Speaker 1: Hi, everyone. I have a confession. I think I got
Speaker 1: into all this energy and climate stuff to impress a girl. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sure I did. I was in grad school
Speaker 1: for molecular biology at the time, but looking for a change.
Speaker 1: She was working in utilities in environment and told me
Speaker 1: about all this stuff I never heard of, like offshore
Speaker 1: wind farms, or bioplastics, or taking c O two from
Speaker 1: the air and pumping it into rocks. That one now
Speaker 1: known as carbon capture and storage sounded particularly out there
Speaker 1: to me. The more I looked into this stuff, the
Speaker 1: more interested I got. So fast forward a few months,
Speaker 1: I found myself interviewing for a job with New Energy
Speaker 1: Finance or any F, a London based research and analytics
Speaker 1: startup whose u S operation was two guys working out
Speaker 1: of a tiny rented office in Alexander, Virginia. The person
Speaker 1: interviewing me was Ethan Zindler, who happens to be today's guest.
Speaker 1: So I got the job, and Ethan and I have
Speaker 1: worked together for about thirteen years at what is now
Speaker 1: Bloomberg in e F or bn F, where he is
Speaker 1: the head of America's Over this time, we've seen the
Speaker 1: industry go through a lot of changes. Just one example,
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, when I started it, there was
Speaker 1: nineteen giga watts of wind and solar online in the US.
Speaker 1: There were two fifty nine giga watts. Today. We'll get
Speaker 1: into the many changes that have happened in the US
Speaker 1: over the past decade, and a report he and his
Speaker 1: team did in collaboration with the Business Council for Sustainable
Speaker 1: Energy or the bc SE titled Sustainable Energy in America
Speaker 1: Factbook Good News. The report this week is available to everyone,
Speaker 1: not just Be Enough clients. You can get it at
Speaker 1: bcs dot org. And before we get into it, a
Speaker 1: reminder that benef does not provide investment or strategy advice,
Speaker 1: and you can hear a full disclaimer at the end
Speaker 1: of the show. If you like the show, please go
Speaker 1: ahead and rate and review us on Apple podcast or
Speaker 1: wherever you listening. Oh and the girl, I think she
Speaker 1: was impressed. I'm still not sure, but we're about to
Speaker 1: celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. I'm Mark Taylor, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to switch on to Be Enough Podcast. Ethan, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming in, great to be here to start us off.
Speaker 1: Can you just tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 1: project itself. Sure, So the fact book is something we've
Speaker 1: now done for eight years in partnership with this Council
Speaker 1: for Sustainable Energy UH. The bc s E is a
Speaker 1: Washington based organization that is basically a coalition of energy
Speaker 1: efficiency companies, renewable energy companies, at gas companies, and other
Speaker 1: similar organizations that are focused on lower carbon power generation overall.
Speaker 1: And the report, I should note, is free to everybody
Speaker 1: and encourage people to download it at www dot b
Speaker 1: CSC dot org or on our website at BNF dot com.
Speaker 1: It's not behind any kind of a payroll. So I
Speaker 1: read this report, and I must admit when I went
Speaker 1: into it, I thought it was gonna be pretty boring.
Speaker 1: It's a fact book of what's happened in the US
Speaker 1: over the last ten years. I thought it was just
Speaker 1: gonna say renewables have grown, Yippi great. But I was
Speaker 1: quickly turned around. I started to make a note of
Speaker 1: all the many areas that are changed, and I can
Speaker 1: put in a list of sixteen areas that have changed.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a bit about what has changed and
Speaker 1: what has happened in the last ten years? Well, first, Mark,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know when last time you came
Speaker 1: the United States. But like facts are kind of cool
Speaker 1: now here, okay, um, and actually being yeah, so being
Speaker 1: real factory is actually pretty sexy, so you know, I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, okay, we you know. So the
Speaker 1: ambition of this report is to provide a great deal
Speaker 1: of data and information about what is going on in
Speaker 1: the US market. And one of the main reasons is
Speaker 1: because we feel like that there is a lot of
Speaker 1: misinformation or even disinformation out there, and that's the goal.
