Speaker 1: With Laurent's segle And from London and Gerard Reed from Berlin.
Speaker 1: This is redefining energy.
Speaker 2: Today, on redefining energy, we're going to talk about energy
Speaker 2: security and the case of Estoniap and how we can
Speaker 2: reach energy security through one bots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and larn I think that what's interesting is to
Speaker 1: talk about this whole Balkans area because what we don't
Speaker 1: realize is the extent of the growth you're seeing in
Speaker 1: these regions and renewables. I think I just looked at
Speaker 1: the statistics. Reason is, if you went back twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: you know, the Balkans region had about eighteen nineteen gigawatts
Speaker 1: of renewable solar and wind and today you're at twenty
Speaker 1: four twenty five kigawatts. And that's that's just in the
Speaker 1: last two years. And the reason this is happening is
Speaker 1: ultimately is because the economics of it really make a
Speaker 1: lot of sense, whether that's in Greece, Bulgaria, Romania. Simple
Speaker 1: as that low couse electricity, that's what you're getting by
Speaker 1: putnent solar, wind and in your energy mix.
Speaker 2: Well, and look, we need to talk about Russia because
Speaker 2: they're on the front line. And I remember in two
Speaker 2: or nine, I went to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria
Speaker 2: during the winter. Looks a super long story, so anyway,
Speaker 2: so I went there. I met the Minister of Energy
Speaker 2: and it was part of the three weeks where Russia
Speaker 2: had cut the gas for Bulgaria. It was minus fifteen
Speaker 2: c outside. They were playing hardball already because of guess what,
Speaker 2: a financial disagreement with Ukraine. So that was two or
Speaker 2: nine and those poor Bulgarians that to cut the trees
Speaker 2: in their equivalent of Hyde Park or Central Park just
Speaker 2: not to freeze to death. So Russia using gas as
Speaker 2: a weapon, that is not new. This is their nature.
Speaker 2: So I understand that people start to learn their lessons.
Speaker 2: And now, even if Russian guys was dut cheap energy,
Speaker 2: security is more important than affordability. So we brought in
Speaker 2: one of the greatest developer of nables in the region.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the co founders of CWP,
Speaker 1: a guy called Demeter n Chef. I've known him many
Speaker 1: many years and they have been incredibly active across the
Speaker 1: region and developing wind and solar very very very knowledgeable
Speaker 1: and great to have him on the show to actually
Speaker 1: have a talk about this about what's going on in
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, particularly in and around energy.
Speaker 2: Let's bring Dimitar on the show.
Speaker 1: Dibitar, it's really great to have you on the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Lit Maybe just kick off because it's next at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. You've got huge expertise in the
Speaker 1: energy space in Eastern Europe. I'd be really great just
Speaker 1: to get a lie of the land overview of what's
Speaker 1: going on in energy across East Europe.
Speaker 3: Eastern Europe is facing some of the same challenges and
Speaker 3: opportunities that the rest of Europe is facing. The region
Speaker 3: is still dominated by fossil fuels, especially coal and important
Speaker 3: natural gas. It used to be dependent on Russian pipe gas.
Speaker 3: Now it's more and more dependent on imported LNG. It's
Speaker 3: gradually shifting towards renewables. The markets of Eastern Europe and
Speaker 3: Southeast Europe are getting better integrated into the European market.
Speaker 3: The markets are getting coupled. Grit modernization is ongoing, so
Speaker 3: you've got a lot of EO funds supporting interconnection, digitalization
Speaker 3: and preparing these markets for the energy transition. The transition
Speaker 3: to a renewables dominated grid. At the same time, the
Speaker 3: region is quite energy and efficient, so you do have
Speaker 3: a big scope for energy efficiency in Eastern Europe, and
Speaker 3: you do have a scope for modernization in gen right,
Speaker 3: for building a more modern energy system. There is a
Speaker 3: growing renew bantagy sector. Solar is booming in Southeast Europe.
