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- [00:02]
Adair Turner
Welcome to the LSE Events Podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences.
- [00:17]
Nick Stern
Thank you. Thank you all for coming. My name's Nick Stern. I'm chairing this. I'm the chair of the Global School of Sustainability. And this is the fourth and last set of lectures associated with the launching. We decided not to have a big party. We would have invited you, but we thought we would have something a bit more intellectual. So we've had Amartya Sen and Ngozi Okonjo Wailer last year and we've had one man, Noel Santos and myself, launching the book in November. And now we've got a Dare Turner. So that's our idea of a launch and we've spread it over a year now. The last of them, you get three for the price of one in the sense of a dare. But of course, you will have to come to the other two in order to gain from that deal. They are on February 3 and February 9, and Adair will explain the structure of those for tonight. We've got abundant clean energy for all the technological opportunity. I also want to draw your attention to an event on Monday, that's next Monday, which is in conversation with Tom Steyer. Tom is a climate investor. Well, he's a rather successful investor. He's a climate investor, he's a philanthropist, and he's likely Democratic candidate for the governor of California. We wish him well. But Tom's fascinating guy, great to talk to. So that's next Monday, 2nd of February. So let me very briefly introduce Adair Turner, Lord Adair Turner. He's had a tremendous career in business in McKinsey. Then he went to be the Director General of the CBI, Chair of the FSA here in the U.K. and very importantly, at the same time, he was chair of the Climate Change Committee, the inaugural chair of the Climate Change Committee. And for the last 10 years, he's been chair of the Energy Transition Commission, which has done fantastic work on exactly that, the energy transition. And you're going to hear some of that, some of that tonight. He's also a member of the Strategy Board of the Global School of Sustainability. So we're very fortunate to have Adair with us. I'm not going to do any further introduction, Adair, but thank you so much for this three lecture series. And we're looking forward very much to the first and you'll explain the other two. Thank you, Adair.
- [03:21]
Adair Turner
Thank you, Nick. Well, my lecture today is entitled Abundant Clean Energy for all the technological opportunity, energy is fundamental to to the growth of human welfare. Since 1800, global energy use has increased 28 times. And if that energy had not been available, we would not have achieved the 100 times increase in global GDP which has occurred and the resulting revolution in living standards, initially in the early industrializing countries and then increasingly across the world. And as we look forward, the demand for energy based services such as road transport, cooling, heating, aviation will grow and must grow rapidly to support increasing prosperity in many developing countries. But Today, humanity gets 80% of our energy from from fossil fuels. And emissions from fossil fuels are driving climate change which threatens severe harm to human welfare across the world. So we have to find a way to enable rapid growth in human demand for energy based services while limiting climate change. In the three lectures which I'm going to give today, next Tuesday and the subsequent Monday, I will explore the fundamental technologies and economics of how to do that. Today's lecture will focus on the technological possibilities and I hope will leave you in a broadly optimistic mood, though with a big caveat about the challenges of food production. In particular. In lecture two on February 3, I will explore some of the economic and political challenges we face in achieving the required energy transition, even if the achievable end point should make us optimistic. And in lecture three, I will then describe what we must do to maximize our chances of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade, in line with the objective of the Paris climate conference of 2015. A key argument that I will make in that final lecture is that while clean electrification can deliver a large share of the emissions reductions we need, and at an eventually nil or indeed negative cost to consumers, it will not be sufficient in itself to achieve a well below 2 degrees temperature limit. That means that in addition to doing very low and zero cost actions, we will have to take some which are more expensive. And that means that we will have to make a climate case for mitigation action. The case that the costs of inaction would be far higher and not solely a case based on technological optimism and economic opportunity. That climate case for action ought to be clear. Today global warming stands at around 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre industrial levels, with global average temperatures over the last three years just below or just above that level. And that is already producing extreme harm to human welfare with severe floods and droughts across the world in the summer of 2023, in the summer of 2024, and again over the last 18 months. Months. And looking forward, and with each degree centigrade of warming above 1.5 degrees centigrade, the adverse costs of climate change are going to increase. But looking forward, I'm sad to say a significant rise above 1.5 degrees centigrade now looks inevitable and a rise above 2 degrees dangerously probable in 2021. The IEAS, the International Energy Agency's net zero scenario, showed that we would need a 38% fall in emissions during the 2020s to put the world on a path to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade. And it contrasted that net zero pathway with what it called a stated policies pathway, a scenario which the IEA judged would result in global warming of 2.6 degrees above pre industrial levels by the end of the century. But unfortunately, with each subsequent annual set of IEA scenarios, the required path for a 1.5 degree limit got steeper and now has become incredible. In the latest IEA World Energy Outlook, even the Most optimistic net zero scenario would result in about 1.65 degrees centigrade of warming by 2050, with a return to 1.5 degrees by 2100, only possible if we assume huge carbon dioxide removals in the second half of the century. And the latest stated policy scenario still suggests global warming of 2.5 degrees centigrade, while the current policy scenario, which reflects policies which haven't been merely stated in principle but have actually been put in place, suggests we are heading for warming of 2.9 degrees centigrade. Faced with these developments, there are many voices calling for a pragmatic or realistic reset of climate ambitions. Dan Juergen and co authors in a widely quoted article from Foreign affairs have argued that rising global demands for energy to support prosperity make a significant move away from fossil fuels impossible. Bill Gates proposes that the very best we can do, even with rapid technological advance is a limit maybe a bit below 3 degrees centigrade. But he suggests that a temperature increase around that would not be catastrophic. While Michael Liebrecht, the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, with whom we have a very close relationship at the ETC argues that the 1.5 degrees centigrade target was always an impossible objective, that we should focus instead on the hard Paris objective of 2 degrees centigrade and focus on deploying those technologies which which can be cost competitive today or soon, largely avoiding actions which might impose costs such as the decarbonisation of aviation or shipping or heavy industry. So let me be clear up front in these lectures. I will disagree profoundly with Jurgen and Gates since I think it is clear that climate change on anything like the level they see as acceptable will do enormous harm to human welfare. And I will disagree somewhat with my good friend Michael Lieberich, since I believe that to get to well below 2 degrees centigrade, we will have to gain political support for some actions which have a non trivial cost. And if we are to do that, if we are to win that political support, we have to begin by making the case that that inaction will be far worse. Now, I have a lot of material in this lecture and even more material in the published text and in the text of the lecture which will be available tomorrow. I make that case that inaction would cost us much more than dealing with climate change. But in the interest of time, this