Speaker 1: You're listening to Redefining Energy.
Speaker 2: Your co hosts.
Speaker 3: From Berlin Gerard Reed.
Speaker 1: And from London Laurent Today on Redefining Energy, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about fossil fuels and whether we're going to
Speaker 1: actually see peak demand in the next few years or not.
Speaker 3: And of course there are furious debates around experts whether
Speaker 3: we're going to see the consumption stay around one hundred
Speaker 3: million barier level per day or if we're going to.
Speaker 1: Go down exactly. So we decided we bring in an
Speaker 1: expert someone Listen, I've known a long while. It was
Speaker 1: like myself. Comes in the equity research background, and what's
Speaker 1: his name?
Speaker 3: His name is Bond, King's Mill Bond.
Speaker 1: He's definitely got the coolest name in the industry, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, not only has a great name, but he works
Speaker 3: at RMI and he publishes exceptional research on the future
Speaker 3: of energy.
Speaker 1: So let's bring him on the show. King's Milk, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. Folks.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to jump right in. Last month's ex
Speaker 3: and Mobile release a report saying that basically we're going
Speaker 3: to continue burning one hundred million buried of oil for
Speaker 3: the foreseeable future, which, of course Appeck found it very
Speaker 3: interesting report. But we brought you because you have a
Speaker 3: bit of a contrarian view on the subject.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's especially contrarian to say that incumbents
Speaker 2: taught their own book, and incumbents expect a future in
Speaker 2: which they remain extremely profitable. Think about the famous debate
Speaker 2: about horses and tractors in the nineteen twenty see Horse
Speaker 2: Association of America regularly put out report telling us that
Speaker 2: forces were the future and the tractors didn't work. It's
Speaker 2: the same thing here with excell It's not surprising that
Speaker 2: exot is telling us that in twenty fifty we'll still
Speaker 2: be using a lot of oil. But you have to
Speaker 2: believe in a lot of very profoundly improbable things if
Speaker 2: you want to believe their forecosts. Give us the contrarian view,
Speaker 2: then it's not contrarian at all. I think it's merely
Speaker 2: a realist view and a reflection of what is happening
Speaker 2: in the real world, rather than the kind of make
Speaker 2: believe world of spreadsheets in which fossil fuel incumbents inhabit.
Speaker 2: And reality similarly is that you have exponential growth of
Speaker 2: clean energy technologies which are now large enough to disrupt
Speaker 2: the current fossil fuel system, and they will push fossil
Speaker 2: fuel demand into permanent decline by the end of this decade.
Speaker 1: That's a big statement. Tell us where does that start
Speaker 1: and how do we when do we know we've really
Speaker 1: reached that tipping pointer, because that tipping point is a
Speaker 1: game changer for the oil industry and also I think
Speaker 1: clean energy in general.
Speaker 2: It's very important to focus on the facts of the
Speaker 2: case and just to look at the information, the data
Speaker 2: that's coming out. Year after year, we're seeing the exponential
Speaker 2: growth of these clean energy technologies of solar and wind
Speaker 2: and batteries and of course all of the paraphernalia surrounding
Speaker 2: that system. And then equally, year after year we're seeing
Speaker 2: peaking demand for one aspect after another of the current
Speaker 2: fossil fuel system. So just to give you a couple
Speaker 2: of examples, So, fossil fuel demand peat in the OECD
Speaker 2: almost a generation ago in two thousand and seven. Fossil
Speaker 2: fuel demand peat in the industrial sector a decade ago
Speaker 2: in twenty fourteen, as the result of the electrication of
Speaker 2: Chinese industrial sector. Ice car demand peaked in twenty and eighteen.
Speaker 2: I could go on for a long time, but you're
Speaker 2: just seeing one absolutely indisputable peak after the next in
Speaker 2: the old system as the new stuff comes in. And
Speaker 2: that's precisely what you would expect in any.
Speaker 3: Can I be contrarian to the contrarian square contrarian if
Speaker 3: I look at the world globally and I'm totally with
Speaker 3: you on the OECD, only this year will the addition
Speaker 3: of wind and solar be one hundred percent of the
Speaker 3: growth of electricity. Why it's because let's name it the
Speaker 3: global sauce India groing. It's called demand that's for electricity.
Speaker 3: And the second thing is, although the EV market is
Speaker 3: going we're going to do seventeen million evs, so the
Speaker 3: time it's going to take to move the transportation sector
Speaker 3: to electric while at the same time jet fuel is
Speaker 3: going up and chemicals is going up. So are you
Speaker 3: really confident that we're going to see a significant decline
Speaker 3: because I'm still on the fence here.
