WEBVTT - The energy transition debate we need to have 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:04.320 You've heard of the energy transition, right. It features and 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:09.000 speeches from world leaders, oil company CEOs and even the 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:13.920 heads of central banks. These are not your typical climate activists, 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:18.480 and yet they all talk about this phenomenon. This is zero. 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:23.160 I am Akshatrati and this week, why does everybody have 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:29.200 strong feelings about the energy transition? Simply put, the energy 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.240 transition is the idea that the world has moved from 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:35.640 one fuel to another in the past, from wood to 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.840 coal and then from coal to oil. Now to tackle 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:43.320 climate change, it must move from oil to renewables. On 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.120 this show, we talked plenty about the rise of renewables, 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:51.479 but John Baptis Freezource doesn't think there's an energy transition happening. 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:55.560 He's a historian at the French National Center for Scientific Research, 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:59.080 and he says the world has never really transitioned from 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:03.000 one energy source to another. In his book More and 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:06.120 More and More, he shows that the world isn't burning 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.679 a lot less word than it did before the Industrial Revolution. 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:14.000 If anything, every new source of fuel has just added 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:18.000 to the growing pile of energy consumption there is. He says, 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:24.360 no transition, just addition. In my job speaking to energy experts. 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:27.840 I found that some have absorbed that conclusion to mean 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:31.959 an energy transition can never happen, that there is no 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.480 way to tackle climate change. When I show those climate 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:39.720 delayers that we have seen energy transitions at a country level, 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:44.160 many times they say go read John Bupptis Phrasoes. So 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:46.800 I did, and I wanted to bring John Bupptist on 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.600 the show to discuss whether he agrees with the many 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:52.960 fans of his book. As you'll hear, his view is 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:56.440 far more nuanced and his goal in exposing what he 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:00.360 calls the false history of the energy transition is to 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.360 get the world to work harder on tackling climate change. 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:06.200 He wants us to be more radical at cutting fossil 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:14.200 fuel use, not give up. Welcome to the show, John Baptiste, 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.560 Thanks for having me well. I enjoyed reading more and 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.280 more and more. It came out a couple of years ago, 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.000 but it's newly relevant given what's happening in the world 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.680 right now. But the central thesis in your book is 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.560 that the phrase energy transition in a way is a gimmick, 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:37.440 it's a marketing idea, it's kind of propaganda, and that 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:40.639 the world has never really transitioned away from one fuel 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:45.280 source to another, and as a polemic trying to reframe 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:47.840 the conversation that the world is having right now about 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.520 an energy transition, it does a great job. But as 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:54.800 with any polemic, there are other views that we should address. 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.280 But before we get there, and before we have a 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:01.079 debate about that, let's start with the history. As a historian, 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.720 you do this fantastic job of explaining where the idea 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.120 of an energy transition came in the first place. Tell 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:11.760 me about Palmer Costlet Putnum. What was his role. 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:16.160 He is a consultant for the Atomic Energy Commission in 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.960 the US, and it was also a great innovative for 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.120 wind power, for industrial wind power. In the middle of 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:27.760 the twentieth century. He wrote a really fantastic report on 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:31.120 the future of energy, and this report was written for 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:34.880 the Atomic Energy Commission. This report is extraordinarily innovative in 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:38.600 many different regards. In nineteen fifty three, in this report 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:42.720 you probably find the first world global quantitative history of energy. 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:47.040 Putnam shows that the biggest producer of energy until the 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.320 eighteen thirties was India, not Britain, and then it was 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:53.200 replaced not by Britain, of the coal and the steam 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.800 power by the us of food. So it has really 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.480 a new vision and much more quantitative vision of victory 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:04.080 of energy. It is also very innovative because they talk 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:08.440 about climate change, which is quite remarkable in nineteen fifty three, 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.640 and it is true that climate change is a powerful 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:16.000 argument in favor of nuclear energy. So the argument was 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.520 that there are limits for the use of fossil fuels. 