Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hello to everybody. Welcome to this webinar from eta on building back better policymaking for the post COVID-19 world. We’re going to wait for a minute or two for more people to join the webinar. Meanwhile, we ask you to introduce yourselves in the chat box. Just say who you are, what organization you come from, what country you’re you’re in, just so that we can all see who has joined the webinar and what diversity of the audiences so please go ahead and introduce yourselves in the chat box and in a minute or two, we’ll start the webinar itself.

Unknown Speaker 2:20
Okay, so I’m seeing people introducing themselves in the chat box we have people from pretty much all over the world from Mexico from India, from Spain, from Italy, from Bangladesh from Dubai, many, many places and we have so far about 55 people 60 people on the on the webinar. So this webinar just to repeat is about building back better policymaking for the post COVID-19 world. We have a great panel who are going to talk to us about the role of clean energy Renewable energy of renewable gas of energy storage and other clean energies in the post COVID world, particularly in the stimulus packages that many governments are starting to put in place and multilateral development bank’s are starting to put in place to address the economic consequences, the economic depression coming from the COVID-19 pandemic. And what we’ll be focusing on is the role of clean energy in those stimulus packages to get economies moving again, to get economies more competitive. We’ll be we’ll be talking about some specific technologies, some specific policies, some specific experiences, we’ll be talking about the need to use those technologies and those investments To try and prevent what could be the next crisis having not prevented the COVID-19 crisis and the economics that went with it to try and prevent through the stimulus packages, the the climate crisis, which otherwise could be coming. So let me ask each of the panelists to make some, some opening remarks or presentation. And then after their presentations, there’ll be an opportunity for discussion of questions that you the participants, send in your you’ll see at the bottom of your screen, a q&a box, I would encourage everybody to send in questions through that q&a box. So in other words, the chat box was used for people to introduce themselves but for the questions we use the q&a box so whenever you whenever you feel like asking a question, please send it in through that through that box. We have three great panelists with a wide range of specialist expertise. We have Lisa Fisher from eg a 3g, the climate Think Tank. We have compiler science to me era from a pajama the energy company, and Anna Halpern lander, the CEO of otters, which is a clean energy developer. So let me ask Anna to speak first. She may want to say a few more words about autists and about herself. And, uh, please go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 5:49
I know you need to

Unknown Speaker 5:50
sorry, I just that meeting. Took me a second. Thank you so much in First of all, thank you to Jonathan for being our moderator and the other panelists and also thank you so much to battlin and a TA, both for the opportunity to be here and to speak and for organizing this, I think this is a critically important topic. I’m going to share my screen and put together a few of my thoughts on this. Job has done a really good job mentioning my work at artists. But the other thing that I do, which is an outgrowth of, of work that I did many years ago, in the early noughties, with a group called environmental entrepreneurs, a few the core team of people who worked on the California Global Warming Solutions bill have reformed in a group called Project 2030. Because a b 32 really took us many great steps to get to meeting California’s emerging California’s emissions targets for 2020. And 2030, is focused on doing the same thing, but in 2030. And so I’ll use California as a little bit of an example of some of the thoughts and ideas I have about how we should be thinking about what policymaking should look like in this COVID stimulus opportunity.

Unknown Speaker 7:11
So let me just make this big. And Jonathan Can Can you see this?

Unknown Speaker 7:19
Just not Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 7:20
So Oh,

Unknown Speaker 7:24
try sharing again. So

Unknown Speaker 7:27
now that we can see.

Unknown Speaker 7:29
Great, so ortus, as Jonathan said, is we call ourselves a climate mitigation firm. What we do is we really take proven technologies, and we Greenfield and we also acquire and accelerate diversified energy, the various different types of renewable energy technologies, but it’s all based on climate change is our defining challenge. Which is interesting because COVID is also a massive challenge. So what is the context here? So first of all, I think many of you on the left is a graph Here, and it sort of shows how big is the economic impact. And this is, you can even think of this as a V shape a U shape and a longer tail. But actually, this is negative impact and duration of impact. And I think, you know, we have various scenarios, I think we’re probably not in a V shape, but possibly closer to a U shape. And the jury’s still out on whether or not we’re going to end up with a longer tail. I think we all hope it won’t. But that is the situation we find ourselves which then calls for significant stimulus to maintain the economy. And I wanted to just set the context here on the right with what this is actually California specific, but the same stands true for global generally. And so you know, you have industrial transportation, AG, residential, commercial and electricity, and then you have a whole variety of technologies and what you can see here as an example, is For example, you know, people are doing a really good job of kicking off electricity and renewable generation. A lot of good work going on transportation, obviously more to be done industrial and agricultural, and some of the Razzie stuff like residential heating are areas that have struggled. And I’ll just note that if global summit was a country, it’d be the third largest emitter in the world 8%. So let me just share a little bit of lessons from California. So first of all, California is the fifth largest economy in the world. It actually is a $3 trillion economy. If you break it out from the United States and it’s the eighth largest state in terms of population United States. California went down a journey in the early noughties. And if you look from 2000 emissions, what you see is that while the emissions declined 10% just on a holistic basis, that’s the red line. If you looked at on a per capita basis, it’s close. It’s over 20% If you look at other GDP paces, it’s negative 40%, while at the same time GDP grew by 50%. So to me, what I want to point out here is that California is a huge success story that you don’t have to compromise economic growth, to achieve emissions reductions. And this is the total of issues. It just says from 2002 to 2017. You go down, right, and you get this is the 2020 limit. And this is a very exciting story. So So how did they what are the principles that we use to get there? Well, don’t prescribe innovation don’t tell people you know, what you really need to scrubbers are what you really need is CCS but do set a standard that drives emissions down and allows innovation to happen and do offer appropriate mechanisms to encourage more investment and those could be revenue stability through contracts for difference, a clear set of rules, so that everybody knows what the game is, cap and trade could absolutely be part of that support through some kind of a carbon market mechanism. So if you look at the cap and trade program in the US, sorry, California, often those are about $11 billion per time, which is a familiar story a lot, very encouraging. But if you look at the LCF s Credit Program, that is well over $100, and I believe last time I looked, it’s close to 180 or 190 per ton, which is a very strong story, and means that if you are somebody who has a way of reducing carbon intensity within the transportation fuel chain, there is real money sitting there for you. And and then Sorry, that was meant to be eliminate the very dirty competitors like cogeneration element. And finally, To achieve targeted reductions, the goal is to achieve target reductions within an acceptable price range. And when you stop California is in fact, it was an acceptable price range, but they didn’t sacrifice growth to do it. So what are the concepts for, you know, today and beyond? So first of all to accept by the way can people see I don’t know this, this bar here seems to be okay. I can move it up good.

