Oh, I can. He tends to forget that the future is not evenly distributed. The car was 10x better than the horse, and never spread cholera. Electric trade vans can barely go 100 km trips in deep cold.
@@RandyTWesterdream on chummy chum! You speak of yesterday maybe today, you can’t grasp that Electric Vans will only get better, not sit in permanent pause! Grow up please and spout your denial elsewhere please!
FINALLY somebody says it - the transition to renewables will unleash an “age of abundance”. I have been banging on about this for YEARS. This is the message we should be promoting, because it’s true! Not an age of less as the fossil fuel companies would have us believe.
I’d describe myself as fairly “green”, but even if I didn’t care one iota about the environment I’d still be hugely supportive of renewables. Why on earth would you *not* want to replace digging up fossil fuels with energy sources that will be forever available, clean, local and free to source? Unless of course you own wealth in oil,pans gas, legacy auto and legacy energy companies….
The way Tony thinks is so refreshing and and every time I hear him talk it generates so much thought for me personally, Thanks for having him on your podcast.
Tony Seba's insights are always fascinating, and his record of predictions are just incredible. As a person who was born in 1960s GB it is incredible to look at what has changed in just 60 years. To be living through the transition to EVs, solar and other clean energy is fascinating. Great interview, again!
Thanks Robert. That was the podcast many of us wanted to hear. This should be required listening for our politicians . I made my MP aware of RethinkX a year ago . Hopefully market forces will succeed where protest hasn't so far.
Hey Philip - I ALSO wrote to my MP some years ago urging him to listen to Seba, and invite Seba to present to the UK parliament. (My letter seems to have been totally ignored.)
@@brunosmith6925 Hi Bruno, Initially I got a stock reply from my MP's researcher saying how wonderful gov policy was. I replied that I wanted to know if my MP had read the rethinkX report for COP26. Amazingly a few weeks later he replied and had read it. He agreed with some areas but sceptical re TASS and precision fermentation. Pleased he read it .
Given the accelerating climate emergency, unrestrained capitalism, and the delays in getting carbon out of the air & oceans, it is urgent that carbon removal from the present ecosystem be done now, ahead of a full phase-out of carbon burning, eg, stop production & use of charcoal; transfer charcoal-making facilities to making biochar; incentivizing the quick-growing of carbon-containing crops like hemp, and the harvesting of forest dead-wood & other carbon waste, that would all be channeled into biochar production. Biochar soil enrichment can store the carbon for hundreds of years while conserving & making soil more productive. This sequestration of carbon is done by pyrolysis which leaves the O2 still in the air. An added benefit of biochar occurs when carbon waste is removed from active conversion via rotting to methane (a much more powerful GHG in the short run than CO2).
Robert, it was three people/organisations that turned me from petrol to electricity over a decade ago. You (and fully charged), Tony Seba and VPRO from the Netherlands. The latter produced an amazing video that spanned solar, renewables, investment, vertically farming etc and I learned all I needed to know about how we have the opportunity to clean up our act and become sustainable. Geoff
Sorry to be on such a downer, (man) but the AI is going to turn us all into paperclips so it's all futile, (man)! Apologiz if you're a woman/mutant abomination/whatever, ('man').
Seba's visualization of the phases of disruption is very helpful to understanding how the entire process works. And Seba is correct about the accelerating pace of the disruptive convergence of technologies.
⭐⭐⭐"The #1 thing you need to do is give people the right to generate, store, and sell electricity!" This is so so very important! Thank you Tony Seba! Thank you Bobby!
Recent weather events here in New Zealand have resulted in significant power grid failures some of which may take weeks to rectify. We are now hearing news reports promoting 'micro grids' being an opportunity to add resilience to local electricity supply. Micro grids are local communities of consumer generators linking together and using their combined small scale generation to allow them to supply their own energy for at least short periods. We have PV so are well aware of the strangle hold that our big power generation companies have on the adoption, growth and economic viability of distributed generation. When every news story about a power outage is accompanied by the usual chorus of EVs being to blame and that EVs will overwhelm the capacity of our national grid I find it curious that while NZ is incentivising EV purchases they are sitting on their hands when it comes to promotion or incentivisation of PV. It's almost as though they don't want to upset the big generators present monopoly! Perhaps the present domestic crisis will provide some extra stimulus for the government to help the public and our power distribution system to put together a more resilient and equitable distributed generation framework. Here's hoping.
yeah another kiwi. I live off grid. The last week has been interesting No power no petrol. The second halve has massive implications for NZ and its dairy industry .
