As the pressure for climate action fades, what is driving investment in clean energy? | The big talking points from New York Climate Week

Summary

Podcast Summary: As the Pressure for Climate Action Fades, What Is Driving Investment in Clean Energy? | Energy Gang @ New York Climate Week

Podcast: Energy Gang
Host: Ed Crooks (Wood Mackenzie)
Guests: Will Thompson (Barclays Investment Bank), Helen Clarkson (CEO, Climate Group)
Date: September 24, 2025

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Overview: The Shifting Landscape of Energy Investment and Climate Action

This episode, recorded live at New York Climate Week, explores why clean energy investment is still accelerating even as the political and social spotlight on climate action seems to fade—particularly in the US. Host Ed Crooks leads a discussion that delves into the surge in electricity demand fueled by AI and data centers, the structural and policy challenges in scaling up clean power, and the evolving role of global climate gatherings like COP and Climate Week NYC. Featuring insights from Will Thompson (Barclays Investment Bank) and Helen Clarkson (Climate Group), the episode captures both the optimism and tension at the heart of the current global energy transition.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The New Demand Driver: AI and the "Speed to Power" Era

• AI's Explosive Electricity Demands:

  • AI, especially the rise in data centers, is now the main force driving electricity demand in the US and globally, outpacing climate as the central investment theme.
  • Investors and tech giants see "speed to power" as critical, with access to reliable power now more urgent than power costs.
    • Quote [16:00]: “Whoever wins the energy race can win the AI race… There's a worry, there's obviously a competitive nature in this industry to get… the best frontier model. And so getting that competitive advantage will require getting access to power.” — Will Thompson

• New Electricity Demand Numbers:

  • US data center load is projected to grow from 4.4% of national demand (2024) to 9–12%.
  • Despite more efficient AI models (example: China's DeepSeq), anticipated demand is still surging, prompting major capital expenditures.

• Investment Implications:

  • Hyperscale tech companies (Meta, Google, XAI) are building distributed, often grid-independent power systems (e.g., Memphis & Ohio 1GW projects).
  • The real capex risk isn’t ROI on AI, but whether sufficient power will be available to maintain exponential compute growth.
    • Quote [06:40]: “Their actual biggest concern is not the return of these investments, but access to power to actually meet their ambitions.” — Will Thompson

2. Energy Infrastructure: Bottlenecks and Barriers

• Stalled Grid Expansion:

  • US generation has been flat for decades due to efficiency gains; the easy wins are mostly realized.
  • Grid interconnection queues have ballooned, as gigawatt-scale data center projects struggle to get online.
  • Quote [09:10]: “A lot of it is we have concentrated data center build out in these primary markets and they've absorbed any excess power that was already available. We essentially haven't grown power generation in the United States for several decades.” — Will Thompson

• Permitting, Siting, and Costs:

  • Political and regulatory resistance ("NIMBYism") is rising—especially in places like Northern Virginia and Florida—due to worries about grid strain, costs, and local benefits.
    • Quote [11:29]: “There's already been NIMBY resistance… they've impacted reliability, they're leading to higher energy prices, particularly in the PJM market.” — Will Thompson

• Equipment Supply Chain Crunch:

  • Critical shortage of gas turbines, transformers, and the specialized steel needed for grid infrastructure (lead times up to four years).
    • Quote [13:43]: “We're highly dependent on European imports for a lot of this equipment…There's a whole lot of headwinds to standing up the supply chain.” — Will Thompson

3. Policy Shifts, Global Differences, and the Climate Narrative

• US Policy Realignment:

  • The US administration has pivoted from emissions reduction to a focus on affordability, security, and reliability; it has also withdrawn from the Paris Agreement.
    • Quote [27:37]: “It's very significant, particularly in terms of US domestic emissions… That makes life very complicated for businesses here to also think about how they position themselves.” — Helen Clarkson

• Global Acceleration:

  • Other parts of the world—China, Pakistan—are pushing ahead with clean energy rapidly (e.g., huge EV rollouts, rooftop solar booms) even as US policy stalls, potentially creating competitiveness issues for American businesses.

• The Evolving Role of COP and Climate Week:

  • Logistics and waning optimism dampen COP30 expectations; more climate leaders are focusing on events like Climate Week NYC as actionable forums.
  • Subnational action is rising (cities, states, industry), and local summits are increasingly shaping global messaging.

