Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Jolle Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alaway.
Speaker 2: Tracy, here's something that really frustrates me, or I find
Speaker 2: kind of weird.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I see these charts a lot of times. They get
Speaker 2: posted on Twitter and it's like, oh, look at the
Speaker 2: incredible like plunge in solar production costs or the incredible
Speaker 2: advance in you know, how much cheaper it is getting
Speaker 2: to install solar. And then I see these charts where
Speaker 2: it's like more and more of our energy is coming
Speaker 2: from solar.
Speaker 3: So it's like, why do you hate environmentalism?
Speaker 2: No, I don't say something I'm not saying, but if
Speaker 2: the thing is getting cheaper and the volume of it
Speaker 2: is growing, why aren't electricity bills like down ninety percent?
Speaker 2: Why is the electricity not gotten a new chuaber?
Speaker 3: Yes, So you know, I have that house in Connecticut,
Speaker 3: which means that I follow ever source news quite closely.
Speaker 3: And eversource raised their rates because they said they needed
Speaker 3: to make more investment into renewable energy, and then just
Speaker 3: recently they said they're actually pulling back on some of
Speaker 3: their renewable energy investments. But unsurprisingly, perhaps rates aren't actually
Speaker 3: going down. But I think it's a frustration that a
Speaker 3: lot of people share, and one that probably says a
Speaker 3: lot about the way renewable energy currently works.
Speaker 2: By the way, on that thing is like, oh, we
Speaker 2: have to raise prices because you're making these investments. That
Speaker 2: was actually a really interesting nugget that I had forgotten
Speaker 2: about from our recent episode when we went to Mount
Speaker 2: Airy and we talked to the CEO of Unified, the
Speaker 2: textile company, and there was a line in there where
Speaker 2: he said, Yeah, energy is obviously a big component of
Speaker 2: our costs, and it's gone up because the utility is
Speaker 2: making all these renewable energy investments. So like, there's something
Speaker 2: weird about this right for energy, in which here you
Speaker 2: have this thing that's getting cheaper and cheaper, there's more
Speaker 2: and more of it. Obviously we know that decarbonization or
Speaker 2: electrification and decarbonization are major priorities, So it's like, what's
Speaker 2: happening Why. I just like, like it's hard for me
Speaker 2: to wrap my head around, Like when are we going
Speaker 2: to see the fruits of all this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like the natural path of capitalism here,
Speaker 3: or technological adoption where you would expect, you know, as
Speaker 3: this particular technology becomes more popular, more efficient, more useful,
Speaker 3: prices would come down and it would start to proliferate.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really seem to be happening quite that way.
Speaker 2: You know, we need you know, we need that like
Speaker 2: the kool aid man to jump through the window and
Speaker 2: bring up Jevin's paradox here. It's like, aha, you made
Speaker 2: the fallacy of thinking that is energy comes down and
Speaker 2: gets cheaper.
Speaker 3: Where's the where's the paradox collects? And that's what we
Speaker 3: need the airhorn to go off.
Speaker 2: So obviously especially in the US right now, but I
Speaker 2: think globally and the doing some similar things in Europe,
Speaker 2: but certainly in the US. We have the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 2: and you hear a lot about like these, like the
Speaker 2: public private partnerships, and we're going to unleash the power
Speaker 2: of capitalism, and we're going to unleash market forces. And
Speaker 2: because capitalism does something really well, which is like drive
Speaker 2: for cheapness and efficiency and all this, you know, that's
Speaker 2: the sort of idea and we're going to nudge it
Speaker 2: along with subsidies and tax credits et cetera. We're going
Speaker 2: to sort of have these like powerful capitalist actors come
Speaker 2: and deliver us this world of cheap, clean electrified energy.
Speaker 3: I mean, I do feel like things are changing a
Speaker 3: little bit on that front. And you mentioned the IRA
Speaker 3: just then, but yes, you're absolutely right. At least in
Speaker 3: the States and you know, large parts of the West,
Speaker 3: a lot of the renewable energy transition is still this
Speaker 3: like kind of weird half measure where it's like private
Speaker 3: capital meets for the most part government subsidies.
Speaker 2: Right, So the question is like, are we doing it wrong?
Speaker 2: What is the role of private capital? Do we need
Speaker 2: private capital to invest in all this? Can the sort
Speaker 2: of the things that capitalism good at deliver us cheap
Speaker 2: clean energy? I'm very excited. We have the perfect guest today.
Speaker 2: We're going to be speaking with Brett Christophers. He's a
Speaker 2: professor of geography at Uppsalo University in Sweden, and he
Speaker 2: is the author of a book that came out this year,
Speaker 2: The Price is Wrong, Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet,
Speaker 2: and it's a deep dive into how these energy markets work. So, Brett,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5: Odd lots, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: It's great to be with you.
Speaker 2: Why don't you just start by telling us the basic
Speaker 2: thesis of your book, which seems to be, you know,
Speaker 2: you say why capitalism won't save the planet, or why
Speaker 2: why market forces won't save the planet, why it won't
Speaker 2: deliver us that world of abundant, decarbonized energy.
Speaker 4: Sure, the basic thesis of the book is as following,
Speaker 4: but it's important to preface it with two kind of
Speaker 4: bits of contextual information that are really really important to understand.
Speaker 4: So the first of those is how the world is
Speaker 4: approaching the job of electricity sector decalanization in economic terms,
Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is to say that
Speaker 4: for the most part, we are relying on the private
Speaker 4: sector to do this. So governments, accepting certain important places
Speaker 4: like China, are keeping out of this in terms of
Speaker 4: the actual role of energy investment and ownership and operation.