Speaker 1: But yes, there's lots of really I think, extremely interesting things.
Speaker 1: Because um, the report is usually it's an annual report.
Speaker 1: It still is, but we very conveniently just came to
Speaker 1: the end of a decade, so we tried to cast
Speaker 1: a little longer view back. And if you look at
Speaker 1: how much has occurred in the United States in the
Speaker 1: last ten years in the areas of what we call
Speaker 1: in this report sustainable energy, but also renewable energy, energy efficiency,
Speaker 1: advanced transportation, all these things, it's pretty remarkable. Really, it's
Speaker 1: incredible how much is changing. You and I know because
Speaker 1: you know, we were working together ten years ago in
Speaker 1: Washington and there's a lot going on. But but you know,
Speaker 1: the transformation that's taken place in the U s energy
Speaker 1: sector has been really, really quite dramatic. I remember when
Speaker 1: I started at any F when we were back in
Speaker 1: when we were startup, I met our CEO, our founder
Speaker 1: at a at a meeting from a corp, the American
Speaker 1: Council and Renewable Energy, I believe it's called, and it
Speaker 1: was called their Phase two meeting UM, and I think
Speaker 1: it was phase two of going from like experimental into
Speaker 1: like commercialization of renewable energy. I think what phase we
Speaker 1: in now, I don't know, like we're definitely I mean,
Speaker 1: you know exactly. It was trying to go from like
Speaker 1: you know, we're at the at the edges and the
Speaker 1: kind of pilot scale, a demonstration scale, to entering the market,
Speaker 1: and then that certainly happened during the decade, and then
Speaker 1: we really entered another phase where we're seeing, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of these things take place really driven for
Speaker 1: economic reasons and the cost competitiveness, which is legitimate, and
Speaker 1: so you know, if you take something like solar, there
Speaker 1: was us than a giga out of solar online in
Speaker 1: the United States a decade ago, where at seventy five
Speaker 1: giga watts. Now, UM, you know, the amount of wind
Speaker 1: capacity has tripled over that period of time. Um. And
Speaker 1: then on the flip side, if you look at how
Speaker 1: much there's been decarbonization in terms of coal coming offline.
Speaker 1: You know, we used to get about half our power
Speaker 1: from coal. Is probably about twenty four of our power
Speaker 1: came from coal. I think the thing that, for me
Speaker 1: at least is interesting, And of course what makes it
Speaker 1: fun for us to work in this industry is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the traditional thought about energy as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: do changes do occur, but they take a long time,
Speaker 1: and you gotta be patient, you gotta think in decades, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I mean, this decade has proven that that is just
Speaker 1: not true. Things can just turn on a dime, very
Speaker 1: very quickly. Yeah. I just as I've mentioned in the beginning,
Speaker 1: I started to take notes of things that have changed.