evening I will simply present the conclusion summed up in a recent analysis by Cambridge University researchers and Boston Consulting Group, where they reckoned that if we allow global temperatures to rise from, say, 2 degrees centigrade to 3 degrees centigrade, we will face cumulative human welfare costs which are 10 times higher than the cumulative investments which we need to achieve a global limit of 2 degrees centigrade. And I note with interest, Nick, that this isn't far off. What was said in a rather famous book back in 2006, the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change, where your figure was about 1 1/2 to 1,5% costs of medication against, I think you had a range of 5 to 25% the cost of inaction. So I think we have to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade. And the purpose of these lectures is to explore how to do that technologically and economically. In 2008, I became the first chair of the UK Climate Change Committee, created by the Climate Change act of that year. That act, people sometimes forget this. That act actually mandated a 60% reduction of UK emissions below 1990 levels by 2050. But we were asked to opine on that and we recommended, and the government accepted, a higher 80% target because we were confident that new technologies would enable us to achieve that at a reasonable cost. But I have to say, if you had asked me in 2008 whether a 100% reduction by 2050 was possible, I would have said only at very significant cost. But only 11 years later, in 2019, the UK adopted the target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, not an 80% reduction, but net zero. And by COP21 in Glasgow in 2021, so too had most other countries and thousands of companies and financial institutions. That rising ambition reflected in part increased awareness of the severity of the climate change threat. But also a pace of cost reduction in key technologies far faster than we at the Climate Change Committee and many other experts anticipated 15 or 20 years ago. In 2008, at the Climate Change Committee, we were very proud of our careful analysis of the future. And we thought that solar PV costs, we knew this was a great technology, might come down by something like 25 to 40% by the mid-2020s. In fact, they are now over 90% lower. The cost of wind turbines has come down about 40% in real terms, but even more rapidly in China, a difference to which I will return in lecture two. That solar price collapse has driven a growth in solar PV institutions far faster than almost any expert group anticipated. This rather wonderful chart shows you in a series of blue lines, the International Energy Agency's series of projections for what would happen to solar PV installations looking forward. And the red line shows you what has actually occurred. Across most of the world, the cheapest way to produce a kilowatt hour of electricity is now from solar and wind resources. That, of course, still leaves us the challenge of what to do when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. But the price of lithium ion batteries has also collapsed down 94% in just 15 years, with the most dramatic falls initially in battery packs for electric vehicles, but with huge falls over the last three years in the cost of stationary battery storage systems. And that has created to a far greater extent than I anticipated 15 or 10 or even five years ago, that has created a world where solar plus batteries together is going to be a cheaper way to produce round the clock renewable electricity across most of what we label the global sun belt than fossil fuels. The global Sun Belt is this huge area at low latitudes where the main renewable resource will be solar and where the main balancing challenge in a power system is from day to night. And a challenge that you can meet with batteries. In the northern latitude wind belt, which is where we live in Northwest Europe, our main renewable resource will not be solar, will be wind. And the main balance challenge is seasonal. What to do with the fact that we lose the wind in the North Sea for several weeks a year? And here the challenges of balancing a system are going to be more difficult and a wider array of storage and flexibility technologies will have to be deployed. But recent ETC analysis still suggests that in all climatic regions, including the uk, the total future cost, total system cost of power systems, which derive the vast majority of their power from intermittent renewables, will be lower than the price of electricity today. And particularly so in both China and in global sun belt countries such as India. So just to be clear, what is going on here for each of these different climatic archetypes, countries or groups of countries, we have on the left hand side the current average wholesale price of electricity and on the right hand side the bar on the right hand side of each what we think the cost of electricity will be from systems which are 70 or 80% variable renewables. Looking forward to from 2050 you see the UK lower then than it is today, but you still see much lower costs of electricity in India, in China and also in Spain. It is and this is a crucial issue to which I'm going to return in lecture two, it is going to be much easier and much cheaper to decarbonize power systems in the global sun belt than the global wind belt. In addition, as soon to be published ETC analysis will show nuclear and geothermal sources can be cost effective in many countries. There is therefore, I believe, no doubt that we have the technologies to produce massively increased quantities of completely clean electricity, eliminating fossil fuels almost entirely from power generation. And with that clean electricity we can then replace fossil fuels in end applications and in doing so achieve a revolution in energy efficiency. Energy is, as I've said, fundamental to human welfare. But in today's fossil fuel based system, the majority of energy inputs are wasted. We start with about 170,000 terawatt hours of what's called primary energy, that's coal, oil and gas. But by the time we have turned that into final energy, gasoline or diesel or electricity, we have lost 49,000 terawatt hours through the heat losses which arise in fuel refining and combustion based electricity generation. But even final energy as conventionally defined, such as diesel or gasoline put into a fuel tank is not actually what we want. It's not useful energy such as kinetic energy in the car wheels. And an internal combustion engine turns only about 70 to 75% of the chemical energy in fuel into kinetic energy. No turns 70 to 75% of chemical energy in the fuel into wasted heat and only about 25 to 30% into the actual kinetic energy we want. Across all applications, wasted heat losses mean that 122,000 terawatt hours of final energy produces only about 64,000 terawatt hours of useful energy. These heat losses reflect the inherent thermodynamic inefficiency of heat to work translations which can be almost entirely eliminated. In the electrified world. An electric vehicle turns around 90% of the energy in the battery into energy in the wheels. And electric heat pumps can use thermodynamics in our favor, using work to extract heat from the ambient air and putting 3 to 4 kilowatt hours of heat into our homes for every 1 kilowatt hour of electricity input. That 3 to 400% efficiency compares with the maximum efficiency of a gas boiler of only 90%. Now, looking forward, and this is a key point I want to make throughout these lectures, looking forward we should expect to see, and we should want to see big increases in the demand and the supply of the energy based services which can improve people's lives. Air travel will probably increase by at least 150%. So too will the demand for cooling while heated floor area could increase by a smaller but still significant 25%. But given the inherent efficiency advantage of electricity and the potential to subsequently improve still further the efficiency of electrical equipment, these increases in energy based services could be met while reducing final energy demand 50% below a business as usual trend and 25% below today's level over the next 30 years. Indeed, it would be possible, primarily through electrification, to reduce primary energy consumption by 36%, final energy by 24% while increasing the consumption of useful energy by 64% and global GDP by over 100%. The electric future is thus inherently more energy efficient than the fossil fuel one, and in most applications it will deliver energy based services at lower cost to consumers. Electric vehicles are inherently cheaper to run than internal combustion