Speaker 4: They're expecting the private sector to drive this forwards, but
Speaker 4: with the helping hand from government in various different ways,
Speaker 4: which we can talk about, and the Inflation Reduction Act
Speaker 4: is obviously a very important example of that. So the
Speaker 4: private sector is being expected to do it. The second
Speaker 4: thing it's important to say by context is what the
Speaker 4: private sector is being expected to do, and for the
Speaker 4: most part, solar and wind are the key things that
Speaker 4: the future, i guess is being hung on. So yes,
Speaker 4: there will continue to be a role for things like
Speaker 4: nuclear and hydro, and that will vary to different degrees
Speaker 4: in different countries, but for the most part, we're kind
Speaker 4: of betting the house on solar and wind. Coming to
Speaker 4: our aid now, with those two bits of information said,
Speaker 4: the basic argument of the book is that in so
Speaker 4: far as we're relying on a private sector, and in
Speaker 4: so far as we're focusing on solar and wind, that's
Speaker 4: a problem because solar and wind, and I'm not talking
Speaker 4: here about the manufacturing side of it, I'm talking about
Speaker 4: the deployment side. Building the solar and wind farms, owning them,
Speaker 4: selling the electricity they generate is a pretty uncertain and
Speaker 4: actually relatively unattractive proposition in investment terms, and specifically in
Speaker 4: terms of profitability. It's very volatile in profitability terms, and
Speaker 4: the returns are actually not great in general. And so
Speaker 4: in so far as that's true, that's a problem because
Speaker 4: we're relying on the private sector to do this, and
Speaker 4: obviously the private sector is led by profit motivations, and
Speaker 4: if it's not a great prospect in profit terms, then
Speaker 4: we're in trouble.
Speaker 3: So I want to get more into why solar and
Speaker 3: wind might not be the best investment opportunity. But before
Speaker 3: we do, I feel like we need to define some
Speaker 3: of your terms. And you make a big distinction between
Speaker 3: price cost versus profit in the book. Can you maybe
Speaker 3: explain that a little bit more, because I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people will hear the word profit and then
Speaker 3: they'll hear a price cost and they'll be like, well,
Speaker 3: the difference between price and cost is the profit, and
Speaker 3: that those two things are interconnected. But you make a
Speaker 3: very important distinction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I'm sure almost all your listeners will have
Speaker 4: heard about one of the things that you guys were
Speaker 4: talking about earlier, which is the fact that the cost
Speaker 4: price of renewable energy, which is essentially the cost of
Speaker 4: generating power through solar or wind, has come down hugely
Speaker 4: over the past ten to fifteen years. In particular, it
Speaker 4: has come down a lot, and you would imagine intuitively
Speaker 4: that if the price of generating it comes down, then
Speaker 4: the profit that can be obtained from selling it would
Speaker 4: be going up, so that as the price comes down,
Speaker 4: it inherently becomes more profitable. But one of the arguments
Speaker 4: I make in the book, I mean, in a way
Speaker 4: the central argument is that for all sorts of interesting
Speaker 4: and important reasons, they are kind of nerdy reasons. You
Speaker 4: have to get into the thickets to understand them. That's
Speaker 4: just absolutely not necessarily the case. There are all sorts
Speaker 4: of reasons why A does not lead inevitably to B.
Speaker 4: And my argument is that the focus on price, the
Speaker 4: focus both on the left and right in understanding these things,
Speaker 4: relentlessly on this what's referred to as the levelized cost
Speaker 4: of energy, and lots of people will have seen this
Speaker 4: chart with the declining price. The focus on that has
Speaker 4: been misleading when it comes to understanding the economics of renewables.
Speaker 4: And the argument is that we should be thinking on
Speaker 4: specifically about profit because that's what drives investment decisions.
Speaker 2: Great, well, then let's get right into this. So there
Speaker 2: are a lot of solar firms in the US. There's
Speaker 2: more and more installation happening all the time, like and
Speaker 2: at a piece that many people would not have guessed.
Speaker 2: So a solar installation, even prior to the IRA was
Speaker 2: deployed at a rate faster than expected there's still more
Speaker 2: the IRA maybe accelerating it at further before we even
Speaker 2: get to the whole grander decarbonization thing. Tell us about
Speaker 2: a business model of a solar farm and why it's
Speaker 2: not that great of a business.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, So I think the best way to approach
Speaker 4: this is to think about what needs to be done
Speaker 4: to get a solar wind farm development off the ground,
Speaker 4: and there are basically three or four crucial things you
Speaker 4: need to do. So the first of those is you
Speaker 4: need the technology, right, so you need in the case
Speaker 4: of wind, you need the turbines, in the case of solar,
Speaker 4: you need the solar sales and the solar modules. You
Speaker 4: need the stuff that's going to help you to generate
Speaker 4: the electricity. The second thing, and all of these are
Speaker 4: really really important. The second thing is you need somewhere
Speaker 4: to put it. So in the case of solar and
Speaker 4: onshore wind, you need land, and you need lots of it,
Speaker 4: which is a really important thing to understand. I would
Speaker 4: say that as a geographer, but it's actually true that
Speaker 4: you need lots and lots of land. And in the
Speaker 4: case of on shore, you can either lease that land
Speaker 4: or you can buy that land. So land is the
Speaker 4: second thing you need, or in the case of offshore wind,
Speaker 4: you need rights to ocean and sea floor. Essentially that
Speaker 4: gets auctioned off by the state, so that's the second
Speaker 4: thing you need. Third thing you need typically is a
Speaker 4: grid connection, So you need to be able to connect
Speaker 4: your generating facility to the transmission grid in order that
Speaker 4: that electricity that you produce can be delivered to the
Speaker 4: entities that consume that electricity, households and businesses. There are
Speaker 4: some exceptions to that, so some you get some off
Speaker 4: grid developments that are literally connected directly to whoever it is,
Speaker 4: might be a big corporation like a Google or something
Speaker 4: that's going to consume that electricity. But in almost always
Speaker 4: you need a connection to the grid. And then the
Speaker 4: fourth and final thing, but actually by far the most
Speaker 4: important thing. And I say that because if a project
Speaker 4: is not going to proceed, if a project is going
Speaker 4: to fall down, this is in the vast majority of
Speaker 4: cases where it falls down, it's in not getting a
Speaker 4: grid connection. It's not in not getting land, it's in
Speaker 4: getting finance. And so this is the really important thing
Speaker 4: to say, which is to say that I thought I
Speaker 4: was writing a book about electricity and I did write
Speaker 4: a book about electricity just as much it's a book
Speaker 4: about finance. And so, whoever you are, whatever type of
Speaker 4: renewable energy developer you are, you typically will be looking
Speaker 4: I mean it varies a bit across time and space,
Speaker 4: but typically you're looking to finance your development in large
Speaker 4: part with debt. So somewhere between sixty and ninety percent
Speaker 4: is the typical range that is debt rather than equity financed.