Unknown Speaker 12:06
Dukes are proven ideas and extend them into sectors that are still struggling. So what are the the ideas I’d like to throw out there? Well take for renewable energy decarbonize electricity and then electrify everything you bloody can. And so you know, keep accelerating that idea with electricity and think about mechanisms to do so think about daily, weekly and seasonal storage and come up with a way to do that. Continue with the transport journey, and I’ll have a suggestion on that. And then residential heated is another key one around renewable energy, explore low carbon fuel standards, those have been really successful in California. And basically it started with a measurement and then it just ratchet it down and puts the pressure on it. If you don’t reduce the carbon intensity in your fuel, you then have to pay and those payments are dear and even if you pay us get released from your obligation, you’re just allowed to continue. But you maintain a balance of obligation to the past that you have to clear off. Second decarbonize industry emissions. And there’s, that’s, that’s a really problematic one. And I’ve got to take an example of cement and show that actually, it’s not as hard as it might look, I haven’t looked at others. But I think that’s, that’s something that many people need to do. And then an easy one is energy efficiency and looking at whole building and then finally, to other ideas, which are Carbon Farming and capturing co2 in the ground and, and Bill building materials, while decarbonizing the process of building materials. And then one last one, which really occurred to me is entirely you know, all this all my presentation, but is can how much can we embed our localization lifestyle changes that we all have to take on COVID because what occurs to me daily is how much carbon is being saved by the fact that people don’t have to commute because they’re still locked down and going to work. is important, but it may not be that important to be there every single day. And, you know, focusing on one of the meetings that matter most traveling less could simply list.

Unknown Speaker 14:12
A

Unknown Speaker 14:14
slide. Right, so I’m renewable energy is countercyclical, so it’s a very good investment. And and but it is one that given the economic situation with the market price of energy will increasingly rely on government action. And I’ll just lay out what my opinion what needs to happen. So, you know, government should have every reason for renewable energy standards, it fundamentals are very attractive, in addition to climate change.

Unknown Speaker 14:47
I think you intended your slide to move on and it hasn’t moved on.

Unknown Speaker 14:53
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 14:56
This decade and beyond.

Unknown Speaker 14:58
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
I’m going to stop, share and restart it.

Unknown Speaker 15:04
That’s the best way.

Unknown Speaker 15:14
So, essentially, I really divide this into two types. One is financial levers. So if you guys, Jonathan, please say if you guys can’t see the slide, I’ll talk through it not

Unknown Speaker 15:25
competent. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 15:27
Okay. So I’ll just talk through it and then please tell me when you can see it. So as everyone’s have every reason to go after renewable energy, beyond the climate change reasons, which are good enough, but you know, it’s crisis resistant. It gives us energy and logistical independence. It’s non correlated, and it’s low volatility. Of course, it’s green and relatively cheap. Oil at 10 $20 $30 is very cheap. But renewable energy is now reached a stage where it can really hold us off. Where I really think governments need to act, what is the financial levers The other one is the policy levers. On the financial side, there’s a lot of sort of points under stabilizing revenues for renewable projects. You know, they don’t need a subsidy per se, they can come in at a merchant an A minus, but what they do need in order to give investors and debt providers certainty, some form of launch activity on that market price. And so expanding things like contract for difference or other government backed PPA structures, it by expanding I mean, keep doing them. So take Italy as an example, Italy is doing a whole bunch of auctions go beyond 2021. And they should expand it in the sense that so extend and expand in the sense that, you know, it’s not necessarily covering every technology that cover additional technologies. They should also look for mechanisms. To support corporate ppas. So the challenge we’re seeing with corporate ppas is to first what is credit credits, you know, the credit worthiness of the off taker. And the second one is around the longevity of the PPA. And of course corporates are very sensibly don’t want to commit for too long because they end up in a situation where they are stuck into a higher price than what the market may be, although that may also be the opposite. And so there’s a variety of ways that that can be cleverly done and then supported by government. And then I think governments need to accept that merchant pricing will not achieve the desired outcome that if you ask investors to take a risk that can change from day to day, especially with the volatility we see on the energy front, things are not going to happen. And then finally, you know, the financial levers to do the things that are being called for by existing industry, to slow businesses in the short term. These could be, you know, loans grants. UK has a structure for early stage companies to match via convertible note structures. But all of these types of levers need to be used. Jonathan, can you guys see my slides or maybe Berlin, we should switch and you should share my slides.