engines in China. They are already cheaper to buy up front. Heat pumps can deliver heat into the home at lower cost than gas boilers as long as the cost of electricity is less than three times the cost of gas. And this electric advantage will grow over time because the technologies of clean electricity production and use are inherently capable of achieving future cost reductions which fossil fuel based systems will not achieve. Since 1975, the price of solar PV per watt of power has come down not 90%, not 99%, but 99%, 99.9%. And since 2008 it has fallen faster than the UK Climate Change Committee's hopelessly pessimistic 25 to 40%. But conversely, while we assumed back in 2008 that the cost of carbon capture and storage might fall By a similar 25%, there has been almost no cost reduction at all. This exhibit shows analysis from The Energy Transition Commission's 2022 report on carbon capture and storage. It shows that for actual projects developed in 2008-15 the realized cost trend was actually up, not down. It also shows on the right that there are some planned projects which hope to deliver the at lower cost, but hardly down from the 202008 level. In essence, what we have is some technologies, such as solar, where cost reduction is relentless and fast, and others, such as carbon capture and storage, where it is slow and uncertain. A clear pattern has emerged wherever technologies entail highly standardized units, mass manufactured using standardized equipment in factories, which look pretty much exactly the same across the world and are dispatched to customers in a close to plug and play form. Solar pv, containerized storage, battery systems, electric vehicles. We see learning curve and economy of scale effects far faster than I thought would be achieved. But wherever technologies require bespoke engineering specific to a particular site or industrial process, or an existing industrial plant, such as carbon capture and storage, biofuel production, or large scale, first of a kind, nuclear plants, cost reductions achieved have tended to disappoint. So in part, the technologies of clean electrification achieve faster cost reduction because they are inherently more susceptible to standardization, mass manufacturing and plug and play deployment. But also because the production and use of electricity requires a combination of interrelated technologies for manipulating photons, electrons, ions and magnets. Electric and magnetic fields, A so called electrotech stack, which combines five key interrelated hardware technologies. Solar PV technologies, Solar PV panels, which can turn a flow of photons into a flow of electrons, lithium ion and other chemistry batteries, which can manipulate ions to store and then release electricity. Electric motors, which turn electric current into mechanical work, and electric dynamos, which achieve the reverse, for instance in wind turbines. Power electronics are really crucial technology which enable us to use electricity to control electricity, to switch it on and off millions of times per second, and to run motors on variable speeds rather than an on off basis. And semiconductor chips embedded within electrical equipment, which enable the intelligent management of electrical power to achieve complex activities such as those involved in robotics. All of these technologies have seen truly dramatic improvements in performance, reduction in cost, and in several cases, also reductions in physical size over the last several decades. And further progress is inevitable for two reasons. First, because they all rely on the foundation of material science as it relates to the electrical and magnetic properties of inorganic materials. And secondly, because progress along any one of these dimensions creates demand for progress along all of the others. Dramatic reductions in battery storage costs over the last two years are now driving even more demand for solar pv, which is driving even more cost reduction in solar pv. Dramatic reductions in the cost of miniature electric motors and the ability to miniaturize electric motors and the power electronics to control them enable the development of ever more effective drones, which creates demand for ever more improvements in battery technology falls in the cost of solar PV panels mean that other cost elements within a complete installed PV system become more important, increasing incentives to achieve reductions in the cost and size of other system elements such as inverters. While the ability to miniaturize motors and batteries, power electronics and embedded computing ability will be a key driver of the development of so called physical or embedded artificial intelligence. The extension of AI capabilities to the physical environment with the sensor and actuator technologies which make possible robotics, including of the humanoid, sort of. In addition, hardware advances and cost reductions are also driving continual software and business innovation, with for instance, the rising share of intermittent renewable supply, increasing the importance of smart grid and smart building control systems which can optimise grid capacity management and enable flexible electricity demand in response to fluctuating supply. These interconnections between the different elements of the electro tech stack. Sorry, I should have put that one on earlier. These interconnections between the different elements of the electro tech stack, together with large scale investment, economies of scale and learning curve effects, are certain to keep driving cost reductions and performance improvements in all the key technologies of clean electrification. And to do so in a way that increases the cost advantage versus fossil fuels. The big picture, I think looks like this. Of course, fossil fuel extraction and combustion technologies are not static. The development of fratting, for instance techniques, for instance, significantly cut shale oil and gas extraction costs between 2000 to 2020. But I think the cost of the electro tech stack will inevitably fall much faster. So the future energy system will be electric and will be one of abundant and clean electrical energy for all. It will also be inherently more sustainable than our current fossil fuel based system. Today, the world consumes about 31,000 terawatt hours of electricity, which accounts for about 22% of final energy demand. By 2100, that could be as much as 100,000 terawatt hours, accounting for a 60 to 70% share. Producing that electricity, primarily from renewables will of course require land for solar panel and wind turbine installations, polysilicon for solar panel manufacture, and rare earth permanent magnets for wind turbine dynamos and electric motors. And using that electricity will require copper for transmission and distribution networks, lithium, nickel and cobalt for batteries, and again, rare earths for the permanent magnets in millions of electric motors. All of which creates a concern that that as we fix the climate challenge, we will simply create new unsustainable demands for natural resources, taking humanity's impact beyond acceptable planetary boundaries along other dimensions. In which case, if that was true, the only way to deal with the climate crisis is to constrain the growth in energy based services to fly less, to drive less and heat or cool our homes more frugally. But detailed analysis of the resource requirements for our new energy system which were set out in the ETC's 2023 report on material and Resource Requirements for the Energy Transition show I believe that there are no significant planetary boundary limits to the supply and use of clean electricity and that our new clean electricity based system will have a local environmental impact as well as a global warming impact which is less than that imposed by the existing fossil fuel energy system and a very small fraction of that imposed by our existing system of food production. The future electric energy system indeed is renewable and sustainable for reasons inherent in the fundable nature of the technologies involved. Now here again I'm going to refer you to the lecture text to see the argument in detail and I would also be very happy to answer questions on this issue when we get to Q and A. But for now let me just highlight a few illustrations. First, there is plenty of land for solar and wind resources to provide the vast majority of of 100,000 terawatt hours of electricity from wind and solar. Indeed, if we produced we wouldn't. But if we produced 100,000 terawatt hours of electricity solely from solar PV, the panels would only need to occupy about 1% of the global land area