Speaker 3: You have a lot of potential for wind in certain markets,
Speaker 3: and this is important in the world of European context.
Speaker 3: The hydro sector it is quite robust, but with limited
Speaker 3: growth potential because all the sites have been built up.
Speaker 3: And at the same time you have challenges because infrastructure
Speaker 3: is aging, You've got regulator uncertainty, you've got Russian interference,
Speaker 3: so Russian does not want the region to be energy
Speaker 3: independent and they're acting upon that and they're trying to
Speaker 3: sabotage efforts for diversification. So it's a picture of challenges
Speaker 3: and opportunities.
Speaker 2: And of course if you look at Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia,
Speaker 2: I hope I don't forget any of them. You still
Speaker 2: have those also yet nuclear plants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you do have quite a bit of nuclear Some
Speaker 3: of the countries areluding new projects. But obviously we all
Speaker 3: know that that takes a very long time and it's expensive,
Speaker 3: so it's not a solution for the George to Median
Speaker 3: term problems.
Speaker 1: Jim, can I just just take a step back just
Speaker 1: to talk about to explain what's happened since the Ukrainian crisis,
Speaker 1: because obviously we've had the Europraeinian crisis had a very
Speaker 1: big impact in Western Europe in the sense that certainly
Speaker 1: we've had to get LNG in and that's impacted industry,
Speaker 1: it's impacted retail prices. What's happened in Eastern Europe over this.
Speaker 3: Period, well, other than making us all very scared and
Speaker 3: trying to avoid this spilling over the rest of the
Speaker 3: ear But from an energy point of view, Ukraine before
Speaker 3: the war has about fifty six gigaottes of electricity generation
Speaker 3: past it currently has about twelve operating, so it's gone
Speaker 3: from fifty six gigaottes of generation to twelve. It's gone
Speaker 3: from an export to a big importer. They don't have
Speaker 3: enough electricity even for they're now severely reduced industrial base,
Speaker 3: so they're sucking power from the region. And Southeast Europe
Speaker 3: was short to begin with, so the region now has
Speaker 3: Europe's highest electricity prices, and this is why we think
Speaker 3: it's such a good place to invest in new generation
Speaker 3: and new renewable capacity. And we are of course active
Speaker 3: in Ukraine. We are active in all of the big
Speaker 3: countries in Southeast Europe, but we have big plans for Ukraine.
Speaker 3: We're trying to do as much as we can now
Speaker 3: in terms of developing projects. We have a five gigabat
Speaker 3: pipeline in Ukraine and it's not easy to get stuff done,
Speaker 3: but you know, we're trying to do as much as
Speaker 3: we can so that we can hit the ground running
Speaker 3: when the war's over and Ukraine has to rebuild it
Speaker 3: our generation sector.
Speaker 2: If I look at the region, Greece has in the
Speaker 2: past five years done a great development of what they
Speaker 2: used to import now they export, and of course there's
Speaker 2: the old balancing going on. Do you think it's a
Speaker 2: blueprint for what can be done in other countries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Greece in the last few years is a blueprint,
Speaker 3: not just in the energy sector, but broadly speaking. They've
Speaker 3: had a pretty sensible government and in the energy sector
Speaker 3: in particular, yes, they have been very successful and they're
Speaker 3: continuing to build more renewables, more storage, they're attracting data
Speaker 3: centers now, so yeah, I would say Greece is a
Speaker 3: good blueprint for the rest of the region.
Speaker 2: And so you talked about price. If I want to
Speaker 2: know about prices in Europe, I go to the ex
Speaker 2: in Germany. Do you have regional markets? How are they
Speaker 2: connected and or correlated with the price formation you would
Speaker 2: see further west.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you do have regional markets, and most of the
Speaker 3: Yew countries in the region, and actually most of the
Speaker 3: countries in the region are either coupled or about to
Speaker 3: be coupled to the broader European market. So Europe is
Speaker 3: very well interconnected. The region itself is also very well
Speaker 3: interconnected to the rest of Europe, so you can trade
Speaker 3: power pretty freely from Southeast Europe to the rest of Europe.
