Speaker 1: You are listening to Redefining Energy. Your co hosts from
Speaker 1: Berlin Gerard Reid and from London Laurent.
Speaker 2: Segalam today on Realdefriending Energy. We're going to talk about
Speaker 2: the book.
Speaker 3: We sure are. The book is called Our Renewable Energy Future,
Speaker 3: the remarkable story of how renewable energy will become the
Speaker 3: basis for our lives.
Speaker 2: But first the word from our.
Speaker 4: Partner, Redefining Energy sponsored by a Mundi, the leading European
Speaker 4: asset manager, your trusted partner to accelerate the transition to
Speaker 4: a low carbon future. Leading asset manager based on the
Speaker 4: IPE ranking. Investing involves risk, consult your financial advisor.
Speaker 3: And we are really really happy to have Doug Arndt
Speaker 3: from the National Renewable Labs in the United States on
Speaker 3: to talk about the future of our energy world.
Speaker 2: And let's just say that Dougarrant is one of the
Speaker 2: most respected Opini energy expert and he's been working for
Speaker 2: decades strategic thinking and he really has a three sixty
Speaker 2: view of all the technologies which are being developed right now.
Speaker 3: Larn me add something which I thought was a little
Speaker 3: bit funny, which was at the back of the book,
Speaker 3: what Doug has done as he's published an article he
Speaker 3: wrote in nineteen seventy six, and it was the article
Speaker 3: that inspired and really to focus on renewables, and it
Speaker 3: was called solar energy. Can I be used effectively? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And if you actually look at the base of what
Speaker 3: he's actually saying, is he saying, listen, solar is going
Speaker 3: to be the heart of our energy system going forward.
Speaker 2: Let's listen to the interview. Doug, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Well, Doug, let me just jump right in. What we're
Speaker 3: going to do. Is we going to talk about the
Speaker 3: future renewables. But before we talk about the future renew
Speaker 3: of us, I'd really like you to talk to our
Speaker 3: listeners about the organization you work for, which is called ENREL.
Speaker 3: What ENRAL is, what they do, what the history is,
Speaker 3: and why ENRAL is important.
Speaker 5: I was a teenager when what was then ENREL, which
Speaker 5: was the Solar Energy Research Institute, was founded by President
Speaker 5: Carter in nineteen seventy six, so it's been around since then.
Speaker 5: It's been the only national research organization globally focused on
Speaker 5: the renewable mission space. But that mission space has changed
Speaker 5: dramatically since the nineteen seventies, when it frankly was a
Speaker 5: science set of experiments to today where it's mainstream markets.
Speaker 5: Enrel is part of the DOE National AB Complex. We're
Speaker 5: located in Colorado. It's about four thousand researchers, about a
Speaker 5: billion dollars a year, and we cover everything from renewable
Speaker 5: power to clean fuels, fuels and chemicals, carbon management, hydrogen
Speaker 5: of course, smart buildings, electric mobility, sustainable aviation, fuels, and
Speaker 5: maybe more importantly, integrated systems. We work in about forty
Speaker 5: countries around the world, but predominantly based in the United States.
Speaker 3: And Doug just following on on ed while they're talk
Speaker 3: about the impact that they've had. As a guy like
Speaker 3: me who's been financing solo wind, whatever do I say, so,
Speaker 3: Wash or you tell me why it is important.
Speaker 5: Enrail feels a really interesting space in the research, development, demonstration, deployment,
Speaker 5: and market ecosystem. Our mission is to innovate solutions, and
Speaker 5: here I say not specifically just technologies, but solutions, and
Speaker 5: to partner with companies to take those solutions to commercial scale.
Speaker 5: And so you can look in the history of enrol
Speaker 5: a ton of history in the fundamentals of solar foldovoltaics,
Speaker 5: concentrating song or power, wind technologies, electric and hybrid mobility,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And that the work with now more than
Speaker 5: one thousand commercial partners is really the gotcha of how
Speaker 5: ENRAL operates in the marketplace. And there are probably many
Speaker 5: investments that you make that actually have a connection back
Speaker 5: to NRAL science that is now buried in the commercial world.
