Speaker 1: With Laurent's segle and from London and Gerard read from Berlin,
Speaker 1: this is redefining energy.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: On redefining energy, we are going to have a discussion
Speaker 1: that took place early in the year in Oxford University.
Speaker 1: Laurent Professor Jan Rosnell had a lively discussion in and
Speaker 1: around the future of the energy transition, and sadly I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to make it because I got a new
Speaker 1: replacement and I wasn't able to travel.
Speaker 2: But it was a good discussion.
Speaker 3: Around Yeah, I went totally off pissed because I had
Speaker 3: prepared something bit philosophical to honor Oxford. So I talked
Speaker 3: about Aristotle, I talked about Jocklythian. But we managed to
Speaker 3: cover everything together and have a very very lively conversation.
Speaker 3: Plus it was in the beautiful library of the Oil College,
Speaker 3: and really I felt extremely privileged to be invited. And
Speaker 3: sorry you.
Speaker 2: Could not make it.
Speaker 3: It's a good way to take a step back and
Speaker 3: look at the big picture and discuss power politics, the
Speaker 3: price of netzio. So let's listen to the conversation.
Speaker 4: All right, let's start. Welcome everybody, this is quite a
Speaker 4: special event. You're not be many times that we have
Speaker 4: had a public event in the Senior Library. I believe
Speaker 4: in the history of the college, so it's quite a
Speaker 4: special thing for the college. Today we're doing a live
Speaker 4: podcast recording, which might be the first time as well
Speaker 4: in history that this has happened at Oriel College.
Speaker 2: I don't know. You're very lucky to get seats.
Speaker 4: Within two hours the event had sold out, even though
Speaker 4: there was no price tech, but all the tickets were
Speaker 4: gone within just about two hours. Just let me briefly
Speaker 4: say what we're going to do, then introduce the podcast
Speaker 4: and Laurent. So we have about thirty maybe forty it's
Speaker 4: for conversation, and then we have some time for more
Speaker 4: informal conversation that will not be as part of the podcast.
Speaker 2: Let me now.
Speaker 4: Introduce Redefining Energy and Laurent Segalin. So Redefining Energy is
Speaker 4: actually one of the world's top three podcasts on energy
Speaker 4: according to Google. So when you google energy podcast top
Speaker 4: in the world, I think Redefining Energy comes up at
Speaker 4: number three. And you had six hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 4: downloads last year. Yeah, last year.
Speaker 2: It's a great podcast.
Speaker 4: I've listened to it for more than I think it's
Speaker 4: now eight years and Laurent is here. You may have
Speaker 4: noticed alone. The other co host, Zarad Reed, is not
Speaker 4: able to come today. He has injured his leg unfortunately
Speaker 4: and can't travel here. So it's just the two of us,
Speaker 4: but we're going to have a good conversation, I'm sure.
Speaker 4: Let me just briefly introduce Laurent. Laurent is a former
Speaker 4: investment banker. You've worked in finance for something like three
Speaker 4: decades for organizations like Lehman Brothers, PwC, Nomura and many others.
Speaker 4: And Laurent has traded I think it was one billion
Speaker 4: dollars worth of energy commodities over the course of his career,
Speaker 4: which is a huge number, of course, and you have
Speaker 4: set up several digital platforms for trading when you were
Speaker 4: electricity battery integration and things like that. But now you
Speaker 4: are a professional podcast co host, and that's why we
Speaker 4: have you here today, and we have sort of turned
Speaker 4: this on its head. So the questions that we're going
Speaker 4: to discuss actually from all of you from the audience,
Speaker 4: and we have a list here. We have so many
Speaker 4: we can't go through the fifty or so questions we received.
Speaker 4: We had to select and cluster them. We do our
Speaker 4: best to cover as much as we can. At this point, Laurent,
Speaker 4: I think I handed over to you and you hopefully
Speaker 4: don't tell me that I have misrepresented you in my
Speaker 4: introduction or Redefining Energy, And I think you have prepared
Speaker 4: a little bit of an introduction. You want to mention Aristotle.
Speaker 4: I think as well, that's what I heard from you before.
Speaker 4: So let's see how a res total features in this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first of all, thanks Ian for having me. You
Speaker 2: can hear from my voice that had a very busy yesterday.
