The Energy Gang Wood Mackenzie

This is a special episode of Wood Mackenzie's The Energy Gang, recorded at the Reuters Global Energy Transition 2024 conference in New York. 




It has a great lineup of speakers from the worlds of business, finance, and government, giving us an opportunity to talk to some of the key people who are driving the energy transition. 




One of the panellists on the first day was Kristina Skierka, CEO of Power for All, a campaign group working on energy access in low-income countries. Host Ed Crooks talked with her about how decentralized renewables can reduce energy poverty, and how partnerships between business, philanthropy and government can help countries make progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.




Power for All is working on what it calls its “Utilities 2.0” initiative, looking for ways to combine centralized and decentralized energy to create robust, integrated systems that will improve service delivery and stimulate increased demand.

Another session at the event was a technology showcase, where we heard from companies developing innovative ways to cut emissions. One of them was Cella, which has a new method for permanent carbon removal. Its approach accelerates the natural geologic process that turns carbon dioxide into a mineral: it injects captured carbon dioxide into volcanic rocks, where mineralization permanently locks it underground.




Ed talked with Corey Pattison, Cella’s co-founder and CEO, and they discussed the different methods of carbon mineralization, the geology needed for the process to work, and the potential advantages for this method over conventional carbon dioxide storage.  




There was also a Town Hall session for attendees, allowing open discussion on any topics the participants wanted to bring up. Ed raised a question suggested on LinkedIn, about the potential trade-off in the transition between speed and scale in the deployment of low carbon technologies, and energy equity. We report back on some of the responses to that question.




Look out for the next special episode from day two of the conference, available on Thursday June 27.




You can find Ed and the show on most social media platforms: we’re @theenergygang on X. Subscribe to the Energy Gang on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you don’t miss the next show.

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Two books that are essential reading for energy wonks give contrasting views on how to tackle climate change.

The hot book in the energy world right now is Brett Christophers’ The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet. It’s a detailed look at the structural issues in electricity markets and the challenges of generating returns on renewable investments, arguing that inadequate profitability is the key reason why the transition to low-carbon energy is not moving fast enough to address the threat of global warming.

It’s a provocative thesis that has sparked heated debate, on both sides of the debate. If you work in the energy business, you need to get to grips with the argument, even if you ultimately think it’s wrong.

In this episode, Ed Crooks is joined by Melissa Lott, Professor at Columbia University’s Climate School, and Joseph Majkut, director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss the question of whether private investment and market forces can bring about the reduction in emissions that the world needs.

They also review another important book that has broadly the opposite message: Askhat Rathi’s Climate Capitalism – Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions. That book focuses on the real examples of progress in the energy transition.

At a time when the pace of the energy transition globally may be faltering, and the 1.5 degrees limit to global warming is getting further and further out of reach, Climate Capitalism shows just how much change and innovation there is in the industry. Bill Gates says it’s an important read for anyone in need of optimism.

In spirit, at least, it seems like a very different message from The Price Is Wrong. But are the fundamental conclusions of the two books really so different? Ed, Melissa and Joseph discuss whether there might be some common ground there after all.

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Regulators are trying to clear the path to the grid that clean energy needs.

To go from an electricity system based on coal and gas to one based on solar and wind, the US needs a very different power grid. On some estimates, annual installations of new transmission capacity need to double. To help build the grid that a new clean electricity system will need, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been working on regulatory reforms, intended to smooth the path for new investments in transmission lines. 

Ed Crooks is joined by Amy Myers-Jaffe of New York University and Shanu Mathew of Lazard Asset Management, to unpack the latest orders from FERC. What are the regulators trying to do, and why do some people object to their plans? And what will the proposed reforms mean for the energy transition in the electricity sector in the US? 

It has been a busy few weeks for big announcements in energy. A new round of tariffs on clean energy products from China was announced this month by President Biden, with rates of 100% on electric vehicles, 50% on solar modules, and 25% on lithium-ion batteries. The goal is to revive clean energy manufacturing in the US, but critics say the tariffs could be counter-productive, because they will drive up the cost of low-carbon technologies for American businesses and consumers.

One important gauge of the state of the energy transition is the health of investment in low-carbon stocks. The news on that over the past couple of years has not been great. So what are the markets telling us about the future of clean energy? Shanu gives us his analysis, and joins Amy and Ed to debate investor sentiment and what it means. 

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AI is driving up demand for electricity. How can we meet that demand with clean energy?