Speaker 1: Kelly, and ask you talk a little bit about yourself
Speaker 1: and the reason I want to do this. We don't
Speaker 1: normally do this in the podcast, but the reason I
Speaker 1: want to do this in this case here is because
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about your latest book on the
Speaker 1: future renewables, and I just want to give the readers
Speaker 1: a sense of your knowledge, where you come from and
Speaker 1: why you decided to write a book about the future renewables.
Speaker 5: It's an interesting journey for me. I was a teenager
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy six when they launched the Solar Energy
Speaker 5: Research Institute and I wrote a paper on the future
Speaker 5: of solar energy. I still have a copy. It's actually
Speaker 5: in the appendix of the book. It's cool, it's not
Speaker 5: so well written, but I was sixteen and I dedicated
Speaker 5: myself to a career in clean energy transition and energy access,
Speaker 5: energy development. Since that point in time, I went on
Speaker 5: did a technical degree, did a PhD, did an MBA,
Speaker 5: and I've been at ENRAL for what I call a career.
Speaker 5: And what motivated me to write the book was that
Speaker 5: there are so many people excited about the energy transition
Speaker 5: and the space and the opportunity who are new and young,
Speaker 5: who don't have a concrete understanding of where it came
Speaker 5: from and the journey that has brought us to this
Speaker 5: point where solar is the technology of the decade and
Speaker 5: there are many others in that pipeline. And so for
Speaker 5: me it was a passion of trying to capture succinctly,
Speaker 5: because it's only a couple hundred pages long, what is
Speaker 5: that journey and maybe more importantly, what are the factors
Speaker 5: that are affecting the future of ignoble energy and what
Speaker 5: our energy ecosystem will look like going forward.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you. You are in tune with my
Speaker 2: big theory, my theory of the one new tech per decade.
Speaker 2: John knows that by heart, but I like to repeat
Speaker 2: it because that's my only theory. So the seventies is
Speaker 2: nuclear R. The eighties is c CGTS, the nineties is wind.
Speaker 2: The two thousand is solar. Tennis batteries takes one decade
Speaker 2: to develop, one decade to roll out, and then they dominate.
Speaker 3: And before you answered that, I think he's wrong.
Speaker 1: I think it's two decades, okay, and I think solars
Speaker 1: only decade.
Speaker 3: That we're only going into second decade solar.
Speaker 5: Now I will reflect as well. So one, I think
Speaker 5: it's got to be faster than two decades to move
Speaker 5: through from idea to commercialization. That's one really important point.
Speaker 5: We need more innovation to commercialization faster. And secondly, maybe
Speaker 5: you've forgot natural gas in there in the fracking boom
Speaker 5: at some point in time in the two thousands twenty ten,
Speaker 5: but okay, we'll debate that later. More importantly, what I
Speaker 5: will also argue is that, and what I argue in
Speaker 5: the book is that the coming decades are about systems integration,
Speaker 5: and they're about integrated systems. And so now you see batteries,
Speaker 5: but maybe batteries are standalone, but most batteries are hybridized
Speaker 5: with solar or otherwise. And you're seeing even new nuclear
Speaker 5: come out hybridized with thermal storage for arbitraging the revenue
Speaker 5: streams depending on how you use that thermal energy from
Speaker 5: a nuclear plant. Great opportunities. I think to think about
Speaker 5: it as an investor, but also as a technology innovator.
Speaker 2: Good we can debate as far as I'm consoled till
Speaker 2: twenties because I forgot to talk about that. Great technology
Speaker 2: are interconnectors, That's the one. And that's something that in
Speaker 2: Europe we know because we've got you know, the valtic seat,
Speaker 2: the nos CIVI talrency, so you know, we know that.
Speaker 2: In the US it's lamb, you know, so you don't
Speaker 2: really know what is the subscencta connector. It's a beauty.
Speaker 2: But anyway, let's dive in into your books, because I
Speaker 2: think solar when the thick of it. But you know,
Speaker 2: there are other things which you have pinpointed, and I'll
Speaker 2: be curious to see your nuclear or carbon management, you know,
Speaker 2: Adan Joe Tummer, which one you don't want to pick first?
Speaker 5: Actually I want to stick with solar, but I want
Speaker 5: to go beyond technology because I think that's a really
Speaker 5: important story that people don't understand, is that many of
Speaker 5: us who live and eat and breathe and invest in
Speaker 5: the energy sector think about it as technology. Only solutions.
