The GreenWave Podcast

The GreenWave Podcast by Synergy international Episode 55: Adaptation Goes Mainstream as Fastest Growing Member of Sustainable Family

Join SYNI, your hostess with a bounty of wisdom, for today’s discussion of Adaptation, the fastest growing member of the sustainability family and the one that shows up to the party wearing sensible shoes. Adaptation is the biggest buzz for sustainable development and investment headed into 2026 and sounds simple: it is the deliberate strengthening of people, ecosystems, and infrastructure to reduce harm and maintain function as climate hazards and other environmental stresses intensify and shift. If you work in sustainable energy, Adaptation has quickly become a bigger dial on your risk register, design basis, community value proposition, and market thesis. Clean electrons that stay on during stress events are now the objective of the exercise. Project development that qualifies demands the ability to measure, finance, implement, maintain, and update as hazards evolve. It will be an enterprise based upon continued governance. 

The GreenWave Podcast by Synergy international Episode 54: Our Sustainable Energy Outlook for 2026

SYNI, your hostess still going strong entering into Year 2 of the pod, presents our 2026 outlook for sustainable energy development. Consider this episode the de facto Part 2 to last week’s 2025 review, focusing on three key watch topics that sit right at the junction of policy, project delivery, and capital markets for this year. First, data centres and the way digital demand is reshaping power systems. Second, flexibility economics, meaning storage, demand response, and the evolving logic of power markets. Third, grids as the binding constraint, meaning the physical and regulatory reality of getting electrons from where they are generated to where they are needed. Yes this is an outlook episode and such occasions often tempt people into dramatic predictions that are intended to draw attention to themselves, or otherwise be forgotten in a sea of misguided forecasts. We know that energy transition has enough drama already. The interesting question for 2026 is whether the transition continues with less friction, less waste, and more system value. Data centres will test that. Flexibility will enable that. Grids will decide that. 

The GreenWave Podcast by Synergy International Episode 53: 2025 in Review - Our 3 Top Sustainable Themes

SYNI, your hostess with plenty of gusto, launches into our Year End 2025 episode, reflecting on the three topics that most defined sustainable energy and development trends as we move into the New Year. Before we get into the substance, a quick note of appreciation. This year marks our first full year of podcasting, which in podcast terms is roughly the same as surviving a full year of budget season, just with fewer spreadsheets and more people listening. Thank you for riding with us week after week, for sharing episodes, for challenging our takes, and for staying curious in a field that rewards stamina as much as insight. As we reflect on 2025, we can now see in hindsight that it was a year of untidy narratives. Yet it was a year of the transition becoming operationally unavoidable. Solar turned into baseline infrastructure. Carbon turned into trade compliance. Hydrogen turned into grown up finance. The EU acted like a bloc that wants its transition to be durable, competitive, and enforceable. Global politics made that posture less optional than it might have seemed a few years ago.

The GreenWave Podcast by Synergy International Episode 52: Wishing You All Merry Christmas and Happy Hols

SYNI, your host brimming over with Christmas spirit, offers a short holiday message, plus a quick look at what we have been unpacking together this year across our first 51 episodes. And rest assured, we’ll be back with our year-end 2025 episode next week, reflecting on developments both good and bad for sustainability during this year. So Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone listening in from boardrooms, trading floors, policy shops, engineering teams, academic departments, and that special corner of the world where people read consultation papers for fun. Thank you for giving us your attention in a year when attention has become the rarest commodity on Earth, narrowly ahead of grid connection capacity. 

GreenWave Podcast by Synergy International Episode 51: CBAM Is Coming in 2026. Is Your Company Ready? SYNI Tells You Everything You Need to Know

SYNI, your hostess with real panache, addresses the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, better known as CBAM, and why at the start of 2026 it will become the most important piece of climate policy that many exporters will only notice when an EU customer emails them with the subject line “Urgent Emissions Data Request.” Once again, the EU has followed the courage of their convictions with legislation that is certain to ruffle more than a few feathers in a world of power politics disguised as trade policy. At the end of the day, it's all about the EU's commitment to lower missions by 55% by 2030. And Brussels is about to flex on sustainable trade in an unprecedented way. 