Unknown Speaker 18:21
I’m happy to do that. Just take the slides off and I can I can do that. Okay, I’ll stop share. I’m on slide seven. Yep. Um, so,

Unknown Speaker 18:32
on the policy levers, you know, we have to be aggressive and setting of 1.5 required levels of emissions. And you know, ways that will still be very community focused, expediting, planning and permitting expediting and interconnections. And, and when I say expediting, this is not, you know, steamrolling over communities, but it is knocking the bureaucracy out of a lot of the permitting processes that exist today. Then apply significant pressure by continuing to phase out coal, not just discouraging investment, but forcing existing plants to close. And then looking at mechanisms like carbon taxes and low carbon fuel standards. I now move on to slide eight. But that curve, right, yeah, it’s on screen. Okay, great. I’m not seeing it. I’m seeing just the first slide. So the other point I want to make is daily weekly.

Unknown Speaker 19:29
You’re just you’re just showing the front page.

Unknown Speaker 19:32
Oh, wow. Okay, hang on one second. We’re

Unknown Speaker 19:34
having a lot of technical little issues today is give me?

Unknown Speaker 19:38
Sure. So what I’ve shown on this slide is a picture of the duck curve. And essentially the point here is that seasonal, daily, weekly, and even seasonal storage is key. And I think we many of the people on this on this call are very aware of the impact as you start reach a certain critical mass of solar and in some cases, when depending on what The profile production of wind looks like you end up with an overcapacity of renewable energy at times when it may not be needed. And is in solar that happens in a thing that looks very much like what we call the duck curve, it looks like a little Fat Duck. And the solutions really are storage, shifting demand better credit, interconnection and storage solutions could also be you know, around building a hydrogen network using things like compressed air and hydro pumped hydro, which enable one, but then you still you’ve gone one slide too far, but it’s okay. which forces which then enables you to shift that power to what you needed. And of course, the appeal of hydrogen is that you could store it and then use it but it also has significant challenges. I talked about transport. So what are the items particularly a project 2030 that we’re looking very carefully at is kill a separate market for renewable energy for transport be less Expensive petrol through policy design. And if you look at just about the numbers, actually, it’s a very compelling idea. So the proposition is, you could buy like cell phone, minutes, you could link it to something like an L CFS, depending on your jurisdiction. And then you know, you could have direct customer access, they’d be a lot like the gasoline market. But you know, there’s a number of requirements. And the cost when you add the storage in is a bit more than gas, or petrol for for your peers. And so, you know, you have to think about what kind of CFS offset might be available to reduce that cost, but it’s a very compelling proposition on its face.

Unknown Speaker 21:42
Next slide.

Unknown Speaker 21:45
Now, I wanted to talk about industry emissions, and we’re not yet on the next slide. But what

Unknown Speaker 21:52
I think where we’re having technical problems with the slides, and I’m wondering if you could conclude in about a minute So,

Unknown Speaker 22:01
yeah, I could conclude in about a minute, two minutes. So I just very quickly go through process submissions. So I’ve taken the Submit process. And one of the things that’s really fascinating is it seems to the outside like a very fragmented industry with very diverse products, but actually just taking it to the top of the line available technology today, reducing the clicker to submit ratio. Adding co2 in curing and substituting municipal waste and or biomass for coal or other fossil fuels leads you to a 30 to 40% reduction in emissions. So there’s a lot of opportunity available in that which is highly compelling. And my last topic that I wanted to talk about was Carbon Farming, which is and carbon capture. So Carbon Farming is effectively making sure that you farm take your agriculture sector, sector in such a way that you are Increase the carbon in the soil. And that’s been done successfully in France 4.4% per year, it’s also being done a number of farms, which have been measuring their carbon intensity of the soil who are using more sustainable practices in the United States. And there is some efforts going on and research on that. And then the other point I wanted to make was about carbon capture where there’s a really exciting opportunity to capture carpet of building materials, where you keep for standings and use for things to like class, cross laminated timber, and also sources like bamboo. And, you know, and then the other thing, of course, is to think about concentrated versus atmospheric carbon and use ways to sequester those, both in the ground or into carbon to value streams. And I’m going to stop there. There’s a lot to take on, I know, but I wanted to share the breadth of where I think the opportunity lies and all the technologies that I’ve talked to about here are not things which are, you know, out in 20 years, but things that can be feasibly executed in the next, you know, tomorrow or the next four to five years.

