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Speaker 1: Hi, it's suckh Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast recently did a

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Speaker 1: great episode about the rise of nuclear power in China

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Speaker 1: is the only country deploying nuclear at a large scale

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Speaker 1: right now, and I thought you would enjoy listening to it.

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Speaker 1: So here's the extra episode. We'll be back with a

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Speaker 1: new episode of Zero on Thursday.

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Speaker 2: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

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Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.

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Speaker 4: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy all the way.

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Speaker 3: Tracy, you know, we've been talking a lot about the

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Speaker 3: US energy system for obvious reasons, at least when it

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Speaker 3: comes to electricity. I don't know about you. I kind

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Speaker 3: of feel like the more we talk about it, the

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Speaker 3: less I understanding.

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Speaker 4: Yes, yes, absolutely, I think there are a couple problems. So, like,

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Speaker 4: even beyond the actual different technologies for generating power, there's

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Speaker 4: the patchwork of like how different grids work in different states.

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Speaker 4: There's the different regulations, the different like interoperability and all

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Speaker 4: of that. And then even if we look like beyond

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Speaker 4: the US, it gets I guess even more different.

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Speaker 3: Yes, well, I sort of wonder maybe we can learn

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Speaker 3: something about the US by a little compared and contrast. Right,

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Speaker 3: So if we look at the US and we still

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Speaker 3: don't totally get how it works, maybe, I don't know,

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Speaker 3: just to thought, maybe we'll learn something about the US

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Speaker 3: by looking at some different system and then we have

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Speaker 3: something to compare it to. It might be a waigh

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Speaker 3: in by looking at the outside world.

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Speaker 4: I'm a big fan of doing this, by the way,

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Speaker 4: just to identify like different choke points in a particular

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Speaker 4: domestic process. If you think that the US can't do

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Speaker 4: something for whatever unidentifiable reason or I don't know, cultural

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Speaker 4: like holdback, but if you look at a different country

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Speaker 4: and they're doing it at scale, very very quickly, then

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Speaker 4: I think you can learn a lot about yourself.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's exactly right. And so one of the things

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Speaker 3: again that comes up from time to time here in

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Speaker 3: our conversations is nuclear and this is just one example

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Speaker 3: of a source of power that may or may not

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Speaker 3: be important in our future. But according to and I'm

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Speaker 3: looking at a story from the Economist, over the past decade,

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Speaker 3: China has added thirty seven nuclear reactors according to the

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Speaker 3: International Atomic Energy Agency. I don't know, maybe we've added

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Speaker 3: like two. I forget how many there are at that

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Speaker 3: Georgia plant. A couple more, maybe restarted. But you know,

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Speaker 3: we talk all the time about nuclear and how hard

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Speaker 3: it is and how hard the financing is and the

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Speaker 3: labor force and the learning laws, and we forgot to

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Speaker 3: you know, we forgot how to build them for various reasons.

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Speaker 3: But that's not and it's so expensive. There's all these

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Speaker 3: cost overruns every time. But apparently that is not the

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Speaker 3: case everywhere, and that there are other parts of the world,

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Speaker 3: particularly China, where they just keep building at scale, and

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Speaker 3: maybe we could learn a little bit of how they

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Speaker 3: do that and how they finance it and how they

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Speaker 3: avoid forgetting how to build them.

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Speaker 4: I think this is so interesting, this particular approach that

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Speaker 4: compare and contrast, and it is absolutely true. I think

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Speaker 4: the US has the most nuclear reactors out there, like

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Speaker 4: almost one hundred or something like that, but it took

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Speaker 4: us decades and decades to build them, and as you

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Speaker 4: rightly point out, we haven't built many new ones that recently. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 4: China is adding more and more, and they make it

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Speaker 4: look easy. I mean, I guess they are just like

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Speaker 4: giant things to boil water, but you know, China really

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Speaker 4: makes it look easy. So what can we learn from China.

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Speaker 3: We really do have the perfect guests. By the way,

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Speaker 3: we've had this guest on in the past. We talked

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Speaker 3: to him about something completely different. Yes.

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Speaker 4: This was during the depths of the COVID crisis, Yes,

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Speaker 4: and we were talking to this person. He was based

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Speaker 4: out in Shanghai and we were talking basically about how

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Speaker 4: they were getting food into apartment buildings and staying alive

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Speaker 4: during that time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was an interesting sort of logis story

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Speaker 3: and it's own right. If you're under complete lockdown and

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Speaker 3: a Shanghai apartment building, how do you actually get food?

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Speaker 3: And anyway, I'm thrilled because now we're recording this December seventeenth,

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Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, we are talking to him in completely

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Speaker 3: different times.

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Speaker 4: He's been freed from lockdown.

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Speaker 3: He is now here in studio with us. So we

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Speaker 3: are going to be speaking with David Fishman, senior manager

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Speaker 3: at the Lantau Group. He's based in China typically where

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Speaker 3: he mostly focuses on the Chinese energy system. So literally

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Speaker 3: the perfect guest and a repeat guest. So David, thank

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Speaker 3: you for coming on. Ad lads, welcome to New York City,

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Speaker 3: Welcome back.

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Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 3: What do you do the only other time we talked

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Speaker 3: to you, the only thing we knew about you is

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Speaker 3: that you were figuring out how to get food into

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Speaker 3: your apartment. What do you do now when that's no

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Speaker 3: longer the pressing issue?

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Speaker 5: Yeah? Sure. So I work at a company called the

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Speaker 5: Lantau Group. We are an economic consultancy. We're doing power

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Speaker 5: and gas consulting across apac and so I'm focused on China.

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Speaker 5: I'm in the China. We're doing the business of electricity.

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Speaker 5: So for me, that means either somebody who wants to

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Speaker 5: build an electricity generation asset, wants to sell one, wants

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Speaker 5: to sell a portfolio of assets, wants to invest in one,

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Speaker 5: maybe through a fund or as some other type of

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Speaker 5: investment product. And then on the what we'd call our downstream,

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Speaker 5: who uses the electricity right, your major multinationals, your factories,

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Speaker 5: anybody who uses electricity as an input to produce things.

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Speaker 5: So we're working in the business of electricity, trying to

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Speaker 5: make buying and selling electricity more economic for everybody involved.

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Speaker 4: Well, I'm just going to dive into the nuclear aspect

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Speaker 4: of this. Then, you know, Joe gave us some contours

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Speaker 4: around how much China is currently building. When did China

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Speaker 4: decide that it was interested in nuclear and what was

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Speaker 4: the sort of like thought process the strategy about how

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Speaker 4: nuclear would fit into everything else, including the coal power

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Speaker 4: that China is famous for using.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the history of the Chinese civil nuclear

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Speaker 5: power industry goes back to stems back to the eighties.

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Speaker 5: So looking at you know, the mid to late eighties

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Speaker 5: is when China was signing agreements to bring in its

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Speaker 5: first nuclear reactor technology. At the time, it was there

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Speaker 5: are two different paths that were pursuing. They signed an

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Speaker 5: agreement with Framatome, a French company, to bring over one reactor,

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Speaker 5: and they developed a domestic reactor with at the time

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Speaker 5: the Soviet Union to have a domestic technology tree as well.

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Speaker 5: So in the eighties, China was actually experiencing some pretty

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Speaker 5: rapid economic growth, especially in the late eighties, and looking

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Speaker 5: to expand its power supply rapidly and at the time

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Speaker 5: it was quite tight, and so nuclear was seen as

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Speaker 5: a potential way to expand the power supply and get

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Speaker 5: into a power generation for what was at the time

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Speaker 5: something very new for China.