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.599 It is the limitation of the geological resource, but is 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:24.680 also the amount of CEO two that you can pump 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:28.200 into the atmosphere. And you've got a fantastic graph in 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.279 this report where you can see the rise of the 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:35.880 level of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans on both sides 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:38.039 of the United States. And of course it is a 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.719 global phenomenon and it is linked to the greenhouse effect 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:46.000 and the burning of fossil fuels. Them is also part 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:51.240 of this group of atomic lobbyists want to show that 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.880 in the future there will be a massive change in 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:59.719 the energy system, and it talks about a transition to 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.159 nuclear energy. It's not yet the phrase energy transition, which 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:06.919 will come a little bit after, but there is also 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.640 this idea that in the century or two, the US 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:13.960 and even the world will have to make a kind 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:18.480 of transition out of fossil fuels towards nuclear fos situle 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:21.400 will be just used as row material basic to make 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:22.479 still for instance. 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.919 And this idea is kind of logical, right, Fossil fuels 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.080 are limited. At some point we will burn them, and 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:32.360 of course climate change is a thing that will get 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.600 worse if we keep burning fossil fuels. And so atomic 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:41.120 scientists are saying, well, the solution is to have a 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:47.640 transition to nuclear power. This is nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties. 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:50.599 Academics are talking in their circles. There are some people 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:53.599 at the government level that are talking about it, but 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:58.880 it's really the nineteen seventies oil crises that take the 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.359 idea of the energy transition all the way to the 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:04.880 US president. How does that happen? 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:05.280 Why? 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.080 Right, is difficult to imagine, is that energy transition is 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:14.600 really completely absent from energy discourse in the nineteen sixties. 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.919 Very few people talk about energy transition. Only nuclear scientists 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:21.279 talk about energy transition. By the way, the phrase energy 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:25.000 transition is first and foremost a term of nuclear physics. 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:29.400 It designates a shift of an electron around its nuclears. 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:32.799 So It is really a phrase which come from atomic physics, 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:36.400 which will be used by nuclear lobbiest to explain in 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:39.039 the future we have to do something. But this future 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:42.680 is really a faraway future for them. The transition will 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:45.719 take place over three or four centuries. It has nothing 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:47.880 to do with the transition we have to do today, 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:49.960 which is more or less in three or four decades 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.920 instead of three or four centuries. And it is true 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.719 that the decay that the nineteen seventies is key for 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:00.440 the diffusion of the discourse. The keyword that's time was 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:06.720 energy crisis. It is on every talk show, radio, television, 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:12.840 and energy transition becomes the kind of very general word 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:16.640 to describe all the solutions to fight against the energy 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.720 crisis so in the nineteen seventies, and that the transition 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:22.720 could mean more call, for instance, which was exactly what 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.600 the US government wanted to do in the nineteen seventies, 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:29.800 to develop coal to limit the effect of the rising 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:34.400 price of oil. And why is the decade of the 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:37.600 seventies so crucial. It is also because at the same 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:41.760 time the issue of climate change emerged. It is at 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:44.640 the end of the nineteen seventies that this idea of 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.840 we have a serious problem with the rising concentration of 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:53.920 carbon diax in the atmosphere. Became talked in the political arenas, 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:56.720 for instance at the Senate at the US Senate, and 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:03.480 the promise that this idea of energy transition moved from 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:07.000 the debate around energy crisis and energiscosity, and we have 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:09.520 to do an energy transition, but it can mean more 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:13.440 coal or it can mean a very gradual shift over 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:19.080 several centuries. This idea then colonized the discourse around climate change. 