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Hi Mike-it’s starting to come together

Thank you very much Michael Liebreich and Mr. Brinbaum for the great episode and your brainstorms! I am looking forward to the next Cleaning Up!

For the sake of RUclips why not include a video feed to we can see you while you’re talking?

I thought this was an excellent discussion. Leo comes across as a great CEO - straightforward answers to Michael's questions and not afraid to state if he doesn't do enough on various points (Africa). I liked the response regarding Nuclear in Germany...the decision was made so move forward.. On a technical point - watched on RUclips and you can see the wind hitting the beach but it didn't affect the sound quality - so good job on that whether it was the tech set-up or post sound editing. More interviews like this please!😊

I'm very grateful to Leo Birnbaum for taking some time out of the Eurelectric #LightsOn Summit in Athens to speak with me. We covered a LOT of ground - the need for rapid build-out of transmission, the impact of digitisation on the electricity sector and much more. A really engaging conversation with an undisputed leader in European electricity and electrification. Listen and learn!

Several LNG terminals and LNG storage tanks across the world has methane leaking problem. Look at LNG storage tanks using an infra red camera eye and you will be amazed how much methane is leaking from LNG terminals.

Would have liked to have heard how Mateo's thoughts on micro-nuclear-reactors. *IF* those can produce power on demand, it seems you wouldn't need multi-day-storage, or charging/un-charging (rusting/un-rusting) at $20/kwh!

Hi Michael, Yeah it’s tough. My contention is that decarbonising has a cost and if we, as societies think we need to follow that path, we need to bear the cost. Just focusing on the hard-to-abate sectors, where you need molecules, as electrons won't do the job: How much does switching to green hydrogen in refining increase the cost of petrol and diesel ?. Same for SAF. How much more on the air ticket ? Idem for green steel. What is the increase in the cost of the square foot of building, or the shipping cost of one TEU with a green-steel newbuild ship, or our next green steel-made car ?. Ditto for fertilizer. how much does switching to green fertilizer increase the cost of a ton of rice, soy, or other crops ?. Are these cost increases unaffordable ?. I don’t think so. But if we want to transition on the cheap, we better just forget it. Just a thought.

The Repower score on the referenced site only lists Nuclear and Geothermal as replacements for old Coal. Wind and Solar are reasoned to no have the required energy density by area. This may be a reasonable assumption if the coal is built in a area with high population density, but in my opinion probably should be included in the assessment so that these solutions can be compared to nuclear. Many old coal sites are in fact in remote areas, and are not limited by land availability. Additionally, there was conveniently no mention of BESS in the methodology. BESS plants are already replacing Coal (see for example Wallerawang near Sydney) and making good use of abandoned grid connections. Also ignored in the methodology is the availability of training or a trained workforce. Taking Australia as an example again - there is no nuclear industry and very few people that have any experience with or expertise in this highly specialised industry. Surely this is a relevant factor for suitability of "repowering"?

25:30 the guest is clearly not informed. “Precision” is not a semantic term. In the case of using yeast to produce other proteins, there is obviously genetic engineering otherwise they’d just be making yeast proteins. In case of “meat” cells, we have no clue what kind of genome optimisations that are being/will be performed on these cells to increase yield. Plus, cells in lab culture experience genome alterations over time that are far greater, diverse and divergent than what happens in the animal. I seriously doubt that they will do a whole genome, transcriptome and proteome analyses of the cells prior to each harvest (as they should). Therefore, they’ve got no idea what they are going to sell. Just don’t eat that 💩

This couldn't have aged worse. Shortly after this interview, Graichen was sacked for giving away jobs in his ministry to friends and family. He has since been known as one of the two main actors in the nuclear scandal. Ministry experts had concerns about closing down the last 6 nuclear plants at the height of the energy crisis, so Graichen muted them.

Newsflash: nuclear scientist analysis reveals nuclear power is economic.

As an engineer we all know its often more difficult to repurpose old equipment, especially if the design needs to be modified for each site each with unique problems and interfaces.