With all the doom and gloom about climate change it is also great to have a positive conversation about the possibilties and also that those possibilities are happening right now. Bring on the Solar Punk Future!
Tony Seba is always stimulating, but I do think that there are reasons to be skeptical about some of his predictions. Some times the development of new technologies follows a smooth curve, but sometimes tech development stalls or happens in bursts and plateaus, and Seba often just follows the cost curve without asking it the technology, resources, capital and people are there to make it happen. So far lithium ion batteries and PV solar have followed a pretty steady cost curve, but it is notable how concentrated solar, wind, geothermal and tidal energies have not, and many would have predicted their their costs would have dropped like PV solar. Seba thought in his 2010 book that concentrated solar would boom in the future and it didn't. 10 years ago it looked like vanadium redox flow batteries were going to be the future of grid storage, but it is LFP batteries that ended up winning. 5 years ago, very few could have predicted that the future of automotive batteries lay in sodium ion, but it is looking increasingly likely today. I also doubt that many could have predicted that salt water flow batteries would be the future of grid storage, but that is what I think today. My point is that tech which looks promising doesn't always develop the way that we thought it would, so you can't just look at the cost curves and project into the future. Tony Seba used to point to the falling cost of LIDAR to explain how autonomous vehicles would soon arrive, but today many question whether we even need LIDAR for autonomous vehicles. AI (specifically machine learning) is the critical factor for the development of autonomous vehicles and that has not happened according to a predictable curve. I think that it is important to listen to the roadblocks that the experts in the tech foresee, because not all roadblocks get solved along a smooth curve. One of the reasons why I'm skeptical about Seba's predictions about energy superabundance is because I don't think that wind energy is going to keep getting cheaper like solar and batteries, and we need wind to complement solar, because wind often blows when it isn't sunny and it is often sunny when there is no wind. We are going to have a hard time achieving energy superabundance if wind energy doesn't keep getting cheaper like PV solar. The second question which Simon Michaux raises is whether there are enough metal reserves to get to a low-carbon economy. While Michaux's calculations are totally wrong, because he makes calculations based on current tech, he still points to something important. Seba does need to pay attention to resource consumption when making his predictions about the future. We are going to have a copper shortage and aluminum isn't always an adequate replacement for copper. I'm skeptical that the R&D of brewing will happen like Seba predicts, but I don't know much about it, so I might be wrong. I would be interested in hearing what experts in the field think about Seba's predictions about brewing proteins to replace lifestock raising.
Very interesting talk, followed Tony's ideas for a good number of years and a lot of what he has described has happened and is happening. Solar, Wind and Battery is a game changer and the disruption of ICE tech would be more profound if it were not for the oil and gas giants lobbying and influencing policies around the world. Thanks Rob, thanks Tony great podcast, hopefully you will both do a followup!
As Tony says, ICE doesn’t stand a chance, solar energy is the cheapest form of electricity production in the history of mankind and getting cheaper by 10% per year, so juicing up an EV is going to be magnitudes cheaper than an ICE car and the performance of EV’s is magnitudes better than ICE
What can one say..? Utterly brilliant..? Tony Seba continues to astound me with his future predictions which are grounded in historical data. He's saying, this is the future if we don't stand in its way. Wow..!
Toni taught me about disruption in 2014 when most people laughed at his theories. I saw his use of cost curves could be applied to investing in disruptive technology. He is my hero and a legend. Has been life changing and rewarding to find those winners and watch the exponential growth even before the tipping point is reached. Funny thing is how most people just can't comprehend disruption and exponential growth even as they see it happening around them. Love your shows, great work and keep disrupting main stream media with guests like Toni.