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:22.400 And there is this speech that in nineteen seventy seven, 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:26.160 the US President Jimmy Carter gives an address to the 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:27.480 nation on energy. 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:29.760 We must look back in the history to understand our 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:33.640 energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years has 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:36.360 been a transition and the way people use energy. 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:37.800 The first was. 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.400 About two hundred years ago. Can we changed away from wood, 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:44.240 which I had provided about ninety percent of all fuel 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:48.680 to coal, which was much more efficient change? 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:53.200 And he talks about the transition from wood to coal, 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:57.360 and then from coal to oil and gas, and instead 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.120 of talking about nuclear power this time he says we 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.319 must transition from oil and gas to solar. 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:05.800 Power because we are now running out of gas and oil. 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:11.320 We must prepare quickly for a third change, the strict conservation, 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.559 and that the renewed use of coal and a prominent 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:17.839 renewable energy sources like solar power. 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:21.679 And it's a great aspiration. He puts solar panels on 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.560 the rooftop of the White House. But you frame that 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:28.439 as a problematic message. 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:34.040 Why I mean, Jimmy Cutter is probably responsible for the 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:37.560 global diffusion of this idea of energy transition. Before nineteen 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:41.800 seventy seven, very few people, very few experts, talked about 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:46.439 energy transition. After Jimmy Carter's speech on eighteenth of April 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:51.840 nineteen seventy seven, energy transition is everywhere. You find it 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:57.880 at the OECD, you find it in several newspapers in 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.360 English language, but also in other languages. And also the 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.640 environmentalists in the US start to talk about energy transition. 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:10.520 The same environmentalists where against nuclear power, became in favor 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:14.920 of a solar transition. Jimmy Carter when he talked about 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:19.720 energy transition, interestingly enough, he mentioned history, this false history 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:22.240 that you just mentioned. There was a shift in the 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:25.480 US from mood to coal, and then from coal to oil, 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:27.679 and now we have to do a third energy transition. 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:32.480 You said it was solar, but actually in the report 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:34.880 and in the National Plan Energy Band of Jimmy Cattro, 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:37.839 it was first and foremost coal. Solar would come after. 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.600 There would be a kind of relaunch of the coal industry, 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:46.280 especially the idea to liquefy coal to make oil synthetic oil. 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:48.720 But it is true that in the far way future 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:52.520 the idea would be to move to solar energy and renewables. 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.560 In general, this ninety seventy seven speech even changed I 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.960 think the way people imagine the dynamics of material and energies. 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:08.760 Suddenly everything became malaeyable. Things could change quickly. For instance, 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.960 Amori Levin's, a very influential environmentalist was member of Friends 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:18.360 of the Earth, explained that the US could do an 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.640 energy transition out of fossil fuels and renewable in less 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:26.400 than fifty years. It's totally durable. Coal might be important 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:30.000 in the next decade, but after four or five decades 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.520 the whole US economy could be based on solar energy. 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.760 So there is really, I think, a new vision of 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:42.280 the dynamics of energy with very rapid shifts, complete transformation, 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:43.800 which was not the case before. 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.439 Why is that problematic? That sounds like great. 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:50.120 It's great, but it's very naive because when you think 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.360 about energy dynamics in a bit more serious way, you 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.920 see that shifts take a lot of time, they are 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:02.160 never complete, and there are a lot of things that 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.800 depend and will depend on fossil fuels for fiveway future. 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:10.000 I could mention still, I could mention plastic I could 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:14.720 mention cement, I could mention aviation, maritime shipping. There are 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:17.360 a lot of things that you know, solar power is 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:21.280 not really able to really decarbonise. So I think it 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:24.720 was a very naive understanding of the dynamics of materials 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:25.360 and energy. 