Speaker 2: The first thing I like to say is thank you
Speaker 2: all for being here, and it's for me. It's a
Speaker 2: great honor. It's very humbling as well. Now we as
Speaker 2: you noticed with Jarre, we did three hundred to four
Speaker 2: hundred episode of the pod. And what a journey because
Speaker 2: at the beginning, with just two bankers getting drunk in
Speaker 2: a pub near PICCADII and and to saying, oh, we're
Speaker 2: so intelligent, we should record what we're saying, which we
Speaker 2: did and the rest is the story. Now, before we
Speaker 2: answer to those questions, there's a question you need every
Speaker 2: one of you to ask yourself, and it's a question
Speaker 2: I also asked myself, it's not really why are we here,
Speaker 2: but why are you here? How did you come to
Speaker 2: be interested in environment, energy, security, transition technology? That all
Speaker 2: umbrella And this is why I'm gonna use Aristotle, the
Speaker 2: famous triangle of Aristotle Ethos, logos, pathos. So itthos. You
Speaker 2: read the Paris Accord, you want to save the planet.
Speaker 2: You heard great Athumburg at Davos, you read the Mark Karne,
Speaker 2: the tragedy of the Horizon. It's going to be the
Speaker 2: tragedy of Alberta trying to see set. So basically, we're
Speaker 2: going to give the oil industry everything they want. You
Speaker 2: had the red Larry Finn two twenty, the head of
Speaker 2: black Hawk Finance is now Climate Finance. Everything is ESG
Speaker 2: something he has now totally forgotten. But ethos is good
Speaker 2: because at the end of the day, that's how laws
Speaker 2: get passed. So maybe that's ethos, or maybe that's going
Speaker 2: to be logos. So logos. You're going to read your
Speaker 2: b and EF reports, Amber report, I see Dave and
Speaker 2: Kingsmila here externary data. You're going to run your models,
Speaker 2: you're l Coe, You're going to calculate your sparks spread
Speaker 2: and you're going to conclude that, yes, the environment is
Speaker 2: mathematically what needs to be done. And of course the
Speaker 2: last one is the pathos. And that's who I am,
Speaker 2: and that's why I'm here. Because when I was twelve,
Speaker 2: as I was doing a school trip in Germany, they
Speaker 2: brought us at the border of West and East Germany
Speaker 2: and I saw, I saw country divided in two. I
Speaker 2: saw kilometters of barb wires, mirrauders and the Russians already
Speaker 2: the Russians putting the old country in jail. When I
Speaker 2: got fifteen, there was the biggest oil spill ever on
Speaker 2: my Belov province of Brittany, where a ship called amucokaddis
Speaker 2: So and that as part of BP run on ground two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty thousand barrel of oil. It was the
Speaker 2: moment we had the oil crisis. So the government sided
Speaker 2: with the oil company and we bretons. We went shovel
Speaker 2: bucket and we clean ourselves beaches. So my interaction with
Speaker 2: the environment is not the ethos or the logos, is
Speaker 2: being fifteen on a beach in Brittany. And then the
Speaker 2: last one, as I was at PwC and we were
Speaker 2: preparing the carbon markets. That was in September two one.
Speaker 2: I had some very good friends at the one hundred
Speaker 2: and fourty level of the Norse Hour of the World
Speaker 2: Trade Center, and we had a cold that day call
Speaker 2: which never happened, and I lost Carton Bartel's and Adam
Speaker 2: White made their name be said, so they are not forgotten.
Speaker 2: And this is where you realize that old relationship with
Speaker 2: the Middle East, just because of oil, makes the old
Speaker 2: world toxic. So you ask, what are my deep levers
Speaker 2: for energy security against the Russian, against oil, my commitment
Speaker 2: to the environment. These are the seminal moments. Now I
Speaker 2: can go outside with a loud speaker, but my friend,
Speaker 2: that friend of yours, told me, you need to be
Speaker 2: inside the system to change it, because if you're outside shouting,
Speaker 2: you're going to feel good about it. But nothing's going
Speaker 2: to change. And how do you change? Change it to finance,
Speaker 2: You change it to investment, and you change to try
Speaker 2: to redirect whatever money is put into facili fuels into
Speaker 2: better technology. Now it works most of the time, sometime
Speaker 2: it doesn't. It's okay, you try and try again. So
Speaker 2: sorry for this long introduction. Everybody has his own angle
Speaker 2: is all past, is all cultural shift and even the
Speaker 2: question you're going to ask now, which are very valid,
Speaker 2: We'll have different answers depending where you stand. You'll get
Speaker 2: a good answer in Oxford. You ask the same question
Speaker 2: in Houston, Texas or in Beijing, and you will have
Speaker 2: always good value. So ask your first question.