Science explains why we do not see it happening. The human species is a behavioral byproduct of environmental influences. And everything in our past has been local and linear. We do not think exponentially. Everything in our lives up to this point has been A B C or 1 2 3 . We fail to comprehend exponential sequences. Our brain does not comprehend that if you double a number 30 times, its a 1.037 billion fold improvement.
I first heard of Tony Seba in late 2012. He raised my attention of what was happening with EVs, and to a start-up company, then called Tesla Motors. I did my homework, and invested in March 2013 quite a percentage of my stock portfolio in TSLA. So... I morally owe quite a bit to Tony! Hats down to him!
Truly excellent episode. Tony Seba's really spot on. I learned some new things: the Clean Energy U-Curve, and the coming disruption of animal farming. Amazing.
Tony Seba is just brilliant, amazing how few people actually gets this. When I told people around me in 2013 that everyone would be driving electric vehicles in 2030 and EVs would be cheaper than fossils this year (2023) they would just laugh at me... look at what happened. I don't remember when I first heard Tony talk but he is always on point with great research, well done! Edit: RUclips knows, I first saw Tony back in 2017, time flies!
In 1974 I worked for an aluminium company in Norway having worked for British Aluminium in Scotland. The cost of aluminium in Norway was a fraction of the cost to that in Scotland, but the cost of transport levelled the cost. Both countries used hydro power to generate the electricity to make the aluminium. Then came aluminium products from China ... game over.
Thanks Robert for this brilliant chat with Tony. Like you I have followed Tony Seba's lectures and presentations on the clean energy and transportation disruption for years. Tony uses facts and stats to demonstrate our rapid transformation to clean transport and energy which is most uncomfortable for the legacy industries that either choose to ignore the inevitable or spend millions on lobbying governments to prevent it.(eg: Toyota and Oil and Gas giants). Wonderful insights. You must get Tony back again soon. Cheers
Finally two of my favorite people have a conversation! Why did it take so long?? Everyone please learn from Tony Seba and his presentation of indisputable facts which he presents in a clear and concise way that is easy for everyone to understand. Thank you for this episode.
Tony Seba the man that showed us what we are living through now decades ago. Who's laughing now?! Thank you so much for having Mr. Seba on, he still doesn't get enough credit for what his think tank has said that have been proven to be correct.
Excellent content! My compliments to addressing food as well. I know it's not the core focus of fully charged. But as the channel expands I love to see and hear more about the "land liberation" (which, imo, more importantly includes Animal liberation) that Tony Seba concludes with. The good news: you don't have to wait for 2025 - 2030. Fantastic plant-based foods already exist. As far as I understood the PF will """only""" mimic animal protein at lower cost.
Actually, the same technology that uses yeast to grow human insuline is now being developed to produce dairy and meat products, and recently read about using it to grow wood to whatever shape you want; this and other developments will free us from growing crops and raising livestock in large corporate farms, that are highly prone to bacterial outbreaks. Furthermore, the setup for vertical farming can easily be adapted to growing meat and dairy; likewise using far less water, energy, etc, in a safer and cleaner environment. Irregardless of the eventual impacts of A.I., automation, robotics, etc, the abundant renewable energy that will soon make energy virtually free, will transform the face of our global society to such a scale it will be hard to imagine it's impacts.
The best Hour I have spent in some time. I was furiously writing down the info shared on this talk so I can use it to further educate my sphere of friends & family on what phasing in passive power can mean for the future. I'm trying to promote Clean Energy and EV's while taking away negativity about our future. Thanks, Robert and Tony. I will go through the day and the months ahead with a more positive and hopeful demeanor.
I need to remember the Amazon AWS analogy. One of the other bad arguments against solar I see regularly is “We build enough for summer, but what about winter?” No one would say “Amazon will build enough servers for regular business, but how could they possibly handle Christmas?”
The old electric grid has about 140 per cent of generation! That extra 40 per cent was only used for the peaks! The rest of the time it was not generating. With over capacity with green energy, you keep generating but use it to make ammonia, desalination, recycle aluminium, steel lots of things. Very cheap electricity. You have to think outside you tunnel vision. EVs are a small part of the what has to be done!