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Speaker 3: What did you so I mentioned literally from just reading

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Speaker 3: the first paragraph of a paywalled economist story that number

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Speaker 3: of about thirty seven new nuclears. I saw that one too,

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Speaker 3: just like I just google how many new clear reactors

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Speaker 3: are big built in China? Scrolled down where I find

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Speaker 3: something in the Google search. This is how the research

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Speaker 3: is done, folks. Well, why don't you, in your words,

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Speaker 3: give us a sense of the size and scale of

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Speaker 3: Chinese civil nuclear generation and where it's going, and then

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Speaker 3: sort of like the role it generally plays in.

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Speaker 5: The overall portfolio there, yeah, surescribe it. Yeah, sure so.

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Speaker 5: So nuclear in China has the interesting status of being

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Speaker 5: both relatively large and still somehow small. Large in the

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Speaker 5: sense that it's one of the largest operating fleets in

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Speaker 5: the world. Right, You've got you know, fifty almost sixty

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Speaker 5: reactors operating, We're talking about nearly sixty gigawatts of generation capacity.

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Speaker 5: But then in the context of China's entire generation fleet, right,

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Speaker 5: they've got well over a thousand gigawatts of coal and

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Speaker 5: then many more thousands of gigawatts of wind and solar.

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Speaker 5: So it's both large in the context of the world,

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Speaker 5: but also small. And that's the case for a lot

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Speaker 5: of things in China. The thing that can be large

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Speaker 5: in China canoso And what's.

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Speaker 3: The ambition for you know, looking out you know, in

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Speaker 3: a five year plan. I don't know how whether they

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Speaker 3: do that for energy? Two? Where is nuclear potentially? How

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Speaker 3: much could nuclear be a thing? What's the size and

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Speaker 3: scale of the ambition?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, sure so long term? I mean it depends on

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Speaker 5: how your energy planners and your economic planners and vision

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Speaker 5: the long term makeup of the grid. What type of

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Speaker 5: power are we using in twenty fifty Is it going

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Speaker 5: to be a little bit or a medium amount or

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Speaker 5: a lot of nuclear? So it's scenarios, right, and China

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Speaker 5: has scenarios too, for a high end a low end.

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Speaker 5: So the recent scenarios that I've seen, Originally it was

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Speaker 5: saying no less than three hundred gigawatts two hundred and

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Speaker 5: fifty three hundred gigawats, so two hundred and fifty or

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Speaker 5: three hundred reactors, right, two hundred and fifty units. So

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Speaker 5: the United States has just about one hundred right now.

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Speaker 5: So if they got to that scenario, it would be

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Speaker 5: about two and a half times what the US has

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Speaker 5: right now.

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Speaker 4: So what's the process by which a new nuclear reactor

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Speaker 4: gets built in China, and how much does it differ

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Speaker 4: from what goes on in the US.

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Speaker 5: Sure, well, the steps of the process are actually very similar.

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Speaker 5: These are international best practices for how you build these

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Speaker 5: types of infrastructure. So you have to choose a site.

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Speaker 5: You're going through a siting process and environmental impact report.

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Speaker 5: Maybe you've got to make sure the local sea life

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Speaker 5: is not going to be affected by warm water being discharged,

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Speaker 5: there's no endangered species nearby, all those different aspects. So

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Speaker 5: you choose your site. That takes a few years. You

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Speaker 5: have consultation period, there's a period for the public to

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Speaker 5: maybe express their dissatisfaction. This happens in China too. And

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Speaker 5: when the site is finally selected, then you start pre construction.

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Speaker 5: You can level the site, you can connect communications utilities,

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Speaker 5: you can do all your pre groundwork, and then we're

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Speaker 5: waiting for a really key milestone called FCD. That's first

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Speaker 5: concrete need and that's when the first barrel of safety

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Speaker 5: related concrete is poured at the site. And so that

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Speaker 5: would be the beginning of your construction of your containment building.

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Speaker 5: And so from FCD to your full construction period, you

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Speaker 5: do construction, you do installation, you have commissioning. Maybe you

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Speaker 5: encounter some issues during commissioning, you do trouble shooting right,

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Speaker 5: and eventually you fully connect. You connect it, you load

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Speaker 5: your fuel, you have your first criticality the first time

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Speaker 5: that you know, fission starts in the reactor. Then you

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Speaker 5: connect it to the grid and then you get up

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Speaker 5: to one hundred percent power and you got a nuclear

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Speaker 5: power plant. If you do it quick, we'll you're looking

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Speaker 5: at ten to twelve years. If you do it not

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Speaker 5: so quick, you're looking at a lot more than that.

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Speaker 3: So it takes a long time in China too, So

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Speaker 3: you know, we look at you as construction build. I

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Speaker 3: was like, oh can't we It's a log process anywhere

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Speaker 3: you look. I want to ask about the financing. So

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Speaker 3: if there's a new who's paying for this? And also

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Speaker 3: how are they selling this energy? Because one thing I

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Speaker 3: get the impression of is that setting aside the cost

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Speaker 3: of building a new nuclear reactor, which is an expensive,

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Speaker 3: time consuming process. The electricity market structure also seems to

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Speaker 3: matter a lot because you need a certain amount of

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Speaker 3: guaranteed off take, You need a certain amount of price

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Speaker 3: stability if the price robs to zero for a long time,

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Speaker 3: because there's it's very sunny and windy in that area,

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Speaker 3: and suddenly you're that's screwing with the economics of it.

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Speaker 3: And so market structure and financing are both important. Talk

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Speaker 3: to us about how that works in China versus two.

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Speaker 5: Right. Sure, So the builders, right, the companies that are

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Speaker 5: constructing and eventually owning the assets are all state owned enterprises. Okay,

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Speaker 5: So you've got these great big sos. Their job is

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Speaker 5: to own and operate nuclear power plants. And so when

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Speaker 5: they go out to secure financing, of course they're securing

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Speaker 5: financing from state owned banks as well. They're going to

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Speaker 5: be getting very preferential loan treatment, right, very low percentage

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Speaker 5: rates maybe two percent, one and a half percent, things

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Speaker 5: like that. For a huge infrastructure like that, we're talking billions.

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Speaker 3: Of cultural rate, not the spread.

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Speaker 5: Okay, keep going, so very very low rates because again

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Speaker 5: they have a mandate to build. This is state banks,

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Speaker 5: state infrastructure, and state builders. They need to build these things.

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Speaker 5: And then when they're going out to sell power right now,

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Speaker 5: they're given a guaranteed on grid rate. So the grid

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Speaker 5: company and the power regulators say, when you complete your

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Speaker 5: plant and you start selling power, we will make sure

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Speaker 5: you receive this much for every kilo lot hour of

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Speaker 5: power that you send into the grid. Long term, they

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Speaker 5: want to marketize it. They want to have that exposed

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Speaker 5: to the vagaries of the markets the same way that

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Speaker 5: you would see maybe in the United States or Western Europe,

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Speaker 5: and that will be an adjustment for China's nuclear industry.

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Speaker 5: Historically they have only operated on this kind of fixed

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Speaker 5: feed and rate.

