Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati this week, entering the
Speaker 1: mid Transition. We're constantly told that clean energy is now cheaper,
Speaker 1: and yet the transition away from fossil fuels is proceeding
Speaker 1: at a glacial pace. Why is that. One answer might
Speaker 1: be that we are living through what some experts call
Speaker 1: the mid transition. Everywhere you look, you see the coexistence
Speaker 1: of two types of technologies, one that runs on fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: the other that runs on electricity from clean sources. Now,
Speaker 1: both these systems have advantages and disadvantages, and there is
Speaker 1: an ongoing struggle between the two, a tug of war
Speaker 1: between two very different futures. But having these two systems
Speaker 1: run in parallel comes with costs, which makes this mid
Speaker 1: transition more expensive and more politically fraud. This is all
Speaker 1: true before you add the uncertainties that come from geopolitical
Speaker 1: events such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Emily Krubert, a civil engineer and
Speaker 1: an environmental sociologist currently at the University of Notre Dame
Speaker 1: in the US. She studies the mid transition, and so
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask her how can countries successfully navigate
Speaker 1: this mid transition to the benefit of their populations. Among
Speaker 1: the four largest carbon polluters, we are already seeing climate
Speaker 1: action slow down in the US, and there are signs
Speaker 1: of much lower ambition in India and China. So the
Speaker 1: answer to managing the mid transition matters more than ever before.
Speaker 1: If you have feedback, questions or guest suggestions for the show,
Speaker 1: please get in touch at zero port at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1: Now here's my conversation with Emily Kruber. Emily, welcome back
Speaker 1: to Zero.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me so among your.
Speaker 1: Many research areas you look at this idea of the
Speaker 1: mid transition. But let's just start at a high level.
Speaker 1: Define what is the mid transition?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is actually a really important thing
Speaker 2: to define upfront, because it's not necessarily clear when you're
Speaker 2: in it. But what we talk about is the mid
Speaker 2: transition is a period where you have a fossil based
Speaker 2: system and a non fossil based system that are both
Speaker 2: big enough to constrain each other, which I think is
Speaker 2: kind of a critical point with a lot of the
Speaker 2: oil stuff that's going on, particularly, but also small enough
Speaker 2: that they can't provide all necessary services that we get
Speaker 2: from the energy system. And this is sort of the
Speaker 2: tricky period between two stable end states where you have
Speaker 2: a mostly fossil based system and a basically non fossil
Speaker 2: based system on the other end, they're both easier to
Speaker 2: manage than this middle period.
Speaker 1: And is there a clear example or two where we
Speaker 1: can see that tension play out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think where we see it most clearly right
Speaker 2: now as in the electricity sector. And my co author
Speaker 2: Sarah Hytink Simon and I had kind of thought about
Speaker 2: when you you can sort of heuristically determine whether you're
Speaker 2: in the mid transition and kind of determined it's probably
Speaker 2: around when you have twenty percent penetration by the new system.
Speaker 2: So we see that more in electricity than other places.
Speaker 2: But as examples, solar coach element because you have a
Speaker 2: hard time ramping back gas or coal or nuclear plants
Speaker 2: or something is one version of this. Similarly, really really
Speaker 2: high ramp rates for gas plants to accommodate solar coming online.
Speaker 2: Those kinds of given takes and sort of constraints on
Speaker 2: each other are pretty characteristic of what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But then some grids around the world, I mean, I
Speaker 1: live here in the UK, and last year something like
Speaker 1: sixty five to seventy percent of the electricity came from
Speaker 1: zero carbon sources, not only renewables because there's nuclear in
Speaker 1: the mix. But are those beyond the mid transition then.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. So it's funny because we hadn't
Speaker 2: really set out to make this a twenty eighty problem,
Speaker 2: but it probably is kind of a twenty eighty problem.
Speaker 2: I think if you have a system that's sixty five
Speaker 2: percent non carbon, which as you say, is not quite
Speaker 2: the same as a brand new system, because you're still
Speaker 2: working with things that basically follow the old rules, like
Speaker 2: a nuclear plant behaves a lot like a fossil plant.
Speaker 2: Hydroplants have been forced to sort of behave in ways
Speaker 2: that are consistent with the way that we've handled systems
Speaker 2: in the past, and so those ones do kind of
Speaker 2: reduce the constraints that you have with the changing system.
Speaker 2: But that said, like if the zero carbon system can't
Speaker 2: actually handle everything yet, that's where we would consider that
Speaker 2: to not quite be fully all the way through yet.