Actually almost 80% of the total capacity built in the last 30 years is either peaker or frequency modulation assets. The most expensive part of the industry to operate, and the easiest for storage to disrupt. We are already seeing its effects in Australia now.
Another very thought Provoking discussion involving Tony Seba, TBH I have heard most of this from Tony before but that is no reason not to go over it again. The majority of the world are not aware of these ideas. Tony predicted the rise of electric vehicles and large automotive makers laughed. Now Tesla is showing how these ideas move from theory to reality and the large OEMs are clearly struggling. A cleaner transport system is a worthwhile goal Thank you Robert for helping to bring such ideas out in to the open.
I had some trouble understanding what he was saying. Some visual aids such as graphs would have helped. Maybe you might be able to edit them in at a later time? Until then, the pdf you can get from that link appears to have all that. One thing I would change Solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) to Solar, wind, and storage (SWS). A lot of storage can be done with pumped water. Also, the batteries we use now can only hold their charge for a limited time, and also wear out and need to be replaced. Flow batteries promise to solve both problems, but are not grid scale yet. Also, I don't quite agree with "We will not need to impose a severe carbon tax on incumbent industries to force them to go clean", because the money from the tax could be evenly distributed to all adult residents who could use that money to go green. The pdf also seems to assume that our power grid is capable of transmitting any amount of power you want any distance you want. The reality is that the biggest problem right now in increasing our production of renewable energy is the hopelessly antiquated power grid which will take many decades to fix - there is no fast easy way to do this.
This is an incredible vision for the future. The idea of getting to superabundance by making smart choices now in a clearheaded way is refreshing. This is not some pie in the sky thing. It's choices we can make to get to a dramatically better future that would be unrecognizably better from what we experience today.
I’ve noticed a lot of critics and anxiety saying we can’t scale up solar because it takes energy to make the panels, or because we don’t have enough materials, and it’s such nonsense. The energy footprint to make a solar panel is about one year of its power output (that’s counting a real-world capacity factor of 20% or so), so they easily pay for themselves there. And solar panels are very simple. There’s an idea that they’re made of rare, exotic materials, but they’re not. They’re just spicy windows - a pane of glass with an aluminum/plastic frame, some wiring, and a thin silicon wafer (silicon is the second most common element on Earth) with a little doping of not-super-rare elements like boron. The most expensive material by far is the silver in the wire - about $20 worth in a panel. And there are no moving parts and no chemical reactions, so there’s very little to go wrong. Modern panels degrade about 0.3-0.5%/year. They’ll still be working a hundred years from now. This is SO vulnerable to economies of scale, both in manufacturing and deployment! With that in mind, it’s hard to see how solar wouldn’t come to dominate our energy. Tony Seba’s GOD (generation on demand) model blew my mind with its clarity. Solar will become so cheap that it’s cheaper just to install solar locally than transmit energy over a complex, expensive centralized grid. It will be cheaper to just add more solar panels than to add storage much of the time. They idea of paying for electricity as a service will fall apart - and with it, all the “necessary” base load power. Base load is already struggling, because we’re hitting points where solar drives grid cost to zero regularly. Base load can’t dial down, so they’re paying for the coal to make electricity they can’t sell, can barely even give away. As Tony points out, this breaks the economic model well before total replacement - it just hurries the transformation along.
I should add here that GOD energy with effectively zero cost leads to industrial uses that follow the supply curve. Another one of those “We’ve always done it this way, so doing otherwise must be impossible” things is the idea that industrial processes require 24/7 energy. A lot of things, like chemical fuel synthesis (green hydrogen, ammonia, hydrocarbons) and (yay!) carbon capture could be done with available energy, dialed down when it’s not there. The market will encourage this. GOD energy will create whole new industries, just as powered transportation did, and the internet did.
Thanks Robert, great as always, I know exactly where you are sitting, not very far from our home! Keep up your great work, absolutely fabulous. 👍 Listening to Tony Seba with his forward thinking and positive outlook has always amazed and fascinated me ever since the very first time I watched one of his videos, probably close to ten years ago. Having him interviewed in this show was really icing on the cake, thanks (to both of you) so much.
