The episode is about whether switching to electric power could make the world use less energy overall. The basic reason is that electric systems often waste less energy than gas engines.
“Energy transition” just means the world is moving away from burning fuels like oil and toward using cleaner electricity. The goal is to cut pollution and reduce how much fossil fuel we use.
They’re talking about how much oil gets burned, which is a major source of pollution. Electrification aims to reduce that burning by using electricity instead of fuel in vehicles and other uses.
This is an EV event designed for businesses, not just individual drivers. It usually focuses on practical EV questions like running costs and how to use EVs for work.
Commercial vehicles are vehicles used for work, like delivery vans and trucks. EVs for businesses can be harder to plan because they need to run reliably and charge in the right way.
They mean the world’s energy supply can be easily disrupted. If something goes wrong with oil or gas, it can cause big problems—so moving to cleaner power can reduce that risk.
LNG is natural gas that’s been cooled into a liquid so it can be shipped around the world. If LNG supply gets tight, energy prices can jump, which can ripple into how people fuel cars and how electricity is generated.
Electrification strategy just means a plan to use more electricity instead of oil and gas. That usually requires building more power and charging options so people can actually switch over.
North Sea oil and gas is fossil fuel production in the North Sea that helps supply Europe. During shortages, some governments try to pump more locally instead of switching to cleaner energy right away.
It means a quick patch that makes things feel better for a little while, but doesn’t actually fix the real problem. The idea is that the deeper issue will come back.
Energy security is basically “can we reliably get the energy we need?” If a country depends on fuel imports, shortages or politics elsewhere can cause problems. Using more electricity (especially from domestic sources) can make supply more dependable.
They’re saying that on that day, wind was providing over half of the electricity. That matters because EVs run on electricity, so if the grid can be powered by renewables, electrification can cut fossil fuel use.
The idea is that fossil fuels might still be used for making things, but not necessarily burned for energy. If we switch transportation and heating to electricity, we can use far less oil and gas for burning.
They’re using a big number—about 105 million barrels of oil every day—to show how much fossil fuel the world uses. It’s a way to explain why cutting that use is a huge job, not a small tweak.
They’re saying electricity is only a small slice of how we use energy overall. So even if EVs are great, we still have other uses of oil and gas that don’t automatically disappear just because cars switch to electricity.
The IPCC is a global organization that reviews climate research and publishes reports about what could happen under different emissions pathways. The host is citing it as evidence that electrifying transport and heating is a key strategy. It’s basically a credibility source for the argument.
The IEA is an organization that studies energy systems and publishes reports about how the world can cut emissions. The host is using it as another source saying electrification matters a lot. It’s evidence for the big-picture strategy.
Concept
Committee on Climate Change
The Committee on Climate Change is a UK group that advises on how the country should cut greenhouse gas emissions. The host is citing it to show that electrifying transport and heating is a widely supported strategy. It’s part of the evidence behind the claim.
The European Commission is the main EU body that sets and supports climate and energy policies. The host is citing it as another source that agrees electrification is a key strategy. It’s not a car part—more like an official policy viewpoint.
Concept
Shell scenarios for decarbonisation
“Shell scenarios for decarbonisation” refers to scenario modeling published by Shell that explores pathways to reduce emissions. The host uses these scenarios to argue that even major energy companies identify electrification as a primary lever. This is a citation to support the claim that electrification is central across many outlooks.
The segment claims electric vehicles (EVs) use much less energy than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles when measured in “final energy terms.” This is mainly because electric drivetrains convert energy to motion more efficiently and avoid many losses that occur in combustion engines. The host frames this as a key reason electrification can cut global energy use.
Gas cars burn fuel inside the engine, and a lot of that energy turns into heat instead of useful movement. Electric cars avoid much of that waste. That’s why the host says EVs can use far less energy overall.
A heat pump is an electric system that moves heat—like transferring warmth from outside to inside (or the other way around). Because it moves heat instead of making it by burning fuel, it can be very efficient. The host uses it as another example of electrification saving energy.
When we use energy, some of it turns into heat instead of doing useful work. That “lost” energy is called waste heat. Electric systems can often use energy more efficiently, so less ends up wasted as heat.
Energy efficiency means getting more useful results from the same amount of energy. If a system wastes less energy, it can do the same job while using less overall. The point here is that electrification can make the whole chain more efficient.
Instead of talking only about miles on electricity, they convert it into what that energy would be worth in gasoline. That makes it easier to compare to what people already know about gas mileage. It’s about energy content, not exactly how much money you’d spend.
The Nissan Micra is a small car used here as a real-world reference point for comparing energy use. The host cites its fuel economy to illustrate how electricity can be compared to gasoline on an energy basis. It’s not a claim about Micra being an EV—just a benchmark for the “equivalent energy” idea.
Miles to the gallon tells you how far a gas car can go using one gallon of fuel. The host uses it because most people understand it. They’re then trying to translate that idea to electricity so the comparison makes sense.
Topic
World War Three distraction vs climate change
They’re talking about how wars and big world events can make people stop thinking about climate change. The host argues climate change doesn’t disappear just because attention shifts. This sets the tone for why electrification matters even during crises.
Energy imports mean getting fuel from other countries. If politics or shipping gets messy, it can become risky and expensive to keep energy flowing.
Concept
electric car batteries
Even though electric cars don’t burn gas, the batteries still have to be made. If the electricity used to make them comes from coal, the manufacturing can create more pollution.
They’re saying solar is being added extremely quickly. More solar power means the grid can get cleaner, which helps electric cars indirectly because they run on electricity.
Decarbonization just means making the energy system produce less pollution. Instead of burning coal, the goal is to use cleaner power so electricity causes fewer emissions.
Smart charging is basically charging your EV at the right time and in the right way. Instead of always charging whenever, it can shift charging to cheaper or cleaner electricity and avoid overloading the grid.
An internal combustion engine is the classic engine that burns gasoline or diesel to move the car. The speaker is talking about how people used to be excited about that sound and racing, before EVs became more common.
Lithium-ion batteries are the rechargeable battery packs inside most electric cars. Over time, engineers improved the battery materials and design so the cars can go farther and last longer.
Battery chemistry is what the battery is made of inside. Different recipes can make the battery store more energy, charge faster, or wear out more slowly.
AI technology is being used to speed up software development and data analysis, which can accelerate engineering workflows. In the EV context, this can support tasks like optimizing charging strategies, battery modeling, and control systems.
Battery capacity is how much energy the battery can store, typically measured in kWh. Higher capacity can improve range and sometimes performance, but the real-world impact also depends on the vehicle’s efficiency and weight.
Charging infrastructure is the system of public places where you can plug in and charge an EV. If there are more and better fast chargers, it’s less stressful to own an EV.
When oil (gasoline) gets expensive, driving a gas car costs more. That can push people to look at electric cars instead, especially if they expect prices to stay high.
Registration data is the official record of when new cars are registered to drive. There’s often a delay between when people order a car and when it shows up in those official numbers.
Used-car demand can shift when EV interest rises, because buyers may look for lower-cost entry points (like pre-owned EVs) or because trade-in values change. This can affect both used EV pricing and the broader used market.
A “tipping point” means the moment when a new technology stops being niche and starts spreading fast. The hosts think EV-related tech is getting good enough and cheap enough that more people will adopt it quickly.
Renewables are power sources like wind and solar that don’t run out. The episode connects EVs to renewables because cleaner electricity makes electric cars better for the environment.
Offshore wind installations are wind turbines placed out at sea to make electricity. The episode talks about how some projects were paused by policy, but courts allowed them to continue. That matters because more clean electricity helps power things like EVs.
