Why Are We Electrifying So Slowly? The Electrification Staircase Ep256: Adrian Hiel, Silvia Madeddu, William Drake & Thomas Butler

Every single scenario for the future that looks at a cleaner energy system has electrification growing to 60, 70, 80% or more, and yet we don't make rapid progress. Why? One of the reasons we don't make progress lies in narratives and culture wars. We hear about heat pumps that don't work, we hear about electric vehicles that don't work, we hear that electrification can't work for high temperature heat and so on, and then we hear a narrative that there is a false solution that will work much better: hydrogen. So how do we electrify things faster? By focussing on what we can do right now, commercially at scale, and removing the barriers that slow those sectors down. Presenting the Electrification Staircase, a tool that breaks down the “Electrify Everything” argument into what can be achieved now, what will be in the near future, and what needs more support to come into being by the middle of the century. This week on Cleaning Up, Michael is joined by the authors of the Electrification Staircase to explore their thinking behind it, how it can be used, and what can be done to get electrification moving even faster. The authors are Adrian Hiel, Director of the Electrification Alliance, Silvia Madeddu, Solutions Architect at Schneider Electric, William Drake, analyst at Liebreich Associates and Thomas Butler, associate at the Regulatory Assistance Project, as well as Michael Liebreich. Leadership Circle: Cleaning Up is proud to be supported by its Leadership Circle. The members are Actis, Alcazar Energy, Arup, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Cygnum Capital, Davidson Kempner, Ecopragma Capital, EDP, Eurelectric, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, Schneider Electric, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information about the Leadership Circle, visit cleaningup.live Links: The Electrification Staircase: The Electrification Staircase Appendix: The Electrification Alliance: Regulatory Assistance Project: Sylvia Madeddu’s Past appearance on Cleanig Up:

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Why Are We Electrifying So Slowly? The Electrification Staircase Ep256: Adrian Hiel, Silvia Madeddu, William Drake & Thomas Butler is an episode from Cleaning Up. Leadership in an age of climate change. by Michael Liebreich and Bryony Worthington.

This episode is 00:55:44 long.

This episode was published on May 6, 2026.

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