Speaker 4: And obviously the key thing to understand here is what
Speaker 4: type of economic business this And again it's really really
Speaker 4: important to understand this.
Speaker 5: So with a sonar and wind.
Speaker 4: Power plant rather than a conventional power plant, the key
Speaker 4: economic characteristic of it is that essentially all the costs
Speaker 4: getting curred up front, So you have your cost of
Speaker 4: getting the grid connection, getting the land, buying the technology.
Speaker 4: But once it's up and running kind of free. You know,
Speaker 4: occasionally a rotor will stop turning, you need to get
Speaker 4: an engineer to come out with a screwdriver and get
Speaker 4: the road to turning again, but basically it's free. So
Speaker 4: well over ninety percent of the costs are incurd up
Speaker 4: front that it's very different from a conventional power plant
Speaker 4: where you're buying the gas or cold to keep the
Speaker 4: power plant running. So if you let's put it this way,
Speaker 4: if you are a renewable energy developing and you've done
Speaker 4: those first three things and now or you've got the
Speaker 4: kit on order, and you now say, right, I need
Speaker 4: to raise the finance. If you go to you and
Speaker 4: you'll basically go to a bank and you'll say I
Speaker 4: need two hundred million dollars to develop this solar farm,
Speaker 4: and your bank manager will say, okay, you know I
Speaker 4: want to invest in green stuff. Green stuff's cool. I
Speaker 4: definitely want to do that. How are you going to
Speaker 4: pay that loan back? And how long is it going
Speaker 4: to take you to pay it back? And you'll say, well,
Speaker 4: maybe ten to twelve years. The kit will last for
Speaker 4: thirty but hopefully within ten to twelve I'll be able
Speaker 4: to pay it back and I'll pay you the interest
Speaker 4: all the time. And the bank manager will look at
Speaker 4: you and say, well that sounds great. How are you
Speaker 4: going to make the money And you say, I'm going
Speaker 4: to sell the electrics and they say what price you're
Speaker 4: going to sell the electricity for? And you say, I
Speaker 4: have absolutely no idea. And the reason you have no
Speaker 4: idea is electricity price is unbelievably volatile in places where
Speaker 4: you have deregulated electricity markets, which in the US isn't
Speaker 4: about two thirds of the country by population, and they're
Speaker 4: very volatile at all time scales, short, medium, and long
Speaker 4: time scales.
Speaker 5: And here's the thing.
Speaker 4: Nobody can reliably predict wholesale electricity market prices a week,
Speaker 4: two weeks, let alone a month or a year or
Speaker 4: five years in as the bank manager will say, well,
Speaker 4: I can't lend you that money because you have no
Speaker 4: idea what the price you're going to be to sell
Speaker 4: the electricity at. And so some mechanism has to be
Speaker 4: found to stabilize those prices so that the bank manager
Speaker 4: can be confident that you will be able to pay
Speaker 4: that deep back. So that's the basic way the business works.
Speaker 4: Once you've raised the finance, you're off to the races.
Speaker 3: So low returns, at least initially, coupled with the difficulty
Speaker 3: of predicting how much you're going to sell the power
Speaker 3: for or the volatility of electricity prices, yeah, I can
Speaker 3: understand how that would be a bad mix if you're
Speaker 3: a bank manager. This is something that has come up
Speaker 3: before when We've spoken with Jiggershaw from the Department of Energy,
Speaker 3: the Loan Program's office there, where he talks about the
Speaker 3: lack of expertise in banks when it comes to renewables,
Speaker 3: and also just the reluctance to take on this particular
Speaker 3: risk even when you have like many mandates both internally
Speaker 3: and externally that are saying you should throw money at renewables.
Speaker 3: It's kind of difficult to overcome. One of the reasons
Speaker 3: we wanted to talk to you is because in your
Speaker 3: book you do a lot of one on one interviews
Speaker 3: with people in this industry, So I'm curious, can you
Speaker 3: tell us, like what bank managers say specifically about underwriting
Speaker 3: this kind of risk. Are there any like particular stories
Speaker 3: or anecdotes that stand out to you?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, I think one of the things that came through
Speaker 4: very clearly to me when I talk to people in
Speaker 4: this business is that they want to invest in this space.
Speaker 4: And so I often hear people, you know, colleagues, a
Speaker 4: man on the left who, like you know, esg is
Speaker 4: all just greenwashing. I don't actually believe that. I think
Speaker 4: there are a lot of people out there in the
Speaker 4: industry who want to support these types of developments, and
Speaker 4: there are also lots of renewable energy developers who are
Speaker 4: actually maybe not the big guys like the Next Era
Speaker 4: energies and the Black Rocks, but the smaller guys, and
Speaker 4: there's tens of thousands of them out there, you know what,
Speaker 4: They're actually prepared to take on the risk. In many
Speaker 4: cases they're like, well, we will do this even if
Speaker 4: the profit prospects are not necessarily great. And so it
Speaker 4: tends not to be them that are making the decisions
Speaker 4: not to invest if the profits don't look particularly appetizing.
Speaker 4: It's the financial institutions that are doing that. And of
Speaker 4: course that makes sense. If you are advancing two hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars that's not going to be paid back over
Speaker 4: to ten to twelve years, you want to be very
Speaker 4: very sure that you're going to get that money paid back,
Speaker 4: and so that they will emphasize relentlessly and repeatedly that
Speaker 4: having some form of certainty over the price which the
Speaker 4: electricity is going to be sold is the key thing.
Speaker 4: Now here's where it gets really interesting, which is the
Speaker 4: difference between the US and say Europe, Because the thing
Speaker 4: about the way the US has approached this, which is
Speaker 4: through renewables tax credits, both historically and with under the
Speaker 4: Inflation Reduction Act. They subsidize electricity investment and generation, but
Speaker 4: they don't stabilize it. And now that's very different from
Speaker 4: the types of mechanisms that governments have typically used in Europe,
Speaker 4: which do both. So some people might have heard of
Speaker 4: what are called feed in tariffs, which has been historically
Speaker 4: the main way in which this is supported in Europe,
Speaker 4: and in China historically as well, and in lots of
Speaker 4: other countries India included, And what they do is essentially
Speaker 4: the government itself or a government back dentity will provide
Speaker 4: a long term contract of say twelve years to buy
Speaker 4: the electricity produced by a renewal developer at a fixed price.