and about 0.3% of the global surface area if we could also find out how to use some of the surface of the oceans. Now of course, that optimistic case may not apply in specific circumstances if Bangladesh, with a population density of 1300 people per square kilometer, consumed as much electricity per capita as China does today, and if it attempted to meet all of that demand with solar PV, the panels would cover around 50 of the national land area in a country where almost all land is already intensively used. But even that might be possible because of the potential for the rapidly growing technology of agri pv, which is solar panels installed above productive agricultural land. Analysis by the ETC's Indian partner Terry shows that even with the most extremely conservative assumptions, India could get 3000 terawatt hours of electricity, which is about 50% half of projected 2050 demand from agri PV installations with minimum impact on food productions and in many locations an increase and for instance very significant reductions in in water use. Because one of the things that the panels do is they trap the evaporation and across most of India, of course a lot of India water aid stress is a huge problem. Over the long term, the analysis suggests that the potential in India could be several times that level applied globally. Agri PV has enormous potential if you take away only one thing from tonight's lecture. If this is the first time you've heard about AgriPTV, remember it's the first time you heard about Agri PV, because this is going to be a much bigger technology than most people have woken up to. As for the minerals needed, there is no shortage of resources, and estimates of available resources continually increase and as demand grows. The U.S. geological Survey's estimate of economically accessible lithium resources, for instance, was 53 million tonnes in 2019, but is now 115 million tonnes, a figure which compares with the 19 million tonnes of pure lithium required to equip 2 billion road vehicles with a 60 kilowatt hour battery. There is lots of lithium, there is lots of nickel, there is lots of cobalt, and there's lots and lots and lots of rare earths. Crucial thing you also need to know from this lecture is rare earths are not very rare. If you want to worry, if you. If you like worrying, and you really want to worry about any mineral, worry about copper, not the smaller and more exotic ones. But even there, we think there are workable solutions. It is also true that there is huge potential for technological innovation to reduce future demands for the most sensitive materials. Since 2019, the projections of future demand for cobalt have collapsed because of the rapid emergence of the lithium ferrous phosphate battery chemistry, which requires no cobalt. So people have gone from believing there's going to be a huge shortage of cobalt and the price going through the roof to the price being now about as low as it's been for the last 10 years. There is also huge potential to reduce future mineral demands via recycling, which we should require by strong regulation. By 2040, 90% of lithium in end of life batteries could be recycled, and by 2050, recycled lithium could be meeting 60% of new lithium demand. And while new mines, of course, require land, sometimes in sensitive areas such as tropical forests, the total land footprint of today's mining industry is only 1-500th of the land devoted to agriculture. And the additional land to support new mineral supply required for the energy transition will be about 1 5000th of today's agricultural land. The International Resource Panel estimates that less than 1% of global biodiversity losses have arisen from mining activity, and the biggest drivers of that impact have come from coal and gold mining, not from mining, which has anything to do with the energy transition. The overall picture is therefore clear. It is impossible. Let's be clear. It's impossible for 9 billion people to live prosperous lives without a significant adverse impact on some local natural environments. We mustn't delude ourselves that there's a way around that. But the impact of the new system must be compared with the impact of the old. And across all the relevant measures, our new energy electrified energy system will be be far more sustainable than the old fossil fuel one we are replacing. Our electric future indeed is not only one in which we will enjoy abundant electrical energy at zero marginal cost, but also one with close to zero marginal environmental impact, dramatically reducing all forms of local pollution. And it will eliminate about 60% of all our greenhouse gases. But eliminating 60% of greenhouse gases is not enough to prevent global warming rising above 2 degrees centigrade. Total anthropogenic CO2 emissions are estimated at about 39 gigatons per annum, of which around 33 derives from fossil fuel combustion in the energy building, industry and transport sectors for the economy, and another 6 gigatons from land use change, such as deforestation, primarily resulting from food production. In addition, methane emissions amount to 375 million tonnes, of which 35% derives from fossil fuel production and processing activities, about 20% from waste management activities, and just over 40% from food production, in particular the rearing of ruminants to produce red meat or dairy products. To express methane in CO2 equivalent terms, we have to make assumptions about the relevant time period. Using a 100 time period, 375 million tonnes has a global warming impact equivalent to about 11 gigatons of CO2. On a 20 year basis it could be as high as 30 gigatons. But if for now we take a 100 year approach, and if we allocate the methane emissions from fossil fuel production and processing through to the end use sectors, we can think of 51 gigatons of CO2 equivalent emissions as deriving mainly from three broad sectors of the economy. About 30 gigatons 60% result from activities which are already either electrified or which we know we can electrify at low or potentially nil or potentially negative eventual cost. And that category includes building, heating, road transport, low to medium heating, applications in industry, and all the applications where we use electricity today. About 10 gigatons, a bit below gigaton, just a bit below gigatons, arises from long distance transport, shipping and aviation, and from heavy industries, iron and steel, cement and chemicals, sectors where electrification will be more difficult or in some cases impossible. And a final 10 gigatons derives directly or indirectly from agriculture, of which 90% arises either from land use changes, methane emissions or nitrous oxide, with less than 10% of that 10 in green at the top arising from energy use, which we could, at least in principle, electrify as we go up that bar. And with apologies to scientists who might think I'm hugely oversimplifying here we go from the physics of photons, electrons and ions, and the manipulation of low and medium temperature heat and kinetic energy, to the chemistry of iron ore reduction, limestone calcination and nitrogen based fertilizer productions, and the use of new molecular fuels in ships and planes, to the biology of photosynthesis and the production of carbohydrates and proteins. And as we go up, we go from known electrification technologies which will enable us to reduce both emissions and costs, to known technologies which are likely to impose a green cost premium, a cost penalty from making products or services in a zero carbon fashion, to the agricultural sector, where we do not yet have a clear technological alternative for the emissions challenge, and where actions which are technologically feasible are likely to add significant cost. Any credible strategy for limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade cannot therefore rely simply on clean electrification alone, but must include actions to reduce or offset emissions where electrification alone is not a sufficient answer. The sectors of the middle orange wedge are often labeled hard to abate, though in fact they have some features which may make them somewhat easier politically to decarbonise than for instance, residential heat. But they are undoubtedly more difficult to electrify, though for two quite different reasons as between long distance transport and heavy industry. In the case of shipping and aviation, the fundamental energy deed is no different from road transport. We want kinetic energy to move the ships and the planes forward. And just as in road transport, electric motors could be used in aviation and shipping instead of combustion engines, and