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- [00:05]
A
Hello and welcome to the Energy Gang, a discussion show from Wood mackenzie about the fast changing world of energy. I'm ID Crooks, and on this episode, we're going to be rounding up what happened at the COP 29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. As you'll know if you've been listening to the show recently, I was there talking to a range of people about the key issues in the talks. I'm joined today by two of her old friends who weren't actually there at the talks but have been following them very closely. Melissa Lott is the partner general manager for energy technologies at Microsoft. Your brand new job. Melissa, hi, how are you?
- [00:36]
B
Hey, I'm doing well, Ed. I'm enjoying the new job. I'm sure we'll talk about that offline. I'll also say for today, you're just getting Melissa, our friend and energy nerd, talking on the Gang. So really looking forward to chatting with y'. All.
- [00:48]
A
Absolutely do not represent the official views of the Microsoft Corporation, et cetera, et cetera, as they always say.
- [00:54]
C
Exactly.
- [00:55]
A
Important note to remember. Well, thanks very much. Very glad you were able to join us. And also from the West Coast, Amy Harder is the executive editor of Cypher, which is an energy and climate news service backed by Breakthrough Energy. Hi, Amy, how are you? Great to have you back.
- [01:08]
C
Yes, I'm doing well. Great to see you both and looking forward to this conversation.
- [01:13]
A
Absolutely. So as we were saying, you didn't go to Buckeye yourself, and I want to get into that in just a moment. But you were represented there, right? Your colleague Anka Gurzi was there, wasn't she?
- [01:23]
C
Yes, she was. And most of the things I'll be saying today are gleaned right from her smart takes and coverage from the conference.
- [01:32]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And I actually had the pleasure of sitting down with Ankur halfway through the talks when I could ask her for her perspective on how the negotiations were going at that time. And here's what she said.
- [01:42]
D
As we walked into this cop, everyone was saying, oh, it's not going to be the most important cop. Everyone's looking forward to the Cop30 in Brazil. Right. When countries will have to discuss their updated national determined contributions and pledges. But certainly at the COP here in Azerbaijan, it's a conversation about money. And a conversation about money is never easy. So it was most likely going to be a tough one to get through. That being said, I think after this, halfway through the cop, the way I see it, there are almost two parallel worlds happening here. We see at the official level all the public statements and announcements. And in this first week we saw the world leaders coming for the world leaders climate summit. And then you have a flurry of announcements and briefings and reports all coming at you all at once. And it's quite overwhelming. And of course, separately, you have all the delegates in the negotiating rooms that are trying to strike a deal for this thing you just mentioned to find a new finance climate goal to which we don't have a lot of visibility, obviously. So it's all about talking to people and trying to get a sense of it. The question is how much is what's happening publicly overlapping or influencing what's happening behind the scenes. What's been happening publicly has been also pretty tense. We've had a diplomatic row. We had the president of Azerbaijan that in his first statement on Tuesday, the second day of the COP and the first day of the leaders summit came out really with a very defiant speech accusing the west of political hypocrisy and double standards and saying it's unfair that Azerbaijan is a petro state.
- [03:21]
A
And so going back to your point about the two worlds and the public world that everybody sees and the official statements and so on, and the private hidden world of the actual negotiations that are going on, if the public world mostly, I think, as people would say, the vibes then have not been good. Right. It's generally been quite scratchy, argumentative. Not great signs of global cohesion there. Do you get a sense that the same is true in the private world? That the negotiations are difficult and people are finding it hard to make progress? Or is it possible actually that the kind of the mood there is much more positive and negotiators are finding themselves able to make much more progress that will eventually deliver some substantive outcome at the end of the conference.
- [04:07]
D
In a short answer so far, I think no, it's not been looking good in the negotiation room either. Earlier this week, the European Union had its first press conference and the EU officials there did not mince their words. They were very worried about how negotiations were going and they were saying that in this rhythm there is also a risk of not having a deal. That those concerns were kind of echoed by the COP 29 presidency also later in the week, kind of emphasizing that there's too many issues still on the table at the end of the first week. And experts here on the ground are saying that normally after the first week of the cop, it's only the big political issues that are still left on the table. For ministers who are arriving that second week to tackle but with so many outstanding issues, you will need huge political will to see this through.