Speaker 1: So on the grid itself in the UK, there is
Speaker 1: a particular challenge, but I think this will show up
Speaker 1: in many other places, which is the UK has some
Speaker 1: of the highest prices of electricity in the world for
Speaker 1: many reasons, but one of the reasons is the mid transition.
Speaker 1: It has invested in all this cleaner energy generation, mostly
Speaker 1: offshore wind, which is fairly expensive even now, but it
Speaker 1: has to maintain this fleet of gas power plants, and
Speaker 1: it has to build out this grid that will move
Speaker 1: electricity longer distances because a lot of the offshore wind
Speaker 1: is in the north in Scotland are whereas a lot
Speaker 1: of the consumption is in the south, in the London area,
Speaker 1: and so you are getting a more expensive energy system
Speaker 1: and it's causing a whole bunch of political problems at
Speaker 1: a time of cost of living crisis, inflation, another energy shock,
Speaker 1: and so people are blaming the transition. People are blaming
Speaker 1: net zero. Are they right?
Speaker 2: It's a really interesting question. I'm glad you brought this up,
Speaker 2: because I think one of the things about mid transition
Speaker 2: that gets so complex is that there's a reason that
Speaker 2: you want to get through it as quickly as you
Speaker 2: possibly can. I think people misinterpret my work sometimes to say, oh,
Speaker 2: like this is going to be hard, therefore we should
Speaker 2: slow down, and actually we're kind of making the opposite point,
Speaker 2: You should try to get through this as quickly as possible,
Speaker 2: because on the other side things look better. But like
Speaker 2: you're saying, I would argue it's not the fault of
Speaker 2: the new system that things are expensive, but it is
Speaker 2: true that during the mid transition you're having to pay
Speaker 2: for duplicative resources. You essentially have to maintain all of
Speaker 2: the fixed costs associated with both the fossil system and
Speaker 2: the non fossil system until the fossil system can be retired.
Speaker 2: But because of that, we do expect some cost reductions
Speaker 2: once you actually have completed that transition, because you no
Speaker 2: longer have to maintain the pipelines, the safety infrastructure, the
Speaker 2: inspection infrastructure, all these kinds of things. I think there
Speaker 2: is a lot to be said for being honest with
Speaker 2: people that the transition is going to be tricky, and again,
Speaker 2: this is why you would like to get through it
Speaker 2: as quickly as possible. And I think we do have
Speaker 2: a really really strong set of evidence that the other
Speaker 2: end of this is going to be cheaper, better for people,
Speaker 2: better for public health, and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: But I think the hard thing I suspect this is
Speaker 2: true in the UK, it's certainly true. In the US,
Speaker 2: we have allowed our institutional structures to exist such that
Speaker 2: much of the fossil system actually needs really substantial remediation
Speaker 2: once it closes as well, which is not necessarily something
Speaker 2: that's easy to extract from the companies that are currently
Speaker 2: responsible for those systems, just because of the intensity of it,
Speaker 2: and because of the way that we've sort of avoided
Speaker 2: having to do that in place, And so the notion
Speaker 2: that there might actually be a lot of back end
Speaker 2: closure costs is also something that I think we need
Speaker 2: to be fairly clear right about.
Speaker 1: So you're saying it would be useful if we get
Speaker 1: through it quickly, because these costs are doubling up our
Speaker 1: maintenance of these two systems.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, the war in the Middle East and the closure
Speaker 1: of the strait of hormones again sort of showed, you
Speaker 1: know that the fossil system has its own critical vulnerabilities,
Speaker 1: let alone the external impacts on climate change. Do you
Speaker 1: think the case for countries to then accelerate the transition
Speaker 1: to a cleaner energy, more electric future is just now
Speaker 1: much much stronger as a result of the war.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say much much stronger because I think that
Speaker 2: case has been extraordinarily strong for quite a while. I
Speaker 2: think it is a good illustration of why we think
Speaker 2: that this transition is so important.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: But it's really funny for me as an American because
Speaker 2: I feel like so many people have talked about renewables
Speaker 2: as a way to enhance energy security because they're sort
Speaker 2: of inherently domestic, and so now what this conversation at
Speaker 2: least here turn into, well, we have to redouble our
Speaker 2: efforts in a while to enhance our energy security. It's like, really,
Speaker 2: it's an interesting take, but yeah, the transition is something
Speaker 2: that we expect is going to make countries more dependent
Speaker 2: on domestically accessible resources that can't be blocked. There's some
Speaker 2: questions about manufacturing capabilities for the machines needed to do
Speaker 2: the conversions, but for the most part, you're not really
Speaker 2: reliant on a fuel anymore.
