With laurents segal and from London and Gerard Read from Berlin. This is Redefining Energy Minutes, Episode one hundred and twenty one and job, do you have a number this week? Actually, I think one hundred and twenty one is a great number. I can't believe we've done one hundred and twenty more podcasts plus ninety eight plus the nine year. But I mean it's amazing, amazing, it is amazing. So you give me your number the week I just
gave you mine fifty one euro paton to the cabon price collapse. It did. The cabin price lost thirty six percent since the beginning of the year. I didn't know. That's just a guest, tell me why something? My god so round. Sometimes it's just these are really important things and you don't keep up with them. Oh my god, I can't believe I missed that. Okay, and bally Gunda was really a vet down off the cabin market. I remember I had a debate within more than twenty ago. Is targeting
thirty five euro metric done by the end of the year. Look, the reason is pretty simple, and we're going to talk about data. But look, it's a question of supply and demand, and there's been a lot of renewables in the market, much less gas and the cold bound and that's what
you get. Well, I suppose actually that's probably a good place to start, because actually we are let's start to talk about Europe, and I think we wanted to talk a little bit about the Ember Report, which really talks and gives a huge amount of great data in and around what's going on in
the electricity markets in Europe. And I suppose that's the starting place, right because that's when when you look at their numbers, you understand why calm price that makes sense to me now or m there for those listeners who don't know. Is NGO run from the UK by a very talented team led by Dave
Jones. So the publish of all the fuels, all the emissions, all across Europe, and I think the growing fantastic organization, fantastic report and the great thing it goes out within weeks at the end of the year, and not the report we used to have, which came like in August, so you know, people dropped the ball. The main takeaway are well, the first one is the power consumption is down, which is not really the case in the US where it's still growing, and of course China and the rest,
everybody hopes that the power consumption is going to go up. The power sector emissions also are down nineteen percent last year. Coal power is down twenty six percent, gas is down fifteen percent. Renewables account for forty four percent of all power. A new twenty five absolutely amazing. I'm interesting. Look in terms of record solar and wind editions last year, that's what you had across Europe, I suppose when I reflect on it, I'm not surprised.
We also had a new nuclear power plant that obviously went online up in Finland, and yeah, the new French nuclear plants are back as well well. So yeah, that means omission to sound. But the interesting one for me though, actually is is electricity demand. So the question is what's driving that electricity demand. You know, we're in a world where we're digitalizing everything.
We're talking about huge increases in data center demand. The electricity demand is down, so it must be just industrial, right, Yeah, I really demand destruction and the big question is what is temporary? And we'll come back once the you know, Ukraine thing is going to finish, hopefully, because it's been two years and the poor Ukrainians have been suffering too much or is it structural and that demand will never come back? And yeah, that's a question
everybody's asking. We need to see our consumption go up for evs for heating, Yeah, exactly, so you would expect the power de man going forward is going to go up significantly, right. But what we are saying, whether we like it or lumpet, is we are saying the d industrialization of let's say heavy industry in Europe. And you might say that and come back. I don't believe it'll come back. I don't believe we have a competitive
advantage in those industries anyway, so why should they come back? But that doesn't mean the electricity demand won't increase, because what you said is we have to electrify heat, and we're going to electrify more and more of industry, and we're going to transport and we've got the digitalization of our world. So yeah, it seems to be a no brainer that demand increases going forward,
the spite efficiencies, the spite efficiencies you talk about ivy industry. If you look at the price of gas and Texas right now, it's one point five dollars and METU, which is a giga jewler one point five is the cheapest energy you'll never have. Yeah, so it just acts as a magnet for all the big ivy industry. And there's nothing you can do, even if the price of gas in Europe has really come down recently to almost pre war level. Just compete, you can't compete. But what I will say,
what's what we need to get our head around? Well, okay, we're not going to do this here in our little recording, but it is artificial intelligence, and I just know, I don't know if you've just seen it. Microsoft recently just to announce a two and a half billion euro investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure in Germany without a subsidy, right, And why are they doing it? Because they realize the opportunity is huge and they sort of have
a view that continental Europe is very important for all of this. Anyway, I say that because that all requires electricity. And when we talk about data centers, they're done to megawatts. That's how you measure the size of them. It's not the speed of them. We don't talk about the capacity in terms of bites that can be stored. We talk in terms of megawatts the power they use, so that that that talking about reports, of course, we have to mention the what is the second edition, But what's going to
become the best seller every year is the Ballard slide deck. Two hundred slides, no table of content, no executive summary, in no conclusion. But he managed to coalesce all the data coming from all over the place, whether it's Bloomberg, New Energy Finance, some from Ember, some from Moodies, and it delivers you everything you need to know about energy climate in two hundred slides. And look, I'm not going to go into each of them.
We'll put the link in the show notes. Okay, so there are the slides about climate change, temperature, renewables, energy efficiency, the investment into energy transition. We reach one point eight trillion last year and this is great green investment. So that there was an interesting slides saying green investment is half the default rate of conventional infrastructure investment. I like those stats. Have you
seen the album? I have, of course, and I really like it every year and it's it's I think it's becoming the bible for anybody who just wants to get an overview of what's going on in the whole energy world. What I I know, I'm sorry. Back to data centers and AI. What I found very interesting was the slightly had on which he calls what hours per request. So if you take a Google search, you know you're down at whatever, maybe zero point three watts what hours per request every time we
go go through. If you go into AI powered Google search, then you're at nine what hours per request. So just to give you an idea of the scale, right, and that goes back to electricity demand. It's telling you where it's going, right, I mean, that's the reality. That's the world we're going into. Right. There are certain slides which I learned. Something I found the phenomenal HCC. You have got the capex cost and the impact of interest rates on capex. That was really brilliant. One very
surprising but spooky is slide one O two. It's the hydro capacity diminution over the years, and it's all across the globe and you see the effect of climate change on lower capacity in hydrol Page one seventy five. The carbonization of steel cement chemical summarize everything in terms of hydrogen cyes and so so look, I will put the link. I encourage every people working in our business to have a look at those two hundred slides. Well said, well said,
and before we go the last report. But that's more for me and for people working in batteries. You have the deck of the Volta Foundation and that's even bigger, something like two hundred forty or two hundred and fifty slides, and it's brilliant. Everything you need to know about batteries right now. It is absolutely phenomenal. You have all the industry, all the tech who produce, what, what are the costs, what are the chemicals, what are
the application? What's the R and D? Where's the policy? I mean, it's it is. If you're into batteries, you have to look at this guy. Oh my god, it's so good. Okay, job, all right, my friend, wish your good week. Talk to you next week. Cheers. Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy. Don't forget to rate the show and subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or the platform of your choice