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:31.280 There was one particular chart that sort of shaped President 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.959 Carter's view on this. I want to know why exactly. 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:37.080 It's hard, but let's just look at that chart and 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.880 why that chart makes it possible to think that energy 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.800 transition can happen. We'll put an image of the chart 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:47.560 in the podcast transcript for readers to look at. But 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:48.559 can you describe it? 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:54.400 Yes, this chart represents the share of foods, the share 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:56.760 of coal, and the share of all in the US 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:01.640 energy mix from eighteen sixty to nineteen seven. And when 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:06.640 you put these energies in shares, suddenly you can make 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:11.520 appear beautiful transitions. Because wood energy was very important in 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.640 eighteen sixty and is not very important in terms of 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:16.960 share for the production of energy in the US in 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:19.000 the nineteen fifty, for instance, So it seemed that there 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:22.320 is a beautiful transition from wood to coal, and the 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:26.040 same goes with coal and oil. Coal is extraordinarly important 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:28.880 in nineteen oh zero, but it's much just important in 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:31.000 nineteen sixty, So it seemed that there is a beautiful 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.200 transition from coal to oil. So the trick is to 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:39.040 put everything in shares. But this is a new representation 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:43.080 of energy. Most of the time at that park, the 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:48.120 dynamics of energy were rather visualized through stack curves, where 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.280 you could see the fact that wood remains actually at 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:55.200 the same level all across the twentieth century, that coal 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:58.680 stay is also very important until in the nineteen sixties, obviously, 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:01.640 and oil, of course is more and more important from 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:04.840 nineteen hundred to nineteen sixty. So you've got a completely 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:08.280 different understanding of the dynamics of energy, and you see 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.160 the history of energy rather had the history of cumulation 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.320 of energy addition and not energy transition. 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:18.360 And that is what justifies the title that you have 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:21.400 for the book, which is more and more and more, 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:26.000 because in absolute amounts, most of these fuels we have 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:30.240 actually just kept on increasing consumption, maybe flattened at some points, 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.000 but really all forms of energy are just adding on 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:37.920 top of each other. Now, this idea, though, does take root, 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:41.280 that we can move from one energy source to the other, 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:44.960 and then climate change goes from the nineteen seventies into 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:51.040 the nineteen eighties as this International Agenda item being discussed 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:55.320 at the United Nations, and the answer becomes, we should 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:58.120 do an energy transition and what will power that energy 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:01.920 transition technology is that instead of using fossil fuels, will 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:06.280 use cleaner forms of energy. Can you explain why technologies 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:09.760 of the past did not actually help us transition from 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:12.720 one fuel to the other. We never really went from 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:14.400 wood to coal and coal to oil. 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:18.920 I mean, the very basic point that my book emphasized 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:24.520 is that energies are intertwined in the economy. For instance, 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:29.520 in the nineteenth century, industrialized countries used more and more 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.440 wood to extract coal, to the point that Britain in 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:36.440 the twentieth century used more wood in the shape of 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:40.560 pit props timber mining to extract coal than Britain at 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:45.520 burning in the eighteenth century. So coal and wood are 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:49.480 growing in symbiosis. They are not in competition in the 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.080 same way. The idea that there is a transition from 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:54.880 coal to oil in the twentieth century is clearly wrong, 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.680 because all many serves to power automobile, and to make 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.000 an automobile you need a lot of steel and therefore 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.840 a lot of coal. The calculations made for the case 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:07.360 of Britain in the nineteen thirties, for each tone of 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:11.000 oil burnt in Britain, two point five tons of coal 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:13.960 were needed to produce all the steel, infrastructure and the 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:19.000 automobile that allowed the combustion of this oil. So really 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:22.720 coal and oil are growing together of God and competition 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.920 on certain market. For instance, it is true that steam 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:29.480 engines were replaced by diesel engines, which are far more 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:33.520 efficient and much less dangerous. Obviously, but steam engines or 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.800 diesel engines powered sheeps or trains made of steel and 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.760 therefore consuming coal for the production. And there is such 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:44.600 a growth in the economy in the twentieth century that 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:50.800 the use of coal just expand globally in the twentieth century. 