Episode Details

Check out the UK's most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Aurélie Maréchal is the Director of Positive Money Europe, an organisation working to reform the economic system so that it works for people and the planet. She's spent 15 years inside the European policy machine, watching the Green Deal go from a fringe idea to the headline of the European Commission, and then watching it disappear from political discourse entirely in just five years. She now spends her time showing policymakers, central banks, and businesses why the way we handle money, interest rates, and investment is one of the most powerful climate levers we're not using properly.

This conversation unpacks the relationship between climate and economics that almost nobody explains clearly: why fossil fuels drive inflation, why raising interest rates to fight that inflation actually makes renewable energy harder to finance, and why the European Central Bank's standard playbook is accidentally locking us into the very system we're trying to escape.

We talk about fossil inflation and climate inflation, why renewable energy projects are more sensitive to interest rate changes than fossil fuel infrastructure, and why the Green Deal went from mainstream policy to politically toxic in the space of two election cycles. Aurélie also shares what it's like working as an insider in Brussels, why lobbying isn't a dirty word but power imbalances make it dangerous, and why the arguments that work today aren't about saving the planet, they're about sovereignty, security, and competitiveness.

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This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

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Find Positive Money at: https://positivemoney.org

Follow Positive Money Europe on LinkedIn, Facebook, Bluesky, and TikTok

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

00:00 Why are we talking about money?

06:30 What is monetary policy?

12:45 What is fossil inflation and climateflation?

18:20 Why raising interest rates makes renewables harder to finance

24:10 Evidence that renewables reduce electricity prices

29:40 The rise and fall of the Green Deal

35:50 Why climate arguments don't work anymore

41:15 The insider/outsider strategy

47:30 How lobbying actually works

54:00 What can you do after this episode?