Unknown Speaker 24:11
Okay, that’s great. Thank you very much. And I think

Unknown Speaker 24:16
people should send in questions if something was unclear because we had technical problems with the slides. I’m sure we could clarify those questions, but more More generally, I just encourage everybody to send in questions we have. We have a few coming in. Now. Let me ask Gonzalo to speak. Next can follow you may want to say a little bit about yourself and about a bit drama and then make your remarks

Unknown Speaker 24:47
Okay, good afternoon from from from Madrid, Spain. A thank you for for inviting us and for inviting me to participate in this this interesting webinar. In the first thing I I have to say that I’m confined in a rural area. That is has a lot of advantages, but the disadvantage is that the connection is not very good. So I had to find a particular spot in my garden when I have a better connection. I am the director of of climate change of Ebola, but Dora is a utility for international utility from really supporting embedding for renewables, renewables networks and storage. We think this is the future. We are really committed to fight climate change and this is our strategy. Today, I wanted to share with you three messages. The first one is that after the short term, immediate measures to mitigate for Corona a economic crisis, economic stimulus packages will be approved around the world aiming at a rapid a economic recovery, and those a estimates are gonna be huge. I think We are going to be the biggest economic plants in history. And for this reason, we think that they will have to be defined wisely. So, and what’s what’s the meaning of wisely I think the plant those plants must be effective economically and socially create 10 investment and jobs. Now, this is important, but at the same time, there must be dedicated to sectors with a sustainable future. And here are clean energies, renewable energies, network must be at the forefront. So for instance, a for Spain to come to where I live, abroad and Ebola we have finalized that in the Spanish power sector mood than 100,000 million euros in cleaner Or just can be invested in the next five years, generating more than 300,000 new jobs. So I’m very important. These we can invest this I mean the power sector in Spain without any subsidies with no cost to the public budget. So we just need an appropriate investment frame. And why because in the last five years, renewable energy costs are have been declining at a huge speed. And now renewable energies in most of the world are fully competitive. So this is the big change in relation to former crisis to the crisis we had only 10 years ago or four years ago, that now supporting cleaner energies. We don’t need to sacrifice economic growth, but the opposite supporting clean energies could mean a more affordable energy and a more secure energy and this is the biggest

Unknown Speaker 28:16
concern of you.

Unknown Speaker 28:17
Yes. Your connection is a few seconds.

Unknown Speaker 28:20
Okay. Okay. I because I had received a phone call, sorry for that. Sorry. The second message is that at the EU level, the European Commission has said that their recovery must come from digitalization from decarbonisation and from making a more resilient society prepare to view to help another crisis such as the crisis of climate change. So we need digitalization, decarbonisation and resilience and as companies that Siebel drooler It is very clear to us That a sustainable environment is crucial to have a sustainable and resilient economy. So, a green economy is not just about the environment. We are in the middle of a technological revolution. And clean energies are becoming increasingly cheaper. So things have really changed in the last five years, especially from a technological point of view. And this is very important for policymakers to change a lot in the last five years. So almost everywhere in the world. We are investing in renewables around the world. It is already cheaper to generate electricity with renewables than with coal or gas plants. And in two or three years, it is going to be cheaper to buy at zero emission electric car than a diesel car. That is polytune. So, in this context, we must take this opportunity and it’s a unique opportunity because the stimulus package is going to be huge. To accelerate this process and accelerate in this process, we will improve competitiveness because when you will, energy is going to be cheaper, it’s going to be more affordable. We can create jobs and at the same time, reduce emissions, improve air quality that I think we think is really important and have more livable cities. And the last and final message is that we must learn from past experiences and from past mistakes. So in Ybor Jolla, we are convinced that we should take advantage of this opportunity to invest in sectors and jobs under our long term perspective, this is key long term perspective because otherwise if we invest sectors that have no future, it will be wasted money, jobs that will be destroyed as soon as the money is no longer injected. So for this reason we must invest in activities or sector that make our regions in our case, Spain, UK, because this power, United States Mexico more competitive and create jobs that can be sustained jobs that can be sustained in time. And we are talking about renewables network with charging points for electric transport, and so on. So I have three teenage children who are thinking about job about the work now, like million people in Spain or a million jobs around the world. And I think we have the opportunity and we have the responsibility to support sectors that we Give them a decent future with a safe and quality job. To conclude, I think we must take advantage of this opportunity and dedicate these economic packages to change the world. Towards this society, we want to be an In this scenario, clean energy, and especially renewable energies are extremely bright future. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 32:27
Thank you very much Gonzalo you make you make a number of very important points, but particularly the fundamental point that this crisis is very different from the last crisis, the financial crisis of 2008, particularly in the sense that with this crisis, we went into it with clean energy, being cheap and competitive and job creating. That wasn’t the case back in in 2010 2008 2009. Then let me turn now to Lisa Fisher from e 3g. Lisa, please go ahead make your remarks your presentation. I encourage everybody to continue sending in questions to the q&a box.

Unknown Speaker 33:15
Thanks very much Justin and thank you as well and repeat two things we’ve already had to Ata Insights for hosting this. I will try and share the presentation. Jonathan, it’s your job to interrupt me if it doesn’t work again. Then I’ll just stop share reshare and we’ll see if that works. And

Unknown Speaker 33:35
go to this place settings please. And in there, click display settings. Show me what you have.

