Speaker 1: You've heard of the energy transition, right. It features and
Speaker 1: speeches from world leaders, oil company CEOs and even the
Speaker 1: heads of central banks. These are not your typical climate activists,
Speaker 1: and yet they all talk about this phenomenon. This is zero.
Speaker 1: I am Akshatrati and this week, why does everybody have
Speaker 1: strong feelings about the energy transition? Simply put, the energy
Speaker 1: transition is the idea that the world has moved from
Speaker 1: one fuel to another in the past, from wood to
Speaker 1: coal and then from coal to oil. Now to tackle
Speaker 1: climate change, it must move from oil to renewables. On
Speaker 1: this show, we talked plenty about the rise of renewables,
Speaker 1: but John Baptis Freezource doesn't think there's an energy transition happening.
Speaker 1: He's a historian at the French National Center for Scientific Research,
Speaker 1: and he says the world has never really transitioned from
Speaker 1: one energy source to another. In his book More and
Speaker 1: More and More, he shows that the world isn't burning
Speaker 1: a lot less word than it did before the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 1: If anything, every new source of fuel has just added
Speaker 1: to the growing pile of energy consumption there is. He says,
Speaker 1: no transition, just addition. In my job speaking to energy experts.
Speaker 1: I found that some have absorbed that conclusion to mean
Speaker 1: an energy transition can never happen, that there is no
Speaker 1: way to tackle climate change. When I show those climate
Speaker 1: delayers that we have seen energy transitions at a country level,
Speaker 1: many times they say go read John Bupptis Phrasoes. So
Speaker 1: I did, and I wanted to bring John Bupptist on
Speaker 1: the show to discuss whether he agrees with the many
Speaker 1: fans of his book. As you'll hear, his view is
Speaker 1: far more nuanced and his goal in exposing what he
Speaker 1: calls the false history of the energy transition is to
Speaker 1: get the world to work harder on tackling climate change.
Speaker 1: He wants us to be more radical at cutting fossil
Speaker 1: fuel use, not give up. Welcome to the show, John Baptiste,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me well. I enjoyed reading more and
Speaker 1: more and more. It came out a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: but it's newly relevant given what's happening in the world
Speaker 1: right now. But the central thesis in your book is
Speaker 1: that the phrase energy transition in a way is a gimmick,
Speaker 1: it's a marketing idea, it's kind of propaganda, and that
Speaker 1: the world has never really transitioned away from one fuel
Speaker 1: source to another, and as a polemic trying to reframe
Speaker 1: the conversation that the world is having right now about
Speaker 1: an energy transition, it does a great job. But as
Speaker 1: with any polemic, there are other views that we should address.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, and before we have a
Speaker 1: debate about that, let's start with the history. As a historian,
Speaker 1: you do this fantastic job of explaining where the idea
Speaker 1: of an energy transition came in the first place. Tell
Speaker 1: me about Palmer Costlet Putnum. What was his role.
Speaker 2: He is a consultant for the Atomic Energy Commission in
Speaker 2: the US, and it was also a great innovative for
Speaker 2: wind power, for industrial wind power. In the middle of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. He wrote a really fantastic report on
Speaker 2: the future of energy, and this report was written for
Speaker 2: the Atomic Energy Commission. This report is extraordinarily innovative in
Speaker 2: many different regards. In nineteen fifty three, in this report
Speaker 2: you probably find the first world global quantitative history of energy.
Speaker 2: Putnam shows that the biggest producer of energy until the
Speaker 2: eighteen thirties was India, not Britain, and then it was
Speaker 2: replaced not by Britain, of the coal and the steam
Speaker 2: power by the us of food. So it has really
Speaker 2: a new vision and much more quantitative vision of victory
Speaker 2: of energy. It is also very innovative because they talk
Speaker 2: about climate change, which is quite remarkable in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 2: and it is true that climate change is a powerful
Speaker 2: argument in favor of nuclear energy. So the argument was
Speaker 2: that there are limits for the use of fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: It is the limitation of the geological resource, but is
Speaker 2: also the amount of CEO two that you can pump
Speaker 2: into the atmosphere. And you've got a fantastic graph in
Speaker 2: this report where you can see the rise of the
Speaker 2: level of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans on both sides
Speaker 2: of the United States. And of course it is a
Speaker 2: global phenomenon and it is linked to the greenhouse effect
Speaker 2: and the burning of fossil fuels. Them is also part
Speaker 2: of this group of atomic lobbyists want to show that
Speaker 2: in the future there will be a massive change in
Speaker 2: the energy system, and it talks about a transition to
Speaker 2: nuclear energy. It's not yet the phrase energy transition, which
Speaker 2: will come a little bit after, but there is also
Speaker 2: this idea that in the century or two, the US
Speaker 2: and even the world will have to make a kind
Speaker 2: of transition out of fossil fuels towards nuclear fos situle
Speaker 2: will be just used as row material basic to make
Speaker 2: still for instance.