Data centers are buildings full of computers that run online services. They use a lot of electricity, and the episode says that increased demand from them can push electricity prices up. That affects how expensive it is to run electric systems.
To use electricity, new projects have to be allowed and physically connected to the power network. If the connection takes too long or the grid has no spare capacity, the project can’t move forward.
Some people worry that if lots of electric cars plug in at once, the power grid won’t be able to handle it. The point here is that grid stress depends on how charging is managed, not just on how many cars exist.
Instead of relying only on the utility grid, some facilities make their own power and keep some energy stored. That can reduce strain on the grid when demand is high.
District heating is a way to heat lots of buildings from one central place, using shared pipes. Here, they’re using heat from data centers instead of burning coal or gas.
Company
BT
BT is mentioned as the company you “chat to.” The point is that your request can be sent to a data center that’s powered more by renewables and causes less grid congestion.
Grid congestion is when the power lines and equipment can’t handle electricity flow as efficiently as needed. It can make it harder to use more clean power or add new electric loads like EVs.
Honkuk is the tire brand sponsoring the episode. They’re saying their “Ion” tire is made specifically for electric cars, with features aimed at better grip and efficiency.
Instead of storing energy in a small home battery, you store it on a much bigger scale for the whole electric grid. That way, when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, stored energy can keep the lights on.
This is a way to measure how much energy a storage system can hold. The host is basically asking: could we build enough battery storage to make a big difference at the scale of the whole planet?
Lithium is a key material used in many batteries. The question isn’t only whether we can find enough lithium, but whether mining it can be done without major damage to people and the environment.
Copper mining is mentioned as another upstream resource concern tied to EVs and clean energy technologies. Copper is widely used in electrical systems, so the podcast treats mining impacts as part of the overall sustainability discussion.
Battery recycling means taking old EV batteries and pulling out useful materials instead of discarding them. As more electric cars are sold, there will be enough old batteries to make recycling work at big scale.
The Nissan Leaf is an early electric car that helped make EVs common. Because so many Leafs were sold starting around 2010, their batteries are now starting to wear out and need recycling.
Tesla is a major electric-car company. The point here is that as Tesla and other EVs sold more cars, more used batteries would eventually need to be recycled.
A supply chain is the path a product takes to get made—starting from raw materials and ending with the finished item. The speaker’s point is that we usually don’t know where key parts come from, even though they can be essential to the whole system.
Cobalt is a metal used in some battery chemistries and has also been discussed in the context of mining and labor concerns. In EV debates, cobalt often becomes a proxy for broader supply-chain issues, even though newer battery chemistries can reduce or eliminate cobalt use.
LFP is a type of EV battery. It’s made with materials that usually don’t need cobalt, which is the metal people often worry about. That’s why some newer EVs can avoid the cobalt problem people hear about.
Nickel is another material that can be used in some EV batteries. Different battery designs use different mixes of metals. Here, the point is that the tested cars use LFP, which typically avoids nickel.
Term
sulfur removal
The speaker is saying cobalt is also used in oil refining to help remove sulfur. Their point is that people focus on cobalt in EVs, but cobalt is used in other industries too.
Concept
technology vs perception lag
The idea is that EVs and clean energy tech can improve faster than people’s opinions. So people keep repeating older worries that don’t match today’s products.
The speaker is saying some of the negative stories people hear about EVs and clean tech might be intentionally spread or exaggerated. That means the issue isn’t just the technology—it’s also what people believe and why they believe it.
The point is that some people don’t switch to electric cars because they feel unsure or worried, not because the technology is actually broken. Once they try it, they may find it’s simpler than they expected.
Hydrogen cars can make electricity onboard using a fuel cell. The challenge is that hydrogen has to be made and delivered, and that takes extra infrastructure and energy.
SMRs are a type of nuclear power plant designed to be smaller and easier to build in pieces. The point here is that they’re not ready at large scale yet, so they likely won’t quickly change transportation energy use.
Fusion is the process of combining light atomic nuclei to release energy, aiming to create a near-limitless, low-carbon power source. The host notes the common energy-sector saying that fusion is “always 30 years away,” highlighting the gap between research breakthroughs and real-world commercialization.
Concept
nuclear waste
They’re talking about using nuclear waste as an energy input. The concern is whether it can be used safely and effectively without creating more waste, and whether that option is realistic enough to build a long-term plan around.
Sellafield is a UK nuclear site. Here it’s mentioned because the speaker is discussing whether existing nuclear waste could be used in a practical energy plan.
Carbon capture and storage is a way to grab carbon dioxide from smokestacks and keep it from going into the air. The debate here is whether it will work at big enough scale to make a real difference, or whether it’s still not delivering what was promised.
Blue hydrogen is made by using natural gas to produce hydrogen, but trying to capture the carbon dioxide that would normally be released. The point being made is that it may not be ready or scalable enough to replace a lot of existing fuel use.
Drax Power Station in Yorkshire is cited as an example of a power plant with a long-running PR push around carbon capture. The hosts use it to argue that, despite expectations, carbon capture hasn’t been delivered at the promised scale or effectiveness over time.
Concept
solar and batteries vs coal and gas generation
They’re comparing different ways to make electricity. Solar with batteries can store energy, while coal and gas plants burn fuel to generate power—so the debate is often about which is cheaper and cleaner.
Agrivoltaics means putting solar panels on farmland without giving up farming. The idea is that the panels can share the space with crops or animals, so you get food and electricity from the same area.
Utility-scale batteries are big battery systems that store electricity. They help when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing by saving power for later.
Rooftop solar is solar panels on your house or building. They make electricity where you use it, which can lower your electric bills and sometimes improve reliability if the grid is spotty.
Grid reliability is how dependable the electricity network is. If the power goes out often, people look for alternatives like solar at home so they’re not stuck waiting for the grid to come back.
“Off the grid” means you don’t get electricity from the normal power company. Instead, you make your own power—often with solar panels—and store it in batteries so you can use it later.
This means how much coal, oil, and gas people are still using. If it’s not dropping fast, it suggests the shift to cleaner energy isn’t happening quickly enough.
“Adoption of technology” refers to how quickly new solutions (like electrification and clean energy systems) are taken up at scale. The transcript argues that even when the technology exists, deployment can lag behind what’s needed to cut emissions.
“Scaling” just means making a technology in much bigger numbers and getting it into lots of places. When that happens, it often gets cheaper and better because factories learn and supply chains improve.
The fossil fuel industry is the oil and gas business that sells fuels for transportation and power. The episode is arguing that because it’s so big, it can strongly influence what policies get adopted.
A lobbyist is someone who tries to influence laws and regulations. The episode is saying different energy industries will push policies that help them make money.
They’re quoting a rough estimate that we have enough fossil fuels for about 47 years if we keep using them at the same rate. But that number can change because new deposits can be found and because what counts as “available” depends on cost and technology.
“Known reserves” means the oil or gas that we’ve found and can realistically pull out with today’s tools and prices. That estimate can change over time as technology improves or as demand and costs change.
The idea is that when something gets harder to get, its price tends to go up. The episode is saying economists use that price behavior to judge whether a resource is becoming scarce.
They’re saying that instead of resources getting more expensive, prices actually went down later. The point is that “scarcity” predictions can be wrong or delayed.
The Club of Rome is a group that warned that the world can’t keep growing forever without running into limits. Their reports helped popularize the idea of “resource scarcity” and sustainability.
“Population explosion” is the fear that the world’s population would grow so fast that it would overwhelm resources like food and energy. It’s a common theme in discussions about sustainability.