The GreenWave Podcast by Synergy International Episode 50: The Sustainable Story Behind Nazare and Big Wave Surf Contests.

SYNI, your hostess, turns her curiousity to the sustainability story behind big wave surfing contests, with a special focus on the World Surf League TUDOR Nazare Big Wave Challenge and what it means for the Blue Economy and for ocean conservation. The surfing community is officially on watch between now and March for “gigantes” to roll into Nazare, then the klaxon will blow for the start of the 2025-26 vintage of the breath-taking contest. SYNI looks at the history of Nazare, the sustainability efforts of the World Surfing League, the network of World Surfing Reserve designated breaks across the globe, and what the surfing community can do to better walk-the-walk of sustainability and conservation. So let's paddle out together and give us a listen just so you know that 50 is not the new 40 when it comes to SYNI or podcasts!
 

The GreenWave Podcast By Synergy International - Episode 49: AI, Data Centres and an Impending Power Crunch in the Age of Electricity.

SYNI, your ever-loyal pod hostess, turns her focus to AI, data centres and an impending power crunch in this new “Age of Electricity.” Can electricity grids manage to stay green amid booming AI demand for power? Forecasted data centre electricity demand will soon begin to outstrip sustainable supply. And this unbalance is forecast to grow quickly and become unmanageable in the not-so-distant future. By the end of the pod, you’ll know SNYI's view on which four pillars are needed to forge a solution. Now, let’s dig into this high-voltage elephant in the room and weigh in with our recommendations on how to cope with this crackling issue. Thanks again for joining us!

The GreenWave Podcast by Synergy International Episode 48: Living over Confidently in a Wetter World with Bad COPs

SYNI, your hostess that defines podcasting elegance and focus, addresses the events of this week all pointing to being confidently wrong in a wetter world. No prizes for all of us that knew COP30 was always likely to be a bust. SYNI provides a brief discussion of this latest edition of a COP flop, the briefer the better. Yet the political clownshow in Belém dovetails with some extraordinary news about super-computer enhanced climate forecasting a wetter and more volatile world. This very bad COP also demonstrated how the psychology of ignorant over-confidence is framing the current climate debate. Over to SYNI and "bora là" as they say in Brazil!

The GreenWave Gazette by Synergy International Episode 47: Adaptation and Resilience Is Not the New NetZero. Just Ask All Oil Industry Lobbyists at COP30.

SYNI, your hostess that consistently exceeds expectations, asks if adaptation and resilience are now the fallback positions due to an expected failure to deliver on Net Zero? Are we quietly shifting from a world where mitigation reducing emissions is the main story to a world where we accept higher levels of warming and simply try to toughen up our societies and our infrastructure? This is not just some theoretical question. Last year, the total costs associated with climate change related disasters globally spiked to ~$1.5 trillion. The US share of this disaster bill approached $1 trillion, close to the amount it spent on providing Social Security income support for poor and older Americans. Given this tremendous price tag, SYNI helps us understand the scale of adaptation that is being discussed and the expectations about future warming that sit behind it. By the end of this episode, you’ll know our take on these key issues. We invite you to join us!

The GreenWave Podcast by Synergy International Episode 46: Don't Expect Any Sankey Diagrams at COP30

Instead of yet another COP30 preview, your hostess SYNI heads right into the heart of the real sustainable energy debate that is sadly missing in Brazil, starting with an explanation of the one chart you need during COP30 week, the classic Sankey energy use diagram. If you’re not familiar with the Sankey, never fear, you will be by the end of this pod. And you’ll know how it reveals that clean energy answers a far larger share of our real energy needs than realised by the pessimists responsible for COP30's negative vibe shift. Think interns of energy services and suddenly you can see the light at the end of the NetZero tunnel. So join SYNI as she paints this Sankey picture in your sustainable imagination.