Speaker 1: And this idea is kind of logical, right, Fossil fuels
Speaker 1: are limited. At some point we will burn them, and
Speaker 1: of course climate change is a thing that will get
Speaker 1: worse if we keep burning fossil fuels. And so atomic
Speaker 1: scientists are saying, well, the solution is to have a
Speaker 1: transition to nuclear power. This is nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Academics are talking in their circles. There are some people
Speaker 1: at the government level that are talking about it, but
Speaker 1: it's really the nineteen seventies oil crises that take the
Speaker 1: idea of the energy transition all the way to the
Speaker 1: US president. How does that happen?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 2: Right, is difficult to imagine, is that energy transition is
Speaker 2: really completely absent from energy discourse in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: Very few people talk about energy transition. Only nuclear scientists
Speaker 2: talk about energy transition. By the way, the phrase energy
Speaker 2: transition is first and foremost a term of nuclear physics.
Speaker 2: It designates a shift of an electron around its nuclears.
Speaker 2: So It is really a phrase which come from atomic physics,
Speaker 2: which will be used by nuclear lobbiest to explain in
Speaker 2: the future we have to do something. But this future
Speaker 2: is really a faraway future for them. The transition will
Speaker 2: take place over three or four centuries. It has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the transition we have to do today,
Speaker 2: which is more or less in three or four decades
Speaker 2: instead of three or four centuries. And it is true
Speaker 2: that the decay that the nineteen seventies is key for
Speaker 2: the diffusion of the discourse. The keyword that's time was
Speaker 2: energy crisis. It is on every talk show, radio, television,
Speaker 2: and energy transition becomes the kind of very general word
Speaker 2: to describe all the solutions to fight against the energy
Speaker 2: crisis so in the nineteen seventies, and that the transition
Speaker 2: could mean more call, for instance, which was exactly what
Speaker 2: the US government wanted to do in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: to develop coal to limit the effect of the rising
Speaker 2: price of oil. And why is the decade of the
Speaker 2: seventies so crucial. It is also because at the same
Speaker 2: time the issue of climate change emerged. It is at
Speaker 2: the end of the nineteen seventies that this idea of
Speaker 2: we have a serious problem with the rising concentration of
Speaker 2: carbon diax in the atmosphere. Became talked in the political arenas,
Speaker 2: for instance at the Senate at the US Senate, and
Speaker 2: the promise that this idea of energy transition moved from
Speaker 2: the debate around energy crisis and energiscosity, and we have
Speaker 2: to do an energy transition, but it can mean more
Speaker 2: coal or it can mean a very gradual shift over
Speaker 2: several centuries. This idea then colonized the discourse around climate change.
Speaker 1: And there is this speech that in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: the US President Jimmy Carter gives an address to the
Speaker 1: nation on energy.
Speaker 3: We must look back in the history to understand our
Speaker 3: energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years has
Speaker 3: been a transition and the way people use energy.
Speaker 1: The first was.
Speaker 3: About two hundred years ago. Can we changed away from wood,
Speaker 3: which I had provided about ninety percent of all fuel
Speaker 3: to coal, which was much more efficient change?
Speaker 1: And he talks about the transition from wood to coal,
Speaker 1: and then from coal to oil and gas, and instead
Speaker 1: of talking about nuclear power this time he says we
Speaker 1: must transition from oil and gas to solar.
Speaker 3: Power because we are now running out of gas and oil.
Speaker 3: We must prepare quickly for a third change, the strict conservation,
Speaker 3: and that the renewed use of coal and a prominent
Speaker 3: renewable energy sources like solar power.
Speaker 1: And it's a great aspiration. He puts solar panels on
Speaker 1: the rooftop of the White House. But you frame that
Speaker 1: as a problematic message.
Speaker 2: Why I mean, Jimmy Cutter is probably responsible for the
Speaker 2: global diffusion of this idea of energy transition. Before nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy seven, very few people, very few experts, talked about
Speaker 2: energy transition. After Jimmy Carter's speech on eighteenth of April
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, energy transition is everywhere. You find it
Speaker 2: at the OECD, you find it in several newspapers in
Speaker 2: English language, but also in other languages. And also the
Speaker 2: environmentalists in the US start to talk about energy transition.
Speaker 2: The same environmentalists where against nuclear power, became in favor
Speaker 2: of a solar transition. Jimmy Carter when he talked about
Speaker 2: energy transition, interestingly enough, he mentioned history, this false history
Speaker 2: that you just mentioned. There was a shift in the
Speaker 2: US from mood to coal, and then from coal to oil,
Speaker 2: and now we have to do a third energy transition.
Speaker 2: You said it was solar, but actually in the report
Speaker 2: and in the National Plan Energy Band of Jimmy Cattro,
Speaker 2: it was first and foremost coal. Solar would come after.
Speaker 2: There would be a kind of relaunch of the coal industry,
Speaker 2: especially the idea to liquefy coal to make oil synthetic oil.
Speaker 2: But it is true that in the far way future
Speaker 2: the idea would be to move to solar energy and renewables.
Speaker 2: In general, this ninety seventy seven speech even changed I
Speaker 2: think the way people imagine the dynamics of material and energies.
Speaker 2: Suddenly everything became malaeyable. Things could change quickly. For instance,
Speaker 2: Amori Levin's, a very influential environmentalist was member of Friends
Speaker 2: of the Earth, explained that the US could do an
Speaker 2: energy transition out of fossil fuels and renewable in less
Speaker 2: than fifty years. It's totally durable. Coal might be important
Speaker 2: in the next decade, but after four or five decades
Speaker 2: the whole US economy could be based on solar energy.
Speaker 2: So there is really, I think, a new vision of
Speaker 2: the dynamics of energy with very rapid shifts, complete transformation,
Speaker 2: which was not the case before.
