wondered where to actually focus your energy when it comes to climate action, this episode is a good place to start.
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In this Season 3 finale of Sustainability Forward, hosts Wrishi Sutradhar and Carmine Fiume look back on the year — but not as a simple recap.
Instead, we retell Season 3 as one connected story: a journey through the messy middle of sustainability, where progress depends on incentives, trust, execution, and real-world adoption.
Across the season, we explored the topics shaping today’s sustainability and energy transition conversation — from impact investing and climate finance, to electrification of heating (heat pumps), resilience and food systems, and the growing importance of data, measurement, reporting and verification (MRV).
This finale brings together the biggest insights from our guests and episodes, including:
Can we make money while saving the planet? (impact investing + incentives)
Why heat pumps and electrification matter for decarbonising homes
Resilience at household level: backyards, preparedness, community
Soil health, regenerative agriculture, and making climate tangible through food
Sustainability communication, trust, and avoiding greenwashing
Science, solar, and the realities of scaling the energy transition
AI for climate: opportunity, risk, and rising energy demand
Methane transparency and why MRV is becoming market infrastructure
The ESG backlash: reporting vs performance, and the role of corporate courage
Capital markets and what “mobilising trillions” really requires
Planetary boundaries and why sustainability is bigger than carbon
Emerging markets and renewables: India and Pakistan — same sun, different stories
We close with our key learnings from the season and a forward-looking view of what 2026 may demand: proof over promises, better execution capacity, credible disclosure, and trust as a foundation for climate and sustainability action.
If you want a thoughtful, practical synthesis of sustainability, ESG, climate tech, climate finance, and the energy transition — this episode is for you.
Subscribe for more conversations on sustainability strategy, real-economy decarbonisation, climate risk, and the future of energy.
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What happens when people stop waiting for the grid — and build their own energy transition instead?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, Wrishi and Carmine travel across India and Pakistan to unpack one of the most dynamic – and least understood – clean energy stories in the world.
Wrishi draws on childhood memories of Indian power cuts and today’s giant solar parks to explain how India became a renewables heavyweight: ambitious national targets, ultra-cheap solar auctions, and state-level champions like Gujarat and Rajasthan. At the same time, coal still acts as India’s safety blanket, revealing the tensions at the heart of its energy politics.
Then the focus shifts to Pakistan, where the official numbers say renewables are tiny – but rooftops tell a very different story. We explore:
The silent rooftop solar boom reshaping homes, factories and farms
How cheap panels and batteries are changing daily life under chronic load-shedding
The hidden risks around grid finances, groundwater, and energy inequality
What “getting it right” could look like over the next decade
Two countries under the same sun, facing different constraints, making different mistakes – and offering powerful lessons for the global energy transition.
🎧 Listen in if you care about climate, development, or just want to understand what the energy transition really feels like on the ground.
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This week, we sit down with IMD Professor and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Julia Binder, to tackle the biggest misconceptions shaping corporate sustainability.
From ESG confusion to climate myopia, “sustainability is expensive” narratives to the belief that sustainable products don’t sell — we break down the stories that have quietly distorted how leaders think and act.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why ESG was never meant to measure positive impact, and what companies get wrong when they treat it as sustainability.
How climate has become a shorthand for sustainability, and the planetary boundaries we’re dangerously overlooking.
Why sustainability isn’t a cost centre — and how leading firms turn it into a strategic investment.
What really stops sustainable products from selling (hint: it’s not consumers), including performance, pricing, and sales-team barriers.
Whether we’re facing “sustainability fatigue” — and why the feel-good era is over, but the real work is just beginning.
Julia brings clarity, candour, and optimism to one of the most misunderstood areas of modern business.
If you’re a business leader, innovator, sustainability professional, or just curious about what’s really happening behind the headlines — this conversation is for you.
🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Sustainability Forward for more conversations with global thinkers shaping the future.
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Is ESG broken — or just leaderless? Lawyer-technologist Scott Lane, founder & CEO of Speeki, joins Sustainability Forward to argue the bottleneck is corporate courage, not cost or complexity. We cover boards’ ESG literacy, reframing the conversation around risk and resilience, compliance vs. true performance, customer-pulled sustainability, China’s scale, and how AI/agentic automation will reshape decisions. Scott’s advice to CEOs: have courage.