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Speaker 4: So, I mean, that's a pretty big comparative advantage if

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Speaker 4: you're getting subsidized financing from a state owned enterprise or

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Speaker 4: something like that. Plus at the moment you have that

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Speaker 4: guaranteed off take, even though they might want to move

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Speaker 4: to a market based system before. It also strikes me

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Speaker 4: that there are a few other potential comparative advantages, like

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Speaker 4: lots of ready labor, lots of manufacturing capacity presumably that's

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Speaker 4: able to make the stuff you need for these things.

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Speaker 4: Walk us through all the different advantages that China has

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Speaker 4: in this process.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, so if you maybe you've seen before or not,

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Speaker 5: if you look at one of those like stacked bar charts,

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Speaker 5: that it compares all the cost components of you know,

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Speaker 5: building one of these things in China versus Europe versus

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Speaker 5: the United States. It's not like you'd point to any

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Speaker 5: single component of the stacked bar and say, ah, that's it.

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Speaker 5: That's the key. That's why they're so cheap. Every single

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Speaker 5: component is cheaper. Right, You've got your cost of capital

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Speaker 5: is lower, You've got your construction timeline is so tightly managed.

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Speaker 4: Right, and so you're saving on interest costsactly.

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Speaker 5: And the sooner you can connect to the grid and

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Speaker 5: start selling power, that's when you start making your money back. Right.

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Speaker 5: So every day that you go over your construction schedule

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Speaker 5: as a hunt, we say in the US about a

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Speaker 5: million dollars of missed power sales and then also about

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Speaker 5: a million dollars of interest payments. So here you got

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Speaker 5: this two million dollars spread every day over your construction

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Speaker 5: schedule that was originally planned. Like that's just mind boggling.

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Speaker 5: Then we look at the production capacity, right, China's incredible

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Speaker 5: industrial production capacity. We're talking about these heavy forged components.

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Speaker 5: Maybe only a couple of companies in the whole world

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Speaker 5: can make things like the reactor pressure vessel, the steam generators,

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Speaker 5: the pressure risers, the primary piping, the reactor cool and pump,

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Speaker 5: all these things. And there's like three companies in the

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Speaker 5: world that can make these, and now at this point,

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Speaker 5: several of them are in China. And when they need

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Speaker 5: to prototype, when they need to iterate, when they need

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Speaker 5: to troubleshoot something, it's all in one industrial cluster. It's

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Speaker 5: all a company and its subsidiaries or its sister partner companies, right,

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Speaker 5: and so they can quickly trouble through things really quickly.

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Speaker 5: So that's going to be your industrial production component very strong.

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Speaker 5: You've got you know, people work longer hours, they'll work

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Speaker 5: through weekends, they'll work through holidays. China is really really

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Speaker 5: competent at building very large construction, very large infrastructure.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 5: It could be a dam, or a bridge, or a

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Speaker 5: highway or a high speed railway, or a nuclear reactor.

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Speaker 5: When it comes to the construction know how of being

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Speaker 5: able to do it on time and like an oiled machine,

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Speaker 5: they're winning there too. And then we talk about the

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Speaker 5: actual way they're building the nuclear power plant. Something really

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Speaker 5: interesting here. This was actually pioneered by Westinghouse out of

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Speaker 5: the United States, something called modularized construction, where on site

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Speaker 5: or off site, you're prefabricating large portions of the reactor,

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Speaker 5: portions of the containment building, and so you can work

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Speaker 5: on individual components at the same time, bring it to site,

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Speaker 5: and then you get the largest crane in the world

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Speaker 5: that lifts this massive, massive, pre assembled component into place.

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Speaker 5: When you're able to work like that, you can cut

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Speaker 5: down the construction schedule even more Interestingly, Westinghouse pioneered that

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Speaker 5: that they haven't been really successful in implementing it in

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Speaker 5: their recent builds. China, on the other hand, learned from

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Speaker 5: Westinghouse and has been very successful with this modulized construction approach.

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Speaker 3: Can you talk more about that, because it's very intuitive, right,

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Speaker 3: the idea that the more you can build at the

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Speaker 3: factory and the less you have to build on site

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Speaker 3: makes it easy and a lot of the so far,

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Speaker 3: it seems like mostly hype about small modular reactors in

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Speaker 3: the US is sort of on this idea, like why

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Speaker 3: don't start a project from scratch? Why is it apparently hard?

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Speaker 3: Even though in theory that seems very obvious, because I

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Speaker 3: don't know if there actually are any modular reactors in

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Speaker 3: the US despite the sort of intuitive appeal.

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Speaker 5: So I think I gotta clarify here, there's modularized construction

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Speaker 5: and there's small modular reactors. Okay, so SMRs are small

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Speaker 5: modular reactors. They refer to a situation where the entire

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Speaker 5: reactor is encased in a single unit.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay, got it. Yeah, but it's still this idea

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Speaker 3: that the lot of the fabrication process happens not at

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Speaker 3: the site itself. Again, something that feels highly intuitive and

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Speaker 3: apparently easier so than time.

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Speaker 5: Well so my understanding from the Westinghouse design approach when

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Speaker 5: they used this for the first time in designing the

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Speaker 5: AP one thousand technology that we're built here in Vocal

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Speaker 5: in the United States, is one of the major barriers. Well,

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Speaker 5: there's terveral. There's always going to be regulatory barriers, right,

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Speaker 5: it's a new way of doing things. Anytime it's a

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Speaker 5: new way of doing things, the regulator is going to

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Speaker 5: want you to jump through a million hoops to try

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Speaker 5: to clarify and justify that what you're doing is defensible

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Speaker 5: and safe. So you've got that one, of course, But

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Speaker 5: then the actual logistics of lifting these massive, massive, we're

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Speaker 5: talking thousands of tons of prefabed components. They actually had

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Speaker 5: to design and then especially contract the world's largest heavy

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Speaker 5: lift crane. Westinghouse did just to be able to lift

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Speaker 5: the first one. They worked with an American company to

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Speaker 5: design to custom design this giant fixed base ring crane

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Speaker 5: that requires other cranes to build it. Then you have

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Speaker 5: this giant giant crane that's in place and it swings around.

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Speaker 5: It usually works for two different units to build two

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Speaker 5: reactors at the same site. Interestingly, they weren't able to

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Speaker 5: use this giant giant crane in China because of a

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Speaker 5: design miscommunication. The first AP one thousands that Westinghouse tried

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Speaker 5: to build in China, they didn't leave space on the

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Speaker 5: site to put the giant crane, so in the end

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Speaker 5: they had to use a very very large roller crane instead,

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Speaker 5: which just about did the job, but it forced them

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Speaker 5: to change the way they built it. China has learned

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Speaker 5: from that though, So the newest you know, QUA long

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Speaker 5: one reactors that China builds, they use a giant ring crane.

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Speaker 5: I believe they use a zoom lion to the Chinese

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Speaker 5: brand has designed one of these, built one of these

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Speaker 5: massive ultra heavy lift cranes as well, and so now

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Speaker 5: that's you know, they're reaping those benefits.

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Speaker 4: I have a slightly random question, which is building nuclear

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Speaker 4: reactors how customized. Do the components that go into these

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Speaker 4: actually have to be like how much does the design

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Speaker 4: actually vary site to site?