Opinion doesn't matter honestly and doesn't matter how much you try and pump up nuclear. Nuclear doesn't mesh well with renewables. Renewables and battery will take over due to economics and the learning curves.

This is the only way that nuclear can possibly work economicaly, but as the proportion of renewables on the grid increases and we get periods of more generation than demand, can nuclear survive increasingly longer periods of negative electricity prices? This smacks of the answer to the question 'what use can we find for a nuclear reactor?' rather than 'what is the cheapest way to generate electricity?' As solar, wind and batteries continualy get cheaper will this model still work? Adam Door of Rethink X set out a convincing arguement in Brighter | Episode 10 - Why we shouldn’t build nuclear power.

Lived in Greece 1974 to 1984. In 1975 the weather patterns that can be traced back 3,000 years plus broke. The climate went crazy and continued to be far more extreme in wildly different patterns that just kept changing. After the burning of Greece last year the Greek PM says this is global climate boiling. [Words to that effect, I do not have them before me.]. The local people on Sifnos told me in 1975 that rain had decreased over the last 50 years. Measured by the fall in the level of the stream/streams on the Isle. This is already killing the animal kingdom of earth and killng us, the humans. I am 82 and this is visible to me in up to 97% to 85% of the death of insects, birds, land and sea creatures.

a few leeks later he was out of business. Graichen - what a loser. He was in the middle of a criminal green clan in the ministry of climate. corruption rules. he was responsible for the german energiewende, which is about to get out of control. everybody hates him in germany. green arrogance.

Thank you very much Michael for your great summary!

Thank you for your real world perspective on the hydrogen hype.

Thank you for those realistic numbers on hydrogen economy very interesting insights!

“The biggest challenge facing low-emission hydrogen is that it is expensive to produce, expensive to transport, expensive to store, expensive to distribute and expensive to use." Before you buy in to any of the grandiose national or international 2030 targets for clean hydrogen, you need to listen to this. TLDR, a realistic outcome will be somewhere around 10% of the figures being bandied around.

Seems to me that Michael gave an easy pass to the guest on this occasion. In truth, the various “shiny” renewables projects that UAE and Saoudi Arabia keep banging on about all over the media (e.g. the Line, Neom) are just drops in the ocean if one looks at by how much they truly reduce the emissions of these countries and their fossil fuel activities. Doesn’t matter that they have the largest solar PV array in the world. What matters is by how much does it lower the overall emissions of the country? 🥜🥜

13:26 root causes. Basically, the way our societies reward overconfidence, bullshitting and lying in decision making and in selecting project proposals is detrimental to the selection of other better projects with more realistic delivery and less sexy proposals. 😅 This issue has also been observed in hiring processes. Interviews and current selection systems tend to lead to the hiring of overconfident people, not necessarily correlating with their level of skills or intelligence.

I want to know what Ambri is doing right now. When will these batteries get tested in a commercial environment. Where are they being tested today and how are they performing? Enough waffling around.

Farm scale ammonia sounds a bit dangerous.. Its a pretty hazardous chemical to handle without industrial expertise. /chemical engineer who works with NH3

Wow. This is basically called “CO2 emissions-laundering” while simultaneously feeding on public money from the country where the original emitter is located (who can now deduct their CO2 emissions) AND from the country where the new emitter is located. Hopefully, regulators won’t fall for it, but given that his business model has been recognised as compatible with IRA subsidies, one wonders what kind of level of education people who work in those institutions have 😅 Carbon neutral 😂. If CO2 is emitted from your barbecue and you vent it towards your neighbours garden using your hand, then your hand is carbon neutral, true 😂 but the whole operation still emits and your neighbours garden now smells like pork sausages. 😂 Disgusting, inefficient, not needed in a world where electrification is ramping up at exponential growth in most sectors. Worked for ENEL and then back to gas business and to this. Says it all about how much the individual cares about climate 😅

47:46 Michael, there’s is an academic who is supporting 100% renewables and he is a professor at Standford University, so not too rubbish: Mark Jacobson 😁

Really enjoyed the podcast and it's good to hear about businesses outwith the traditionally tech heavy sustainability sector benefiting from the collaboration needed to drive sustainability. The research and tech investment is really impressive and in an area of industry that has been battered over lack of sustainability, very welcome.