• Narrative Challenges:

  • Climate advocates recognize that messaging has not connected enough to everyday issues (“kitchen table” concerns), and that future communication must focus on near-term benefits and the costs of inaction.
    • Quote [32:58]: “We need to link it to people's lives… Not doing [climate action] is way more expensive.” — Helen Clarkson

• Implementation Over Grand Announcements:

  • The movement is increasingly about "behind-the-scenes" systemic change and regulatory detail, less about headline-grabbing pledges.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On "Speed to Power" and Grid Strain:

  • “Getting that competitive advantage will require getting access to power.” — Will Thompson [16:00]

• On the Clean Energy Messaging Gap:

  • “I don't think we can reverse away from talking about climate... It's about people living lives that are bearable on the planet and being able to feed themselves.” — Helen Clarkson [32:58]

• On AI’s Opportunity and Dilemma:

  • “There is a balance between do we constrain an industry that's leading to higher emissions than they had signaled to us, or do we take the bet that AI is going to actually make the world a better place?” — Will Thompson [19:44]

• On "Back to School" for Climate Policy:

  • “It's almost a bit back to schooly... You've got two months or six weeks maybe to the COP. We need those NDCs, we need to kind of pin down who's going to be where, when, who's saying what.” — Helen Clarkson [01:11, 25:43]

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Important Timestamps

• AI and Investment Shift: 02:16–06:40
• Data Center Power Constraints: 08:04–11:30
• Equipment and Supply Chain Bottlenecks: 12:02–15:07
• Policy & "Speed to Power" Initiatives: 16:00–18:34
• Emissions Implications of Distributed Power: 18:34–19:44
• Distributed Global Acceleration (China, Pakistan): 27:37–29:18
• Narrative and Communication Challenges: 31:42–34:49
• COP30 & Subnational Action: 23:42–25:06

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Conclusion: The Outlook for Clean Energy Investment

• Clean energy investment is increasingly detached from public climate urgency, now riding on AI-driven demand and major power infrastructure constraints.
• For the US, supply chain issues, permitting gridlock, and political uncertainty have created friction, even as global competitors push ahead.
• Policy, investment, and narrative efforts are shifting from aspirational targets to gritty, local implementation and systemic reform.
• Climate advocates are re-evaluating how to connect with the public’s day-to-day concerns, as rapid technological and industrial transformation leaves communications struggling to keep up.
• The overriding theme: The new energy transition barometer isn’t "climate ambition" alone but the race to deliver scalable, reliable power—at speed.

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For deeper dives or specific details, please refer to the marked timestamps.

Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to the Energy Gang, a discussion show from Wood Mackenzie about the fast changing world of energy. I'm Ed Crooks, I'm an energy analyst and the host of the show. We're back in New York City for Climate Week, one of the biggest events in the energy year and it's bigger than ever this year. And we're talking to industry leaders, investors and policymakers about the biggest issues in clean energy. Climate Week has in recent years taken place against a backdrop of confidence in the transition to low carbon energy. When we were here last year, market sentiment around renewables was still riding high. Policy support for solar and wind and other low carbon technologies was strong. So where are we now? This is the first in a special series of episodes of the Energy Gang that we're recording at Climate Week. We're going to be talking about all the biggest issues in energy right now, including meeting electricity demand for AI, breaking down the barriers to low carbon technologies, including nuclear power, and following the money to see where the investment is coming from and going to. Today we're opening our Climate Week coverage by talking to Helen Clarkson, CEO of the Climate Group, which organises New York Climate Week. Here's what's coming up from her later in the show.

[B]

Climate Week NYC has always been really important because I think we've called it sometimes like the green room for the cop. It's a moment that sort of focuses the mind. It's almost a bit back to schooly, you know, time to focus everyone. You've got two months or six weeks maybe to the cop. We need those NDCs, we need to kind of pin down who's going to be where, when, who's saying what. Really high electricity costs on the grid in Pakistan, very little regulation about. You can just put a solar panel on your house. People started putting up tik tok videos showing this is how you do it. Very cheap solar panels from China. And now you can just see the solar boom in Pakistan on Google Earth. Even in rural villages, about 50% have solar on the roof. That sort of shift is coming really, really quickly. And so I think as much as it's about the US sort of rowing back the rate and difference of change across the world. That's the difficulty, I think, for businesses looking out across that landscape, thinking how to respond to that.

[A]

So that's coming up later. But first I wanted to get an investment analyst's view on where we are with the energy transition. Will Thompson is Director in the Thematic Investment Research Team at Barclays Investment Bank. Hi, Will. Welcome to the energy gang.