Speaker 1: And my first assumption was that, yeah, the world looks
Speaker 1: roughly the same, or the US at least look roughly
Speaker 1: the same. But no, it's very different. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the last time I've used, you know, a filament light
Speaker 1: bulb for example, or I take Uber everywhere, Um, yeah no,
Speaker 1: and or you know, electric vehicles ten years ago. Basically
Speaker 1: you couldn't buy one. There's about forty four choices for
Speaker 1: American consumers to buy electric vehicles that's pure electrics. You
Speaker 1: can buy plug in hybrid electric car if you if
Speaker 1: you really you want to your nerd out, you can
Speaker 1: get like a fuel cell hydrogen car. There's those are unusual,
Speaker 1: but it's possible many cars. I'll let you put some
Speaker 1: biofuels in the tank too, if that's what you want
Speaker 1: to do. So the number of choices for consumers when
Speaker 1: it comes to transportation is obviously dramatically expanded UM. But
Speaker 1: one of the points we also try and make in
Speaker 1: the report is that, you know, we call it the
Speaker 1: quote unquote empowered consumer, where you look at all different
Speaker 1: types of areas where consumers now have choices that they
Speaker 1: didn't have before. Transportation is just one of them. Homeowners
Speaker 1: have different choices UM. Businesses have more choices even in
Speaker 1: terms of what type of power to buy. Absolutely you
Speaker 1: can you know and and how you want to buy it,
Speaker 1: So you know, do you want to put a PV
Speaker 1: system on your roof? Where do you want to sign
Speaker 1: on to be part of a community solar deal where
Speaker 1: you buy some of the solar that's produced locally or
Speaker 1: do you want to just buy it through your utility
Speaker 1: by paying some kind of a green you know, premium
Speaker 1: on that. And of course companies have the same opportunities
Speaker 1: as well, and they can sign direct contracts um with
Speaker 1: large producers and we saw another another you know record
Speaker 1: for corporate p p A s that were signed last
Speaker 1: year as well. So consumers have been very much empowered
Speaker 1: in all of this. And I guess, you know, within
Speaker 1: the Washington context, one of the things that I really
Speaker 1: do try to emphasize in this report is guess what,
Speaker 1: it turns out that actually this is also cheaper. And
Speaker 1: that's something that I think there's still very often this
Speaker 1: sort of false economy perpetuated that like dirty energy is
Speaker 1: cheap energy, plain energy gotta pay a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But that's just not true if you look at if
Speaker 1: you look at how costs have come down in the US.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, before anybody you know out there
Speaker 1: and podcast world, you know, complains and says that I'm oversimplifying. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's not just because of renewables, that's because the gas too,
Speaker 1: definitely a gas is really cheap. It was the peak
Speaker 1: fourteen dollars prove v to you, and now they can
Speaker 1: barely get over to yeah. So yeah, and that, you know,
Speaker 1: and low and holding by the way, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like it's going up anytime soon, especially since we
Speaker 1: didn't really have much of a January in terms of weather,
Speaker 1: so the prices have been pretty flat. So going back again,
Speaker 1: I remember every year, almost I guess every year we
Speaker 1: in the office would get nervous that the PTC or
Speaker 1: the production text credit was going to expire, and it
Speaker 1: always seemed to, you know, keep on going. You had
Speaker 1: a line in the in the report that said there
Speaker 1: was a great confluence of technology, innovation, policy, and economies
Speaker 1: of scale. Which of those three do you think at
Speaker 1: the greatest impact. Well, definitely combination of all of them.
Speaker 1: But it's a really good question. I mean, at one
Speaker 1: point to make is that you know, the United States,
Speaker 1: we don't do like long term policy planning like pretty
Speaker 1: well at all. So ten years ago it wasn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, in Washington they sat down they said, we
Speaker 1: have a natural energy strategy. We're going to cut our
Speaker 1: emissions by this and much. We're you know, going to
Speaker 1: take about half the call fleet offline. We're gonna do
Speaker 1: all these None of that happened. Um, yeah, there was
Speaker 1: some federal legislation, and I could argue that the stimulus
Speaker 1: Bill it was passed at the end of the prior decade,
Speaker 1: made a huge impact, but it frankly wasn't its main
Speaker 1: goal wasn't like to think long term about US energy
Speaker 1: security and people rights, to get people working. So those
Speaker 1: things contributed, and I would say that the stimulus bill
Speaker 1: plus the state level mandates for renewables kind of and
Speaker 1: and by the way, state level mandates for energy efficiency
Speaker 1: it should we pointed out to those really kind of
Speaker 1: got some momentum going. And then economies of scale kick
Speaker 1: kicked up, frankly because in part because the Chinese were like, Wow,
Speaker 1: the US, that's a big market, let's export there, and
Speaker 1: so boom, suddenly you have a massive scale up of
Speaker 1: battery manufacturing and photobo take manufacturing in China to serve
Speaker 1: the US market. Prices not just the US market, but
Speaker 1: others prices came down. So that's your economies of scale
Speaker 1: kind of story. And then by you know, two thirds
Speaker 1: of the way through the decade and towards the end,
Speaker 1: you have legitimate price competition. And so yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: combination of all things, but I think you could probably
Speaker 1: say the policy really did help spark stuff and then
Speaker 1: you've got economies of scale and along the way it's
Speaker 1: been technology innovation. But I do think it's worth, you know,
Speaker 1: noting that like you and I remember back in the
Speaker 1: heyday where people are raising venture capital for all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff, and that those days are long over and
Speaker 1: there were innovations, but economies of scale are really what
Speaker 1: drove a lot of the progress that we've seen at
Speaker 1: our summit over the past couple of days. I heard
Speaker 1: venture capital for quote unquote clean tech is back up.