if they were used would deliver large energy efficiency improvements, eliminating the large losses involved in heat to work translations. But what we lack is batteries with sufficient energy density to support long distances between recharging. Current achievable densities of around 800 watt hours per liter and 500 watt hours per kilogram at the cell level can support increasingly long distance road passenger and road freight transport and very short distance aviation and shipping. But we would need gravimetric energy density, watt hours per kilogram about six times higher than the current limit. Before we would seriously be talking about long distance electrified aviation. Now relentless improvements in battery energy density, which on the current trend are increasing about 50% each decade. And I know many of you have immediately worked out what 1.5 to the Power 4 is and so seen how Much change that can make those relentless improvements will take us in that direction. And in the long run. Densities of 3,000 watt hours, 3 kilowatt hours per kilogram are theoretically possible with batteries which use oxygen as the active cathode material, so called lithium air or lithium oxygen batteries. But they are a long way from commercialization. And even in a maximum electrification scenario, it is very difficult to see electric flight counting for more than 2 to 3% of aviation traffic by 2050, and a similarly low percentage of total shipping traffic for several decades. Therefore, long distance shipping and aviation will depend on the energy dense liquid fuel with decarbonisation achieved by changing either the type of fuel used or the way we produce it. In the case of shipping, moving from marine fuel oil to either methanol or ammonia, and in the case of aviation, continuing to use essentially the same jet fuel, but produced with biofuel or synthetic inputs rather than using fossil fuels. The good news is that these technologies are now available. The challenge is that in both cases, the new green technology costs far more than the fossil fuel alternative and will almost certainly continue to cost more for several decades. And that in part reflects the fact that unlike in applications where we can use electricity directly, these new fuel technologies have no inherent efficiency advantage versus fossil fuels. Indeed, they actually face an inefficiency penalties. In both shipping and aviation, the energy losses between primary energy input and final energy fuels could actually increase as a result of a move from fossil to decarbonized fuel options. The challenge in heavy industry is different. The CO2 emissions here do not arise because we're using combustion generated heat to turn into work, but from the chemical reactions required to produce the materials which a modern economy requires, such as using carbon in coking coal as a reduction agent to produce primary iron from iron oxide, or turning calcium carbonate into calcium oxide in order to produce cement and then concrete. In both of these sectors, and in plastics, ammonia and aluminium production, there are large high temperature heat inputs. And there are a range of key technologies being developed which can electrify heat generation even up to temperatures of 1,000 degrees and above. But in each of these industries, the chemical reactions currently used to produce materials would result in CO2 emissions, whatever the heat generation mechanism. Here too, however, the good news is that we already have the technologies which could enable us to produce all these emissions, these materials without CO2 emissions. But here too, as with shipping and aviation, these will impose a significant green cost premium for several decades, and in some cases forever. In iron making, we could use hydrogen as the reduction agent rather than carbon. And several variants of hydrogen based technology are now being developed across the world. This is a pellet of sponge iron produced via hydrogen direct reduction at SSAB's pilot plant in Lulia in northern Sweden. And this is from a pilot plant run by the China Iron and Steel Research Institute in Shandan Province in China, which I visited in October. Or perhaps it's the other way around, because when I take them out of my pocket I have no idea which is which. But you get the general point. This technology is not in the lab, it's in real pilot plants. And it is possible that green hydrogen made from zero carbon electricity may eventually be so cheap that hydrogen reduction will eventually beat coking coal on price. But today the green cost premium is large and unlikely to disappear for several decades. An alternative approach in iron making and cement production would be to add carbon capture and storage to existing processes. But by definition, if you take one process and add another step, you will add cost. While to make plastics production zero emissions we will either have to source carbon molecules from bio sources, or direct capture or apply CCS to the continued use of fossil fuels, or reuse or recycle plastics mechanically or chemically, or store plastics at the end of life in an environmentally secure form. But all of those routes are likely to result in more expensive plastics across both the long distance transport and heavy industry sectors. We must then therefore assume that significant cost premia will exist for many years. These green cost premia will tend to reduce over time, both because key inputs such as green hydrogen will fall in cost and through technological innovation, for instance in high temperature heat generation, in new cementitious materials, or in the possibility of the direct electrolysis of and electro winning in iron making. And at some time there may be, there may be technological breakthroughs so big that we entirely eliminate some of these green cost premium. But any credible strategy for limiting Global warming below 2 degrees centigrade cannot rely on the assumption or the hope that those breakthroughs will occur. But must instead start with the reality of green cost premier today at the level of the intermediate products sold from business to business a ton of iron, aluminium, cement or ammonia. These cost premium are currently very large. Recent analysis by the Mission Possible Partnership estimates that decarbonizing iron production could add 75% to the price of a ton of iron, while decarbonizing aluminium cement and ammonia could increase their prices 18%, 80% and 75%. Similarly large cost premia are observed in the production of zero carbon plastics, shipping fuel and sustainable aviation fuel. Decarbonization will Therefore not be economic unless significant carbon prices or equivalent regulation increase the cost of producing products or services in today's emissions intensive fashion. But while the cost premium are large at the intermediate product level, the impact on consumer prices ends up small. Adding 75% to the cost of a ton of iron adds about 45% to the cost of a ton of steel and only 7% to the cost of some key components for the automotive or constructed sector. And adding 75% to the cost of producing ammonia adds a much lower 35% to ammonia nitrate inputs into fertilizer and 9% to the cost of wheat. And if we go all the way over to what end consumers actually buy, for instance, a car or a loaf of bread, the impacts are more like 1%. Similarly with shipping, even if shipping freight rates doubled, the impact on the cost of a pair of jeans made in Bangladesh and bought in London would be so small that consumers would not even notice. A path to near complete decarbonisation of the hard to electrify sectors is therefore not only essential if we are to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade, but technologically possible and less economically and therefore politically daunting than often suggested. We sometimes call these sectors hard to abate, but as I will argue in lecture three, they should not be hard to abate if we have good policy well implemented. But that is however, not unfortunately the case with food production and land use change, which is the most difficult issue in climate change mitigation and a really fundamental one since it derives from the inherent inefficiencies of our current means of animal protein production. Human beings in total use each year, as we've seen earlier, about 125,000 terawatt hours of final non food energy. Meanwhile, if 9 billion people each enjoyed an adequate calorific intake of 2,200 calories a day, that would mean 7,400 terawatt hours of energy intake in the form of food required. Food energy input is thus around 6% of total human non food energy use. But unlike our