[C]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

Yeah, great of you to join us. So look, we wanted to think about Climate Week in the context of investors and the way investors are viewing the energy industry right now. It feels like probably if we'd been having this conversation two years ago, all the talk would have been about climate would have been central focus. Climate and sustainability probably more broadly. Now it feels like the focus has shifted very dramatically. Climate is being de emphasized in investors decisions and the thing that's absolutely dominant, certainly dominant in the conversation, is AI, electricity demand, all the changes that are flowing from that. Do you think that's right?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, we at Barclays hosted our annual energy conference earlier this month and two central themes was obviously the integration of AI, both in the upstream side, but also in terms of advancing clean tech technologies. But secondarily was addressing this growing load growth that is associated with data centers and our AI ambitions.

[A]

And how big is that opportunity, do you think? You have a lot of numbers being thrown around. People talk about very steep growth in electricity demand. Just out to 2030, maybe there's another 100 gigawatts or so of demand that could be there on the system and therefore very significant need for investment in new generation capacity and in transmission and distribution infrastructure as well. Do you think that's right?

[C]

No, I mean, we're seeing it. We've been actually even despite the January events of Deepseek saying that this train has really left the station, there's been a paradigm shift in the scaling laws was really leading to both training compute needs, also inference compute needs. And I can get into that later. But you know, the Department of Energy, I think pegs data center load growth of 4.4% of U.S. powder demand. I think that was in 2024 and potentially growing to 9 to 12%. And I do think that's consistent with how we see the market playing out.

[A]

Right. And just a footnote on that deep seq point. So this was deep seq, this was the Chinese AI model that was announced earlier this year appeared to have radically lower power consumption to achieve the same results as some of the other models from Google and OpenAI and others. And as you say, there was a sort of like a deep seek moment when there was a big correction fallout back in share prices for some of the power generation companies. Everyone had this sort of moment of worry about would that increased power demand really be there? That didn't seem to last very long. It seemed like pretty quickly after that, people got back to reassuring themselves that yes, that demand growth was really going to happen.

[C]

Yeah, I think there was a market shock and the understanding we had this Chinese startup come out with this pretty efficient model, both in terms of model level architecture design, but also on the training costs. What it really showcased is a paradigm shift in the AI scan loss. So, so historically the belief was that we needed more compute, more costs, more data centers to advance AI intelligence. What DeepSeq really showed that is, yes, we continue to use more data, more compute on the training side, but the models are getting incrementally more intelligent on the inference side. So on the back end of once you train these models, we're teaching these models to reason and think like humans through complex problems. Well, that requires time test scaling in terms of, of actually spending more time in compute, letting the models think, and that's actually leading to a large surge in inference demand associated with AI.

[A]

So what are the implications of that then for electricity demand? I mean, it feels like when people talk about this issue, there's sometimes the implication that effectively demand is infinite, that as many new data centers as you can build will be needed and as much new electricity infrastructure as you can put in place to support those data centers is going to be needed. And so that's really the thing you have to do, is just deploy as much capacity as quickly as you possibly can. There is also obviously then underlying that the sort of the worry that maybe it's a bubble. Perhaps at some point this is all going to become much more efficient and either the computing is going to be done more efficiently or the data centers are going to become more efficient and use their electricity in smarter ways that mean they don't need as much and you're going to end up with stranded assets and there will be data centers and power plants and transmission lines and everything else that aren't actually being used. How big is that risk, do you think?

[C]

Yeah, I think there's a lot of investor handwriting still on the return on AI. So the ROI of AI for obviously concerns that we don't, you know, the hyperscalers don't know what the return is. I think they're optimistic. They are seeing tangible, measurable returns in terms of their own operations. But in terms of gen AI, we don't know what the sort of perfect model is for that and how to monetize that from their body language. My sense is they actually consider AI an exceptional risk to their business models. Right. Met has talked about how AI is going to impact everything they do. And so I think there's an arms race clearly not only within the tech community, but also autocratic versus democratic AI because obviously the threat of China. And so I think they're throwing everything they have behind it. These are well capitalized companies and based on body language they are very power hungry. And I think their actually biggest concern is not the return of these investments, but actually access to power to, to actually meet their ambitions. And you know, we're of the view that maybe the risk to hyperscaler capex is not the return profile of AI because we're still early on the return curve, but actually accessing power and maybe actually hitting a powerwall.

[A]

Right. So when you talk about the power wall, this is effectively what, as I was saying, if you think about the demand for AI and AI related services as being basically unlimited, or at least we don't know what the limit is, you're saying there's going to be a constraint on the supply side with people being able to get the power they need.

