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With Laurent's Segolan from London and Gerard
Read from Berlin. This is redefining energy

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minutes, John, Now way are
doing our minutes on the main show.

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Hey, looking forward to It's the
first one and it should have been number

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ninety nine, but now it's number
one fourteen. I have no idea why.

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Well, you're in charge of the
numbers, so yeah, I can

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only blame you. We have number
of the week ninety LA per pound,

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per pound, ninety per pound.
That's a very good question. Give me

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a little bit of a clue,
is it. I could say something that

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really looks stupid, right, I
was going to say it's probably uranium,

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right it is? Oh, it
is, okay, because I was going

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to say something even worse. So
I'm glading out right because I don't want

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to look stupid on the at the
beginning of the year. Okay, all

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right, And it was the best
performing commodity, going up eighty percent in

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two twenty three. But it's a
very tiny market so you can't really trade

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it. Yeah it is. But
you know the funny thing is it's probably

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the only investment that I've done that's
done well over the last year and a

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half because I invested into what's called
the sprout ETF. I don't know if

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you've heard of this, Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so just so

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those are people who are you know, obviously the uranium market's quite small,

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but what actually happened was there is
an exchange traded fund. I think he's

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at a Canada, isn't he?
Okay, he's out of North America.

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Anyway, what he decided to do
was to start buying physical uranium, and

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he's now got so much uranium bought
that it would supply all of the French

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nuclear fleet for two years. And
he's taken the margin supply out of the

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market. That's what he's done,
and the prices have just gone to the

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roof. Yeah. So anyway,
that's the only good investment I did in

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in the public markets in the last
year. La on crazy crazy crazy.

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It is though funny market uranium.
It is so took about nuclear. We

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starting to have the twenty three data
because most of the time the nuclear industry

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likes to use that are three to
five years old. So if I look

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in Europe, the nuclear production in
two twenty three versus two twenty two is

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only up nine hour, which is
really not much with more French supply,

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but we have less coming from the
UK and less of course from Germany,

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so it's almost flat. If I
look at the US, it's plus one

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hour, so nothing in the US. The big event was plus one hundred

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of gas and one hundred of coal, so that was the big event.

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And even if I look at China, nuclear is minus sweeter what hour.

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So over Europe US China nuclear production
two or twenty three is flat. It's

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flat. So what about new builder
and stuff like that. I haven't looked

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at the chart on that. I
think the big news, and that is

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really massive, is the return of
what I call Godzilla in Japan. Godzilla

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is the biggest nuclear plant in the
world and it has been stopped for ten

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years and finally the Japanese regulator has
authorized them to restart. And I'm going

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to quote the name. It's the
Keshi Waza key Caiwa Plant eight point two

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gigawat, so I guess they have
Yeah, they have put six or seven

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nuclear plant next to one another.
It's of course by the sea, but

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it's facing Korea. Did a lot
of safety pollen. But if they restart,

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it's so huge it will spare Japan
five billion dollars of ell engine port

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per year. My god. That
might be counterbalanced by the fact that they've

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just hit by a tsunami and they've
had to close a whole pile of the

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nuclear plants, right, I mean
sorry, it is a serious issue when

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you just think of it, is
that you have to cool these plants and

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where do you put them either potamon
rivers or you put them on seas It's

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another one of the issues that nuclear
face is going forward, right, Yeah,

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but look, the plants are there
and being they've been chicking safety for

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the past ten years, so fully
you know, it's not going to be

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as bad as Fukushima. I guess
they learn their lessons. But the thing

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is they are all fully expensive to
build. But once they are there,

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you want them to run as much
as possible because especially if country like Korea

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Japan, which are energy pour needs
to import pretty much all over the energy

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it's not having nuclear, it is
a huge burden. No sorry, listen,

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I'm totally which are a nuclear I
mean nuclear is part of the future

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and if it's built, well,
we should keep these things running. Simple

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as that it's clean energy. Yeah, it's clean, it's a good baseload,

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but the number of passionate supporter they
have is pretty phenomenal. But if

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you look at the result, okay, two or twenty three, another flat

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year, it is. But let's
be clear one thing. There's a big

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difference for the Europeans between twenty twenty
three Christmas and the year before, and

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that is the French nuclear plants are
up and running. I think you've got

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fifty four gigawatts or whatever running and
that's the difference. And we saw I

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don't know if you saw Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, we saw negative power

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prices across Europe, et cetera,
et cetera. And it can contrast that

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with a year ago. Now,
these are these crazy prices. So the

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good news is the existing nuclear plants
in Europe are back and running. Yeah,

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but I mean people are cheering about
back to normal. Well, for

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me, it's a niche market technology, and it's an important niche market technology

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in the electricity space. But it's
not going to change our world going forward.

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I don't think it is. Anyway, you never know, it might

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be surprised. No, no,
no, but it's just too expensive.

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It's too expensive it's just takes too
long. It takes too long, and

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the private sick dog doesn't want to
touch it. So it's just public money.

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And as you know, public money
is a finite resource. Sure is.

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Yeah, absolutely, As we talk
about niche market technologies, can we

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talk about offshore end? Okay?
So two twenty three there were a lot

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of host is, especially in the
US, with probably what half of the

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project were mouth bold or just canceled. Osted caused them a fortune. I

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don't know what price they negotiated with
New Jersey because every developer has managed to

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get out with a few millions,
but Osted had to pay billions to get

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out of the New Jersey deals.
Absolutely. Absolutely. The reasons are known

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inflation, supply chain, interest rates
and so on. But I think there

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are silver linings and I do believe
that this industry is going to turn around

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into twenty four and I give you
a few reasons. Number one, w

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at the end of last year they
bought all of that t and Fal off

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shore development in the North Sea for
a billion, which means that is still

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very bullish on off shot wind.
Osted has announced that they're going to develop

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on CEA three, which is an
absolute massive wind farm. Same in the

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North Sea, and I guess they
founded deal with the UK regulator to get

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a better price because their price was
really too low. And even in the

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US we just had last week Avant
Grid and Copenhagen in Fosture Partner announced that

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they're eight hundred mega what Vineyard win
number one as fed power to the New

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England grid. So despite all the
bad headlines, people are working. This

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is a hard working industry and they
still continue to plant those stourbines in the

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sea. So that's great. So
let me give you my upsote opinion.