In today’s episode, Wrishi and Carmine sit down with Scott Lane (lawyer, technologist, and founder/CEO of Speeki) to unpack why ESG feels “stuck” — and how to get it moving again.We discuss:
Crisis of leadership: why the missing ingredient is corporate courage
Boards & ESG: shifting the conversation to risk, resilience, duty of care
Reporting ≠ performance: ESG as a management system that happens to report
From green push to customer pull: building products people value (not paper-straw optics)
China’s renewable scale-up and lessons for global progress
AI & agentic automation: from “smart” to truly predictive decision-making
A CEO playbook: long-term thinking, listen to customers, stop being hostage to politics, and learn the new discipline
Scott Lane — lawyer & technologist with 25+ years in ESG risk; founder & CEO of Speeki (ESG reporting and management partner). Former founder of The Red Flag Group (acquired by LSEG).
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How can we move the machinery of global finance fast enough to meet the urgency of the climate crisis?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, hosts Wrishi Sutradhar and Carmine Fiume sit down with Steven Rothstein, Chief Program Officer at Ceres and the founding Managing Director of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets. With over four decades of experience spanning nonprofits, government, and finance, Steven shares what it really takes to turn investor intentions into measurable sustainability outcomes.
From fiduciary duty and climate disclosure to risk, regulation, and the next wave of innovation — we unpack the playbook for mobilizing capital markets to deliver real-world climate results.
🎙️ Topics include:
Why climate risk is financial risk
The next frontier for investor action
The hidden role of water, insurance, and heavy industries
How credible disclosure can cut through greenwashing
What gives Steven hope for the future
📍 Visit www.sustainabilityforward.com for more stories and insights.
Available on all major podcast platforms. -
Renewables have officially overtaken coal as the world’s largest source of electricity — a historic first. But beneath that milestone lies a much more complex story.
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, Wrishi and Carmine unpack BP’s Energy Outlook 2025 to reveal what’s really shaping the global energy transition. From the “two futures” of rapid clean tech expansion in Asia versus fossil resurgence in the West, to the ten key insights that define BP’s latest scenarios — including oil’s long glide path, the LNG decade, AI’s growing power hunger, and why energy efficiency remains the quiet boss.
They close with three big takeaways for anyone thinking seriously about the future of energy:
The hinge of decarbonisation lies in emerging markets.
Build for demand surprises driven by AI and slow efficiency gains.
LNG’s near-term boom will depend on how strongly the world commits to climate goals post-2035.
Listen for a clear, grounded breakdown of the world’s evolving energy map — and what it means for business, policy, and investment.
👉 Visit www.sustainabilityforward.com or find Sustainability Forward on all major podcast platforms.
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The planet just got a health check — and the results are alarming.
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, Wrishi and Carmine revisit one of their most downloaded topics: the 9 Planetary Boundaries Framework — the scientific model that helps us understand how human activity is pushing Earth beyond its safe operating space.
The 2025 update brings a sobering milestone: for the first time, scientists confirm that ocean acidification has crossed its boundary. That means 7 out of the 9 planetary boundaries — including climate change, biodiversity loss, and chemical pollution — are now beyond the safe zone.
But this episode isn’t about despair. It’s about direction. Wrishi and Carmine unpack what each boundary means for ecosystems, economies, and people — and highlight the real-world actions that can bring us back, from restoring forests and protecting water systems to accelerating decarbonisation and circular economy solutions.
Because understanding the boundaries isn’t just science — it’s about redefining how we live within them.
🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.
🌐 sustainabilityforward.com -
Methane may not grab the headlines like carbon, but it’s one of the most powerful greenhouse gases—and tackling it is critical if we’re serious about slowing climate change. In this episode of Sustainability Forward, we sit down with Georges Tijbosch, CEO of MiQ, to explore how methane certification is bringing trust and transparency into the energy transition.
Georges shares his personal journey into climate leadership, the story of how MiQ was founded, and the progress made so far in getting oil and gas companies, policymakers, and investors to take methane seriously. We dig into the challenges of scaling climate action, the rising wave of pessimism around sustainability, and why he believes cutting methane emissions is one of the biggest “quick wins” available to the world right now.
If you want to understand how data, verification, and trust can reshape climate markets, this conversation is for you.
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As heatwaves scorch Europe and global electricity demand surges—up 4% in 2024 alone—can artificial intelligence be part of the solution to climate change rather than the problem?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, Wrishi and Carmine explore the double-edged sword of AI’s environmental footprint. From the staggering water and energy consumption of data centers to AI-driven breakthroughs in energy efficiency, methane detection, wildfire response, and food waste reduction, this conversation offers a candid look at AI's climate promise—and its pitfalls.
Drawing from new insights in the Global Electricity Review 2025 by Ember and projections from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, we examine how AI could help cut up to 5.4 billion tonnes of CO₂ by 2035—but only if used wisely.
Whether you're in tech, policy, or simply climate-curious, this is the episode to understand how AI is shaping the future of our planet—one algorithm at a time.
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