[C]

Yeah, I think we are hitting the powerwall. There's indications that data center capacity under construction has plateaued if not started to decline, us and globally. And that suggests to me there are power constraints really because the pipeline of data center projects continue to grow. These are supported by extremely high pre leasing rates. But actually moving those projects from sort of feed to construction has been a challenge. And we're increasingly seeing a lot of even the hyperscaler projects move to distributed power. So what we like to call bring your own power BYOP and we're seeing it with XAI in terms of their Colossal One and Colossal Two data centers. In Memphis, Tennessee, Meta is building a 1 gigawatt data center in Ohio that will be largely powered by distributed power solutions. So I think this move to sort of grid independent power solutions for data centers suggests that they are realizing that they can't get access to power they need.

[A]

Want to come on to that question of distributed power in a moment before I do, just to think about the constraints then that are forcing the data center operators and customers in that direction. What are the issues then? What is it that's stopping people getting the power they need?

[C]

A lot of it is we have concentrated data center build out in these primary markets and they've absorbed any excess power that was already available. We essentially haven't grown power generation in the United States for several decades. Right. The demand growth has been flat for two decades because of the efficiencies we've been able to get in terms of LED lights, high efficient appliances, industrial efficiency efforts. Even though we've had GDP growth. I think my sense is that lohane fruit has been picked and now we're talking about giga scale data centers just showing up and asking to interconnect to the grid. And we've seen the growth in the interconnection queue for a lot of these projects. And we've grossly, from my perspective, under invested in grid infrastructure to move the electrons from generation. So we can focus as much as new power generation, but you can't move, you know, solar or wind generation to where the data center is. Then you have a grid interconnection issue.

[A]

And so if you need new generation and grid infrastructure, some of the issues obviously that come up. So permitting and siting being problems that still seems to be a perennial problem in this country. There's forever talk about doing something in Congress to streamline permitting. That talk's been revived again recently as talk about maybe bipartisan legislation passing. Believe that when we see it, I guess have to wait for that to make a bit more progress and to become more real. So that's one issue. Another issue clearly is the question of how that infrastructure gets paid for and what the impact is on customer bills. And certainly you see it is generally the case, I think that a lot of people in the United States right now feel that their personal finances are strained and rapid rises in electricity bills. I think electricity bills rising on average by 7% or so in the US this year. That makes a lot of people unhappy. People notice that you get political pushback certainly in quite a few areas, but where people are looking to build data centers, you're finding political resistance. I was very struck on the social platform X the other day. Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, Republican you would think of as generally kind of a business friendly type of person. He was saying, we're worried about these data centers. They suck power off the grid and they don't contribute anything to our economy. So lots of different signs of resistance coming. Do you think that's something that's really going to obstruct data center build out?

[C]

Yeah, there's already been NIMBY resistance, particularly somewhere like Northern Virginia where again they've impacted reliability, they're leading to higher energy prices, particularly in the PJM market. We saw the impact of the PJM auction and the potential pressure that will have on utility bills for consumers. And I think I do worry that this will get highly politicized. And so this could be is as we try to figure out. I mean there's clearly bipartisan support to lead on AI against China But I think where we lack consensus is how do we do that?

[A]

And then the other thing that we follow quite closely at Wood McKenzie is equipment and equipment supply chains and whether companies building infrastructure are able to get the components and equipment they need. It seems like that's becoming a big problem. If you look at wind and solar, actually availability there is not so bad. But we've had the administration putting various regulatory barriers in the path of wind development in particular also its extent for solar. We've had, of course, tax credits for wind and solar are on their way out as a result of the legislation, often known as the one big beautiful bill that was passed in July. So the administration very much trying to encourage investment in new natural gas generation because they say you need reliable baseload power that's available 24,7 that's dispatchable and can support the grid therefore in that way. And that supply chain is pretty tight. And I think our numbers are showing that on average, if you order a new gas turbine, you're going to wait four years for it today and can be significantly longer than that. And so that again is another reason for significant delays in getting new capacity built. How do you think that gets resolved? I mean, you were talking about distributed generation as being part of the answer. So that maybe gets around some of these issues with NIMBYism to an extent and certainly could be a way to get around concerns about new demand on the grid, creating pressure to drive prices higher. But still you need the equipment, right? You have to buy it from somewhere.

[C]

Yeah, I think we obviously are seeing the demand signal today that we need this new generation and the transmission to move the electrons. I think there's obviously the continued overhang of the uncertainty around the sustainability of hyperscale capex. We have seen capacity additions added from the major OEMs who are producing these turbines, but it is across the entire supply chain because we've been talking about large power transformers that are critical both on sort of the generation and the receiving end of these transmission wires. And we hear three to four year lead times. We're highly dependent on European imports for a lot of this equipment. And it still requires skilled labor to produce. And a lot of it requires specific steels that we don't actually have a lot of suppliers. We have one supplier of what's called grain or electric steel in the United States. So I think there's a whole lot of headwinds to standing up the supply chain to grow our generation, which we haven't done again in several decades. So I think there's a broad recognization that solar and wind can get us so far. But as to your point, we need baseload power to support these data centers, which are considered essentially a block load. They run 24 7, 365. And so, yes, we've seen strong demand for aerodriver gas turbines, industrial scale gas turbines, even fuel cells and gas engines. So there's a whole supply chain that we're seeing a surge in demand growth for to support the move to distributed power.

[A]

So how do you think this plays out then, both for the industry and in policy terms for the industry? As we've been saying, these tech companies see themselves as being in a race to develop the most effective AI capabilities as quickly as they possibly can. In policy terms as well. There is a sense for the administration and on a bipartisan basis in Congress that there is an AI race between the US and China now, just as there was a space race with the Soviet union in the 60s or a race to develop the atomic bomb against Nazi Germany in the 1940s. These are kind of very high stakes apparently that we're playing with here. So something has to be done, it would seem, to get through that power wall that you're talking about to make it possible to accelerate development of AI and the power infrastructure needed to support it. What do you think can happen?

[C]

I think whoever wins the energy race can win the iris. And that's obviously a global phenomenon. We're facing the move. Distributed power, I think has been just. It's a focus on speed to power. And so the hyperscalers are less sensitive around the cost of electricity and more focused on when can I get it? And so I think there's a worry, there's obviously a competitive nature in this industry to get be first to have the best frontier model. Meta even alluded to the fact that we have AI making AI better. And so being on the front edge of the AI race will give you a huge competitive advantage. And so getting that competitive advantage will require getting access to power.

[A]

Yeah, very interesting. You use that phrase, speed to power. I was very struck by a statement that came out from the Energy Department very recently talking about a new Speed to Power initiative. They have clearly identified this as a big priority for them. Do you think we're going to see material consequences from that in terms of measures that will actually accelerate the deployment of energy infrastructure?

[C]

We're seeing. I mean, you mentioned earlier about the challenges on infrastructure permit reform. Right. We have state, federal, local permitting, environmental reviews. Then you have cost allocation and you have to rate basis stuff like it's very complicated. We have 3,000 utilities in the United States. There's no master plan. Arguably the best option for speed to power right now is solar plus batteries. But we need to stand up a lot of battery capacity to do that. So I think we're seeing policy efforts in terms of Texas State Senate Bill 6 which focuses on having backup power on site. We're seeing an effort in West Virginia for similarity to have backup power on site. So I think the recognization that we will add power capacity in state, but when the grid gets constrained, you need to have your own power available so that we don't constrain the grid peak times, particularly somewhere in August where we have everyone running their air conditioners. So I think that's the back end way to get around this. The fact that we can't add utility scale generation and transmission fast enough is that we're essentially having the data centers become utilities with their own grid independent solutions.

[A]

So final thought then taking it back to Climate Week again, what are the implications of that for emissions going to be given that, as you say, it seems like there's increasingly a focus on distributed power. Some of the time that distributed power is literally just diesel generators. Some of the time it might be gas turbines, gas engines of various kinds. It feels like on the whole, doesn't it, that this push for speed to power and significant backup power for data centers to make it possible to get them online, that's just inevitably going to drive up emissions, isn't it?

[C]

Yeah, I mean the default form of cheap baseload power is natural gas. And so most of these projects are being supported by natural gas. So clearly there's an emission implication there. We still see the hyperscalers essentially meet all their annual energy demand needs in terms of virtual power purchase agreements for newable and solar projects. But again, there's a mismatch in terms of the timing. So I think the stick which the industry should be measured by IS24,7 supply and demand balancing on the same grid network. We've gotten some disclosure from the hyperscalers on that and we know that they're far behind the 100% target by 2030. And so I think again their emphasis is speed to power. Today we're going to use natural gas. We'll try to figure out how to decarbonize it down the road. In the meantime, we'll still sign a lot of virtual power purchase agreements to essentially say we're using 100% renewables in terms of Annual matching. But then the long term goal is to use AI to sort of advance the clean tech and decarbonization efforts.

[A]

Right. And so in the long term that means things like advanced nuclear, it might mean long duration storage, it might mean geothermal, might even potentially mean hydrogen, I guess. But in the short term it's as you say, solar batteries and gas. Right?

[C]

Yeah. And fusion I think is the hopefully, maybe down the line obviously, but maybe a binary outcome. But I do think it is. There's this message from, I think some tech executives do not constrain AI power demand today because of the benefits both in terms of not only decarbonization, but know, healthcare, advancing society in the long term. So I think there is a balance between do we constrain an industry that's obviously leading to higher emissions than they had signaled to us, or do we take the bet that AI is going to actually make the world a better place? And so I think we have to sort of navigate through that. And right now the focus really is on how do we get speed to power.

[A]

Indeed. Let's hope we bet correctly on that one. Certainly, as you say, some pretty important decisions to be made on that score. Will Thompson, thanks very much indeed. Great talking to you Ed.

[C]

Appreciate it. Thank you.

[A]

Thanks for joining us. So that's the backdrop for Climate Week. It's a challenging time for clean energy in some respects, but there is still plenty of optimism in the industry. Helen Clarkson is CEO of Climate Group and she joins me now to talk about the key messages and debates that we can expect this week. Hello, Helen.

[B]

Hi, good to see you.

[A]

Welcome to the energy gang.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Thanks very much for joining us. Let's start off maybe just talking a little bit about the event. What is going on at Climate Week and what do you think is particularly important about this event?

[B]

Well, Climate Week NYC happens every year alongside the UN General assembly here in New York. And actually this year, the fact that it's happening I think is really important. I'm not really one for kind of giving people marks for showing up to things, but you know, across this year we've been looking at what would the event look like. So much uncertainty out there. You could see the way the kind of year was unfolding and so actually getting out there and saying to people, look, we still need to have these conversations. Climate is needs to be top of the agenda. And New York is the right place to have those conversations because we've got people in town for unger and so on and kind of convincing people that it was going to happen. I think it's been really important to bring everyone here together. So now they're here and they are having those important conversations and moving the agenda forward.

[A]

And I think I heard you say yesterday at the opening ceremony, this will be the biggest Climate Week NYC ever in terms of interest activity attendees on what metric is that?

[B]

Yeah, we have a few metrics. So one things that we do as climate we as climate group is we run the week, which means having our own events, but also hosting the platform where people can register what we call affiliate events. And those are events that happen around the city. And we always joke they sort of range in size from big global meetings to poetry readings about climate in basements, potentially comedy events, which I always, every year say I'm going to get to never do. This year we've registered a thousand events on our website, which is more than last year when, you know, the world looked very different this time last year. Also the number of government leaders that were speaking at the Climate Group events over these couple of days, so showing that real appetite to come here and have these conversations and kind of encourage people to do more. And then in terms of corporate sponsors, interest from companies, so. So a range of metrics that we look at for gauging the interest.

[A]

Right, got it. Because anecdotally, certainly when I've been talking to people in the energy industry over the past few weeks, quite a lot of people have said they're coming to Climate Week. And quite a lot of people have said one of the reasons they're coming to Climate Week is because they're not going to COP30, the climate talks in Belem and Brazil in November. And there's a range of reasons for that. Logistically, it's tough. Belem's not a very big city. It's clearly going to be strained in terms of its hotel capacity and that kind of thing to support the tens of thousands of attendees that you typically get at a cop. So I think that's one reason why a lot of people are taking the decision not to go. Another reason, though, you could say, is that because optimism and confidence in what a COP might achieve has been waning, people don't think it's going to be that big of a deal. And people think that just as the kind of international effort on climate seems to be faltering in general, you can't expect anything very significant to come out of COP 30. What's your view on that?

[B]

Well, I think that the COP is an evolving process and sort of my joke is if you didn't exist, you'd have to invent it. You know, it's a really important moment in the year for multilateralism, for countries coming together. But obviously it's been going a long time now and there are different moments in the negotiations that cycle. And I do think a lot of the problem this year is logistics actually and the fact that that's made it very hard for people to plan to go there and that probably has pulled a few people here. But for a long time people have been saying, look, the COP needs to be much smaller. And then as soon as it is smaller, people are like, well the fact that it's smaller is a kind of indication of weakness, like we can't win. And I think, I think that's a kind of challenge for the un. There's been a big sort of push to say look, we're moving out of the era of negotiation and interactions, implementation. So actually even though I think the COP will be smaller and that some of that is capacity constraints, there's a lot of activity the week before in Rio. There's some activity I've heard about in Sao Paulo. We, we will be as climate group in Rio the week before running something called the Local Action Summit, which is sub national governments and cities who are really important implementation players and where a lot of the action actually happens. And that's in the run up to cop. So it'll be the week before for, and then taking a message into COP to the parties, the national governments who turn up to say, look, we are here, we're ready to take action. This is where we need your support. So I think there's a kind of shift that's happening in climate which might have been moved a little bit quicker with the logistics.