energy for heating and cooling and machinery operation, we cannot substitute electrons for carbon based molecules in the food we eat. Instead, we derive food from photosynthesis of vegetable matter. And that's a very inefficient way to convert solar energy into usable energy. Even fast growing sugarcane on highly fertile land in the tropics converts only around 0.5% of solar radiation into chemical energy within the sugar. By contrast, a field of solar PV panels can achieve an average percentage yield of 15% and that figure is increasingly relentlessly over time, with technological advance. Inevitably, therefore, photosynthesis to make food requires large areas of land, and even more if we consume our food as red meat, protein or dairy. Because animals, and in particular cattle or cows, are stunningly inefficient chemical processors. Egg production converts about 25% of the vegetable protein in feed into animal protein. A pig about 9%, and cattle just below 4%. The complete process for converting solar energy into beef protein thus has an efficiency of less than a 20th of 1%, compared for a 13.5% aggregate efficiency in going from solar energy to kinetic energy in the wheels of a car. Which is why, on almost every relevant dimension, the food system has an impact on the environment massively greater than all the solar and wind farms and all the mines for all the minerals we need to support our new clean electricity energy system. The 50 million kilometers squared which we devote to food production, of which 80% is for meat and dairy, is 100 times the land required for solar and wind power generation, and 500 times the land currently allocated to mining activities. Water use in agriculture is 500 times that required in all mining activity. And well over 90% of annual deforestation results from agriculture was most of that driven by cattle pasture or by the production of feed for various categories of animal protein production. That deforestation accounts for about 5 gigatons of annual CO2 emissions. In addition, annual methane emissions from ruminant animals and waste management are equivalent to around 4 gigatons of CO2. And nitrous oxide emissions resulting from fertilizer application are about 1.5, for a total, as we've already seen, of about 10 gigatons, of which, as I said earlier, only less than 10% results from the energy use in agricultural processes which we could electrify. Reducing these emissions, as well as the 60% that we can electrify away is therefore essential if we are to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade. But today we are making minimal progress. We could try to constrain land use related emissions by hard supply side constraints. And at COP26 in Glasgow, 140 countries, representing 80 to 90% of the world's forest area, committed to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. But while the long decadal trend of deforestation has slowed down from previous decades, large scale foreign loss continues and indeed increased significantly after 2022. And methane emissions could in theory be offset by CO2 removals, rather than by actually reducing the size of the beef or dairy or sheep herds. And indeed, that is precisely what major countries with large ruminant animal herds and methane emissions assume in their emission reduction strategies. For instance, New Zealand's national determined contribution is ultimately based on assuming that it will do carbon removals to offset continued methane emissions. But actual carbon purchases of emissions are occurring at a snail's price. In a 2022 report, the ETC estimated and on the left hand side you see the annual figure, the right hand side the cumulative figure. We estimated that carbon dioxide removals would need to reach 5 gigatons by 2030 if the world was to be on a path compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade. But actual carbon removal credits purchased in 2024 are estimated at about 48 million tonnes. 48 million tonnes against a need for 5000 million tonnes. These failures reflect two fundamental challenges. First, that it is going to be very difficult to stop deforestation pressures unless the consumer demands that drive them are eliminated. Second, that any solution which depends on paying for removals or paying people to stop deforestation will only occur if somebody puts their hand in their pocket and pays for them. And underlying both of these problems is that unlike in the electrifiable sectors of the economy, we do not yet have a new technology or a socially accepted technology which can meet existing and future consumer demands in a zero carbon fashion. In the long run, we probably will. In a report by a group called rethanks x in 2019, it is absolutely technologically possible to produce protein synthetically via precision fermentation and to produce cell based equivalents. And the cost of precision fermentation. This is a log scale sign of the dollars of producing a kilogram of protein from a synthetic precision fermentation approach. That too, like solar PV and several other of the trends I've talked on, is on a relentless downward path. And these costs are certain to fall further as our knowledge increases and indeed as artificial intelligence reduces the cost of acquiring new knowledge. Over time, indeed, the technical efficiency of synthetic processes will inevitably rise and the costs inevitably fall, while real animal cows will broadly stay as inefficient as they are today. At some time, therefore, it is close to inevitable that synthetic meat proteins will beat natural proteins and perhaps first will beat natural milk on nutrition, taste and cost. But the crucial phrase is at some time, and while RethinkX's description of the fundamental technology trends is compelling, their forecast of the pace of commercial developments has proved a little over optimistic. Just six years ago they predicted that by 2030, 70% of all beef protein would come from new non animal based production technologies. But today that share is still stuck at around 1%. Synthetic protein will, I suspect, be a technology which very powerfully demonstrates what is called Amara's Law, that we tend to overestimate the effects of a technology in the short term, while still underestimating it in the long. And the short term here could last for several decades. Reducing the 10 gigatons of GHG emissions which come from food production is likely to be therefore the most difficult challenge we face as we attempt to cut global emissions fast enough to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade. So let me sum up. I believe it is essential that we limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade. And that means we will eventually have to reduce all net greenhouse gases from all sectors to zero. But how we do that and how difficult it will be varies a lot between three broad sectors. At least 60% of emissions will be eliminated through electrifying end applications and decarbonizing electricity generation, primarily with renewables, but also with a role for nuclear. And a deeply electrified energy system will deliver energy services at lower cost than today's fossil fuel based systems and will have a far reduced environmental impact. The future is electric and the faster we get there, the better for humanity. But close to another 20% of emissions come from long distance transportation and heavy industry sectors which are difficult to electrify. Here too, we already know the technologies that can take us to net zero, including a role for electricity and for instance, high temperature heat. But applying these technologies will result in green cost premia, certainly for several decades and in some cases forever, Though the good news is that the consumer impact of those premia is small. Finally, for the last 20% of emissions which derive from agriculture, food and related land use, the path to decarbonisation is not clear. We do not have clearly economic and socially acceptable new technologies and alternative approaches have been ineffective so far and will only work if someone is willing to pay for them. In lecture three, I will describe the implications for required action to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade. But before that, in lecture two I will consider the economic and political challenges of transition, which are important even in the clearly electrifiable sectors of the economy. I hope, however, that lecture one has left you in an at least reasonably optimistic mood. Energy is fundamental to human welfare and we have the technologies to deliver abundant, cheap and clean energy to all of humanity. Thank you very much.