29:10 if there is ONE thing that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has very clearly demonstrated is that having centralised electricity generation using power plants such as nuclear plants DOES NOT offer energy resilience. Which is why Ukraine has installed more on-shore wind in 2023 than the UK. And this is also why China is making sure their energy system transitions to renewables massively…

21:14 it is very cheeky from Kirsty, representing the British (our own) nuclear industry to say in a nutshell that in Europe they did not know what they were doing basically, even though France has been an actual world leader in nuclear power plant management and construction for decades. You’d think that they know better than you what they are doing. However it is true that these things consistently go over budget. It’s just a fact that is indissociable from the nuclear industry.

Bryony : “Whereas on the right, there's much more acceptance of authority, or being led and looking to experts, or leaders really, to tell you what to think…” Is this correct? For instance, doesn’t the Left accept without question the UN Sec Gen’s view that we’re in an era of “global boiling”? And as for acceptance of authority what about the Left’s acceptance of Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot? Today the Left and the climate activists are unconcerned by China’s CO2 emissions, only those of the Western democracies, which is all rather odd really

It was great to hear Lily Cole promoting the idea of debate, a feature totally lacking today for the subject of climate, when our powerful state broadcaster, the BBC, has made a unilateral decision to not allow any discussion on climate to take place on any of its channels. A censorious policy rigorously applied and much loved by authoritarians through history from 17th Century Catholic Popes to past and current Communist regimes and which must be inexplicable to those who previously thought the UK was a democracy with freedom of speech.

Methane (CH4) is only 0.00019% (1.9 parts per million) of the atmosphere. Both of its narrow absorption bands occur at wavelengths where water vapour (H2O) is already absorbing substantially. Hence, any radiation that CH4 might absorb has already been absorbed by H2O. With the concentration of water vapour in the atmosphere being between 1,000 and 20,000 times greater than CH4, the effects of CH4 are completely masked by H2O.

Thank you for this amazingly informative podcast. So much to do for a coordinated solidare action. Incentives - Penalties- Capacity building together with “Honest” financing … Just missed a bit of time dedicated to the role of the Ocean as probably the main and most efficient route to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. With podcasts like this we will make the miracle happen. 🙏

Sorry Lily, but making diamonds from CO2 captured from the air using renewable energy and claiming it is carbon negative, to put it diplomatically, doesn't add up. A 1 carat diamond is 0.2g of pure carbon for which you would have to capture 0.733 g of CO2. The atmosphere doesn't care whether you take 0.733 grams of CO2 out of the atmosphere or stop 0.733 g of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere, the end result is still the same. However, the real issue is not the CO2 captured in the diamond but the amount of energy required to put it there. Apparently, it takes about 250KWh of electricity to make 1 carat of diamond. If that 250KWh of electricity was used instead to displace natural gas fired, combined cycle gas turbine, electricity generation, it could displace about 455KWh of natural gas. That would save about 31.2Kg of natural gas saving roughly 85.7Kg of CO2 emissions, reducing the carbon in the atmosphere by roughly 117,000 times more than if that energy was used to make a one carat diamond. If you're just using surplus renewables, that would otherwise be curtailed, the situation's a lot better, but even onshore wind has a carbon intensity about 15g co2/KWh which means the carbon emissions from the renewable energy is about 5,000 times higher than the CO2 that's drawn down from the atmosphere to make the diamonds. Situations probably better than diamond mining, but this arguments only valid if you can guarantee that the synthetic diamonds are actually displacing mined diamonds, which I suspect they probably won't but almost impossible to prove either way. Saying these diamonds are carbon negative is fundamentally just a marketing ploy, even if you ignore the energy input, the amount of carbon drawdown would be absolutely miniscule. Furthermore, with the current wind and solar strike price of around £60/MWh the cost to draw down just one tonne of CO2 would be about £20M.

