New podcast - Going Clean Is Dirty Business - reveals a breakthrough that nearly changed the world
After more than a decade of research, investigating and documenting events as they unfolded, Deckchair Productions are today launching Going Clean Is Dirty Business, a gripping new narrative podcast uncovering one of the most extraordinary stories in modern clean energy history.
For the first time, a maverick TV pioneer turned clean energy insurgent tells the inside story of the billion-dollar hydrogen breakthrough that came within touching distance of changing the world by giving people free clean energy (and could still).
Each week, in conversation with filmmaker Harry Otto Brünjes (right), Nick Abson (left) retraces an almost unbelievable journey: from directing Queen’s We Will Rock You and Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, to revolutionising British television, to building Europe’s largest fuel cell company, before losing £250 million in a single catastrophic week after 9/11.
What follows is a story that moves at breakneck speed from pop culture to high finance, from factory floors to the Houses of Parliament, from Wall Street to the US Supreme Court. As hydrogen fuel cells stood on the brink of going mainstream, something happened. Deals were made. Alliances shifted. Legal battles ignited. And a technology that promised clean power and clean water quietly disappeared from view.
Compiled over ten years and told through exclusive first-hand testimony, Going Clean Is Dirty Business charts the rise of a man who became one of the richest figures in Britain and his dramatic fall into financial ruin, geopolitical conflict and a fight for survival.
This is more than a podcast about energy. It’s a high-stakes saga of ambition, power, betrayal and resilience and the story of a technology that, against all odds, refuses to die.
Speaking on the launch, Nick Abson said: “I’ve always believed cheap clean energy is not only possible but realistic. The destruction of our companies, facilities, endless court cases and threats have never made me think differently. The idea that energy is a right not to be exploited is the mantra. I learned how to build technology that everyone can and should be able to make. It’s not a distant idea, but a reality that can be achieved, no matter how many oppose it. For the last ten years we have been documenting how to tell the story and get on with challenging the status quo to power the people.”
Harry Otto Brünjes added: “I first sat down with Nick in the back room of a pub in Chelsea. I thought I was meeting a colourful character with an unbelievable story but I soon realised we were sitting on one of the most important and disturbing clean energy investigations of our time. Our job for this podcast has been simple: follow the evidence, test the claims, and let listeners decide.”
Going Clean Is Dirty Business is a gripping narrative investigation into the clean energy revolution we almost had and the system that stopped it.
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