“Population bomb” is a dramatic way of saying that population growth could become so fast it causes major problems for society. Later, many countries saw birth rates fall, changing the outlook.
This is like a giant “gravity battery.” You use electricity to lift a heavy weight, and later you let it fall to spin a generator and make electricity again.
Energy storage systems work in two steps: first they “store” energy (charging), and later they “give it back” (discharging). How well they do both steps determines whether they’re practical.
Megawatt capacity means the system can handle a lot of power—big enough for industrial or grid-scale use. It’s not just a small battery; it’s designed to move energy on a large scale.
Instead of storing energy in a battery pack, a “heat battery” stores energy as hot material. You use electricity to make it hot, and later you use that stored heat for things like heating water or running industrial processes.
Tidal turbines make electricity using the rise and fall of the ocean. Because they sit in salty water, the equipment has to handle corrosion and harsh conditions.
Concept
tidal barrier across the river seven
A tidal barrier is a big structure built across a waterway to capture the energy from tides. It’s a huge construction job, so it’s not as simple as “just build it.”
A variable tariff is when your electricity price isn’t the same all day. It usually costs less at certain times (like overnight), so you can plan to use or store power then to spend less.
A home battery is like a rechargeable power bank for your house. It lets you save electricity when it’s cheap and use it later when it’s more expensive or when you’re not generating solar power.
Time-of-use pricing means electricity costs more at some times and less at others. The idea is to use or store power during the cheaper times (like overnight) and use it later when it would cost more.
They’re saying you can’t just assume a battery will always save money. It depends on your home’s situation, your electricity prices, and how you actually use power day to day.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast.
Little bit different this week. This is definitely an audio podcast.
You can put that lack of a video feed down to the interviewer
on this particular episode. I'm not going to name that interviewer.
I don't want to shame them. They're already shamed enough as it is.
But anyway, the important thing is that the audio is brilliant
and the audio works and you can hear because that's really what you need to do.
You need to be able to hear what we were talking about.
Oh, that's just giving it away that I am the interviewer who screwed up the video.
I forgot to press record. Anyway, who I'm talking to for this episode,
it has been on the show before, but a while ago, about four or five years ago,
Extraordinary Man really, if you want to find someone that genuinely has a deep,
profound understanding of the energy transition of the impact of burning 105 million barrels of oil a
all those basic things in the background of the fully charged show and everything electric
and everything we've been doing for the last 16 years. He's like right at the front.
So today, we'll be talking to Professor Jan Rosenau.
And I just want to read out because I'm not going to remember this, who he is.
So Jan is the Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at the Environmental Change Institute
and the Jackson Senior Research Fellow at Oriole College Oxford, which is where we recorded it.
And it looked beautiful. And some stupid idiot didn't press record. Anyway, moving on.
He is also a senior associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership
at the University of Cambridge and an affiliate faculty at the University of Sussex.
He's kind of quite well connected. So I'm not going to waffle on. I'm just going to ask you,
please do check out the show notes here, which will also include a link to our live events.
One of them is coming up fairly soon in Harrogate in the central north area of the UK.
And the next one after that is in Cheltenham, which is in the central south west ish area
before we appear at Twickenham much later in the year and before we then go to Sydney
for the last show of this year's tranche of live events.
Please do subscribe to everything electric show and do check out our other channel,
Everything Electric Cars. In case you haven't seen that you've stumbled across this
as a much bigger channel than that's been the one that's been going for 16 years.
And that's enough. No more waffle from this old fool. Press record. Please welcome to the
Everything Electric podcast, Professor Jan Rosnell. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs
and Clean Energy Tech are funded by our fun packed test drive tastic events in the northwest
west and greater London and our events down under. Next up, everything electric heads to
Harrogate and then Cheltenham. All events include a B2B EV day and commercial vehicles too.
Yeah, so this is something I've actually written something about, but it is
very pertinent to the current global situation. But how many reminders do we need
that it might be a good idea to speed up the transition away from burning fossil fuel?
It's not really a question. It's just a statement, but I think it does feel like there's been a
everyone's had a reminder that we have a very fragile fuel system on the planet. It can go
wrong very, very quickly and very, very easily. Yeah, and it doesn't feel that long ago, right?
And in 2022 we had almost exactly the same discussions. I think the difference is that
this time it's oil and gas and last time it was mainly gas and now it's oil probably a bit more
than gas because it's about 20% of the LNG, the liquefied natural gas that's going through the
straight up from us, but that's only a fraction of total gas demand. So oil is 20% and that's
but that's global. So that's a much more significant impact on oil. And I mean,
certainly because I have a lot of contact with Australia, it's had a very big impact on that.
I think they've now already kind of leveled it out. They've managed to get, this is from petrol
for gasoline and diesel and they had, they were closing garages in Australia because they had
no fuel, not because of any regulation or price. It's just like we haven't gotten a thing.
Yeah, and people are starting up to panic behind and there's not very shortage, but no, it's massive.
And the deja vu moment, I think, especially in Europe, where we've been so affected by the
crisis is huge. It might be interesting to see, I mean, what happens in the coming months.
I mean, have you seen what France has just announced last week? So they have, I think,
are the only country that I've seen that set out a sort of long term strategy for how to
transition away from oil and gas and have an electrification strategy. They want to spend
billions in accelerating that transition, very ambitious and forward looking. But most of the
other discussions that I've seen were all about, can we maybe find some more oil and gas in the
North Sea? Or, you know, can we find a new supplier? Can we find a way of cutting taxes or
subsidizing prices, which may help in the short term? It helps in the short term. It's just
we're going to have the same discussion maybe in four years time when the next crisis starts.
Yeah, I mean, it's a very small bandaid on a very large wound, basically, isn't it? It's not going
to solve it. That's right.
I think I'm going to log, James, because there's something you said there was, oh,
yes, it is that argument to increase North Sea oil and gas. I mean, there is some left,
but there's not that much as far as I understand it. It's not like a massive supply. But it is that
the lack of understanding that it's going to be sold on the global market. It's not going to be
just, you know, that's our gas. Yeah, but it's actually probably going to Brazil or
somewhere, you know, because that's who's going to pay for it. I had exactly that discussion
on a BBC Radio 5 discussion. There was someone from the industry that, representing the industry
oil and gas in North Sea, and that question was put to me, like, will it actually bring
down prices? And my response was, well, not significantly, because the quantity
will be minuscule compared to the global oil and gas market. So that's not going to bring down
prices unless you make assumptions about companies selling at a significant UK discount,
or you nationalize the number. But those scenarios are rather unlikely. So there's not
going to be a big price difference. I think there is some sort of validity in saying, well,
this will have energy security benefits, because those real shortages, you know, where you really
can't get the energy into the UK, of course, that will have an advantage there. But it certainly
has a price benefit that will be of any significance for the UK consumer. Yeah. And I mean, surely,
though, you know, like today is a good example. Thankfully, it's an ideal day. I'll just check
before I left it, we were 56% wind, just wind, 56% of our electricity was coming from it. But that
is actually one of the things I want to talk about was that area of the kind of feasibility
that the enormity of the project to say, we're going to be using fossil fuels in 100 years,
but we might not be burning it. That's what I'm hoping that we're using for everything else.
