Volts crossover: Six big energy questions

Latitude Media covering the new. The energy transition. I'm Shail Khan, and this is Catalyst. This is the scary thing about solar radiation management. You could stand up and do a reasonably large scale test. on your own without a ton of money. Arguably without being detected doing so by the world. You know what I mean? Coming up, six questions, the David Roberts of the Volts podcast, and I want to hear answered in the next five to ten years.

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All right. So this is the second crossover episode that I've done with my friend David Roberts. He's a longtime journalist and thinker on lots of things, politics, but also clean energy. And he hosts the Volts podcast, which I like as well. And he and I get together periodically and just riff on a bunch of stuff. So that's what we did here.

The prompt we gave ourselves was we each came up with three questions that we want to see answered in the next five to ten years. So we talked about those three from each of us, and then it led us down a bunch of paths from there. Anyway, fun conversation as always. Here's David. David, nice to be back with you. Awesome. Glad to be doing this again.

All right. So we gave ourselves a prompt here, which is that each of us have come prepared with three questions we are eager to see answered in the next five to ten years. I I assume we both came with backups as well in case we overlap. I don't think I bet you we're not gonna overlap. I I tried not to overlap with you. So I think we will it'll be funny if we both tried so hard that we're gonna like leave some very obvious questions unanswered.

Well yeah, I I didn't try to go super esoteric, but I at least tried to. tried to get like medium esoteric. So we'll see we'll see. We'll see. You want me to go first? Yeah, you go first. Okay, so so just to just to to to review for for listeners, the prompt here is questions. Important questions facing the clean energy world that you might reasonably think will get some kind of answer.

in the next five to ten years. And that turned out to be really interesting, really difficult because I kept thinking of questions. that I was like, well, will we really know in ten years? You know, there are like lots of big there are lots of big questions where I don't think we'll really know

until like twenty or thirty years out. So that was sort sort of interesting as a way of bracketing my thinking about this. So anyway, long story short, my first one is so Self driving cars. are here. Which is puzzling in itself since there was all this chatter and talk for years in anticipation. Of their arrival. And then they arrived.

And like nobody talks about it. Like they're operating in several cities now and nobody talks about it. Like so it's a little weird. So, but there are lots of really, I think, interesting questions about the macro effect. of self-driving vehicles that I think we will get answers to pretty soon because You know, now that San Francisco has been doing it a while and it seems to be working, basically. And I think Seattle's starting a pilot. There's like pilots starting in a bunch of cities.

We're very close, I think, to basically widespread adoption. And then we'll start to get answers to. Some of these questions w like, you know, the fear that I have that I think that I think a lot of people. sort of climate people have, greenies have, is that

Making it easier to take a car around is going to result in a lot more people taking a lot more cars around, basically. Like even though people might not necessarily own their own vehicle, even if these are sh even if they're shared vehicles. just the level of the level of use. of cars is going to rise sharply when it becomes so easy and so convenient, which will translate mathematically into greater congestion. So like You could see like death.

going down, as I think we're already seeing in San Francisco. you could see noise going down if they're all electric. You could see pollution going down if they're all electric. But but on the core issue of urbanism They are gonna m the fear is that they are gonna work against density, basically. They're gonna make it easier to live far out. They're gonna make it easier to commute. Like a commute, you're not gonna dread

an hour long commute if you can just chill and like read and tap on your phone and or watch a TV show or something. So that's just gonna make it a lot easier to decide to live an hour outside of town. So anyway, I think Within five to ten years, we will at least see cities where these things become. Ubiquitous and then I think at the very least we'll have directionally

answers to some of these things. I'm very curious, Sheil, from your perspective, w what your level like of anticipation versus dread versus um You know, now that it's here, it's just not that big of a deal either way. I'm curious what your disposition is on self driving cars.

Uh, good question and so many things to say about it. Okay. Let me offer you a few bits of exposition first. Um, so I live in the Bay Area, as I think you know, uh I don't live in San Francisco, but I live outside the city and I You've taken Of course. I Waymo as a regular I use Waymo as a verb regularly. Yeah, of course.

And and you're right that like it's just not a thing in San Francisco anymore. Not a thing in the sense that like one out of every three cars in the city is a Waymo and and that's just how it is. And it's become pretty normalized to anybody who's not a tourist. And I agree with you, it's coming everywhere. And I think five to ten years is also

It's kind of the right time frame for this. I the my other um Tidbit for you, I have a four year old son and I've been making bets about his future with anybody who wants to take them with me since he was born.

Um, and the one of the bets is that he will never drive a car. He'll never get a driver's license. I mean, he's growing up, you know, in kind of suburban Bay Area, California. So take that into account because this is a specific bet to my son. But You know, I think twelve years from now, when it would be time for him to get his driver's license. It he's not gonna need to, right? And already lots of kids are just Ubering around. Yeah.

That said, with your question, it's interesting the framing of it to me, because I I had anticipated you were gonna raise a climate concern, which you're not, right? Like you're saying because the best bit of Second order. I th I think I think urbanism and density are climate related. Like I think if you if you lose density, even if the cars aren't polluting, you're still going to get greater pollution and greater impact. Like I think there are second order climate effects.

Probably, but I would bet I don't have data on this, but I would bet that those affects One of the main reasons why density is lower emissions per capita is transportation. That's a big part of it. Yeah. And so if it is true, the benefit of self-driving vehicles from a climate perspective is that. it is it makes a lot more sense for them to be electric. Right. Like the the the uh utilization pattern.