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Speaker 5: Well, if they are the same series of reactors, right,

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Speaker 5: you could say the AP one thousand, right, that's a

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Speaker 5: base unit. Now the ones that are built in vocal

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Speaker 5: and the ones that were being built at Summer in

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Speaker 5: South Carolina before that was canceled, those are probably a

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Speaker 5: little bit different, right, but you know, largely part of

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Speaker 5: the same series. The ones that were built in China

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Speaker 5: were built on that same platform, but they would have

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Speaker 5: been modified a little bit for the Chinese context. They

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Speaker 5: called them Chinese AP one thousand CAP one thousands, But

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Speaker 5: you could say they're substantially the same reactor with with

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Speaker 5: small modifications. When we start talking about different series, though,

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Speaker 5: if we say like the French design versus the US

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Speaker 5: design versus what's being sold now in Korea or something

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Speaker 5: like that, you'll see more similarities to their predecessors that

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Speaker 5: they came up through different generations of technology. So like Korea,

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Speaker 5: you'd see similarities to the old g Hatachi reactors because

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Speaker 5: that's where they got their technology originally. Then you'd see

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Speaker 5: to say a modern EP one thousand, these are different

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Speaker 5: tech trees from different competitors.

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Speaker 3: So if I'm a guy on Twitter listening to this,

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Speaker 3: and I am a guy on Twitter, except I'm talking

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Speaker 3: in this, but I'm just a guy on Twitter, and

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Speaker 3: I'm hearing you talk about Okay, they get preferential lending

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Speaker 3: from the state owned bank. The company me is state owned.

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Speaker 3: Probably the crane company is state owned. There's probably a

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Speaker 3: few other state owned businesses. And I think, yeah, okay,

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Speaker 3: you know, they're really good at building reactors fast, but

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Speaker 3: there must be some sort of accumulated debts and inefficiencies

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Speaker 3: that come with all of these all of these entities

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Speaker 3: that have something other than a profit motive. And you know,

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Speaker 3: probably you know, I don't know that my intuition or

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Speaker 3: my response to you, or my my dunk on you

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Speaker 3: is that there's going to be all these accumulated losses

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Speaker 3: that ripple through the systems on account of the fact

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Speaker 3: that it's SOOE working with see after SOE, do we

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Speaker 3: have any sense of how economic these projects actually are?

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Speaker 3: Because if these were private companies, you say, oh, they're

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Speaker 3: either making money, or if these were sort of strictly

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Speaker 3: for profit listed companies, you say, well, they're making money.

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Speaker 3: They're not making money whatever, How do we think about

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Speaker 3: the actual economics of whether this is good investment? Because

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Speaker 3: it's cool. Yeah, you know, China building dozens of reactors.

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Speaker 3: How do we know these are good economic investments?

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Speaker 5: Well, unless I can crack open you know, China National

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Speaker 5: Nuclear Corporations books like, I can't tell you for sure

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Speaker 5: if these are good investments.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 5: But when they build them at that pace, when you

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Speaker 5: look at it from the outside and you say, all

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Speaker 5: the conditions are in place to have surely built this

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Speaker 5: according to the budget you set for yourself. Right, you

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Speaker 5: declared that you would build it with a certain budget

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Speaker 5: and a certain time. Ye talk about the budget, right,

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Speaker 5: So you're looking at you know, your construction period of

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Speaker 5: five years, your pre construction, and your commissioning. You add

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Speaker 5: another five years or so. Right. But then once they

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Speaker 5: build it, they're saying, you know, we can build a

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Speaker 5: single gigawatt unit reactor for five billion dollars four and

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Speaker 5: a half billion, five billion. You look at numbers out

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Speaker 5: of the US and they're saying, we're going to build

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Speaker 5: what vocal cost was two units for twenty eight billion

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Speaker 5: dollars or something like that. You do a little bit

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Speaker 5: of Napkin math, and you say that reactor can't possibly

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Speaker 5: make back how much money it costs to build and

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Speaker 5: it's operating lifetime or maybe it will just about get

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Speaker 5: there after forty years. And that's assuming that the plant

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Speaker 5: operates in the spot markets really really well and sells

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Speaker 5: power so efficiently and never gets curtailed and never has

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Speaker 5: issues like that. Meanwhile, your Napkin math in China is saying, well,

434
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 5: they're going to sell power at this rate for the

435
00:22:12,359 --> 00:22:15,520
Speaker 5: next forty, maybe sixty years, maybe they'll do double life extension,

436
00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:18,720
Speaker 5: maybe eighty years. And you know, so many killo odd

437
00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:21,720
Speaker 5: hours of power times so much per kill a lot hour. Yeah,

438
00:22:21,760 --> 00:22:24,920
Speaker 5: it looks like these things should be reasonably profitable. And

439
00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:28,800
Speaker 5: keep in mind the profit motive of Chinese soees is different, right,

440
00:22:28,840 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 5: They're expected to try to be profitable so they have

441
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,400
Speaker 5: cash flow to do things and you know, be functional.

442
00:22:34,640 --> 00:22:37,440
Speaker 5: But if they have to take a hit, sometimes they will.

443
00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:40,880
Speaker 5: They can be the lubricant in the system that causes

444
00:22:40,880 --> 00:22:43,639
Speaker 5: the inefficiencies to be okay, because you've got you know,

445
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:46,720
Speaker 5: a major SOE that was okay, losing half a billion

446
00:22:46,760 --> 00:22:49,520
Speaker 5: dollars last year. They'll make it back later. It's okay.

447
00:22:49,560 --> 00:22:51,960
Speaker 5: The system didn't fall apart. They were the lubricant.

448
00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:55,879
Speaker 4: So one way we could potentially judge the success of

449
00:22:56,080 --> 00:22:58,560
Speaker 4: Chinese nuclear reactors is you could look at whether or

450
00:22:58,600 --> 00:23:03,360
Speaker 4: not they are significant changing the energy mix. And there

451
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 4: was a story out this week saying that China's domestic

452
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:09,640
Speaker 4: coal production had reached an all time high, and granted

453
00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:14,320
Speaker 4: that's production that's not necessarily coal use, but I don't know,

454
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 4: it doesn't seem like there's been a big impact just yet.

455
00:23:17,520 --> 00:23:18,160
Speaker 1: Why is that?

456
00:23:19,040 --> 00:23:21,640
Speaker 5: And yeah, and that's right. I saw that yesterday too.

457
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:24,840
Speaker 5: I'm bummed about that because I'm on record saying back

458
00:23:25,119 --> 00:23:28,480
Speaker 5: in December twenty twenty three that I thought twenty twenty

459
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:31,320
Speaker 5: four would be the peak year, and I thought structurally

460
00:23:31,359 --> 00:23:33,120
Speaker 5: we were in place to be able to peak coal

461
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 5: consumption in twenty twenty four, and I think we're going

462
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 5: to end up up one one point five percent year

463
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 5: on year something like that, which for China is a

464
00:23:41,359 --> 00:23:43,520
Speaker 5: huge amount of coal because it consumes so much coal.

465
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 5: But it's really close, which of course means if we're

466
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:48,240
Speaker 5: up year on year and last year was the highest

467
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:50,800
Speaker 5: year ever, then this year is the highest test year ever.