Speaker 1: So we are starting to see signals from countries that
Speaker 1: depend on importing fossil fuels that they would like to
Speaker 1: speed this up. There was an announcement from France that
Speaker 1: they are going to double down on electrification of homes,
Speaker 1: on heat pumps, on electric cars, and they're putting in
Speaker 1: a bunch of subsidies toward it. We've seen movements in
Speaker 1: Asian countries to try and accelerate the deployment of renewables. Again,
Speaker 1: those are countries that have been very dependent on importing
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, and in a fossil fuel shock that those
Speaker 1: kinds of moves makes sense. Then there's the countries that
Speaker 1: are fossil exporters, like the country you are in, which
Speaker 1: is just less and there are a bunch of those countries,
Speaker 1: like about twenty percent of the world has enough fossil
Speaker 1: fuels for itself and then to export it. Why is
Speaker 1: the case for speeding up the mid transition for those
Speaker 1: countries for the exporting fossil fuel countries also one that
Speaker 1: should be speed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think fundamentally it is really just about this
Speaker 2: point that we need to do this, and the end
Speaker 2: state is going to be much more stable than the
Speaker 2: middle state. I think one of the things that we
Speaker 2: talk about, even beyond costs and beyond the fact that
Speaker 2: you're paying for two systems at once, is just the
Speaker 2: reality that when you have these two systems that were
Speaker 2: really designed to work together and would both probably function
Speaker 2: a bit better if they didn't have to accommodate. The
Speaker 2: other one is just that you're exposing yourself to a
Speaker 2: whole suite of risks that we haven't really thought about before.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting and also kind of tragic watching some
Speaker 2: of the after action reviews for big power outages or
Speaker 2: other kinds of issues that we see emerging, where it's like,
Speaker 2: in retrospect, this could have probably been predicted, but we
Speaker 2: haven't really spent the time to do that. And I
Speaker 2: think that really, even just beyond the fuel security risks
Speaker 2: that are becoming, I think clearer to people that don't
Speaker 2: think about this all the time, what's interesting is there's
Speaker 2: so many other good reasons to accelerate this transition, cost
Speaker 2: being one of them, risk management being one of them,
Speaker 2: and just actually getting to a place where you're reaping
Speaker 2: all of the benefits of having transitioned, so again, public
Speaker 2: health benefits, climate benefits, all sorts of things like that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's true that the exporting countries are in
Speaker 2: a bit of a different mindset, I think if you're
Speaker 2: only looking at global demand processes rather than some of
Speaker 2: the reasons why we want to transition. But I don't
Speaker 2: think that's a reason not to.
Speaker 1: And so are there economies countries that you think are
Speaker 1: navigating the mid transition On the well side.
Speaker 2: It's so funny. I think I am one of the
Speaker 2: people that probably would argue that we're less in the
Speaker 2: mid transition and then most which is funny. I'm so
Speaker 2: happy that this term has resonated with people, But I
Speaker 2: think my caution a lot of the time is we're
Speaker 2: barely in it. Like you said, I think there are
Speaker 2: some electricity systems around the world that are in the
Speaker 2: sort of early to middle stages of this, just managing
Speaker 2: inverter based resources as things that we haven't really had
Speaker 2: to deal with before. But for the most part, like
Speaker 2: with transportation, I don't think we've entered this stage yet.
Speaker 2: I think most of the challenges that we're seeing are
Speaker 2: sort of inherent challenges of the fossil system as opposed
Speaker 2: to being real challenges of transition. I do concede that
Speaker 2: I think there are some places where people are making
Speaker 2: some anticipatory choices that are reflective of the expectation of transition,
Speaker 2: but we're not necessarily really in the place that's going
Speaker 2: to be hard. What's nice about the anticipatory stuff is
Speaker 2: it's my pretty firm belief that if you plan for this,
Speaker 2: you can really not eliminate but reduce the risks and
Speaker 2: reduce the added costs quite a bit. And so that's encouraging.
Speaker 1: And can you give examples of these countries that are
Speaker 1: taking on the anticipatory moves already?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I won't give you a country example, but
Speaker 2: just one that I've been working on a lot lately
Speaker 2: is refining in California, which is sort of country scale.
Speaker 2: So I'll let this example maybe slide a bit, But
Speaker 2: what we're seeing in California is about a ten percent
Speaker 2: penetration by zero emissions vehicles as light duty vehicles at least,
Speaker 2: which is bigger than you see in most places, but
Speaker 2: is still not dominant by any means. So oil demand
Speaker 2: is declining, It's not declining that fast, but it is declining.