It's a very useful material. But the colossal scale of what we need to do, and how I mean,
I can't remember what it is. It's around about 105 million barrels a day that the human race
consume on the planet. You go, that's whatever you do with that, that's a lot of stuff that we're
getting through. But I mean, I just, so it's the sort of hoping you can explain the plausibility
of reducing that use by huge amount and how long that's going to take. I mean, maybe I start by
pointing out that electricity is only about 20%. Because it's often where people often assume
electricity is energy. And that is basically everything that we talk about when it comes to
energy, and it's only 20%. And people in the energy space often like to focus on electricity,
because that's where a lot of things have happened. And based on coal in the UK, we have a lot of
renewables now in a lot of countries, batteries, and that's all great. But that's only 20%. And
in the other 80%, that is basically two things. It's mobility, and that's primarily oil, and it is
heat in industry and buildings. That's where that 80% is. I'm simplifying, there's of course,
sort of other cases, but that's where the majority of energy is being used. And replacing that is
going to be the challenge for the next couple of decades. And then we've sort of used the last
two decades for cleanup electricity and done that pretty, pretty well now. I think there's a pathway
towards full decarbonisation or near full decarbonisation in many countries. But when it
comes to the other 80%, we're just beginning. And to answer your question about what would that
system look like, I mean, electrification is the number one lever. In all of the scenarios,
whether you look at the IPCC or the IEA or the UK government, the Committee on Climate Change,
the European Commission, academic studies, they all suggest electrification is the main lever.
Even a shell scenario, take the shell scenarios for decarbonisation,
they also identify electrification as the primary lever. So if we did electrification to, let's say,
70, maybe even 80% of the entire economy, that would roughly half the amount of energy we would
need globally. So that is the effect that electrification has. Why? I mean, you cover this
many times on the show, electric vehicles use a fraction of the energy, probably three or four
times less in final energy terms than an internal combustion engine vehicle. A heat pump is just
the same. So you have these big savings, whereas your fossil fuels, if you burn them, you can never
get a more efficient device than if you go electric, but you have this waste heat that you can't
capture. So that is, so what that, if you could just transition today, the whole world, we stop
using fossil fuels. What's interesting is the actual amount of energy the human race would consume
would be lower. Much lower. Half would be about half, which is incredible. We have a paper currently
under review that hopefully comes out very soon, where we have done that thought experiment. We
sort of draw a map of the world's energy system today. We identify how much energy is actually
wasted. That's another interesting statistic that a lot of people have never heard of. It's about
two thirds of all the energy inputs. We waste because we can't really use it with the current
technologies that we have. And it's just waste heat goes back into the atmosphere. And in the new
system that we draw then as a comparison, that amount of waste is dramatically reduced. And
overall we use about half of the energy that we currently use, which is a significant efficiency
of that. Because actually that's a statistic I've been trying to use when I'm describing electric
vehicles. You go, oh, well, what's the range? Oh, it was 220 miles. No, what is the energy equivalent
of if it could run on petrol? If you could use the petrol to hold electricity and feed it into,
so the car I've just driven in today, the Nissan Micra, it does 158 miles to the gallon. That's
the equivalent energy use. So that gives a very good clue. Can't beat that with an internal combustion.
I mean, no, not necessarily in a little cigar on a track. One of those sort of experimental vehicles.
But that, I mean, because I think that I'm feeling it and I certainly know a lot of people, I know
feeling sort of a mild but increasing desperation that, you know, a war, it distracts from the
Epstein files for one thing, which is one of its aims, I'm sure. But it also distracts from
everything else. You know, you think, oh, well, I've forgotten about climate change because I'm
worried about World War Three. I mean, I don't think climate change is staying, oh, I won't,
I'll wait for a bit while you have a war and then I'll kick in.
It's completely absent, isn't it? From the discussion, which is not in the mix. It's
not in the mix. It's fascinating where we have this conversation almost as if climate change
was never a problem, will never be a problem and just talk about, well, can we just replace
one supplier with another rather than thinking about, actually, is this an opportunity to
speed up the transition? And in fact, that's, I think, I mean, countries as I mentioned, France,
but also China and in other countries are deliberately doing because they see that there
are these huge geopolitical risks of relying on energy imports, which is not a good strategy
in the long run. And I mean, that was a thing that I think we, you know, I certainly became
aware of when I was in China, but that there's sort of argument about China, oh, well, they're
burning loads of coal to make your fancy electric car or whatever, though, you know, the batteries
or whatever. And they are, I mean, there's no question, they do have a lot, they're the biggest
coal burners we have. But my goodness, they're ramping that down because they don't want to burn,
they don't want to pay for the coal. And they're, I mean, that was, I think it was,
I'm right in saying last year, the global total of solar panels installed doubled,
and it was all in China. They just literally put as much as we'd ever put anywhere in one year.
I mean, it's just mind blowing. Do you see, I did see one solar farm that was just over,
it was just, I don't know what it even was, it looked like a solar mountain.
And emissions have now started to cut down, and especially in the power sector in China.
And yes, there's still more coal plants being built, but the utilization rate, how many hours
in the year they actually run is reducing. And I think there is a trajectory now where you can see
how in five years, 10 years time, there will be seeing there can be fewer emissions in China
from electricity. And yeah, still a long way to go. There's no doubt. But I think we reached a point
now where you can conceive of China being able to manage decarbonization. And given how fast
they've been able to scale production of these technologies and adoption, I think it'll be,
we'd be surprised, I think, probably rather than disappointed.
Is that so? The thing I'm not only thought since I arrived here is my contact with young people
is now fairly minimal. Most of my mates are sort of dodgy old fools like me. But I'm, you know,
you're in contact and discussing these things with students. Yeah, all the time. And I mean,
is there, what is their attitude? I mean, do you just intrigued to know if there are young people
that are studying here that go, oh, it's all nonsense. It's all a con job. And there's no
such thing as climate change. And President Trump is right. Is that an uncommon?
I haven't come across someone like that yet. But I'm, of course, I can't claim that I have
talked to everybody. But the people I've spoken to, they actually think they get it. And they're
often much more pragmatic. And they're sort of almost not that interested in having long
ideological debates, but they might just be working on writing the next code to work out how to
smart charge electric vehicles or be involved in a startup around solar and batteries or solve
the heat pump adoption problem we have in the UK and what have you. And no, I think that's what
I'm seeing is young people are still very much engaged and trying to really find a niche in
this market, in this sector. I mean, that's, I think the thing that kind of keeps me going
is that, you know, I grew up with a, you know, sort of passionate fascination with internal
combustion engines and the loud cars and motor racing and all that stuff. I kind of liked it.
And then I then I went through a phase of going, something wrong with it. But I'm talking about
many, many years ago. But what I find so exciting now is the fact that, you know, 25 years ago,
people were using very crude lithium ion batteries and they put them in a box together and then
brought a wire to an electric, I mean, it's so crude, the very early electric vehicles I saw.
And there's sophistication that's gone on and the battery chemistry and all those things are,
there is so much innovation and so much to do in the sense of engineers and scientists. There's a
massive job waiting for them. Yeah. And I mean, the tools we now have just so much more powerful.
I mean, a lot of the students, they use AI technology, of course, to just speed up coding
and analysis of data. And it's fascinating. I think they're going to bring a lot of new
skills to the markets of people like you and you and I who've sort of done this for a long time.
I think there's better in a number of ways in doing what we've done for a long time,
because they come to it with a new set of tools and in a different mindset, perhaps as well.
But no, I keep being impressed and surprised by just how brilliant the students are.
How passionate, how passionate. And now they just want to get stuff done. Whereas I still see all
these people on social media who usually says we're tied engineer in the title on LinkedIn.
They always tell you why something doesn't work and it's always glass half empty or completely
empty and it's all terrible. It's never going to work. And then you see this young people who are
like, I want to solve things and I have an idea and I'm going to apply myself to and that's how
change happens. I believe not by telling other people that it's all pointless, you know, best.