468
00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:53,280
Speaker 5: And so what are we looking at, though, We're looking

469
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:56,440
Speaker 5: at a power sector that is still growing consumption every

470
00:23:56,520 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 5: year by seven percent year on year, six or seven

471
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:01,439
Speaker 5: percent year on year, compared to the US, where a

472
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 5: good year is maybe like one percent or half a

473
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:06,600
Speaker 5: percent year on year, and you talk about data center

474
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:09,400
Speaker 5: demand growth is going to maybe rise that and everybody's

475
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:11,200
Speaker 5: freaking out, how are we going to meet this new

476
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 5: consumption need? China has been growing like that seven percent

477
00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:17,160
Speaker 5: eight percent in the past. It was even higher for

478
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 5: decades now. So it to be able to peak coal consumption,

479
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:24,359
Speaker 5: we have to get to a single year where all

480
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 5: of the incremental consumption growth is met by incremental generation

481
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 5: from clean assets, right from wind and water and solar

482
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 5: and nuclear. If we can't manage to do that in

483
00:24:34,119 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 5: one year where all the incremental growth is covered by

484
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 5: new incremental clean generation, thermal generation has to go up.

485
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 5: And so that's still where we're at. We're real close.

486
00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 5: If it only grew by one point five percent this year,

487
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:48,600
Speaker 5: that means that seven percent of China's entire consumption mix

488
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:51,679
Speaker 5: was almost totally covered by growth year on year of

489
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 5: wind and water and solar and nuclear, but it wasn't

490
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 5: quite there, and so that's where we stand at twenty

491
00:24:56,320 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 5: twenty four. I'm going to be made a liar of

492
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 5: that statement at the end of last year where I

493
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 5: thought coal consumption would peak this.

494
00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 3: Year since you mentioned it. Data centers is obviously a

495
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:07,760
Speaker 3: huge part of the story of the return of load

496
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 3: growth in the US. I mean, there's obviously just the

497
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 3: general modernization and country getting wealthier. But tell us about

498
00:25:14,119 --> 00:25:16,080
Speaker 3: the data center's story in China as you see it

499
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:17,320
Speaker 3: and it's impact on the grid.

500
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's of course going to be another growth driver.

501
00:25:21,560 --> 00:25:23,879
Speaker 5: The major difference here is that when China says, oh,

502
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:26,200
Speaker 5: we've got data centers coming in, so instead of six

503
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:28,280
Speaker 5: point five percent growth, it's going to be seven point

504
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:31,120
Speaker 5: five percent growth. Right, It's just what's a percentage point

505
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 5: among friends, right, Whereas the United States going from half

506
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,240
Speaker 5: a percentage point to one point five or two percent

507
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:38,639
Speaker 5: is very different from how we've had to grow in

508
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:42,960
Speaker 5: the past. So China's i think, approaching this with much

509
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:47,000
Speaker 5: more sanguinity, maybe that they're just saying, yeah, it's going

510
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 5: to be a driver of growth. Let's put them in

511
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:50,960
Speaker 5: some of our parts of the country that have low

512
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:53,840
Speaker 5: load and great renewable resources. We're going to put them

513
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:55,880
Speaker 5: Inner Mongolia is what we're going to put them. We're

514
00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 5: going to put growth demand centers in Inner Mongolia. They

515
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 5: don't need to be close to the Chinese.

516
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 3: Is Inner Mongolia.

517
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's sparsely populated, it's got a lot of

518
00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 5: great energy resources. The wind blows and the sunshines all

519
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 5: day long, and there's no load out there. So it

520
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:13,879
Speaker 5: wouldn't have made so much sense maybe to cite you know,

521
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 5: your heavy energy intensive industrial manufacturing so far from the

522
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:20,280
Speaker 5: demand center, so far from the coasts where you could

523
00:26:20,280 --> 00:26:22,360
Speaker 5: get it to logistics. Oh, they put some stuff out there,

524
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 5: but it wasn't so intuitive to put energy intensive industry

525
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:27,959
Speaker 5: out there. But data centers, Oh that's great, right. They

526
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,439
Speaker 5: don't need to be close to markets per se. You

527
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 5: just need to get be them close to the affordable energy.

528
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 5: So it's looking like inn Moongolia or places like that

529
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 5: will be a great match for China's data center growth.

530
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 4: So one of the things that's been happening in the

531
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,560
Speaker 4: US speaking of data centers is a lot of the

532
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 4: big tech companies have been signing off take agreements with

533
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 4: energy producers and they've been pushing them towards more renewable energy.

534
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:55,119
Speaker 4: So they say, we want clean energy to power these things,

535
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 4: and you make it for us and we'll take it.

536
00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 4: Do you see a similar dynamic taking place in China

537
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 4: or do people not care as much about the ultimate

538
00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 4: cleanliness of their energy for data centers.

539
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,439
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a major driver of how the power sector

540
00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:14,640
Speaker 5: offers power. Right, your customers demand a certain type of power,

541
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:17,119
Speaker 5: you should be able to meet their needs. Right now,

542
00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 5: in China, you'd split, or in anywhere anywhere in the world,

543
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:23,399
Speaker 5: not just in China, you'd split green power consumption on

544
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:28,440
Speaker 5: the end user end into voluntary and mandatory. So mandatory

545
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:30,400
Speaker 5: says the government says you have to consume a certain

546
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:32,399
Speaker 5: amount of electricity that is green. We call it a

547
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:35,879
Speaker 5: renewable portfolio standard or an RPS. Right, there's rps and

548
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 5: US states, not all of them, but some of them,

549
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:40,639
Speaker 5: And there's RPS in China. So from that perspective, you

550
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:43,359
Speaker 5: could say the government mandates that you consume a certain

551
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 5: amount of renewable energy to meet the quota. Now. Right now,

552
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 5: that applies to utilities in China, but it doesn't yet

553
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 5: apply to end users. Your aluminum smelter doesn't have that

554
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:56,880
Speaker 5: man yet, but that's the next stage of RPS that's

555
00:27:56,920 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 5: being added right now. Data centers I think need to

556
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 5: be it's quite high. I think it's eighty percent renewable.

557
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 5: To build a new data center in China, you're going

558
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 5: to need to have aluminum and steel and all these

559
00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:10,640
Speaker 5: heavy energy intensive industries need to consume renewable. So that's

560
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:13,719
Speaker 5: your mandatory consumption. That's OURPS driven and then you've got

561
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 5: your voluntary consumption. So voluntary consumption, you know, corporate social

562
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:21,680
Speaker 5: responsibility initiatives ESG right companies say we want to go green.

563
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:23,959
Speaker 5: We want to put it in our CSR report that

564
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:27,239
Speaker 5: we consumed x amount of renewables last year. We did

565
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,159
Speaker 5: this on a voluntary basis. We joined ARE one hundred,

566
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:33,160
Speaker 5: we joined the Science Based Targets initiative, and we want

567
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:35,880
Speaker 5: to claim that we are green. Yeah, that's your consumer

568
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:39,640
Speaker 5: tech brands, that's your luxury fashion and increasing. A lot

569
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 5: of European brands are very aggressive on their renewable energy consumption,

570
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:47,479
Speaker 5: including in China. So if you're producing in China and

571
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 5: selling to the world, you want to be able to

572
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 5: say our production in China was also green. So that's

573
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 5: voluntary consumption of green power. But you demand your power

574
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 5: retail or to provide you with green electricity and they'll

575
00:28:58,800 --> 00:28:59,959
Speaker 5: give you a quote for green electrics.

576
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 3: We started on the nuclear side, we talked coal, but

577
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 3: then we're all, you know, there's all these charts that

578
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 3: are you know, great about all this solar being installed?

579
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 3: Is the economics of that roughly the same in the

580
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 3: sense that it's probably an sooe getting money from an

581
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 3: so E bank, And talk to us about who's funding

582
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 3: that and where does it make sense? Like why in

583
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 3: some places is solar going to be solar wind part

584
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:43,520
Speaker 3: of the answer versus say nuclear.