Speaker 2: So, Laura, you're putting together a lot of different issues
Speaker 2: here and hard to address them all in a single comment.
Speaker 2: But let's stop with electricity. Electricity system, there are full
Speaker 2: basic pieces when it comes to countries inside electricity demand.
Speaker 2: So you've got the OECD, you've got China, you've got
Speaker 2: the Global self, and you've got the Better States. Those
Speaker 2: are your four pieces inside the system. And we have
Speaker 2: this SECDP about fifteen years ago, I should say, we
Speaker 2: have the China peak in twenty twenty three. Those two
Speaker 2: regions alone around sixty percent of the total, so we
Speaker 2: already crossed, as it were, the tipping point. You then
Speaker 2: have the global self, or actually one third of the
Speaker 2: global self has also seen peak electricity demand. It's right
Speaker 2: across Latin America and in various other countries. So you're
Speaker 2: kind of left with two or one and a half
Speaker 2: pieces petro states, which is about five percent of the
Speaker 2: global population, and the rest of the global self, where
Speaker 2: in fact there's also growth taking place quite quickly. The
Speaker 2: one I guess is that the decline in the two
Speaker 2: biggest pieces of the system OECD in China will outweigh
Speaker 2: the relatively small amount of growth in the remaining growing
Speaker 2: parts of the system, and that again is absolutely normal.
Speaker 2: You'd see that in many other transition. Then when it
Speaker 2: comes to your second point, for about the electric vehicle
Speaker 2: story once more, here you've got to look at what's
Speaker 2: happening in the world's largest market, which of course is China.
Speaker 2: As everyone knows, electric vehicles are now fifty percent of
Speaker 2: total sales in China, and if we continue to extrapolate
Speaker 2: the S curve, then we're going to be basically near
Speaker 2: one hundred percent by the end of this decade. And
Speaker 2: from China, the low costs and that technology then spreads
Speaker 2: across the global self, and that means you can of
Speaker 2: course have what Hues called reverse sedience, that is to say,
Speaker 2: certain specific countries which hold back against change, but it's
Speaker 2: not going to slow aback the global tig King.
Speaker 4: Can I ask you about I can sort of get
Speaker 4: my head around peak oil demand. I can ask get
Speaker 4: my head around peak coal demand. Where I sort of
Speaker 4: can't get my head around is natural gas. Can you
Speaker 4: give your sort of thoughts on that and how you
Speaker 4: see demand for that going forward?
Speaker 1: Gas?
Speaker 2: The first point to be made, of course here is
Speaker 2: that all prices are linked, and therefore, as you have
Speaker 2: this new enormous, cheap energy source of renewables coming into
Speaker 2: the energy system, it will impact the entire system in
Speaker 2: ways that we can't necessarily forecast in detail. In twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. But one has to realize that very simple economics,
Speaker 2: when a cheap, giant new energy source comes into a
Speaker 2: massive system, everything gets impacted. So then when it comes
Speaker 2: to gas, the first bottombout gas is that, as you know,
Speaker 2: basically half of gas is used for electricity generation. In
Speaker 2: the electricity generation space, the requirement for the gas fulfills
Speaker 2: for intermittency is relatively small. The requirement for baseload, however,
Speaker 2: is going to be continuously eroded away by superior, cheaper
Speaker 2: renewable energy technologies. And this again brings me to something
Speaker 2: which is really significant in the debate. We are not
Speaker 2: arguing about the date of the endgame, or when the
Speaker 2: endgame happens, or how do you solve the last twenty
Speaker 2: or even thirty forty percent. We're arguing about a peak
Speaker 2: and a decline in a system which is eighty percent
Speaker 2: a primary energy production. That's much easier to podcast as
Speaker 2: much easier to see that this is happening will happen.
Speaker 3: I love what I hear, but also I can see
Speaker 3: stuff like in the US or in Canada, gas is
Speaker 3: a two dollars pum and btu which creates a fuel
Speaker 3: costs omega. What hour a ten dollars, okay, I multiply
Speaker 3: by three point four, and then I put the energy
Speaker 3: efficiency of the turbine, so ten dollars promega what our
Speaker 3: plus is dispatchable. It's going to take a bit of
Speaker 3: time for solar plus batteries or even when to reach
Speaker 3: that level. Just to illustrate that the data centers are
Speaker 3: really power hungry. They took the big talk about their emission.