Speaker 4: The first question. It's difficult to pivot from a very
Speaker 4: personal story law to what is a fairly abstract but
Speaker 4: super important issue. The first question is really around are
Speaker 4: we actually in an energy transition? Several questions that people raised,
Speaker 4: some of you things suggests that, well, haven't we seen
Speaker 4: a bit of a backlash against transition recently? Other people
Speaker 4: have talked about an energy addition because we still see
Speaker 4: fossil fuels rising. So this is the first question we
Speaker 4: would like to discuss. I certainly have my views on
Speaker 4: this question and have worked with several people in the
Speaker 4: audience trying to get to an answer. But Lauren, do
Speaker 4: you want to kick us off on this question and
Speaker 4: then I can offer my perspective as well and then
Speaker 4: see where we end up before we move on to
Speaker 4: the next one.
Speaker 2: Excellent. So when it's come to predicting the future, the
Speaker 2: first thing is to look back at the past prediction
Speaker 2: of the future which were made when it comes to energy,
Speaker 2: and if I'm in two thousand and I look at
Speaker 2: the best expert in two thousand of how they see
Speaker 2: the next ten years. There are two words that they're
Speaker 2: not going to use is aed and shale gas, which
Speaker 2: means nobody sow coming even five years before the two
Speaker 2: most important energy events of the decade. If you're in
Speaker 2: two ten, you know what's gonna happen. There's a beautiful
Speaker 2: Mackinser report from two or twelve which I keep because
Speaker 2: people say it does not exist. It exists. I have
Speaker 2: it on my hard drive, The Future of Automotive Okay,
Speaker 2: full of hydrogen. Of course, the word electric is written
Speaker 2: once in that two or twelve report. If you ask
Speaker 2: the people like me who are already investing in solar
Speaker 2: into ten, well, the price of the panel is going
Speaker 2: to be it was at four dollars or what or
Speaker 2: is so look, if we manage to get that three
Speaker 2: will be lucky off At the end of the decades
Speaker 2: are twenty cents, which means nobody saw that coming either. Okay,
Speaker 2: you do in two or twenty the future, do you
Speaker 2: know what nobody talks about that a sentence. Nobody talks
Speaker 2: about batteries or they talk about batteries within car. Nobody
Speaker 2: talks about energycy So just this to explain you. The
Speaker 2: future is very hard to predict, and technological stuff happen Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe over one year or two, but they come extremely
Speaker 2: fast and they tend to, you know, rebalance the cards. Now,
Speaker 2: in relation to your question, I'm going to make a
Speaker 2: Roman antiquity parallel. It's what I call the Joglethian tetuarchy.
Speaker 2: So in the Geoglythian TECHWARKI, you have the Augusti and
Speaker 2: the Cesarees. You have the two main thinkers, which I'm
Speaker 2: sure everybody know here. On one hand you've got vaclass
Speaker 2: Mill and on the other you've got Clayton Christensen. You
Speaker 2: have the Pope of the system. Are very rigid and
Speaker 2: you know, move very very slowly. And on the other
Speaker 2: you've got that wonderful man that we lost too soon,
Speaker 2: who is describe disruption, destruction, codact moments, the s curves,
Speaker 2: and of course you go down one notch to the Cesarees.
Speaker 2: So in the waclaf's milk column you have Danielle Jogin,
Speaker 2: which for me, when I read the prize thirty six
Speaker 2: years ago was an absolute revelation. He rewrites the whole
Speaker 2: twentieth century through the prism of oil and all the
Speaker 2: geopolitics links to oil. And I can tell you if
Speaker 2: you should read it, it's very eye opening and it's
Speaker 2: still alive. He is a very clever guy. He has
Speaker 2: not really updated his software for the past fifteen years,
Speaker 2: but besides that is a very respected guy. And of
Speaker 2: the other everybody knows him. Here it's Michael Libic who
Speaker 2: has taken the christen cent theory and put them to
Speaker 2: work on solar batteries, you know, and King's Mill is there,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of you know, it's the same school
Speaker 2: of thought. And of course, depending which cocktail you're going
Speaker 2: to take, of the smell jog In or the christensend Libriic.
Speaker 2: To answer to your question, the best way you look
Speaker 2: back fifteen years, because they've been in terms of the
Speaker 2: same thing all the time, I would say the Libash
Speaker 2: camp is seventy percent and the Yogin camp thirty percent.
Speaker 2: Just by the fact. So if you ask me, are
Speaker 2: we addition or transition, we are two thirds transition, one
Speaker 2: third edition, and we have geographical growth on one hand,
Speaker 2: and Eric Mitchik on the others, oil one hundred and
Speaker 2: one million. Barry, okay, we're going to go to one
Speaker 2: hundred and two, one hundred and three. You know that's
Speaker 2: not a growth sector. Let me listen.