Unknown Speaker 33:41
Now

Unknown Speaker 33:43
the blicket slideshow let’s see if that one works. Hopefully this

Unknown Speaker 33:49
There we go. All right, I’m switching Slide Master let me

Unknown Speaker 33:56
and you should see a slight now that says what is the 3g I just wanted to give Quick, and I see it. Great. Okay, and, and quick background on who we are. Because you probably don’t know as an ECG. We’re an independent climate change Think Tank, working on the transition to climate safe world. And we have a number of offices in Europe. We have one in India. Yes. And we also have experts around the world, like in South Africa, in Japan, and it was a big, and I wouldn’t say more I can answer questions later I lead our work on on energy systems and also the future of guests. Maybe we will come back to that. And I’m switching slides. Or I wanted to you should see a slide with different color, blue shape, different color. Yeah. Fantastic. And I thought and Gonzalo already hinted that that it’s, I find it very useful to actually think about this crisis in different stages. And try and think about what drives government response there because that helps us tell the story a bit, you know, how do renewables how to keep technologies link into into the drivers of government actually. So the first part, which is really the the emergency response, which is really about health, life support to companies and employees, burnings, cetera, and climates, cleaning doesn’t really have a role to play there. And the second phase is more around stimulating economic recovery. In in economies, like at least Europe that are very consumption driven, that’s all about increasing consumption, again, of manufactured goods, and maintaining and boosting employment. And then you have the third phase of the response just

Unknown Speaker 35:47
links much of

Unknown Speaker 35:49
all links quite strongly to building back better, which is around structuring future economic governance and social investments and the drivers behind that are and increasing resilience to futures to shocks. Climate change is one of them, but also technological disruption. And investing in sustainable growth, livelihoods. And really phase out phase one, we can’t change very much. Phase two and three are really where we can where we can embed that building back better idea, learning from past crisis, however, the progression between those stages is very quick. And I’m switching slides. And we go You said you should see a slide with lots of country flags. If you don’t please share a shout out. And this is really just a snapshot I find it useful to give orientation really, countries will proceed at different pace through through those different stages. Of course, because the disease spreads are different responses are different. And nonetheless, we’re all connected to a global supply chain that affects certain sectors like when you protect in Europe, for example, That’s, you know, the supply chain, China. And so there’s there’s a stumbling stair. But we will, we will we will all move through it we will probably move through those different stages over the course of the next year. And moving to the next slide. And really as the main part of my my input to this discussion, I wanted to think through the headwinds and tailwind for renewable, smart and efficient power systems. There’s different stages in terms of maintaining and creating employment, renewables, in particular have actually a really good story to tell. They’re in for the sort of phase two of the response. They’re really quick to scale up and quick to be deployed as long as the processes have been streamlined already. In many countries, there’s already a case for repairing which can be done very quickly. So in terms of maintaining on crazy employment, there’s a lot that can be done. And, and and, and they’re already, the whole sectors are employing about 11 million people globally. And in terms of boosting disposable income, I draw the attention and as I already mentioned this to onsite interventions like demand side response, smartening of systems efficiency investments, and that includes polling. And that increased disposable income of individuals and also industry consumers, and then hence helps with cash flow helps with actually getting money into other manufacturers goods into the economy and boosting the economy through that multiplier. And also in the last crisis, we’ve learned that training schemes can actually really be critical at this point in time to keep people in some kind of paid situation, and at the same time increase their future productivity by moving them into sectors or

Unknown Speaker 39:00
To sort of skills

Unknown Speaker 39:01
areas that are of more value in the future, I’m telling you all this, you might know most of this already. But it’s really about making the point that governments have a choice here, they have a choice to choose the best available technology rather than maybe the second best one, which might be, you know, gases, any countries. They have a choice. And there’s a lot that renewables and technologies have about, however, in this face quite a few headwinds like, and of course, the fossil fuel prices are very low, that means incentives to invest are quite low. And this is where we need government action to bridge and this kind of temporary disincentive. And also at least in Europe, you know, MPs and renewable industries, you know, the clean tech sector are generally less organized in political terms, they have less of a voice politically. And so if we if we have conversations about protecting jobs, we need to ensure that these kind of future jobs are also represented at the table and what We see a lot in Germany, for example, in terms of building insulation, insulation efficiency, that is a good workflow. But again, that can be that can be tackled through quick fire packages and invested in investments.

Unknown Speaker 40:16
I’m going to face

Unknown Speaker 40:18
there’s three. So there’s sort of more longer term structural changes. And,

