Live from Brussels, on the 20th of June 2023, we were invited to interview Leonard Birnbaum. Since he came last on the show (Ep50), the whole Energy Sector has been through hell with Russia invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent near-death experience of 2022. Leonard Birnbaum is the CEO of the giant German Utility E.ON and also president of Eurelectric, the sector association which represents the common interests of the electricity industry at pan-European level. We have a very lively debate abo...
Jul 15, 2023•29 min
Steel is essential for the equipment of the Energy Transition (Wind, EVs) but at the same time bears a very significant carbon footprint: 1.8tCO2/t steel. Pushed and/or incentivised by policies in the US and EU, the Steel industry must innovate to reduce its CO2 emissions which today represent 7%-8% of the world’s carbon dioxide. ArcelorMittal (the world biggest steel company outside China) is in the thick of it. It is not just writing reports but investing through its own VC fund called XCarb I...
Jul 01, 2023•30 min
What a pleasure, what an honor to have the original Energy Gang on our show to celebrate our 100th Episode. The wit of Katherine Hamilton and the laugh of Jigar Shah were our inspiration 5 years ago when we got drunk at the Red Lion pub near Piccadilly to launch our show. The “ambitious” business plan was to create a tiny European copycat of the Gang. 900k downloads later, this is where we are. Katherine Hamilton is Chair at 38 North Solutions, a public policy firm focused on clean energy and in...
Jun 15, 2023•30 min
The electricity network is the bloodline of the economy. It is a very complex system, built over decades, with layers of technologies and it has to be reliable 24/7. We hardly talked about this network of wires and cables a few years back but now, in the context of the energy transition, it plays a critical role in solving the three main challenges: the three D’s – decarbonisation, decentralisation and digitisation. Operating the grid 365/24/7 is not a simple task, as the primary objective of an...
Jun 01, 2023•27 min
How to optimise a fleet of hundreds of solar parks? And the work needs to start once the asset has been energised...and continue for decades. Plus, as with an iceberg, most of the work is below the surface. How to manage this complexity, what lessons can be learned from one territory to another? How are the teams trained? What is the impact of digital to optimise the economic performance? We have the pleasure of welcoming Adele Ara, Head of Global Business Operations at Lightsource bp, where she...
May 15, 2023•30 min
The Power Markets have been created thirty years ago to respond to the Energy Deregulation drive. They have recently faced crisis, such as the Ukraine Russia war or storm Yuri in Texas, with power prices going crazy and creating a lot of financial distresses for certain producers and consumers. Meanwhile, we see the development of renewables that increase the volatility and remove the traditional reference to marginal pricing linked to fossil fuels. How to characterise the problems? Do power mar...
May 01, 2023•31 min
The Energy Storage Market, namely large-scale batteries, is the fastest growing segment of the Energy transition. Texas, UK, California, and Australia are witnessing phenomenal deployment rates. We are talking about annual growth of 30%-40%. As more and more infrastructure investors are either considering investing in Batteries, or have already started, we wanted to make a deep dive on how to monetise that new asset class. Because revenues from batteries quite differ from wind and solar. It’s al...
Apr 15, 2023•29 min
Can we really go to Net Zero and keep energy secure and affordable with current policies, or do we need to make hard choices that politicians might not be willing to sustain over the long term? Are the new technologies going to save us or will have to rely on dirigiste policies to dampen the energy prices spikes and secure affordable power. What will it take to go net Zero? Are we too dependent on weather and unreliable energy sources? Two visions are clashing: it is Elon Musk’s Master Plan 3 vs...
Apr 01, 2023•32 min
3 million heat pumps were installed in Europe in 2022 (up 38% year on year) with some markets going crazy (Poland went up 120%). The movement is not limited to Europe, as US annual sales rose above 4 million units for the first time in 2022 (more than gas boilers). As the deployment of heat pumps has reached an inflection point in 2022, we wanted to dig deep into the decarbonisation of heating. We wanted to talk about new technologies, economics and government interventions which are sometimes g...
Mar 15, 2023•32 min
The supply chains in renewables are a total mess. Security of Supply, Price fluctuations, Technological changes, ESG… Acquiring equipment on time and on budget is becoming a harder challenge by the day. How to fix the supply chain for renewables? We needed to bring a real professional on the show, and that’s Özer Ergül. Özer is Group Head of Procurement with Aquila Capital. Prior to joining Aquila Capital, he was Group CPO for Lightsource BP, and started his career at Toyota and then HitachiABB....