Speaker 2: But we're starting to see refineries announcing their exits in
Speaker 2: ways that are creating a bit of a scramble to
Speaker 2: figure out how to manage this where supply is dropping
Speaker 2: faster than demand. What makes this example so interesting and disclosure,
Speaker 2: I've been working with the California Energy Commission on these
Speaker 2: topics for a bit now. But what makes this conversation.
Speaker 2: So interesting, I think is the recognition that actually, refinery
Speaker 2: exits are consistent with state policy goals, and they are
Speaker 2: consistent with what the broader trajectory is, but they're misaligned
Speaker 2: with how demand is changing. And so I think California
Speaker 2: is doing a reasonable job recognizing that this is a
Speaker 2: problem and trying to think hard about what happens next,
Speaker 2: but they too aren't quite in it yet. I think
Speaker 2: there's a couple of other situations around the world where
Speaker 2: you see sort of similar things, where there's just an
Speaker 2: expectation that things are going to change. What gets complicated
Speaker 2: about that is that just because like a government might
Speaker 2: be pretty committed to seeing those kinds of transitions happen,
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that companies in particular believe it. And I
Speaker 2: think that that's the pattern we see more frequently actually,
Speaker 2: is people sort of playing chicken a little bit and saying, well,
Speaker 2: you say this is going to happen, I don't believe you,
Speaker 2: and so I'm not going to do very much about
Speaker 2: it until I have to. And then you end up
Speaker 2: with these very very tricky situations where you're essentially really
Speaker 2: enhancing market power of particular firms. You're really putting countries
Speaker 2: in a bit of a bind about losing critical services.
Speaker 2: This is not a fossil fuel example, but the UK
Speaker 2: just went through this with steel, and I think that's
Speaker 2: not the only example we've seen of this recently.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Another way is where the country is plunged into a
Speaker 1: crisis and then it has to act. So we saw
Speaker 1: in Spain last year that the blackout that you know,
Speaker 1: many people blamed on renewables, but it was a whole
Speaker 1: system wide problem of not just being able to manage voltage,
Speaker 1: not particularly a problem that renewables was causing. And so
Speaker 1: they are now. You know, I have had number of
Speaker 1: reports come out and a number of policy changes that
Speaker 1: have happened as a result, and that ought to be
Speaker 1: something that the rest of European grid is going to
Speaker 1: learn from as well, because one of the report comes
Speaker 1: from and so E, which is the European Wide Transmission Authority,
Speaker 1: and they are taking on the lessons of automating certain
Speaker 1: changes that happened in the grid that were being made
Speaker 1: physically at that you know, required people to be present
Speaker 1: at a particular place that really don't need to be.
Speaker 1: You could automate these things that are now being deployed.
Speaker 1: Another one that I don't have as close and understanding
Speaker 1: is the blackouts that have happened in Texas. What have
Speaker 1: been the outcomes of that, because Texas itself, at least
Speaker 1: on the grid, is kind of toward the mid transition,
Speaker 1: just given how much renewables and batteries that's added to
Speaker 1: the system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and they are as you know, their own
Speaker 2: system essentially, and so they are having to kind of
Speaker 2: manage this on their own.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What's interesting about the after action on the gas system
Speaker 2: in Texas, I think is that without those blackouts, a
Speaker 2: lot of it was around gas deliverability. This is something
Speaker 2: that I'm frankly personally kind of obsessed with and have
Speaker 2: been for a while. It was obviously a very tragic event,
Speaker 2: and the illustrations that it gave us, I think are
Speaker 2: really instructive. Not necessarily because of the degree of transition
Speaker 2: that they were in. There were other issues there, and
Speaker 2: there were some previous cold snaps that they hadn't really
Speaker 2: implemented recommendations. From that said, I think one of the
Speaker 2: things that we see a lot in deep decarbonization models
Speaker 2: is this assumption that the gas system is there to
Speaker 2: catch you always and that doesn't necessarily acknowledge that the
Speaker 2: times when you're expecting in a model the gas system
Speaker 2: to catch you are actually the most challenging operational conditions
Speaker 2: and the most challenging deliverability conditions. Whereas with Texas you
Speaker 2: have a lot of questions about does gas go directly
Speaker 2: to people's heat or does gas go to the power plant?