They're all Wiymo's. They're all electric. All the extant self-driving cars on the road are electric today. your EVs and it just makes more sense, right? You you drive high utilization, you pay back the added capex of the EV much faster. Um, it it's better for a bunch of reasons. So I you know, I think if you assume that our self-driving future actually accelerates vehicle electrification.

Then to a first order from a climate perspective, it's not inherently a bad thing. Now that would be weighed against your question, which is I think a question of like, will there be more vehicle miles traveled total? Yes. And so those kind of weigh against each other to some extent, but it's not obvious to me that that uh a transition to autonomous vehicles is bad from a climate perspective. It might even be No, I I I would not I mean I would not have the arrogance to

put my flag on either side of that. I don't think like I I I think we just genuinely genuinely don't know. I th I think that's right. that it uh it's gonna eliminate a huge chunk of emissions um of emissions. The the question is all these second order effects and how you even really trace them. But like I do think that continuing to sprawl outwards is bad for a number of reasons extraneous to climate.

Yeah, I guess I don't really have an opinion on that. I'm not a I'm not an urbanist, I guess I would say in that way. And so I don't have strong opinions on whether adding more sprawl is Bad. I could see it happening. I actually have a I have a friend who's a long-term real estate investor who is amassing a portfolio of land in the exurbs of certain cities under the bet.

Under like a multi decade decade bed of exactly what you're describing. So I totally could see that happening. I guess I just don't inherently see it as a bad thing. Oh uh well th th the question of whether excerbs are bad or not is a large question that we don't have time to to address here. So you know so So I mean I think this is a good thing.

I think this would just reinforce the worries of the urbanists, which is that they see the tech guys pushing this, and I don't yeah, I don't see any sign from the tech guys that the tech guys care about this. They drive themselves They drive themselves everywhere. They drive themselves everywhere. They don't live in walkable places. I don't like

Silicon Valley, the physical form of Silicon Valley is so gross. It's so gross and deadening. But I guess that that's all they know. Anyway, so but at at the very least, like We'll be able to see if that sprawl happens, and then I guess we'll be able to, you know, answer the question of whether whether we like the effects or not.

I think what we can measure to answer your question of will we know in five to ten years is in the cities where there is high proliferation of autonomous vehicles, so San Francisco and five to ten years from now, probably a bunch of other cities, will total VMT have gone up? Over that period. Yes,'cause they are pushing in the other direction in i in California with policy. They are trying to restrain sprawl with a lot of other

policies. So how will that balance out? And uh or or or it might even be more interesting to see like what would happen to a city like, you know, Cleveland or whatever if they get a bunch of A Vs'cause they do not have a strong overlay of other laws restraining them. So it'd be more of, I guess, like a clean, like a clean experiment. And we'll probably see something like This is where Phoenix has been the test bed for autonomous vehicles. Are they are they a thing there now?

Uh oh yeah, that's where that's where a lot of the early testing was. In some ways because it's it's obvious. Phoenix is a a simple grid, it's not hilly, the weather's good. Yeah, so it it's kind of the opposite of San Francisco. San Francisco was like trial by fire for Waymo, but Phoenix is Phoenix is already sprawling like crazy. So it's a little t a little tricky to separate the signal from the noise, but

Yeah. Okay. Can I give you my first question? Get your first one. Okay, so I think the obvious question that of course I'm gonna ask. I'll try to ask a different version of. The obvious question that I'm gonna ask is. Um, how hot will data center fever get and will it break in the next five to ten years? Five to ten years is is Probably the right time frame to ask that question. Um

Who knows, right? But within the next 10 years, will we we'll see some directional thing here. And so, but instead of asking the question of how hot will he the data center fever get and will it break? I'll ask a different question, which I think is like a second order effect of that, which is how much large load goes off grid? Mm-hmm. In the next five to ten years. Because to walk through the chain of logic.

The kind of going assumption right now of what's happening is that there is so much demand for new data center capacity that we are going to be bursting at the seams on the grid in any market that has demand for data centers. We're basically going to tap out everything we could possibly do on the grid. And so much so that maybe we need to go to space.

Right. Um but I think before we go to space in significant volume, there would be a good chance we would go off grid. We've never seen a lot of large industrial loads go off grid apart from like mining and things like that. We're starting to see glimmers of it. Right now in data center. Are we not saying law? Like didn't either someone just proposed or passed a law that basically said you have to

Josh Hawley in the in the Senate and somebody else I think um introduced a bill that would essentially mandate data centers to go off grid. I my presumption is that doesn't pass. Well, I like I've said several times, like there's a a world of difference between bring some generation and bring enough generation to cover yourself if you go off grid entirely. That's a very you know what I mean? I know. Hundreds of megawatts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, what's happening now, to be clear, there's an enormous amount of bring your own generation. No no question about that one. That's an answered question.

The question that has not been answered is uh and and actually to add to that, there's also an enormous number of projects that are saying, Okay, we'll do bridge power. So we are gonna be off grid until we get the grid connection. And that's gonna be a year, three years, five years, whatever it might be. I'm saying Forget the grid. Who how many large loads will just be fully off-grid with no intent to get a grid connection? Will that happen in significant volume? That is an interesting question.

I it is interesting. I'll just say my gut instinct strongly says no. I I just think like the arguments for a grid, like a grid is handy. You know what I mean? Like grids are extremely useful. And like a lot of a lot of policy discussion right now is is being forced into weird Shapes.

Because it's trying to work around the fact that we can't do the obvious thing, which is just build more grid, right? Like that's like that would solve all the problems. That's what everybody wants. It's what everybody needs beyond data centers, even. Like For the future, period. We just need to do that. And we're like Between trying to make that happen and then trying to sort of weasel our way around it. You know what I mean? And so I guess the how that question.

