The REM Podcast - Renewable Energy Movement

Epizode

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  Grace Kankindi: A Good Asset Isn't Always a Good Investment 07.10.2026 33min

  Grace Kankindi is Deputy Head of Investment Management at Aquila Clean Energy. She grew up in Rwanda, where once a month everyone, even the head of state, comes out to clean up their community. That stayed with her.In this episode, Grace walks us through her career. A biodigester project in Canada that showed her how much money decides what gets built. A master's at Yale. Four years in Washington DC working on solar tax equity. Two years working for the Rwandan government, including through COVID. And now Hamburg, where she invests in renewables and battery storage across Europe.We also talk about why a good asset isn't always a good investment, why the same battery project can look so different in Italy and Germany, and where she thinks battery storage is going next.Links to Grace's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracekankindi/?isSelfProfile=falseand Aquila Clean Energy:https://www.linkedin.com/company/aquila-clean-energy/home/ Powered by KIGYO
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  Ypatios Moysiadis: Victims of Our Own Success 30.09.2026 34min

  Ypatios Moysiadis has spent more than 20 years working in renewable energy across over a dozen European markets. His career started around the time of Greece’s first feed-in tariff, and today he leads sales across the UK, Ireland and Denmark at BELECTRIC.In this episode, Ypatios shares his view on where the renewable energy industry stands today and why its rapid growth has also created some big challenges.We talk about what happens when solar and wind grow faster than the grid, storage and electricity demand can keep up with, as well as negative power prices, slow grid upgrades, public trust and the impact of changing energy policies.It’s an open conversation about what the industry has achieved, what hasn’t worked as well, and what needs to change next.🎙️ A new episode of the Renewable Energy Movement Podcast is out now. Powered by KIGYO.
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  Joaquín Aparicio: Delusional Until It Works 23.09.2026 41min

  This week on the Renewable Energy Movement Podcast, host Tom Essex is joined by Joaquín Aparicio, founder of Energía Circular. Joaquín's career started almost by chance, from a mining project on his family's land in Spain to seven years building grid connections in Scotland, to helping stand up Scottish Power's solar and battery business from just two employees.Joaquín and Tom talk through his path from Iberdrola and Scottish Power to development director at JBM (later acquired by RWE), and the decision that changed everything: walking away from an executive role to found Energía Circular, a biomethane company built from his family's home village in Spain. They cover what biomethane actually is, why Spain is years behind countries like Germany and France, and Joaquín's honest take on what it actually takes to bet on yourself. Powered by KIGYO
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  Carmelo Bongiovanni: Building a Solar Giant Across Three Continents 16.09.2026 44min

  Carmelo Bongiovanni is Managing Director of Enevo Group and CEO of Enevo Spain, and his career started with a stroke of luck: two weeks after joining his first company in Milan, it got bought out, putting him in the room with international clients and investment banks before he'd even finished training.From there it's taken him through the UK and then to Japan, where at just 27 he set up an entire company entity from scratch, no local team, no head office to fall back on. He's since run operations across Australia, India, Mexico, Spain and Jordan, and today leads Enevo Group, where his team is building one of the biggest tracker-mounted solar farms ever constructed in Europe.Tom and Carmelo talk through what it actually takes to build a business in a country where you don't speak the language, why Carmelo calls himself a generalist who surrounds himself with experts, and the biggest gamble of his career, one he says paid off a million times over.New episodes of the Renewable Energy Movement Podcast every Wednesday.Powered by KIGYO
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  From Banana Farms to Battery Storage: Roberto Jimenez's Unlikely Path to BW ESS 09.09.2026 30min

  Roberto Jimenez is Executive Director of BW ESS in Germany and previously spent more than 13 years at Shell, most recently as VP of Onshore Power Europe.In this episode, Roberto takes us through a career that started far away from renewables. He grew up between the Philippines, Brazil, Guatemala and Cameroon because of his father’s work, before starting his own career at a small engineering company in Louisiana.He was originally hired because he spoke Spanish, but ended up helping the company grow its business across Latin America. His early work covered everything from air permits and landfills to incinerators and he even holds a US patent for an incinerator design.In 2014, he joined Shell’s early move into renewables. He went on to sign Shell’s first solar deal himself and helped grow the business into something worth close to a billion dollars.Then he decided to start again.Roberto left Shell to build BW ESS’s battery storage business in Germany from the ground up.Tom and Roberto also talk about the duck curve, why Roberto saw the opportunity in batteries early, and where he thinks the BESS market could be heading between now and 2030.Powered by KIGYO
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  Alvaro Sanz (Enerside): Why Chile and Spain Keep Having the Same Blackout 02.09.2026 31min