Speaker 1: Why is that problematic? That sounds like great.
Speaker 2: It's great, but it's very naive because when you think
Speaker 2: about energy dynamics in a bit more serious way, you
Speaker 2: see that shifts take a lot of time, they are
Speaker 2: never complete, and there are a lot of things that
Speaker 2: depend and will depend on fossil fuels for fiveway future.
Speaker 2: I could mention still, I could mention plastic I could
Speaker 2: mention cement, I could mention aviation, maritime shipping. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of things that you know, solar power is
Speaker 2: not really able to really decarbonise. So I think it
Speaker 2: was a very naive understanding of the dynamics of materials
Speaker 2: and energy.
Speaker 1: There was one particular chart that sort of shaped President
Speaker 1: Carter's view on this. I want to know why exactly.
Speaker 1: It's hard, but let's just look at that chart and
Speaker 1: why that chart makes it possible to think that energy
Speaker 1: transition can happen. We'll put an image of the chart
Speaker 1: in the podcast transcript for readers to look at. But
Speaker 1: can you describe it?
Speaker 2: Yes, this chart represents the share of foods, the share
Speaker 2: of coal, and the share of all in the US
Speaker 2: energy mix from eighteen sixty to nineteen seven. And when
Speaker 2: you put these energies in shares, suddenly you can make
Speaker 2: appear beautiful transitions. Because wood energy was very important in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty and is not very important in terms of
Speaker 2: share for the production of energy in the US in
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifty, for instance, So it seemed that there
Speaker 2: is a beautiful transition from wood to coal, and the
Speaker 2: same goes with coal and oil. Coal is extraordinarly important
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh zero, but it's much just important in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty, So it seemed that there is a beautiful
Speaker 2: transition from coal to oil. So the trick is to
Speaker 2: put everything in shares. But this is a new representation
Speaker 2: of energy. Most of the time at that park, the
Speaker 2: dynamics of energy were rather visualized through stack curves, where
Speaker 2: you could see the fact that wood remains actually at
Speaker 2: the same level all across the twentieth century, that coal
Speaker 2: stay is also very important until in the nineteen sixties, obviously,
Speaker 2: and oil, of course is more and more important from
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred to nineteen sixty. So you've got a completely
Speaker 2: different understanding of the dynamics of energy, and you see
Speaker 2: the history of energy rather had the history of cumulation
Speaker 2: of energy addition and not energy transition.
Speaker 1: And that is what justifies the title that you have
Speaker 1: for the book, which is more and more and more,
Speaker 1: because in absolute amounts, most of these fuels we have
Speaker 1: actually just kept on increasing consumption, maybe flattened at some points,
Speaker 1: but really all forms of energy are just adding on
Speaker 1: top of each other. Now, this idea, though, does take root,
Speaker 1: that we can move from one energy source to the other,
Speaker 1: and then climate change goes from the nineteen seventies into
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties as this International Agenda item being discussed
Speaker 1: at the United Nations, and the answer becomes, we should
Speaker 1: do an energy transition and what will power that energy
Speaker 1: transition technology is that instead of using fossil fuels, will
Speaker 1: use cleaner forms of energy. Can you explain why technologies
Speaker 1: of the past did not actually help us transition from
Speaker 1: one fuel to the other. We never really went from
Speaker 1: wood to coal and coal to oil.
Speaker 2: I mean, the very basic point that my book emphasized
Speaker 2: is that energies are intertwined in the economy. For instance,
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century, industrialized countries used more and more
Speaker 2: wood to extract coal, to the point that Britain in
Speaker 2: the twentieth century used more wood in the shape of
Speaker 2: pit props timber mining to extract coal than Britain at
Speaker 2: burning in the eighteenth century. So coal and wood are
Speaker 2: growing in symbiosis. They are not in competition in the
Speaker 2: same way. The idea that there is a transition from
Speaker 2: coal to oil in the twentieth century is clearly wrong,
Speaker 2: because all many serves to power automobile, and to make
Speaker 2: an automobile you need a lot of steel and therefore
Speaker 2: a lot of coal. The calculations made for the case
Speaker 2: of Britain in the nineteen thirties, for each tone of
Speaker 2: oil burnt in Britain, two point five tons of coal
Speaker 2: were needed to produce all the steel, infrastructure and the
Speaker 2: automobile that allowed the combustion of this oil. So really
Speaker 2: coal and oil are growing together of God and competition
Speaker 2: on certain market. For instance, it is true that steam
Speaker 2: engines were replaced by diesel engines, which are far more
Speaker 2: efficient and much less dangerous. Obviously, but steam engines or
Speaker 2: diesel engines powered sheeps or trains made of steel and
Speaker 2: therefore consuming coal for the production. And there is such
Speaker 2: a growth in the economy in the twentieth century that
Speaker 2: the use of coal just expand globally in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: I do want to come back to this idea that
Speaker 1: we really are stuck in having to use all forms
Speaker 1: of fuel, because there are places where trans have happened.