Speaker 1: Is that right? There's definitely some renewed interest and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, but vcs have so many scars from money
Speaker 1: loss the first time around. The Usually the first criteria
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, can we invest in this uh in
Speaker 1: a way that won't you know, in two years require
Speaker 1: this company and us to try and raise like a
Speaker 1: half a billion dollars for them to go demonstrate the
Speaker 1: technology out in the desert someone. So if it's something
Speaker 1: that's simpler than there, and you know, and it's more
Speaker 1: plug play or or or software oriented, and I think
Speaker 1: they're more there. I'm smiling because it just reminds you
Speaker 1: of the areas that I used to cover as an analyst,
Speaker 1: you know, geothermal and carbon capture and stores, which were
Speaker 1: big projects that in a lot of cases cost tens
Speaker 1: to hundreds of millions of dollars to test. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about some of the things that didn't pan out
Speaker 1: over the decade. It's a really good question. And um,
Speaker 1: as you know ten years ago, we as a firm
Speaker 1: at Bloombergunna F we're interested in all the potential new technologies,
Speaker 1: and we frankly from a sort of resources perspective, we're
Speaker 1: spending as much time probably thinking about bio fuels as
Speaker 1: we were about geothermal and ccs and all these other things.
Speaker 1: There was certainly no guarantee it was. It wasn't clear
Speaker 1: then that you would have a couple of technologies on
Speaker 1: the renewable side be the biggest ones that would emerge.
Speaker 1: It also wasn't clear at all about how important the
Speaker 1: fracking revolution was going to be in the fact that
Speaker 1: we boost our natural gas production by in ten years.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of things that weren't clear.
Speaker 1: And I would say, though, yeah, I mean like geo
Speaker 1: thermal has not gone in the way I think people
Speaker 1: might have liked and steady um Eile Fuels had a
Speaker 1: moment where basically they built enough capacity to serve ten
Speaker 1: percent of the gasoline market and so they could replace
Speaker 1: what was an additive called mtb UM and the policy
Speaker 1: driven policy driven, and then since then not so much
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. I'm sure you know a few things around
Speaker 1: the edges, but not nearly as much. So, yeah, that
Speaker 1: hasn't panned out. And then of course, um CCS is
Speaker 1: one of those things where you know, I think CCS
Speaker 1: is sort of having a moment again and seems to
Speaker 1: be and it's because it's it's actually, frankly largely because
Speaker 1: the federal government has put in place a pretty generous
Speaker 1: tax credit, which I think a lot of the folks
Speaker 1: in the industry are hoping we'll drive some real scale it.