  This week, Tom sits down with Alvaro Sanz, Director of Development at Enerside, who has worked on renewable energy and grid challenges across Chile, Mexico, Spain and Italy.They talk about the blackouts in Chile and Spain, why similar grid problems keep showing up in different countries, and what the industry can learn from them.Alvaro also shares how he helped grow Enerside’s storage pipeline from zero to more than 3 GW, and the side project he’s building to make one of the hardest parts of development much quicker — finding the right site for a project.If you’re interested in where renewables, storage and the grid are heading, this is a good one. 🎙️
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  James Innes: 20 Years Building UK Wind, Solar & Battery — and the £100bn Grid Problem Ahead 26.08.2026 38min

  This week on the Renewable Energy Movement Podcast, Tom sits down with James Innes, Head of UK Development at Elmia.James started out in oil and gas before moving into renewables in 2005, joining Iberdrola as the UK onshore wind market was starting to grow.Since then, he’s seen almost every side of the UK renewables market, from developing wind projects with Iberdrola and Scottish Power, to moving into solar, and now working on battery storage at Elmia, where he’s helping manage a 7 GW portfolio across 14 projects.In this episode, James explains what the UK’s CP2030 grid changes actually mean for developers, why getting a grid connection now looks more like an auction than a queue, and why he believes the UK needs around £100 billion of new grid infrastructure by 2035.We also talk about what he sees as one of the biggest risks to renewables: oil and gas becoming cheap again and why solar and battery technology needs to keep getting cheaper to compete.We cover:• Moving from oil and gas into onshore wind in 2005• Building wind projects with Iberdrola and Scottish Power• Why a major wind project in Wales never got built• Moving from wind into solar• What CP2030 means for UK grid connections• Why battery storage struggled under the new grid rules• The £100 billion of grid investment James believes the UK still needs• Why cheap oil and gas could be a major challenge for renewables🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
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  Are Flexible Data Centers Better Than Batteries? | Lukas Pfeiffer 19.08.2026 27min

  What if the answer to grid congestion isn’t always a battery? 👀This week, Tom sits down with Lukas Pfeiffer, CEO and Co-Founder of Gridmetry, to talk about why flexible data centres could be one of the most overlooked tools available to renewable energy developers.Lukas took a very different route into the industry... From telecoms and data centre consulting, to Bitcoin mining, and eventually to building Gridmetry into one of Europe’s largest flexibility providers for data centres. That background gives him a very different way of looking at the grid.They get into why 1 MW of flexible data centre capacity can provide similar economic value to 8 MWh of battery storage at around a quarter of the cost, why the Nordics are leading the way, what happens when growing AI demand meets an already stretched grid, and what Europe’s energy system could look like in 10 years if this model takes off.It’s one of those conversations that might change how you think about what belongs next to a renewable energy project.🎙️ Renewable Energy Movement Podcast — Powered by KIGYO
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  Paolo Tusa: From Coal to Clean | Why Joining Early Changed Everything | Part 2 12.08.2026 27min

  In Part 2 with Tom Essex, Paolo Tusa gets into what’s really happening in the Italian renewable energy market.They talk about why the market is heading towards more consolidation, why trying to operate across too many countries doesn’t always work, and why Paolo walked away from Enfinity Global when the pressure around the IPO became too much.Paolo also explains why he sees renewable energy as a marathon, not a sprint, why many of Italy’s authorised solar projects may never actually get built, and how falling battery prices could change project economics over the next few years.And to finish, he shares the one change he would make to Italy’s regulatory system if he had the chance.Missed Part 1? It’s already in the feed. 🎙️Renewable Energy Movement | Powered by KIGYO
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  Paolo Tusa: From Coal to Clean | Why Joining Early Changed Everything 05.08.2026 25min

  Paolo Tusa didn't plan a career in renewable energy.He started out managing one of Europe's biggest construction sites, a coal power plant just outside Rome with nearly 4,000 people on site. Then, in 2009, he made the move into the Italian solar market when the industry was still in its early days.In this episode, Paolo shares how that decision shaped the rest of his career, from building teams and developing projects in Italy to working across Europe, the US and China, joining startups, navigating market downturns, and eventually becoming VP Italy at OX2.If you're interested in renewable energy, leadership, or how careers really unfold, this is a conversation worth listening to.Part 2 drops next Wednesday.Renewable Energy Movement | Powered by KIGYO
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  Roland Flaig — The HR Guy Who Ran Half of Europe's Wind Portfolio | Part 2 22.07.2026 21min

  In Part 2 of our conversation with Roland Flaig, CEO of ANEO, we get into what happens after the big mergers are done and the real work beginsRoland walks us through what it was actually like to merge the RWE and E.ON operational teams across 12 countries, what separates a good site manager from a truly great operations leader, why psychological safety on a multi-contractor construction site is harder than it sounds, and his honest take on where the Nordic renewables market is heading over the next five yearsHit subscribe so you never miss an episodeRenewable Energy Movement | Powered by KIGYO
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  Roland Flaig — The HR Guy Who Ran Half of Europe's Wind Portfolio (Part 1) 15.07.2026 26min

  How does someone go from working in HR to running massive, heavy-duty engineering operations for one of Europe's biggest energy utilities?In Part 1 of this special two-part episode, Tom Essex sits down with Roland Flaig, CEO of Aneo. Roland shares his incredible career pivot and breaks down his unique leadership philosophy: treating your assets like people, and your people like assets.If you want to know what it actually takes to build trust, lead massive cross-border teams, and why a commercial mindset is the most important skill in renewables right now, this conversation is for you.Connect with us:Follow the REM Podcast for more insights from the frontlines of the green energy transition.Connect with Tom Essex on LinkedIn.The Renewable Energy Movement | Powered by KIGYO
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  Abel De Voogd - The Political Scientist Who Builds Solar Farms 01.07.2026 31min

  Abel de Voogd is Head of Project Development at ABO Energy in the Netherlands. He didn't come from an engineering background. Instead, he studied political science before finding his way into renewable energy, where he's now spent more than 10 years developing solar projects, mainly for the Dutch farming sector.In this episode, Tom and Abel talk about the real challenges of agri-solar. They discuss why a farmer often only gets one chance to make the right decision, why agri-PV is much harder than it looks, how grid congestion has changed project development in the Netherlands, and where Abel thinks the market is heading over the next five years.A practical, honest conversation based on years of real experience in the field.Renewable Energy Movement | Powered by KIGYO
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  Structuring For Success! 10.06.2026 15min

  This week on REM Rewind, Tom Essex pulls two episodes from the Season 1 archive that were recorded months apart but tell opposite sides of the same story.Laurens van Ochten is Head of BESS at R.Power, where he oversees a centralised team across six European countries. He breaks down how grid access works differently across each market, why Germany's ultra-easy access quietly flooded the system with paper projects that never got built, and how R.Power structured its BESS operation to stay ahead of the curve.Carlo Toic is COO and co-founder of SOL-R Global, a real estate investment company operating inside the renewable energy industry. He makes the case that IPPs should never own land, explains why mixing real estate and energy on the same balance sheet kills your IRR, and draws a direct parallel to what already happened in the telco sector.Two guests who never sat in the same room, solving the same fundamental problem from completely different directions. The infrastructure beneath the infrastructure is where renewable energy projects quietly succeed or fail. This episode is about exactly that.Full solo episodes for both Laurens and Carlo are in the back catalogue.Renewable Energy Movement Podcast — Powered by Kigyo.
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  REM Rewind: The Local Conviction of Global Scaling 03.06.2026 56min