Speaker 2: Is the line frozen? Did you bother to recognize that
Speaker 2: this was actually critical infrastructure now? But I think one
Speaker 2: of the things, sort of like we were talking about
Speaker 2: before the mid transition, poses these new risks that you
Speaker 2: don't necessarily see. And I think that illustration is actually
Speaker 2: really important because in the Texas situation, people just sort
Speaker 2: of assumed that the gas system would be ready for
Speaker 2: this without informing those assets that they needed to be
Speaker 2: the backup in this kind of a situation. That's not
Speaker 2: totally fair. I think some of them probably had been
Speaker 2: informed into an act that said there were these new
Speaker 2: conditions where people sort of assumed things would be fine
Speaker 2: and they weren't. And those types of outcomes are again,
Speaker 2: I think, predictable when you look for them, but can
Speaker 2: catch you really off guard in really dangerous ways if
Speaker 2: you don't.
Speaker 1: After the break more of my conversation with Emily Grubert.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying this episode of Zero, please take a
Speaker 1: moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube,
Speaker 1: and Spotify. It makes the algorithms happy and helps more
Speaker 1: people find this podcast. A lot of the conversations so far,
Speaker 1: we've looked at sort of rich country examples, you know,
Speaker 1: Europe and the US, which are energy systems that are
Speaker 1: not really growing right now. Okay, the electricity system might
Speaker 1: be growing a little bit faster than it has, but
Speaker 1: overall energy consumption has been declining in Europe for a
Speaker 1: long time now, whereas in developing countries energy consumption all
Speaker 1: across the board is rising. Is the mid transition faster
Speaker 1: to go through if you have a growing energy system,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: It is, and especial if it's a situation where you're
Speaker 2: not really expecting to have to retire a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I think that the sort of long
Speaker 2: term industrialized countries are in a bit of a different
Speaker 2: situation here, just because we have the advantage of having
Speaker 2: pretty old infrastructure, so you don't really need to worry
Speaker 2: about amortization and stuff like this once you start really
Speaker 2: looking into transition, that's a challenge, I think with countries
Speaker 2: that are still growing their systems in a fossil reliant way.
Speaker 2: This is I think an interesting callback to a lot
Speaker 2: of the conversations about leapbrogging that happened many many years
Speaker 2: ago when people were starting to look at distributed systems.
Speaker 2: But the notion that you might actually have utility scale
Speaker 2: systems that can leapfrog and just skip the need to
Speaker 2: actually retire your fossil assets in some cases not all,
Speaker 2: And obviously I think there's a there's a higher benefit
Speaker 2: to providing people energy services at basically even if that's
Speaker 2: fossil based for a pretty significant proportion of what is
Speaker 2: actually still needed. That said, the more that you can
Speaker 2: avoid building stuff that you know you're going to have
Speaker 2: to retire, I think, the easier this transition becomes. So
Speaker 2: you're right, just the fact that they are growing without
Speaker 2: necessarily also having to shut down a bunch of stuff
Speaker 2: I think does change the situation. But like to the
Speaker 2: broader point, even the long term industrialized countries, if you
Speaker 2: do assume that electrification is happening, we're still talking about
Speaker 2: at least in the US, I think the statistics are
Speaker 2: mostly that our electricity capacity might need to grow by
Speaker 2: a factor of two to six or so to accommodate
Speaker 2: a lot of the just primary energy sifts over to electricity.
Speaker 2: So still huge growth environment, but with this added challenge
Speaker 2: of closing things. That looks a little different in countries
Speaker 2: that either have not really provided modern energy services widely,
Speaker 2: or have done so but have brand new fossil based systems,
Speaker 2: and I think those two conditions are also quite different.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in the case of the UK, for example,
Speaker 1: the core power plants are already aging, and yes, maybe
Speaker 1: some of them had to be retired maybe a few
Speaker 1: years early, but it wasn't too much of a problem,
Speaker 1: not fifty years early exactly, Whereas in places like Indonesia
Speaker 1: or China or India where they're even now building coal
Speaker 1: power plants for them, the lifetime is fifty years, and
Speaker 1: so if you're going to have to retire them to
Speaker 1: three decades early, that's going to be a hefty cost.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so in a way, then the point you're
Speaker 1: trying to make is that given how complex the energy
Speaker 1: infrastructure is and how long the different parts of it exist,
Speaker 1: changing it requires a lot of good planning a lot
Speaker 1: of future thinking, and that requires a lot of political stability,
Speaker 1: which there isn't around most countries. So let's come to
Speaker 1: sort of the sociology hat that you wear in doing
Speaker 1: your research and look at how to manage this from
Speaker 1: a political point of view. So for so few companies,
Speaker 1: I mean, the US is probably the best example of this,
Speaker 1: have a lot of leverage on politicians and does have
Speaker 1: a lot of leverage on how the energy system is
Speaker 1: planned for. So what is it that needs to be
Speaker 1: done to ensure that a realization that clean energy is
Speaker 1: the future is one that allows for clean energy voices
Speaker 1: or governments to think about how to get to the
Speaker 1: meat transition and go through it pretty quickly. How do
Speaker 1: you manage the politics?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like it's almost
Speaker 2: a trope at this point to be like, well, the
