With Laurent's Segeland from London and Gerard Reed from Berlin.
This is redefining.
Energy today, I really find energy. What I thought we would talk about immobility, and we ended up talking about energy security because my guest was Christian Ruby, a Secretary General of your electric.
Yeah, and I'm sorry I missed this, but I will say that I did have a similar conversation with Christian a few weeks ago at the Munich Security Conference. So from looking forward to actually recap with you the conversation and give you my little bit of an idea and viewers on it.
Okay, let's bring Christian in the show. Christian, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much.
But it's your third time and every time it's just get better and better. So today we're going to talk about energy security and immobility and you're going to kind of explain how it's so connected. But probably start with your trip in Ukraine and what have you seen there with our friends and colleagues from d Tech.
Yes, a month ago I went to visit our colleagues from d Tech and to see what operations of the electricity system look like in a war zone. And I got to say that was a genuinely humbling and very inspiring experience. We essentially came into Ukraine and had a mission to inspect the power plant that has been hit more than a dozen times throughout this war by bombardments, and it really gave us a taste of what these people are are doing. So immediately on arrival at the site,
the air alarms go off. We get the intel that Make thirty one's with Kinsel missiles have left a base in Russia and could be headed towards this power plant. So we have to rush towards the bomb shelter together with the other employees from the plant, and on the way there we see convo pickup trucks with roof mounted air defense guns that are on their way to positions in order to try to shoot down any aggressor that
might be coming. And what was striking about that scene was, on the one hand, the seriousness of what was going on, on the other hand, the fact that this was everyday life. People were proceeding to the shelter, they had their smartphones out, We're texting with friends and family. But it was, in quotation, marked normal event in a day in the life of a Ukrainian power engineer, So moving on to the side.
Once the air alarm had been called off, we went inside the power plant and as I said, it had been hit some twelve times or more throughout the last three years, and the destruction on this side was just incredible. Windows and walls were missing, replaced with blue tree. In many ocare agents, the walls had been completely destroyed. In
some places the roof was missing. There were two units that have been struck in the last bombardment completely destroyed, and outside the pylons of the transmission lines wrought out
in grotesque shapes from explosions of incoming drones. So it was really sort of a Dantean infernal image that met us on the one hand, and on the other hand, you just had this quiet, persistent determination of the people working there welding, removing rubble from the floor, putting in interim solutions at the best of their ability, and just making this work in order to keep the power flowing and keep the society going in the midst of this
brutal and unnecessary attack from the Russians. So to see them how they coped and also to see how they insist on having an even constructive and positive attitude in the midst of this was really really inspiring.
The Ukian network is now connected with the European network, and also we had in recent weeks the old Baltic system managed to plug off from the Soviet one, and that really embodies that report you put out last months really finding energy Security excellent titled can you speak more about this now approach around energy security of what your electric is doing and what is it proposing.
Absolutely so, we launched our new flagship study about energy security and the age of electricity at the Munich Security Conference a couple of weeks ago, and essentially this report starts from the fact that Europe has been almost in this kind of harket of time for the last three decades.
We've essentially been on a vacation from world history in the last thirty years, where we've enjoyed, on the one hand, very cheap supplies of fossil fuels from Russia and others, and on the other hand enjoyed very cheap security provided by NATO and our Transatlantic alliance. Now we're in a new situation in the last three years where these things have changed very rapidly. We can no longer rely to
the same extent on historical alliances. We can no longer rely on one or a few supplies of fossil fuels, first of all, because we want to decarbonize. Secondly, because they've proven unreliable and therefore we need to enter into a new thinking about energy security. And this is what we call the Age of Electricity, one where we double down in Europe on our indigenous resource, which is homegrown
clean electricity. The core of this is to electrify society faster, but it also means that when society becomes more reliant on electricity, it is really crucial that electricity is reliable and that has implications for the way we design the system, both when it comes to the sources of generation, but also very much when it comes to the sources of
flexibility and the infrastructure that we build. So this new paradigm of doubling down on electrification of society and stabilizing and building a more resilient electricity system, that's really the vision that we're putting forward with this new study.