Mar 01, 2023•31 min
We discovered Simon Moores, CEO of Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, on YouTube, during a legendary testimony during the US Senate in 2019. Simon just blew our mind, so it had been an ambition for this show to bring him on. And we did. With Simon, we analyse the whole supply chain of batteries, from mining (lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite) to refining, down to the Gigafactories. The battery industry has managed to scale x10 in the past six years and is expected to x8-x10 (depending on who you l...
Feb 15, 2023•32 min
Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) are private contracts between a producer of renewable energy and consumers. The PPA was developing consistently, mainly driven by Utilities. Then 2022 arrived and we witnessed an unprecedented volatility in PPA markets in Europe. What were the consequences of that turmoil on the PPA markets in terms of prices, tenures, counterparties? Did PPA provide good hedges to sellers and buyers? We have brought in Luca Pedretti, the COO & Co-Founder of Pexapark to dive ...
Feb 01, 2023•28 min
Everybody wants to buy 24/7 green electrons, but until recently, it has proven quite difficult. Most buyers of Green Energy are currently purchasing their electrons on a yearly basis, and furthermore with little regard for the location. At the same time, last century thinking has gripped regulators with frantic proposals of price caps and tentative market reforms around nodal pricing. This flurry of activity has only added confusion in the mind of renewables developers, and hence has been stifli...
Jan 16, 2023•31 min
Happy new year 2023 to all our listeners. In this Episode, it is Nostradamus vs. Cassandra all over again: Laurent and Gerard review their 2022 predictions (Episode 65) and look forward to the future. How accurate were our two co-hosts’ predictions for 2022? 1) The Energy Transition is not going to be a smooth ride 2) The Hydro and water crisis 3) The decade of geothermal 4) High Energy Prices 5) Elon Musk out of Tesla 6) Power Market Structure Reform. Overall, it seems to be another draw. You’l...
Jan 02, 2023•31 min
Another year of explosive growth for the Solar Industry: production above 300GW, +45% yoy. What’s behind this staggering growth? How are the supply chain evolving? What are the “Fab four” and what new technology are they pursuing? Why are the prices not going down? How can the development of ESG in supply chain be assessed? How will the industry look in 5 years? So many questions for this booming industry and it is just starting: Solar PV capacity is expected to almost treble over the 2022-2027 ...
Dec 15, 2022•31 min
The biogas/biomethane industry is now one of the promising segments of the Energy Transition: security of supply, renewables sources, local jobs, round the clock dispatchability; the industry ticks all boxes. Biogas can basically be made from any organic material, so the three big sectors are: 1) agricultural wastes (manures and slurries, crop residues) 2) food waste (from the processed food industry or food manufacturing, but also from supermarkets and households) 3) waste water. Biogas only co...
Dec 01, 2022•31 min
Geopolitics and Climate disasters have shown how fragile Energy flows and infrastructures have become. Moving electrons or molecules is becoming an ever-greater challenge in the drive to decarbonisation, affordability, and security of supply. Politics are always in the background, and the recent US Midterms elections have signaled the end of a full Democrat Congress which has been very active in financing infrastructures and the energy transition. To discuss Energy infrastructure in the context ...
Nov 15, 2022•30 min
The war in Ukraine has triggered a dislocation of Energy markets, especially in Europe. This has led to a point a few months ago when governments had to bail out all Utilities which were caught on the wrong side of Energy Trades. Trillions of derivatives threatened to trigger a “Lehman moment”. How did we get there? Are the Energy markets the culprits or just the symptoms? Are they beyond repairs or can they be reformed? Do they even need to be reformed? As Regulators are coming up with new idea...
Nov 01, 2022•32 min
Offshore Wind was one of the great development successes of the past decade, growing in 10 years from a few pilot projects to a real industry. Two zones have been at the fore front: the North Sea (with 30GW as of 2021) and China (with +20GW). Better tech, burgeoning supply chain and infrastructure, and a dramatic fall in cost have created tailwinds for this industry. Offshore Wind is now a technology considered all around the world. However, there is a little problem: the fixed bottom Offshore I...
Oct 15, 2022•30 min
Decarbonising the shipping industry seemed very aspirational until recently. Lofty goals are out there: “The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set an ambition to reduce the carbon intensity of emissions from shipping by at least 40% by 2030, and 70% by 2050, compared with 2008 levels. To achieve this, the shipping industry needs to unite in taking urgent action.” While a lot of talks are centered around hydrogen or ammonia, it is once again the batteries that are making the differenc...