- [66:32]
Moderator / Audience Member
Hi, I'm interrupting this event to tell you about another awesome LSE podcast that we think you'd enjoy. Lseiq asks social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. Like what? Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Or can we afford the super rich? Come check us out. Just search for lseiq wherever you get your podcasts. Now back to the event.
- [67:02]
Nick Stern
Adair, that was absolutely tremendous. I had a few questions I was going to ask, but I'll suppress them and we can discuss them later. In any case, some in the audience may well come up with the questions I would have asked. In thinking about your questions, could you remember the two lectures that are to come? Otherwise, Adair would just say, well, I'm going to answer that in lecture two and lecture three. So try to focus it on what you heard, what you heard today. I'm going to. We haven't got an awful lot of time for questions. I'm going to take the first. First three and then we'll take one or two questions online because obviously this has been online. Could you say who you are and keep your question short, please? The roving mics is. There's just here with the green top on. But please keep the question short. Yeah. And you are? Yes.
- [67:59]
Moderator / Audience Member
Hello, my name is Natalie Jones. I'm with the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Development. Aman. Thank you very much for this lecture. My question is, you made a very powerful case for the cheapness and the reduced cost of renewable energy. My understanding is that the profitability of this energy potentially raises a challenge. Still, compared with fossil fuels, which are very profitable, renewable energy is less so. So my question is, how can we incentivize firms to. To invest in renewables? And what is the role of the state in this regard? Thank you.
- [68:33]
Nick Stern
Thank you. Just behind you is a lady. Just behind you. Just there. Yeah.
- [68:43]
Adair Turner
Thanks very much. Birgit Maas. I work for German television Deutsche Welle. Where are you on artificial intelligence? Is it a net positive or is the energy use so great that it will. Yeah, it'd be more of a negative.
- [68:57]
Nick Stern
One more question. This gentleman just next to you. Hello there.
- [69:01]
Adair Turner
My name is Ian. I'm a chemistry teacher. You seem to describe some of the challenges as technological, but in some ways.
- [69:07]
Nick Stern
Eating less beef is more of a marketing challenge.
- [69:11]
Adair Turner
Do you see these as different challenges? A failure of advertising and communication with eating less beef? We don't necessarily need sort of an equivalent. We could just eat more lentils or even chicken. Okay. In turn, the first one, you know, is there a problem that renewables are cheaper but they're not as profitable? I think it's Much more complicated than that. Renewables have a particular feature. It's also true of nuclear that you invest a large amount up front and then you have zero marginal cost of operation. And that means that the cost capital, the expected rate of return, has a disproportionate impact on the economics of renewables compared to say, fossil fuels, where you have, yes, some upfront costs, but you have a significant operating cost as well. And I will talk further about that cost of capital implication in the lecture 2. But one of the implications of it is that the required role of the state in renewables is to try and find ways to reduce the risk of the future revenue streams and therefore the cost of capital. And it typically does that through contract structures which give to the developer of renewable energy a certainty of the price looking forward. And that is for instance, what the UK government has just done in what's called the AR7 round of wind auctions, which will give a fixed price on some of the output of Those for a 20 year period, is what the Indian government does. And again, I'll talk about this in lecture two in what are called the round the clock renewable auctions. One of the implications of this, however, is that once you've done that, what you tend to turn renewable energy into is an investment category, which is what the market calls utility like or debt like. It has low risk but it has lower rate of return, whereas investing in a fossil fuel company might have greater risk, but on average higher return on average over time, but coming with greater volatility. So yes, there is an important role for the state and it's essentially a risk reduction role on AI. Artificial intelligence will produce a significant increase in electricity demand and of course there's a huge focus on it at the moment. I think there are two things to say about it. First, it's big, but it's not transformatively big as best we can tell. So I talked about the fact that from 31,000 terawatt hours today, we could go to 100,000 terawatt hours of total electricity demand by 2100. When we've been looking at forecasts for electricity demand for AI data centers in 2050, say there might be 4,000 terawatt hours. That's a hell of a lot of electricity, but it's still not transformative. The other thing to say about AI is that we really don't know the energy demand for AI centers because it's the product of two stunningly uncertain factors. One, how many flops, how many activities will be done, how much Computing activity will occur in AI centers. And two, what will be the energy required, the watt hours per flop. And interestingly, we quote in one of our etc reports some figures by a very interesting energy analogist called Rob west, who has a group called Thundersaid Energy. And he between 23 and 2024 kept his projection for 2035 AR demand completely stable because he multiplied by 10 times his estimate of the computing activity and he divided by 10 times his estimate of the energy required per computer computing unit. So we're dealing with something which is hugely uncertain, but it's not transformative. On the other hand, AI will have a role in helping us to, you know, solve climate change. I think, for instance, in the material science places the it's also true in the biological sciences. The ability of AI to help us to just sort of search through all the physical properties of everything in the periodic table and search for new chemistry combinations in, for instance, battery chemistry, I think will be highly likely to speed the level of innovation compared with what we've achieved in the past. And finally, technological versus, you know, changing consumer behavior. I'll come back to that in lecture three. And I'm going to say don't put too much of that into your model. Right. I came here on a lime bike. Depending on it's raining or not, I'll go back on a lime bike or on the tube. I eat very little red meat. I try to get the train as much as possible. I turn down my heating to a level where my wife objects to it quite a lot. I feel that if I'm going to talk about these sort of things, I have to do something about my carbon footprint. But I honestly am wary suggesting a strategy for the decarbonization and meeting well below 2 degrees centigrade, which places more than a somewhat marginal emphasis on persuading people to change behavior. I hope that we can. I think that, as I've said, our biggest challenges on food, that's where we don't have a technological solution. So if you're going to focus on consumer behavior, you know, get those packets of lentils out, far more important eventually than cutting your flights. I just am very wary of assuming that we will be able to change that on a large basis across the world.
- [75:16]
Nick Stern
Thank you. Adair. Online questions Molly, we have one question.