Speaker 4: We'll go a bit deeper up to this point, because
Speaker 4: when you look at it globally, it is true that
Speaker 4: fossil fuels have kept on rising and still keep on rising,
Speaker 4: and we add on renewables on top. But I was
Speaker 4: in copenhageners two days ago, and when you look at
Speaker 4: Denmark's transition as a case study, just in the electricity sector,
Speaker 4: renewables are now something like close to ninety percent of
Speaker 4: electricity generation EV sales are what seventy percent or eighty
Speaker 4: percent now, So massive transformation. So once you start looking
Speaker 4: at the transition sectorially or regionally, the picture does change
Speaker 4: quite a bit. And we talked about this in preparation
Speaker 4: for this. You know, actually looking at things globally can
Speaker 4: be instructive because it tells you something about how fast
Speaker 4: we're going globally, but it doesn't tell you about all
Speaker 4: the innovation that's taking place in different parts of the world.
Speaker 4: It doesn't tell you actually where the solutions are where
Speaker 4: the problems are, and therefore I think it's a question
Speaker 4: that needs to.
Speaker 2: Be more nuanced.
Speaker 4: You know, we are in a transition in some parts,
Speaker 4: in some sectors, in some countries, but we're not yet
Speaker 4: in a transition globally everywhere, and that's going to take
Speaker 4: some time. But these things tend to come in transes, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, you may look at the deployment of other
Speaker 4: technologies that hasn't happened at the same speed everywhere, that
Speaker 4: has happened at different speeds in different times, in different places.
Speaker 4: And I think that will be my take on this question.
Speaker 4: Are we going fast enough? Of course we're not. Otherwise
Speaker 4: emissions would have come down and we would and see
Speaker 4: an increase in demand for fossil fuels. But to say
Speaker 4: that we're not in a transition, it's just an addition.
Speaker 4: I think it's too short sighted. That will be my
Speaker 4: take on the question. And it also then does not
Speaker 4: allow you to understand really where the barriers are and
Speaker 4: where the solutions are.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that law? Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: if it took electrification in our countries, which is like
Speaker 2: you know, we had flat electricity for twenty years so
Speaker 2: the electrical system has lost the muscle memory of growing.
Speaker 2: They are in America, you know, trying to get it back,
Speaker 2: and it's very, very painful because you don't have enough electricians,
Speaker 2: because connection to the grid last ten years, because you
Speaker 2: get your turbines in six years. Because people have become
Speaker 2: kind of comfortable in the zero growth universe, the electrification,
Speaker 2: it's the future. Whether you talk about better technology, whether
Speaker 2: you talk about redu seeing emission, whether you talk about
Speaker 2: would you see in fossil fuge, just give better product
Speaker 2: to people. So it's going to be evs. But in
Speaker 2: India is going to be cooling, and as here is
Speaker 2: going to be heating. You like your heat pumps and
Speaker 2: I love the heat pumps as well. And of course
Speaker 2: in America is going to be data center. I said,
Speaker 2: I was looking to a girl from Google as all
Speaker 2: this AI stuff, said no, no, no, we don't build
Speaker 2: that a center for AI. We build that as centers
Speaker 2: because of YouTube, because of autonomous vehicle are way more
Speaker 2: are just you know, need more and more data center.
Speaker 2: So eighty percent of the data centers who are building
Speaker 2: are not for AI. They're just for your run off
Speaker 2: the milk cloud. And then he told me, we had
Speaker 2: this big meeting at Google to see how we could
Speaker 2: spend our one hundred and eighty four billion dollar CAPEX
Speaker 2: investment this year on the ready eighty four. The first
Speaker 2: thing is say that's more than the military budget of Russia.
Speaker 2: Just Google, and then you know, the guys say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: our budget of one at and I guess one eighty
Speaker 2: four for you. Four billion is a rounding error. So
Speaker 2: that gives you a bit of the magnitude of the
Speaker 2: amount of money that the eye per scatters. Are they
Speaker 2: going to make stupid things with them? One hundred percent,
Speaker 2: They're going to be crisis, They're going to be bankruptcy.
Speaker 2: But the digitization effort that's happening in the US, and
Speaker 2: that's going to come in shape or forming yourb This
Speaker 2: is great news because we finally going to see growth
Speaker 2: and a system with your growth where you know, it's
Speaker 2: like the same pizza you want the bigger size of pizza,
Speaker 2: you need to take it from somebody else. A system
Speaker 2: is much better. What is growing.