Oct 01, 2022•27 min
In the past two years, we’ve seen a remarkable renaissance of the carbon markets. Some markets are of a “compliance” type - like in Europe - heavily regulated but limited in geography and scope; but there is limited prospect for an overall Cap & Trade worldwide as carbon markets were ignored in the US IRA - the largest Climate bill ever. So, what happens when a sector or a company is not covered by those compliance markets but still have pledged a net-zero or carbon-neutrality (whatever that...
Sep 15, 2022•31 min
Talking about nuclear is tough. In the left corner, a besieged and opaque industry only delivering carefully crafted talking points; and in the right corner, most of the energy economists and financiers that are ignoring promises never met. One can’t escape the feeling that the nuclear industry operates in a parallel universe where models don’t match reality, where actual numbers don’t match forecasts; a world where nuclear generation is flat over the past 10 years while renewables have quadrupl...
Sep 01, 2022•33 min
This episode is done in partnership with SolarPower Europe. There is a lot of media around Utility solar, but the real solar revolution is happening one rooftop at the time. In China, the EU and Australia, Rooftop and C&I account for more than 60% of all solar installations (In the US, it’s only 30%). No need to restructure the Distribution network: it’s energy at the point of need. So, we wanted to do an episode on Rooftop solar, because on one hand, very intelligent people in think-tanks a...
Aug 16, 2022•26 min
Energy Efficiency is not sexy, it’s under the radar, hard to invest in. We are talking about small unit amounts, with aggregation problems, credit problems, standardisation problems. But the whole sector is undertaking a quiet revolution: with the price explosion of retail energy, efficiency is now on everyone’s desk. In the US, Sunrun has managed to securitise portfolios of rooftop solar using techniques of the mortgage industry. The same techniques are now arriving in Europe, even if it’s more...
Aug 01, 2022•24 min
The future of storage is so bright that investing in in the vertical and its adjacencies is the opportunity of a lifetime. At the same time, buyer beware - there are many Theranos-like investment opportunities lurking out there in our vertical. You've got to be very smart to minimize the losers in your portfolio…or, as the great Michael Lewis would say, adopt a “Moneyball” approach. Where are the successes and where are the pitfalls? You need to be a great financier but also a fantastic scientis...
Jul 15, 2022•27 min
Subsea interconnectors are a very discreet sector, it entails decade-long developments…but are developing fast and have become critical to increasing renewables penetration and enhancing energy security. They were originally developed around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea by TSO (Transmission System Operators) but have now caught the interest of large private infrastructure investors. Those HVDC cables, running for hundreds of kms under the seabed, can carry (in both ways) power equivalent to ...
Jul 01, 2022•30 min
After the fiasco of “Better place” in 2013, a much-hyped Israeli start up that proposed battery swapping for cars, everybody thought that the concept of battery swapping was dead. Against all odds, an exceptional Hong Kong Chinese American entrepreneur decided to be a contrarian and launched Gogoro as Better Place collapsed. But Horace Luke’s angle was to focus on two-wheelers, which are so present in Asia (500 million). Horace’s past experiences at Microsoft and HTC helped him shaped his vision...
Jun 15, 2022•29 min
Elon Musk calls Lithium supply the “limiting factor” for electric vehicle adoption globally. Lithium is the key material for the Energy Transition and is currently enjoying a “white gold” rush. The supply has significantly gone up multiple fold in the past seven years, up to 500,000t/y in 2022; still, demand is expected – according to Benchmark Minerals Intelligence – to grow another four to five-fold this decade. The shortage of Lithium – whether real or perceived -, has triggered a spectacular...
Jun 01, 2022•30 min
There is not a single day when we don’t hear about new funds being raised to finance the Energy Transition. As very few funds are listed on Exchanges, and it is estimated that more than 2/3 of the Energy Transition is currently financed on private markets, for which there is limited public available information. Today, we attempt to lift the veil on those VC (Venture Capital), PE (Private Equity), Infrastructure funds which all working to finance the Energy Transition. Who invest in those funds,...
May 16, 2022•26 min
Over the past few months, energy prices have gone through the roof, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put energy security on the front burner. We can legitimately ask ourselves: Are high energy prices and the need for energy security tanking or boosting the Energy transition? Of course, we now are seeing the fossil fuels lobbyists making victory laps, telling “we told you so”, “forget about net-zero” “This is La-la land”, “That’s the consequence of ESG”. In our opinion, that is just grand sta...
May 01, 2022•28 min