Unknown Speaker 40:24
again, renewables have a good story to tell. And most of that says that I’m not going to end that competitiveness point. I think there is a point that hasn’t been mentioned around resilience that thermal power plants, especially in Europe, as many studies by now will be impacted disproportionately by climate change. So their formance will reduce and they will also be impacted on renewables but to the extent and the different expense and and efficient cooling can be used future picked up, answer and increase increased system system resilience and There’s a lot of health arguments around using air pollution if you replace, you know, go to cooking fuels and buildings and heating fuels. You know, like it was our growth market, we’ve talked about that. And generally the clean tech sector is more and that also extends to agriculture for example, and you know, best is, is quite job intense. And so and in those jobs, through maintenance, servicing, etc, last for quite a long time. But here now I’m coming really to the meat of what I wanted to say today, there is a glass ceiling and the European example I promised it in the chat. And it’s really a case in point and Clean Energy Solutions need more than just money, and the EU will next week, publish a recovery plan, which from every single scene in terms of leaked documents, and it’s Pay ambitious. It talks a lot about renovating buildings stock renewables auctions, eu wide renewables auction options, investment in hydrogen innovation, etc, etc. So real real boost short term boost for the economy, however, and it was a short term boost unless we video ways in which we plan energy systems because at the moment, this is a European example. But I imagine it’s similar in many of the countries you use. And its supply for its supply so focused and it’s led by those who own networks. It’s doesn’t necessarily reflect vision on demand side response, ambition, on energy efficiency, efficient on renewables. We often and I think similar things have been mentioned before and have regulated returns for infrastructure in the traditional sense of pipelines and grids, but not so much for these new services like response to renewables plus batteries. And that, of course has an impact on the financing costs and the ability to participate in capacity market schemes etc. And that’s a real thing we need to fix if we want this short, short term boost to translate into something longer lasting and really harness. And, you know, if we bring down technology costs here to actually make this into a more competitive market going forward, because at the moment competition is really skewed. And the last two bullet points around climate modeling and climate impacts on the energy system are not built into energy modeling in Europe, as far as I’m aware, I’d be interested to hear whether there’s any examples across the globe that you’re aware of. And we need to you know, in terms of system resilience, that’s that’s absolutely important. Like your and yeah, hitting hitting, the amount of hitting days are steadily declining, the amount of days are going up, we need to build that into our system, resilience modeling, otherwise we were getting it wrong, basically. And often the reference studies for National Planning use quite quickly outdated assumptions on on all these new technologies. A World Energy Outlook, repeatedly had got it sort of renewal was necessarily wrong, but they were just very quickly outdated. And, and so they’re no longer a good sort of guide for big infrastructure choices for support schemes and regulation. And this is something we need to think about almost at a global level, how we can innovate that process and make much more real time, make it much more balanced in terms of distributions we have available. And stop here. So we have some time for questions. Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 44:49
Great. Thank you very much, Lisa.

Unknown Speaker 44:53
That’s very, very interesting presentation. We now have about 15 minutes for

Unknown Speaker 45:01
Questions and Answers. And we’ve had quite a few questions come in, though I’d encourage people to send in more. A first question actually for Anna, about California. It’s actually two questions about California. But both of them quite interesting questions. And one question is, what can developing countries? It’s quite a broad question. What can developing countries learn from California given that California is part of a developed country? And the other question about California, and I’m smiling, because it’s quite a provocative question is in the US, when you have California with a very proactive, assertive green energy policy, and you have the federal government, with whatever the federal federal government’s energy policy See, it’s I mean, I’m, I live in the US, I would find it very hard to describe what it’s what the federal government’s policy really, really is. But I think what the question is referring to is the, the frequent pronouncements by by Donald Trump that are sort of in favor of old energy technologies of coal and gas and oil. And I’m not particularly supportive to put it diplomatically, not particularly supportive of clean and green energy technology. So the question is basically, how does California? How does what California is doing? How is it consistent with what the federal government is doing? So two questions, one, what can developing countries learn from the California experience with green energy and to how do you deal with this tension between California at the state level and the federal government?

Unknown Speaker 46:56
Thank you, john said just so people are aware I have been busily answering try to answer questions by typing. So a number of these questions have been answered on typing. So you can see Have a look for your question. But I think these are great questions. I think developing countries are absolutely can take for the California stuff that the California story Why? Well, most of the countries are not as wealthy as California. But what they do have in common is many of them are very high growth. And they are I did inflection point in their curve of growth. And what California has done is to take a view that good environmental policy should also be good economic policy. So that if you find yourself as a developing country, taking on a lot of really dirty industry at very low cost, you know, effectively you’re down. you’re you’re you’re taking your workforce, your productivity to a very low value, place where you really want to move towards it. To kind of a higher scale, stimulating innovation of technology, and, and making sure that you guide your growth wisely is really critical. And that’s what California has done. I think there’s a lot of other things the developing countries can do by having a robust push on environmental and clean tech type technologies and crafting their markets for them. Because what will happen is, a lot of companies and for direct investment will be attracted to those countries. So what you can then start to see you take Bangladesh, they do a really big push over noble energy, and that is stimulating renewable energy companies. I know Bangladeshis who are going back who have worked internationally around the world, just so they can set up vehicles to provide these kinds of energy to into that country. So it’s really a great opportunity for developing countries. This Second question, which is around the federal versus state, California has been a leader against the bads for a very long time, the Clean Air Act, California had air standards way before the feds did. And as a consequence, California is grandfathered in with the ability to set its own standards, and then other states can follow. So California is put in a leadership position for maybe 40 or 50 years already, Trump’s not going to change that. They kind of take it on the chin. It’s one of the few states where the democrats control of the legislature. And so in general, there’s a very progressive mentality across the board. And, you know, for example, the conversations we’ve been having for 2030 we’ve had a very much an open door where people have literally looked at the initiatives we’ve put in front of them and said, this is great, how can we find the money to trial this to do this to take it forward, etc. So I don’t think that California is gonna get a beat Gonna be

Unknown Speaker 50:02
constrained by the federal government anytime soon.

Unknown Speaker 50:08
Okay, that’s, that’s good to hear. Okay, so there’s there’s a few questions that relate to different types of energy storage and the role that energy storage plays in making renewables essentially even more competitive or competitive at a much higher level of, of penetration in a in a power system. There are also a few questions about carbon capture and sequestration and utilization. Let me put the energy storage questions to anybody on the panel who would like to talk about the prospects for energy storage, particularly medium to long term storage because and I think you said you made some remarks about season seasonal storage, in particular presentation, there’s quite a few questions about the medium to long term and what role storage can really play on an economic basis.