Speaker 3: I think they cook their books, but in reality they
Speaker 3: just want power wherever it comes from. So on the
Speaker 3: gas story, as long as it's that chip, it's a
Speaker 3: tough one to be now, of course, when you're importing
Speaker 3: it from Russia and cost of fortune, I understand. But
Speaker 3: there are places where they're just going to continue to
Speaker 3: use gas as much as they can.
Speaker 2: There is no dispute that in the very low cost
Speaker 2: locations of gas in the United States, or oil in
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia or coal in eastern Russia, people will carry
Speaker 2: on doing this stuff. There is no dispute about that.
Speaker 2: Good luck to them, and they'll carry on doing it
Speaker 2: for decades to come. But the marginal change is not
Speaker 2: happening in those locations. All of the global growth now
Speaker 2: in primary energy demant is taking place in the Global South,
Speaker 2: and in those countries, they're not channing and out handering
Speaker 2: out prices of two bucks. They're buying an energy at
Speaker 2: ten and if you're infer multiple is five. In fact,
Speaker 2: I suspect the real multiple actually is eight. With a
Speaker 2: level of efficiency in those markets, ten bucks is eighty
Speaker 2: dollars per mega. What hour you can churn out soda
Speaker 2: at forty You could put a battery on that and
Speaker 2: account for the intermittency, and it's going to be sixty.
Speaker 2: This debate is completely over. Ninety percent of all new
Speaker 2: electricity capex globally, in eighty percent in the Global South
Speaker 2: is now renewables. There's a few little pockets of resistance
Speaker 2: still to be cleared up, but that's completely irrelevant to
Speaker 2: the global story. I mean, sorry, I know you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily disagree with this at all, but it's also really
Speaker 2: important to say that the existence of continuity of fossil
Speaker 2: fuels in various parts of the system doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 2: all about what's happening at the margin, and what's happening
Speaker 2: to growth in the growth markets, and what's happening to
Speaker 2: price at the margin, which counts.
Speaker 1: Kingswell, I just want to follow up there on the
Speaker 1: Global South. My own view is that these countries can
Speaker 1: really take a big leap ahead of us because we've
Speaker 1: got an old system and I don't mean just a
Speaker 1: father fuels. Actually it is a fossil fuel based system.
Speaker 1: Even the electricity system is fossil fuel based. It's been
Speaker 1: around for one hundred and twenty years. They can embrace
Speaker 1: electrification and renewabilization and by doing that they can make
Speaker 1: a huge leap.
Speaker 2: For that is indutedly true. So basically two narratives of
Speaker 2: the Global South. The first narrative is that the Global
Speaker 2: Self is a useful way to prop up the dyeing
Speaker 2: fossil fuel system decline in the wears, but growth in
Speaker 2: the global selth thin good is for that everything is fine,
Speaker 2: And that's one narrative that the fossil fuel folks are pushing.
Speaker 2: The reality is that the Global Self will ride the
Speaker 2: clean tech revolution to energy prosperity and to growth, and
Speaker 2: they will use these new technologies in the same way
Speaker 2: as they would use any new technology in order to
Speaker 2: satisfy the legitimate desire of their own citizens for more growth.
Speaker 2: And what's happening in Africa and in Latin America and
Speaker 2: South Asian Southeast Asia is you are seeing certain wise
Speaker 2: government deploying clean energy technologies in order to get energy
Speaker 2: to their citizens, which is cheaper. And to be clear,
Speaker 2: the global South is a net fossil fuel importer, just
Speaker 2: like Europe and China and India. They don't have a
Speaker 2: lot of fossil fuels. They've got sixty percent of global population,
Speaker 2: but twenty percent of fossil fuel production and reserves and
Speaker 2: seventy percent of global renewable potential. So these folks, of
Speaker 2: course they're going to embrace renewables now that the prices
Speaker 2: have fallen. So they're basically two barriers in the way
Speaker 2: of change in the global cell. The first barrier, not
Speaker 2: work can necessarily solved on this podcast, is the fact
Speaker 2: that some elites make so much money out of fossil
Speaker 2: fuels that they like to continue to important use them.