- [05:00]
A
So given all those tensions during the conference, it's not at all surprising that the negotiations took a long time to reach an agreement. I'm now back home again in the us. I didn't stick it out of the talks until the bitter end and I have to say I'm quite glad I didn't do that, because the talks didn't actually end until about half past five on Sunday morning. So that's about 36 hours after the scheduled end of the conference, which was at six o' clock on Friday evening. But when they did finally conclude, Simon Steele, who is the Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, he's essentially the UN's top climate official and leads the UN FCCC.
- [05:35]
E
He had this to At COP28, the world agreed to triple renewables. At COP29, we tripled climate finance and countries will work to mobilise much, much more. At COP28, the world agreed to boost climate resilience. COP29 will help finance real protections for those on the front lines, especially the most vulnerable. COP 29 also reached global agreement on carbon markets after almost a decade of hard work. Where several previous cops were not able to get this done. No country got everything they wanted and we leave Baku with a mountain of work to do. The many other issues we need to progress may not be headlines, but they are lifelines for billions of people. So this is no time for victory lapse. We need to set our sights and redouble our efforts on the road to. To belling.
- [06:45]
A
So what we're going to do on this show is unpack those claims, see what really happened and how much real progress was made. I think you were both at COP28 last year in Dubai, weren't you? But you didn't go this time. I'm interested in why that is, and I don't know. Melissa, what did you think?
- [06:59]
B
Yeah, Ed, it's interesting. I had a lot of discussions with colleagues of mine across the US and around the world about who was going to go to Baku this year, who wasn't, and it was just a matter of what kind of impact did we think we could have? If you're going to fly out there, if you're going to be physically on the ground, it's like, how do you think you can contribute and affect those conversations? And so given the emphasis areas around climate finance and a couple of the other topics that I know we're going to dive into and kind of how that all came through there was a priority to send some of our finance colleagues, which I think was the right move because that was a huge part of the conversation. And so as much as I can talk a good game, Amy, similar to what you just said, I would be quoting my colleague Gautam Jain half the time, Luisa Palacios and Lisa Sachs and others. So having them on the ground way more important than having me on the ground this year is what I felt at the time.
- [07:49]
C
Yeah, well, I, I didn't go either. And the reasons are somewhat similar to Melissa, for reasons that I still don't quite fully understand. There seems to be a two year cadence for a lot of people's attendance. So Glasgow was a big deal in 2021 and then Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt seemed to be sort of an off year cop where sort of the, the institutions and the people surrounding the official negotiations don't attend as much and then they come out in full force two years later. So in that case that would be COP28 in Dubai. And I anticipate a similar cadence to happen next year in Belem, Brazil. And I'm not sure why that is. I think, you know, there's conference fatigue. We are all invited to so many different events that I think for some people it's just a determination of. Well, this year's topic is, you know, primary topic is finance. It's extremely important. But is it quite the flashy discussion of climate, of transitioning away from fossil fuels like we saw in Dubai? I will say though that 85,000 is a heck of a lot of people. 55,000 is still a lot of people. You know, I've been to five or six cops now and it's not like you're in a room with all of those people all at once. It's always very crowded, even if it's 55 or 85. And I will say a quick search online that the historic cop in Paris in 2015 had something like 30,000. So that seemed like a lot at the time, but the numbers just keep going up. And so I think that's something to keep in mind that even if the numbers wax and wane, it's still sort of waxing and waning up and to the right.