Unknown Speaker 51:09
I’d be happy to start and then hand over maybe to Lisa or Gonzalo if they have a view. Lisa, in particular talked about some of the European hydrogen programs. So I mean, I think the challenge that we have here is twofold. One is, unfortunately, the slide didn’t show but there’s a lovely little curve that shows when solar over produces, you get something called the duck curve, where you get a big boost to solar and then the prices kind of dropped. And then they got very steeply towards the evening. This is a profile during the day of production, and that form, so that looks a lot like a little duck. Um, and what it really means is that you end up with an overproduction over capacity of generation, during which you know, there’s a lot of power that people don’t really lead and prices really crater and it’s an ideal opportunity to turns into that energy at a relatively low cost into and when I say relatively, I mean, really relatively, I mean, really low cost. in some markets, it goes negative or it gets curtailed, to turn that energy into hydrogen or to use other storage, which could be kind of daily storage, like, or even a weekly storage like a compressed air or pumped hydro. hydrogens is great because it could be stored, you know, on a seasonal basis and to be used later. And so that’s, that’s quite interesting. And that those were some of the technologies that I was both talking about. Thank you, Lisa. Over to you. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 52:46
Danny, things I’d have to add is that yeah, I mean, the key innovation area is really seasonal storage. That’s right. And hydrogen is one solution, but it’s it is you know, hydrogen will be a skies, premium goods and You know, producing a gas, a molecule for electricity to earn, you turn it into electricity, again later, is not necessarily an efficient pathway. And so you want to, if it’s necessary, you need to do it, but you want to do it as little as possible. So what I’m missing a little bit, for example, in Europe is there’s a lot of settling on hydrogen, a suspicion, there’s very little on sort of much more open competition on trying to get innovation in necessities. So I think that is a real global gap. As far as I’m aware, again, I’d be interested to hear about things I don’t know about. And the second point is on on storage and demand, you know, you know, batteries more at decentralized level and maybe more for for, you know, storage for a few days and few hours. Again, it’s actually also an institutional question. So technology costs are coming down if we didn’t actually find out offer in particular is the market and tariff structures encouraged this. In particular, if your infrastructure planning takes this into account and has like upside, sort of scenarios and estimates around it, again, we see in Europe that is very focused on supply side. It doesn’t have sort of high potential scenarios on demand side response deployment. We don’t invest in innovation over how do consumers behave or learning how do consumers respond and share this and accelerate the learning here. So again, there’s a real gap like we have the technology now, but our institutional and market structure are lagging behind on on really capitalizing on this and and there’s a bit of an uneven playing field.

Unknown Speaker 54:47
And can I add something?

Unknown Speaker 54:53
Yes, I think I agree with what has been said about the storage concerns. But I would like to stress and hydrogen Yeah, for the future, but I will like to stress that with current technologies, you know, with photovoltaic, with wind, with a large hydro, you know, with the backup will have with generation, it is possible to really develop and to, to to reduce emissions and to increase energy efficiency in a very rapid way in the next 10 years. So, we have to do two things to invest in things for the future hydrogen batteries and so on. But what is really important is to implement current technologies. I’m going to put an example in Spain now, the power system, a renewable represents something like 40% of the power generation in Spain. We happen is that the optimal mix from an economic point of view will be to have more than 70% renewable energies in the energy mix in only in only 10 years or 2030. If we don’t have 70% generation from renewables, this system will be more expensive. So what’s the message here that we need to invest with current generations and we have a lot to do and without cost, I mean, this is this is the basic message that that will have to invest in renewable generations everywhere in the next 10 years. Because doing that, we can move forward very rapid in order to reduce emissions and to have other benefits. And the other thing I wanted, I wanted to stress. I mean, the basic issue the most important issue to us today to allocate these a stimulus packages are jobs. So if we want to do to push for renewables and for clean energies, we have to stress the importance of renewables to increase jobs, because nowadays policymakers are worried about Europe and never worry about jobs. So I think this is this is the basic element to to. I mean, renewables are already competitive, but we have to stress the importance to create jobs and long term jobs, because other alternatives are creating jobs, but with a hybrid, very high cost, and no competitive for the future. And we are, as you mentioned before, we are in a in a in a very different position in this in this economic crisis, to really support when you will such a way to improve energy competitiveness and economic competitiveness and creating jobs.

Unknown Speaker 57:53
Yeah, thank you. I’ll come in a moment to the to the questions they’re all about carbon capture. And what role carbon capture can play in, in the view of the panelists. I think the points that you’re making about competitiveness about cost is extremely important in the recovery packages that that deal with an economic depression because you’re going into a depression, what you definitely need is is cheap energy to get you out of that depression. And if if renewables are the cheapest form of energy, particularly in combination with with storage, or demand responsiveness or other flexibility solutions, that that’s where that’s how you will come out of the depression fastest and how you’ll create the most jobs as quickly as as possible. Let’s come back to carbon capture because I see several questions in the q&a box. Let me ask each of you, if you have a view on how important you think carbon capture and sequestration or carbon capture and utilization will be in future and whether you think it has an important role to play in post COVID recovery stimulus packages. I don’t know who wants to take that one first. Lisa, Lisa, then Anna,