Making a case, right? Like the fact that we're not solving that. I mean you could make a case that we will solve it, but if we don't solve Then what happens? Yeah. Well, I mean this this that's an interesting even broader question. Like what Could it I could I could imagine a story where our sort of social and political dysfunction, our inability to build quickly, forces these weird around the edges solutions that end up like growing and developing

in ways that we can't anticipate now and like bringing new things into the world. You know what I mean? Like it will spa it will spawn invention and innovation, I think. Even though, like, if you had your druthers, you would ch not choose this situation. But I do think it will it will it will force some very creative thinking.

Yeah, I mean I think To me, it really comes down to this question of is it is it really true that for an extended period of time into the future, we're gonna have dramatically more demand for data center capacity than we have ability to serve it on the grid? Um, with money attached to that demand that is willing to take some risks that maybe hyperscalers wouldn't have taken in the past, for example. And if those things are true, then it is kind of inevitable to me that.

Some amount of it, and I don't know how much, is gonna is gonna take the one risk that is introduced by not being on the grid, which is. largely reliability, right? You you don't, you know, you don't have as many nines of reliability unless you really overbuild a bunch of on-site stuff. But what you get in exchange is You get unleashed from a citing perspective. I mean, imagine how easy it is to cite something if you remove the constraints of the transaction.

But you are, I take it, imagining very large gas plants. I'm not imagining. اشتركوا في القناة Watching them get built. I would you know I don't I I have not uh accommodated myself to that yet. I d I don't want that to happen, you know. Oh, but that's happening, right? No, I know what's already happening.

Um, and by the way, it doesn't inherently have to be gas, right? Like there's a good study that uh PACES and scale microgrids put out a while ago that was that was, you know, what would it can you actually run at high utilization a data center fully off grid? With uh with mostly solar and storage. Um you generally do need a little bit of dispatchable generation. So you mix your things together and you end up with some gas, but like it, you know.

It's just a microgrid, right? It's the same question. It's the same question that faces any microgrid. Like you you It's the same question that faces any grid, really. Like you can do X amount with variable and you need some marginal amount of dispatchable to to to firm up. Like it's gonna be the same the same in miniature. Or more batteries. That's what that's the like that's what I wanna see. Like that's what I think could straightforwardly

more straightforwardly substitute for for natural gases, more and bigger batteries. But they're like As as you know, because like half of your shows and my shows are about this now, but like this question the way you ask it is also tied up intimately with a bunch of other super fascinating questions, like um Are data centers gonna continue evolving in the direction of gigantism, or is there a serious prospect for?

distributed, more distributed, more modular, more grid edge data centers. That's a super interesting question. Then there's the sort of just the bigger question of like Will there be radical efficiencies in chip design that mean we don't need The sheer quantity, we think now, or will the bubble pop or something. You know what I mean? Like the the question of how many data centers there will be is is

Everyb lot lots of people wanna know the answer to that question. Not just the not just the power people and the grid people, but uh But so how do you think about and this is something I and then we can move on to the next one. This is something I try to think about how I talk about. Like I what I want to say or or here's another note I would put. Before they take the extraordinary step of trying to build Their own I mean if you're gonna gigawatt

Gigawatt data center, and you're trying to go off grid, you're basically building like a pretty large grid. Like you're building like a city's worth of like electrical infrastructure. It's a pretty extreme step. I would like to see them. Because they can't get nuclear plants quickly or coal plants quickly or natural gas plants quickly, I would like to see them get serious about exploiting distributed capacity. I think That's faster and cheaper than on-site.

generation if we can get the the the financial and institutional arrangements lined up the right way. I think you I think this is all the whole scenario here is all a yes and. Like the presump the presumption is

There will be enough demand. We're gonna tap out every available possibility. We're gonna do gets and we're gonna get more on existing lines. We're gonna do some distributed capacity aggregation, which is ha all these things are starting to happen. I think they're gonna continue to happen. And yet. In the absence of building out like a entirely new transmission system on top of our existing transmission system.

We're gonna hit a ceiling, basically, or at least we're gonna hit a ceiling from a time. Yeah, and I guess the fact that all these forecasts are saying we're gonna build more data centers than we could conceivably power, like. Is just good evidence that it's not not gonna happen. Like I'm just I'm just very skeptical. Like what I guess I I I would just ask you the central question. Do what do you think? Like.

Do you do you think demand is going to get even close to the sort of higher-end projections, or are you kind of a deflationist on this? I don't think I am smart enough to know the answer to that question. I don't think anybody really knows the answer to that question. I do think that it's there is pretty universal agreement amongst people who are building these models.

that we're gonna need to your point on sort of the like, will it shift to the edge? Yes, inference might. And that's like an open question. There is going to be for some period of time in the future demand for more and more and more powerful models. Those require the centralized big, big ass data centers.

Um, we are already starting to have a harder time to find sites on the grid to power those in in the time period that people want. And so I think there's going to be some period of time where we are bursting at the seams from an electricity perspective. I don't know how long it lasts. Right. And I don't know whether it gets to the point where like Elon wants to put a hundred gigawatts a year of orbital data centers in space. Um

Do you think there are do you think there are gonna be space based data centers? You did a you did a pod on it, didn't you? We've talked about it a bunch. I'm doing more on it. I've I've spent a lot of time now like understanding the economics. It it's sort of to me, um, the answer to that question is the answer to the question you asked me because

Uh I think that orbital data, I mean, Elon says he thinks that they will be the cheapest way to get new compute in like three to five years. I do not think that is possible. Not too. He he says a lot of things. Yeah, but um, but If you do think that there is going to be this insatiable appetite and we're going to need to scale to hundreds of gigawatts a year, and we are not going to have the ability to do that on the grid.