No, absolutely right. And that one of the things I've just experienced very recently,
I'm not going to mention the make of the vehicle, but I've just seen a new version of a car,
of an electric car. Well, one of the things I am aware of, partly because my brother worked in
that industry, but there would be a relaunch of a brand, of a model of a car. And it would have
a new front bit and those doors, they open in a different way and they didn't involve a dance.
But this one was pretty much, it looked 99% the same. I wasn't interested in that.
The battery had was about 25% higher capacity. It was the same weight and the vehicle cost 700
pounds less than the previous. So it was faster and it charged much faster. The charging infrastructure
was unbelievable. Lighter, faster and cheaper. And cheaper. And then you go, that is not something
that the automotive industry has experienced or people, you know, and it's not a super cheap
car anyway. So it's not like, you know, it's a middle range car, but it's not a flash sports car.
This is a sensible family car with room for luggage and dogs and all that stuff.
You just think that is extraordinary. That story is really interesting that that is the case.
Yeah, how that's kind of affecting all the technologies connected with it.
100%. And I think now with the, to come back to the current
crisis and the high oil prices, I mean, we had like oil more than $100 and some point
was $120 per barrel. And that's really driving interest in EVs. I mean, we have only anecdotal
evidence so far because it always takes a few weeks until you see the registration data because
people will probably make the order now, then it takes what six weeks until they get the car
and they need to register it. But there has been a real spike in inquiries and
sort of websites for second hand cars, but also for new cars and real interest in
actually switching over from internal combustion engine to electric vehicles. So I think that is
the one good thing maybe that will come out of this is that there will be more people now
looking at the alternatives and singles for heating. I mean, I see so many people who are
not energy geeks who are not obsessing about the scope, the efficiency of the heat pump
and uploading it on a public website like heatpumpmonitor.org. You can get us a ranking,
but just normal people who don't want to burn fossil fuels in their home anymore
and want to switch to something that is cleaner and safer and better for the environment and
potentially cheaper if they have a really good install. So there's just so much going on in that
space that even if the politics are difficult and horrible and toxic, I think there's something
has changed and I think there's a tipping point where technology is now so good and
become increasingly affordable that it's going to scale. It may take longer or it might be quicker
depending on how supportive our politicians are of it, but I believe even in the event of having
a government that wants to prevent this, look at the US, right? The last year was still the year
with the record investment in renewables and that was here. It's so bizarre because I must
admit, I was, you know, I was like, oh God, I had, you know, I kind of wasn't surprised when the
current administration appeared, but I just thought it was just going to flatten everything and all
the, you know, because that's where I first saw things like solar panels. Winter was in California,
was in America. That's where electric cars, I mean the whole thing came out of the United States
bizarrely and at the moment it's just, but I mean the story about the offshore wind in the
northeast of the United States is so funny because he just stopped it all happening and then the
judges went, no, you can't do that. So they're now carrying on and it's such a pretty good bit of news.
Yeah. Was it three or five cases, something like that, where it wasn't just one, it was several
cases. No, I think there were five different winds and they're big. I didn't realize quite the
scale of them. They're large-scale offshore wind installations. Yeah, and especially at a time
when you have rising electricity prices, you have increased demand because of data centers,
electrification, and now the wall happens and prices rise even higher, stopping projects that
are shovel-ready or even in the middle of construction, you know, not being able to connect to the
good. I mean, it is an interesting policy. Yes, yes. I think you're flattering it by calling it a
policy. Because that is one thing, so I must admit, I had a bee in my bonnet on my shoulder,
whatever it is, and it wasn't so much about, you know, about your mentioned data centers,
but it was one topic I wanted to cover because it's having such a huge impact on the electricity
market, certainly, and water. But my argument isn't that we should be doing it or it's wrong,
or that, you know, it's that I had so many people for so long and I'm sure you've heard this,
oh, electric cars, they'll melt the grid. There's not enough capacity to charge cars and you, oh,
my God, we can charge 100 million cars in one garage in the equivalent of a data center,
because a data center is like in one place, it's on all the time, it's a massive draw of power.
I mean, that is a big challenge for the human race, I think, just generally speaking.
Yeah, I mean, data centers are interesting. There's certainly regionally causing huge problems
for the grid, but then I think there's now increasingly incentives or requirements for
data centers to produce their own electricity on site, maybe to have storage, certainly pay for
the grid connection, and that already helps to address part of the problem. And then, of course,
there's also an awful lot of waste heat that these data centers generate. And, I mean, Finland
has made sort of headlines because they have now started to integrate waste heat from data
centers into the district heating system. So you're just using electricity that's been put into
a data center, electricity mainly from renewables, and then use the waste heat and put it into
district heating and replace coal or gas. And that, of course, has tremendous benefits.
So there are some upsides. I mean, the other, there's an interesting company in the US that
uses data centers for flexibility. So they have a portfolio of data centers they have contracts
with. And if you put something into chat to BT and your query will then go to the data center
where there's more renewables in the grid, there is less congestion, and it's better for the
electricity system rather than sending it to a data center where you have maybe coal producing
electricity right now, and there's a lot of congestion in the grid. So there are now companies
that help with that. I think there's a lot of things that can be done to mitigate, but yeah,
it's still a significant problem. Although I think the public discussion about data centers,
especially AI and electricity demand, is overhyped. I mean, there are data from the IA looked at this.
So by 2030, we're going to have X amount of increase in electricity demand.
Data centers make up about 8% of that increase in AI within the data center chunk, I think is
not even half. I think it's closer to 20 or 30%. The rest is cloud computing and just applications
we use all the time in Google. What we're doing now will be housed in the data center.
Exactly. So I mean, it is a problem, I think in particular regions, but I think it's somewhat
been overhyped as well. It's not the only challenge that we face. And I think the interesting question
is how will we integrate lots of new electric vehicles and heat pumps and electrify industry?
Clearly, we've got to do that in a smart way and generate more, but also do it in a smart way,
that is in the end cheaper for the people who own these assets as well.
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Tire on the road. Is that, I mean, all those things, I think, are really interesting how
the impact of, I mean, just simplified to the impact of renewables. So the impact of wind in
this country, you know, there are days when we just don't need, we're burning like 5% of the
electricity we're generating is from gas. The rest is from nuclear and wind. And you go,
my God, that is an incredible change, really in a very short period of time. I mean, I don't know
when wind-powered electricity passed 1%, but it's in my lifetime. Oh, yeah, it's not that long ago.
No, it's not that long. Not at all. Yeah. And now it's often, today, 55%, the other day, over 72%.
And you will have, of course, you will have people who will say, oh, but what about the
last 10%. And the last 10% will be the most difficult 10%. There's no doubt. But even getting to 80%,
which some countries have done now. Denmark, I think, are now around 90%. Of course, they have
interconnections and they can have a hydro from the Scandinavian countries nearby and so on. But
still, we've seen tremendous progress at just how far you can push renewables, which was
unthinkable 20 years ago, completely unthinkable. And in global statistics, you wouldn't be able to
see solar and wind, because it was tiny. And now you see that they actually generate a significant
change. Yeah. But then, so the, you know, when, if you sort of just think about it from a lay person's
point of view, where you don't really know the granular detail, but you can sort of understand,
like at my house, I've got solar panels, I've got batteries, the solar charges, the batteries,
when that happens, I don't buy any electricity from the group. That's not hard to understand.