Speaker 3: And maybe just to take a step back and kind
Speaker 3: of describe the situation from a broader perspective, the European
Speaker 3: power market is mostly driven by weather because it's fifty
Speaker 3: percent renewals these days, so you know, when the wind
Speaker 3: blows and when the sun is shining, you've got low
Speaker 3: prices and vice versa. Southeast Europe is generally short power,
Speaker 3: so the average power price is higher than the rest
Speaker 3: of Europe. The region is probably the last bastion of
Speaker 3: coal in Europe, so you have quite a lot of
Speaker 3: lignite that's expensive to run, it's carbon intense if it's polluting,
Speaker 3: and at the same time you still have a lot
Speaker 3: of very good sites for grit capacity for building out renewables.
Speaker 3: So the region is a good opportunity both from an
Speaker 3: investment point of view, but in the broader European context.
Speaker 3: Europe as we know is energy poor. It imports fifty
Speaker 3: five percent of its primary energy. That comes at the
Speaker 3: cost of five six hundred billion a year, so it's
Speaker 3: a drag on the economy. It's also putting us in
Speaker 3: a position of four independents, which you don't want to
Speaker 3: be in that position these days. And the only solution
Speaker 3: to this problem at scale is to build out renewables.
Speaker 3: Every local electron that you produce off sets at the
Speaker 3: margin and imported hydrocarbon. The issue is that parts of
Speaker 3: Europe have reached a point that I call commercial saturation.
Speaker 3: If you look at Germany last year, five percent of
Speaker 3: the time you had negative prices. Ten percent of the
Speaker 3: time prices were very close to zero. In Spain that
Speaker 3: was closed to twenty percent of the time. The UK
Speaker 3: paid wind farm one point five billion pounds last year
Speaker 3: not to produce because they could evacuate the power. So
Speaker 3: in this context, the cheapest way to decarbonize Europe and
Speaker 3: transition is grid to locally produced electricity is to build
Speaker 3: out as many different weather zones in Europe and connect them,
Speaker 3: and Southeast Europe East Europe in general is a big
Speaker 3: opportunity because you do have the grid, you do have
Speaker 3: the sites, and you have a different weather profile. If
Speaker 3: you build a wind farm in Germany today, over the
Speaker 3: life of that wind farm on a levelized basis, if
Speaker 3: base load is one hundred, best you can hope to
Speaker 3: capture is fifty to fifty five. In all of our
Speaker 3: projects in the region. In Southeast Europe we get more
Speaker 3: than nineteen the capture eight over the life of the project.
Speaker 3: If you take a look at the average wind farm
Speaker 3: in Bulgari last year, it captured one hundred and eighteen
Speaker 3: percent of German basedo because it produces at the right
Speaker 3: time when there is no wind in Germany and prices
Speaker 3: are high. There's wind in spinisterin Europe and vice versa.
Speaker 3: When there is no wind down here you may have
Speaker 3: fantastic wind in northern Europe. So the point I'm trying
Speaker 3: to make is from the European context, building out the
Speaker 3: potential of the region is very important because this is
Speaker 3: the lowest cost option to transition the electricity grids for
Speaker 3: all of you.
Speaker 2: Every developer in Western Europe always complain about permitting and connection.
Speaker 2: Is it the same nightmare or is it better? In
Speaker 2: Southeast Europe.
Speaker 3: We focus on wind and storage mostly right, So storagezy
Speaker 3: wind is excruciatingly difficult anywhere in Europe. It's probably less
Speaker 3: so in Eastern Europe, but it's still very difficult. And
Speaker 3: on top of the usual problems that you've got, you've
Speaker 3: got other problems in Eastern Europe that I don't think
Speaker 3: you have elsewhere. So, for example, on one of our projects,
Speaker 3: we had thro Russia groups. The same people who were
Speaker 3: protesting against providing support to Ukraine, they were protecting against
Speaker 3: our windfar There was a recent report that came out
Speaker 3: by the Center for Study of Democracy that analyzed Russian
Speaker 3: misinformation campaigns, whether it's on Ukraine or on any other topic,
Speaker 3: and guess what they were. One of the main reasons
Speaker 3: that offshore wind was stopped in Bulgaria and generally they're
Speaker 3: spreading this information about wind and trying to disrupt the development.