Then I think the interesting question is, um, your options are kind of off grid or off world. Yeah. And and then it's a different comparison and you know, it's interesting to think about. We should get off of the data center thing. Yeah, no the the final thing I would say about it, and this is the note I wanted to uh say earlier this is just it's when I talk to people who are as you know, there's a very loud constituency

to the left that hates data centers, hates AI, hates the whole discussion. All I would say is a final note is even if you think that data s short term data center demand is is radically overstated and that these data centers are not gonna you're not gonna end up with as many as as currently forecast. It is nonetheless the case that we're electrifying transportation and we're electrifying heat and cooling.

And we're electrifying industry, and we're just gonna need lots, lots, lots more electricity and a much stronger, better grid in the future, regardless of what happens with data centers. So I just think like that should be I don't want those two questions too. to start to be conflated in people's minds, basically.

Actually I okay, put a pin in that when we get back to my next question. Okay. This is another one that I sort of brought because I don't think Tech people. are thinking about it enough or taking it seriously. So I love that I I represent tech people. I'm sorry I'm dra I'm sorry I've drafted you into this un unenviable uh spokesperson job. So

Here's here's my thought. Basically, you and I know that the way the long term evolution is that basically everything that is plugged in is gonna become a resource. Eventually, like the the notion of DERs as a kind of distinct category, I think, is just gonna kind of fade away because eventually, like everything that plugs in is going to be managed by software.

That is in communication with larger grids, basically. That's just gonna become kind of the default. On some time horizon, we can talk about how fast we think that's gonna happen, but it's gonna happen basically so To me, what that means is that a lot of things that we have held as distinct from software are going to become software. like driving in cars and living and homes and

On the one hand, I think that's immense I think there's immense potential there, as I've done a cajillion podcasts on. I I think it's gonna be Extraordinary, gonna have a much more stronger grid. We're gonna make each electron go further, we're gonna utilize our grid better, we're gonna like everything's gonna we're gonna have a more small d democratic grid, etc. etc. On the m for the most part, I love this.

Trend and I'm very hopeful for it, the internitification of of of the of the grid. But Capital B butt. when I think about software as it exists today, uh

It's awful. You know, the situation is awful. I think, and I'm, you know, and I'm not far from the only person saying this, like it feels these days Like tech, the tech sector, which is basically we think of as the software sector in public, is Kinda exploitative, out of touch, you know, like Kind of g getting increasingly deranged, talking about their bunkers on their islands, talking about the Antichrists, like

All fucked up on ketamine, just off in la la land. And basically, software feels exploitative these days. Almost everywhere you encounter it, and shittification. You know, I did a whole pod on in shittification, basically platform. enter what seems like this inexorable cycle where they in shitify. And so this trend of of your house and your car becoming software. I don't see enough people raising red flags saying, Do we want? Intrusive ad-based, ad supported. Subscription nagging.

Different tiers, you know, uh real-time variable pricing, all these sort of exploitative things that we're running into. Do we want that in our cars and in our homes? Are we gonna end up within shittified homes? you know, is the promise basically of dis of coordinated distributed energy going to manifest in reality like just another chapter of sort of

chintzy, exploitative, and shittified software that ends up exploiting the people who get stuck with it. I worry about that. And I don't hear any hardly anybody else worrying about that. Do you worry about that? Do you have a nest thermostat? I do not. My house is so analog and primitive, my current house.

I guess I don't see so if I think of like what are the things in the home that tie to electricity that have been software if I Thermostats are the obvious one to me via Nest and EcoB and other companies like that. You know, people who have EVs have an EV charger and then they have a software platform that goes on top of that. So they're EV owners. I have an uh I drive an EV9. I'm sure you're an EV driver. Oh K A Kia? The big one the big one? Is it nice? Is it super nice?

It's the best. Yeah. Um, so there's the there's the vehicle, there's the thermostat. I mean, if you want to go newer newer age, um I am an owner of a quilt. Uh which is A Oh, you got one of those? version of a heat pump. We're we're EIP is an investor, so I was actually customer number seven. Oh Do you have one of the newer? Because didn't they just sort of like refresh the look of their of their of their wall units? I feel like

looking. Um, but it but it is what you're saying, right? It's like soft verification. It's got an app, it's much more controllable. I mean, my personal experience with all those things is that they're better. Uh, and I don't know that anybody I've heard anybody saying like, oh, Nestin shittified the thermostat. Well, yeah. Or the Tesla app and shit ify is my if you're EV charging or my charging experience by familiar with Corey's work. You know, that always stage one on the platforms.

Is that they're good to users and that they offer genuine value to users. That is step one of this process: is you attract the users with genuine value and then over time work to make Leaving the platform difficult. And then when people are locked in, that's when you start. exploiting them. And like I will I will happily agree that all of this is so nascent and new and and barely there that we're just on the front end of this.