Speaker 1: But before it come to that, let us finish the
Speaker 1: thought that you carry through, which is energy transition, as
Speaker 1: an idea is created the climate problem will be solved
Speaker 1: through an energy transition. Then there's one more layer in
Speaker 1: the two thousands where you say, alongside this framing, there
Speaker 1: is another framing that takes hold of policymakers, and that
Speaker 1: framing is of climate as a resource that needs to
Speaker 1: be optimized. And it's the combination of the energy transition
Speaker 1: with this optimization framing that you say is why what
Speaker 1: we're doing right now to tackle cramate change is the
Speaker 1: wrong thing. Can you explain that framing and why that's
Speaker 1: gotten is to a problem?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think the basically economists we're used to reflect
Speaker 2: on the growing scarcity of oil in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: and what they proposed was a way to optimize the
Speaker 2: use of oil and in general. The best example of
Speaker 2: that is William not OUs. In nineteen seventy three, he
Speaker 2: wrote a paper showing that explaining that oil is expensive
Speaker 2: after the first oil chock, Does it mean that we
Speaker 2: need to conserve oil? On the contrary, it is better
Speaker 2: to burn it now while it is very valuable, because
Speaker 2: in twenty or thirty years we will have the Breeder reactor.
Speaker 2: So we should not underestimate the power of disruptive innovation. Basically,
Speaker 2: that is his claim. Two years later he wrote the
Speaker 2: very first paper by an economists on climate change, and
Speaker 2: he made exactly the same point. There is an issue
Speaker 2: with global warming. Does it mean that we need to
Speaker 2: tighten our energy belt? Not at all. It would be
Speaker 2: so much easier to do the energy transition later at
Speaker 2: the end of the twentieth century, when we have the
Speaker 2: Breeder reactor and other technologies. So this idea to make
Speaker 2: climate chain cost benefits, basically to apply benefit analysis on
Speaker 2: climate change and energy production, is really granted in these
Speaker 2: resource economics of the nineteen seventies, and then it was
Speaker 2: applied to the global climate change the planet in its entirety.
Speaker 2: And you can also see that the idea of energy
Speaker 2: transition served as a kind of delaying tactics in climate
Speaker 2: economics of the nineteen eighties. The argument was to say
Speaker 2: it should be cheaper to do it later, so it
Speaker 2: is better to do nothing now. I mean, the only
Speaker 2: thing we need to do is just do some R
Speaker 2: and D to be sure that the breeder reactor will
Speaker 2: be ready when we really need to do the energy
Speaker 2: transition when it really starts to become too warm.
Speaker 1: After the break, I asked John Baptiste his solutions for
Speaker 1: a warming world. If you have feedback for the show,
Speaker 1: please email us at zero port at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1: Now let's come to the fuel side of the equation here,
Speaker 1: because it is true in absolute numbers that you know, wood, coal,
Speaker 1: and oil in general, we've either continue to consume the
Speaker 1: same amounts after reaching a peak, or we've continued to
Speaker 1: just increase the amount we consume. But in the book
Speaker 1: you say that there is only one material sort of
Speaker 1: that we have really actually reduced our consumption of, which
Speaker 1: is sheep's wool. But there are other examples. Weal oil, mercury,
Speaker 1: chlorofluorocarbons as bestas lead. Almost all the materials that at
Speaker 1: least I could come up with to think about ones
Speaker 1: that we've moved away from that we in absolute amounts
Speaker 1: use less of our materials that cause environmental harms that
Speaker 1: far outweighed the cost of just using them forever we
Speaker 1: were using them, and so government's brought in regulation and
Speaker 1: that forced companies to move to the alternative. Why do
Speaker 1: you think it cannot happen with carbon?
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, let me precide that I
Speaker 2: just said that Hippule was the only rumatial where there
Speaker 2: was a decrease caused by kind of obsolescence, my technological
Speaker 2: obsolescence because of synthetic fibers. It is true that asbestos
Speaker 2: and mercury have decreased very significantly after laws and global
Speaker 2: prohibitionis because there were toxic materials. So change is possible, indeed,
Speaker 2: but we have to act much more decisively than what
Speaker 2: we do on fossil fuels. The idea that there could
Speaker 2: be a kind of technological obsolescence of coal, oil and
Speaker 2: gas in three decades thanks to renewables or automic energy,
Speaker 2: if you wish, is ludicrous. It's not based in any
Speaker 2: kind of you know, empirical historical understanding of the dynamics
Speaker 2: of energies and materials.
Speaker 1: But we have had transitions, right We talk about energy
Speaker 1: transition as a thing that is typically slow because if
Speaker 1: we look at it at a global scale. You know,
Speaker 1: it does take a long time for fuel mixes to change,
Speaker 1: but at a country level we can see a transition happen.
Speaker 1: So here in the UK, there is no coal being
Speaker 1: burnt in power now, and soon once the last steel
Speaker 1: furnace is converted into an electric one, there will be
Speaker 1: no coal being really burned in the electric arc furnace
Speaker 1: in the steel plants here. If that can happen, then
Speaker 1: why are you worried that it's not based in physics,
Speaker 1: because clearly it's possible, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we should differentiate the electricity sector
Speaker 2: from all the rest. For electricity sector, I think it
Speaker 2: makes sense to talk about transition. But many countries have
Speaker 2: already decobonized the electricity system. There is nothing, so there's
Speaker 2: nothing new in decabonizing an electric sector. You can mention Norway, Sweden, France,
Speaker 2: and many countries actually have like over eighty percent renewables.
Speaker 1: Iceland, Costa, Rica, Ethiopia. You know, there's long.