- [75:21]
Moderator / Audience Member
From Nick Cook who asks, should we, the UK in particular, be putting more effort into researching alternatives technologies, for example, solid polymer electrolyte technology, which can potentially provide better overall performance and are not geographically restricted. And another question from an anonymous viewer when do you foresee that renewable energy will become affordable and plentiful for the majority of countries in the world?
- [75:47]
Adair Turner
Well, on, on the latter, I think that renewable energy is now the cheapest way to produce a kilowatt hour of electricity in much of the world. And I think in an increasing bit of the world it's emerging as a cheaper way to produce round the clock electricity. The best way to look at that is not to look at estimates of levelized costs, but at actual auctions at which real people trying to make money are willing to bid. And if you look at the Indian round the clock renewable auctions where companies like Adani Reliance, what's it Aviva Renew, are bidding and are having to meet contracts where they commit to provide electricity for 80% of the hours in the year and increasingly on a time slotted basis, 24 hours in advance. We are seeing, you know, bids at that, accepted bids at that at the sort of, you know, $40 per megawatt at our level, which is certainly cheaper than new coal and getting cheaper than the marginal cost of running existing coal. And I think this is going to be a feature which spreads across the whole of the global sun belt. I think, and I can return to this in lecture two, it's more challenging in the wind belt because wind is more expensive than solar and balancing seasonal supply and demand imbalances is more expensive than, than balancing daily supply and demand balances. But in much of the world, we are already there that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. On the first one, what was it? Solid polymer electrolytes. Rob, tell me what, there's a man there who probably knows what that is. Could you translate? What do you think that is, Rob? Is this Electrolyzer Technologies? Is this. It's probably the application in batteries. Oh, so it's one. Oh, it's solid state. We're talking solid state batteries. Yeah, okay, right, look, solid state batteries, yes. Solid, yes, of course there's a solid polymer. It's solid state electrolytes between the cathode and the anode rather than the liquid electrolyte. I think the way to think about solid state batteries is not to think about them as we're suddenly going to get solid state batteries and we're suddenly going to double the energy density in either volumetric or gravimetric terms. Even without solid state, we are seeing this gradual increase of, you know, 50% every decade, actually faster in volumetric terms than that. More like a doubling on the volumetric index, maybe 50% on the gravimetric. And we are going to see that continual process. Even if we have liquid electrolytes, but solid electrolytes will enable us to go. It'll remove a barrier to going further. The other thing to say is there are a whole load of intermediates. There are semi solid state electrolytes. There are things that CATL are developing called condenser batteries. There are lots and lots of variations. So I think people sometimes think about a somewhat binary, you know, liquid to solid and suddenly we leap. Think about there being. And you will see this. You know, if you went to the R and D departments of the major battery companies in the world, they're looking at 15, 20 different tweaks to the anode, different tweaks to the cathode, different tweaks to the electrolyte, which I am certain will keep us at least on that 50% every 10 years and possibly with the advantage of artificial intelligence on an accelerated path.
- [79:16]
Nick Stern
Thank you. I'm just going to take two more questions, but please, please keep them very short in Frontier.
- [79:24]
Adair Turner
Thank you. Alistair Hamilton, I'm from McKinsey. You admitted to being wrong in 2008 about the PV cost down trajectory. If we were to reconvene in around 20 years, what are the candidates for where we would be spectacularly wrong on the upside today?
- [79:41]
Nick Stern
Thank you.
- [79:41]
Adair Turner
One more question. Good question.
- [79:44]
Nick Stern
Right, right at the back there.
- [79:46]
Moderator / Audience Member
Thank you. Thank you. Eduardo from niso. I really want to know your views and opinions about how do we ensure the appetite of the public is sustained with regards to sustainable energy, especially against the backdrop of cost of living and high energy prices.
- [80:08]
Adair Turner
I'm going to say that's in lecture two. So I don't know whether you want to take. I'm not going to answer that because in lecture two, I don't know whether you want to take. You know, one more at the end.
- [80:16]
Nick Stern
You better come to lecture two.
- [80:17]
Adair Turner
You better come to lecture two. That's lecture two. There was one that was right and another one. Where are we going to be wrong in the future? Yeah, but are you going to take one more or we just.
- [80:27]
Nick Stern
No, no.
- [80:28]
Adair Turner
Oh, okay, fine. Okay. You're not doing the substitute because we knocked her into lecture two.
- [80:33]
Nick Stern
No, no.
- [80:33]
Adair Turner
Okay, fine.
- [80:35]
Nick Stern
We're close to out of time. Okay.
- [80:37]
Adair Turner
Where are we going to be wrong? Where are we going to be wrong? If you said 30 or 40 years, maybe battery technology will take us closer to at least medium distance flight and shipping than I'm suggesting, I don't think by 20 years. But you know, I'm, you know, I'm pretty sure that in 2100 I will be able to fly across the Atlantic Electric plane. I'm also fairly sure I won't be around to settle. Anybody who wants to take that bet? I suspect that most of the forecasts for the collapse of solar PV are still underestimating what we'll achieve, though. The thing that pushes the other way there is the cheaper the panels get, the less important important the panels are, the more that is the, the balance of system is, is the cost. But there is one thing that does drive down the balance of system costs, which is solar, which is increasing yield. And I think we may be about to see a significant acceleration of yield as we see the application of perovskites. I think that could come a bit faster than we thought. But I think you have asked asked me one of those paradoxically unanswerable questions, which is, you know, where will I be wrong? If I knew where I was going to be wrong, I wouldn't be wrong. But it is a good question to ask.
- [82:19]
Nick Stern
So thank you so much. I'm not going to try to sum up or capture in a sentence or two, but I do want to say that if you listen carefully to what you said, it's a yes, we can, but next time you'll hear about the difficulties of actually making it happen. I hope there's a yes, we can answer to that, but there are serious difficulties to making it happen, as you've already alluded to. And lastly, it's the action plan for keeping below 2 degrees. It's been absolutely tremendous lecture. I've suppressed all my questions, but I'll keep them because, you know, we know each other and we'll find the opportunities to discuss them. Right. I'm pretty confident I speak for everybody here that they've gone away a lot wiser than when they arrived. And the academics test of a good day is if you learn something. I think today we learned a lot. So thank you very much, Adair.
- [83:33]
Adair Turner
Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to the LSE Events podcast on your favourite podcast app and help other listeners discover us by leaving a review. Visit lse.ac.ukevents to find out what's on next. We hope you join us at another LSE event soon.