Speaker 1: But yes, CCS maybe one of the classic technologies that
Speaker 1: required billions of dollars of investment and people just weren't
Speaker 1: willing to kind of take the plunge on it. In
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, we saw basically a form of all of
Speaker 1: these things. All these dynamic changes happen in some shape
Speaker 1: or another. Can you just catch some the major changes
Speaker 1: just last year. Sure, So you know, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look down at my cheat sheet a little bit here
Speaker 1: because I can't remember every single fact that but there, yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly were have been. And I would think the one
Speaker 1: point I would make about twenty nineteen was that, you know,
Speaker 1: we've now done this fact report for eight years, and again,
Speaker 1: like I said, we we do it in Washington, we
Speaker 1: release it in Washington. We want people to understand what
Speaker 1: the facts are. And there is a larger narrative about
Speaker 1: decarbonization and transformation and empowerment of consumers. But every year
Speaker 1: there's like different things that like kind of are slightly
Speaker 1: off trend. You know, something doesn't exactly happen within that
Speaker 1: grander scheme of sort of larger trends. It was seeming
Speaker 1: to kind of have to explain it. Last year was
Speaker 1: interesting though, because basically almost everything happened on trend. So
Speaker 1: basically we saw, you know, on the whole side, we
Speaker 1: saw thirteen percent less coal generation from the year prior,
Speaker 1: so a pretty steep decline. UM. We saw US power
Speaker 1: sector emissions again decline. UM, we saw total US greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas emissions decline just a little bit year on year
Speaker 1: as well. We saw increasing competitiveness for energy storage projects
Speaker 1: paired a solar. We saw wind go past hydro in
Speaker 1: terms of total generation as a contributor. We saw increasing
Speaker 1: energy productivity. And this is something we try and highlight
Speaker 1: every year in the report, which is very very simple metric,
Speaker 1: which is just like how much does the U. S.
Speaker 1: Economy grow and how much does our primary energy consumption grow?
Speaker 1: And the answer is pretty often the economy grows and
Speaker 1: primary energy consumption stays the same or goes down. And
Speaker 1: in fact, basically the GDP grew at a much greater
Speaker 1: rate over the course of a decade than it did
Speaker 1: than energy consumption did. And last year energy consumption actually
Speaker 1: ticked down a little bit. So there's five of ten
Speaker 1: last five of the ten last year started to finish,
Speaker 1: but just ten last years energy consumption has gone down
Speaker 1: year on year, But in each of the last ten
Speaker 1: years the U. S. Economy has grown. Can can you
Speaker 1: explain that a bit? Does that mean we're just getting
Speaker 1: more efficient? Yeah? How this sort of the good news
Speaker 1: and I'm making I'm make an air quote. Um, but
Speaker 1: the good news is that you know, Americans in the
Speaker 1: American economy is unbelievably profligate in terms of how much
Speaker 1: energy we consume per person, we use a ton, I mean,
Speaker 1: more than anybody in the world. So yeah, by a
Speaker 1: long shot. So what that means is that, you know,
Speaker 1: not only they're low hanging fruit. There's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't you know, a massive harvest of watermelons. All
Speaker 1: every ground scooped up for the for the energy efficiency sector.
Speaker 1: And so in many ways, we're still just getting started
Speaker 1: on all of this. So you know, for instance, in
Speaker 1: the last decade, we've put you know, there's about a
Speaker 1: billion LED bulbs that have been installed, and that's sort
Speaker 1: of light bulbs are easy because people can kind of
Speaker 1: get their heads around and understand that compared to none
Speaker 1: a year ago, and that's cutting energy consumption massively. But
Speaker 1: we're still only replaced about half the light bulbs in
Speaker 1: the US. There's all kinds of opportunities going forward, only
Speaker 1: pace half only about half. And I can't remember the
Speaker 1: last time I've seen a filament bulb in a store.
Speaker 1: I mean, still there's you know, people have the bulbs
Speaker 1: last a long time, they have them on the shelves
Speaker 1: for years, and you know they're old bulbs, you know,
Speaker 1: And I still have a few old ones in my
Speaker 1: house kicking around someplace. So you know that that change
Speaker 1: is going to take time. But it's not just that
Speaker 1: it's furnaces, it's washers and dryers, it's cable television boxes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some people still watch cable TV, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: all all those kinds of things that are being swapped out.
