Speaker 1: You're listening to Redefining Energy.
Speaker 2: You're co hosts from Berlin Gerard Read and from London
Speaker 2: Laurent Saga.
Speaker 3: But y'all mayor Christmas, you too, my friend. Last episode
Speaker 3: of the year, So we're gonna wrap up everything we've seen,
Speaker 3: everything we were right about, everything was wrong about.
Speaker 2: The Crazier, my friend, it was a crazier.
Speaker 3: Now when you come to the podcast for twenty four
Speaker 3: we're gonna have six hundred thousand downloads, which is up
Speaker 3: twenty seven percent. You're on your We won the Leading
Speaker 3: Voice Award in energyent Communities by City Tech not no
Speaker 3: City Tech, but you know, was great to have an.
Speaker 2: Award, Absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 3: What was the most downloaded episode of the year, Child Gates, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Bill Gates already episode three and then the on PPA
Speaker 3: always very popular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean such a technical topic as well, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: Right, okay, Yeah, so we do another one in February
Speaker 3: and then Google so anything around AI that aren't a
Speaker 3: lot of interest.
Speaker 2: The top the real big topics of the year, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, batteries. All the batteries episode also were very popular.
Speaker 3: The most commented was the one we did the last
Speaker 3: months on Nossholt, which went crazy. We can see what
Speaker 3: the wind blows, whereas everything around any division Z or
Speaker 3: climate nobody's interested anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. It's one of the conclusions I get
Speaker 2: out of twenty twenty four is this transition now is
Speaker 2: all about economics, now politics. It's not about climate change anymore,
Speaker 2: you know, totally.
Speaker 3: We used to talk about the famous traffecta security, affordability
Speaker 3: and clean This is not the case anymore. Now it's okay,
Speaker 3: security first, but then there's growth and for the first
Speaker 3: time there is growth in the US, not in Europe.
Speaker 3: And I have a quote from a very brilliant girl
Speaker 3: called Chris Seiple, is the head of power at the
Speaker 3: Woodmark and he said, this year a seventiear trend of
Speaker 3: declining share of electricity to GDP has been reversed.
Speaker 2: And let me add to that as well, it's also
Speaker 2: the first year really in over a decade where maybe
Speaker 2: even fifteen years, we're in the Western world we're actually
Speaker 2: saying electricity demand beginning to go up as opposed to down,
Speaker 2: and actually that's going to continue to go forward. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we talk about data centers. There are about five
Speaker 3: thousand data centers in the US, and if you take
Speaker 3: Germany pers UK Press, they are not even two thousand.
Speaker 3: America is on fire and Europe is on zenas.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to disagree with you, by Fred, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to disagree with you because my sort of
Speaker 2: reflections on the air is just I just think Europe
Speaker 2: as sleeping. That's in every way just sleeping.
Speaker 3: You need a ted ex Bolin which was really brilliant
Speaker 3: because I am totally incapable of talking in front of
Speaker 3: a live audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a lot of fun, I must have met.
Speaker 2: It was the first time I've ever done it, and
Speaker 2: it's amazing. Really, You when you do something like that,
Speaker 2: you just reach a different target audience important, right, we
Speaker 2: need to This transition that we're going through is not easy,
Speaker 2: and it's part of what we're doing is educating people, right,
Speaker 2: and so we want to educate as many people as
Speaker 2: we can.
Speaker 3: Your thesis, which we've been talking NonStop on this podcast
Speaker 3: is the four driver of the energy revolution no transition,
Speaker 3: solar batteries, semiconductors, and China.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I've changed the word semiconductors to energy
Speaker 2: intelligence at this point. More than that. Yeah, sorry, and
Speaker 2: the other thing I think you've just said. What you
Speaker 2: just said was China. I mean, this is two thousand
Speaker 2: and twenty fours the year of China. When it comes
Speaker 2: to energy, they dominate the production of all these energy
Speaker 2: technologies we talk about, but also they're installing them, not
Speaker 2: just exporting them. They're going and install them in their
Speaker 2: own country. Right. The biggest market ev is, biggest market
Speaker 2: for solder, biggest mark of for wind. They're shown the way.
Speaker 3: Forward and you start seeing it in the numbers because
Speaker 3: following an expert, respectator John Kemp, he says that China
Speaker 3: will import less oil in two twenty four than tour
Speaker 3: twenty three.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: And that's not debatable, you know, it's not a percentage
Speaker 3: of the growth of this all that, it's simply they're
Speaker 3: going to import less oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Other interesting figures a lot coming from that. India consumes
Speaker 3: more cold than the US plus the EU.
