The REM Podcast - Renewable Energy Movement

Tom Essex

The REM Podcast gathers the most successful project development and delivery leaders in utility-scale renewable energy to share their stories and insights. We’re the go-to place for authentic and valuable conversations within this niche industry, covering market challenges, how leaders plan to navigate them, and what’s happening behind the scenes.

  1. vor 4 Tagen

    Carmelo Bongiovanni: Building a Solar Giant Across Three Continents

    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

  2. 9. Sept.

    From Banana Farms to Battery Storage: Roberto Jimenez's Unlikely Path to BW ESS

    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

  3. 2. Sept.

    Alvaro Sanz (Enerside): Why Chile and Spain Keep Having the Same Blackout

    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. 🎙️

  4. 26. Aug.

    James Innes: 20 Years Building UK Wind, Solar & Battery — and the £100bn Grid Problem Ahead

    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.

  5. 19. Aug.

    Are Flexible Data Centers Better Than Batteries? | Lukas Pfeiffer

    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

  6. 12. Aug.

    Paolo Tusa: From Coal to Clean | Why Joining Early Changed Everything | Part 2

    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

  7. 5. Aug.

    Paolo Tusa: From Coal to Clean | Why Joining Early Changed Everything

    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

  8. 22. Juli

    Roland Flaig — The HR Guy Who Ran Half of Europe's Wind Portfolio | Part 2

    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 begins Roland 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 years Hit subscribe so you never miss an episode Renewable Energy Movement | Powered by KIGYO

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The REM Podcast gathers the most successful project development and delivery leaders in utility-scale renewable energy to share their stories and insights. We’re the go-to place for authentic and valuable conversations within this niche industry, covering market challenges, how leaders plan to navigate them, and what’s happening behind the scenes.

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  • Erstellt von
    Tom Essex
  • Jahre aktiv
    2025 - 2026
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