Speaker 2: Less but like Brazil for instance, as a massively decabonized
Speaker 2: electricity system, but their emissions are growing right because they are,
Speaker 2: there is at have differestation. So I think we should
Speaker 2: really differentiate between the electricity system where transition could make
Speaker 2: sense from the rest. The rest is much more complicated.
Speaker 2: If you take the case of steel, while you put
Speaker 2: you can put electric arc furnaces, but it means that
Speaker 2: you are recycling scrap metals and it is much easier.
Speaker 2: So if Britain starts to consume much more scrap steel,
Speaker 2: it means that there would be less crab still for Turkey,
Speaker 2: for instance, which has a very big electric arc furnace
Speaker 2: still industry, which perhaps means that somewhere else there would
Speaker 2: be more still made from iron ore and therefore emissions
Speaker 2: would be just transferred. So I think for still it's
Speaker 2: much much more complicated than just going to electric oftennesses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we know we can do it in the
Speaker 1: transport sector. So we are already seeing, for example, in
Speaker 1: places like Norway, ail consumption is starting to decline in
Speaker 1: an absolute amount because of the transition to electric cars.
Speaker 1: Now one hundred percent of the sales in Norway are electric.
Speaker 1: We're getting to like sixty seventy percent in many countries today.
Speaker 1: The most recent numbers from China in the month of May,
Speaker 1: it was sixty three percent of all cars sold had
Speaker 1: a plug in it, and so oil consumption can start
Speaker 1: to decline in a transition in a single country and
Speaker 1: eventually in the world too. Right, So you could do
Speaker 1: electricity as a wedge to try and decarbonize other sectors
Speaker 1: of the economy. So maybe not all sectors, but electricity
Speaker 1: can take you very far in the process of the
Speaker 1: energy transition.
Speaker 2: That is true. But there are two points to be made. First,
Speaker 2: the electric car is certainly not zero cup one, because
Speaker 2: it is a big chunk of steel and still will
Speaker 2: be made with coal or gas for a long time
Speaker 2: to come. We won't decabonize the world still industry in
Speaker 2: toward three decades. This is rerilliant, I mean, quite an illusion.
Speaker 2: That's the first point. The second point is the point
Speaker 2: I mean the aim. The goal is not simply to
Speaker 2: diminish a little bit the emissions. It is to get
Speaker 2: to zero, which is I mean, far far more difficult.
Speaker 2: I think if the point are just to stabilize emissions
Speaker 2: or reduce it even by half, which is probably durable
Speaker 2: with the technologies we have, then I wouldn't be that worried.
Speaker 2: The thing is, if you divide by half the global emissions,
Speaker 2: you just delayed by two and the rise of temperature.
Speaker 2: Climate change is a completely different challenge from an energy crisis.
Speaker 2: For instance, It is far more demanding.
Speaker 1: I think we can agree on that fact. But what
Speaker 1: happens is one of the ways in which I was
Speaker 1: recommended your book is by people who I would class
Speaker 1: as climate delayers. They're like, look, JB. Frasers has written
Speaker 1: this book that says we can just consume more and
Speaker 1: more and more, and there is no energy transition, and
Speaker 1: what are you talking about addressing climate change? We just
Speaker 1: cannot do that, whereas obviously your book has this more
Speaker 1: nuanced view that it can, yeah, that you can actually transition.
Speaker 1: You can reduce consumption or fossil fuels, maybe not to zero,
Speaker 1: but you could go very far along the way. So
Speaker 1: if climate change is not just a problem of getting
Speaker 1: to zero, yes, of course that is the final answer,
Speaker 1: but you have to first start reducing emissions, which the
Speaker 1: world can certainly do right now. So it's not something
Speaker 1: your book is saying. But that's what people, you know,
Speaker 1: take from the book, which is to take the idea
Speaker 1: that no energy transition has ever happened, and thus what
Speaker 1: are we even doing thinking about addressing climate change.
Speaker 2: I think the book is whether about the vocabulary and
Speaker 2: the ideology that you have behind this idea of energy
Speaker 2: transition with electric cars, what do you do. You don't
Speaker 2: do an energy transition. You decrease the carbon intensity of
Speaker 2: the economy, which is very different. In a country like France,
Speaker 2: you divide by two or three the carbon intensity of
Speaker 2: your of mobility, which is good, but it is far
Speaker 2: from enough. In a country like China, it is not
Speaker 2: as good because there is still a lot of coal
Speaker 2: in the electricity system. So we should be really cautious
Speaker 2: about saying that the electric car is really the technology
Speaker 2: for the energy transition. When you think about the electric
Speaker 2: car at a global level, basically half of the electric
Speaker 2: cars are in China, and in China fifty six percent
Speaker 2: of electricity is still produced by coal. With coal, so
Speaker 2: basically what the electric car has done since twenty years
Speaker 2: basically has shifted mobility from oil to coal. It has
Speaker 2: not de carbonized electricity. It's a bit different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it has also decreased the carbon intensity in
Speaker 1: the process. Because if it was just a switch from
Speaker 1: oil in the same amount to col in the same amount,
Speaker 1: it would be very bad news. But because the electric
Speaker 1: car is so much more efficient, was three four times
Speaker 1: a difference for the same amount of energy. The total
Speaker 1: amount of emissions that come out of it are far
Speaker 1: lower than it would come out of a gasoline power car.