Unknown Speaker 59:23
and cook and yeah, I think carbon capture I mean, let’s not forget this. This is a natural way of capturing carbon and carbon which I don’t think you guys were referring to. But let’s make sure we remember that as well. And these these policies are so incredibly important. So protecting forests and afforestation and and carbon sinks, but on on CCS or CC us as a technology, I am by no means an expert, but what I can What I can say is it is similar to the hydrogen cons of conversation in the sense that it is a kind of Yemen, scars, kids in the end, right? Like the way where you can store your carbon is extremely dependent on your geographic location and how we know very little about costs. We know very little about permanence of capturing carbon. Having said that, or the capture carbon and having said that, we need it and we absolutely need it in order to achieve our, you know, goals like European ality, how there is a question over where we need it. I don’t see the need for it in the power sector, given we have all these expanded alternatives, and we may needed, you know, in industry in particular, but I think again, it’s a question of focus and making the best use of what is a property scars and probably also quite expensive resource. But we need a dedicated agenda for it and we have just to give you a fun, fun fact. But the other day I dug out a record as we expected in 2010 to have 100 carbon capture and storage projects at the global level for 2020. In 2019, we had 21. So we we also really need to need to change something and not not much has changed on costs on knowledge in that area. So this is by no means a given that we will make any progress on that agenda unless we get our act together.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:29
Thanks, Lisa. I talked about four different ways to do carbon capture. Okay, the first one is carbon for everything, which is a forestation not cutting down existing for us increasing the the carbon intensity in the soil from agriculture and farming in such a way. And in fact, in the EU, there is already a mechanism to do that which is a Common Agricultural Policy, which pays a payment which in the UK is called the basic payment scheme, but effectively pays farmers to run out furrows according to a registered system, it could be easily adapted to include carbon. So a forestation and farming itself. So agriculture. Now, those are two very good ways, then three would be what I would call carbon to value or carbon sequestration through building materials and other valuable aspects. One example is that if you cure cement with co2, the summit sucks in the co2. But it also makes you can have a much lower load of cement, and have better structural factors. So it’ll be stronger. And so you actually save money from us for the summit. But of course, you have to have the system to bring the co2 back into the curing area and so on. So, so there’s and the last that I was talking about was CCS itself where you take large pipelines and you put that carbon into the ground. So there’s four different ways that I laid out. And I think what we need is policy that occurred, all of them. And I would just say that, and that is urgent. But I would also say that from a code perspective, there are probably some of those are more easily achievable than others. And probably the Carbon Farming stuff is easier to do. And even the carbon to value stuff is easier to do with the very big CCS projects that cost in the billions of dollars and require a very comprehensive geological studies and so on to make sure that as Lisa said, they do what what is put on the package as probably something that would be more post COVID. What is needed is first the will to do that encouragement by legislators, encouragement of the clean tech sector to do that, and then ultimately, have some mechanism to courage the pipeline To follow the pace, and if you’re going to put down more pipelines for co2, you might as well put down hydrogen pipelines while you’re at it because you’ve got the right of ways. So I’ll just leave that.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:11
But very briefly, I don’t see a very bright future for for CCS in the past quarter, not by this crisis. I think is is very expensive, has a lot of problems. We have alternatives to PCs that are extremely cheap nowadays. In a regarding hydrogen, I see hydrogen we see hydrogen, but we see a green hydrogen as the main element or I will invest in green hydrogen, because he I think he has a very bright future. So honestly, I don’t see I don’t see people investing nowadays, after this crisis in in CCS in the next five years, at least Of course, in the power sector, but even in the other sectors. I see that we will invest in in there will be investment in some hydrogen, but maybe a on on on green hydrogen that is, I think is, is what we need for to, to, to, to to move towards higher net zero emissions, at least in Europe and afterwards in also in other regions of the world.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:15
Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. We’ve kind of run out of time. It’s a pity because this has been a very rich discussion. And there are quite a few questions in the q&a box that we haven’t been able to respond to. But let me just conclude by saying that I, I’ve been very, very struck in this whole conversation

Unknown Speaker 1:05:43
about

Unknown Speaker 1:05:44
in a way, how little it was about climate change and how much it was about economics. Yes, we talked about climate change, and it was very important to talk about it. But but the arguments that were being made were mostly that Economics have gone in that direction anyway, towards the, the, the cleaner end of the energy spectrum. And that if you want, as effective a recovery as possible and stimulus packages to be as well spent as possible to get the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, then then clean energy is, is clearly the way to go. And that, in that sense, as Gonzalo pointed out a couple of times, in that sense, it’s this is historic, it wasn’t like that in in previous crisis, it was more well, it would be nice to do green it would be nice to clean up the environment. It would be nice to tackle climate change, but but it’s what it was rather expensive and people weren’t always prepared to make that trade off between growth and environment and in the middle of a crisis. Now it’s, it’s not nearly so much of a trade off. It’s, it’s that the green stuff, the green stuff is what’s going to save As economically I’m also going to create the, the jobs. So let me conclude there. It’s a pity that on these these webinars, these audio, video, seminars, conferences and so on. We can’t hear the applause from the other panelists from the the audience. So if people want to applaud in the chat box, please go ahead and abroad because I think we had great interventions from our the panelists from Anna, Gonzalo and, Lisa, let me thank the participants for their active participation and for their very good questions. Okay, thank you very much. And I’m seeing applause coming in in the chat box. That’s nice.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai