Business Post Podcasts – Details, episodes & analysis

Conall Bolger, chief executive of the Irish Solar Energy Association, gives his Five Degrees of Change, including scaling up solar energy, aiming for 100 per cent renewable electricity on the grid, and empowering citizens to reap the benefits of DIY energy production.

Lynn Boylan is a Sinn Féin senator with a background in environmentalism and experience working in Europe as an MEP. 

For her Five Degrees of Change, Boylan spoke about lowering the voting age to 16, making ecocide a crime, exiting the Energy Charter Treaty, making space for nature in her garden, and trying to use her car less. 

Ed Brophy worked as a government advisor to three different Irish governments over the last decade, with a front row seat to inner workings of a our political system. He has a unique insight into the state managing crises, as he was present for the fallout of the financial crash, the consequences of Brexit and most recently the pandemic.

Brophy's Five Degrees of Change included making climate change a key tenet of macroeconomic policy, making climate change part of the curriculum, and getting cars out of cities.

Michelle Ní Longáin, the new President of the Law Society, joins the podcast to discuss her plans. English barrister Paul Marshall tells us about hundreds of criminal convictions that may have arisen from a computer error. We discuss recent case law, and how courts can establish whether handwriting has been forged.

Law on Trial is presented by Peter Leonard BL, Mark Tottenham BL, editor of Decisis.ie, and Catherine Sanz, legal correspondent of the Business Post. 

Hannah is one of Ireland's leading energy analysts. She has become a regular feature of radio and newspaper media as Ireland has begun to wrestle with the scale of the energy transition that lies ahead. For her Five Degrees of Change, Hannah chose to install safe walking and cycling infrastructure near schools, to divise a national land use and food production strategy, to set a national curriculum at secondary and third level for climate change, and to change her diet and fossil fuel habits. 

Norman Crowley is a serial clean energy entrepreneur. He has several successful businesses in the clean energy and climate action space, from helping large manufacturers reduce their energy waste, to running a climate change exhibition at the Powerscourt estate in Wicklow, to retrofitting expensive classic cars with electric engines .

For his policy changes, Norman chose to ensure data centres use their power generation assets to support the electricity grid, to create a regulatory framework to allow electric cars feed power from their batteries back into the grid, and to incentivise research for cellular lab grown meat and make Ireland a leader in the future of lab-grown meat production

For his personal changes, Norman discussed how he eats less meat and how he drives electric most of the time.

This bonus episode of Five Degrees of Change comes from Glasgow on November 11th, just as the COP26 negotiations reach their critical point. We speak with three Irish experts attending the conference about what changes they would like to see come out of COP26.