Speaker 4: And the IRA doesn't do that. So what's really interesting
Speaker 4: about the US is that tax credits are enough. So
Speaker 4: you need tax credits plus something else.
Speaker 2: There is some guaranteed right in the Inflation Reduction it's
Speaker 2: some like guaranteed something per kilo or.
Speaker 4: So that's a supplement, okay, to the market price. So yes,
Speaker 4: you get a supplement, but if the market price is
Speaker 4: in the toilet, you're still in the toilet, but just
Speaker 4: less in the toilet, so to speak. And so in
Speaker 4: the US you need something else. And so there have
Speaker 4: been two main things historically that do that, and that
Speaker 4: you know, talking to bank bank investors, this is what
Speaker 4: they look for. So either there are some form of
Speaker 4: financial hedging instrument so banks will do other parts of
Speaker 4: the same, or a different bank will provide swap or
Speaker 4: futures contracts in order to synthetically stabilize the electricity price essentially,
Speaker 4: or and again lots of listeners will have heard of these,
Speaker 4: particularly recently because they've been in the news a lot recently.
Speaker 4: It's what's called corporate power purchase agreements where instead of
Speaker 4: the generator having to sell their electricity into the volatile
Speaker 4: spot market, but Google or an Amazon or a Microsoft
Speaker 4: will come along and say, hey, we're going to build
Speaker 4: a new data center. Because of everything that's going on
Speaker 4: with AI, we want to secure as much of that
Speaker 4: electricity in renewably as we can because it's good for
Speaker 4: our pr Obviously that's the most the most important thing
Speaker 4: for them, and so they will enter a direct agreement
Speaker 4: of our purchase contract with the renewable developer and say, look,
Speaker 4: if you build this facility, we commit to buying often
Speaker 4: all your electricity, sometimes fifty percent of the electricity you generate,
Speaker 4: and we'll do that at a fixed price for the
Speaker 4: next twelve years. And the renewables developer then takes that commitment,
Speaker 4: goes back to the bank and says, here's what you're
Speaker 4: looking for, Now give me the money. And so they've
Speaker 4: become a really important way of rendering renewables projects bankable.
Speaker 2: I want to give back to some of these market
Speaker 2: structure questions with electricity, but you know, you lay out
Speaker 2: a very compelling argument that in theory there are some
Speaker 2: real problems that the way we deploy solar and wind,
Speaker 2: and on the other hand, in practice we are deploying
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff.
Speaker 5: We are so for all.
Speaker 2: These things, whether it's the uncertainty about the ultimate price
Speaker 2: you get, the cost of land, the coins of interest rates,
Speaker 2: in practice there is a lot more and there's more
Speaker 2: solar on the grid in California every day, and there's
Speaker 2: more battery stores to augment that solar, to deal with
Speaker 2: some of the variability that naturally comes out of solar.
Speaker 2: So like, why is that not an undercutting point the
Speaker 2: fact that, yes, in theory it shouldn't work, but in
Speaker 2: practice it's getting built.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it is getting built, which is great. But
Speaker 4: a it's getting built because the renewables industry globally remains
Speaker 4: fundamentally buttressed by subsidy and support. So any way you
Speaker 4: look in the world, where governments have tried to remove
Speaker 4: those support mechanisms or even substantially attenuate them, investment collapses.
Speaker 4: So that's important to understand. And that's fine in a way.
Speaker 4: I mean, of course, the fossil fuel sectory is underwritten
Speaker 4: by subsidy globally as well, so it's not like renewables
Speaker 4: are alone in this. That's the first thing to say.
Speaker 4: The second thing to say is that you know, I
Speaker 4: often like in this to people who look at things
Speaker 4: through a glass half full or a glass half empty, right,
Speaker 4: which is, you look at the pace of growth of
Speaker 4: renewables investment, and you look at the pace of growth
Speaker 4: of generation from renewables, and it's sharply upwards. Fantastic. However,
Speaker 4: electricity generation from fossil fuels is also still going up,
Speaker 4: so greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation are also going up.
Speaker 4: So as I see it, it's very hard, it would
Speaker 4: be very difficult and in my view, not really acceptable.
Speaker 4: To say we are succeeding while you know, twenty or
Speaker 4: thirty years into this, in terms of renewables deployment, we
Speaker 4: are still growing the amount of power we generate from
Speaker 4: fossil fuels. So the basic point is that, yes, renewables
Speaker 4: have been growing strongly, but that renewables growth has proven
Speaker 4: purely supplemental too, rather than substitutive of fossil fuel generated power.
Speaker 3: Just to go in sort of the opposite direction to
Speaker 3: Joe's question, but why not? I mean, if we recognize
Speaker 3: that this isn't a particularly profitable business model, that private
Speaker 3: capital is perhaps reluctant to underwrit and at the same
Speaker 3: time we agree that decarbonization is an important goal for humanity,
Speaker 3: then why not just nationalize everything?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that's kind of the argument that I'm broadly
Speaker 4: sympathetic to. But as anyone who's read the book will know,
Speaker 4: what I don't do is come out with a kind
Speaker 4: of full throated positing of that argument. And the reason
Speaker 4: I do that is that I don't feel that I
Speaker 4: know enough about how that might look to actually go
Speaker 4: down that road. But it's definitely one argument that's out there.