And we've said also in Ireland, almost a thought of the greed going down because of what is it, hurricane or tempest and It's very important that we explained that direcricy system is a community and you know, everybody is supporting each other. It goes much beyond the nation's sometimes a petty interest.
Absolutely, and essentially what we're trying to show in this report is that not only sort of the big picture thinking, but also the more detailed metrics and the way we plan, invest and operate the system needs to change because we're facing a completely different challenge landscape. The new normal for the electricity sector is that we have hot wars going on.
We have cyber attacks on our sector, we see hybrid war style attacks on the system, we see increase in spionage, and we have the constant threat of extreme weather events that is becoming ever more frequent. So we need to essentially take a new approach when we operate the system. We need to start planning for the unexpected. We need to invest much more in resilience, and then we need to operate both with efficiency but also with an increased situational awareness as we call it. We need to be
more aware of what's going on around us. That requires people to take a different type of approach to their work. They need to do exercises. For these extreme situations, they need to be in closer contact with authorities and basically report unusual events going on around the plants. It is a new approach, it is a different way of going to work, and it's a different way of planning and investing in the system.
Yeah. And of course also recently we had the Russians and the Chinese reaping up cables in the Baltic Sea, which frankly is despeakable. In the law of the sea of the eighteenth century, the captain would be just hanger on the highest mast and that would give a lesson. Sometimes I wonder if in these actors, as you say, stealth war or semi war, makes sense to use civil laws for those type of things which are blatant to attack on our existence.
Absolutely, it's a security conundrum that power engineers are not used to deal with. You can say even it's a bit above our pay grade, but it's something that we're forced now to deal with. And the way we need to deal with this is to have a different type of contact with authorities. We need to have a military course of action on this or security course of action on this, and we need to have an operational engineering
course of action. But if we speak first about the engineering challenge here, it's clear that the infrastructure and the system needs to be designed in a different way where we have less examples of a single point of failure, where we have more redundancy in the system, and also where we equip the critical infrastructure with sensors and alarm systems that allow us to be able to detect early
such attacks or attempts at at sabotage. On the security side of this, NATO has recently put in place and new initiative and the Baltic Sea, and I would say this is really something that is developing as we speak. There needs to be a fine balance between taking decisive action against such attacks, on the other hand, assessing how those actions affect the broader security situation and to what
extent they cause an escalation of the conflict. The practice that has now been established is to essentially board and in some cases seize ships that are under suspicion, and I think this can be an effective step. Also, there's been some first legal analysis looking into how it can be dealt with from a legal perspective. Can you use, for instance, environmental law to basically seize these ships or can you use other types of legal requirements to make
sure that you do then necessary? From security perspective, this is a very new situation that we've not been used to in the last thirty years. So most of the people employed in the sector today just don't have this type of opunience.
Okay, so that was a bit grim. Let's probably pivot to something a bit more joyful, which is immobility. You had a few weeks ago this extraordinary gathering in Brossers to talk about immobility. So what are the main takeaways?
Yeah, maybe to make the connection to the security piece. Of course, immobility the transition to an electric transport sector in Europe is part of this challenge we're facing to have a much more electric society, which again requires us to have a very reliable system. The good news here is that actually if we activate the fleet of electric cars, it can really do a significant contribution to stabilizing the system.
Once we have all those millions of electric cars out there with their batteries, they have the opportunity and the potential to stabilize the electricity system much more than is the case today. Because, as you know, we're moving into a much more renewable future where we have issues with highs and lows in the system, and this is where
a big fleet of batteries can come in. What we need in order to activate those batteries for the better of the system and for the benefit of the customer, by the way, is to have proper frameworks in place that allow us to buy and sell electricity much easier than it is today, sell it back to the grid a so called bt G technology, so that when the cars are idle, they actually actively contribute to the system
stabilization and get remunerated for that service. So that's what we're showing in that report, and what's really interesting is that the cost savings for the consumer are very very significant. Compared to buying a fossil fuel as you be today, you can save up to a quarter of the total cost of ownership if we have the right systems in place and people are able to actively flex with their batteries, very significant saving for a normal family.