Speaker 2: politics are harder than the technology. It's interesting because I
Speaker 2: don't actually think that's necessarily been true the whole time
Speaker 2: that I've been working on energy systems. But we've seen
Speaker 2: so much technological advance that makes it pretty clear that
Speaker 2: we have the ability to do this that I think
Speaker 2: we are squarely in the version of the world where Yeah,
Speaker 2: the politics are hard. The good thing about politics is
Speaker 2: they're not bound by thermodynamic constraints, at least usually, so
Speaker 2: I think it is something that goes well beyond like,
Speaker 2: you know, can we come to a compromise position that's
Speaker 2: based on a policy that we've seen work in some
Speaker 2: other structure in the past. And I'm being a little
Speaker 2: oblique here, what I really mean is, I think, especially
Speaker 2: looking at the US and a lot of the policies
Speaker 2: that get exported from the US, there's a huge emphasis
Speaker 2: on kind of looking to say, you know, when we've
Speaker 2: done clean air policy in the past, looking at acid
Speaker 2: rain or smog or things like that, these were the
Speaker 2: kinds of things that worked in those situations. We're past
Speaker 2: the point where that's helpful, I think, And so in
Speaker 2: thinking about managing the politics, I really think this has
Speaker 2: to be around why is the future that we're talking
Speaker 2: about so much better? Why is the future that we're
Speaker 2: talking about one that's going to enable you and future
Speaker 2: people to actually live a dignified life. And these kinds
Speaker 2: of points I think are much more important than your
Speaker 2: kill what hours are going to be twenty percent cheaper,
Speaker 2: or you know, you won't have to look at this
Speaker 2: pipeline or whatever that kind of a thing is. But
Speaker 2: I think really talking about this as a social transition
Speaker 2: that will be better once we get through this really
Speaker 2: challenging thing, that's part of it. What's interesting, I think
Speaker 2: from a sociological perspective is people are remarkably altruistic when
Speaker 2: they actually trust that that altruism is going towards something
Speaker 2: like people are shockingly happy to sacrifice when they think
Speaker 2: there's going to be a good outcome at the end
Speaker 2: of it. And I'm not saying this to say like, yes,
Speaker 2: we have to go into entire sacrifice mode. Obviously there
Speaker 2: are many people that don't have much to sacrifice and
Speaker 2: shouldn't be asked to. Nonetheless, I think saying something like
Speaker 2: the rhetoric around a lot of clean energy development that's
Speaker 2: sort of like there will never be any problems, it
Speaker 2: will be very wonderful and nothing bad will happen and
Speaker 2: everything will be great, I think is not that helpful
Speaker 2: because people suddenly realize that actually there are some challenges
Speaker 2: that we need to navigate. But I think people are
Speaker 2: willing to kind of accept if you explain where we're
Speaker 2: going that like, Okay, I didn't really want to look
Speaker 2: at that solar farm, but my not wanting to look
Speaker 2: at it is not that big of a deal compared
Speaker 2: to what that's going to be able to provide to me,
Speaker 2: So that's part of it. I think the other thing
Speaker 2: that I think about a lot, and this looks a
Speaker 2: bit different in the US than it does in a
Speaker 2: lot of other industrialized context, is just that what this
Speaker 2: actually means for social safety nets is enormously important. I
Speaker 2: started out saying this kind of tongue in cheek, but
Speaker 2: I think it's actually a really important thing to say,
Speaker 2: at least in the US. I don't think you can
Speaker 2: do the energy transition without universal health care. And the
Speaker 2: reason is essentially that a lot of the resistance to transition,
Speaker 2: especially in fossil fuel host communities, is related to people's
Speaker 2: sphere that if they lose their jobs, they lose their
Speaker 2: health care. So stuff like this is more interlinked than
Speaker 2: I think people realize. I think another big difference about
Speaker 2: the US that people may or may not be familiar
Speaker 2: with is we're not totally unique. There are other former
Speaker 2: British colonies that have some holdovers of this actually too,
Speaker 2: but we're almost unique in the sense that we have
Speaker 2: private mineral ownership, which makes our structures and who kind
Speaker 2: of controls the narrative around fossil production quite different than
Speaker 2: in most countries where the government owns the minerals. So
Speaker 2: the fact that I personally can own oil here is
Speaker 2: globally pretty unusual, and yeah, does change the politics quite
Speaker 2: a bit.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about the carbon four, which is India, China, US,
Speaker 1: and Europe. In those places, only the European Union is
Speaker 1: the one that is sort of sticking with the ambition
Speaker 1: needed to act on climate. And Okay, they're not doing
Speaker 1: all the things that you need to deliver on that ambition,
Speaker 1: but they are sticking with the ambition, whereas India and
Speaker 1: China have actually become more cautious on that ambition. And
Speaker 1: of course we know the politics of the US, and
Speaker 1: the US is kind of giving up at least at
Speaker 1: a federal level. But in all these three places, the
Speaker 1: social safety net is actually fairly weak. India is a
Speaker 1: middle income, low income country, does not have much of
Speaker 1: a social safety net. China is now a high middle
Speaker 1: income country, could really have a social net for its people,
Speaker 1: but it does not. Still, it's better than what the
Speaker 1: US social safety net is in a way. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: gives me a pause that if you really do need
Speaker 1: a social safety net for an energy transition to happen,
Speaker 1: just how much longer the energy transition will take because
Speaker 1: the only region where there is is social safety net
Speaker 1: of a kind is Europe.