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Please, offshore wind, I think
is a niche market technology and it will

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stay that way. And I'll start
with one question. Do you know how

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much offshore wind turbines were installed across
the world excluding China last year twenty twenty

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three? Nope, but you're gonna
tell me four gigabats? Why are we

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talking about the technologies focus? Sorry, we did four hundred gigawats worth the

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solar last year and we're talking about
four gigawatts, so not the words were

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installing more solar in four days than
offshore one does in a year. Let

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me give you my theory why it
is. It is because it started with

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the European project, which was to
connect Europe together to the North Sea.

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Oh yeah, we'll have an island
here, we'll do this, we'll connect,

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we'll interconnect the countries in And there's
another advantage really clear. The North

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Sea is not deep. So if
you look at the projects that we're done

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in the UK where they're really offshore, they're almost on shore right in the

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initial ones have done. If I
look at a lot of the stuff going

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forward, Baltic Sea, et cetera, et cetera, the water's not deep.

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So I can get my head around
that, and I say, okay,

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that makes sense. But before giga, what's a year? And by

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the way, okay, you know, if I include in China and that

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we're at ten gigawatts, the whole
onshore wind market is eighty ninety gigawatts a

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year. All the attention goes to
offshore and we talk about floating, we

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talk about this, and we talk
about that. And if I look at

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the US, let me be really
radical in that, why should the US

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build one gigawat of offshore wind?
They've got the best resources in terms of

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fossil fuels, and every former renewables. You can imagine whether it's hydro on

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show wind, so they have all
of it, why should they go and

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put the money into this big expensive
one. Now I can understand you might

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say New England. You gave that
example earlier. Niche market. It's a

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little island normal within the within the
system. I kept my head around there,

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so I just see offshow wind staying
niche market going forward. And to

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be honest, I don't want to
talk about offshore wind this year because it's

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not important four gigawatts when we're doing
five hundred, six hundred gigawats of renewables

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every year. Four gigawatts in the
portant, I hear you. But those

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four gigawatts, they're gonna produce power
at the very high load during the months

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where we need the power the most. And it's great. You're gonna put

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sell up panel and probably we can
run on sell up Let's battery five to

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six months per year. That I
agree, But what happened the other six

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months. You're very happy to have
those off show wind farm. We're gonna

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deliver the quasi base load between October
to March, so it's a good compliment

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to solar, and it's not an
opponent to solar, but I would say

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you need on show wind rather off
show wind. Unshow wind is easier every

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way, it's cheaper to when installed, there's less risks. Yes, you

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might say the capacity factors are lower, but it depends where you are.

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You know, you go to the
midwestern United States, capacity factors are the

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same as well as if you're in
the North State. Yeah, yeah,

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yeah, and then you need to
cross ten or fifteen New es States and

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it's just impossible, a much easier
let's cross the Atlantic. We'll talk about

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it on the next podcast. So
so we just talk about two niche today.

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But I like of show wind.
You know, it's beautiful, and

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of course you like it because you're
a project finance guyrol on and it's a

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project finance is called. It's a
big project. It's five hundred megawatts,

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it's one point five billion, you
know, as opposed to Minuttle five A

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lot of my solo on my rooftopic. Why not like that? That's too

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poorant that's too difficult to finance.
I think we need to be very open

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minded when it comes to clean energy. So, and I agree with Chick.

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I agree with check a great check
a great chat. I understand if

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you're in the US and you have
gas at less than three dollars and BTU

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the amount of premium that you need
to add on the top of this to

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finance of show win, maybe it's
too much. But in Europe we are

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energy poor and you can get throwing
the fifty percent of the years at double

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digit. You know, I take
it fair enough, fair enough, And

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as I said, I'm not completely
knocking off showing. I just it seems

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to grab so many headlines when actually
I look at it and say, well,

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it's a niche market, okay before
we go, And I know you

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don't want to do like the news
this stuff, but I'm going to do

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it. Nevertheless, there's a company
we add on the show, I think

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like four years ago when we started, and we just drunk their propaganda and

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kol Ad that's comings you know.
They were telling us, oh, we're

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so clean, you know, a
New Engines and they've been fined one point

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six billion dollars. And of course
when you have such a bad news,

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they managed to put the press release
the day before Christmas, so in fact

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nobody talked about it. I divested
it completely. Really, who find them?

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Who find them? Comings? They
use the same you know, software

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cheating design as Volkswagen. Oh my
god. It is the second biggest fine

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ever of this story after Volkswagen.
And they've been cheating on all the this

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engine for like ten years. And
it's not an allegation. They admitted it.

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They took the fine and it's okay, we're gonna publish the Friday before

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Christmas. Oh my god. All
right, Okay, six hundred and thirty

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thousand Ram pickup truck engines, the
largest ever penalty for a cleanar violation.

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So I want to talk about it. You got it? You got it?

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I like it. Okay, that's
it. Okay, job my friend.

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Well, I hope our listener enjoyed
the new ish format, Got my

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Friend. Next Monday, we'll have
an episode on infrastructure investment, and we

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continue that format in two weeks,
so now it's going to be every Monday.

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I look forward to chairs