Seba focuses on the disruptive potential of technological advancements and the rapid adoption of renewables, Mark Mills The Last Optimist podcast underscores the physical, technical, and economic challenges inherent in this transition, suggesting a more gradual shift in the energy landscape.
Met him 13 years ago. I have been using his model to track and predict technological unemployment trends in my Modern Anthropological studies. These trends are ALL OVER the value chains of our society now. Labor is adverse to productivity and efficiency in the digital autonomous era we are now transitioning into. And Technology Convergences have been responsible for the creation, and eventual obsolescence of every social/economic/political system in history. This will be the eighth such occurrence in our evolutionary history.
Finally, someone with a good long interview with Tony Seba. I'm tired of of other networks interviewing so called experts and their premise framed wrong usually and their conclusion is wrong and they don't state their sources or if they do, it's a fossil fuel nonprofit think-tank organization.
I am not sure about all his predictions bit sometimes things really move fast, like here in Latvia where I live we only had 40 MW of solar installed and analysts said well in the coming years every next year we will have 15-20 MW added more. Then came war in Ukraine and spike in gas prices which is how a good portion of electricity in Latvia is generated and there was 120 MW of solar added, with another 240 MW still in various stages of development, and the total projected amount for a few coming years is over 1GW which would exceed Latvia’s needed capacity in the solar generating period. Gas is now again way cheaper and it may prevent as fast build up of solar as projected, but electricity prices are still higher than they were pre-war and the more solar panels go up on the roof, the more people also install, neighbors etc. With EV adoption that also grows. Sometimes the S curve can happen just like that, of course in this case there were external factors same as with Norway’s EV adoption due to gas car taxes, but at a certain point when the price is right and cost of old solution becomes too high, it happens
March 2023: Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with about 60 reactors under construction. Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region, though there are major plans for new units in Russia. Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading. Plant lifetime extension programs are maintaining capacity, particularly in the USA. In the 2022 edition (WEO 2022), the IEA's 'Stated Policies Scenario' sees installed nuclear capacity growth of over 43% from 2020 to 2050 (reaching about 590 GWe). About 100 power reactors with a total gross capacity of about 100,000 MWe are on order or planned, and over 300 more are proposed.
The move to renewables is not just significant because it may save us from a climate catastrophy but because it may operate as a catalyst to social and political change via the mass liberation of people from dependency upon the institutions that currently provide the basic necessities of life. If we can solve the housing problem, (having to live as bonded/mortgaged laborcr in order to afford a house) then things will/may be even better! HOWEVER:- What are most of us going to do if AI and automation leave most of us with no jobs? Governments need to address this issue as much as they need to address climate change. Of course they are most unlikely to because as we all know, governments attract the wrong kinds of people and are habituated to and more interested in excercising power over others rather than considering what their rightfull role should be. Power corrupts and so many are in Government NOT because they wish to emancipate humanity but because they enjoy controlling it, for their own perverted and egotistical ends! We can only continue to live in hope!
Great conversations. I agree with the idea of building a system for winter so in summer you have more than enough. I think car makers need to re-think the design of a car so they are even more efficient. Most people don't really need a big suv, a smaller car would need less battery resources. For the odd family road trip a roof pod and rear bike rack / smart trailer would be handy.
The grid as energy storage? For example, Washington State sends electricity to California during summer, their peak use period - while California sends electricity to Washington State during winter, our peak use period. Is a smart grid cheaper than local battery storage?
I understand and support Tony's idea of 'super power' through over production of renewables. I am however struggling to understand why a market system would build out wind and solar to 400% of demand for 11 months of the year without significant financial incentives. Falling renewable energy prices will surely curtail capacity build out. I am already seeing articles from the wind sector about falling contract prices, low government support (including windfall taxes) concluding that the business model is unsustainable - despite crazy electricity costs.
Tony Seba, represents a strand of Techno-Optimist thought, pretty disconnected from reality. For a more realistic vision of the probable future our own, Helen Thompson: Disorder Europe's Energy Reckoning is a better reference point...