Speaker 2: That's kind of a very specific issue one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: But the second issue which has been holding back change
Speaker 2: is capex and the observation that the capital costs of
Speaker 2: clean tech was higher than the capital costs of deploying
Speaker 2: fossil fuels. Now, of course, because of the collapse in
Speaker 2: clean tech costs, that is no longer the case. So
Speaker 2: the capital cost if you're building new stuff, the capital
Speaker 2: costs of solar is broadly comparable with the capital cost
Speaker 2: of building coal or gas. And of course you have
Speaker 2: the great benefit for the next thirty years. You don't
Speaker 2: have to fork out ten dollars per remember to you
Speaker 2: to buy your energy whatever it is. So what we're seeing,
Speaker 2: of course, is a tenuous shrinkage in reasons not to
Speaker 2: deploy clean energy technologies in the Global South. And if
Speaker 2: I may give you one further observation of what's happening
Speaker 2: across the global self, there is this perception that people
Speaker 2: are not changing. Actually, folks, they are. We're writing in
Speaker 2: port of this. At the moment, sixty percent of countries
Speaker 2: in the Global South have already passed the five percent
Speaker 2: tipping point in solar wind as a share of electricity generation.
Speaker 2: Thirty three percent have already seen peak fossil fuel demand. That,
Speaker 2: as I say, is cross Latin America, in Thailand, in
Speaker 2: South Africa, in a series of other countries around the world,
Speaker 2: and in fact, twenty percent Girarda doing exactly what you
Speaker 2: suggest and have elite frogged. What's going on in the west.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm with you on this one one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's putticy. I thinking about this
Speaker 3: pain point. I was in South Africa six months ago
Speaker 3: and at seven pm you had blackouts everywhere in Cape
Speaker 3: Town and there were start to disoginerate ours, every shop.
Speaker 3: You know, they gues, oh you know we're putting putting sola.
Speaker 3: Next year, were fed up with s com You look
Speaker 3: at Nigeria, the moment they stop subsidizing oil, it was
Speaker 3: a solar alboom. I can foresee next year it's gonna
Speaker 3: be Egypt because EGIP has been relying on this gas
Speaker 3: field which is not producing. Now they need to import.
Speaker 3: Guess what EGYP is super sunny. Plus the demand is
Speaker 3: for cooling during heat waves. So I can foresee Egyp's
Speaker 3: going to be a massive, massive, and in a more
Speaker 3: sinister but nevertheless interesting negdotal way. The guys who are
Speaker 3: the biggest solar installer in Lebanon are the Esbola because
Speaker 3: it is what it is energy security, right yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: So even for people which you don't want to spend
Speaker 3: your vacation with, sola is the solution. These are just examples,
Speaker 3: but I'm with you.
Speaker 2: A couple of the observations. Globally, we have about one
Speaker 2: hundred times as much so little inn potential as fossil
Speaker 2: fuel extraction today, but in the global South it's four
Speaker 2: hundred times because they lack fossil fuels, they have a
Speaker 2: lot of your space. Actually for these countries and for
Speaker 2: everyone around the world, we have new options at the moment,
Speaker 2: I think this is what we really want to get across.
Speaker 2: A lot of them modeling being done by Xon and
Speaker 2: other folks in the fossil system. They're modeling the current system.
Speaker 2: They're not thinking about the new, They're modelling old. And
Speaker 2: what you want to do is you want to model
Speaker 2: the suite of possibilities that people across the globalself have
Speaker 2: in front of them today. So going to be you
Speaker 2: a householder or a small business, or or a large business,
Speaker 2: or a utility you can install so lead any level
Speaker 2: and that can then get you energy where you had
Speaker 2: Number four. If I may come also, folks to at
Speaker 2: this point about political economy and resistance to change, which
Speaker 2: I guess is ultimately going to become the primary reason
Speaker 2: why people don't deploy clean tech because they leaks make
Speaker 2: so much money from the current system. So let's think
Speaker 2: for a second about how big resistance is. So if
Speaker 2: I go back to my framing before, if they're being
Speaker 2: four parts to the world, the OECD, the Global SEUTH,
Speaker 2: and the petro region petro regions add the whole lot
Speaker 2: up to about five percent of global population, about ten
Speaker 2: percent of energy demod that's kind of a separate bucket.