What made that move to VTG possible is the podcast done in batteries, Because I remember five years ago when that theme started to emerge, the batteries could do three thousand cycles, four thousand cycles. So of course the O and m's were a bit reluctant because you know, they were afraid it would arm the battery. But now the batteries I'm investing in two they have fifteen thousand cycles, so you know, plug into the grid is not gonna
arm the battery in any shape or forming. The battery is still going to be around when the car's gone. The advancement in batteries allows that old VTG to come back into the scenario, and I guess that means, you know, double flow, but detail is there. There's a lot of startups, you know, a lot of very intellgent people are working around it. So that looks impossible a five years ago, and now it looks kind of doable, and of course going to take time and you need to build standards
and do sumple things. But I think it's very helpful for everybody that we'll be able to start integrating the immobility as an extension of the grid.
What's good news is that technologically speaking, from the perspective of the battery, this is possible with today's technology, and presumably even more feasible as we move towards twenty thirty What we really need to do is to unlock this potential, and that's going to require a few changes across the board.
What we see today when it comes to the cars coming to market is that they're not all of them V to G enabled, So there needs to be a step change on the side of the OEMs to sort of make this a standard in the cars that they put out. Of course, that also comes with a little markup.
The second thing that needs to happen is that we need to prepare the system better for this and have a proper frame work for this new type of flexibility, because it is very different from the distance we had in the past, which were about transporting centrally generated electricity all the way one way to the customer. What we have today is a much more more nimble system and
one that has much more complex power flows. And the system and the political framework, the remuneration frameworks need to be there in order for people to have the incentives to do it. So we need stuff like local flexibility markets. It would be helpful with a framework for aggregators that
could monetize a whole fleet of cars, for instance. So all these nitty gritty details need to come in place, and this is what we're talking with policymakers and brousses about in capitals to make sure that we accelerate the implementation of a lot of legislation that's in fact already there. So the potential is there, the legislation is in principle there. Now it's about making it happen and then incentivizing consumers to take up this light challenge.
Appristian, Well, I'm not going to s enthusiastic, but this is great that we managed to start to have autistic approach where energy security and immobility are about to do the same debate and some solutions is going to emerge so they can feed on each other. What's the way forward for your ectric?
What's really interesting is that link between this new flex potential and then the bigger system that we described in our new Energy Security Report. And what's really important to understand here is that when it comes to the flexibility challenges that we're facing going forward, we have to take a very pragmatic and honest approach because it's really going to have to be an all of the above approach if we want to meet the flexibility needs of the future.
In our report, we estimate the twenty thirty potential of eed flexing for the system to be around four percent. What we need by twenty thirty is a tripling of flex capacities on a daily basis. So what that means is that while doing this piece, we need to ramp up every single other source of non fossil flexibility that we have available. Otherwise we're not going to succeed. And this is the reality that we're looking into when it comes to the energy security paradigm that we're moving into.
I believe that the new reality that we're in forces us to really deploy very pragmatic and honest thinking about this because in this new and more electric world, the reliability of our system is directly linked to the functioning of our metro systems, of our payment systems, of the electric equipment and hospitals, but also our cars, our heat pumps,
et cetera, et cetera. So it's really really crucial that we take seriously the fact that the system needs to work every single day, it needs to be sufficiently flexible every single day, and therefore this transition towards the new sources of flexibility needs to be handled with great care taking into account the existing sources of flexibility on the system, and then of course we need to think out of the box and see where we can interconnect in new ways,
where we can connect our markets to others in new ways, and also connect the dots in Europe better with stronger infrastructure.
And of course the Transatlantic cable. That's my mission, that's my colling, and I'm very glad that your Electric has invited us at your power submitting June to present our latest development. Christian, thank you so much for coming on the show, and at Redefending Energy we're a big fan of your electrics work, so keep on the break work.