Speaker 5: The most important element to think through is how do
Speaker 5: those technologies get priced in a market are either responding
Speaker 5: to a policy in regulatory framework, and who's willing to
Speaker 5: pay for them, whether or not that's a company striving
Speaker 5: for twenty four to seven power or frankly individuals throughout
Speaker 5: Europe or elsewhere who want self determined power shall we
Speaker 5: call it I E. Rooftop solar, PV batteries, et cetera.
Speaker 5: All of those factors have come to play in a
Speaker 5: very unique way in the last few years. And it's
Speaker 5: the combination of those factors which is bringing an incredibly
Speaker 5: unique opportunity of what is the next few decades maybe
Speaker 5: a solar decade, solar plus battery decade, et cetera, But
Speaker 5: it is the decades of renewables moving from what was
Speaker 5: called alternative energy to effectively mainstream energy to what I
Speaker 5: think will be renewable dominant energy systems. And this is
Speaker 5: a fundamental change in paradigm that we are in the
Speaker 5: middle of right now.
Speaker 1: I love the phrase that you use, which is renewable dominance.
Speaker 1: So just I'd love you to build me a picture
Speaker 1: of how that renewable dominant power system looks.
Speaker 5: Like there's a lot of conversation about electrify as much
Speaker 5: as possible, principally because people understand that renewable power is
Speaker 5: the least cost set of options in nearly every country
Speaker 5: of the world, and of course you've got the overlay
Speaker 5: of decarbonization, so you've got to push for electrification of
Speaker 5: end uses, be that in the building, emobility, power to X.
Speaker 5: You then have the broader thinking of electricity derived chemicals
Speaker 5: and fuels being the dominant source of global trade of
Speaker 5: what we consider energy products. Think of green ammonia, green
Speaker 5: hydrogen being a fuel product now being shipped around the
Speaker 5: world in order to provide decarbonized power. Again, power as
Speaker 5: the backbone of a clean energy economy going forward. Even
Speaker 5: if it's a chemical being used let's say in Korea
Speaker 5: or Japan where they don't have huge amounts of renewables,
Speaker 5: that chemical has its history in an electrified dominant and
Speaker 5: a renewable electrified dominant energy system.
Speaker 3: On a follow up in.
Speaker 1: It where I'm trying to actually come from, I'm coming
Speaker 1: from the economic side, because the reality is the more
Speaker 1: and more win solar we build, the more that at
Speaker 1: certain parts of the day we have too much power,
Speaker 1: which actually disincentivizes me to build that renewables. And so
Speaker 1: what your vision is is one hundred percent where we
Speaker 1: should go. What I'm trying to get my head around
Speaker 1: is how do you move from financing a solar project
Speaker 1: to financing that integrated solution that you're talking about. How
Speaker 1: do we do that or do you have any thoughts
Speaker 1: of that? The answer actually is a heterogeneous pathway, and
Speaker 1: let me explain that to you. A lot of power
Speaker 1: to X configurations, solutions, plants, et cetera, may be in
Speaker 1: fact dedicated I either going to have their own dedicated
Speaker 1: power systems, hybrid power systems, some combination of wind, solar,
Speaker 1: potentially geothermal, potentially nuclear, other low carbon technologies, and they're
Speaker 1: going to be predominantly dedicated to that electoralizer plus ongoing
Speaker 1: conversion technology, whether or not that's Sabatier to methanol or
Speaker 1: Haberbasche to tsu ammonia, et cetera. What your question presumed
Speaker 1: was that the whole system is interconnected and that you
Speaker 1: had to take a price, that you were not a
Speaker 1: price maker in the market. And I think that there is.
Speaker 5: Money to be made if one thinks much more creatively
Speaker 5: about what the configurations are, what your business proposition is,
Speaker 5: whether or not you play in the market or you
Speaker 5: use that power yourself, if that makes sense to you.
Speaker 5: It's more complicated than current structures today. But then again,
Speaker 5: you're a financial whiz, so I think you're going to
Speaker 5: figure it out.
Speaker 3: I'm not being to wrong.
Speaker 2: How are we going to sort it out?
Speaker 3: The way?
Speaker 2: I see the technologies now, who have a wonderful toolkit,
Speaker 2: whether it's batteries, digital interconnections, whatever. There are incubans, there
Speaker 2: is inertia, There are people protecting their market share, regardless
Speaker 2: of the economics and trench interest. I do think that
Speaker 2: what's slowing the energy transition are more the people than
Speaker 2: the technologies. Those people, you know, whatever you say you're
Speaker 2: going to put all the formula in front of them,
Speaker 2: they say, look, I'm paid to sell gas. That's my job.