So a lot of this is speculative, but like It sure seems like that is the direction everything Travels. And and like one way I think about this, and this is probably something you've heard me talk about before, like one thing that I'm just waiting for is if if if the self-driving cars become ubiquitous, what is to stop? them from offering a free tier

that is ad supported, which everybody then chooses because nobody wants to pay up front. And then that's one more little area of our lives where we are constantly beset with customized. Advertising. Like that's one way I could This is where, yeah, maybe I'm gonna okay, I'm gonna own I'm gonna own my my tech broiness. I if I decide to choose to take to get free rides around in my future Waymo or whatever it is in exchange for being served as

That's a trade I make deliberately and happily, right? And I get free rides and that's worth it to me. I don't I don't see that as being inherently a bad thing. I mean, I think they the There are challenges obviously to the ad ecosystem. But you... You... Are you recognizing shittification as a thing that happens on other platforms, or are you skeptical more broadly about Corey's work? I don't know Corey's work, so uh let me preface with that. But I would say

I think I see what you're talking about, and I think I can come up with examples of it. I don't know that I see it as like the inexorable direction of travel when things become softwarey, particularly as it pertains to me. It's less softwarey than platformy. It's the platforms. So this is like, this is why I want if you're on like. If your water heater is signed up to some VPP and you're

Thermostat's signed up to another one. They're both on different platforms. I want interoperability and I want the ability to move from one platform to the other without penalty basically. I don't want lock in. Like that's what leads to platform and shitification is lock in. And I think we could I think we could avoid a lot of that up front if we just went in with some clear privacy laws and some clear rules and regulations about interoperability and transparency.

I don't just I don't disagree with that. I think that's a pretty innocuous statement to make. To me, I guess that the high level The things that I actually think about that are in our homes, I'll just focus on the home for now, that like are hopefully going to be transformed such that as you said, eventually all of them

are software enabled, interact with the grid, enable the them to be responsive to the needs of the grid, but also have more capabilities for the customer. Like when I think about them one by one and what I think the future of those things are going to be.

I generally think it will be better. And certainly the ones that I can think of today that have already started to be that way feel better to me. I can see how it could go off the rails. Like I've watched Idiocracy, but um, but as where we stand today, I don't see evidence. Yeah, I guess uh yeah I guess It's early enough now that I don't have a lot of concrete examples to hang this on. So mostly it is just a generalized fear, but I look at the exploitation and the crappiness.

Around us in every other area, and I just don't want that coming into my home and hearth. Are you tired of overpaying for big name PR firms but not really knowing what they're delivering? Is your comms team wasting time reviewing lengthy messaging briefs and decks? Instead of engaging journalists or producing content, are you wondering why your competitors are getting pressed and you aren't? Fishtink PR is an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables and sustainability focused PR firm

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Did it deliver? Easy enrollment creates momentum, proven performance builds trust. That's why more than 170 utilities rely on EnergyHub to manage over 2.5 million devices, delivering 3.4 gigawatts of flexible capacity. See what that looks like at energyhub.com. Okay, can I come back to the last statement you made in the last question to ask my next? Yes, segue me

You said you didn't want to see You wanted to be careful to separate out the, we need to improve the grid because we're going to be electrifying all these other loads. um from the like, you know, uh some some people just don't like data centers thing. Um and I and I sort of agree with that generally. But here's my question that I here's my concerning question, I will say.

That I think we may or may not have fully answered in the next five to ten years, but we will know the direction of travel, which is. Is electrification dead or will electrification be dead as a pathway for industrial emissions reduction? So just to walk through the logic here Will it be dead when? For what reason?

Uh well for what when? I mean, will it will it appear dead over the next five to ten years? And for what reason? Is because you have two things happening in my mind right now that are pushing against it. Yeah. Um by the way, for a long time I've always said like to a first order, the simplest way to solve climate change is Uh

Clean up electricity, electrify everything that you possibly can, and then go like fill in all the pieces of the stuff that you just can't possibly electrify. So that implies electrifying a big portion of heavy industry, for example. Yep. If you are trying to electrify something in heavy industry right now, you're trying to build, or even not something that hasn't been electrified, but is already electrified, take an aluminum smelter.

Right? You just want to build a new aluminum smelter. Uses hundreds of megawatts of electricity. You can't find a site because every site is being taken up by a data center and your prices are higher and you're super sensitive to electricity prices. I see where you're going with that. So if you is so the the premise of industrial electrification is you get cheaper, you know, operating costs because it is electrified.

Um, you're gonna get probably higher capital costs. This is the trade with everything that you electrify, and then you save money over time because it's so much more efficient. And that that is a function of the spark spread. It's the difference between the price of electricity and the price of natural gas. And I also think less waste and less regulatory uh compliance

Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. P easier to permit. Um But but in a world where you have a really, really hard time citing because there are not that many places to put hundred megawatt, multi hundred megawatt loads, and where there is inflationary price pressure on electricity, which there certainly is today. that value proposition is eroded. And so I wonder what happens. Yeah, I mean more broadly Both of us wanting to electrify everything I think

naturally leads to both of us being daunted at the fact that electricity prices are high and rising. Those are very obviously at odds on every level, in industry particularly, but also residential, also transportation, also everything else. Which gets us, of course, to the The question of the day, the political question of the day of the decade, really, which is how you bring down electricity prices. while continuing to rapidly and aggressively

Electrifying. Yeah. And and another question I had about industry that I almost brought, I'll just throw in. Here one is Does it in fact start electrifying in this circumstance where electricity is expensive and data centers are bullying them out of the way and grabbing all the and grabbing all the electricity? Yeah, yeah. And then another another question is.

that I have that that I didn't bring today because it's definitely a like a twenty year plus question is When we say electrify everything, do we mean industry two? And by that I mean how much faith do we have in electrochemistry to replace? Like right now you can make steel with zero emissions electrochemically. It's just wildly expensive. Same thing with, you know, the concrete or

Concrete you can do, same thing. Like electrochemically you can do it with zero emissions. It's just much more expensive. Um so is electrochemistry Is electrochemistry gonna come along enough fast enough that we could really electrify everything, everything. The reason I didn't bring that question along is that it's definitely like a twenty plus year question. But but I think Hope, think slash hope. Let's call it a fifty fifty split that

In the long, long term, I really think we're gonna electrify everything. I'm a I'm I'm a I'm an absolutist. I don't think I think once you've built a single unified system that is providing power to ninety-eight percent of stuff, whatever that two percent. It's a the same question. The benefits of just being able to hook into that system are so immense that it's g just gonna overcome whatever. Whatever barriers they are.