Speaker 1: So it is possible to start to reduce emissions. I
Speaker 1: feel like the debate around net zero is so politically
Speaker 1: fraud because zero is such an absolute term, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the title of this podcast. But trying to start
Speaker 1: to reduce emissions is certainly possible, which is really the
Speaker 1: debate we should be having at this moment in time,
Speaker 1: and getting to zero is the final goal. But that
Speaker 1: does not need you to stop on acting on climate
Speaker 1: change today.
Speaker 2: No, on the contrary, should encourage you to be much
Speaker 2: more radical than just imagining putting one point seven billion
Speaker 2: electric cause on the roads. I mean, that's basically the
Speaker 2: energy transition gives you gives people the impression that you
Speaker 2: can have exactly the same economy without fossive fuels, and
Speaker 2: this is false, This is not true. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you really want to tackle the problem of climate change,
Speaker 2: you really need change the nature of the economy. You
Speaker 2: need much less materials, that's much less cause, much less plains.
Speaker 2: You need to stop its in meat or beef, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's really a much more radical thing than what the
Speaker 2: phrase energy transition convey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so this is the part of the book
Speaker 1: where you know, as trying to write a polemic that
Speaker 1: changes the conversation, you lay out the problem very well,
Speaker 1: especially for people who read the book and don't just
Speaker 1: read the summary and make an assumption about what you're saying.
Speaker 1: But then towards the end you don't really have an
Speaker 1: answer to the problem. Apart from that, you want people
Speaker 1: to start the conversation that acting on climate change to
Speaker 1: get to zero is a really radical thing that the
Speaker 1: world has to do, and we are not talking about
Speaker 1: that right now, But at this moment in time, when
Speaker 1: the politics around climate are so fraught, where the cost
Speaker 1: of living is the main thing that people care about,
Speaker 1: where actually shortages of fossil fuel is stopping people, especially
Speaker 1: in developing countries in Asia, from doing the basic things
Speaker 1: that they would be able to do. How do you
Speaker 1: think we can get to a place where there is
Speaker 1: a space for conversations about the radical idea of getting
Speaker 1: to zero.
Speaker 2: I think we need the scientists to be true, to
Speaker 2: be saying the truth, because the mitigation expertise has really
Speaker 2: bought ridiculous ideas of negative emissions. As you said, getting
Speaker 2: to net zero is extremely difficult. So the trick is
Speaker 2: to say, of course, we know that there will be
Speaker 2: CO two from the still, from the cement, from agriculture,
Speaker 2: from all sorts of sectors. Never mind, we will have
Speaker 2: the capacity to capture SOO two from the air, from
Speaker 2: the atmosphere and put it under the ground. And that
Speaker 2: has really become central in all the Nazero scenarios put
Speaker 2: forward by the EYPECS. But this is really a magic
Speaker 2: a magic trick. The technologies are not ready, they cannot
Speaker 2: be deployed at scale. If it exists, it would be
Speaker 2: extramely expensive. It to be also very polluting because you
Speaker 2: need chemicals to capture the two. It will be extremely
Speaker 2: electricity intensive as well. So I think we really need
Speaker 2: to be saying the truth. I mean, it's really the
Speaker 2: objective of scientists should not be to invent the technology
Speaker 2: that you need to get to zero, just in models.
Speaker 2: We really need to accept the fact that camma change
Speaker 2: will happen. We can delay it, sure, but I mean
Speaker 2: we can delay it with renewables, with electric cars, but
Speaker 2: these technologies, they're not really making an energy transition. They
Speaker 2: are decreasing the carbon intensity of the economy, which is
Speaker 2: different things. So it is on the table the size
Speaker 2: of the economy, which which should also be part of
Speaker 2: the discussion. I think for a long time electric car
Speaker 2: would have been called technological progress because it is what
Speaker 2: it is. It is just technolical progress. It is less
Speaker 2: producing in series, it is more efficient, as you said,
Speaker 2: but it's not an energy transition. I mean, that's a
Speaker 2: bit serious about the word we use.
Speaker 1: And so your next book, I'm assuming, is then less
Speaker 1: and less and less the case for why we should
Speaker 1: be using less of everything.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm a historian, so I don't want to.