  I recorded these conversations months apart and genuinely didn't plan this but when I went back into the archive to pull them together, I couldn't believe how much they were saying the same thing from completely opposite ends of the industry.Mathieu Lassagne walked away from 15 years inside ENGIE and EDF to co-found ZE-Energy from scratch. Without any safety net or corporate playbook, just seven years of going deep into local grid intermittency, hybrid solar-plus-storage, and the unglamorous but genuinely critical work of asset re-powering across France, Italy and Germany.Francisco Diaz never left the big organizations but he went wide in a way that most people never do. Built a 100-person team from the ground up across six Latin American countries for Canadian Solar, then moved on to scale gigawatt-level projects in India, Germany, and the US. He went around different continents every few years. facing different market rules every time.On paper they couldn't be more different but when you pull back a layer and they're telling opposite sides of the exact same story.It's the red tape and the companies actually winning right now who've figured out how to move through brutal regulatory environments as fast as the technology scales. If you're building in this space, regulatory agility isn't a nice-to-have. What we get into:— Why the best market intelligence only comes from being in a market before anyone's written the playbook yet— Mathieu on the structural shift happening right now from centralized utility models to local flexibility and what that actually means in practice— Francisco on India: the speed, the sophistication of the auctions, and why the volume of work happening there is unlike anything else on the planet— And the conviction both of them share: throw all the capital you want at a project, without the right people on the ground, it doesn't moveThis episode is the highlights package.The Renewable Energy Movement is powered by Kigyo.
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  The Reality of Global Mobility: Rewriting the Renewable Career Playbook 27.05.2026 43min

  Two careers built by saying yes when the answer should have been no. This throwback compilation brings together two of the most listened-to conversations from Season One of the Renewable Energy Movement. Ilona Nemeth-Kiss and Alexandros Kalargyros have almost nothing in common on paper.One is a Hungarian lawyer who accidentally built a career in offshore wind after moving to Germany with zero German and two small kids. The other is a Greek engineer who spent fifteen years building renewable projects across four continents and had his daughter born mid-relocation between South Africa and the United States. What they share is the willingness to step back, start over, and figure it out on arrival. In an industry that rewards exactly that quality, both ended up exactly where they belong.In this compilation: The cultural and professional shock of crossing industries and bordersWhat it actually takes to be accepted on a site in South Africa as a European engineer Stepping down in title to step up in career Greece as an emerging energy hub and why BESS is the market's next challengeAnd the best single line this podcast has produced: do no harm and take no shit Both full episodes remain in the feed. This is the best of both.The Renewable Energy Movement Podcast is Powered by Kigyo.
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  Say Yes and Move: A Throwback ft. Natalia Paraskevopoulou and Filippo Ricci 20.05.2026 30min

  Two careers built by saying yes when most people said no.Natalia Paraskevopoulou, Head of Wind Business Development for EMEA at LightSource BP, discovered renewables in a classroom in Athens in 2004. She went on to move to Johannesburg as a 20-something woman in a field dominated by men, earn respect on construction sites by physically doing the job, and build a career that now spans Greece, South Africa and the UK.Filippo Ricci, General Manager and Country Lead for Italy at Recurrent Energy, fell into renewables through a friend asking for help in Bologna. He ended up developing markets in Chile, Egypt, Jordan and Cameroon before he was thirty.Two different paths with the same lesson at the end of both of them.In this throwback episode Tom revisits two of the most popular conversations from the REM archive and brings them together for the first time.What they cover together:Why the best careers in this industry are rarely plannedWhat working across radically different cultures actually teaches youWhy saying yes to the uncomfortable thing is the common thread in almost every success storyWhat the Italian and European renewable markets look like heading into the next phase of executionAnd why the energy transition only wins if it saves people moneyLeadership, people, and why community inside a team matters more than most leaders admitThe Renewable Energy Movement Podcast is powered by Kigyo.
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  Read the Instructions First: Maria del Puy on Spain’s Energy Future 13.05.2026 38min