- [09:31]
A
So let's get on to the results of the COP then. It was billed as the finance cop. The big item on the agenda was meant to be a global deal on climate finance. What is sometimes called the new collection Effective quantified goal NCQG in that wonderful bit of UN jargon and arguably the good news, the best bit of news out of the COP was that a deal on this was agreed. The countries of the world issued a statement saying that there would be $300 billion a year of climate finance. That's money from the public and private sectors essentially in developed countries, flowing to low and middle income countries both to finance reductions in emissions and to finance adaptation to the impacts of climate change. So a deal was done. And it kind of sounds like a big number because it's 300 billion a year. And the previous goal I'm sure a lot of people will remember, was the 100 billion a year that was agreed all the way back in 2009. And that allowed the UN Simon Steel, to come out and say, look, we're tripling climate finance. This is a real step forward. This is a significant advance in the international effort on climate change. Not everyone saw it that way, though. There are a lot of developing countries that were very unhappy with that outcome. They said that $300 billion was much less than they'd been looking for, much less than they needed. African countries, for instance, had come out in the run up to the talks, they'd said that $1.3 trillion a year was what they'd need, or what the developing world in general would need. And that number, a trillion dollars a year or more, was kind of rumbling around as being something with that was sort of an aspirational goal for many developing countries. And in fact, the statement from the Talks does mention $1.3 trillion a year, but it's really in quite a weak way. It talks about it only as something that countries should work together to enable. And it's very clear the actual goal for Climate Finance is $300 billion by 2035, there was a lot of criticism of that decision. India in particular came out as very, very strongly critical of the $300 billion. They said this is a paltry sum, not nearly as much so although I guess you could call the outcome of the negotiations a success, it was definitely a qualified success. Who was right, do you think, Melissa? I mean, how much of a success should we see this as?
- [11:53]
B
I think it was an incremental step forward. To me, it highlighted the difference between the ambition we need and the goals we need to hit and the reality of what's happening. I'll sum it up like we move a lot of stuff very quickly if we want to get to net zero in a way that protects human health. And Amy, when you're talking actually about the two year cycle and conference fatigue last year, was the first health day. I work in climate change and health. That's my background. And so, yeah, I mean, you felt that last year was the first one. That was a big deal. This year was the second one, and that's great, but it was different. But coming back to your question, Ed, we know that we need to move faster as a world. We know that there are many real difficulties to getting there. And all these numbers, I mean, more is great. I don't want to minimize that. You know, it's the whole perfect being enemy of the good type of thing. It's like, let's celebrate it for what it is. But, yes, there's a qualification to that, which is just that. The reality of what we need to do and the reality of what's happening, those are different things. Right now. There's still a significant gap. Amy, I'm curious what you think, though.
- [12:52]
C
Yeah, you know, whenever we think about goals and climate change, I try to think about ways to simplify it in my mind. Not that this is a simple issue. It's extremely complex and very diverse and very global in nature, obviously. But I often think about when the doctors tell us we need to have so many servings of vegetables a day and we need to exercise 30 minutes a day, and how many of us actually eat exactly what the doctors tell us and exactly exercise how much they tell us. Even if we don't meet the goals set out, anything is still better than nothing. I realize perhaps the simplicity of that metaphor is probably cold comfort to developing countries that have done the least to cause this problem and are now facing the most damage due to it. But I think it helps understand how we need to celebrate the successes that have happened and also keep striving toward a goal. I think another thing that has come up in this cop that maybe we'll get into is the usefulness of the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal. Again, I try to simplify it in my mind. It's like, well, if you're an obese person and your doctor says you need to run a marathon at six minutes, maybe scale back the goal to do one mile at 20 minutes. Again, that's an extremely simplistic metaphor to help explain. Well, is 1.5 degrees still a useful goal here in the finance realm? 1.3 trillions is so much money, and yet it's also what is needed because this is such a massive systemic problem, and yet maybe that was always too high. But if, you know, if we had done 500 billion, maybe we would have only gotten a Little bit more than a billion. So I think overall, it's a good sign of momentum. Even though we're not anywhere near what we should be doing.
- [14:48]
A
I think it's great. As you said that they got a deal. And as you say, Melissa, totally true to say, it is a step forward. It's another kind of step that stops the great kind of bicycle of climate policy, which has to keep moving forward or it'll topple over. Stops it from toppling over. But it just doesn't feel to me like it's a very substantive achievement.