Speaker 3: So this has been going on. It's probably not isolated
Speaker 3: to Eastern Europe. There are arguments to be made that
Speaker 3: this is going on across Europe. Eastern Europe is probably
Speaker 3: more susceptible, but Russia is actively trying to prevent Europe's
Speaker 3: energy independence. It has been solved for many, many years,
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure Europe is aware of the situation
Speaker 3: and reacting according here. But bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Speaker 1: Demitter, I think you're speaking to the converted when you
Speaker 1: talk about our need to step up and really work
Speaker 1: on energy independence. And I'd like to actually maybe follow
Speaker 1: on on that and say, look, if you look really
Speaker 1: from side, we've got huge energy security issues. And because
Speaker 1: you're if I may say, at the front line, you
Speaker 1: have operations in the ukrainte et cetera. Give me a
Speaker 1: sense of how we can make that energy system more
Speaker 1: secure going forward.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm going to keep talking my own book, but
Speaker 3: I think that's the solution, right. The distributing energy generation
Speaker 3: is part of the solution. You can see what happens
Speaker 3: when you have a six gigattes nuclear plant. That's a
Speaker 3: single point of failure. If you replace that with sixty
Speaker 3: or six hundred smaller plants, it's a lot more difficult
Speaker 3: to take them out. So distributed renewable energy generation is
Speaker 3: part of the solution, but at a broader level. Understanding
Speaker 3: what's going on and knowing that this is a major
Speaker 3: risk and that people are actively working against their energy
Speaker 3: independence and they're against our energy security first part of
Speaker 3: the process. Not quite sure where they'reet certainly not everywhere
Speaker 3: in Europe.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being candid. We've said in previous podcast
Speaker 2: that the enemies of wind are the enemies of freedom.
Speaker 2: You bring a very very clear example here. So you
Speaker 2: talk about cables, you talk about interconnection. Do you want
Speaker 2: to talk a bit about flex and how to balance
Speaker 2: the intermittency? I guess you are looking into batteries in
Speaker 2: the region. The question I always have is how well
Speaker 2: the market structure are prepared to accommodate those batteries and
Speaker 2: tracking them and providing a good remuneration to the battery investors.
Speaker 3: You can look at these at different levels. If you
Speaker 3: look at it at the European level, the cheapest way
Speaker 3: to transition the energy system is to connect as many
Speaker 3: different weathers zones as possible and do that renewables and
Speaker 3: as many different weathersones as possible, because you need batteries.
Speaker 3: But batteries can help you throughout the day. They could
Speaker 3: time shift for a few hours, but it's really to
Speaker 3: solve seasonal problem with batteries. When you have two weeks
Speaker 3: of low wind and no solar, you country land battery.
Speaker 3: That's going to be just prohibitably expensive. So the best
Speaker 3: way to solve that problem is to connect a different
Speaker 3: weather zone. Again, that point I made about Southeast Europe
Speaker 3: being one of those different weather zones, that's at the
Speaker 3: broader level. At the local level, you are absolutely right
Speaker 3: that some market lack the tramwork and the regulation to
Speaker 3: take full advantage of batteries. We are getting there. Even
Speaker 3: in our markets. The system operators have realized that batteries
Speaker 3: are fundamentally important, so they're very accommodative. More and more
Speaker 3: the revenue stack for batteries is driven not by uncillary
Speaker 3: services but by time shifting. If you look at Southeast Europe,
Speaker 3: because the region is short power but it's long solar,
Speaker 3: you have the biggest min max spreads in Europe. When
Speaker 3: it's sunning, you have oversupply, and when the sun sets
Speaker 3: you're short, so you've got very low prices mid day
Speaker 3: and very high prices in the evening. So the average
Speaker 3: spread in a place like Hungary last year was more
Speaker 3: than one hundred years. The three highest daily minmac spreads
Speaker 3: in Europelus Tier were Bulgaria, Romanian, Hungary. So you don't
Speaker 3: need unculary services to justify battery more and more, with
Speaker 3: the cost of storage where it is today, the economics
Speaker 3: actually look fantastic even without the extra revenue you get
Speaker 3: from uncivere services.