Speaker 2: Regardless of whatever you can demonstrate from a scientific point
Speaker 2: of view, I'm just going to continue to sell gas.
Speaker 2: And by the way, that's the only thing I know.
Speaker 2: So you can have a perfect design system and then
Speaker 2: you will have the entrance reality that people are protecting
Speaker 2: their cake. Or is it just me babbling?
Speaker 5: You actually spot on. I lay out six factors in
Speaker 5: the book, and all of them are based upon people
Speaker 5: and knowledge. I call out specifically knowledge. But people are
Speaker 5: the core of social willingness and acceptance. They're the core
Speaker 5: of institutional willingness and acceptance. They're the core of change
Speaker 5: in policy and regulation. And you know, there's been a
Speaker 5: phrase for many decades that regulators are slower than the
Speaker 5: utilities in making change, and it's that inhibition to change
Speaker 5: which is really going to slow us down. And so
Speaker 5: while and I think we're all enthusiastic for this energy
Speaker 5: transition to an electro and a clean electro renewable dominant future,
Speaker 5: I'm also skeptical that it's going to happen at the
Speaker 5: speed and the scale that is called for, certainly for
Speaker 5: the Paris Agreement. If you're going to limit at one
Speaker 5: point five, it's likely much more likely to get into
Speaker 5: an overshoot and then capture scenario going forward. That's a
Speaker 5: different conversation.
Speaker 1: Can I then just follow up on that, because I
Speaker 1: have one concern, but the positive on the other side
Speaker 1: think that weighs my concern. So my concern is large
Speaker 1: scale renewables just building that whether that's going to happen
Speaker 1: in time. I doubt this, and also I doubt the economics,
Speaker 1: and there's a whole pile of issues there. But what
Speaker 1: really excites me is behind the substation and behind the meter,
Speaker 1: because what you've definitely seen is the customers saying, I'm
Speaker 1: fed up with this price volatility. I want to have resilience,
Speaker 1: I want to have clean power. I'm going to do
Speaker 1: it myself, and it's cheap. That's the revolution that I see,
Speaker 1: and that lends itself into a lot of very interesting
Speaker 1: integration issues in and around digitalization, connecting everything together that
Speaker 1: pushes us forward very quickly. Would you share that view
Speaker 1: or how do you see that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I hate to be one hundred percent in alignment with you,
Speaker 5: but it's absolutely fundamental to embrace what I call the
Speaker 5: heterogeneity of the power system. Power systems were designed for big,
Speaker 5: huge plants and one way powerflow all the way out
Speaker 5: to what they called meters, not even people or thinking
Speaker 5: of the end users. Today, you're seeing a plethora of
Speaker 5: digitization opportunities, self generation opportunities, desire for resiliency in places
Speaker 5: where there are lots of outages, and desire for control
Speaker 5: of or surety of pricing and so that's your point,
Speaker 5: which is, if I buy a solar system and a
Speaker 5: battery and maybe an EV charger, I know what my
Speaker 5: price is and how long it goes. Now I may
Speaker 5: have to pay depending if I'm still connected to the
Speaker 5: grid for I'll call it reliability services unless I've completely
Speaker 5: designed an off grid system. But I know the bulk
Speaker 5: of what my costs look like now for many years,
Speaker 5: decades in the future. That gives folks a sense of comfort,
Speaker 5: which is back to Lawrence people point, which is it's
Speaker 5: a people decision. And in fact, even if you look
Speaker 5: at further than that, go down that digitization pathway. I
Speaker 5: think just a little bit more fascinating set of conversations
Speaker 5: of what's happening with aggregators. These are folks that have
Speaker 5: digital control, visibility and control, are marrying sensing, AI, cloud
Speaker 5: computing and financial modeling to provide both better services behind
Speaker 5: the meter at the building level, be that either residential
Speaker 5: or commercial, and also services into the wholesale market. And
Speaker 5: they make money doing that and people get better service,
Speaker 5: more reliable service, and cheaper service.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be to kill joy as usual in Australia.