- [15:09]
B
I mean, I think we certainly saw a lot of examples in this cop, but this is far from the first cop where we've seen this, of the growing divide between developing and developed economies, even within that, between emerging economies that have a lot of momentum going and those who are still like, hey, we have a very low percentage of our population with basic energy access right now, much less access to the amount of energy we need to grow the economy we want. And those are really big tensions. And it's interesting. I was on this. I recorded this PBS special a couple years ago, I think it was. It's online somewhere, but it's with Terence Keeley, who at the time was at blackrock just before transitioning. And there was this example. You. You triggered my memory of it, Amy, talking about, like, running a marathon in six minutes and all that. And if you told someone, hey, you're gonna have a heart attack, unless you, you know, are declining health, if nothing else, very rapidly declining health, unless you do that and the person goes, there's no way I can do that, so do not get off the couch. And we got into this discussion that I think is an important one to recognize, which is just that the choices I make and the choices of each of us individually make, we all know they affect each other. So it's not just about my heart health. It's about all of ours, heart health. And you know what? If, Ed, no offense, I'm sure you can run a mile faster than me. Actually, at the moment, I'm more of a swimmer, but if you told me, hey, there's no way I can do this, or maybe the analogy is swimming, because I'm much better at that. It's like, okay, well, if you don't do it, I get hurt too. Okay? I'm gonna be there with Gatorade, my clappers or whatever, cheering you on, maybe picking you up for a section of that race and carrying you forward so.
- [16:44]
C
Your legs get a break.
- [16:45]
B
And to your point, we don't see a ton of that happening yet. And I worry that this is a symbol of a lot of divisions we're seeing around the world, which I know we've talked about on this show many times. And when we become a more divided world, what that does in terms of our ability to step up into these spaces and work towards a global target, a cumulative target in which every one of our individual actions as individual countries or regions affects all the other ones in the world. It's just tough. It's really tough. I still agree with you. I'm slightly on the more optimistic end of the scale acknowledging what was accomplished, but, yeah, it's a qualified one for sure.
- [17:24]
A
Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. So I just want to hit on a couple of more concrete things that came out of the cop. First one, the other sort of big success that people are claiming out of the talks is an agreement on carbon markets. This is Article 6 of the Paris Agreement all the way back in 2015, set up this plan for international trading of carbon credits and so on to enable people to cut emissions in one country and then people in another country to buy those credits in order to help meet their emissions reduction goals. And it's proved very, very difficult to actually work out what the rules are for how that kind of market should operate. At last, we seem to have had a breakthrough on that. It looks like the key principles of the framework are now in place and there's still a bit of detail to be filled in, but it seems as though first trades under this mechanism are going to be able to start next year. How important a breakthrough is that? Is that something that's going to end up being very significant in terms of emissions reductions worldwide?
- [18:34]
C
Well, I think it's significant insofar as there's been a lot of justified negative attention on a lot of the questionable carbon offset deals around the world done by a lot of great journalists. So hopefully this new, more verified market by the UN will help protect the public and others from these types of questionable deals. That's a big if. I think we've already seen some criticism of this new system to not being strong enough. But the theme of the UN should be don't let perfect be enemy of the good enough. So here I think it is a significant deal in terms of connecting the dots between Article 6 and carbon emissions. There's a few dots in between. I think we could be having this conversation a year from now, and there's probably a lot of bureaucracy that we'll need to wade through to see the fruits of this labor. But I think it's a positive step and one that took 10 years in the making.
- [19:34]
B
Yeah, I mean, my short answer is I think this is a really big deal. So, yes, there's still stuff to figure out. There's still. I can't remember which news outlet called it. We have to work out the finer details. But that was a phrase in one of the things I was reading, and that is absolutely true. We still have to work those things out. But. But the creation of a market where we can recognize the value of emissions and we can set up some kind of a trading scheme where you can get paid for doing things that are in line with climate mitigation and pay, if you're not able to, or just for whatever reason, you're not going to be able to reduce emissions directly. And there's a lot of diversity in this world that makes those types of things really important. I mean, this is at the heart of the challenge of mitigating climate change. Right. The fact that we haven't acknowledged the value of these things in a market. And so our markets operate independently of them for the most part, with some exceptions. Hashtag, footnote. There are some exceptions, but that is a core issue. And so the fact that we've made progress on something that has been so contentious and such a hard kind of. I don't know what the analogy is. Log to roll, stump to move, whatever it is, I don't know which phrase to use. Somebody message me, give me a better one. But that's a big deal. Because this had seemed like an immovable object to, I think, many folks in the conversation. And it did move forward. We carried the ball forward this time.