Speaker 4: We could discuss how USII is as a tool and
Speaker 4: whether that is good energy demand growth or not. But
Speaker 4: I think let's go into the next question, which is
Speaker 4: sort of connected. I think you mentioned the US already
Speaker 4: and the huge growth and data centers. The next cluster
Speaker 4: of questions really are around geopolitics and so industrial policy,
Speaker 4: the rise of China as a global superpower, and especially
Speaker 4: relevant of course in energy, the backlash against some of
Speaker 4: the clean energy policies in the US. I have the
Speaker 4: feeling that we are on the cusp of quite an
Speaker 4: interesting switch globally when it comes to energy where yep,
Speaker 4: still people talk a lot about the US, but when
Speaker 4: you look at investment figures all the time, Lauren, when
Speaker 4: you look at how much money gets invested in clean
Speaker 4: energy technologies, it's not the US that's top of the list, right,
Speaker 4: that's China. How is that shift affecting geopolitics when it
Speaker 4: comes to energy dependencies? You mentioned your early youth experience
Speaker 4: with oil and dependency and realizing the implications of that.
Speaker 4: How is all of that going to change in the
Speaker 4: next five years or ten years if you want to
Speaker 4: look ahead?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, it's all debate be was state versus a
Speaker 2: cross state and here Kingsmelia and you know are the
Speaker 2: real brain behind that. And of course it's all about
Speaker 2: industrial policy. Now. The first thing I want to say,
Speaker 2: is the moment you do ideology in energy, it costs
Speaker 2: a lot. Ideology costs a fortune. Gb decides that to
Speaker 2: go to coup. They want to be zero call okay,
Speaker 2: zero coal, regardless of the course of the system. Fine,
Speaker 2: so they're gonna tell drugs, okay, wonderful, you're going to
Speaker 2: switch to biomass, you're gonna get trees. They're going to
Speaker 2: be sustainable. Of course they're not. But at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, they give them ten billion pounds over
Speaker 2: ten years, ten billion pounds just for the ideological purity
Speaker 2: of saying we don't burn coal anymore. The Germans they're
Speaker 2: going to close six well functioning nuclear plants just because
Speaker 2: it's ideology. In the US, they're waging a war against
Speaker 2: offshore wind just for ideological reason. So every time you
Speaker 2: want to do ideology, good, but come with your checkbook.
Speaker 2: That's the first thing I'd like to say. What was
Speaker 2: your question again? Yeah you apologize? Yeah, okay. So some
Speaker 2: people say, yeah, the answer is, we need to produce
Speaker 2: everything here. We need to have a no tarctic philosophy,
Speaker 2: building our sta panels. And because the Chinese are so
Speaker 2: aw full, now please, you're going to take please your iPhone,
Speaker 2: and you're going to break your iPhones because ninety percent
Speaker 2: of them are done in China, which apparently causes your problem.
Speaker 2: What I would say is you still need to have
Speaker 2: an industry, a STRATEGI, but you need to have a
Speaker 2: smart one. So you need to take that old electro
Speaker 2: tech and figure out which one accommodity ties and you
Speaker 2: don't really just just buy it and which part are
Speaker 2: really strategic and double down the investment. So don't do
Speaker 2: a kind of sprinkling blanket. We're going to support all
Speaker 2: these things a very target, and so put the list
Speaker 2: together here.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a fundamental difference, isn't it. If you
Speaker 4: have a renewable space system, for example, you have to
Speaker 4: import the technology maybe from China, right solar panels, so
Speaker 4: then once they installed, you don't need to have a
Speaker 4: fuel in order to operate them, Whereas if you operate
Speaker 4: a gas via power station, you need to have a
Speaker 4: fuel to keep that running. So they're fundamentally different technologies
Speaker 4: in that way. So the dependency is quite a different one,
Speaker 4: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But every expert, and I trust the experts
Speaker 2: will tell you we'll go to seventy eighty percent of
Speaker 2: vulnerable predication. With the technology we have and kind of
Speaker 2: the system we have, you want to do ideology, you
Speaker 2: want to net zero it or zero zero, it's going
Speaker 2: to cost an absolute fortune. So it makes economic sense
Speaker 2: for everybody's build to keep probably the twenty percent of
Speaker 2: facili fuel on the system. And that's a more intelligent
Speaker 2: debate than to say that zero zero zero zero. That's
Speaker 2: the end of it. Now, going back to the technologies,
Speaker 2: some of those technology, it's fine. Led the Chinese build
Speaker 2: them Los solar panels, it's fine. Now if you look
Speaker 2: at battery cells, there's been some joint venture. They're going
Speaker 2: to be built in Portugal, in Spain, in Poland. Once
Speaker 2: those plants are there and people kind of know how
Speaker 2: to do some good leftky batteries, great, then you can
Speaker 2: put some protective measures because we have build the industry.