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:53.800 I do want to come back to this idea that 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:57.440 we really are stuck in having to use all forms 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.760 of fuel, because there are places where trans have happened. 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:04.120 But before it come to that, let us finish the 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.760 thought that you carry through, which is energy transition, as 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:11.920 an idea is created the climate problem will be solved 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.320 through an energy transition. Then there's one more layer in 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:19.760 the two thousands where you say, alongside this framing, there 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:25.480 is another framing that takes hold of policymakers, and that 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:28.720 framing is of climate as a resource that needs to 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:32.040 be optimized. And it's the combination of the energy transition 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:37.320 with this optimization framing that you say is why what 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.320 we're doing right now to tackle cramate change is the 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.680 wrong thing. Can you explain that framing and why that's 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:44.800 gotten is to a problem? 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:50.320 Yes, I think the basically economists we're used to reflect 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:54.000 on the growing scarcity of oil in the nineteen seventies, 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:58.040 and what they proposed was a way to optimize the 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.520 use of oil and in general. The best example of 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.080 that is William not OUs. In nineteen seventy three, he 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:10.680 wrote a paper showing that explaining that oil is expensive 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:12.879 after the first oil chock, Does it mean that we 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:15.200 need to conserve oil? On the contrary, it is better 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.200 to burn it now while it is very valuable, because 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:21.320 in twenty or thirty years we will have the Breeder reactor. 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:25.520 So we should not underestimate the power of disruptive innovation. Basically, 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.320 that is his claim. Two years later he wrote the 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:34.080 very first paper by an economists on climate change, and 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:37.800 he made exactly the same point. There is an issue 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:40.600 with global warming. Does it mean that we need to 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:44.199 tighten our energy belt? Not at all. It would be 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.919 so much easier to do the energy transition later at 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:50.800 the end of the twentieth century, when we have the 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:55.840 Breeder reactor and other technologies. So this idea to make 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:01.119 climate chain cost benefits, basically to apply benefit analysis on 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:06.400 climate change and energy production, is really granted in these 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:10.720 resource economics of the nineteen seventies, and then it was 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:16.400 applied to the global climate change the planet in its entirety. 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:19.679 And you can also see that the idea of energy 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:23.600 transition served as a kind of delaying tactics in climate 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:28.200 economics of the nineteen eighties. The argument was to say 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:30.919 it should be cheaper to do it later, so it 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.280 is better to do nothing now. I mean, the only 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:34.960 thing we need to do is just do some R 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:37.800 and D to be sure that the breeder reactor will 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:40.200 be ready when we really need to do the energy 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:47.240 transition when it really starts to become too warm. 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:50.240 After the break, I asked John Baptiste his solutions for 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:52.760 a warming world. If you have feedback for the show, 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.679 please email us at zero port at Bloomberg dot net. 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.120 Now let's come to the fuel side of the equation here, 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:13.560 because it is true in absolute numbers that you know, wood, coal, 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:17.399 and oil in general, we've either continue to consume the 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:21.080 same amounts after reaching a peak, or we've continued to 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:26.440 just increase the amount we consume. But in the book 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:28.919 you say that there is only one material sort of 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:32.200 that we have really actually reduced our consumption of, which 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:39.040 is sheep's wool. But there are other examples. Weal oil, mercury, 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:44.840 chlorofluorocarbons as bestas lead. Almost all the materials that at 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.560 least I could come up with to think about ones 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:51.640 that we've moved away from that we in absolute amounts 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:56.760 use less of our materials that cause environmental harms that 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.359 far outweighed the cost of just using them forever we 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:03.480 were using them, and so government's brought in regulation and 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:06.439 that forced companies to move to the alternative. Why do 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:08.640 you think it cannot happen with carbon? 