I mean, I think I agree with you in the long term. I mean, right now we're at twenty five percent in the US, right? Like twenty five percent of final energy consumption is electricity, seventy five percent is not, worth remembering that. Um Long way to go. And For a long time, I think people who were seeking to electrify, particularly industry. um sort of rested on this belief that the marginal price of electricity was was plummeting towards zero.

Yes. Electrochemistry in particular very much depends on copious cheap. Electricity and and that is not the world we're living in right now. It's probably not the world we're gonna live in for the next few years. Now it may it may turn back, right? This could be cyclical and five years from now it'll turn back. But like the current state of affairs is Electricity prices are going up, not down.

I mean one thing that might be answered in the next ten years is everybody's freaked out about electricity prices now, right? The entire Democratic Party is seized with seized with this. Right. So w will we Will we actually be able to pass policies that reduce the prices price of electricity in an enduring way? Like, you know, reform utilities and like inf infrastructural Permitting reform, build more transition.

form stuff like that. Like will we be able to actually um will we be able to do that? That's a that's an open question. Yes, I don't know. And maybe, right? And so I think five to ten years is an interesting timeframe under which to think about this question. But um but I could tell you, I think over the next three years, you know, electricity prices are probably going up, not down. Yes. And that's gonna just make that value proposition.

And that's and that's bad. So I think everybody in our world really needs to uprate the question of making electricity cheaper. It really is kind of a pivot on which everything else turns. And that alone could screw us. It's could screw everything else if we can't if we can't deal with that. you but uh to your to your point I think actually A glimmer of hope here is that there is alignment.

Everybody, everybody, the word affordability is going to be the key word in many, many, many circles for the next couple of years. It has become, as you said, a political hot button thing. It's the word of the day amongst utilities, amongst data center companies. And amongst everybody else, like uh affordability is the thing, so there will be a big focus. And and and we and we are in the lucky position that the kinds of energy we favor are the cheap ones. So like

You know, like you can you can take climate out of the take climate out of the picture. There's still gonna be a lot of moneyed interests pushing for lots more clean energy and batteries for reasons having nothing to do with the environment.

Okay, uh so I'm on my third one, yes. Yeah. Okay, my third and final one. Um this is something I've been thinking about so Here's how I'd phrase it. Is JB strubble gonna turn out to be as or more significant to the long term? fortunes of clean energy than Elon Musk. By which I mean you know uh JB Strobels set up this big recycling company, this big battery recycling company. Set it up, Redwood, set it up. Arguably before there were Many batteries. Batteries to recycle.

So they had they were like they know they were like scrabbling to like collect, you know, old vacuum cleaner batteries and double A's and stuff just to keep going long enough. For the batteries to show up. But now I think we're just on the cusp of the first kind of wave of of used up batteries coming in. And the reason I raise all this is that, you know, there's the whole, there's this whole question about critical minerals, about materials.

And about who dominates supply chains. As you know, everybody in the world is freaked out because China dominates all the supply chains. They mine all the critical minerals, do all the processing, et cetera. And so we're very dependent on them. And so there's been a lot of talk about how. The US can sort of stand up a supply chain of its own.

And so there's been lots of talk about mining and stuff like that, um, in the US, although not a ton of action. But I think We should start viewing Electronics themselves, clean tech itself. as uh like a a source to mine. Do you know what I mean? Like if if we can capture those materials and reuse them effectively infinitely, then when you buy a solar panel from China It is as though you you are both. buying a solar panel.

And mining a certain quantity of materials that will be available after the solar panel is dead. Do you know what I mean? So like recycling is a source of critical minerals, basically. Like it is a strategic source. of critical minerals. And I think once you you know, if you take the sort of growth numbers of EVs, And solar panels and all the rest of it, seriously, it's gonna be a very large source.

of minerals, s large source of raw minerals and raw materials, which means all all of which is just means that I think that recycling is going to go from a sort of like environmental nice to have, which is what which is kind of how I think people are thinking about it now, to something like a national security, energy security

imperative. In other words, like if you get your hands on some of these materials, it is absolutely in your interest to make sure that you keep recycling those materials through your economy. Forever. Basically. I just think so. I think recycling in the next five to ten years is going to A take off and B just become much, much more I think viewed as much, much more strategically um important. Wonder whether you think so. Uh wonder whether you agree.

I do agree, generally. I mean, and I think it's not just EV batteries either, right? So there's so Redwood is is recycling EV batteries and a bunch of other old batteries and getting out of it the lithium, nickel, cobalt, stuff like that. We invest in a company called Cyclic Materials that's doing recycling for rare earth elements. Um, like the least recycled critical mineral, which is crazy. Out of coal piles? Uh no, I'm not sure. Or is that a different company?

Not tailings or coal piles or anything like that. This is out of I saw a different company doing that. motors and magnets and and stuff like that. Um there are companies that are now doing solar panel recycling. Yeah. I mean I I think that um

Where I agree with you is I'm like a recycling maximalist. We should recycle all this stuff. It has high value at end of life, and we should take advantage of that value and that should mitigate the amount of of new virgin mind stuff that we need in any category where we possibly can. particularly in those where there is a geopolitical reason that we want to have our own sovereign supply. The only thing I would push back against, I guess, is just that

The challenge, let's just take battery recycling. If you believe that we're on a steep upward trajectory of demand for new batteries, then you're forever going to be in a position where the amount of supply that you have to recycle is the amount of sub of demand that there was 10 years ago. And so you're Not for. Forever. Well, until. Not literally forever, but until you hit the top of the S.