  Maria del Puy Ayerra started her career in 2001 at GAMESA, developing wind farms in Spain when "renewable energy" was barely a household term. Over the last two decades, her career has spanned Spain, the UK, and the United States, navigating every market cycle thrown at developers, investors, and consultants.In this conversation with Tom Essex, Maria provides an insider’s view of the Spanish energy evolution; from the early feed-in tariff boom to the grid saturation crisis of today. They discuss the ground-level reality of the 2025 blackout, the necessity of storage, and what the next two years leading up to 2028 actually look like for those moving capital into the region.In this episode, we cover:The Early Days: Joining GAMESA in 2001 and the internal reality of Spain’s first wind energy boom.Resilience Through Crashes: Surviving the 2008–2013 market collapse and the five-year wait for real momentum to return.Global Perspectives: Moving across the UK and US markets, overcoming language barriers, and avoiding "cultural ego traps" when entering new territories.A Milestone Moment: What it felt like to see Spain run on 100% renewable energy for a full day after starting when it was just a dream.The Grid Crisis: An honest look at the April 2025 blackout and the reality of 83% grid node saturation.The Storage Mandate: Why storage is no longer optional and how creative PPA structures are reshaping the market.Strategic Acquisitions: Why this is an opportunistic moment for investors and how to navigate the current regulatory landscape.Future Frontiers: Maria’s current work advising on the intersection of data centers, EVs, and total energy solutions.Connect with the Movement:Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-del-puy-ayerra/Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomessex/Subscribe to the Renewable Energy Movement Podcast to stay updated on the people and technology driving the global energy transition. Powered by: Kigyo
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  Ksenia Balanda: Building Italy’s Floating Offshore Wind Future 06.05.2026 39min

  There Is No Going Back: Ksenia Balanda on Floating Offshore Wind in Italy!Ksenia has spent nearly 20 years at the absolute edge of the energy business. She started with building a 45-person team in nine months in Russia to mastering Italian in "survival mode," her career has been defined by rapid scale and frontier markets.Now, as the Head of Offshore Wind Italy for Nadara, Ksenia is leading one of the most ambitious energy projects in the Mediterranean: the development of six floating offshore wind farms across Southern Italy and Sardinia, representing a massive 5 GW of capacity.In this conversation with Tom Essex, Ksenia breaks down what floating offshore wind actually requires to succeed, why Italy’s regulatory environment is currently the biggest bottleneck, and how the country’s ports and supply chains are quietly preparing for a generational industrial shift.In this episode, we cover:The "Generalist" Advantage: How starting in economics led Ksenia to lead billion-euro energy projects.Rapid Scale: The reality of building a 45-person renewable energy team from scratch in just nine months.The Mediterranean Opportunity: Why floating wind in Italy is a global game-changer and a gateway for the region.The "Three Projects in Parallel" Strategy: Understanding the unique complexity of developing floating technology.Regulatory Bottlenecks: Navigating Italy’s policy gaps and what needs to change to unlock construction.The Talent Shift: Upskilling workers from legacy coal and naval industries for the offshore future.Frontier Leadership: The art of hiring talent and then getting out of their way.WindEurope Insights: Key takeaways from Madrid regarding the future of wind in Italy, Portugal, and Greece.Connect with the Movement:Guest: Ksenia Balanda (Head of Offshore Wind Italy, Nadara)Host: Tom EssexSubscribe to the Renewable Energy Movement Podcast to stay updated on the people and technology driving the global energy transition. Powered by: Kigyo
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  Build the Relationship First: Stefano Girolami on Solar, Leadership and Scale 29.04.2026 43min

  Stefano Girolami arrived in London from Naples nearly 15 years ago planning to stay six months. He stayed for over a decade, built a career across five countries, and eventually joined a six-person startup that has since scaled to over a hundred people across Europe.He is now the Group CTO of Innovo Renewables. But this isn’t just a conversation about technology todays episode taps into a masterclass in leadership, resilience, and why your professional relationships are your most valuable currency.As Stefano sits down with Tom Essex to discuss the "scars" of the feed-in tariff crash, the reality of managing teams more senior than yourself at 25, and why he chose the chaos of a startup over the security of a global utility, they discuss the following:The Pivot: From Naples to London and finding a footing in the UK solar market.The Market Crash: Surviving the feed-in tariff collapse and being made redundant twice before age 30.The "Young Leader" Challenge: Managing peers and senior experts as a first-time manager.Scaling a Giant: Navigating the Solar Century acquisition by Statkraft and the transition to corporate life.Startup DNA: Joining Innovo at the ground floor and building a team of 100+ from scratch.Hiring Strategy: Why he prioritizes junior talent and "proceduralized" workflows.The Horizon: Future predictions for the Italian and European solar markets over the next 24 months.Connect with the Movement:Guest: Stefano Girolami (Group CTO, Innovo Renewables)Host: Tom EssexSubscribe to The Renewable Energy Movement Podcast to never miss an episode on the people and technology driving the global energy transition.Powered by: Kigyo