His SWB predictions are becoming our Australian reality with the penetration of rooftop solar and it's interesting watching the energy companies trying to deal with it - at the moment curtailing excess production, but more recently in NSW, energy companies are designing tariffs around a two way flow from homes to grid. Naturally, some media are calling this a 'solar tax' in an attempt to slow the change and are no doubt funded by those with vested interests in staying with the old system. if these new tariffs do come into effect and the cost of batteries continues to fall, then this will just accelerate the SWB reality as we all store our midday production and either use or sell it to the grid after 4pm.
Robert, in regard to Seba's total disruption explanations you should have a look at Munro Live's Why Sandy is Disappointed in Audi which just dropped on YT. The title is an an understatement and he demonstrates that Audi/VW just don't get it and seem incapable of change.
@49:45 among people who control their property (rent/lease a physical piece of land vs just rooms in a larger building) I think solar adoption is happening fastest among the poorest cohort. The trailer parks near where I live are absolutely covered in solar panels, most of them leaning against buildings or screwed to bits of wood on roofs... These aren't new panels, and the installs certainly aren't permitted, but the residents aren't paying for electricity when the sun is shining 👍
They will have to compete on price. They can't just have any margins they want even if there isn't much competition. Solar panels will be do cheap to make that energy companies wont be able to limit supply of energy to keep profits up. Price of electricity must fall as a result
Raw materials, infrastructure and production capacities are limitting factors. Even in 2040...2050 new ICE cars will be sold in Russia, parts of China, Africa and South America.
What about the problem of producing enough solar panels? Specifically there isnt enough silver. As we try to increase the production of solar panels we will very quickly consume the entire amount of silver mined eac year just for solar panels.
In the winter you can still transport electricity from places on or over the equator. This is a quite vulnerable though. I think we also need some long term storage, for example aluminum powder, or synthetic kerosene (kerosene made from: air, water, and clean electricity).
Can't get enough of Tony Seba!
Oh, I can. He tends to forget that the future is not evenly distributed. The car was 10x better than the horse, and never spread cholera. Electric trade vans can barely go 100 km trips in deep cold.
Same here 😮
@@RandyTWesterdream on chummy chum! You speak of yesterday maybe today, you can’t grasp that Electric Vans will only get better, not sit in permanent pause! Grow up please and spout your denial elsewhere please!
We need more visionaries like Tony
Smart man. Loved his talk years ago.
Things happen quickly once the ball starts rolling.
FINALLY somebody says it - the transition to renewables will unleash an “age of abundance”. I have been banging on about this for YEARS. This is the message we should be promoting, because it’s true! Not an age of less as the fossil fuel companies would have us believe.
I’d describe myself as fairly “green”, but even if I didn’t care one iota about the environment I’d still be hugely supportive of renewables. Why on earth would you *not* want to replace digging up fossil fuels with energy sources that will be forever available, clean, local and free to source?
Unless of course you own wealth in oil,pans gas, legacy auto and legacy energy companies….
It will be an age of starvation and collapse.
The way Tony thinks is so refreshing and and every time I hear him talk it generates so much thought for me personally, Thanks for having him on your podcast.
Tony Seba's insights are always fascinating, and his record of predictions are just incredible. As a person who was born in 1960s GB it is incredible to look at what has changed in just 60 years. To be living through the transition to EVs, solar and other clean energy is fascinating. Great interview, again!
Thanks Robert. That was the podcast many of us wanted to hear. This should be required listening for our politicians . I made my MP aware of RethinkX a year ago . Hopefully market forces will succeed where protest hasn't so far.
Hey Philip - I ALSO wrote to my MP some years ago urging him to listen to Seba, and invite Seba to present to the UK parliament. (My letter seems to have been totally ignored.)
@@brunosmith6925 Hi Bruno, Initially I got a stock reply from my MP's researcher saying how wonderful gov policy was. I replied that I wanted to know if my MP had read the rethinkX report for COP26. Amazingly a few weeks later he replied and had read it. He agreed with some areas but sceptical re TASS and precision fermentation. Pleased he read it .