- [20:59]
A
Yeah, it always blows my mind when you see one of those graphs of the marginal cost of emissions abatement across a number of different technologies. And there are some things you can do that will cut emissions and will actually save you money. So they have a negative cost. And then there's some things that have a cost of kind of $1,000 per ton of CO2 or more that you're avoiding. This is just massive discrepancy. And I'm an economist by trading. That's my background. It just really kind of rubs me up the wrong way that this is incredible inefficiency in global efforts to address emissions for all kinds of kind of structural and institutional reasons that mean we're sometimes spending money on these incredibly expensive emissions abatement technologies and not concentrating the spending on where the dollars would go the furthest and would be most cost effective. And so anything like an international carbon market that helps improve efficiency there takes away some of those structural rigidities in the system. That means that you can't concentrate your efforts at emissions reduction where they're going to be most effective has to be a good thing, I think. And as you're saying, Amy, lots of concerns about are these emissions reductions real? There's a lot of problems that have been exposed in recent years in terms of claimed emissions cuts not actually being real, offsets being of poor quality, and all that kind of thing. So definitely there are issues. But if we can resolve those issues and if this new UN mechanism really works, I think that's a huge step forward. So there you go. Look, I've talked myself into being more positive. That is one definitely brighter outcome from COP 29, I think. If you're curious about how the global energy transition will shape our future, check out Energized the Future of Energy. It's a new podcast series from Gzero Media and Enbridge, co hosted by JJ Ramberg and Enbridge's CEO Greg Ebel. They dive into critical global conversations around energy, innovation, climate change and geopolitics. With expert guests like Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Jurgin, former Canadian Member of Parliament Lisa Raitt, former Congressman Tim Ryan, and Microsoft's Ulrich Homan. You'll get insights from people at the forefront of energy evolution, topics like economics, the impact of AI, and how indigenous communities are shaping energy. Tune in on your favorite podcast platform or by visiting gzeromedia.com energygang that's gzeromedia.com energy again. So there we go. That's some good news, then. Some bad news that a lot of people have been pointing to was in the communique. And the statement following up from the declaration at COP28, which made this commitment to transitioning away from fossil fuels. First time that a COP statement in terms said that was the goal of what the world is doing. A lot of excitement about that. People were very pleased that that had been put into the statement a year ago. Apparently somehow the government said COP 29 couldn't even manage to reiterate that commitment. There's no mention of transitioning away from fossil fuels in this cop's statement. Just some talk about, oh, we'll try and make sure we get back. It gets back in again at the Belem COP in a year's time. Is that significant, do you think? How much of these kind of rhetorical issues really matter? I'm a bit skeptical that the language makes a Massive difference to anything. But Amy, what do you think?
- [24:39]
C
Well, I think as far as language matters, this matters a lot. And I remember saying to this crowd a year ago that the transitioning away from fossil fuel language of last year's COP was a very big deal, that it was a rare moment when everybody seemed to be rowing in the same direction. And there were far fewer critics than say with this year's climate finance deal. We've heard more critics question that deal for good reason. Of course, it's hard to question one sentence of a rhetoric as opposed to a whole slew of finance commitments. Number one considered it a very big deal last year. And the fact that they couldn't, as you said, dad, merely repeat what they agreed to last year is objectively not a good thing at all. But going back to my comment before considering where we are in the world order, the fact that they didn't actively backslide to something even somehow more friendly to fossil fuels.
- [25:46]
A
What to start saying we want to increase the use of fossil fuels.
- [25:50]
C
I mean, we did hear talk of, of deals being had at the COP for more oil and gas. So in reality that was possibly happening. But considering how the context has shifted over the last year, I think sometimes you have to exert a lot of energy to stay in the same place. And that's what happened here. And that's a victory, even if it doesn't feel like one.