But then to do it on a scale, on a kind of national scale, you just go, well, that's a very, very
big battery. And that's a lot of solar panels. But I mean, the most crude question I've got about
this is, you know, do we have enough raw materials to make what would have to be, you know, on a
global sense, like petawatt hours of electricity storage? I mean, is that feasible or am I thinking
about it in the wrong way? You know, yeah, I think so that there's different camps out there as with
everything. But in one camp, would say that there is enough raw materials by a very wide margin,
and it's not a problem. And I think in physical terms, how much material there is, they're right.
The question is how much of that can be extracted without destroying everything exactly, which
time scales. And I'm just reading a book called extraction, which is kind of all about lithium
mining in Chile, and kind of the edge of greed capitalism, I think it's a subtitle. And it's
very interesting, because, yeah, of course, there is an impact of anything we do on this planet,
there's an impact, there's a social and environmental impact of some kind. And that's,
that's important. I think equally, it's important to compare it against the current system and not
just sort of being purist about it and say, oh, yeah, kind of any environmental impact, because
if it does, then we shouldn't be doing it. And often it's actually people who have never had a
problem with the impact of the fossil fuel industry, which is much, much larger. And then
point out that there are some issues with lithium mining or copper mining. And that I think is
disingenuous. So we, I think recycling would be interesting. And that's a really, I think,
important topic that is not talked about enough. How can we create a circular economy in a clean
energy system? It's only now, I think, becoming really relevant, because the first batteries
from electric cars that came to market of the Nissan Leaf was 2010, I think. And then Tesla,
more or less, was 2012. And only, you know, that was tiny. Numbers of cars sold globally was tiny.
And now we have millions. So the next few years, we're going to have more cars that come to the
end of their life. And then we have more opportunity for large-scale battery recycling. Can we actually
set up a battery recycling industry? And on what time scale will that work? I think that's really
important, because once you have enough materials in circulation, in theory, you just keep reusing
it. And there will be some loss. But my understanding is that most of it can be reused with existing
technology and can be recycled. So we've got to pay more attention to how we do that.
I mean, so the company that I first heard about that we're doing on scale, we're Redwood Materials
in the United States, which is one of the founders of Tesla starting it. Like, I'm trying to remember
his name and it's gone. Anyway, him, he's very clever. And it's colossal. I mean, it's a massive
industrial-scale plant they have in the desert, where they're recycling just thousands of tonnes.
But they're talking about 95% to 97% of all the materials in the battery that you use again.
I think there's a similar factory in Switzerland. It might even be Glencore that is operating that.
Well, it's going to be a new form of mining in a sense. You're extracting those materials.
I think that's in Belgium as well. I do want to go and say, there's a few
things I want to see before. But on that topic, it's just a matter of personal shame. When the
first person said to me, well, everything we use is either dug up or grown. I immediately thought,
no, what about, and then I was trying to think of things that we don't dig up or grow.
Well, there's an Ed Conway's book, Material World. And it's absolutely fascinating because
we really have no idea where the stuff we use every day comes from, unless you go to the
lengths that he's gone through and you investigate and you trace things back in the supply chain.
And you find out that in this supply chain, there might be one very critical factory that is making
a particular component. And without that, the whole thing would fall apart. But I think we have,
as a society, completely lost connection to the resources we use, where they come from,
and how they've been provided. That is an important conversation to have. And no doubt.
Absolutely. And it is those things like the kind of, it's much less. I mean, I'm sure you've
sensed this, but it is one thing that I've noticed is that the criticisms that I would
regularly witness about electric vehicles or renewable energy, they've changed considerably.
They've reduced enormously. But there's still some points, you know, where people will have heard
something in the last 10 years. And oh, what about all the cobalt that's in your factory,
dug up by children? Well, it's about 1% of all cobalt was dug up by human beings in,
all those excuses. But also, the last four electric cars that I've test driven don't have any cobalt
or nickel in them. They're all LFP batteries. And cobalt is used by the oil industry to remove
sulfur. And that kind of information, I mean, I bang on about it all the time, but it isn't in
the general understanding. And I think we have, there's always a delay where the evidence has
already moved on technology has moved on. But perception is based on information that has
dated 10, 15 years out of date. And people still believe it. And it's been repeated all the time.
And I mean, you can spend all day long just addressing the same myths, our technologies,
and they keep coming. I mean, it's incredible. I mean, the same goes for heat pumps, right?
Yeah. And clearly, some of that is just people are misinformed, I think there is also, and you
know that because it's been exposed by investigative journalists, there's a deliberate misinformation
campaign going on. I mean, you know this very well, and you've sort of tried to counter that
with actual information. And but this is one of the key obstacles. It's not so much technological.
I think it's, I think it's psychological. It's the same with I think with electric cars,
you know, the problems with that anybody might have, it's absolutely not technological. It's
psychological. It's what you feel and I couldn't charge it. I wouldn't know how to do it. I don't
know how it would work. And you go, well, just have a go. You'll find it's very mundane in many
ways, isn't it? And what about then, because that's the other one, the sort of few things that come up
every now and then. So I think finally, hydrogen as a fuel source for transportation has gently
been moved into the into the long term care home. But small modular nuclear reactors,
carbon capture and storage. There's another one. There's three that I couldn't find. Fusion. Fusion.
Thank you. Yes. Those all seem to come up every now and then. And I mean, none of them
are bad ideas. It's not like, it's not like let's drill for more gas. No, that I don't agree with.
But if small modular nuclear reactors, if they work, make make loads of them. Brilliant.
I haven't yet seen one. And then carbon capture and storage. Well, it's not going to destroy the
world if you capture a load of carbon, please carry on. Oh, how much electricity is it? Oh my
God. I mean, are they are any of those in your mind viable technologies? Certainly not in the
medium term, right? Because I mean, there's not a single SMR small modular reactor connected
commercially in the whole world. I'm not aware of it. I don't think there is. And in scaling,
that supply chain will take a lot of time. It's not going to happen overnight. It won't happen
in two or three years. So the time from commercialization to mass deployment, that's too long
to make a significant difference in the medium term, maybe in the long term.
Sure, that may happen. But by 2035, that's what I think is the medium term,
it won't play a significant role. It's just hard to see how even if it became
commercially available tomorrow, it's not going to scale up that rapidly. And when it comes to
fusion, I mean, there's a saying in the energy sector that fusion is always 30 years away.
And I mean, yes, you read the papers all the time that there's been some sort of success
and something has happened. But again, it's a long way from commercialization if it ever happens.
And yeah, I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing the research by any means. And if it worked,
it could be wonderful and amazing. Well, if it could use the nuclear waste
stuff we've got in Sellafield, just use that well and it didn't produce more waste.
It's just difficult to see how you could construct an energy strategy that's viable
around a technology that is not yet available and proven. I mean, there's a bit of a wishful
thinking, I'd say, if you did that. And then what was the other one, carbon capture and storage?
We're going to need some of it to remove carbon from the atmosphere. If you want to
bend down the curve of emissions in the atmosphere, and also there will be some residual
emissions from livestock, agriculture, some processes in industry where it's impossible
to electrify. It's very difficult to see how you can eliminate the emissions fully and carbon
capture for that. Sure. I mean, we may need it. The question is, again, to how much do you rely
on it for your long term strategy? And I just don't see it playing a major role in, we're going to
have blue hydrogen and replace all the gas and the pipes and carbon capture will be offering us
that opportunity to make blue hydrogen at scale. I just don't see how that would work. There's
simply no evidence for it taking off in the way that we have been promised many times by the
industry, but it hasn't happened yet. I mean, I filmed at Draxby Power Station in Yorkshire in
the UK over 20 years ago, and there was a big PR push then. We've got a lot of emissions now,
but we're going to use carbon capture as well. And I was going, oh, that's brilliant. Amazing.