Speaker 1: Timeter, I'm saying off the same hymn sheet as you,
Speaker 1: and I think Luran as as well, because what I'm
Speaker 1: actually hearing also is what I would say a vision
Speaker 1: for the future or power system, which is you need
Speaker 1: to increase interconnection. You're doing this one because as you said,
Speaker 1: it's in particular wind, it's much easier to move wind
Speaker 1: from west to north or north to south or whatever.
Speaker 1: But that's also really good for energy security. And the
Speaker 1: second thing is also the whole view around solar, which
Speaker 1: is solar is not about moving it's solar from east
Speaker 1: to west or north to south. It really is about
Speaker 1: storing it for a few hours, right, because it's really predictable,
Speaker 1: and by doing all of this you make the system
Speaker 1: more secure. And actually what you're doing from a European
Speaker 1: perspective is we're all completely relying on each other, right
Speaker 1: like today you said earlier on Ukraine is relying on
Speaker 1: Southeast Europe for its power today, right, which you could
Speaker 1: think was unimaginable even four years ago. You would never
Speaker 1: think this. I want to thank you for your vision.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just to out on top of that, there is
Speaker 3: a lot of europe bashing these days. It's very popular,
Speaker 3: especially across the Atlantic. But it's energy poor. You can't
Speaker 3: change that. We just don't have the hydrocarbons in the ground.
Speaker 3: But it is actually very well interconnected, so we could
Speaker 3: leverage that existing advantage. And the other thing that Europe
Speaker 3: has going for it, and the other way you can
Speaker 3: actually reduce your foreign dependence is by improving energy efficiency.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the European economy, it's dramatically
Speaker 3: more energy efficient than the US. So that's two major
Speaker 3: advantages in Europe pass that we need to lean into.
Speaker 3: Broadly speaking, it's pretty obvious what the solution is the
Speaker 3: poor independence issue, to the climate issue, to the cost issue.
Speaker 3: You know, it's building out more renewables all over Europe.
Speaker 2: Dimita, your developer of on Obles, can you give us
Speaker 2: a concrete example of a project you've been developing the
Speaker 2: past two years and what is Vanilla and any other
Speaker 2: developer would have done in any other country, And you
Speaker 2: know what was really specific about your approach.
Speaker 3: Obviously, development is a long game, so you need to
Speaker 3: see around corners and you need to try to guess
Speaker 3: where the world's going to be five six seven years
Speaker 3: from now, because when you start the wind farm development,
Speaker 3: it's going to be commercialized in five six seven years, right.
Speaker 3: So what we did right in Southeast Europe with our
Speaker 3: current portfolio is that we saw where the market was
Speaker 3: going and we bet on the two technologies that we
Speaker 3: think are being validated by the market today and that
Speaker 3: those are wind and storage. What we did different back
Speaker 3: when the company was started a big wind farm was
Speaker 3: fifty one hundred megwas our first ever project, was Europe's
Speaker 3: largest onshore wind farm. It was a six hundred megwats
Speaker 3: project we developed in Romania, so we were one of
Speaker 3: the pioneers in the region. We developed the largest in
Speaker 3: the biggest wind farms in Bulgaria and Romania in Serbia.