Speaker 2: They need to change, but the political resistance to change
Speaker 2: will be very, very powerful. But within the global South,
Speaker 2: only five percent of demand is coming from petro states,
Speaker 2: places like Equatorial Guinea or Guiana for example. It's five
Speaker 2: percent of demand. And there's a further six percent of
Speaker 2: demand which is coming from countries which are major fossil
Speaker 2: fuel exporters, such as Nigeria. So that's basically about another
Speaker 2: ten or eleven percent. These are simply going to be
Speaker 2: the last people to change, but that's not going to
Speaker 2: stop changing the system as a whole. And there are
Speaker 2: a couple of classic analogies which I would love to
Speaker 2: get across because if very often missed that you don't
Speaker 2: need to worry too much about endgame problems. Think, for example,
Speaker 2: about electricity electricity was invented in nineteenth century and then
Speaker 2: started to get deployed and run nineteen hundred and here
Speaker 2: we are in twenty twenty four. We still have ten
Speaker 2: percent of the global population which doesn't have electricity, But
Speaker 2: nobody is saying that the fact that ten percent of
Speaker 2: people don't have electricity means that electricity doesn't work or
Speaker 2: the electricity is not going to have a major impact
Speaker 2: upon the world. And equally, if you look at the Internet,
Speaker 2: thirty three percent of people still don't have internet access,
Speaker 2: but Internet has nevertheless radically changed the world. And it's
Speaker 2: the same thing here solar win. Today's about fifteen percent
Speaker 2: of global supply. It's going up towards forty to fifty
Speaker 2: sixty leaders are above fifty percent, and as it does that,
Speaker 2: it will radically change and disrupt the current system long
Speaker 2: before you get to any of these endgames.
Speaker 1: Kings, Well, I'm hearing a lot of positive news from you.
Speaker 1: There's one thing that we haven't talked about, which I
Speaker 1: think is a correlation of all of this, which is
Speaker 1: carbon emissions. We must be close to global peak emissions.
Speaker 2: If you're right, it looks as if we are at
Speaker 2: the peak of global emissions coincident with peak fossil fuel
Speaker 2: demand because of the growth, the very rapid growth of
Speaker 2: these clean energy technologies. If you look, for example, at
Speaker 2: emissions per person, emissions per person have clearly fallen off
Speaker 2: the global peak for about five years beyond peak emissions
Speaker 2: per person. That's a kind of harbinger of the change
Speaker 2: to come. And you combine this peak emission series to
Speaker 2: deep peaking emissions in China and then those two being
Speaker 2: sufficient to drive decline at a global level. But as
Speaker 2: you say, Gerard, it's a start. There's always a distinction
Speaker 2: to be made between the argument we make that there's
Speaker 2: disruption coming to the fossil fuel system, which is absolutely obvious,
Speaker 2: versus will we drive emissions down quickly to get to
Speaker 2: a certain temperature target where it's still completely moot. And
Speaker 2: I agree with what the scientists are telling us, and
Speaker 2: we need to do a lot more to get to
Speaker 2: what point five degrees or even two degrees than we're
Speaker 2: currently doing. But that's a different debate to the fact
Speaker 2: that the current fossil fuel system is going to be
Speaker 2: disrupted whatever happens.
Speaker 3: I don't know about carbon accounting, but what is sure
Speaker 3: is that although we kind of have a decent idea
Speaker 3: of what's going out of the tailpipes. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of problems upstream with the methane. Here. I want
Speaker 3: to do a shout out with a wonderful woman called
Speaker 3: Sean Wilson. She's in Texas and she has a special
Speaker 3: camera and she checks all the gas wells and you
Speaker 3: know they are spewing methane and after they are not
Speaker 3: reporting them to to the EPA. So I mean, this
Speaker 3: is a real ecoher of ours. And I think there
Speaker 3: are much more methane emissions that are reported for at
Speaker 3: those big cups and so on. That's number one. Then
Speaker 3: this is the all effect about deforestation. I don't know
Speaker 3: how well it is master or not. The fight continues,
Speaker 3: in my opinion.
Speaker 2: I'd also like to give a shout out to my
Speaker 2: starn Oscar who is also working to reduce methane emissions
Speaker 2: in the UK system, and lots of heroes all across
Speaker 2: the world who seeking to do that and reduce the
Speaker 2: But Laur, I think you might have gone a little
Speaker 2: bit above my pay grade in terms of what I
Speaker 2: actually know much about, which is the change in the
Speaker 2: energy system that clenty many other pieces and as you say,
Speaker 2: it's very important that we curtail deforestation and reduce methane losses.