[A]

And what are your expectations about the outcomes from the cop? I mean, do you think it's going to be a significant one? We were hearing people talk at the opening ceremony here yesterday about how important it is this is meant to be the cop, where the countries of the world get together and present more ambitious goals for emissions reduction. These nationally determined contributions. Still, most large economies have not done that, have not submitted new NDCs. Obviously the United States is not going to do that. It's not going to present one and that's clearly second largest emitter in the world, a very important player. Is that going to mean we're not really going to get anything very impactful out of cop 30?

[B]

I think we'll know more about this on Thursday. Right, so that Thursday this week at the UN There's a climate summit. There's going to be a lot of pressure for countries to bring forward the NDCs. I think China is keeping everyone guessing about when it's going to put its NDC forward and that's obviously very significant. China is moving on this agenda with or without an ndc. And I think it's more the point for China about when does their NDC catch up with our actually kind of economic ambition around this and when do they use that as a, as a push for others in the world. So that's something that's quite interesting. That's all slightly happening outside. You know, people are seeing the COP as the end date for that rather than they should have done this all in February. So, yeah, things are delayed, they're not. We'd like them to be on that ambition front. There's a really critical next couple of months for the un. But that's again where Climate Weekend I see has always been really important because I think we've called it sometimes like the green room for the cop. It's a moment that sort of focuses the mind. It's always a bit back to school, you know, time to focus everyone. You've got two months, we'll see, six weeks maybe to the cop. We need those NDCs, we need to kind of pin down who's going to be where, when, who's saying what. And I think this week in New York, particularly over at the un, mines will be getting focused on that.

[A]

So you mentioned earlier the world looking very different now from the way it did a year ago. Clearly one crucial difference is in the us, the US a year ago had an administration that was committed to emissions risk reduction, doesn't have that anymore. Now it has an administration that's withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement and it has set energy affordability and security and reliability as its priorities rather than emissions reduction. What difference does that make in general to the climate debate and the kind of conversations that you have when you meet people in the rest of the world, in business, in finance? How significant is it that the position of the US has changed so sharply?

[B]

It's very significant, particularly in terms of US domestic emissions. I think we have to start there. You know, the US is approximately 10% of the world's emissions and moving away from policies that would bring that down and they were already behind in bringing that down. So I think that's the kind of starting point and that makes life very complicated for businesses here to also think about how they position, position themselves. But the rest of the world is moving much, much faster. And I think what we're going to start to see is this division between the rest of the world decarbonizing in the US kind of being left behind. And then what does that do to competitiveness for US Businesses and how does the US at some point is going to need to play catch up. But I think when you look towards what China's doing, so this huge rollout of electric vehicles, and I think sometimes people misunderstand electric vehicles in the mix. They think, oh, it's a kind of rich person's car, but actually it massively dents fossil fuel markets and changes the economics there. So as that number goes up, you know, we're going to see that huge change. Then you see things like I talked about this yesterday a bit about what's happening in Pakistan around solar energy. So, you know, really high electricity costs on the grid there very little regulation about. You can just put a solar panel on your house. People started putting up TikTok videos showing this is how, how you do it. Very cheap solar panels from China. And now you can just see the solar boom in Pakistan. On Google Earth, even in rural villages, about 50% have solar on the roof. That sort of shift is coming really, really quickly. And so I think as much as it's about the US sort of rowing back, there's also just a big discontinuity in the world. I'm sure you've talked about this a lot on the podcast, like the rate and difference of change across the world. That's the difficulty, I think, for businesses looking out across that landscape and thinking how to respond to that.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And as you say, we do definitely see that kind of discontinuity, the disconnect between what's happening in the US and what's happening in the rest of the world. Have to say, though, the other thing that is absolutely dominant in the conversation in the energy industry in the US right now is AI. Yeah, and that's the thing where probably a couple of years ago everyone would have been talking about emissions and sustainability and so on. Now everything is about AI, growing electricity demand to power, data centers to support AI and its various applications. And the big question is, how can you increase electricity supply in order to serve that growth in AI in some cases, that can support climate action. Some of the investments you make to increase power supply could help reduce emissions, but often they don't. And I was wondering how you see that and you again, in terms of conversations you have when you're talking to businesses, the businesses you work with at the climate group. Do you see that concern about AI in the sense that AI is sort of an existential battle? It's a race both for companies and for countries. It's absolutely essential to dominate that industry. Is that kind of rising up the agenda as a higher priority and something that stops people effectively thinking about climate?