Speaker 2: Well there's the biggest country in the world in terms
Speaker 2: of population, so there's no surprise, you know, the they
Speaker 2: all want to be at the same living standards that
Speaker 2: we do. So yeah, they're going to consume energy energy energy.
Speaker 3: For the next years, US electric fleet consumes more power
Speaker 3: than US electric trains. Okay, interesting, huh interesting. Okay, So
Speaker 3: now I've got a list of influencers, so I just
Speaker 3: want to name them because these are the people I follow,
Speaker 3: and whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's on X or
Speaker 3: now you've got blue Sky, which I think is a
Speaker 3: is a bit of a subper version of X. But
Speaker 3: did you open your account on Blue Sky or not?
Speaker 2: No? I didn't know.
Speaker 3: Well whatever, Okay, So for EV's James Scouter, Tom Zug Malcot,
Speaker 3: June Kyle Chan, Roger at King Sky, Kent Felix Summer.
Speaker 3: If you just follow those guys, you know everything that's
Speaker 3: happening in EV's Solar. It's always gingy chase, but I
Speaker 3: mean Solar. I mean, you wonder if you need to
Speaker 3: follow it. It's crazy.
Speaker 2: We just keeps growing, of course, keep falling. Yeah, it's simple.
Speaker 3: The growth of the batteries. But we supply chain. We
Speaker 3: have some very good guys we're following. Aaron Wait, Carma Cole,
Speaker 3: Chris Berry, Matt Firmley, Simon Moore's Jeloy. When it comes
Speaker 3: to Litia Press of lithium this year ten thousand a ton.
Speaker 3: It's flat production going up, a lot of discussion around
Speaker 3: Palmer market, around capture prices, great source and burne er
Speaker 3: g Dave Jones, Stephen Woodhouse on Earth, Vigan, everything that's
Speaker 3: around PPAs picks up Park, everything that's around batteries is model.
Speaker 2: Great people out there that actually we can follow. And
Speaker 2: obviously listen, Well we haven't talked about Lauren. I like
Speaker 2: to talk about is hydrogen and hydrogen. Listen, We've got
Speaker 2: Paul Martin, Tom Baxter, people like that that we that
Speaker 2: we follow very closely. Yeah, But anyway, and he comments
Speaker 2: on twenty twenty four and hydrogen.
Speaker 3: But hydrogen beats the record of a project announcer never
Speaker 3: delivered because it's just too expensive. The current state of
Speaker 3: hydrogen affairs look like this. Electoralizers that do not exist
Speaker 3: are supposed to use excess electricity that does not exist
Speaker 3: to feed hydrogen into a greed that does not exist
Speaker 3: in order to power plants that do not exist. Alternatively,
Speaker 3: hydrogen is supposed to be transported via ships and port
Speaker 3: that do not exist for suppliers country that you guess
Speaker 3: it also do not exist, you know Zeidler. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And despite that, and I want to pass the clip
Speaker 3: there is a guy in Germany, the CEO of BMW,
Speaker 3: who still thinks hydrogen at the future. Let's listen to
Speaker 3: the clip.
Speaker 1: In our industry, timing is crucial. Pioneered the technology together
Speaker 1: with the right partness, and we have brought it to
Speaker 1: the road. Now it's time to unleash the full potential
Speaker 1: of hydrogen. A mildestone in automotive history. We are announcing
Speaker 1: the first ever serious production fuel cell electric vehicle to
Speaker 1: be offered by a global Bremium manufacturer, powered by hydrogen.
Speaker 1: It will underscore how technological brokess is shaping future mobility.
Speaker 3: Oh God, but I don't want to give any comments
Speaker 3: on hydrogen. Let's listen to a ne expert. You're gonna
Speaker 3: find out very quickly who he is.
Speaker 4: We're gonna have hybrids, We're gonna have gasoline propelled cars,
Speaker 4: We're not gonna have hydrogen cars. You know, hydrogen cars
Speaker 4: is the new thing, right you know about that? Hydrogen
Speaker 4: is the new car. They say it's great. Has one problem.
Speaker 4: If it explodes, you dead. If it explodes, they actually say,
Speaker 4: if it is you're unrecognizable. You call your wife over.
Speaker 2: They call up the wife.