Speaker 2: On the one hand, and I think that is plausible.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, I sometimes think that politics change
Speaker 2: quickly at times. This is something that I think is
Speaker 2: also really interesting to look at if you just look
Speaker 2: to geology and stuff like this, where for a really
Speaker 2: long time, geologists thought that big landscape changes couldn't happen quickly,
Speaker 2: and then started to develop newer models that were like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, when glacier dam's break or something like that,
Speaker 2: you can actually carve out a canyon in a really
Speaker 2: really fast amount of time. And I think, like the
Speaker 2: speed thing is a thing that we think about a lot.
Speaker 2: I actually think that a really carefully planned and coordinated
Speaker 2: transition that is integrated with a lot of these other
Speaker 2: political wins I guessed, where you can really show people
Speaker 2: what life is going to look like if you actually
Speaker 2: endure this for a little while, probably means this goes
Speaker 2: faster and sticks harder. I think people tend to and
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that this is what you're saying, but
Speaker 2: I think people tend to kind of say, well, if
Speaker 2: we plan, we have to stop what we're doing. We're
Speaker 2: not doing anything, and so I'm not sure that planning
Speaker 2: is going to slow down are nothing, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: And I think that sometimes combining a lot of these
Speaker 2: issues and really trying to form a lot of coalitions
Speaker 2: around political change, it has the potential to move faster
Speaker 2: than doing it one at a time. Who knows, but
Speaker 2: I think there's a shot that this could actually be
Speaker 2: faster if you do it well well.
Speaker 1: But there's an argument that people make about technology, and look,
Speaker 1: once it's cheaper, it is inevitable that we will be
Speaker 1: going towards that system. And we have seen in some
Speaker 1: places that the takeup of clean energy technology, is of
Speaker 1: electrified devices has really taken the S curve and is
Speaker 1: really going much sharper but than many predicted. And it's
Speaker 1: happening in developing countries of all places. You know, we've
Speaker 1: covered stories of Ethiopia and Nepal and Thailand and Vietnam
Speaker 1: when it comes to electric cars, for example. But you
Speaker 1: don't think that's the case that the technology becoming cheaper
Speaker 1: is not an inevitable outcome for this transition.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, and again, coming very much from
Speaker 2: a US perspective, I want to acknowledge that this does
Speaker 2: look different in some places, but we I think reasonably
Speaker 2: it's it's become a bit of a challenge, but reasonably
Speaker 2: our electricity system is not actually a free market. Why
Speaker 2: I think that's good is because it reflects the fact
Speaker 2: that we actually don't want this just to fail, like
Speaker 2: this is a critical social service and it's something where
Speaker 2: we actually do put pretty tight constraints on making sure
Speaker 2: that the power stays on. But because of that, in
Speaker 2: the US at least, we have a lot of institutional
Speaker 2: structures that basically mean it doesn't matter what's cheaper, and
Speaker 2: that's been quite visible so where I live, and in Indiana,
Speaker 2: which is kind of in the middle of the US
Speaker 2: and is one of the few states without a renewable
Speaker 2: portfolio standard of any kind. I believe at this point
Speaker 2: half of the counties, the sort of sub state units
Speaker 2: of power have just banned wind and solar altogether. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if they're cheaper, they're banned. And that's not
Speaker 2: a unique outcome, and so like those kinds of things
Speaker 2: that we see, that's not really so much on their
Speaker 2: regulatory side. I think even within the power systems, just
Speaker 2: rules about being able to show that you have certain
Speaker 2: voltage characteristics and all the things that you actually can
Speaker 2: show with a lot of inverter based resources right now,
Speaker 2: but we don't necessarily have the structure to accept those.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of barriers that go well beyond cost.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean to your point, people are constantly
Speaker 2: shocked when they're essentially like, well, you know, the reason
Speaker 2: that we're not seeing a whole bunch of solar and
Speaker 2: wind up take is because they're too expensive. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: they're actually far cheaper than even operating the system that
Speaker 2: we have right now. But there are these other barriers
Speaker 2: in place that mean that it's relevant, but it's not
Speaker 2: the driving force. So I think in some places the
Speaker 2: regulatory setup is a bit different. Here at least cost
Speaker 2: is helpful, but it's not enough.