[B]

Yeah, I don't think that stops from thinking about climate. I think, you know, you certainly see the tech companies now right on the front foot on this and I think that's impressive. They're not, they're sort of saying, how are we going to solve this as a supply issue? And you see them going after different solutions. We do a lot of work with Google, a project with them, around 247 carbon free energy. And how do you get that? So you're matching your energy at sort of 15 minute increments, which is not.

[A]

An easy thing to do. That's really challenging.

[B]

And actually also so the data helps you solve that. And I think there's interesting research out there that sort of says actually you could get about three times the number of savings through smart use of AI in things like logistics, supply chain, smart building management, other energy efficiency measures. I think at the moment, you know, where we see AI and sort of, you know, cat memes or, you know, I've used it to help me solve my holiday question. You know, that's not the wonderful use that we hope will come, but so I think there's a kind of, again, a very big disruption at the moment. We have to find those uses for it as well as figuring out this energy supply question and how we're going to make that renewable.

[A]

Yeah, I do agree. I think that's a, that's a really important priority. So just going back then to the question of how the world is different from a year ago, the other thing that I was really struck by at the opening ceremony was Simon Steele from the UNFCCC talking about essentially communications and the way that the story about climate action has been told to the global public. And he said something like, we have to acknowledge that we've made mistakes. We have not explained to people in the right ways what needs to be done. And he said, he talked about, he didn't use the expression kitchen table issues, but that was basically the implication. He said, you know, we have to talk to people about the things that matter directly to them. And he said we have to talk about the ways that climate action can improve people's lives here and now. And in the immediate future, rather than just holding out the prospect of, if we do this, we'll avoid a massive disaster 50 years or 100 years from now. Do you think he's right in that and do you think there is a shift in the sort of climate advocacy movement towards addressing those kind of problems he's identified, or do you still have a way to go on that?

[B]

I think there's a lot of work to do. There's. The number of calls I've been on this year is like, we need a new narrative. And it's like, well, I don't think there is one narrative. And I think that's a mistake to think that. I'm also worried about an idea which. Not to what he's saying, but that we could stop talking about climate and get there a completely different way. Because I worry that, you know, someone said to me, oh, well, people will see their insurance bills going up and they'll connect that and they'll know that that means it's climate. I'm like, I don't think they will unless we tell that. So I don't think we can reverse away from talking about climate. It's climate Weekend ycs. It's obviously a big topic here, but I definitely do think it's true that we have to be sophisticated in how we talk to people and understand about this is about kind of protecting lives and livelihoods. And it's not about tree hugging, it's about people living lives that are bearable on the planet and being able to feed themselves. I think that is a very challenging narrative because you don't go too far into doom and gloom. You know, you can't just kind of, as you say, kind of endlessly paint dystopias and help that changes. But we need to link it to people's lives. And I think a big job force is going to be countering misinformation. And it's frustrating when you see end to see the cost of net zero talks about. And we can agree that it's expensive. Not doing it is way more expensive. And we've lost. You know, the. In the uk, the sophisticated analysis of the Stern Report was done in 2005. We've had this conversation in the past and we've allowed that to drop off the agenda. So I think it is tricky. We've got to get some breakthrough on some of the. Those other messages that the cost of inaction is far, far greater, both in sort of straight financial terms, but also in risk and what lives are going to look like in the future. And that's a tricky needle to thread. Yeah.

[A]

I was going to say, given how tricky it is, how confident are you that you can turn the conversation around?

[B]

I don't think we'll do it overnight, but I think there's a lot of thought going into that at the moment and we're trying to build it into the way that we're sort of building things. I think we also need to move away from our kind of, you know, savior narratives. All this kind of. So you're seeing a lot of big announcements this week because we're kind of beyond that. We're into this kind of implementation phase and a lot of that is kind of regulatory and behind the scenes. And that's what a lot of people, Climate Week NYC are thinking about is actually how do you get some of those sort of underlying systemic shifts? And it doesn't need we're not waiting for the consumer necessarily, but we need to link back to how they're thinking.

[A]

That is really interesting and it's going to be fascinating to see how those shifts evolve over the next year and what the conversation looks like when we talk again a year from now.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

I very much hope we will. For now, though, enjoy the rest of your week.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Thanks so much, Elib. Great talking to you.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

Thanks for joining us. Big thanks to Helen Clarkson and Will Thompson for joining us here in New York at Climate Week, and thank you all for listening. We really do value your feedback. So please do leave us a comment if you're watching us on YouTube or leave a review wherever you're listening to your podcasts. And we'll be back very soon with more special coverage of the most important stories in clean energy right here at New York Climate Week. I'm Ed Crooks. Thanks for being with us.