Speaker 4: Would you please come here and take a look and
Speaker 4: see whether or not this is your husband, because we
Speaker 4: cannot see. And she goes to the nearest tree, which
Speaker 4: is about one hundred yards away, and she says, it's
Speaker 4: only blood. There's nothing there since I can't tell. So
Speaker 4: hydrogen has one problem. It's extraordinarily dangerous. Other than that,
Speaker 4: the car works quite well.
Speaker 5: Actually, well, let's return to good news, because one thing
Speaker 5: I think is very important laur On is the entrepreneurs
Speaker 5: in this space.
Speaker 2: And actually, if I look back in our podcast, we've
Speaker 2: had We've had a few really successful ones and some
Speaker 2: that haven't been so successful. But it's really important to
Speaker 2: have this innovation in there. So if you were looking
Speaker 2: at the entrepreneurs in our space, you would just say
Speaker 2: you look up.
Speaker 3: To well, look the one who came on the show,
Speaker 3: and that the most narration for Greg Jackson, David Sky's book,
Speaker 3: Sheldon Kimber, all of them have developed a huge, huge
Speaker 3: capacity innovation, created billion dollar company. I'm really privileged to
Speaker 3: be able to do this podcast so we can interact
Speaker 3: with those people.
Speaker 2: And just see people you know. Greg Jackson is the
Speaker 2: CEO founder of Octopus Energy. David Squay's Brook is the
Speaker 2: CEO founder of Quinn book, which is very interesting asset management.
Speaker 2: And then Sheldon Camber is the CEO of really really
Speaker 2: interesting ask developer, you know.
Speaker 3: Your intersect power. He just signed a gigantic deal with Google.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you, what have you read this year
Speaker 2: that you've enjoyed?
Speaker 3: Okay, so we have our books of the years. There
Speaker 3: are six that caught my eyes so well. Richard Black,
Speaker 3: The Future of Energy, Our Vulnerable Energy Future by Dougarrant,
Speaker 3: hash cut Ratti, The Climate Capitalism Super Great Super Solutions
Speaker 3: that's from Idioconostic and Edition, The Coming Wave from Mustafa Suleiman,
Speaker 3: and finally Jimmy Chase Solar Finance without the jargon. All
Speaker 3: these books are of course around the energy, about the
Speaker 3: energy revolution, except the Coming Wave. You want to say
Speaker 3: something about it, I'm.
Speaker 2: Gonna say my favorite one was The Coming Wave from
Speaker 2: Mustafa Sulimon. And this is on AI and what AI
Speaker 2: is going to have in terms.
Speaker 3: Of impact on the world.
Speaker 2: And I say that also because AI is going to
Speaker 2: have a huge impact on the energy space as well.
Speaker 2: Obviously we need data centers, etcetera, etcetera. And I think
Speaker 2: it's really critical that whether they are Google, Microsoft or
Speaker 2: whoever it is you need to be part of the solution,
Speaker 2: and we need to get them really involved, much more
Speaker 2: involved in the energy transition than they have been up
Speaker 2: to now. So anyway, I thought that book was great
Speaker 2: for those of you who don't know who he is.
Speaker 2: He is a very interesting London born entrepreneur who ended up,
Speaker 2: you know, his business being bought. It was booked by Google,
Speaker 2: wasn't it, deep minds. Yeah, so very interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 3: Okay, So to kind of finish off my echo of
Speaker 3: the years, Kiril Buddhadov. Why but you know he is.
Speaker 3: He's the head of the Ukrainian g u R and
Speaker 3: he's the guy who blew up all the Russian refineries,
Speaker 3: doing more for fighting Clemagin than anybody else.
Speaker 2: Under On one other topic that sort of came, I've
Speaker 2: changed my view in and around environmentalists, and don't forget
Speaker 2: I am actually an environmentalist deep down, but I think
Speaker 2: the approach of many environmentalists is too extreme at this
Speaker 2: point in time. What I mean by that is the
Speaker 2: world is not black and white, it's gray, and we
Speaker 2: need to move forward quickly. But a lot of environmental
Speaker 2: movement is actually stopping change happening. Right, And I was
Speaker 2: looking recently at just the whole area of data centers,
Speaker 2: and you've had, sorry, Friends of the Earth come out
Speaker 2: and I'm talking about a report they did in Ireland
Speaker 2: where they come out and basically say, hey, listen, forget
Speaker 2: about this AI data center stuff because the end of
Speaker 2: the day, we won't be able to hit our climate goals.