That's what I mean. It's right. So so unless you think we're already at the top of the S curve, um, which I I don't think either of us do think, then it will matter Some, but it is not a solution to our sovereign mineral supply problems. I would just say that my I guess my prediction would be that in ten years, maybe in uh in or in twenty, that just a unit of critical minerals drawn from recycling will be cheaper than a unit

mind, I think. I think. Eventually. Like I think it will end up being our primary and cheapest source of those. Like I know we're never I don't think we're ever gonna I mean maybe you'd maybe you disagree, but I don't think we're ever Really going to be in a position where we're fully like an autarky where we fully have

a a a a a contained and complete supply chain. I think mostly this is just about having a little bit of a buffer. But like I just think people need to start rethinking thinking of recycling like they think of mining, basically, like as a source of as a a large and probably the cheapest source of those materials.

Yes, I agree. I agree with that. And I think to the point on it should be cheaper. I mean, I'll give you a specific example in the rare earth context, right? Which is that um there are actually 16 rare earth elements.

uh that are grouped together. We really only use four of them, actually. Like we only care about four of them out of the 16. If you're doing mining, virgin mining, you get this like basket of all of them and you have to do this like complicated separations process to get the stuff you want. If you're doing recycling,

You're only getting the stuff we were using in the first place already. So you've already cut out a bunch of expensive separation steps in the value chain there. So there's a bunch of reasons why, like fundamentally, I I think it should be cheaper. Um And I and again, I think it'll be such a economic and such an economic push on that that again, there'll be tons of innovation and we'll get something closer to an actual closed loop. We'll be moving cause this is like to me, this is like

like fifty percent of the of of future sustainability. You know, we we focus so much on the energy. part, but also the closed physical loop, the the reducing physical waste and physical throughput, I think, is like the other half of the The other half of the equation, and this is you know, so like cre creating something like a closed loop of minerals where you're because

The one thing that offsets that uh dynamic that you very accurately lay out, right? Like the demand is going up faster. So sort of by definition, your recycling is behind your new demand. One force does slightly offset that, which is the lithium you get out of the old batteries will go farther. In the new batteries than it went in the old batteries, just because batteries are always constantly improving.

So y you you will actually get more you w I don't think you'll catch up to demand, but you'll get more, let's say, than, you know, it's not l it's not a a fungible Yeah. Yeah, right. I think I think the place you want to end up and all these other critical minerals is kind of where we are maybe a little better than where we are today in in more mature supply chains where like aluminum, copper, Yeah, absolutely. Do recycle a lot of that stuff.

Um, that doesn't mean we don't still need a lot more. So it doesn't solve your problem, but it's meaningful. All right. Can we can I do the last one? I think this is the last one. Last one. Question to answer in the next five to ten years? Maybe not next five to ten years, to be honest. Like maybe this is a question that gets answered in in 20 years, but nonetheless, I'm curious. Will we see a meaningful scaled geoengineering demo?

I thought you were gonna say for sure you were gonna go geothermal. Geothermal. Oh. I that better get answered in the next five to ten years. No, that's uh that's uh uh I th that one I think will be I think in ten years we'll know whether geothermal is Yeah. Going to pay off the promise? Do you think in ten years we'll know? Well no, we'll know. Yeah. I mean at least like traditional it's for sure traditional hydrothermal, probably EGS.

Who knows about, you know, super hot rock. Anyway, I'm not asking about geothermal. I'm asking about geoengineering. Will we see somebody go do like a big solar radiation management experiment? Yeah, I have a I have a solar radiation expert. coming on the pod uh in in in a couple of weeks to talk about just this. I'm so torn on this question. Like you know, there are there are like a bunch of cowboys

jerkoffs in Silicon Valley doing this already. Like they're doing little I mean I don't know what counts. I would not say that the The group you were referring to is not of Silicon Valley. They are not. Uh Uh they're not. And that's just like one balloon at a time or whatever. I'm not super clear what they're head what they're doing. So I guess I don't know if that counts as a test at scale. Like uh I do wonder

I'm so torn about this and I'm so curious what your thoughts are on the moral hazard side of things. Cause like, you know, like depending on what side of the bed I wake up, I can take different sides of this argument. Like on the one This is pretty cheap. Somebody's gonna do it. You know, climate change is gonna get so bad. Somebody's gonna do it, so we might as well do it in a conscious, planned, controlled way. The other side is just

Y you know, a i in a sense, the whole field is protected by being kind of obscure and not a lot of people know about it. Like what happens if you start doing high profile tests and experiments and make this a real thing? Suddenly then everybody around the world is gonna be told, hey, you could like you know, with like a hundred and fifty bucks, you could go fiddle with the climate. And then you're like, got a whole Pandora's box thing going because you really

This is the scary thing about solar radiation management. You could stand up and do a reasonably large-scale test on your own without a ton of money. Arguably without being detected doing so By the world. You know what I mean? And the fact that no one's doing that yet, I just think they don't know they can yet. So like I kind of don't want them to find out. Just like what do you think about the what do you think about that aspect, the moral hazard part of it?

It's so tricky, right? I mean to to to to fear monger you a little bit more. I'm gonna use I'm gonna use a dirty word to you, I suspect, which is that a billionaire could probably get us half a degree C of cooling globally, personally. Like the the that's the crazy thing about SRM is that

The estimates, like we don't really know, we don't exactly know efficacy, blah, blah, blah. But the but the rough estimates just to an order of magnitude are that, at least what I've seen, it might cost a couple billion dollars. To deliver something like a half a degree of cooling, half a degree centigrade of cooling. Yes, but as you know, I'm sure if you follow the literature is the the the the the cloud of uncertainties around all of this, like unanticipated A hundred percent.