Speaker 4: I mean, that was kind of like central to the
Speaker 4: original Green New Deal as it was articulated on both
Speaker 4: sides of the Atlantic. So that's one possible argument. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think you've asked that question. I think it's actually
Speaker 4: useful to kind of lay out what the possible kind
Speaker 4: of routs out of this are as they are seen
Speaker 4: by those who acknowledge that we have a problem. And
Speaker 4: so the first and not surprising you, those different answers
Speaker 4: are kind of associated with different constituencies, so that the
Speaker 4: first of those is the argument that you get from
Speaker 4: I guess what I would call orthodox energy economists, so
Speaker 4: economists who are focused on energy and trained in the
Speaker 4: neoclassical tradition, and their basic argument is that our reliance
Speaker 4: on the private sector and markets to do this is
Speaker 4: not the problem. The problem is that we haven't got
Speaker 4: the market design right. So that's their argument, is that,
Speaker 4: and it's always their argument, frankly, whatever, whether you're talking
Speaker 4: about energy or anything else. But the basic argument there
Speaker 4: is that the problems not markets. The problem is that
Speaker 4: we haven't got the markets right, and we need more
Speaker 4: markets or better markets are optimized markets. And actually I
Speaker 4: have some tympathy to that argument because what they say,
Speaker 4: and they're right is that, look, the types of markets
Speaker 4: that we have now for the trading of electricity, whether
Speaker 4: the wholesale and or retail, are ones that were designed
Speaker 4: in and for a fossil fuel world, and actually those
Speaker 4: markets remain largely unreformed, which is true. So they say
Speaker 4: we need to rethink markets and optimize them for the
Speaker 4: new mix of electricity sources that we're living. Fair enough, However,
Speaker 4: you look at any specific design that has been suggested,
Speaker 4: and all of them have their own drawbacks as well
Speaker 4: as potential advantages. So I am sympathetic to that argument,
Speaker 4: but not convinced by it. The second argument is the
Speaker 4: one you hear from industry, who they agree with the
Speaker 4: mainstream economists that the problem is not that we're relying
Speaker 4: on the private sector of markets. But what they say
Speaker 4: is the existing market design's fine, we just need more subsidy.
Speaker 4: And so that's kind of how you end up with
Speaker 4: the Inflation Reduction Act, which is for several years now,
Speaker 4: the industry's been telling the administration, look, you've been reducing
Speaker 4: these subsidies over time, which is what had been happening
Speaker 4: in the US. You can see the results of that
Speaker 4: investment is beginning to stagnate, the rates of growth are
Speaker 4: not good enough. You need to bump up those subsidies again,
Speaker 4: and that's what happened with the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: at the same time as that was happening, you had
Speaker 4: increases in supply chain and you had increases in financing costs.
Speaker 4: So there's a very open question as to whether the
Speaker 4: I array is enough. Maybe it needs to be even more.
Speaker 4: But that's basically the industry's answer. Everything's fine, but just
Speaker 4: more subsidy so that returns go up from say five
Speaker 4: to eight percent, which is where they're typically at now,
Speaker 4: to ten plus percent, and eventually to a point where
Speaker 4: and here's the key thing, maybe even the big fossil
Speaker 4: fuel companies might begin to get interested if returns in
Speaker 4: renewables get closer to the kind of fifteen plus percent
Speaker 4: that they're used to in their upstream oil and gas business.
Speaker 4: But right now, of course, they're not interested to million
Speaker 4: miles away from the types of returns they're used to.
Speaker 4: So that's the second answer, more subsidy, more support, and
Speaker 4: I'm not unsympathetic to that argument either. The third answer
Speaker 4: is the one where you where you started, Tracy, which
Speaker 4: is the answer you typically hear from large parts of
Speaker 4: the left, which is to say, look, we've tried the
Speaker 4: private sector in markets. That's what we've been doing for
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five years. It's still not working. And I've
Speaker 4: explained why. I think that's absolutely true. Even though the
Speaker 4: industry is completely buttressed by subsidy internationally, and even though
Speaker 4: the costs of generation have come down as much as
Speaker 4: they have so something there is telling us that maybe
Speaker 4: that's not the right approach after all, and therefore we
Speaker 4: should try the kind of massive public sector financing ownership operation.
Speaker 4: And again I'm sympathetic to that argument too. However, one
Speaker 4: thing I would say about this, and I think this is,
Speaker 4: you know, arguably to my mind, the most important thing
Speaker 4: I can say, which is that you know, the credibility
Speaker 4: of that argument depends massively in what part of the
Speaker 4: world you're talking about. I mean, I know there's lots
Speaker 4: of kind of concerns about levels of public debt in
Speaker 4: various rich countries around the world, including the US, UK,
Speaker 4: Germany and so on and so forth. But at least
Speaker 4: in those countries, it remains the case that the state
Speaker 4: could conceivably borrow to invest in revenue generating things, which
Speaker 4: is what renewable assets are at a reasonable rate, probably
Speaker 4: even cheaper than the private sector without being massively punished
Speaker 4: by by the bomb market. But now if you are
Speaker 4: a government in a very very poor country with you know,
Speaker 4: crippling levels of debt, servicing obligations as it is, then
Speaker 4: frankly their idea of a kind of a big green
Speaker 4: state investing in and owning in those that is is
Speaker 4: very very far fetched.
Speaker 2: And this is where all the demand's coming from for electricity.
Speaker 2: These un rigual.
Speaker 4: And this is that, you know, when we were sitting
Speaker 4: in New York and where I'm based in Europe, we
Speaker 4: often think kind of a bit too much about those
Speaker 4: parts of the world. But frankly, if you think about
Speaker 4: the power sector and the future of greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 4: and the future of the planet, frankly, what happens in
Speaker 4: North America and Europe is not completely incidental, but it's
Speaker 4: almost incidental to future emissions tractories. And there are two
Speaker 4: reasons for that this is really important. First is that
Speaker 4: actually large parts of the Europe and of the global
Speaker 4: North in general are actually quite far down the decarbonization
Speaker 4: path of the power sexual already where I am in Sweden,
Speaker 4: ninety percent of electricity is generated carbon free. But there
Speaker 4: are other parts of the world where power generation remains
Speaker 4: hugely dependent on fossiphyr. South Africa ninety percent is coal,
Speaker 4: India seventy five percent coal, China sixty five percent coal.
Speaker 4: A those are the parts of the world where future
Speaker 4: growth in energy consumption is expected to be concentrated as
Speaker 4: you get further urbanization and industrialization and modernization and b
Speaker 4: China arguably accepted. But those are the parts of the
Speaker 4: world where the financial challenges our greatest.
Speaker 2: So Tracy asked you the question of Okay, why not nationalized?