Speaker 3: I guess what we did differently and what we do
Speaker 3: differently today is we realized that scale matters. The time
Speaker 3: and effort and money takes to develop a wind farm
Speaker 3: is all the same, whether it's one hundred or three
Speaker 3: hundred or five hundred megwats. So we started doing big
Speaker 3: projects early on. And the technology that we focused on,
Speaker 3: which is wind and storage, is also a part of
Speaker 3: our unique strategy, which is now being validated by the
Speaker 3: market because this is the profile that the market needs. Specifically,
Speaker 3: in the last two three years, we develop a few
Speaker 3: hybrid projects or a combination of wind, solar and storage,
Speaker 3: where you're utilizing your grid connection better, you're producing a
Speaker 3: better profile and on a portfolio basis, this has a
Speaker 3: lot of value helping the grid as well by being
Speaker 3: less intermittent. I guess a lot of projects going forward
Speaker 3: they are going to be hybrids. I don't see a
Speaker 3: lot of solar only getting built in the future. You
Speaker 3: always have to be paired with storage, and we've been
Speaker 3: doing that for a long time.
Speaker 1: Jametter, maybe as a last question, give you a little
Speaker 1: bit of a view of how you see the future
Speaker 1: of energy in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 3: I'm quite optimistic about the region. The region has a
Speaker 3: very good basis on which it can build. Obviously, the
Speaker 3: power market is going to have to be largely renewables,
Speaker 3: bas we do have quite a lot of nuclear in
Speaker 3: the region, so that provides a good carbon free foundation,
Speaker 3: but anything on top of that will have to be renewables,
Speaker 3: and that's going to allow us to be energy independent,
Speaker 3: but also it's going to allow us to be economically
Speaker 3: competitive because the profile that we can generate in this
Speaker 3: region is going to be very valuable in the European context.
Speaker 3: So we can not only decarbonize and transition are grids,
Speaker 3: we can actually benefit by helping the rest of Europe
Speaker 3: decarbonized and transition their grids, and that's quite valuable in
Speaker 3: the broader European context. So I'm quite excited about the
Speaker 3: opportunities in Eastern Europe. There are a lot of challenges,
Speaker 3: of course, but probably speaking un optimistic about the future.
Speaker 2: Kivian Tel, thank you so much for coming on the
Speaker 2: show and shedding light on a different zone, which also
Speaker 2: mean that more cables and more integration and increasing the
Speaker 2: size of the grids. It's not only beneficial to you're
Speaker 2: part of Europe, but beneficial to Europe as a whole.
Speaker 2: So thank you very much for making that case. Also
Speaker 2: the Russians, the Russians are enemies.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks timitar No. It's been a good discussion and we
Speaker 1: wish you all the best in the future. So Ron,
Speaker 1: let me tell you my reflections on this podcast. My
Speaker 1: reflections really are all about the need for energy independence,
Speaker 1: particularly in the Eastern Europe. You know, when you're on
Speaker 1: the front line at Russia, you realize we do not
Speaker 1: want to be held to ransom by them again. And
Speaker 1: the best way to actually go and do that, and
Speaker 1: the quickest way is you electrify and your nobilized. And
Speaker 1: this is what I take out of the podcast is
Speaker 1: that this is what's happening in the Balkan region in
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. It's just incredibly strategic. It's not about the environment,
Speaker 1: it really is about energy security.
