Redefining Energy

After several black outs in the past months, the irresistible growing trend towards electrification and the relentless rise of renewables, the grid has become the indispensable nervous system of the energy transition. How can the grid manage more intermittent and decentralized sources while ensuring more resiliency in dire and more recurrent weather extremes.
Gerhard Salge, CTO Hitachi ABB Power Grids provides solutions for a modernised XXIst Century super-grid. The super-grid will be strengthen through interconnectors and AI, but also integrate new usages such as emobility, heating, and industrial uses like steel and mining. This is a journey where digisation, virtual inertia, mini-hubs are the new tool to build, manage and strengthen the XXist century supergrid. Massive investments and new mindsets will be key to a cleaner and more resilient electrical world.
Thank you to our partner - Aquila Capital - for supporting the show.
Visit Aquila Capital: https://www.aquila-capital.de/en/

The UK Green Industrial Revolution was introduced by Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister, in 2020. It is a holistic approach to decarbonisation, but we wanted to focus on one of its key aspects: the development of the largest offshore wind farms in the world.
Beyond climate change, it is about innovation, new opportunities and massive jobs creation. We have invited two young engineers working on those gigantic projects Ajai Ahluwalia of Equinor and Virginia Ruiz of ScottishPower-Iberdrola. On the top of their daily jobs, they have both volunteered to work in the shadow board of RenewableUK (the trade association representing the renewable energy sector) and they are actively preparing COP26.
It is great to have young, diverse guests on the show, not just old grumpy white dudes. The passion and dedication of Millennials is definitely powering the Green Industrial Revolution.

Why are engineers, politicians and financiers talking about Hydrogen all the time? And why are they throwing billions of subsidies or investment in companies in that sector?
Is Hydrogen a problem, with its hundreds of millions tonnes of CO2 emissions per year or a “Swiss Army Knife” solution that will help decarbonise Mobility, Heating and God knows what?
Should decarbonising the current Hydrogen production be the initial goal? Carbon Capture, Electrolysers: do those technologies make sense from an economic perspective, are there technology breakthroughs ahead or does someone will have to foot the bill?
Rather than trying to fix the fuel, should we not instead switch the fuel and electrify everything?
Those are all the subjects that are covered in this long Episode, and answers are… complicated.
Fortunately, we have our friend Paul Martin on the show, to try to make sense of all those options, and dissociate the Hope from the Hype.

References:
•Electrification: Mark Jacobson
•Mobility: James Carter (and check Auke Hoestra on twitter)
•Aviation: Toby McCann
•Lobbying: THE HYDROGEN HYPE https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/2020-12/hydrogen-report-web-final_3.pdf
•Finally, a lot of good material from our friends John Poljack and Alex Grant

Aluminium is a key metal for the Energy Transition with the development of EVs, non-plastic packaging and Renewables. But it is also a very energy-intensive metal, consuming 15MWh/t aluminium: this represents 3% of the world’s power consumption. Some of the greenest producers are taking action to promote a cleaner way to produce aluminium; they are also pushing the market to properly price “green metal” vs “black metal”. To discuss those critical issues, we have the pleasure to welcome Lord Greg Barker on the show.
After a distinguished career as UK Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change under David Cameron’s government from 2010 to 2015, Lord Barker is now Chairman of EN+. EN+ is the largest Aluminium producer in the world outside China and also the largest private owner of Hydro Capacity in the world (15GW). Lord Barker is on a mission to clean the Aluminium sector, and debates with Gerard and Laurent how the pricing of carbon will help boost the advent of green metals.
An excellent report on Aluminium emissions: https://ember-climate.org/commentary/2021/02/07/china-aluminium-2020-emissions/

In this Episode, its Nostradamus vs. Cassandra: Laurent and Gerard share their predictions for 2021.
1) “The Empire strikes back”, legacy players in the Energy and Automotive sectors will bounce back
2) The unstoppable development of renewables
3) The SPACs valuation hang-over, most of them imploding after reaching unjustifiable valuations
4) The tipping point in EVs production and adoption
5) The renaissance of the Carbon markets
6) The growing leadership of China in the Energy Transition…
and much more topics that we unveil and will dig more into during the season…