Speaker 2: I want to put some out on my roof. It's
Speaker 2: going to cost me ten thousand dollars the same system
Speaker 2: in California thirty thousand dollars. What is the problem. It's
Speaker 2: the same technology. Now, I can't understand that for geopoliticular reason.
Speaker 2: Everything that out of China is China, China, China. We
Speaker 2: can't accept anything from China. We've done episode on China
Speaker 2: and our vision is a bit. Look, it's going to
Speaker 2: be we solve climations with China or we solve it
Speaker 2: ten years down the line, and it's going to cost
Speaker 2: us double Is it just me around ting.
Speaker 5: As you real it's not urranting. The US has had
Speaker 5: a three times to four times price differential from Europe
Speaker 5: or Australia for decades and it's persistent. Sadly, what's behind it?
Speaker 5: It's not technology costs. Frankly, it's back to your point
Speaker 5: on people. It's labor costs. Sometimes it's permitting and the
Speaker 5: process itself. Sometimes it's cost of money and margins. But
Speaker 5: those pieces, the soft costs add up considerably in the
Speaker 5: United States, and it's a real price differential and a
Speaker 5: barrier for low and middle income communities, which is why
Speaker 5: you're seeing alternatives being pushed out like community solar, where
Speaker 5: people can buy a portion of a bigger unit that
Speaker 5: has economy of scale, or buy solar products from their
Speaker 5: serving utility. There are lots of options on that, but
Speaker 5: that fundamental piece of an installed solar system on your
Speaker 5: roof still sits at that three x price differential.
Speaker 2: You're going to see what we've seen yop, which is
Speaker 2: something crazy. It's called balcony, So there's no installation. People
Speaker 2: buy in the supermarket to just put them on the balcony,
Speaker 2: plug it and that's it.
Speaker 3: Done.
Speaker 2: Now, it's not perfect, but it works pretty well.
Speaker 1: John, don't give you an idea that the fully installed
Speaker 1: costs fifty cents a lot.
Speaker 3: It's mind boggling.
Speaker 2: You just plug it in.
Speaker 1: That's it, and you can actually put it in your
Speaker 1: garden and just put it up into the external socket.
Speaker 1: And if you do it fifty cents, like if you're
Speaker 1: on Californe, you've got a payback period of like a year.
Speaker 5: Incredible opportunity.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I was talking to a colleague at the Department of
Speaker 5: Energy yesterday and he remembered that they had put out
Speaker 5: a solicitation for plug and play solar modules ten years ago.
Speaker 5: And it was ahead of the curve. The technologies weren't there,
Speaker 5: the visibility wasn't there, et.
Speaker 2: Cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: Today, I think you're absolutely right that the US in
Speaker 5: particular is ripe for disruptive innovation like that, along with
Speaker 5: all the challenges that will come with it. So cost
Speaker 5: of your poor system operator who's got no visibility or controllability,
Speaker 5: of your bounty fuller and the grid is overloaded, there
Speaker 5: are going to be some interesting issues coming up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why when I asked the question earlier on
Speaker 1: about the future the power system, not I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get my head around, is how does it look like
Speaker 1: with these two way power flows and grid operators not
Speaker 1: being able to see everything that's going on and on?
Speaker 1: And I think that's the big technical challenge? Or am
Speaker 1: I seeing that wrong?
Speaker 5: You're not seeing the challenge wrong. But let me describe
Speaker 5: to you a potential solution. Colleagues at ENROL about five
Speaker 5: years ago saw this future coming and we invested a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of resources into thinking about self healing, self controlling,
Speaker 5: distributed heterogeneous grids. So what we call autonomous energy systems.
Speaker 5: Think of the autonomous driving car, equivalent for autonomous energy
Speaker 5: systems cool so okay, self aware, self coordinating or coordinating
Speaker 5: in micro hierarchical structures where you could get visibility to
Speaker 5: your balcony system and your neighbors by the way, coordinate
Speaker 5: a little micro cell in your community, potentially aggregate or
Speaker 5: control that power up. Or your balcony is getting more
Speaker 5: sun and your neighbor needs ev charging and they don't
Speaker 5: have a battery, and so you're doing that arbitrage even
Speaker 5: within the community. These possibilities actually offer an incredible solutions suite.