Well done. 20 years later, they haven't done it. They burn wood there. They don't burn coal.
That's right. I mean, until recently, there was, I think, one single power station in the
world in Canada that had carbon capture fitted. But it used, first of all, it didn't capture all
of the carbon. It only captured a small amount and also used the carbon emissions to then get more
oil out of it. And that wasn't particularly cost effective either. So now I think there's a few
in China, I believe, where Southeast Asia, but it's only a handful and certainly hasn't,
the dream of clean coal has not materialized. I mean, let's face it. And in the meantime,
of course, you know, we now have a situation where often solar and batteries wind are cheaper
than coal generation or gas generation. Therefore, how could you then outcompete
these technologies? If you add another technology, another cost to it, it's hard to see how you would
be able to do that. Well, it does feel to me, and I'd love you to correct me if I'm wrong,
but it does seem to me that it's the economics that are making as big a shift as anything else.
You can have government policy, you can have the right attitudes because we want to protect the
environment. But economics is a very powerful driving force. And if it's cheaper, I mean,
I've just been in Australia earlier this year, the solar farms I went to see there on a monstrous
scale with sheep, very good combination. Agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics are very popular.
But it's just cheaper. It's cheaper. In Australia, where coal is sort of free,
it's still cheaper to use solar and batteries. And they're putting in massive batteries the
size of large housing estates. There seems to be no limit. They just get bigger and bigger.
Yeah, or Pakistan is a really interesting case study where I've sort of followed the solar
adoption there for quite closely. And I think it was something like only 1% a few years back,
and we're now at more than 20% of the entire electricity generation in Pakistan. And most
of it is actually rooftop solar, because people have realized it's cheaper to have
rooftop solar than buying electricity from the grid. And it's more reliable. The grid is actually
not that reliable in Pakistan. So you have this real sort of from the ground up grassroots adoption
of technology suddenly, because it's become more economic and affordable. And that wasn't the case
10 years ago, because we changed. Because I mean, I'm sort of going back to,
you know, when I first heard about these things, when I was in Germany, and I spoke to a government
minister in Berlin about, and I can't say it, you'll be able to say that, I'm going to say,
in a guy of vendor, but that's not it. In a give and thank you. I wasn't a million miles away.
But, you know, and it sounded so, you know, such an amazing aim to do this. And it was expensive.
And because the solar was expecting it, everything was like it didn't feel
like for the common person, it's not going to affect their lives. And now, you know,
certainly in Africa, I know that solar has had an enormous impact on, you know, people who have
never had electricity. In a sense, a bit like cell phones, you miss the copper wire bit and just
have a cell phone. We had someone here at Oriole College to give a talk, actually, who worked for
a company in, I think it was Nigeria, and they offer people off the grid, a package of a battery
of a solar panel, and a flat screen TV. And often it's the TV that sells. But then once you have
the solar and the battery and the TV, then the next thing might be, well, maybe instead of cooking
with biomass, you might try induction cooking, or you can do other things on top of that.
And that's, you know, complete game changer. If you suddenly have electricity, you can charge your
phone, you have a TV, you can watch the news and then sport, and it's incredible.
Charge your phone. I mean, do you think then generally speaking, because it sounds like you are
relatively optimistic, you know, realistically grounded, but you're generally optimistic
that the human race can, you know, move on really from the fossil, really from burning stuff. I mean,
that's what we've been doing for 10,000 years. I think you have to be optimistic. And because
otherwise, you may as well just give up. So I think actually optimism is, I'm often told,
oh, it's naive. How can you be optimistic? Look at the numbers. And yes, fossil fuel consumption,
it's not going down fast enough. In fact, it's been rising in a lot of countries.
Adoption of technology is not happening fast enough. Carbon emissions rising. So we're
failing, aren't we? So just give up. And sometimes I'm told by people who actually,
they are environmentalists, they want to stop the problem. But I think if you have that mindset,
you're never going to change anything. You have to believe in the possibility of change,
and that means you have to be optimistic and believe that change is possible. So I think it's
almost a tool that you have to use in order to effectuate change in the world. But I'm also
optimistic just looking at how much, I mean, I've worked in energy for 22 years now. I started in
2004 as a student research assistant. And you know, I've seen just over that two decade period,
the industry changed. So unbelievable change. And that is against a lot of obstacles,
but difficult economics. And we're now in a situation where the question is, how fast can
we scale rather than other technologies viable? We have not all of them, but we have most of
the technologies already. And they will keep getting better and they will keep getting cheaper.
So we have all the ingredients we need. The question is whether the politics and our
cultural and social political... I don't want to do a conspiracy theory, but the pressure,
completely understandable. I've always said this, from the fossil fuel industry,
it's how they earn a living. And they want to keep selling the stuff they extract.
Of course. I mean, if you are a lobbyist for a fossil fuel company, you will be
looking at... You will be motivated to promote solutions that benefit your business, just as,
of course, if you were a lobbyist for renewable energy firm, you would be the same.
So we shouldn't be surprised. I think the difference is that 80% is to largely fossil
fuels. The amount of resources available to these industries is different.
Yeah, yeah. I looked up yesterday, so we have 47 years,
according to someone in like one of the IEAs or the 47 years of fossil fuel left at current
consumption rates of known reserves. So we have trillions of barrels of oil. It's like,
not running out. But we could. I mean, I don't think we'd ever run out,
but it would just become incredibly expensive to get what remains. It becomes harder and harder,
that sort of. But I thought, I've never seen that before. I was thinking about talking to you
today and I went, I didn't know that someone had worked 47 years. I haven't looked at this
recently, but I think the story has been, historically, that whenever people have predicted
we're going to run out of certain resources, there would be discoveries. And I remember when,
I think it was Paul Alec, who was, I think he was an evolutionary biologist, maybe at Stanford.
And he made a bet with an economist, I think called Simon, and they were betting on resources
running out. And they basically used the price, I think, as an indicator of scarcity. And they had,
I think, 10 different resources. And Paul Alec said, look, all of these would be much more expensive
in 10 years time. And Julian Simon, I think, was his name, bet against it. And they both put a
check down and said, look, if you win in 10 years, you're going to get that from me.
And then 10 years later, I think almost all of the resources had gone down in price and Paul
Alec lost the bet. And that was kind of the most prominent case, perhaps. And of course,
a club of Rome at the time published their report about running out of resources and limits to
growth. And I think the problem is not so much the availability of resources, but if we burned
through them all, we're going to be, we're going to be in a, not on the planet, we'll just be very
difficult to live on for us as a human race. So I mean, I think the other one that's in a similar
way with my entire childhood and early years was all about the population explosion, the population
bomb, there were books, you know, that we're doing. That's Paul Alec. That's Paul Alec. Yeah,
no, he loved a bit of popular. And then, you know, then the most recent book I've read about it is,
what are we going to do? Because the population is literally falling off a clear everywhere. And
if the country in the world, except Afghanistan, at the moment, I think it's the only one,
the birth rate is dropped precipitously, even in countries which we as Westerners would assume
like Bangladesh, it's below when, when I was born, you know, it's 2.5 children, you know, when I was
born, Bangladesh is below that. And you think, my God, that's changed. And it's, if women are
educated, if there's basic health services, people have less babies, because more of them live,
yeah, it's quite old, sort of something. But that I think was not, you know, but Paul Alec did not
predict that. He predicted it would just, and so the actual, you know, conceivable that in 100
years, there'd actually be a lot less human beings on the planet, not a result of war or, I mean,
you know, a few less of us. Yeah. I mean, when I read that book, I went through my address book,
and saw all my, because I've had two children, I've looked at all these, and I went, oh, no,
oh, three, she had three. Disgusting. None, none, one, one, one, one, you know, it was none or one,
was very common. And I was, I'd never even thought about it. But, you know, the fact that we,
we didn't need, because you need more than two to do replacement, the mathematics is beyond me.