Speaker 1: And and to be clear, you know, you get you
Speaker 1: can pas themselves on the back is this is some
Speaker 1: sort of great, you know, decarbonization effort, But in many
Speaker 1: cases it's business owners and and and homeowners just trying
Speaker 1: to cut their monthly costs. And along those lines, you know,
Speaker 1: we found that over the decade, the percentage that homeowners
Speaker 1: are spending on energy is like the lowest it's been
Speaker 1: in like forty year years, and they seem to be
Speaker 1: the biggest winners in the past decade, Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean consumer you know, consumer retail retail electricity prices
Speaker 1: have definitely not fallen as much as wholesale power prices,
Speaker 1: but they will continue to fall, especially as US utilities
Speaker 1: are supposed to pass through the value of a tax
Speaker 1: cut that the Trump administration gave it last year. Um,
Speaker 1: and that will continue. And but generally speaking, yet consumers
Speaker 1: pay less. We know we have some of the least costly. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, energy in the entire world on multiple levels
Speaker 1: is cheap natural gas now plentiful oil production in the US,
Speaker 1: and gasoline prices that aren't high, and then electricity prices
Speaker 1: that have been driven down by cheap gas prices. So
Speaker 1: let's flip it a bit. Costs of all technologies have
Speaker 1: decreased over the past decade, right, and companies used to
Speaker 1: do okay by getting relatively high terraces for their electricity
Speaker 1: or hydrocarbons. Who is winning now in this current market.
Speaker 1: So that's a really good question and definitely something that
Speaker 1: we probably hear more from clients these days, which is like,
Speaker 1: how do I make a buck? Yeah? Exactly, Um, And
Speaker 1: that's not a you know, that's not a crazy it's
Speaker 1: not a crazy question because you know, with this sort
Speaker 1: of real lentless pushed down on power prices, particularly in
Speaker 1: the electricity sector, it's hard for folks to make money.
Speaker 1: In many cases. We are definitely seeing new models in
Speaker 1: terms of how energy get sold. But I do think
Speaker 1: it's not a it's not a sort of I can't
Speaker 1: sort of blow that question off. I think that one
Speaker 1: of the things that in the medium to long term
Speaker 1: in the US that's going to have to be thought
Speaker 1: about is how can you restructure power markets in a
Speaker 1: way so that people do get compensated. Because it's it's
Speaker 1: all well and good that we're in this period of
Speaker 1: sort of steep power price decline, but eventually, if you
Speaker 1: want to continue to see people, you know, participating in
Speaker 1: terms of building new projects and stuff, then you're going
Speaker 1: to need to make sure that they can earn a
Speaker 1: rate of return so they can keep investing. All that said,
Speaker 1: a small asterisk guy put on that is that I
Speaker 1: think in the US, traditionally, when especially when you think
Speaker 1: about renewable development and even you know, power and even
Speaker 1: a fossil fuel development, we have this great tradition of
Speaker 1: independent power producers, the sort of um, you know, the
Speaker 1: cliche wind farm cowboys. You know, these independent firms that
Speaker 1: were going out, yeah exactly, and you know, signing deals
Speaker 1: and whatever. Those guys are usually backed by private equity money,
Speaker 1: and those investors expect pretty high rates of return on
Speaker 1: the projects. Those guys in particular are facing you know,
Speaker 1: some real headwinds at the moment, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you can't have a big utility who wants to
Speaker 1: earn a much lower rate of return come in and develop.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're definitely starting to see, not just
Speaker 1: with like domestic utilities like the southerns and the Dukes
Speaker 1: and the others, but also international players like a Knell
Speaker 1: and some of the others who are coming over and
Speaker 1: they make a lot of money cash flow off of
Speaker 1: other operations. They don't need to earn ten to fift
Speaker 1: rate of return on a winter solar project. They'll take
Speaker 1: you know, in the five to ten percent, maybe even
Speaker 1: a little lower. So the market's going to change as
Speaker 1: a result of that. But yeah, it's it's hard out
Speaker 1: there for some of the windfarm cowboys of yesteryear. So
Speaker 1: is that what you see for the next ten years?