Speaker 2: So when first were building screed, then we protected. And
Speaker 2: then there are other things like HVDC, cable switch gears,
Speaker 2: power electronics, key material processing that needs to be here
Speaker 2: at home, and others. Okay, fine, well import it. They're
Speaker 2: cheap and in fact, nobody's making money. If you're shoulder
Speaker 2: of long Gioginko, if you made ther many so you
Speaker 2: need to be selective. There are things which are critical
Speaker 2: and we need to protect them and invest in them,
Speaker 2: and others that are useless.
Speaker 4: There is now sort of initiative at least in the
Speaker 4: European Union to manufacture goods here, right. So I want
Speaker 4: to get into the resilience question, which came up quite
Speaker 4: a few of you asked that question. So if we
Speaker 4: move away from more fossil based economy to a more
Speaker 4: renewables based economy and using more electricity overall, what does
Speaker 4: it mean in terms of resilience Supply chain disruptions, but
Speaker 4: also grid resilience and how extreme weather, cyber attacks.
Speaker 2: All of these.
Speaker 4: Things can have an impact on the energy system. And
Speaker 4: my take has always been that electricity is fundamental to
Speaker 4: everything we do Already. You can't get petrol from a
Speaker 4: petrol station if there's an electricity, because a pump that
Speaker 4: pumps the petrol wouldn't operate. You can't run your gas
Speaker 4: boiler if there's no electricity, because every modern heating system
Speaker 4: needs electricity. Therefore, to say that we will end up
Speaker 4: in a more vulnerable world if we electrify, I don't
Speaker 4: think it's necessarily true. There's a great book, actually it's
Speaker 4: not a great book, but it's a useful book called Blackout,
Speaker 4: which is kind of depicting a scenario of what would
Speaker 4: happen over one day, two days a week, two weeks
Speaker 4: a month if there was no electricity at all, and
Speaker 4: society as we know it would collapse.
Speaker 2: That's just a fact.
Speaker 4: Will that be dramatically different if we have a much
Speaker 4: higher electrified share of our energy system opposter using combustible
Speaker 4: fossil fuels. I think that's an interesting question, and I
Speaker 4: don't pretend to have the answer to that.
Speaker 2: But maybe you do.
Speaker 4: You do law It's thought about this a bit more
Speaker 4: than I have.
Speaker 2: I'm sure I have answers to everything everybody talks about, you know,
Speaker 2: the blackout in Spain last year, But in fact, the
Speaker 2: remarkable story is how fast they managed to put the
Speaker 2: old system back together in twelve hours, which looks along
Speaker 2: if you're stuck in an elevator, but they're managed to
Speaker 2: put back all system together in twelve hours. I know
Speaker 2: the distribution service operator, I know the transmission. They are
Speaker 2: on it twenty four to seven, and every day they
Speaker 2: get better and they get more sensors, and there are
Speaker 2: more decentralization. They are on it. Government's on it, a
Speaker 2: government three day blackout, A government's gone. When I do
Speaker 2: an episode on a resilience, first I'm going to learn
Speaker 2: a lot, the second I'm going to fall asleep, and
Speaker 2: the third is not going to have any downloads. So
Speaker 2: don't worry about that. But what I'm saying is it's
Speaker 2: not sexy, but people are working a lot on it now.
Speaker 2: Of course, if you're in Finland and you get attack
Speaker 2: and sabotage daily from the Russians, you're even more prepared.
Speaker 2: And of course maybe the further down you go, your bit.
Speaker 2: Let's lax. What has happened in fact in Spain is
Speaker 2: that gas was always there to balance the run wabbles. Okay,
Speaker 2: and as run Webbel's persation continued, the gas plant load
Speaker 2: factor fell down to thirty percent. They went to see
Speaker 2: the government. I bet all we need more money because
Speaker 2: you know, we don't run our gas plants at all
Speaker 2: because solar and winners it and our lunch and said no,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to give you any money, and poor
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. So the gas plants said, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: and so just because the government did not want to
Speaker 2: leaning the blackmail of the gas lobby. The gas lobbee
Speaker 2: on purpose say fine, you're on your own. Any problem,
Speaker 2: it's on you. And after the blackout, what you see
Speaker 2: is that the load factors of gas shut back up
Speaker 2: because the government got its lesson. Now, of course they're
Speaker 2: going to develop batteries, but the fact that they refused
Speaker 2: to develop battery, that's criminal because everybody GiB would do
Speaker 2: a battery Italy. They're bureaucracy. I don't know what happened
Speaker 2: in Spain, but never never figure out that battery was
Speaker 2: now a mature technology which could really alleviate any risk problem,
Speaker 2: resilience issue.