585
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 5: Right, So when it comes to wind and solar, these

586
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 5: are being built differently from nuclear, right, They're not nearly

587
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 5: as capital intensive. Also, they can be smaller, they can

588
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 5: be more distributed. And so when you look at Chinese

589
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 5: wind and solar, of course you still see sooees playing

590
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:00,520
Speaker 5: a big role, but there are as well ipp independent

591
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 5: power producers or just non soees right, as well as

592
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 5: foreign players. So you as a you know, a foreign

593
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 5: investor who you know, like black Rock, can come into

594
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 5: China and build a power plant if they want to,

595
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 5: a wind or a solar farm, no problem. And so

596
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:18,040
Speaker 5: anyone can participate in that space if they do their

597
00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 5: financial analysis and they see the way to attractive project economics.

598
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:25,000
Speaker 5: So for if Chinese builders they borrow from Chinese banks,

599
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 5: as will Chinese independent borrowers, then international players they might

600
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:30,959
Speaker 5: borrow from international banks, they might try to borrow from

601
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 5: Chinese banks. They can do that as well. They will

602
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:36,479
Speaker 5: get you know, market competitive rates. This is a different

603
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 5: kind of building compared to nuclear where it's instead of

604
00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 5: it's like a national strategic priority to build a rooftop

605
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 5: sole or facility. Now that's much more of a commercial

606
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 5: market operation. However, there are some projects in China that

607
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 5: are national strategic priority. We talk about those huge desert bases,

608
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:57,240
Speaker 5: you know, hundreds of megawats gigawatts, hundreds of gigawats in

609
00:30:57,280 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 5: the middle of the Gobi desert, coal plants, plus a

610
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 5: wind far and plus a solar firem plus a huge

611
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:04,719
Speaker 5: battery array, all financed by a giant Chinese built by

612
00:31:04,720 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 5: a Chinese soe. That's the kind of stuff that that

613
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 5: kind of looks more like a nuclear power plant in

614
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 5: the way that they finance and process that. But you know,

615
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:15,680
Speaker 5: rooftop solar facility in Eastern China. Now that's very much

616
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 5: just a commercial play. If it makes money, if it

617
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:19,080
Speaker 5: makes sense, they'll build it.

618
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 4: So when we talk about China's energy landscape or its

619
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,320
Speaker 4: energy mix, I mean a lot of what we're talking about,

620
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 4: we're pulling in numbers from the Chinese government, right, like

621
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 4: domestic production numbers, domestic usage numbers. And whenever you do that,

622
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 4: there's always a certain element of uncertainty or a question

623
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 4: mark over them. And there are some people who even

624
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,960
Speaker 4: if you were to say that China's coal production was

625
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 4: finally falling, which it isn't, as you know, people wouldn't

626
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:51,040
Speaker 4: necessarily believe it. They'd be like, oh, well, China wants

627
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 4: you to think that. So I guess my question is

628
00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:57,480
Speaker 4: like how much should we believe some of these stats?

629
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:00,200
Speaker 5: Yeah, and this is going to be always very subject

630
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 5: about how much you want to believe or how much

631
00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 5: you think is worthwhile believing. My take that I usually

632
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 5: go to is like, look at the top levels. You've

633
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 5: got your National Bureau of Statistics, You've got these you know,

634
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 5: national level entities who's their job mandate is to report

635
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 5: statistics as faithfully and as honestly as they can. All right, fine,

636
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 5: you know what, that's their job mandate. I have no

637
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 5: latitude to say I think they're doing their job dishonestly

638
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,240
Speaker 5: or something like that. But I do believe there are

639
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 5: many kind of perverse incentives throughout the structure of the

640
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 5: reporting economy in China that would create opportunity for misreporting information.

641
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 5: When you tie you know, the county governor's promotion or

642
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:42,960
Speaker 5: lack thereof, to his ability to grow GDP in that

643
00:32:43,040 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 5: province or in that county, you're creating the incentive for

644
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 5: him to cook the data. When you're creating economic recovery,

645
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 5: and you announced to and this happened. This is a

646
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 5: real story. When you announce to a certain city in

647
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two that you're going to be evaluating how

648
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:02,640
Speaker 5: quickly they've recovered from COVID conditions by seeing how quickly

649
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,960
Speaker 5: their factories get back up to regular production. And you

650
00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 5: know that they're measuring that by seeing how much electricity

651
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 5: they consume. Well, all of a sudden, you have.

652
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 4: And everyone starts plugging stuff in.

653
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 5: Right, So if you can say that people are trying

654
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 5: to do their jobs honestly, and then you also have

655
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 5: people that have been given perpose incentives to misreport did.

656
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:22,800
Speaker 5: I think that's where a lot of the uncertainty.

657
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the core problem of central plan.

658
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,680
Speaker 3: I mean, this is it in a nutshell. And obviously

659
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 3: the most egregious examples of this were, you know, during

660
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 3: the Great Leap Forward and all of the ways that

661
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 3: either they you know, the steel production that was melting

662
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 3: down literally anything of steel and destroying the economy. In

663
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, what are some of the techniques used

664
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:52,120
Speaker 3: to avoid sort of egregious juking of the stats so that, yeah,

665
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:55,680
Speaker 3: someone's promotion who is tied to electricity consumption can't be

666
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:57,200
Speaker 3: sort of egregiously abused like that.

667
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean famously or perhaps infamous. So I

668
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:02,560
Speaker 5: think it ended up it came out of like a

669
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 5: WikiLeaks something that the former premier Leka Chang said he

670
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:08,360
Speaker 5: didn't look at GDP data.

671
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:10,799
Speaker 3: From certain produces and that's the terminal.

672
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 5: Yeah, the le Kasyang index, And he said, I prefer

673
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:15,880
Speaker 5: to look at I think it was a rail cargo

674
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 5: and electricity consumption, and there were the third item too, right,

675
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 5: he said that these items, you know, the people in

676
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:25,360
Speaker 5: charge of reporting them, there's you know, my assumption is

677
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 5: that his logic was there's less incentives to misreport these,

678
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:30,439
Speaker 5: so that these are the ones I want to look at,

679
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 5: and you can maybe come up with your own version

680
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:34,879
Speaker 5: of the modern day Li Ku Chang index. I think

681
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:37,839
Speaker 5: electricity consumption is still fine, but maybe there's some other

682
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:40,920
Speaker 5: numbers that you say, look, this is all very centralized reporting.

683
00:34:41,200 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 5: The reason I like electricity because it's all state grid, right,

684
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,080
Speaker 5: those numbers almost all come from state grid, and State

685
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 5: grid is just a single unified entity. You're not gathering

686
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 5: data points from many different companies. Maybe other stuff like

687
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:57,200
Speaker 5: we talk about cargo right again China Railways. Yeah, you

688
00:34:57,239 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 5: have one centralized company that would be able to report

689
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:01,640
Speaker 5: that information. So if you want to modern you know,

690
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,399
Speaker 5: fashion your modern Lika Chanan decks, maybe try those types

691
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 5: of indsease.

692
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 3: So one other element obviously of the Chinese energy demand.