There has been a 10% decline in natural disasters since 2000 (CRED). Normalised disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and human mortality due to extreme weather has decreased by more than 95% since 1920, so you're 50 times less likely to die from a climate-related disaster in a world that's 1°C warmer than 100 years ago (EM-DAT, CRED/UC). Deaths from drought have declined by 99%! As an example of good news, Climate Change saved 555,103 lives in England and Wales between 2001 and 2020 (ONS, 2022). Globally the ACE index (accumulated cyclone energy) 1980-2021 shows no increasing trend. Global Hurricane Landfalls 1970-2021 (updated from Weinkle et al, 2012) shows no trend. Satellite data since 1980 shows a slight downward global trend for total hurricaine numbers with 2021 being a record low year. From the NOAA GFDL website 'Global Warming and Hurricanes, An Overview of Current Research' (dated Feb. 9, 2023). And I quote "We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes." Multidecadal variability in Atlantic hurricaines is most probably related to the AMO (Vecchi et al, 2021). NOAA data 1851-2021 shows no trend in number of hurricaine landfalls with the record high being 1886. There is also no trend in the frequency of major hurricanes (Cat 3 +) for the same period, although the trend for the last 20 years is downwards. It makes no difference if you look at the Pacific. Using data from the JMA 1951-2022 we see typhoon activity trending downwards for over 7 decades. There is evidence cited in AR6 (IPCC) that Australia is experiencing the lowest frequency of tropical cyclones in the last 550 to 1,500 years, and that windspeed overland throughout the Northern Hemisphere has been dropping in recent decades. Also the number of intense storms (below 960 mbars) in the Northern Atlantic has fallen sharply since 1990 (Tilinina et al, 2021). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report, Chapter 11,"Weather and Climate Extreme Events in Changing Climate" concludes that changes in the frequency and intensity of most severe weather events (with corresponding intense rainfall) have not been detected nor can they be attributed to human caused climate change. What the data from NOAA SPC shows about tornados: EF1-EF5 (1954-2022) no trend; EF3-EF5 (most destructive) (1954-2022) 50% decline. No EF5s in US since 2013 (a record absence). There has been no clear change in annual precipitation over the Earth's landmasses between 1850-2000 (Wijngaarden, 2015). Drought appears to be decreasing globally (Watts et al, 2018) measured by SPI 1901-2017. Deserts have shrunk considerably since the 1980's. The Sahara shrank by 12,000km² per year 1984-2015(Liu & Xue, 2020). The Earth has greened by 15% or more in a human lifetime. "The greening of the planet over the last two decades represents an increase in leaf area on plants and trees equivalent to the area covered by all the Amazon rainforests. There are now more than two million square miles of extra green leaf area per year"(NASA, 2019). Observations of Earth’s vegetative cover since the year 2000 by NASA’s Terra satellite show a 10% increase in vegetation in the first 20 years of the century. Global tree canopy cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers (865,000 square miles) between 1982 and 2016 (Nature, 2018). As well as human intervention, the reasons for this include forests expanding polewards aided by additional CO2 and a slight rise in temperature. Increased CO2 causes this in two ways: it has a direct fertilising effect (the CFE), and it increases drought tolerance by reducing stomata. This greening of the Earth due to CO2 is now "an indisputable fact" (Chen et al, 2024). In fact, 55.15% of those areas greening have been doing so at an accelerated rate since 2001. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution the Earth's primary productivity has increased by more than 30% (Campbell et al, 2017 and Haverd et al, 2020). The Earth’s natural vegetation productivity actually increased 6% in 18 years (Nemani et al, 2003) with 42% of this increase coming from the Amazon rainforests. Between 1961 and 2021 global cereal production increased 250% and cereal yield increased over 200%. Land used for cereal hardly increased (Data from World Bank, FAO/UN). This is the only time in human history that you are more likely to be overfed rather than underfed. We should be thankful we were borne into an age of such abundance. A US DoE study (Taylor & Schlenker, 2021) estimated that a 1 ppm increase in CO2 led to an increase of 0.4%, 0.6% and 1% in yield for corn, soybeans and wheat, respectively, and that CO2 increase was the main driver of the 500% yield growth in corn since 1940. Global tomato production has set a record each year for the past 10 years. Banana production has doubled in 20 years. All 10 of the largest sugar crops in global history occurred during the past 10 years. All 10 of the 10 largest rice crop years occurred during the past 10 years (UNFAO). 2023 was another record cereal crop. The Great Barrier Reef's coral cover reached the greatest extent ever recorded in 2022 and 2023 (AIMS) despite reports of supposed repeated bleaching. If you look at the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) data, the WIO (West Indian Ocean) shows 26% hard coral cover in 1985 upto 30% in 2020. South Asia reefs shows a decline around 2000 to below 25% then a regrowth to around 40% (2010) and a decline to 25% (2020). The Red Sea shows no change at around 25% (1995-2020). So the pattern in these three areas show no relationship to each other or to a changing climate. The Caribbean region reefs have a cover of around 0.15 ± 0.02. There is no evidence of a major reduction in coral cover in the Caribbean over the last two decades. GCRMN data for the most important coral bioregion, the East Asia Seas, with 30% of the world’s coral reefs, and containing the most diverse coral of the ‘Coral Triangle’, show no statistically significant net coral loss since records began. The East Asia region has the biggest human population living in close proximity to reefs, and is located in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool - the hottest major water mass on earth. Life is most diverse in the warmest parts of the world’s oceans. This has been shown across 13 major taxonomic groups from zooplankton to marine mammals. Warmer water = more biodiversity. This is a scare story about things you cannot see. Extinction rates (1500-2009) peaked around 1900 at 50 per decade. Extinction rates have declined dramatically to around 4 to per decade in the 2000s. So the extinction rate is very low: 900 known lost species for 2.1 million known species in 500 years (IUCN), so from observations there are an average of slightly less than 2 species lost every year. Out of a known species total of over 2 million. That gives an annual percentage loss of less than 0.0001%. That's background extinction. At that frequency it will take over 930,000 years to reach 80% extinction of species experienced at the K-T boundary that saw the extinction of the dinosaurs. Of course, extinction is a natural part of the evolution of life on this planet with the average lifespan of a species thought to be about 1 million years (cf 930,000). It is estimated that 99.9% of all plant and animal species that have existed have gone extinct. It should also be noted that no taxonomic families have become extinct in the last 500 years. In fact marine diversity at the taxonomic level of families is the highest it has ever been in the Earth's long history (see Sepkoski Curve). In a review of 16,009 species, most populations (85%) did not show significant trends in abundance, and those that did were balanced between winners (8%) and losers (7%) (Dornelas et al, 2019). There have been only 9 species of continental birds and mammals confirmed extinct since 1500 (Loehle, 2011). No global marine animals have become extinct in the past 50 years (McCauley et, 2015 using IUCN data). There is no climate crisis.