Speaker 4: Just to say, littim iron batteries were invented in Oxford.
Speaker 4: For those of you who don't know that, we actually
Speaker 4: had one of the noble lords who was part of
Speaker 4: that invention give his lecture here last year, so you
Speaker 4: could walk in five minutes to the department where that
Speaker 4: technology came about and he's given a fascinating lecture about
Speaker 4: how that technology from the lab has grown to now
Speaker 4: gigawatts scale batteries. I don't know if you know how
Speaker 4: many gigawats are in the pipeline. I think the UK
Speaker 4: has is a seven gigawatts or something like that in
Speaker 4: the pipeline of getting deployed. But yeah, that was unthinkable
Speaker 4: just ten years ago the size of these grid connected batteries.
Speaker 4: So I think it's a really key point that you
Speaker 4: had a whole episode I think on batteries, or several
Speaker 4: episodes probably.
Speaker 2: In the Yeah, butteries is extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. And of
Speaker 2: course the guy who broke the glass ceiling is not
Speaker 2: very popular, was the kind of the hero of the
Speaker 2: last decade and is the zero of this decade. It's
Speaker 2: el N Musk. Now you can think whatever you want
Speaker 2: about the person, and I can recognize it's pretty obnoxious.
Speaker 2: But it took his approach of being a bully, and
Speaker 2: he bullied Australia out who just came out from a blackout,
Speaker 2: and all the Australian expels, oh, we're going to build
Speaker 2: more gas plan to provide resilience of the systems, and no, no,
Speaker 2: I'll put you a battery in three months and it's
Speaker 2: going to work. And if you know, if it doesn't
Speaker 2: work or it's for free, you need balls. It's not
Speaker 2: going to be a bb or your Tachi or Siemens
Speaker 2: is going to do that, and he delivered ons day
Speaker 2: and then was paid in eighteen months. Hello, So all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you know, technology is there, start making money.
Speaker 2: Everybody just followed him. You know, you need to give
Speaker 2: a credit where credit is due. The second point is
Speaker 2: that's time time. You know, batteries is time. The second
Speaker 2: is space. So it's all about the HVDC line, which
Speaker 2: which is an unsung hero. If you look at GB,
Speaker 2: every day we import and export fifteen percent of electricity
Speaker 2: and we even have created in the North eder I
Speaker 2: would say the M twenty five of power. So it's
Speaker 2: always the same thing. It comes from France where there's
Speaker 2: too much nuclear, it goes to GB. There's always a
Speaker 2: part which goes to Ireland because unless very windy, they
Speaker 2: don't have enough power there, and then turns back to Denmark.
Speaker 2: And right now it turns back even to Norway, which
Speaker 2: contrary to people say there is so much hydro in Norway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: why do they import right now some power from GiB
Speaker 2: which is Penci because the hydro are low, which is
Speaker 2: another fact, and.
Speaker 4: That's a good thing, right because sometimes in the media
Speaker 4: discussion people are very concerned because two percent or three
Speaker 4: percent of electricity consumption were imported, more than the year before.
Speaker 4: When you look at other energy carriers, where the European
Speaker 4: Union imports about fifty eight percent of all its energy
Speaker 4: from other countries. The UK is slightly better because as
Speaker 4: them more domestic gas production, but when you look at
Speaker 4: those figures, they're much higher, and people get incredibly concerned
Speaker 4: about importing a relatively small amount of electricity.
Speaker 2: I wonder why that is why we have this sort of.
Speaker 4: And this gets us into the sort of last cluster
Speaker 4: of questions around the politics, which I think are fascinating
Speaker 4: because what I see and I think you probably agree
Speaker 4: with me, law we have this divergence where there's a
Speaker 4: really polarized discussion taking place publicly in the media on
Speaker 4: social media, and it feels like things are not really moving.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of disagreement. But when you look at
Speaker 4: the market and the technology space, things are moving quite fast,
Speaker 4: and not fast enough, perhaps not everywhere where. There's been
Speaker 4: tremendous progress. Even last year in the US I think
Speaker 4: was another record year for renewable investment and battery investment
Speaker 4: in the US the Trump administrations.
Speaker 2: So how do we bring.