I have, I haven't studied. No, it's a different topic. I'm sure it's very interesting.
What last thing, just, just because I, you know, I'm fascinated when I see
new technology, I saw this extraordinary company in Australia that, that, you know,
I'd heard of this notion before, but of using weight to store energy, so that you drop a weight
down a mine shaft. And that, and I can understand it. And as it drops, it, it spins and generates,
and then you use electricity, cheaper electricity to pull it back up. They've gone one step further.
It's a very clever system of nonstop constant, right, charging and discharging. And it's,
you know, it's in the megawatt capacity. So that, you know, those little ideas are fascinating.
But I wonder if there's a technology that you've seen that is in its formative stages.
Yeah, I mean, I would say heat batteries are definitely one to watch. And by heat batteries,
I mean, large batteries that can be used for industrial processes. There's now about 40
companies, at least I counted that can offer heat batteries, very large range of temperatures from
just the low hundreds degree centigrade. So maybe in a brewery, in a food and drinks industry,
boil water, maybe textiles, you know, it's quite low temperatures, a pulp and paper,
all the way to quite high temperatures, up to 1500 degrees centigrade. And in the beauty,
I think with heat batteries is that you can use an abundance of different materials. It could be
sand, there's a company using sand, you can use old bricks, you can use manufactured materials
from waste materials. There's a wide range of materials you can use for that. And then,
modulizable, you can make little by bit one similar to really electric batteries.
And you can, they don't need that much space, physical space. And they can be running flexibly,
harvesting cheap electricity and providing heat 24 seven. So I think that's an interesting space
to watch because it's fairly new, very novel and industry is the next, that's kind of the next big
thing I think that needs to happen. We have, I mean, we've done really well on transport,
I'd say on, certainly on road transport, when it comes to innovation, buildings, I mean, heat pumps
are really the technology, I think that will dominate that space. But industry is still,
and it's infancy, I mean, industrial heat pumps will do some of it, but for the higher
temperatures, they struggle. So I think heat batteries, definitely one of the technologies
you can watch, I'd say. Yeah, I mean, just because it's come back recently, but I mean,
I spent a couple of visits to Orkney, where they do, they have got tidal turbines there,
which are very clever ideas. But I think even they would acknowledge saltwater and metal and
electronics. It's a complicated, challenging mixture. But apparently there is a very large
1.1, 1.2 megawatt turbine operating in Japan that is proving itself to be very, I mean,
that's never going to happen. I mean, maybe, you know, it's probably more unlikely.
But then sometimes there's a breakthrough and suddenly, there is a technology that wasn't
on people's radar, and it does really have a massive impact. I mean, lithium ion batteries
were invented, at least partly in Oxford, not far from here, and that was in the 70s.
Without that breakthrough, we wouldn't be having the ability to drive EVs around,
and because there was such a difference in weight and the ability to store electricity.
So these things happen once in a while. But there's a lot of competing technologies in the mix
that I'm always skeptical until you see that there's actually demand picking up,
there's professionalization of the industry, and it's not just a pilot project.
Because those things always sound wonderful until you only need one person to explain to you,
but they're, you know, the idea of a tidal barrier across the river seven in this country.
And you see the tides, I mean, you know, I know that river quite well. It's a phenomenal difference.
And you go, yeah, you just build them all. Yeah, where does the stuff that you build them all come
from? It's basically Devon. You dig up Devon and you spread it. You know, it's such an enormous
project that you just go, okay, I understand why that might not happen. Those things.
Yeah, it's been such fun. I mean, I want to just check the time. Oh, yeah, we're done. Oh,
because I think I think we've covered lots of things. Yeah, I mean, it's been, it's been wonderful.
Oh, I'm going to do one last one. This is definitely the last one. So you've got a house
and it's well insulated. But the roof is unsuitable for solar panels, but you can get
a variable tariff on your electricity. Is it worth, is it worth going for a battery rather
than solar? This is a very domestic question. Oh gosh, that's a hard question. Because I think,
I feel, I'm encouraging people are going, don't worry about solar, get a battery first.
Because anyone can put a battery in the house and solar is often more challenging and depending
on the house and all that stuff. But you know, I can sense that I've benefited from having batteries.
But in the winter, I charge for less money in the nighttime and I use that electricity in the
day. It seems, you know, fairly. Yeah, I mean, I think you have to look at it on a case by case
basis. Like what's the cost of the battery? What tariff would you have? Clearly, for some people,
it makes sense. But I wouldn't go as far as saying it always makes sense. You should always have a
battery and it depends on your usage and how you operate the battery, what tariff you're on
and the cost. And how you use electricity. And so there's all these factors. But yeah,
I think we're getting now into a position where it makes sense for more and more people. Making
more and more sense. I mean, what I love about that is a perfect illustration of my, yeah,
just get a battery and shut up and you're, let's think about this a little bit more carefully.
Which is why you're a professor in Oxford University and I'm not. But that is,
yeah. And thank you so much. It's been a real joy. Pleasure to you. Pleasure. Thank you.
Really hope you enjoyed that. But that's all. Do join us again next week for another
sizzling episode of the Everything Electric podcast.
About this episode
Professor Jan Rosenau argues that electrification is the biggest lever to cut global energy use—potentially halving it—because EVs and heat pumps use far less energy than burning fossil fuels, where waste heat is unavoidable. The discussion contrasts short-term “find more oil/gas” responses with long-term electrification plans (notably France), and explains why fossil fuel supply arguments don’t meaningfully lower prices. They also tackle grid concerns (data centers, smart charging), renewable scaling, battery recycling, persistent myths, and why alternatives like hydrogen, SMRs, fusion, and carbon capture are unlikely to matter in the medium term.
In this episode of the Everything Electric Podcast, Robert Llewellyn sits down with Professor Jan Rosenow, Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at Oxford University, to reveal why electricity currently only tells 20% of the global energy story.
They delve into tackling the "hidden 80%", the mobility and heating sectors still dominated by fossil fuels; and explore why our current system is "astonishingly inefficient," wasting two-thirds of all energy inputs as heat. Jan explains how shifting to electrification at scale could cut total global energy demand in half and tackles the biggest myths and milestones of the transition:
The Grid Threat: Why data centers pose a more significant regional challenge to the grid than 100 million electric vehicles.
Critical Materials: Is the world really running out of lithium, or are we entering an era of "urban mining" where 95-97% of battery materials can be recycled?
The China Factor: A look at the "mind-blowing" scale of solar adoption in China and the declining utilization of their coal plants.
Beyond Climate: Why electrification is now a primary lever for energy security and economic resilience in a volatile world.
From the efficiency of heat pumps to the emergence of industrial heat batteries , this episode connects the dots on what the next phase of the energy transition really looks like.
00:00 A little error...
03:22 Fragile Fuel Systems and Global Crises
05:53 The Myth of North Sea Energy Security
07:44 The Colossal Scale of Global Oil Consumption
08:44 The 20/80 Rule: Why Electricity Isn't Everything
10:41 Efficiency: Why Electrification Halves Energy Use
12:47 China's Solar Revolution and Coal Reality
15:52 The Mindset of the New Generation of Engineers