He completely ignore (or ignorant) that any kind of hydro carbon fuel by air capture must be combined with hydrogen. Why adding additional process will make it efficient? He is the gure of efficiency. Master of hypocrisy.

Still ignoring hydrogen fuel cell co-generation system which make use of waste heat. Hype is made by Michael Liebreich on BEV, which is apparently failing. Why? He apparently did not understand at all that we live on the plane earth with seasons, not on flat earth without seasons governed by the emperor without clothes.

Interesting to listen to. It is interesting to hear directly from Chinese experts. China seems very bureaucratic.

Thank you. Amazing. 1 gig solar installed every day world wide. By 2026 China will have installed 1000 gig of solar alone.

It would be useful at the start to quantify the amount of methane in the atmosphere, by how much it is increasing and which absorption bands it absorbs and emits and where these bands lie in the Earth's Plank distribution of emitted radiation.

As much as I admire Dr. Sadoway's work, it's concerning to hear him spew Fox News-type misinformation about EVs. It's been studied and shown many times that even when charging EVs off of a coal-powered grid, they result in significantly lower CO2 emissions than ICE vehicles. In a recent interview on the Everything Electric Show he described Li-ion batteries as though they're blowing up left and right when it's virtually impossible to start a fire with the newer generation LiFePO4 batteries. He's against EV subsidies? How about the 6 trillion in subsidies the fossil fuel industry receives per year.

Systems solutions cannot be overestimated

A classic example of approaching a problem from the wrong direction. If we squander money on unreliable and uncontrollable sources of electricity, how do we prevent major blackouts? We squander more money on a storage system where the cost of electricity from storage is more than double the cost from the original source. The correct question is this - how do we provide reliable and affordable electricity? The answer is to build power stations that generate electricity when it's required. "There is no short-term likelihood of low-cost large-scale electricity storage. Even hydrogen is very expensive. If one were to generate excess electricity in summer to manufacture hydro- gen, which could be used six months later to cover for winter shortages, the container required would be very large. At stand- ard temperature and pressure, the container for Europe would be a cube of side 45 km. The one for Ireland would be a 2-km side cube. Pressurising the hydrogen would of course reduce the volume required, but would waste some of the energy." www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/03/Kelly-Net-Zero-Progress-Report.pdf

Took 2 mins bef interview begins. Wrong. Bad business. Customer walks in & store makes'm listen to 2-min recording to begin shopping. Terrible. Disrespectful practice. Introduce guest & begin show. Do necessary introducing later.

A well argued presentation. But what do you mean please when you ask the question “Will we get there in time?” Do you mean net zero before a 1.5 degree C rise above pre-industrial temperatures or before the next cooling period, as we had during the Little Ice Age, can no longer be concealed? If the former then I have good news : Recent history, since the last ice age, which ended just 11,000 years ago, shows temperatures above those of today during Roman times when vines were grown up by Hadrian’s Wall and in Medieval times when the Norse Icelanders colonised Greenland growing crops such as barley for 500 years just before the Little Ice Age cooling period started. These increased temperatures did not lead to runaway warming or for the oceans to boil (Al Gore) or for the planet to boil (UN Sec Gen) as they claim has already happened. Fortunately for the planet Happer & Wijngaaden have shown that additional CO2 causes negligible additional warming because all the IR radiation emitted from the planet in the CO2 frequency bands is already absorbed (and subsequently re-emitted to space) by the current amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, a condition described as IR saturation. And in fact the Antarctic Vostok ice core data for the last 500,000 years when both temperature and CO2 have been, as they are today, at historically low levels, CO2 is found to follow temperature and not vice versa. If the latter then it is clear that net zero can only be achieved by an impoverished planet controlled by an authoritarian world government as there would, for instance be no energy security for the UK when all our infrastructure (wind turbines and solar panels, steel etc) is supplied by a country our security services describe as “hostile”. Neither could we protect all the renewable farms and cabling. In which case it becomes clear that the authoritarian world government is the goal and net zero is simply the means by which it can be achieved.

Mikael, great episode. It’s just fantastic to hear two great minds discussing something so obvious as electrifying everything and, how it makes sense. Will have to read his book. Cheers!

Dr William Happer says CO2 does NOT drive climate

#fabriclast . my own version is the line in the sand, why spend thousands to upgrade the system pipework, insulation, windows, radiators the size of garage doors etc for a little extra heat pump efficiency gain. Too much focus is spent on certain race obtaining the best COP or SCOPs. This difference could be a 12k system to a 20k system, the running energy saving gain may be only £150 a year, so it would take 30 ish years to get that gain back on having the super efficient version. Ive always tried to be pragmatic when designing systems, not chasing super results to show off against others. Installation outlay/distruption and running costs are key, there is a point economics make the decision on where that line in the sand should be. BTW don't upset my friends Nathan or Mr Webster.

This technology looks very promising. I'm a little puzzled why you didn't talk about seasonality. You could run this system a lot in winter, and charge it back up in summer by not using it so much. I love it, especially for district heating.