Speaker 4: These two things together, sort of the politics the conversation
Speaker 4: we have publicly around the transition and energy and what
Speaker 4: actually happens on the ground.
Speaker 2: It's very sad that energy has become entangled in cultural wars.
Speaker 2: It was captured by one camp, but the other camp
Speaker 2: used the most absurd statement to ridicule it. What happens
Speaker 2: when the sun doesn't shine? And those simple question which
Speaker 2: requires very complex answers. Of course, nobody has time to
Speaker 2: really go into the mechanics of a system when I
Speaker 2: read the telegraph or just the airlines, because I don't
Speaker 2: even want to read the article. So the ev penetration
Speaker 2: goes there. And then there's trick. And this is where
Speaker 2: you have the article of the telegraph. Site's usually January.
Speaker 4: Right in January, well, less few cars, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Your cars, I want my diesel back, And then goes
Speaker 2: up and then there's there's a blip and that's the
Speaker 2: second article. But there's nothing you can do if you
Speaker 2: don't like it. Just put more money. At the end
Speaker 2: of the day, it's just money. You arrive with the
Speaker 2: telegraph and you give them tell me on pounds. They
Speaker 2: will write whatever you want. Data center on the Moon,
Speaker 2: anything you want. It's just a question of money. You
Speaker 2: don't like it, ignore it, just go on invest because
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, it's all about what
Speaker 2: people talk about. It's about the investment you make, how
Speaker 2: the walls, turbines, generators, cables, batteries. That's what makes the
Speaker 2: transition happen. It's not a noise you don't like because
Speaker 2: it has been entangled into culture war. And at some
Speaker 2: point you want to question the government. Question why has
Speaker 2: several government of different political color gave ten billion pounds
Speaker 2: to drugs? That's a really scandal. Why nuclear is out
Speaker 2: of control in terms of cost, out of control. It's
Speaker 2: an industry which I'm just going to milk the taxpayer.
Speaker 2: Or when is it going to be finished? Two seven? Okay, fine, sorry?
Speaker 2: Two or twelve or sorry two fifteen or sorry to
Speaker 2: I don't even know anymore. I'm not just it because
Speaker 2: I don't just give me more money. Oh and now
Speaker 2: we found a new thing, the rubber regulatory as a
Speaker 2: base like in the matrix. You know when you directly
Speaker 2: on the bodies, you know, first of January your new
Speaker 2: nuclear plant size. Well, see it's already in your bills.
Speaker 2: They have not put the first batch of concrete. You're
Speaker 2: already paying for it, and explain you. But you know
Speaker 2: the cost of capital is going to be lower. So
Speaker 2: this one is going to be twenty percent cheaper, which
Speaker 2: is weird because when they were building in Clacit ten
Speaker 2: years ago they say not already. The next one will
Speaker 2: be thirty percent cheaper. Now the way they communicate is
Speaker 2: very interesting because how much as it costs the how
Speaker 2: it costs this amount, I don't know how they calculate,
Speaker 2: and then they say it's in two or twelve pounds,
Speaker 2: but you know you're in two twenty five. So in fact,
Speaker 2: with inflation, it's already thirty percent more. They're very good
Speaker 2: at mudding the water. Now we can have debate notes up.
Speaker 2: I think we should have some nuclear power. I think
Speaker 2: it's important, but the industry is not disciplined. The real
Speaker 2: discipline would be, Okay, you take the top ten nuclear expert. Okay,
Speaker 2: you you you'll sign on this. Okay, I give you
Speaker 2: twenty percent more time, twenty percent more budget, because you
Speaker 2: never know what's going to happen. If you go over,
Speaker 2: your house is gone, your mortgage is gone, your pension
Speaker 2: is gone. Okay, But if you reach on time, you'll
Speaker 2: get ten million pounds each tax free. Do you sign
Speaker 2: and you know what they're going to say, we need
Speaker 2: to recalculate so other people's money. That's wonderful, and unfortunately
Speaker 2: that's the nuclear industry. I don't want to do. Do
Speaker 2: it Chinese style, where you know, if the stuff is
Speaker 2: not on time, on budget, you might be sent in
Speaker 2: a raducation camp. Great energy, but an industry which is undisciplined.
Speaker 4: You just managed to take off another question cluster around nuclear.
Speaker 4: I suggest we maybe now go to our audience with
Speaker 4: the roaming mic and you get other questions in. We
Speaker 4: have another fifteen minutes or so, and then we have
Speaker 4: our drinks.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to rate the show and subscribe on Apple, Podcast, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or the platform of your choice