Speaker 2: I do not pretend that there is any solution in
Speaker 2: this book. I'm just I mean, this book shows that
Speaker 2: the expertise on mitigation is highly problematic. I also trace
Speaker 2: you know, the origin of the IPCC in the mid
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties. When the IPC was created, the point was
Speaker 2: certainly not to raise the climate the climate agenda. On
Speaker 2: the contrary, it was to slow down the climate alarm
Speaker 2: in international circles. The head of IPC Group three was
Speaker 2: opening cemetoskeptic when it was created in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Working Group three is the group that
Speaker 1: actually works on reducing emissions. And I found that history
Speaker 1: very interesting, you know, starting from the nineteen eighties, but
Speaker 1: also in the nineteen nineties, just the amount of influence
Speaker 1: that the US as a government had on the mitigation
Speaker 1: question because they put the Working Group three ahead as
Speaker 1: somebody who would be essentially taking the message of the
Speaker 1: US to shape the conversation. But it should be noted that,
Speaker 1: you know, the IPCC, by the time it wins the
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize has gotten rid of that level of influence
Speaker 1: that it had on its system. Sure, you can talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that because they are now more constrained
Speaker 1: with where emissions are, if they are to meet the
Speaker 1: Paris goals, which is what governments have set, the only
Speaker 1: way they can do it is to have these negative
Speaker 1: emissions added to the system. So at least the bias
Speaker 1: on trying to slow down acting on climate change has
Speaker 1: gone away. But then there is this creation of a
Speaker 1: technology that really is not yet been costed out, has
Speaker 1: not been shown to work at scale. That makes it
Speaker 1: a problem. You also, as a historian, you said, you know,
Speaker 1: I look at history to try and help you have
Speaker 1: a conversation. But you know, you frame in the book
Speaker 1: that the use of energy transition as a futurology has
Speaker 1: gone wrong. You know, can you explain why future ologies
Speaker 1: matter so much? Because currently there's a narrative that actually
Speaker 1: the world has become far too short term mist with
Speaker 1: politicians only thinking in the three to five year political cycle,
Speaker 1: or company CEOs only thinking quarter to quarter. And you know,
Speaker 1: in some cases, and this is true because I've spoken
Speaker 1: to lots of these young people, there's a nihilistic conversation
Speaker 1: that there is no future anyway, So like, you know,
Speaker 1: what the hell, but you still thing that future ologies matter?
Speaker 2: Why? I mean, I the idea of energy transition has
Speaker 2: always been a future orgy. It will happen in the future.
Speaker 2: Right in the nineteen seventies, we have not always introduced
Speaker 2: the idea of backstop technology. There is a backstop technology
Speaker 2: for the energy crisis. Then it is used in climate economics.
Speaker 2: There is a backstop technology for climate change. First it
Speaker 2: is a breeder reactor, and then it became the negative
Speaker 2: emissions I just mentioned. So I think we have this
Speaker 2: course which is really future oriented oriented. It is oriented
Speaker 2: to the future. It is the future that will save
Speaker 2: us from climate change, technology from the future that will
Speaker 2: save us from climate change, Whereas we could have a
Speaker 2: completely different discussion saying that it's probable that the word
Speaker 2: or the technological world won't be that different in twenty years.
Speaker 2: I think it's a it's a fair assumption to make,
Speaker 2: I mean aour There We'll be more electric cars, there
Speaker 2: will be more or renewball in the electricity mix, but
Speaker 2: it won't be a fundamentally different world. So what we
Speaker 2: do with the technology we have, I mean, instead of
Speaker 2: dreaming about the future innovations coming to save our beans.
Speaker 1: But one way to think about the more and more
Speaker 1: and more framing is also that in this time period,
Speaker 1: the population of the world has been growing and growing
Speaker 1: and growing, and we now know that that is likely
Speaker 1: to peak and start to fall. And these are very
Speaker 1: credible analysis done by lots of people, but including by
Speaker 1: the United Nations, and for the first time the world
Speaker 1: will be different because the entire human population will start
Speaker 1: to shrink. Don't you think there is a chance that
Speaker 1: the energy transition is a very different conversation in a
Speaker 1: shrinking population.
Speaker 2: I mean, what matters is not that large number of people,
Speaker 2: but the way they live and I think even if
Speaker 2: there is a shrinking of the global population, the forecast
Speaker 2: or rather than global DIDP will grow in the next
Speaker 2: twenty years. So I think that really the key factor
Speaker 2: is rather the way you live and not the number
Speaker 2: of people. I mean, for global population. The only good
Speaker 2: effect could be the slowdown of deforestation, which is a
Speaker 2: major factor of emissions. And we always talk about energies
Speaker 2: and fancy food technologies, but we just have to take
Speaker 2: in mind that one third of global emissions is the
Speaker 2: global food system, from deforestation to the management of waste
Speaker 2: through fertilizers and packaging, refrigeration, all sorts of things. I
Speaker 2: mean here once again, well, we could talk about energy
Speaker 2: transition for certain small aspects of this, like refrigeration. I
Speaker 2: guess we can do better, of course than using fossil fuels. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: the dynamics is not one of transition. If you want
Speaker 2: to be really serious about like this big chunk of
Speaker 2: emission one third of missions, once again, you need to
Speaker 2: talk about reducing certain consumption. And I think that's really
Speaker 2: something we need to keep in mind, because it's true
Speaker 2: that this idea of energy transition is completely disconnected from
Speaker 2: the goobot moostphere. It addresses just a small part of
Speaker 2: the problem, like the electricity production mainly, which is forty
Speaker 2: percent of emissions. But for the rest. Once again, I
Speaker 2: don't think this is the right word to use.
Speaker 1: But I think you are also only looking at one
Speaker 1: point of view and you are saying that is why
Speaker 1: we need to reduce But there is a possibility, which
Speaker 1: you know now, in the scenarios that are there to
Speaker 1: reduce emissions. Yes, GDP continues to grow, like all the
Speaker 1: climate models assume GDP growth alongside reduction in emissions, And
Speaker 1: so why is it a problem if that were possible?
Speaker 1: Why is it a problem that you know, the world
Speaker 1: continues to consume more if they are able to reduce
Speaker 1: emissions and get to net zero, because there are credible
Speaker 1: scenarios that allow you to do that while economic growth
Speaker 1: is happening, Why is that a problem?
Speaker 2: I mean, the problem is that they are not credible
Speaker 2: at all. They're rubbish. They're founding on false technolgical promises.