693
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:13,840
Speaker 3: We've talked a lot about the grid obviously and the

694
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,320
Speaker 3: power of the grid. Then there is the whole world

695
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:20,360
Speaker 3: of automobiles, which up until very recently was totally separate

696
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:24,320
Speaker 3: part of the energy system, but now it's around the world,

697
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 3: but in particular China, and we talk about Chinese evs

698
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,399
Speaker 3: all the time being plugged into the grid. How much

699
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 3: do we see the electrification of the Chinese automobile fleet, Like, A,

700
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 3: how electrified is it right now? And b is it

701
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 3: moving the dial on oil consumption? Because this is a

702
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 3: pretty big question in the West, right like at some

703
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 3: point will EV's become big enough where meaningfully starts to

704
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,760
Speaker 3: reduce our oil demand? And even in countries like Norway,

705
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 3: I think like it's still barely moving the dial despite

706
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 3: mass of electrification. What are we seeing in China right

707
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:56,800
Speaker 3: now on that front?

708
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean in the major cities you say, Shenjen, Shanghai, Beijing,

709
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 5: places like this, the EV penetration rate is noticeably high,

710
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 5: and you'll see that they're easily identifiable. They have green

711
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:11,480
Speaker 5: license plates instead of the regular blue license flight, so

712
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 5: you can just kind of look at them on the street.

713
00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 5: It's very expensive to get a license plate in Shanghai.

714
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 5: Just the license plate itself is expensive. But EV's for

715
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 5: a long time were free, like the license plate was free,

716
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,839
Speaker 5: so that was a great perk for them to pursue those.

717
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 5: And yeah, there I think it was. New vehicle sales

718
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 5: in Shanghai, for example, was fifty percent electric vehicles in

719
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 5: the last reporting session, and it's really noticeable when you

720
00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:37,880
Speaker 5: stand on a street corner in Shanghai, and I guess

721
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 5: it's noticeable by the lack of the noise.

722
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 3: I heard that everyone goes to Shanghai and says it's

723
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 3: really quiet. That's you know.

724
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 5: Look, I'm back in New York right now for the

725
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 5: first time in a year, and I stand on a

726
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 5: street corner. It's so loud, and I hadn't really noted

727
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 5: the lack of the noise because I'm just used to

728
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 5: it now, and it's it's I hear the roar of

729
00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 5: petroleum based engines all around me.

730
00:36:58,040 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 3: Yeah.

731
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:02,360
Speaker 5: So eve's in the large cities. Penetration rates noticeably high.

732
00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 5: In the smaller cities still fairly high. When you go

733
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 5: out to the more rural areas, it's going to drop off.

734
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:10,960
Speaker 5: Of course, there's more skepticism about the completeness of the

735
00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 5: charging network, just maybe some more uncertainty about the technology itself.

736
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,719
Speaker 5: You'll hear people in the countrysides and all batteries are dangerous.

737
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:21,640
Speaker 5: I heard that I saw a video once of an

738
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:25,400
Speaker 5: evy on fire. Things like that. Similar you know comments

739
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:28,920
Speaker 5: in the United States too. But the long term, the

740
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:31,959
Speaker 5: EV penetration rate will will only continue to rise.

741
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 3: It's national oil consumption, I believe.

742
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:38,760
Speaker 5: So I think I saw. Now I'm not an oil specialist,

743
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 5: but I think I've seen and I've read recently that

744
00:37:41,200 --> 00:37:45,359
Speaker 5: that Chinese oil imports should have peeped right, that they

745
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:48,359
Speaker 5: should have be ready to draw down if you know,

746
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 5: if I'm lying here, may God smite me down. But

747
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:52,799
Speaker 5: I think that that was the case, and that we

748
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 5: see a structural decline in petroleum because of the adoption

749
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 5: of evs.

750
00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 4: So, speaking of EV's, there is a lot of Chinese

751
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:03,920
Speaker 4: made clean tech that is here in the US, including

752
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 4: solar panels as well. And this has been one of

753
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:10,040
Speaker 4: the frictions of the past few years, which is, you know,

754
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:13,960
Speaker 4: the US says it wants cleaner energy, and Chinese solar

755
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 4: panels and evs are probably the cheapest forms of that

756
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:21,240
Speaker 4: technology around, and yet there's a lot of I guess,

757
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 4: reluctance to import tons of those into the US, and

758
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:28,279
Speaker 4: certainly with Trump coming in, it seems like tariffs are

759
00:38:28,280 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 4: on their way. How do you see all of that

760
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 4: shaking out into the new year.

761
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:33,759
Speaker 3: Yeah.

762
00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:38,319
Speaker 5: Look, in the United States, you're gonna decarbonize or you're

763
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:43,360
Speaker 5: gonna buy green tech. At exactly the rate that is economic. Yeah,

764
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:48,439
Speaker 5: and so if you have access to very affordable green tech,

765
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 5: you'll do it at a faster rate. If you have

766
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 5: access to more expensive green tech, you'll do it more slowly.

767
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 5: And so I have to assume that if those teriffs

768
00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 5: go in place, unless alternative producers are able to offer

769
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:02,600
Speaker 5: similar quality goods at similar prices, then you're going to

770
00:39:02,640 --> 00:39:06,719
Speaker 5: slow down your green transition. That's maybe a simple but

771
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:10,240
Speaker 5: obvious kind of answer there. On the Chinese side, of course,

772
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:13,759
Speaker 5: there will be some pain for exporters, anyone exposed to

773
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:17,160
Speaker 5: the United States market. Some solar panels, maybe some evs,

774
00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 5: some batteries I think are pretty significant if those are targeted. Yeah,

775
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 5: you'd expect to see some pain on the Chinese side there.

776
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 5: It's already an extremely extremely competitive environment in China. Most

777
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:31,360
Speaker 5: of these producers are in very thin profit margins, hanging

778
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 5: on by a threat. It's good for consumers, it's not

779
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,759
Speaker 5: good for if you're holding those stocks. So this would

780
00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:40,240
Speaker 5: only just be another bit of pain for them, denial

781
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 5: of a potential revenue channel.

782
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:46,359
Speaker 3: Since you mentioned EV charging stations, we have this sort

783
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 3: of weird patchwork here, and there's a lot of I'm

784
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 3: a little ambiguity about the US government under Biden has

785
00:39:53,239 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 3: earmarked a lot of money to build EV charging stations.

786
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 3: It's a little unclear how much actually got built publicly.

787
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:02,120
Speaker 3: There seems to be a view that it hasn't been

788
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 3: particularly successful on the public side. What is the structure

789
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 3: of the buildout for charging stations in China? Is it

790
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 3: publicly owned? Is it what's the deal?

791
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:13,399
Speaker 5: It's all of the above, I guess. So you've got

792
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 5: you know, China State Grid or China Southern Grid. The

793
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:19,799
Speaker 5: grid companies they build charging infrastructure. Some of the EV

794
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:23,759
Speaker 5: makers themselves build their own charging infrastructure, maybe like like

795
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:26,480
Speaker 5: a Tesla supercharger, right. Some of them also build their

796
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:29,240
Speaker 5: own battery swap stations. I think Neo is quite famous

797
00:40:29,239 --> 00:40:31,759
Speaker 5: for having battery swap stations. You can go pretty much

798
00:40:31,760 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 5: any highway rest stop in China and you can find

799
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 5: a Neo battery swap station.

800
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 3: So then there's no time you just swap it in

801
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:38,239
Speaker 3: and out.