Speaker 2: The world is not black and white. AI is so
Speaker 2: important that I think you have to rethink. So you know,
Speaker 2: give loads of examples, but one, for example is let's
Speaker 2: say the Tesla factory outside Berlin, which has been You've
Speaker 2: had people basically living in the forest there preventing the
Speaker 2: cutting down of trees there, and they've been doing this
Speaker 2: for the last two and a half years. And I
Speaker 2: sort of look at that and got I'm sorry. You've
Speaker 2: got a company here that is actually, in terms of
Speaker 2: impact on carbon emissions worldwide, they will have a greater
Speaker 2: impact for the positive world than anything else than any
Speaker 2: other company across the world because they pushed the electrification
Speaker 2: of the automobile, etcetera, etcetera. And so that's me the
Speaker 2: bigger picture, and it's the world is not black and white.
Speaker 2: And as I said, i'd I don't believe that black
Speaker 2: and white is really helpless, and I think perfectly in
Speaker 2: the European perspective, but also in the US, this black
Speaker 2: white approach means that a lot of people they just
Speaker 2: become anti climate change really, which is not helpful for
Speaker 2: any pot The.
Speaker 3: Problem of enviamentalist is they surfer from what I call
Speaker 3: the niavana fallaci, which is, if it's not one hundred
Speaker 3: percent perfect, let's not do it. So they talk about
Speaker 3: the mining impact and stuff like that. They don't see
Speaker 3: that if you take green Bush, which is the biggest
Speaker 3: mine for lithium in the world. So they talk about
Speaker 3: the abomination of green Bush in Australia, but from a
Speaker 3: surface perspective, it's only one third of one coal mine
Speaker 3: for one power plant. Get very emotional. They have no
Speaker 3: idea of the orders of magnitude. We're talking about too
Speaker 3: much emotion.
Speaker 2: That's a good way problem. Too much emotion, and actually
Speaker 2: we need to get practical. That's what we need to do, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: else you'd say about two thousand.
Speaker 3: Dolly, Well, look twenty twenty four. If you want to
Speaker 3: summarize up what has been going up, relentless grows of
Speaker 3: solar explosion of batteries, eves, despite it in the media
Speaker 3: as the EV is going down now the even's still
Speaker 3: going up, but has been also the extraordinary rise of
Speaker 3: gas turbines everywhere. I mean, if you look at the
Speaker 3: shares of GVA and over Simon's Energy, it's fantastic. Every
Speaker 3: time I meet young people, I see their enthusiasm, their innovation,
Speaker 3: the new take digital This is fantastic. Now I am begging, begging,
Speaker 3: begging Europe to deregulate, I mean too creatures the bonfire
Speaker 3: of all those regulations that are just hampering the progress,
Speaker 3: because that's what's happening in the US, and I'm not
Speaker 3: even talking about China. These are my ups.
Speaker 2: Oh god. Actually, that's a very, very, very good point.
Speaker 2: I agree with your Tolkien. Europe is totally over regulated,
Speaker 2: and really we set it up around because at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, we've set up a European Commission
Speaker 2: that has one job and that as the regular right,
Speaker 2: and they have the more the more they regulate, the
Speaker 2: more power they have. So this is a pretty crazy situation.
Speaker 2: We put ourselves into it, and it's not helpful because
Speaker 2: what ends up happening is we're just stifling innovation. And
Speaker 2: I'm trolling a bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: Maybe before we leave, just one word to say, as
Speaker 3: the Biden administration is going to depart, I want to
Speaker 3: setute the work done by at the US LOOM program
Speaker 3: the past four years. It's an extraordinary achievement what they've
Speaker 3: managed to do. Not everything is going to be successful,
Speaker 3: but they gave their golden letter back to the world
Speaker 3: industrialth policy and the US is going to benefit for
Speaker 3: decades of the work done by Jigasha and the Biden administration.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wish Tigger all the best.
Speaker 3: Or don't worry for him. I'm sure yes. De proposal
Speaker 3: on his desk right now. Oh yeah, and he deserves them.
Speaker 3: That's the job. I wish you merry Christmas. And our
Speaker 3: first episode of the year is as usual our predictions
Speaker 3: where you are always right and I'm always wrong because
Speaker 3: I'm specific and you're vague.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be I promise next year I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be specific. Okay, cheers, good by friend Joy. Thank you
Speaker 2: for listening to Redefining Energy. Don't forget to rate the
Speaker 2: show and subscribe on Apple podcast Spotify for the platform
Speaker 2: of your choice.