Speaker 2: But there's another solution, the theoretically or another answer, which is,
Speaker 2: if we accept the premise that, whether it's through subsidies
Speaker 2: or direct ownership or whatever, that the government balance sheet
Speaker 2: should play a much bigger role in this, why not
Speaker 2: skip solar and wind and just do what France did
Speaker 2: and build a ton of nuclear. And it's like, maybe
Speaker 2: the French nuclear plants like didn't end up being that
Speaker 2: economical and I think they had some excess or whatever,
Speaker 2: but they have a what eighty percent decarbonized grid. They're
Speaker 2: the nuclear So if we're going to spend all the
Speaker 2: money when I just skip the solar and wind and
Speaker 2: just build more nuclear plants.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, I again, that's an argument
Speaker 4: I'm sympathetic to. France is the great example of that,
Speaker 4: and certainly there are lots of very compelling voices out
Speaker 4: there who argue exactly that. I think probably the Breakthrough
Speaker 4: Institute here in the US would be one of the
Speaker 4: best examples of that, And I personally don't take a
Speaker 4: particular position on that. I'm not sitting here saying we
Speaker 4: should focus exclusively or even larger and renewables. The reason
Speaker 4: I focus on renewables in the book, just it's worth
Speaker 4: spelling that out, is that that's what the world is doing.
Speaker 4: So yes, I think there's been a of a mini
Speaker 4: nuclear renaissance in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: Certainly a lot of podcasts about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, I think the likelihood if you
Speaker 4: look at what governments are doing around the world is
Speaker 4: that nuclears so nuclear is currently at about ten percent
Speaker 4: overall of global electric electricity generation. There might go up
Speaker 4: a bit, but it's not where the focus is. But
Speaker 4: you're right, it could be where more of the focus is.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that the reason. I think there's
Speaker 4: a bunch of reasons why that's not where the focus
Speaker 4: is in most countries. So one is cost. It definitely is,
Speaker 4: and so you look at those levelized cost charts, and yes,
Speaker 4: while the cost of generating electricity from renewables is now
Speaker 4: comparable too and in some places lower than from colon
Speaker 4: elateral gas, nuclear is a lot more expensive, and a
Speaker 4: lot of that's due to regulatory costs, So partly it's cost.
Speaker 4: I think the second thing is timescale. So once you've
Speaker 4: got the grid permits and so on all sorted out
Speaker 4: and the financing, you can put up a solo farmer
Speaker 4: or an onshore wind farm in six to twelve months.
Speaker 4: It's really quick. Nuclear is not quick. Nuclear is like
Speaker 4: five to ten years at best, and everything's kind of
Speaker 4: urgent now. So I think that's the second reason for
Speaker 4: the focus on renews. And then the third one is
Speaker 4: just is public perception. Despite the fact that nuclear is
Speaker 4: very very safe statistically, it's still represents something somewhat forbidding
Speaker 4: in the public consciousness in many parts of the world,
Speaker 4: and Germany is obviously the best example of that.
Speaker 3: Since we're talking about things that could possibly work. You know,
Speaker 3: you mentioned power purchase contracts earlier, and we've seen so
Speaker 3: many headlines recently about big tech companies, players and AI
Speaker 3: teaming up in one way or another with energy companies
Speaker 3: to secure power and make those big off take agreements.
Speaker 3: Is that something that like maybe could be helpful here
Speaker 3: by providing you know, there is a lot of money
Speaker 3: flowing into AI. I'm not entirely sure whether or not
Speaker 3: that business is very profitable yet, but there's certainly a
Speaker 3: lot of enthusiasm for it in the market. Could you
Speaker 3: maybe borrow from the AI world some of that enthusiasm,
Speaker 3: the promise of profitability perhaps and use that to funnel
Speaker 3: more money into renewable energy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think it has been and will
Speaker 4: continue to play a really important role. And as I said,
Speaker 4: the key thing here is that the agreements from the
Speaker 4: big AI developers, the big the Amazons and so on
Speaker 4: are what enable a lot of renewables projects to get
Speaker 4: off the ground that might not otherwise get off the
Speaker 4: ground because they're offering long term fixed prices. And actually,
Speaker 4: if you read what a lot of policymakers have been saying,
Speaker 4: not just in the last few months, but actually the
Speaker 4: last few years, they in many cases regard those power
Speaker 4: purchase agreements as kind of an almost an alternative to
Speaker 4: government subsidy and government support.
Speaker 5: So the argument there is that.
Speaker 4: The market will perform the role that governments have historically
Speaker 4: by rendering projects bankable through those power purchase agreements. And
Speaker 4: I think all I would say about that is two things.
Speaker 4: So the first is that it will play a role,
Speaker 4: and it is play a role, and it will continue
Speaker 4: to play a role, but it's a limited role. So
Speaker 4: it will help with bankability to a certain extent, but
Speaker 4: it will only ever do that in a limited way
Speaker 4: because there are unfortunately only a kind of limited number
Speaker 4: of credible off takers out there who can perform that
Speaker 4: role of providing bankability. So if Amazon comes along and
Speaker 4: says we'll buy your power for twelve years, the bank
Speaker 4: behind the renewable developer will be like, fine, we're pretty
Speaker 4: confident Amazon is going to still be in business in
Speaker 4: twelve years and it's going to honor that agreement. But
Speaker 4: most other types of entities that might try to do
Speaker 4: that then they're not considered credible enough, So there's only
Speaker 4: limited market out there. The second thing flows from that,
Speaker 4: which is that because there's only a limited number of
Speaker 4: players out there, they have a lot of power in
Speaker 4: this market. So the Amazons and the Googles and code
Speaker 4: because there aren't that many of them, when they negotiate
Speaker 4: with renewed boost developers the price at which they will
Speaker 4: buy that electricity for the next twelve years, they have
Speaker 4: all the leverage. There's thousands of developers scurrying around to
Speaker 4: get this sort after contract from an Amazon, and Amazon says, okay,
Speaker 4: we'll we'll exploit that and we'll push down the agreed
Speaker 4: power price, limiting renewables developers profits.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting. So, by the way, we're recording
Speaker 2: this May seventh, just six days ago May first, Microsoft
Speaker 2: in Brookfield signing the biggest ever clean power deal. It's
Speaker 2: going to be like a ten point five billion dollar deal.
Speaker 2: So one of these massive agreements. But I think actually
Speaker 2: now thinking about it, it actually speaks to the point
Speaker 2: that if you want renewables, whether it's the government or
Speaker 2: a private company, what's important is that guaranteed.