- [26:14]
B
This was not an easy process. I don't think any of us think that these processes are easy, but this one was not easy. There was a lot of stuff going on. And I mean, I'm not, I agree with you, amy. Language matters 100%. Not disagreeing in any way there. But also it's just like, well, you know, at some point there were choices made about what was going to get over the line and what was not. And you know, there you are. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in those discussions and heard and heard how those things were prioritized and how the discussions were going to go. But I remember, I mean, you guys remember the last minute finish last year. You know, we're all in Dubai. Where's it going to be next year? Okay, this, it can't be these countries. It couldn't be these. Okay, we got two left. Okay, which one? And that was an 11th hour, last minute kind of deal there too. So, you know, choices are made, priorities are made.
- [27:06]
A
So final thought then on where this leaves process of cops, unfccc, the international effort on climate change. When you look ahead to COP30 and Belem next year. As we've been saying, a lot is riding on that now. The UN wants everyone to submit new and more ambitious commitments, new NDCs that will put them on a path towards deeper reductions to get closer to the pathway that we'll need to be on to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement. Are you hopeful that that's going to happen?
- [27:41]
B
I think that the next year is going to be really hard. Like, I think there's going to be a ton of work being done by so many people to try to make next year's COP a huge success, a big splash, a lot of positive change in movements. I have big questions about, you know, the nationally determined contributions, how much more ambition will be communicated by different countries. We're in a state of massive transition, not just in the US but around the world in a lot of places. And so where will countries be? Where will they be willing to step up? Where will they choose to step up? To what degree? But I don't want to sound too negative about it. I think it's always a lot of work, it's always a lot of effort by a lot of people. But next year's COP matters a lot in the discussion. And so we'll see how far we can move the ball down the field. And I hope it's a few more yards than I might predict if I had my crystal ball today, which I unfortunately left at home.
- [28:36]
C
Yeah, I definitely, the saying goes, prediction is hard, particularly about the future. We just don't know what will happen. What will be the world order by next year? Who knows what Trump will do? One thing I'm trying to instill a lot in me, even more than normal, is a lot of humility. We don't know how things will stand, other than I do think it will be an extremely difficult cop, you know, but there's also an element of this was never going to be easy and politics, you know, the voters around the world are telling us their priorities, whether we agree with them or not. And so I think it will be difficult. And I think other than that, we really can't predict with any serious level of knowledge.
- [29:23]
A
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think the one thing I would just say here is that as a important as the cops are, as important as the UN process is, there is still an enormous amount of change happening in the world of energy that is not affected by the cops. There are things that are being transformed as we speak because of what businesses are doing, because of technological innovation, because of the ways that scientists and technologies are pushing back the frontiers of knowledge and so on. And so I. Although, as you say, I think you're absolutely right to say it's going to be very difficult for the COP process, that doesn't mean that the world of energy is going to stop evolving. In fact, actually, the pace of the transition I think might even speed up. So we do have to leave it there very quickly. Melissa, before you go, your free electron, what do you got?
- [30:13]
B
Oh, man. To be honest, I have read so much about the COP over the past couple of weeks that has been absolutely consuming my feeds. One thing I am doing though, that I thought, okay, this is not as nerdy as all the cop talk we just had is I treated myself this year to a LEGO kit. I know random, but that is powered and electric and it's got a little solar panel that I'm attaching to it and everything else. Does anyone have a good life cycle analysis on legos? I'm putting it out into the energy gang world because I've been looking for it. I have not found it. And I'm pretty good at searching libraries and journals for good articles with an lca. If someone has a good LCA on legos, I'd love to see it because I really want to calculate out what my little set, which is bringing me joy beyond the emissions, what my little set is costing over time, and how much my little tiny solar panel matters. That's it. That's my free electron.
- [31:09]
A
Sorry, Melissa, you've actually got it there, have you? Go and show us the box.
- [31:12]
B
I do. So it's the sun and the moon and the Earth.
- [31:18]
A
It's amazing.
- [31:18]
B
They're circling.
- [31:19]
C
Yeah.
- [31:20]
A
Thank you.
- [31:21]
B
It's fun. And I'm putting a little motor with it. I don't have the solar panel here, so I can't show you that. It's itty bitty, though.