Second order effects that like things could go so horribly wrong. And that is, I mean, that is precisely precisely the kind of question I don't want random individual billionaires answering. You know what I mean? Like this But this is like This is to me argues for Really wrapping our heads around it and then doing it explicitly just'cause somebody needs to wrap their hands around it and start controlling it. It's the kind of thing where like you want the equivalent of the

International Atomic Energy Agency. Like you want you want like the UN to take charge of this and say, look, for the sake of the world, we need to explore this, but it could it should only be done in a coordinated fashion or something. Yeah, but think about the difficulty that nuclear arms like uh uh you know regimes have had

ferreting out and finding out whether a country is actually doing a nuclear program. And a nuclear program is big and expensive and requires very specialized knowledge. It's very difficult to do that without being noticed. And people are pulling that off like I can't imagine an international enforcement regime.

That could that could that could enforce this. Like it's so easy to do. Like, and then if like a billionaire does it and another billionaire doesn't like the way the billionaire does it and decides to undo it or do it a different way or redo it. You know what I mean? Like do we want billionaires? Uh getting the idea that they should be involved in this field.

I I'm well uh yeah, I knew I was gonna I was gonna trigger you with billionaires, but I but I I don't No, like I I think we have to the problem is I think the solution is not to put our heads in the sand because the the more we collectively put our heads in the sand about it, the more likely it is that that's the way it gets developed ultimately.

Yeah. Yeah, it's uh yeah. I mean, I I guess trying to do it on purpose and with eyes wide open is the best is the best we can do, but boy am I nervous about about how that plays out. I guess there's no I mean You can't not do it. You can't put a lid back on it. You can't unknow what we know about it now. So like I guess the only way out is through. But uh Anyway.

We have three minutes left. You want to toss out one of your spares just to just to intrigue the audience, just to titillate an audience with a with a question we didn't get to. My spares weren't great, actually. I wanna hear what yours thought. Yeah, you hit me with some spares. Well, one of my spares I was surprised you didn't bring up, I almost brought up, which is What's going to happen with permissionless DER? I just did an episode on this.

I know. I listened to it. I listened to it and and I and I you know, I did I did one on the on the balcony solar not long before that. So people know this as balcony solar. Basically it's any distributed y you know, generation or or or or battery that you can plug in without getting permission from a utility or from anybody, really. You can just plug in. So twenty last I heard, and it's literally changes week to week, but last I heard, 25 states. had laws either proposed or

announced to be proposed to legalize balcony solar in tw that's that's half the country right there. That's twenty five states. That's probably pretty soon. And I'm sure many more will follow in the wake. And I just think that's so like I'm just fascinated by what effect it's gonna have. I think you and I probably agree that the net Megawatt? produced by this stuff is probably not going to be, you know, it's not going to be huge. The question is, like, will the ability to put your hands on it

and fiddle with it and play with it in a DIY way, like Legos in your backyard, is that gonna spark a kind of subculture? Is that gonna spark a lot more people to care and get involved and just be aware, just be aware of Solo. I'm curious what you think the how you think that's gonna play out. Balcony solar punk. I don't know. I need to learn more about Germany. Like I haven't spent enough time understanding like what balcony solar is a huge thing there.

It's a gigawatt. Yeah, they got like a gigawatt. Uh uh, so I guess it's not that small of a of an of a net amount. They have like four hundred million. Or something like our four million, I shouldn't say four hundred million, that's ridiculous. Four million, something like that. Systems installed from like three years of it being legalized. So clearly like people like it. Yeah. So I'm just curious like what the sort of distributed social effect.

will be of that. I know y both of us will be translated. And my other backup, which I thought was good, but which you and I are probably not the people to discuss, but is China is in over a state of overproduction of batteries and solar panels, which means they're selling solar panels to their neighbors at just ludicrously low prices, which means countries like Pakistan and Vietnam

are just being flooded with cheap solar. Like Pakistan w went like I think it was like two years or three years, forty percent of its total load now. It has imported solar panels equivalent to 40% of its total load. Give that another two, three years. So I'm very curious. So we're gonna see what happens when a massive. Spontaneous upwelling of distributed solar energy meets.

rickety developing world grids. How does that resolve itself? Like what happens when Pakistan has enough solar panels that like It's more than one hundred percent of its total load. You're gonna get all these. problems that grids get with lots of solar, right? Like balance and

frequency management and inertia and all this stuff, but it's all of this is be is unplanned. Like the leaders of Pakistan did not arrange this. They didn't have anything to do with it. Same, it's happening in Africa. It's happening in Vietnam. So I'm just curious: like, what does the spontaneous unplanned profusion of solar at the ground level do?

to a country's electricity system physically and also just politically? Like that's just a very big change happening very rapidly. And we have no idea yet what's gonna come out of it. Great question. Uh not when we have time to answer. Let's uh let's watch it. We'll leave you we'll leave you listeners to ponder what's gonna happen in Vietnam. There we go. David, this was fun. Thanks for doing it again.

Awesome. We'll do it again. David Roberts writes the Voltz newsletter and hosts the Voltz podcast. This show is a production of Latitude Media. You can head over to latitudemedia.com for links to today's topics. Latitude is supported by Prelude Ventures. This episode was produced by Max Savage Levinson and Sean Marquan. Mixing and theme song by Sean Marquan. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. I'm Shale Khan.