Speaker 5: Off take one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so in a way it almost like, yes,
Speaker 2: technically this is a market arrangement, but as you noted,
Speaker 2: there's probably a lot of pr or maybe sort of
Speaker 2: ESG requirements that encourage them, so in a way, it
Speaker 2: still sort of backstops the basic loge of the government
Speaker 2: needing to be either the buyer or the price center.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Per So, just going back to the financing side of things,
Speaker 3: So one thing that we've seen in Europe in particular
Speaker 3: is an effort to maybe tweak regulatory capital requirements for
Speaker 3: environmentally friendly or renewable energy related financing. I'd love to
Speaker 3: get your views on the efficacy of that. And then secondly,
Speaker 3: my understanding is that as part of the IRA money
Speaker 3: you know, I mentioned Jiggershaw and the DOE earlier and
Speaker 3: their loan Program's office, a lot of what they're doing
Speaker 3: is extending financing in lieu of the banks. So trying
Speaker 3: to get over that hurdle of if you are a
Speaker 3: loan officer at a large bank, you do not want
Speaker 3: to underwrite this particular business because of the combination of
Speaker 3: low returns and volatility difficult to forecast electricity prices. So
Speaker 3: how how effective are those types of policies like attacking
Speaker 3: it from the financing set.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that has been and almost certainly
Speaker 4: will continue to be a really a really important way
Speaker 4: of attacking it to you know, to use your word
Speaker 4: and I think, you know, probably probably the best example
Speaker 4: of that right now is China. So if you look
Speaker 4: at what's been happening in China, so about a year
Speaker 4: or two ago, I can't remember the exact details, China
Speaker 4: actually withdrew a lot of the legacy mechanisms for subsidizing
Speaker 4: renewables development in China, which which feed in tariffs. At
Speaker 4: least it's centric, it's at least the feeding tarifts provided Beijing.
Speaker 4: And there was lots of concern at that time that
Speaker 4: renewables investment would collapse in China. Obviously didn't happen, and
Speaker 4: one of the main reasons that it didn't happen is
Speaker 4: that the Chinese Central Bank now plays a really really
Speaker 4: important role in subsidizing the capital cost for renewables development.
Speaker 4: By I mean it does it indirectly rather than directly,
Speaker 4: so it basically provides a capital subsidy to the lenders
Speaker 4: who then lend directly to the renewables developers, and it's
Speaker 4: doing that on a massive scale. So that's exactly the
Speaker 4: type of thing you're talking about. And of course the
Speaker 4: other sorts of entities that are doing this in a
Speaker 4: really big scale, but on a scale which is not
Speaker 4: remotely big enough is the big development finance institutions. Because
Speaker 4: and here's the thing, right, if finance is the big obstacle,
Speaker 4: or one of the big obstacles, which I think it
Speaker 4: clearly is that obstacle is far greater in the global South,
Speaker 4: where the perception of risk among private lenders is so
Speaker 4: much higher. So instead of lending at say four or
Speaker 4: five percent, which they might have been doing in recent years,
Speaker 4: in the global North, they will be lending at twelve
Speaker 4: to fifteen percent, which means that projects have no chance
Speaker 4: of getting off the ground unless a development finance institution,
Speaker 4: a World Bank, or some philanthropic financier comes in and says,
Speaker 4: we will effectively subsidize that finance in some way, you know,
Speaker 4: And that's what you know, lots of listeners will have
Speaker 4: heard about blended finance and all these sorts of thing.
Speaker 4: That's what's going on there is that essentially, in order
Speaker 4: to bring private capital to the table, some sort of
Speaker 4: either public capital or quasi public capital also has to
Speaker 4: come to the table, essentially to subsidize that private capital
Speaker 4: and to make things attractive in profitability terms for them.
Speaker 4: So I think finance has to and will continue to
Speaker 4: play a huge role in this. And it's interesting that
Speaker 4: China is doing that, you know, much more effectively and
Speaker 4: aggressively than the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: You mentioned Sweden where you live now, I see coined
Speaker 2: the various websites and clicking on somewhere between seventy and
Speaker 2: ninety five percent, depending on how measure renewables. How did
Speaker 2: they get there?
Speaker 4: Two main answers to that. So it's not primarily a
Speaker 4: solar and wind story, not as it only a primary
Speaker 4: solar story. Not surprisingly hydro, oh, very good hydro resources, however,
Speaker 4: also nuclear. So hydro is about thirty percent of electricity
Speaker 4: production in Sweden, much high in Norway, and nuclear is
Speaker 4: about thirty percent.
Speaker 2: We aren't damns. I love hope, I love dams. And
Speaker 2: there used to be, seriously, there used to be a
Speaker 2: time in this country in which I was reading one
Speaker 2: of those books. You know, we're like the Bureau of
Speaker 2: Land Management and the Army Corps of Engineer like competing
Speaker 2: against each other just so you could build more dams.
Speaker 2: Is there more room for hydro?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: I mean that's so. The reason I mean This goes
Speaker 4: back to what we were going about nuclear. The reason I
Speaker 4: think that the world is not expecting massive growth in
Speaker 4: hydro in the future, and as instead is kind of
Speaker 4: betting the house on so and when a primarily twofold
Speaker 4: or threefold one is the time thing light nuclear takes
Speaker 4: a heck of a long time. Second thing is that
Speaker 4: and again I think lots of people will be aware
Speaker 4: of this, but the negative social in many cases environmental
Speaker 4: implications of damn development, you know, displacing hundreds of thousands
Speaker 4: of people have become more obvious and more problematic in
Speaker 4: large parts of the world. That's the second the second
Speaker 4: thing I think, and the third thing is that, as
Speaker 4: I understand, a lot of the kind of low hanging
Speaker 4: fruit in terms of hydro development has already been kind
Speaker 4: of plucked, and actually literally the geophysical potential for it
Speaker 4: is more constrained than it was, you know, twenty or
Speaker 4: thirsty years ago.
Speaker 3: I have just one more question, which is you know,
Speaker 3: reading your book, you're very explicit about what the goal
Speaker 3: of it is, and you know it's focused on solar
Speaker 3: and wind. It's about explaining why the business model doesn't
Speaker 3: really work. It's not about policy prescriptions, and you make
Speaker 3: that very clear. What's your next book? Is it a
Speaker 3: continuation two.