Speaker 5: Can we get there?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 5: Will it be this decade? Likely? Not so, Laurent. Back
Speaker 5: to your point, that's probably a twenty thirties decadal piece,
Speaker 5: which is to see software enabled controlled solutions roll out
Speaker 5: at scale.
Speaker 2: In the US, you are blessed by gods. You've got
Speaker 2: coll for five hundred years. You get oil number one producer.
Speaker 2: You've had gas gas at two dollars and BTU it's
Speaker 2: crazy cheap. It's power at ten dollars O MAGA what hour.
Speaker 2: It's a luxury that pretty much the rest of the
Speaker 2: world doesn't have. I can understand that all that fossil
Speaker 2: fuel ecosystem wants to stay alive, and they're living pretty
Speaker 2: well around that. And the utilities they like their little monopolies.
Speaker 2: If you look in Europe the shock word with you know,
Speaker 2: putting invasion of Ukraine and the price going like the
Speaker 2: equivalent of three hundred four hundred barrel. We didn't have
Speaker 2: any choice. We had to do those things. I give
Speaker 2: you a simple example of great technologies invented in the US,
Speaker 2: the prot in Europe, great hand and seeing technologies, everything
Speaker 2: about dynamic like creating topographic reconductor in Europe. With all
Speaker 2: of them in the US. Now people are fine. So
Speaker 2: I go back. It's to people, it's not the tech.
Speaker 2: The tech we have them. Sometimes, you know, I want
Speaker 2: to bang heads together and say are you already serious
Speaker 2: about the energy transition? But again that's just me talking.
Speaker 2: I'm just a talking head here. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Interesting part of the US is that it's it's a
Speaker 5: very heterogeneous energy system. It's very competitive. There are more
Speaker 5: than a thousand equivalent what you call utilities. They're vertically
Speaker 5: integrated investor on utilities. There's munis and other public power utilities.
Speaker 5: There are rural co ops. Some markets are restructured or deregulated.
Speaker 5: Other markets remain regulated. Now, the interesting part is that
Speaker 5: with federal legislation that has been passed, there's an incredible
Speaker 5: number of incentives for investing, not only in manufacturing, but
Speaker 5: deployment of grid technologies, new generation hydrogen.
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
Speaker 5: But more importantly, because it's a democracy and it's a
Speaker 5: federal system, the states actually control a lot of oversight
Speaker 5: in terms of what's happening in the power system. And
Speaker 5: more than thirty of the fifty states have clean energy
Speaker 5: or carbon goals or renewable goals covers more than two
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty million people of the United States. And
Speaker 5: then you lay on top of that what's happening with
Speaker 5: the big tech companies or other companies. There's a ground swell.
Speaker 5: I use the terms you're thinking about institutional social drivers.
Speaker 5: Those drivers are on the demand side are significant. Where
Speaker 5: you're seeing barriers on slowness to implement is in the
Speaker 5: regulation in the utilities and currently today with higher interest rates,
Speaker 5: little bit of stress around financeability and investability.
Speaker 1: Dog just maybe the last question I go back to
Speaker 1: Lauren said at the beginning, which is this whole thing
Speaker 1: about the technology of the decade. So if we look forward,
Speaker 1: just talk about any sort of surprises that are out
Speaker 1: there that might come away that we're not thinking about.
Speaker 5: There are two surprises that we have yet to see
Speaker 5: breakthrough in terms of major market opportunities. One is what
Speaker 5: we talked a little bit about in terms of innovation
Speaker 5: at the grid edge. The combination of clean technologies along
Speaker 5: with sensing AI aggregation will unlock flexibility. I'll use this
Speaker 5: term flexibility. I talked about it before, but it's this
Speaker 5: whole idea of controllability to match supply and demand and
Speaker 5: do that in a very financially attractive way that's coming
Speaker 5: at scale that we've never imagined before. That's one. The
Speaker 5: second one is the inventiveness of integrated systems. A little
Speaker 5: bit goes back to the comment that Laurent made about
Speaker 5: ah the importance of grids and interconnectivity. Well, the electric
Speaker 5: curate is a large interconnected hybrid system. If one thinks
Speaker 5: about it, it's just different supply, different demands, and the
Speaker 5: grids are what controls it together. There is opportunity late
Speaker 5: twenty twenties, probably more into the twenty thirties of what
Speaker 5: I call mindfully crafted, developed and managed integrated energy systems.