It has been a big theme on the Energy Gang this year: the massive additional demand for energy that could be created by data centers for artificial intelligence. It’s an emerging issue that threatens to cause new challenges for the world’s attempts to achieve net zero goals.

So it is a great opportunity for us to have on the show a representative from Google, a company that relies heavily on data centers and is at the forefront of the AI revolution. It also has some ambitious decarbonization goals: the aim is to power the company’s operations entirely with clean energy by 2030. 

 Maud Texier is the global director of clean energy and decarbonization development at Google. She joins Ed Crooks and Amy Myers-Jaffe to explain how she sees the path to achieving that goal by 2030. Google’s objective of 24/7 clean energy requires sourcing renewable power that aligns with its consumption patterns. That means not just buying enough renewable energy to match its usage over the course of a year: every kilowatt-hour consumed must be carbon-free. It’s a challenging goal that it driving Google, like other companies with similar objectives, to explore new ways to generate power, store energy and manage the grid. 

Google is looking at or already investing in a range of innovative energy technologies, including enhanced geothermal, hydrogen, long-duration storage and advanced nuclear. Big energy users such as Google can do a lot to shape the evolution of the energy industry. But policy support is, as ever, crucial to achieving net zero goals. How is Google engaging with policymakers and regulators to help support the deployment of clean energy? New standards in the European parliament, aimed at improving energy efficiency, include mandates for data centers to report their performance. Are we moving towards an era of more stringent regulation of energy use for data centers and other large loads?

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The Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office has a grandstand view of the energy transition. Where is it going next?

Jigar Shah, one of the originators of the Energy Gang, now runs the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, playing a key role in advancing clean energy projects. By helping to bridge the gap between R&D and large-scale deployment, it encourages private sector investment and supports the administration’s work to achieve its net zero goals.

Jigar was appointed Director of the LPO in March 2021 with a brief to “to rev those engines back up” after a quiet period under the Trump administration. He returns to the Energy Gang to discuss the progress he has made so far, and the goals he is working towards in the future. In particular, he talks about the hot topic of the moment in energy: how to meet increased demand for electricity driven by data centers for AI, new factories, and electric vehicles.

Much of the new load being added to the electricity system will not be flexible. Data centers mostly need to be available 24/7. So how is the grid going to manage these growing demands? Host Ed Crooks is also joined by Amy Myers-Jaffe, Director of NYU’s Energy, Climate Justice & Sustainability Lab, to discuss Jigar’s views on the solutions to these challenges.

Topics covered include Virtual Power Plants, enhanced geothermal and advanced nuclear. Those latter two are among the handful of sources of energy that we usually think about when we are discussing “clean firm power”. Geothermal in particular is generating a lot of buzz lately. What will it take to get it deployed at scale? Is it pulling ahead of advanced nuclear in the race to commerciality and large-scale deployment?

The Energy Gang will be recording live from the Global Energy Transition event in June in New York. To secure a discounted ticket, use the ENERGYGANG500 discount code. Visit https://events.reutersevents.com/energy-transition/global-energy-transition-new-york to book.




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Fossil fuels still dominate the world’s energy supplies. Do we need different terminology to talk about what’s happening?

We talk about “the energy transition” all the time. But is that language misleading? 20 years ago fossil fuels were 85% of the world’s energy, today they’re just a few percentage points less. If there is a transition to low-carbon energy, it is happening only slowly, and it needs to move much faster to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. The world has made huge strides in both the cost and deployment of renewable energy, but can we really say that we are in a transition away from fossil fuels?

Host Ed Crooks is joined by Melissa Lott, a professor at Columbia University’s Climate School, and Amy Myers Jaffe, director of NYU’s Energy, Climate Justice, and Sustainability Lab, to discuss the way the language we use shapes our ideas about energy policy. Amy quotes her Tufts University colleague (and previous guest on the show) Kelly Sims Gallagher: “climate doom and gloom really disregards the progress that's been made”. That progress includes 56 countries, between them responsible for over half of global emissions, passing direct climate mandates to limit greenhouse gases.

But despite all that action, we still get the great majority of our energy from fossil fuels. The gang debate whether the current global shift towards low-carbon energy represents a real "transition", or maybe even a “transformation”. Or is it merely an addition of new energy sources on top of the existing ones such as oil and gas.

Ed, Amy and Melissa debate the feasibility of achieving net zero by 2050, considering the political and economic hurdles ahead. Innovations including carbon pricing, electrification, and advances in renewable energy technologies will play prominent roles in shifting us towards cleaner energy systems. Will they be enough?

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