802
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:40,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm there's a line to wait for the battery

803
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:43,160
Speaker 5: swap station if another Neo pulls ahead of you. But

804
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:47,440
Speaker 5: besides that, I mean, I think the major thrust, at

805
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 5: least the ones that I've seen recently in the Southern

806
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 5: Grid region have been by the grid company itself, right, So,

807
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:55,919
Speaker 5: China Southern Grid. I remember reading last year they said, ah,

808
00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:58,480
Speaker 5: you know, we're planning to build one hundred thousand chargers

809
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:01,320
Speaker 5: this year, where you know, three min we're seventeen thousand

810
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:04,320
Speaker 5: chargers in so far. We're on track to finish our

811
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 5: goal by the end of the year. And you do

812
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 5: see it when you go to regions that have been

813
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 5: targeted for those buildouts. Right. You can go to fairly

814
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 5: rural areas in say Gwandong Province down in the south,

815
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 5: and you'll find EV chargers installed there by China Southern

816
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:21,319
Speaker 5: Grid and a village where I don't think there are

817
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,279
Speaker 5: necessarily any evs, but hey, they got the infrastructure there

818
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:25,840
Speaker 5: because they said we're going to build one hundred k,

819
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 5: and so they built a hundred K.

820
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:31,239
Speaker 3: David Fisherman so great to chat with you again, especially

821
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 3: in person, and I'm so good you have other things

822
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 3: to worry about besides figuring out how to get food

823
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 3: in your apartment. Really appreciate you coming back on ovloins.

824
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:52,600
Speaker 5: Thanks a lot for having you guys.

825
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:56,760
Speaker 3: That was really helpful. Tracy, I learned all the things

826
00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 3: more or less that I wanted to know about how

827
00:41:58,480 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 3: they're built so much nuclear.

828
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 4: Yeah, what's that reaction? Well, it does. It leaves me

829
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 4: wondering how like replicable it is in other countries, right,

830
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:11,000
Speaker 4: because obviously in places like the US, we don't really

831
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 4: have subsidized finance on the scale that China does. We

832
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:18,879
Speaker 4: don't have a lot of cheap and skilled labor at

833
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:21,319
Speaker 4: the same time, and we don't have some of the

834
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:27,719
Speaker 4: let's put it this way, like regulatory hastiness maybe in

835
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:30,799
Speaker 4: approving these sites and these things. I don't know, like,

836
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:32,440
Speaker 4: how replicable do you think it is?

837
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:36,919
Speaker 3: No, this is the exact question, because you know there's

838
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 3: some subsidy the loan Program's office exists, but we don't not,

839
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 3: say the same gigantic state owned banks. Yeah, and then

840
00:42:44,680 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 3: even if you solve the financing problem, and even if

841
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:51,719
Speaker 3: you solve the market off take problem, which is going

842
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 3: to be very different, right because we have market grids

843
00:42:54,200 --> 00:42:56,279
Speaker 3: in a lot of parts of the country, and so

844
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 3: it's hard to sort of make that forty year commitment

845
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:02,319
Speaker 3: that you will get this price. Then there's all the

846
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,680
Speaker 3: logistics like oh, you needed this gigantic crane that's the

847
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 3: biggest crane in the history of.

848
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:08,759
Speaker 4: Now you need a big crane to make the big

849
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:09,200
Speaker 4: crane you.

850
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 3: Need to make. So this gets to I mean, this

851
00:43:11,160 --> 00:43:13,760
Speaker 3: is a point that jigger Shaw makes all the time,

852
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:17,880
Speaker 3: but this idea that we're never gonna really do this economically,

853
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:22,240
Speaker 3: and David just mentioned the sort of daunting economics of Vogel.

854
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 3: We're never gonna do this economically unless we do it

855
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:27,680
Speaker 3: over and over and over and over again. And it

856
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:30,279
Speaker 3: feels like the components of what it would actually take

857
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 3: to do it over and over and over again is

858
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 3: this massive centralized commitment to doing lots of different parts.

859
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 3: And you know, it sounds like the regulatory side or

860
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:44,440
Speaker 3: the permitting thing that seems about the same. And the

861
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 3: fact that the public can complain about endangered fish and

862
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 3: all that that's sort of similar. So people complain about

863
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:53,720
Speaker 3: annoying local nimbi's. That doesn't really sound that much different.

864
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:55,400
Speaker 3: It sounds like everything else that's different.

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00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:59,839
Speaker 4: I suspect the nimbiism is slightly different too. But point

866
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 4: to taken, and I do wonder, like, how do you

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00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 4: even go about beginning to redevelop that nuclear muscle memory

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00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:10,240
Speaker 4: in the States. It seems really really hard, Like, Okay,

869
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:14,360
Speaker 4: we can reactivate some nuclear reactors like we're planning to,

870
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:17,800
Speaker 4: but starting like new ones from scratch. It just seems

871
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:19,719
Speaker 4: like there's such a limited pool of people who are

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00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 4: capable of doing that and then putting in place, as

873
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:24,800
Speaker 4: you rightly pointed out, all the off take agreements and

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00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 4: the network and everything needed to kind of make those

875
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 4: things financially viable. It seems hard.

876
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:34,520
Speaker 3: By the way, I'm glad you asked that question about

877
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 3: coal consumption that because that was really helpful, because it's

878
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 3: one thing to say, well, another record year for coal consumption,

879
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 3: but I guess the waight I think about it, at

880
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:45,120
Speaker 3: least in the short term, we don't know.

881
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 4: When it's not coal consumption, it's production.

882
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:50,359
Speaker 3: Just to be cold production. Yeah, but it's really going

883
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 3: to be about like if coal is in fact as

884
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 3: a part of the you know, if it's only growing

885
00:44:55,640 --> 00:45:00,320
Speaker 3: one percent, but electricity demand is growing six to seven percent,

886
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 3: that is a good sign, right, even if it's not

887
00:45:04,239 --> 00:45:05,600
Speaker 3: bending the curve down yet.

888
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:10,480
Speaker 4: Mm hm. Anyway, it's funny I will always associate Beijing

889
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 4: with lots and lots of burning coal in the winter.

890
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 3: By the way, I had heard that about how apparently

891
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:19,360
Speaker 3: the big cities now are really quiet, which is pretty cool.

892
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 3: And once self driving cars are everywhere, there will be

893
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:25,360
Speaker 3: no honking either, And so we can look forward to

894
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:29,880
Speaker 3: a future. Maybe one day we're very peaceful, peaceful, quiet

895
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:31,000
Speaker 3: big cities.

896
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 4: All right, something to hope for. Shall we leave it there?

897
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:33,839
Speaker 3: Let's leave it there.

898
00:45:34,080 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 4: This has been another episode of the Outhoughts podcast. I'm

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00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 4: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

900
00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:42,840
Speaker 3: And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.

901
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:46,800
Speaker 3: Follow our guest David Fishman, he's at Pretentious What. Follow

902
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Speaker 3: our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carman armand dash Ol Bennett

903
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:53,359
Speaker 3: at Dashbot and Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. Thank you to our

904
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:56,760
Speaker 3: producer Moses Adam. From our Oddlots content. Go to Bloomberg

905
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Speaker 3: dot com slash oud lots, where we have transcripts, a

906
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907
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Speaker 3: of these topics, including energy and China, where we have

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Speaker 3: two separate rooms in our discord Discord dot gg slash.

909
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910
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Speaker 4: like it, when we talk about nuclear power plants in China.

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913
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917
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:34,640
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00:47:00,480 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 5: Eight