Speaker 2: There is one point I would make where there is
Speaker 2: an intersection with energy, which is the use of biomass
Speaker 2: to generate electricity is one of the most spectacularly stupid
Speaker 2: and wasteful ways to pour resources away, and we shouldn't
Speaker 2: do it because it hardly reduces your carbon emotions. It's
Speaker 2: incredibly inefficient, and now we have far superior ways of
Speaker 2: generating electricity. Getting sunshine or getting electrons via a tree
Speaker 2: is absolutely crazy way to get electricity in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: and actually stopping the use of biomass to produce electricity
Speaker 2: would actually free up a lot of space which we
Speaker 2: could be using for reforestation also, so pree up pressure
Speaker 2: upon land in many different areas is not of course
Speaker 2: just pres also biomass for driving, which is another incredibly
Speaker 2: wasteful use of resources now that we have far superior resources.
Speaker 2: So that's where for me the intersection lies, and that's
Speaker 2: where if we can free up, as I say, this
Speaker 2: land that needs resources to try and tackle the global
Speaker 2: warming problem.
Speaker 3: From another angle, kings Mid, we took a lot about
Speaker 3: supply and not really about demand. And I know that
Speaker 3: RMI is doing a lot of work in energy efficiency,
Speaker 3: so maybe in conclusion you want to talk a bit
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 2: Sure, thank you. Efficiency again is a supremely complex topic,
Speaker 2: but there is a way pioneered by Nickair at Oxford
Speaker 2: to simplify an extremely complex debate in its simplest terms.
Speaker 2: We are currently pouring half of our heat sources, that
Speaker 2: is to say, col oil, and gas into work uses,
Speaker 2: that is to say, electricity and driving, and there is
Speaker 2: an absolutely physical, inevitable two thirds loss of conting heat
Speaker 2: into work, and this is a huge waste of resource.
Speaker 2: Now we have a way of converting work into work.
Speaker 2: It's called sunshine and solar panels, and that goes straight
Speaker 2: into work in electricity, goes straight into work in cars,
Speaker 2: and that is creating a once in a generation opportunity
Speaker 2: to significantly increase the efficiency of the energy system in
Speaker 2: the same way as the replacement of biomass with coal
Speaker 2: or the replacement of coal with oil, the replacement of
Speaker 2: heat technologies with work technologies in the twenty twenties will
Speaker 2: significantly increase efficiency, and that efficiency gain will make the
Speaker 2: energy transition much easier.
Speaker 3: Jings Mila, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: We'll still won't be invited at Sarah Week, but I
Speaker 3: don't care.
Speaker 1: Great avenue, my friend, great avenue.
Speaker 2: Fig Laurel, thank you for art, for the opportunity to state.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Well, Joab. It's always a great pleasure to have a
Speaker 3: conversation with Kingsmith.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's great, right, and this listen, it's an
Speaker 1: experienced analyst. It's been at this far a long long while,
Speaker 1: and I just love it. Vision and passion right. And
Speaker 1: also it does have a contrarian view, although he'll tell
Speaker 1: you it's not contrary, but in the world we live today,
Speaker 1: I mean, the incumbents have the power, so it is
Speaker 1: a contrarian view.
Speaker 3: One of his main thesis and are really abide by
Speaker 3: it is that on one hand, you've got the commodities well,
Speaker 3: and they think arithmetically, and on the other you've got
Speaker 3: the technological world and they think geometrically, and the pace
Speaker 3: of innovation the commodities is very low, whereas in the
Speaker 3: technology world is very fast. And let's be clear, solar batteries,
Speaker 3: these are technologies. These are not commodities. Not going to
Speaker 3: be a one for one.
Speaker 1: I think that's a very good way. I put that wrong,
Speaker 1: And actually the thing is you're right to say geometric,
Speaker 1: but also some of them are exponential, because if I
Speaker 1: look at what's going on in bat Race, I mean
Speaker 1: that's exponential. It's the cost reductions we've seen, you know,
Speaker 1: the scale up in supply and demand. It's just been
Speaker 1: mind bobbing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In conclusion, and that's really for if you're industry friends.
Speaker 3: Following sentence, I heard somewhere. I don't know who said it,
Speaker 3: but it's brilliant. In the present, the pussimist always sounds smarter,
Speaker 3: but in the long term, optimists are always right.
Speaker 1: Who well said. I'm glad I'll be right at some
Speaker 1: point my life.
Speaker 2: Lauren.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for the patcham, but that's a
Speaker 1: good way of.
Speaker 3: Summing it up exactly, So, Joab, we thank King's Mill
Speaker 3: for coming on the show, and I took to you
Speaker 3: next week looking.
Speaker 1: Forward to it. Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to read the show and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or the platform of your choice.