Speaker 4: Books a year? Yeah? Well, yeah, I've been I've been
Speaker 4: quite productive recently. I'm going to give the honest answer
Speaker 4: to that question. I have no idea. However, I moved
Speaker 4: recently within Upside University to an Institute of Housing and
Speaker 4: Urban Research, and I've done a lot of work historically
Speaker 4: on housing stuff, and I'm pretty sure that moving back
Speaker 4: towards house, you know, another area where the world is nothing,
Speaker 4: if not in crisis, is probably going to be what
Speaker 4: I'm focusing on going forward.
Speaker 3: Maybe you could do a history of nimbiism and nuclear
Speaker 3: power plants on no. I think that'd be interesting, you
Speaker 3: could tie the two together.
Speaker 2: We definitely will have you back for a housing episode
Speaker 2: because there's never enough demand for housing.
Speaker 5: And I have one last question.
Speaker 2: So it's just a theory that I have and if
Speaker 2: you think it's complete nonsense, then feel free to shoot
Speaker 2: it down. But you mentioned that the world has made
Speaker 2: this bed on solar and wind, that these are the
Speaker 2: two war courses that we expect for decarbonization. But it
Speaker 2: raises the question of why there's it nuclear as a
Speaker 2: part of the story the environmental movement. In my lifetime,
Speaker 2: when I was younger, the environmental movement meant like literal
Speaker 2: green forests and preservation and conservation and clean water, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And today the environmental movement is almost synonymous with climate,
Speaker 2: although there's still other issues. Is it like a solar
Speaker 2: and wind or bucolic and we associate it with just
Speaker 2: green because get under you from sun and the wind?
Speaker 2: Like it sounds, Is that like, explain in part why
Speaker 2: there is so much attachment to these forms of energy.
Speaker 4: I don't know a definitive answer to.
Speaker 5: That right people's minds, but I would be.
Speaker 4: Astonished if that's not at least partly true. I think
Speaker 4: that for sure that must be partly true, the idea
Speaker 4: that you can that there's this kind of free resource
Speaker 4: that you can capture cleanly in a way that doesn't
Speaker 4: have any at least any downstream environmental implications. There are
Speaker 4: certainly upstream implications in terms of you know, the copper
Speaker 4: and the lithium and everything.
Speaker 3: That is needed and the whales. To go back to
Speaker 3: nineties environmentalism and the wind power generations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, but no, for sure it fits with that
Speaker 4: kind of bucolic image, which is still part of the
Speaker 4: environmental movement broadly conceived absolutely.
Speaker 2: Bred Christopherus, thank you so much for coming on our block.
Speaker 2: Fascinating conversation.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me, Tracy.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed that conversation. It was nice to hear
Speaker 2: like the sort of like yeah, just like a very
Speaker 2: clear spelling out of what the sort of like financial
Speaker 2: and just other constraints are to further expansion of the production.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I think intuitively, a lot of
Speaker 3: people have the sense that the current model isn't necessarily
Speaker 3: working because of the reason that you mentioned in the intro.
Speaker 3: You know, like cost of producing renewable energy is going down,
Speaker 3: but like the rates for people aren't necessarily going down
Speaker 3: as much, and it still feels like a lot of
Speaker 3: the burden of investment is on electricity users versus like
Speaker 3: the investors. So I think intuitively it feels like it
Speaker 3: kind of encapsulates that tension. I did find it really
Speaker 3: interesting the emphasis on off take yes and having a
Speaker 3: reliable source of demand, because this seems to be a
Speaker 3: key difference between the US model and some European models,
Speaker 3: and also it seems to be a thing where we
Speaker 3: are seeing some momentum in terms of the IRA, you
Speaker 3: know a little bit, not that much, but also in
Speaker 3: terms of private players, like say a Microsoft who wants
Speaker 3: to strike a big deal to take renewable energy from
Speaker 3: an energy company and like underwrite that investment permanently into
Speaker 3: the future. That's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: I agree, And I think that was like a light
Speaker 2: bulb moment for me because you know, we've talked to Jiggershawn.
Speaker 2: Jiggershaw talks a lot about off take and the need
Speaker 2: for this, but that basically that, yes, if Microsoft and
Speaker 2: Brookfield do a deal, that is two market players coming
Speaker 2: to a free market agreement. But it sort of validates
Speaker 2: the underlying logic. And Microsoft isn't going to pay for
Speaker 2: more energy than it consumes. It's not going to pay
Speaker 2: for other people's energy, so that it sort of validates
Speaker 2: this underlying logic, which is if you want to not
Speaker 2: just ad solar but actually add renewables to the scale
Speaker 2: that you can then cut back on fossil fuels based
Speaker 2: energy that you actually need to like that off take
Speaker 2: has to be part of it, you know, across the space.
Speaker 2: The other thing that was interesting, and I think we're
Speaker 2: gonna do another episode on electricity market soon is you know.
Speaker 2: Brett described why the volatility of electricity markets hamper renewables
Speaker 2: because you're the price is so uncertain, et cetera. The
Speaker 2: nuclear people don't like electricity markets either, and their argument
Speaker 2: is like, well, we have such big costs and it's
Speaker 2: so difficult to turn on and turn off nuclear. It's
Speaker 2: not like other forms like gas that during these periods
Speaker 2: when everything is cheap, we lose a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And so it feels like there are a lot of
Speaker 2: players that find electricity markets to be not conducive to
Speaker 2: the best energy system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we should do a episode on the
Speaker 3: history of unbundling of energy.
Speaker 2: I think I think we may have one in the work.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, excellent, because I still don't underst down how
Speaker 3: it happens.
Speaker 2: I think I think we may even be recording one
Speaker 2: tomorrow for Thursday.
Speaker 3: Okay, there's an insight into the Odlots prep process where
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about what we're going to talk
Speaker 3: about until the day of Okay, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 3: This has been another episode of the Audlots podcast. I'm
Speaker 3: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 2: Check out the book of our guest Brett Christopher's The
Speaker 2: Price Is Wrong Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet, put
Speaker 2: out by Verso Books at Verso Books. Follow our producers
Speaker 2: Carmen Rodriguez at Carman Ermann dash, Ol Bennett at Dashbot
Speaker 2: and Kilbrooks at Keilbrooks. Thank you to our producer Moses On.
Speaker 2: For more Oddlots content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash
Speaker 2: odd Lots. We have transcripts, a blog, and a newsletter,
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