Given the accelerating climate emergency, unrestrained capitalism, and the delays in getting carbon out of the air & oceans, it is urgent that carbon removal from the present ecosystem be done now, ahead of a full phase-out of carbon burning, eg, stop production & use of charcoal; transfer charcoal-making facilities to making biochar; incentivizing the quick-growing of carbon-containing crops like hemp, and the harvesting of forest dead-wood & other carbon waste, that would all be channeled into biochar production.
Biochar soil enrichment can store the carbon for hundreds of years while conserving & making soil more productive. This sequestration of carbon is done by pyrolysis which leaves the O2 still in the air. An added benefit of biochar occurs when carbon waste is removed from active conversion via rotting to methane (a much more powerful GHG in the short run than CO2).
Robert, it was three people/organisations that turned me from petrol to electricity over a decade ago. You (and fully charged), Tony Seba and VPRO from the Netherlands. The latter produced an amazing video that spanned solar, renewables, investment, vertically farming etc and I learned all I needed to know about how we have the opportunity to clean up our act and become sustainable. Geoff
Mind blown! Wow, the hope meter ticked up a notch. I could listen to his ideas all day, hope you have him on again soon.
Sorry to be on such a downer, (man) but the AI is going to turn us all into paperclips so it's all futile, (man)! Apologiz if you're a woman/mutant abomination/whatever, ('man').
Excellent podcast! Like Tony said in the end, please don’t let five years go by before he comes on the show again!
It'll be over by then anyway.
Congratulations on 200 episodes! Keep up the good work 👍
Seba's visualization of the phases of disruption is very helpful to understanding how the entire process works. And Seba is correct about the accelerating pace of the disruptive convergence of technologies.
Best show ever, thanks Robert and Tony
⭐⭐⭐"The #1 thing you need to do is give people the right to generate, store, and sell electricity!"
This is so so very important! Thank you Tony Seba! Thank you Bobby!
Recent weather events here in New Zealand have resulted in significant power grid failures some of which may take weeks to rectify. We are now hearing news reports promoting 'micro grids' being an opportunity to add resilience to local electricity supply. Micro grids are local communities of consumer generators linking together and using their combined small scale generation to allow them to supply their own energy for at least short periods.
We have PV so are well aware of the strangle hold that our big power generation companies have on the adoption, growth and economic viability of distributed generation. When every news story about a power outage is accompanied by the usual chorus of EVs being to blame and that EVs will overwhelm the capacity of our national grid I find it curious that while NZ is incentivising EV purchases they are sitting on their hands when it comes to promotion or incentivisation of PV. It's almost as though they don't want to upset the big generators present monopoly!
Perhaps the present domestic crisis will provide some extra stimulus for the government to help the public and our power distribution system to put together a more resilient and equitable distributed generation framework. Here's hoping.
yeah another kiwi.
I live off grid.
The last week has been interesting
No power no petrol.
The second halve has massive implications for NZ and its dairy industry .
Govt is majority owner of Genesis, Mercury and Meridian, so they have a conflict of interest with pushing energy independence.
Or bring on fracking in NZ
@@jimsouthlondon7061 You're a bit slow on that front Jim. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking_in_New_Zealand
Now that Jacinda ,s gone you kiwi can get back to fracking
I look forward to this podcast every week.
It’s well worth watching all RethinkX videos. Very eye opening.
With all the doom and gloom about climate change it is also great to have a positive conversation about the possibilties and also that those possibilities are happening right now. Bring on the Solar Punk Future!
I cannot tire listening to Tony
Tony Seba is always stimulating, but I do think that there are reasons to be skeptical about some of his predictions. Some times the development of new technologies follows a smooth curve, but sometimes tech development stalls or happens in bursts and plateaus, and Seba often just follows the cost curve without asking it the technology, resources, capital and people are there to make it happen. So far lithium ion batteries and PV solar have followed a pretty steady cost curve, but it is notable how concentrated solar, wind, geothermal and tidal energies have not, and many would have predicted their their costs would have dropped like PV solar. Seba thought in his 2010 book that concentrated solar would boom in the future and it didn't.