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.399 I mean, first of all, let me precide that I 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:15.960 just said that Hippule was the only rumatial where there 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:19.600 was a decrease caused by kind of obsolescence, my technological 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:23.960 obsolescence because of synthetic fibers. It is true that asbestos 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:31.840 and mercury have decreased very significantly after laws and global 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:35.840 prohibitionis because there were toxic materials. So change is possible, indeed, 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:39.359 but we have to act much more decisively than what 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:43.280 we do on fossil fuels. The idea that there could 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.680 be a kind of technological obsolescence of coal, oil and 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:50.800 gas in three decades thanks to renewables or automic energy, 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:55.119 if you wish, is ludicrous. It's not based in any 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:59.840 kind of you know, empirical historical understanding of the dynamics 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:01.200 of energies and materials. 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:04.120 But we have had transitions, right We talk about energy 0:22:04.160 --> 0:22:07.359 transition as a thing that is typically slow because if 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:09.679 we look at it at a global scale. You know, 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:12.600 it does take a long time for fuel mixes to change, 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:16.200 but at a country level we can see a transition happen. 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:19.040 So here in the UK, there is no coal being 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:24.680 burnt in power now, and soon once the last steel 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.480 furnace is converted into an electric one, there will be 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:31.280 no coal being really burned in the electric arc furnace 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:36.400 in the steel plants here. If that can happen, then 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:39.280 why are you worried that it's not based in physics, 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:40.960 because clearly it's possible, right. 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:43.760 I mean, I think we should differentiate the electricity sector 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:47.159 from all the rest. For electricity sector, I think it 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:51.439 makes sense to talk about transition. But many countries have 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:55.840 already decobonized the electricity system. There is nothing, so there's 0:22:55.880 --> 0:23:04.160 nothing new in decabonizing an electric sector. You can mention Norway, Sweden, France, 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:08.840 and many countries actually have like over eighty percent renewables. 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:12.200 Iceland, Costa, Rica, Ethiopia. You know, there's long. 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:16.480 Less but like Brazil for instance, as a massively decabonized 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:19.840 electricity system, but their emissions are growing right because they are, 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:22.359 there is at have differestation. So I think we should 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:26.000 really differentiate between the electricity system where transition could make 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:29.760 sense from the rest. The rest is much more complicated. 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:33.560 If you take the case of steel, while you put 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:36.479 you can put electric arc furnaces, but it means that 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:41.640 you are recycling scrap metals and it is much easier. 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:45.480 So if Britain starts to consume much more scrap steel, 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:47.879 it means that there would be less crab still for Turkey, 0:23:47.920 --> 0:23:50.879 for instance, which has a very big electric arc furnace 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:54.640 still industry, which perhaps means that somewhere else there would 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:58.120 be more still made from iron ore and therefore emissions 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:00.280 would be just transferred. So I think for still it's 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:04.199 much much more complicated than just going to electric oftennesses. 0:24:04.359 --> 0:24:06.080 Yeah, but we know we can do it in the 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:09.560 transport sector. So we are already seeing, for example, in 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:13.800 places like Norway, ail consumption is starting to decline in 0:24:13.880 --> 0:24:17.880 an absolute amount because of the transition to electric cars. 0:24:17.920 --> 0:24:20.360 Now one hundred percent of the sales in Norway are electric. 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:24.119 We're getting to like sixty seventy percent in many countries today. 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:27.200 The most recent numbers from China in the month of May, 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:29.880 it was sixty three percent of all cars sold had 0:24:29.880 --> 0:24:33.040 a plug in it, and so oil consumption can start 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:36.239 to decline in a transition in a single country and 0:24:36.320 --> 0:24:38.600 eventually in the world too. Right, So you could do 0:24:38.720 --> 0:24:44.960 electricity as a wedge to try and decarbonize other sectors 0:24:45.240 --> 0:24:49.400 of the economy. So maybe not all sectors, but electricity 0:24:49.400 --> 0:24:52.800 can take you very far in the process of the 0:24:52.960 --> 0:24:53.680 energy transition. 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:57.040 That is true. But there are two points to be made. First, 0:24:57.400 --> 0:25:00.840 the electric car is certainly not zero cup one, because 0:25:00.880 --> 0:25:03.320