Speaker 2: And look, the great things is in your we are
Speaker 2: sharing a lot with our eastern front. So it means
Speaker 2: that a lot of things that we've been able to
Speaker 2: develop in Western Europe get deployed much faster. Also in
Speaker 2: East on your rope, for instance, Timita is allied with Mercuria,
Speaker 2: with a great energy training company. So we start seeing
Speaker 2: financial interest in developing those projects because guess what, they
Speaker 2: are probably more lucrative than the one that you would
Speaker 2: find in places like Spain or Germany where sometime we
Speaker 2: reach saturation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was another thing that I wanted to bring up, Lauren,
Speaker 1: and it goes back to the energy security thing, and
Speaker 1: this is north Stream too. And obviously this in that
Speaker 1: pipeline was blown up, and let's talk about what do
Speaker 1: you do next with there's a view that you do
Speaker 1: not matter, you just leave it the way it is. Well,
Speaker 1: what I found very interesting is that in the run
Speaker 1: up to the formation of the new German government, what
Speaker 1: you definitely saw was a significant amount of lobbying activity
Speaker 1: by America to allow American interest to actually buy Northestern too,
Speaker 1: and even crazily with a view I suppose that you
Speaker 1: would use it then as a bargaining chip with Russia
Speaker 1: in and around Ukraine. Now what ended up happening is
Speaker 1: it didn't really get into thankfully, it didn't get into
Speaker 1: the Coalition agreement or anything like this. But it just
Speaker 1: struck me what a crazy world we're in when I,
Speaker 1: as I said, when you realize the politics of energy
Speaker 1: and what's going on there right when.
Speaker 2: I look at the profile of those guys old KGB,
Speaker 2: Spies and the far right Texas all tycoons, really it's nefarious.
Speaker 2: But what I will say is we'll still get Russian
Speaker 2: gas in Europe. It's not going to come directly. We'll
Speaker 2: love Russian energy, or some will come through Turkey, or
Speaker 2: some will well swap with us a bad jan so
Speaker 2: the spices must flow, but it's going to be much
Speaker 2: more indirect on a short term basis than long term agreements.
Speaker 2: I don't see any new long term agreements with Russia
Speaker 2: for a generation.
Speaker 1: I hope you're right, but be really clear that in
Speaker 1: particular we look at Germany, is that you've got fifty
Speaker 1: years of German interests being pretty close to Russia. And
Speaker 1: if I include East Germany, you know you've got seventy
Speaker 1: five years of interest being close to Russia.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, you have more than a century. You look
Speaker 2: at the Treaty of Rapallo in nineteen twenty two, you
Speaker 2: look even at Catherine the Great, Yeah, Sue as a
Speaker 2: German princess. There's a kind of natural magnetism between Germany
Speaker 2: and Russia.
Speaker 1: And let's say something very practical. You know, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a house in Brandenburg on the Polish border,
Speaker 1: and there are two houses in my village that have
Speaker 1: Russian flags. And by the way, they're not Russians, but
Speaker 1: they have Russian flags. And I just want to say
Speaker 1: that it's the complexity of the German relationship means that
Speaker 1: you never know what Germany's going to do. That's what
Speaker 1: I would just say. In the whole North Stream thing.
Speaker 1: What I hope and the way forward should be is
Speaker 1: he just push for energy independence, and the only way
Speaker 1: to do that is to push towards electrification, right because
Speaker 1: at least with electrification you can generate your own electricity
Speaker 1: and you break the dependence on natural gas. But the
Speaker 1: concern I'd have is that's not the case. I see
Speaker 1: the new government. They want to build a whole pile
Speaker 1: of natural gas plans. By the way, they won't get built.
Speaker 1: But they won't get built because by the way, if
Speaker 1: you order one today, you won't get it delivered until
Speaker 1: twenty thirty two. And actually the Kappax because of these
Speaker 1: CCG plans are three times what they were like five
Speaker 1: years ago. So the economics that don't make this heads.
Speaker 1: But anyway, where I'm coming from.
Speaker 2: Is and they're gonna run five hundred that was a year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just it's sort of a anyway, it's just
Speaker 1: over there.
Speaker 2: It's a generation of guys in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 2: and they just can't update their software period.
Speaker 1: Goody put them, my friend.
Speaker 2: It was great to have Dimita on the show. And
Speaker 2: freedom goes through.
Speaker 1: Rulnerable absolutely totally. Witcher renewables bring feuredom.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: All right, my.
Speaker 2: Friend, talk to you next week.
Speaker 1: Bye, next week, look forward. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: Redefining Energy. Don't forget to read the show and subscribe
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