- [31:26]
A
Yeah, no, that is very cool. I have to say I'm very envious of that. I don't any longer have children of an age to have LEGO bought for them, so I have to. I'm gonna have to start buying it for myself. Or if anyone is listening out there and wondering what to get me for Christmas, I think that just might be quite a good idea just. Just putting that out there. So now, Amy, what is your free electron?
- [31:50]
C
Well, you know, Melissa, I appreciated your comment because I often, in my experience coming on the show and listening to it, free electrons often have to deal with how we as individual humans interact with climate and climate technologies. And My free electron, which is a bit of a negative one unfortunately, but such is life is just that this car share service here in Seattle where I live called gig, is actually going out of business at the end of the year. And it's a real big bummer because my partner and I used it as a one car household. It really was a way to sort of patch the differences in our needs to use the car. And now he's going to buy a car and we're going to be a two car household again. And it would be our preference not to be. But you know, Seattle doesn't have great public transit and he needs to be able to get around as I'm getting around. So, you know, I've been doing a little sort of personally driven research about what makes a car share service work and what doesn't. In Seattle it has not been great. So, you know, we talk about the impacts of elections and how they have huge consequences, but it's also local things that have sometimes a bigger consequence and impact. So that's my free electron trying to live, you know, within our means with one car, but going up to two cars. And I don't think it's going to be an electric car. We live in an apartment building, it's hard to charge. So you know that that's the stuff I'm dealing with.
- [33:20]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I'm in exactly the same position. I'd really like to own an ev, but we live in an apartment building. I just can't work out really where we could charge it. It's very difficult. And so for us, for the moment at least, that's not going to happen.
- [33:32]
C
In my little bit of research I've done on this topic, I think one main reason why GIG car share is going out of business is they cited decreasing demand and operational challenges. And you know, I'll say Mark and I used gig, but very sporadically. We wouldn't use it regularly. And most things need to be used regularly to make a business. I mean, just ask the long duration energy storage crowd. That's their challenge as well. So that's something that we're grappling with.
- [34:04]
A
Yeah, no, that is interesting. And I wonder if that is partly about Seattle as a city and where people live and what people do and there's a whole lot of other things going on there. So my free electron, coincidentally actually is another kind of business failure story. Hasn't really affected me personally in any way, but it's just something I've been reading about, been absolutely gripped by, which is the Northvolt story. Any of you have been following this, which is, I just think, really interesting, this attempt to kind of create a European battery champion to take on the big Chinese companies in particular. Obviously China absolutely dominates the battery supply chain today. This company, Northvolt, just last week went into bankruptcy. I think they had something like nearly $6 billion of debt and just $30 million of cash on hand. It does seem to have gone very, very badly and has been a huge blow to hopes of building a European battery industry. When you look into the details of what went wrong, it does seem like there were a lot of things specific to that company that stopped it being effective. But it is a reminder, I think, of the challenge of industrial policy. It's really hard to do. It's one thing to say we'd like to build our own domestic industry in the cutting edge low carbon energy technologies of the future. It's often a very different thing to actually be able to make that happen. And it's something that probably putting all of your eggs in one basket is a really bad idea. This shows and you need to be able to diversify risk. And if you had 10 battery companies, then probably at least one of them could have been successful. If you put all your chips on that one particular or a lot of your chips on one particular prospect, that's always going to be fraught. You're always going to run the risk of things going badly wrong. And so I've just been reading about it a lot. I think it's a really fascinating case. Interested to hear if listeners have other views on it because it is definitely something I think that I'd like to know more about and I think more is going to come out about it over the months and years to come. So we do have to leave it there. Many thanks, Melissa. Great talking to you, Amy.
- [36:31]
B
Ed, always good. Really enjoyed the conversation. Look forward to continuing it.
- [36:34]
A
Thanks very much, Amy. Sure. We will be talking again soon.
- [36:37]
C
Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
- [36:38]
A
Thanks to our producer, Toby Biggins Gilchrist and above all, many thanks to all of you for listening. We really value your feedback, so please do keep it coming. And we'll be back soon with all the latest news and views on the energy transition. Until then, goodbye.