Speaker 2: The negative emissions I mentioned they are key, really, I mean,
Speaker 2: without negative emissions, no scenario can get to neutrality.
Speaker 1: But reductions and emissions are real, right, like ninety percent
Speaker 1: reduction is still possible with the technologies that are available
Speaker 1: to us, or eighty percent reduction is possible? Is the
Speaker 1: last ten to twenty percent is what really the negative
Speaker 1: emissions are used for today in the scenarios.
Speaker 2: I mean, we are at a round thinking get tons
Speaker 2: of negative emissions for for net zero. So it's more
Speaker 2: like yeah, twenty five percent. Yeah, But even like the
Speaker 2: reduction you said, it's really by being very optimistic on
Speaker 2: the on the technologies that people like.
Speaker 1: Leaving aside the economic system or the scenarios or the
Speaker 1: conversation around energy transition. There's a real political question around
Speaker 1: consuming less that needs to be addressed, and right now
Speaker 1: that will involve questions around inequality, around injustice, around not
Speaker 1: South divide, around colonialism, around extractivism that has been going
Speaker 1: on for hundreds of years. Those are questions that almost
Speaker 1: no forum is ready to discuss and find a solution for.
Speaker 1: How exactly can we get to a point of having
Speaker 1: that discussion, because without that we don't get to zero.
Speaker 1: We might get to eighty percent reduction, but getting to
Speaker 1: zero is what we really need to do eventually, right I.
Speaker 2: Think my I mean, what I would want to see
Speaker 2: is economists starting to explain what is the welfare associated
Speaker 2: with certain emissions of CO two. There will be zero
Speaker 2: two emissions in the economy after twenty fifty, that is
Speaker 2: absolutely certain. The key question should be to do what
Speaker 2: for whom? And to do that we need to get
Speaker 2: out of the dollar metrics or the monetary metrics. We
Speaker 2: need to really understand welfare. I'll just give you an example.
Speaker 2: Cement is extremely difficult to decabanize because you need to
Speaker 2: do cabon capture and storage, and I don't think it
Speaker 2: was very well. So cement is very difficult to decabanize.
Speaker 2: But it can be used to build a new skyscraper
Speaker 2: in London. I'm not sure there is so much welfare
Speaker 2: into that, even if there is probably a lot of
Speaker 2: money to be made. Or it can be used to
Speaker 2: make a water network in the megalo police of the
Speaker 2: poor world, where there is really a sudden increasing welfare
Speaker 2: when you've got running water at your home. So I
Speaker 2: think it is this kind of discussion that we need
Speaker 2: to have. It's I mean, the economist can help us
Speaker 2: to have this discussion by studying that properly, But in
Speaker 2: the end it would be a democratic discussion. It would
Speaker 2: be about which country accept to do which kind of sacrifice,
Speaker 2: you know, And I think we need to have this discussion.
Speaker 2: For me, the issue of climate change is really an
Speaker 2: issue about redistribution. If we really want to reduce zero
Speaker 2: to emissions very at a short short term, like in
Speaker 2: the next twenty years, of course we can decabanize electricity,
Speaker 2: but that may just part of the work. Then we
Speaker 2: have to reduce the consumption of rich people in the
Speaker 2: first place, right, And that is indispensable if you want
Speaker 2: to make room for the growth of the poor world,
Speaker 2: which is going to be enormous in the next decades. Right. So,
Speaker 2: I think the problem of climate change expertise it is
Speaker 2: that it didn't want to touch upon this very tricky
Speaker 2: issue of inequalities and the net zero scenarios. They do
Speaker 2: not envisage the GDP of rich countries to decrease, for instance,
Speaker 2: which is a very strange hypothesis when you think about it.
Speaker 2: If you really want to get to net zero, you
Speaker 2: could say, okay, let's start where it is easy to
Speaker 2: decrease emissions, like the US or Australia or Saudi Arabia
Speaker 2: or whatever. Countries where they meet really a lot and
Speaker 2: they have a very high GDP. But this has never
Speaker 2: been studied, which is amazing when you think about it.
Speaker 2: It has been thirty years that these economists have been
Speaker 2: working on permittant and that they're not sorry to study that.
Speaker 1: This was fun. I hope the next history book you
Speaker 1: do is the history of how climate scenarios were shaped
Speaker 1: and why we make the assumptions that we do, because yeah,
Speaker 1: we certainly need more scenarios to understand how the world
Speaker 1: could be shaped. Thank you, John Baptiste, thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening to zero Now for the
Speaker 1: sound of the week, and.
Speaker 4: So it kicks off the greatest extravaganza on a twenty
Speaker 4: third defa World Cup, the biggest, the most bloated, the
Speaker 4: most controversial, the most divisive, let's hope the most exciting.
Speaker 1: That's the sound of kickoff at the opening game of
Speaker 1: this year's Football World Cup, played between Mexico and South Africa.
Speaker 1: Forty eight countries will play at this year's World Cup.
Speaker 1: The highest ever will take place across Mexico, Canada and
Speaker 1: the US, making it the World Cup with the most
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas emissions too. If you liked this episode, please
Speaker 1: take a moment to rate and review the show on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify. This episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Oscar boyd Our theme music is composed by Wonderley. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Somarsadi, Laura Milan and shan Chan i'm Akshadrati
Speaker 1: Bak sou