Thank you very much, pleasure to be here.
And as your security is back with a bang.
Oh yeah, you're the Munich Energy. So what did you hear beside the cables?
And there was a few things that struck me. One was listening to a CEO European utility turn around and say that there are daily attacks by the Russian on his country's power system, daily attacks, and that he has weekly meetings with the head of security services, the head of the army and the head of the police. That tells you everything you wrong. But I will add to it. It's all great. If North Stream goes out, if your electricity system goes out, it's sort of game over for
a large city. And so that's energy security. Energy security is it's much more important than it was before because of the fact that electricity is our critical energy source. We cannot do anything without it. And I think I've said to you, I listen, I've lived in Ireland here through what was a blackout for one third of the country. True, I call it high winds, you call it climate risks.
Not pleasant, especially when you have a digital economy, and certainly you cannot use your mobile phone to pay for anything, and in fact, you can't even load up with diesel or oil or gas because guess what, the electro pumps which run electrocity don't work right and new ones can't pay for it. So energy security is back on the bank.
And I really like the conversation because it's all encompassing. It's a cybersecurity, as you said, and it's really flexibility, which is a world that do not appear two years ago, and now it's on everybody's mouth. Look, the good news
is number one, the batteries are developing extremely fast. They're getting cheaper, they're getting better and of course this all planned at European level is the V two G, which is vehicle to grid, which means that within ten years we will be able to use some not all, but some of those batteries on will to support the grid. But also there's going to be a lot of digital because if we electrify our eating system, the eating system
of a kind of latency. If a smart tumble stat you know, you don't need to power exactly at peak. So it's going to be all of the above. And of course at the end we talk about interconnection, more interconnection, we talk about the transactionenty cable and is in favor. It's just a rainbow of solutions that's going to bring energy security through resiliency and flexibility.
I think the key word is resilience. We need to build a resilient system. And I tell you we need to just put our hands up and say we don't have a resilient electricity system. And we don't. And as I said, that example in Ireland shows me that we don't. Climate risks as well as geopolitical risks. They're not going down anytime, so they're going in the other direction. So you have to deal with those risks promptly because it's not pleasant to have no electricity, right, it's not. And
that's actually my message to everyone. And by the way, it's very good at Christian Is also they're saying the same thing. They think, guys, we need to wake up here, We need to really really invest and prepare for the worst. That's the world we live in.
Yeah, I mean, it's incredible how the zeitgeist has changed in the past three years. Three years of decombonization was older rage and now it's okay. It's energy security and residency with dicambonization as a side effect, positive side effect, but as a side effect.
Yeah.
And I would add to that is that climate change risk is now a reality. It's not just about high winds in the West of Ireland. It's also declining water levels and rivers, which impacts you know, the ability to cool nuclear power stations for example. So it's far reaching what we're talking about here, and we really now need to think about how do we build our energies so that it is resilient to withstand climate risk going forward.
I would use the example you talked about vehicle to grid earlier on if you're talking about actually showdly come up with solutions pretty quickly. The lovely thing about it an electric vehicle is it's a battery on wheels. All right, So guess what if you're afraid of your mobile network going out because guess what it doesn't have electricity, Well, why wouldn't you open up the area around the world wild Tower to ev charging so that in the worst case scenario, Guess what you can do? You can use
that battery as a backup, PA. But I can do the same my home. And that's actually where we're going. Because you know, to trying to go and build all the infrastructure in and around climate risk, it's going to be expensive and going to take a lot of time. But actually, if you add existing infrastructure that's been bought and allow that to be part of the system, you actually lower the cost and you increase the resilience. And again I would say the exact same thing if I'm
in a in a war situation. You want to have decentral lives. Energy solutions and mobile batteries are a huge, big part of.
That solution, right, absolutely, well, Joab, we thank Christian for coming on the show. We support your electric everything they do. You know, we strip to Ukraine. Very inspiring and job. I'll talk to you next week.
Yeah, look forward to my friend. Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy. Don't forget to read the show and subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or the platform of your choice.