Speaker 1: Marcarnie Primishure of Canada has been talking about this idea
Speaker 1: of the Middle powers coming together, and not just for
Speaker 1: climate but for all sorts of problems, working together, creating
Speaker 1: coalitions to Act. You raise the point about the mid
Speaker 1: transition also requiring all sorts of manufacturing of these clean
Speaker 1: energy goods, which right now is very heavily constant treated
Speaker 1: in one country in China, And so can you see
Speaker 1: a place where Middle powers come together and allow for
Speaker 1: speeding up this mid transition.
Speaker 2: No, it's a fascinating question. I actually had one of
Speaker 2: my undergrad research assistants look at this pretty recently because
Speaker 2: I was really curious, is the capacity for solar panels,
Speaker 2: specifically manufacturing that we see in China sufficient to supply
Speaker 2: the whole world if you just assumed that there were
Speaker 2: no geopolitical barriers on that kind of thing. It looks
Speaker 2: like it is actually, which is sort of interesting, and
Speaker 2: I think this is not a new thing, but I
Speaker 2: needed to convince myself that this was true. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a really interesting piece of the
Speaker 2: transition related to energy security that I actually didn't expect
Speaker 2: to see. But this notion that there is global manufacturing
Speaker 2: capacity that's maybe not sufficient to actually result in deployment
Speaker 2: is sort of a one of many kinds of conditions
Speaker 2: that we could see ourselves in. I think when you
Speaker 2: talk about the Middle Powers getting together if they're essentially
Speaker 2: aligned on who they're willing to train with and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, then yeah, that's probably helpful. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, like we are talking about redundancies
Speaker 2: in our manufacturing capabilities for reasons that may be justified
Speaker 2: and maybe aren't depending on your perspective. But like, this
Speaker 2: notion that you want to be self sufficient in manufacturing
Speaker 2: is a new version of energy security that I think
Speaker 2: that we haven't really dealt with before.
Speaker 1: So if you're saying that we're just at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this mid transition, then are these arguments against net zero,
Speaker 1: against the cost of the transition, et cetera. Are they
Speaker 1: going to become more difficult or do you think that
Speaker 1: given these technologies become cheaper, become more dominant, that people
Speaker 1: will see the advantages that flow from them, that it
Speaker 1: becomes easier to deal with the mid transition arguments in
Speaker 1: the future.
Speaker 2: I hope it gets easier. I think what's actually kind
Speaker 2: of interesting about being at the beginning of the mid
Speaker 2: transition here is that if people are worried about it now,
Speaker 2: that's actually much better than being worried about it when
Speaker 2: you're in the middle of it and having to deal
Speaker 2: with all of these operational constraints. At the same time
Speaker 2: as you're thinking about it, we're still in kind of
Speaker 2: an anticipatory mode and being like, oh wait, I'm starting
Speaker 2: to see the edges of what this might look like.
Speaker 2: But having this be as a result of a shock,
Speaker 2: whether it's from a war or an extreme climate event
Speaker 2: or something like that, as opposed to just your everyday
Speaker 2: condition is actually a much better position to be in
Speaker 2: from the possibility of doing well. I think we haven't
Speaker 2: screwed this up yet entirely. There are things we've screwed
Speaker 2: up already, but we're not really committed to having missed
Speaker 2: this one, and so I think that there is a
Speaker 2: lot of opportunity to kind of leverage these glimmers of
Speaker 2: people understanding why this might be so hard to really
Speaker 2: do a lot better. We haven't done it yet, so
Speaker 2: I don't want to be too optimistic about how that's
Speaker 2: going to go. But I think recognizing this before we're
Speaker 2: really really facing a lot of these operational constraints is
Speaker 2: a really good thing.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Emily, thank you so much, and thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to zero Now for the Sound of
Speaker 1: the Week.
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