For our first episode of 2021, we have the pleasure and privilege to welcome Katherine Hamilton, co-founder and Chair at 38 North Solution (a Washington based public policy firm focused on clean energy and innovation). Katherine is one of the best expert of the US energy and environmental policy, and she is also part of the “Energy Gang” the most famous Energy podcast. We consider Katherine to be the “fairy godmother” of Redefining Energy. During a breezy and affable conversation, we analyse the state of play of the American Energy Transition as Trump gives way to Biden. Despite the outgoing Administration’s rhetoric and shenanigans, clean energy has thrived since 2016 (wind +50%, solar x2, batteries x4, EVs x6). Now that a resolutely pro-climate Administration takes the helm, we anticipate a spectacular acceleration of the Energy Transition in America, and Katherine wonderfully explains why.

Happy new year to all our listeners.

For our last episode of 2020, we share a Christmas story: until 1931, Santa was green, then he was taken over by Coca-Cola who turned it red. In 2020, Santa is Green again! So we have invited the tech version of Green Santa, Norman Crowley.
Norman, a convinced environmentalist and successful Irish entrepreneur, is investing in advanced solutions to reduce emissions in three key sectors of the Energy Transition: energy efficiency, transportation and food-tech. Norman delivers an optimistic message “Climate Change is solved”: this is due to the rapid adoption of clean technologies rather than old-style command and control, top down policies. Controversial, probably… worth listening, certainly.
https://www.crowleycarbon.com/
https://www.electrifidreams.com/
https://www.coolplanetexperience.org/

Merry Christmas to all our listeners; if you want to make us a nice year-end present, please rate the show 5* and leave a nice review. See you all in 2021.

In 2020, every two days, wind and solar added more net capacity to the world than nuclear in a year. Fifteen years ago, the Nuclear Industry presented itself as the main solution to climate change; today, it is limping towards oblivion. This carnage is mainly self-inflicted: disregard for capital discipline, appalling track record in term of innovation deployment and more basically wrong economics when every other source of energy was working hard to scale up and reduce costs. To assist us in the Industry’s autopsy, we have invited Mycle Schneider, leading independent nuclear expert and coordinator of the internationally acclaimed World Nuclear Industry Status Report. We dissect the reasons why the industry is going from bad to worse, and why its last supports start to wane. Total tragedy.
Reference: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-The-Annual-Reports-.html

The EV Battery race is in full swing: competition for scale, building of international supply chains and the search for the best chemistry. After the spectacular Tesla Battery Day where a path to a 50% reduction in batteries costs has been plotted, Redefining Energy tries to assess Tesla’s technological advances versus its competitors: Years or just months? And what is the competition working on?
There is no better guest than Roland Zenn, Supply Chain Manager at Farasis, to provide a technical inside-view on the state-of-the art of Batteries production. Farasis is one of the challengers in the EV battery race, with a partnership with Daimler. Are we on the path to standardization or specialization? How can we continue to reduce prices while ensuring a staggering growth in volume? What are the breakthroughs around the corner? All those themes and much more in this new Episode of the Redefining Energy podcast, to reach an answer to one of the key question of 2020: can the Auto Industry catch up on Tesla?
A great thanks to Simon Moores and Vivas Kumar from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, George Heppel from CRUGroup, Joe Lowry aka “Mr Lithium”, Howard Klein and Rodney Hooper from RK Equity and Jack Bedder from Roskill for their insights. They are the real experts!

Spain is a country blessed with natural clean resources, water, wind and sun, but also prong to boom and busts when it comes to the Energy Transition. Thankfully, Spain’s Energy Transition is also managed by no non-sense very competent professionals. It is our pleasure to welcome Agustin Delgado, CTO of Spanish giant Iberdrola, a company more valuable than RWE and E.ON combined. With Agustin, we will review Spain’s plan to massively decarbonise, and use mostly market forces and proven technologies to achieve this goal. Running a clean grid at 70% is within reach, thanks to a savvy combination of Solar, Wind and Pumped Hydro, while Battery Storage and CCGT will be used to balance the market. This will allow the retirement of coal and nuclear while electrifying transport and buildings. A great vision, but a pragmatic and totally doable. Spain is definitely back as a Clean Energy champion, and Iberdrola leads the charge.
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Finally, we want to thank all our listeners. More than 75,000 downloads, Close to 100 5* reviews on Itunes. Gerard and Laurent wish you, fellows of the Energy Transition, a happy Anniversary!