Speaker 5: So this is a combination of power, power to fuels,
Speaker 5: hydrogens in the middle of it, emobility, the distributed energy
Speaker 5: pieces all coming together in a much more integrated way.
Speaker 3: I am so happy you.
Speaker 1: Didn't mention Geotma.
Speaker 5: Yeah, didn't mention SMRs. Somebody's gonna hate me for not
Speaker 5: mentioning one.
Speaker 2: I hate you. I hate you for not mentioning your
Speaker 2: film mode.
Speaker 5: You can add that, you can say edit that later.
Speaker 5: You know you're The list really wasn't very long, so
Speaker 5: that's a lot of other things to.
Speaker 2: Think, Doug. It was a real pleasure aven on the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Thank you you thugs a lot dog, good funds.
Speaker 2: Good funds. Great.
Speaker 5: I'll make sure you have a copy of the book
Speaker 5: and we'll bring it along shortly.
Speaker 2: So, joh, did you enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 3: I did, and I sort of I go along with
Speaker 3: his vision. I really do. I think it's just about
Speaker 3: removing roadblocks to enable it to happen, and I think
Speaker 3: it's imperative that we do it off one obviously from
Speaker 3: a climate perspective, but also two from a geopolitical perspective,
Speaker 3: because if we don't do it, China and other countries
Speaker 3: will do it, and they'll leap FROGUS. But anyway, what's
Speaker 3: your thoughts?
Speaker 2: Well, it's totally above my pay grade. Doug is a
Speaker 2: strategic thinker, you're as strategic thinker and me it's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, But what I will say is, somebody
Speaker 2: needs to tell him that the nrub is a two
Speaker 2: dollar and mbtu, which means if fuels are going nowhere, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's okay. Number two, somebody needs to tell him
Speaker 2: that it's the Chinese company's not the US company. You
Speaker 2: brought solar panel to tens and sow and batteries to
Speaker 2: fifty US dot R Pokuto what I wan?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: I mean, what's the point doing all those research if
Speaker 2: it ends up promoting the Chinese industry.
Speaker 3: The good news is he had an impact because the
Speaker 3: Chinese read as reports. The Americans maybe didn't.
Speaker 2: When I'm then there are some oddities. I heard green
Speaker 2: hydrogen shipped around the world. Really job really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen, I'll watch on this. You're going to use
Speaker 3: green hydrogen. We have to use green hydrogen, and that
Speaker 3: is to clean up existing hydrogen production, right, which simples
Speaker 3: that you're using it in chemical industry, using and steel industry.
Speaker 2: And okay, and then you and Doug at that great
Speaker 2: conversation where you're ask him about curtailment capture prices, and
Speaker 2: I quote this answer, there is money to be made
Speaker 2: if one think more creatively, your financial whiz, so you
Speaker 2: will figure it out. And then you turn to me
Speaker 2: and you asked me, La, how are we going to
Speaker 2: figure it out? So now I'm.
Speaker 3: When is it? By the way, the reason I go
Speaker 3: to you it is because it's also at the heart
Speaker 3: of it is the power market, which is is a
Speaker 3: trading thing and you're a trader. So I'm start of
Speaker 3: going to around. How do you practically sort this out?
Speaker 2: Well, look, I've said it over and over again. It's
Speaker 2: space and time, space interconnect dos time batteries. That's it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's it.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: And also about my favorite new motto stumps. Look, you
Speaker 2: must have been happy. We talked about BALCONICLA, which is
Speaker 2: one of your two obsessions this year with alongside Transformer.
Speaker 2: We talk a bit about Joe Thermal not enough, but
Speaker 2: look overall, well, it's great that you have great thinkers
Speaker 2: like Dug around and you know the published book and
Speaker 2: they've been passionate for ages. Just saying the bit above
Speaker 2: my pay grade.
Speaker 3: Actually I don't agree with that last statement because we
Speaker 3: need you to think about these things as well, because
Speaker 3: actually what you just said, actually I like it. Space
Speaker 3: and time. I like that. That's a good answer. That's
Speaker 3: a very good act.
Speaker 2: We thank Doug for coming on the show. We thank
Speaker 2: our sponsor a Mundi for continuing to support the show.
Speaker 2: And Joah, I'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 3: Look forward to us. Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to rate the show and subscribe on Apple, Podcast, Spotify,
Speaker 3: or the platform of your choice.