Speaker 1: We'll see more and more international players coming in. Where
Speaker 1: are the opportunities in the next time. We're definitely seeing
Speaker 1: more international players come into renewable development. There's still plenty
Speaker 1: of opportunities for domestic players for energy efficiency retrofits, you know,
Speaker 1: and that stuff that's local work, you know, that has
Speaker 1: to be done, the installation of PV modules on people's roofs. Again,
Speaker 1: like there's no reason's an you need to be owned
Speaker 1: by UH, an international conglomerate or even like a tesla.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's are there are those opportunities I
Speaker 1: think out there. Um, you know, we we do think
Speaker 1: that these report itself to be clear and UH is
Speaker 1: all backward facing. But what it doesn't have is any
Speaker 1: forward looking views because we we wanted to keep it
Speaker 1: just fact based. So this is my opinion, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, we are optimistic. We think we're going to
Speaker 1: see actually one of the very strongest years for renewable
Speaker 1: build this year, and we think we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: good couple of years going forward. Do you foresee any
Speaker 1: black swans or or big changes in the next decade.
Speaker 1: I guess that's a definition of black swan. You can't
Speaker 1: see it, but hey, black swans, black squirrels maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know. You know, it's it's hard to maybe more
Speaker 1: blackly black squirrels. I mean in the sense that you don't.
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of the trend, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of momentum here um that's gone on. Um that's
Speaker 1: going to be pretty hard to turn back. And if
Speaker 1: if you need any sort of proof of that, maybe
Speaker 1: look at the last couple of years. I mean, from
Speaker 1: a policy perspective, the Trump administration has tried to do
Speaker 1: kind of whatever they can to support the coal industry,
Speaker 1: and yet the amount of coal generation dropped really sharply
Speaker 1: last year. The number of coal plants that say they're
Speaker 1: retiring is definitely not easing up. There's like another twenty
Speaker 1: five giga watts of coal that's said that they're gonna
Speaker 1: retire over the next five years. So I take that
Speaker 1: as sort of proof that there is a kind of
Speaker 1: momentum here that really isn't going to get knocked off course,
Speaker 1: at least by policy. I guess there are other questions
Speaker 1: about other things that that could come up um as
Speaker 1: we go forward, and of course, you know, you never know. Certainly,
Speaker 1: the coronavirus as we speak is a scary thing, and
Speaker 1: who knows what kind of effect that can have on
Speaker 1: markets and things like that. And there's trade. But but
Speaker 1: generally I think it's gonna be hard to kind of
Speaker 1: stop the momentum what we've seen. I think I have
Speaker 1: one more question for you. You run the America's for being,
Speaker 1: if not just the US, are you seeing what's happening
Speaker 1: in the US happened in other markets as well, or
Speaker 1: is it unique to the US the questions. So I'll
Speaker 1: maybe not try to go country by country because we'll
Speaker 1: take too long. But I mean, I think Canada is
Speaker 1: an interesting case where we're definitely seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: things go on. However, the Canadian power sector in particular
Speaker 1: is already pretty decarbonized because they get so much hydro
Speaker 1: electric power to begin with, where coal is still prevalent,
Speaker 1: which is out in the province of of Alberta. Um
Speaker 1: they are actually also we're seeing a lot of transition underway,
Speaker 1: although some political challenges out there. The rest. You look
Speaker 1: further south, Mexico has traditionally been one of the hottest
Speaker 1: markets that we've seen, but the current government is definitely
Speaker 1: raising some problems for the industry down there. And then
Speaker 1: across the rest of Latin America, Brazil is a fascinating one.
Speaker 1: I would just say to keep an eye on because suddenly,
Speaker 1: like almost overnight, there's a couple of gigga outs of
Speaker 1: distributed solar that's just like boom popped up, and and
Speaker 1: that's a market that we just know it's just to
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere to some large degree. So that's
Speaker 1: one that we'll have to see. Um. But they're they're
Speaker 1: you know, the the story of lad i Am is
Speaker 1: obviously very different from the US of Mexico because these
Speaker 1: are middle income developing countries potentially with much faster growth.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't really have actual top line growth
Speaker 1: and electricity demand in the US. It basically flat has
Speaker 1: been for a decade, and Canada is not that different either, Ethan.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming in sure, thank you. Bloombergun e F
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