10 years ago it looked like vanadium redox flow batteries were going to be the future of grid storage, but it is LFP batteries that ended up winning. 5 years ago, very few could have predicted that the future of automotive batteries lay in sodium ion, but it is looking increasingly likely today. I also doubt that many could have predicted that salt water flow batteries would be the future of grid storage, but that is what I think today. My point is that tech which looks promising doesn't always develop the way that we thought it would, so you can't just look at the cost curves and project into the future. Tony Seba used to point to the falling cost of LIDAR to explain how autonomous vehicles would soon arrive, but today many question whether we even need LIDAR for autonomous vehicles. AI (specifically machine learning) is the critical factor for the development of autonomous vehicles and that has not happened according to a predictable curve. I think that it is important to listen to the roadblocks that the experts in the tech foresee, because not all roadblocks get solved along a smooth curve.
One of the reasons why I'm skeptical about Seba's predictions about energy superabundance is because I don't think that wind energy is going to keep getting cheaper like solar and batteries, and we need wind to complement solar, because wind often blows when it isn't sunny and it is often sunny when there is no wind. We are going to have a hard time achieving energy superabundance if wind energy doesn't keep getting cheaper like PV solar. The second question which Simon Michaux raises is whether there are enough metal reserves to get to a low-carbon economy. While Michaux's calculations are totally wrong, because he makes calculations based on current tech, he still points to something important. Seba does need to pay attention to resource consumption when making his predictions about the future. We are going to have a copper shortage and aluminum isn't always an adequate replacement for copper.
I'm skeptical that the R&D of brewing will happen like Seba predicts, but I don't know much about it, so I might be wrong. I would be interested in hearing what experts in the field think about Seba's predictions about brewing proteins to replace lifestock raising.
Tony Seba opened up my mind to a whole lot of hope and showed me the way forward.
Very interesting talk, followed Tony's ideas for a good number of years and a lot of what he has described has happened and is happening. Solar, Wind and Battery is a game changer and the disruption of ICE tech would be more profound if it were not for the oil and gas giants lobbying and influencing policies around the world. Thanks Rob, thanks Tony great podcast, hopefully you will both do a followup!
As Tony says, ICE doesn’t stand a chance, solar energy is the cheapest form of electricity production in the history of mankind and getting cheaper by 10% per year, so juicing up an EV is going to be magnitudes cheaper than an ICE car and the performance of EV’s is magnitudes better than ICE
Tony has always been my inspiration that lead me to believe in what Elon is doing, but there is so much more. i need to open my mind.
Wonderful! What a coup - Fully Charged and Tony Seba together! Stars are aligning...
What can one say..? Utterly brilliant..? Tony Seba continues to astound me with his future predictions which are grounded in historical data. He's saying, this is the future if we don't stand in its way. Wow..!
the 2 of you together... Honoring my wishes. Thank you both.
Tony’s warnings are like pearls to swine,his visions are all rolling out as predicted, a great mind 👍👏👏👏👏
I was expecting Tony’s comments about electricity generation / storage and EVs. But his insight into new ways to make animal protein was new to me.
Toni taught me about disruption in 2014 when most people laughed at his theories. I saw his use of cost curves could be applied to investing in disruptive technology. He is my hero and a legend. Has been life changing and rewarding to find those winners and watch the exponential growth even before the tipping point is reached.
Funny thing is how most people just can't comprehend disruption and exponential growth even as they see it happening around them.
Love your shows, great work and keep disrupting main stream media with guests like Toni.
Science explains why we do not see it happening. The human species is a behavioral byproduct of environmental influences. And everything in our past has been local and linear. We do not think exponentially. Everything in our lives up to this point has been A B C or 1 2 3 . We fail to comprehend exponential sequences. Our brain does not comprehend that if you double a number 30 times, its a 1.037 billion fold improvement.
I first heard of Tony Seba in late 2012. He raised my attention of what was happening with EVs, and to a start-up company, then called Tesla Motors. I did my homework, and invested in March 2013 quite a percentage of my stock portfolio in TSLA. So... I morally owe quite a bit to Tony! Hats down to him!
Truly excellent episode. Tony Seba's really spot on. I learned some new things: the Clean Energy U-Curve, and the coming disruption of animal farming. Amazing.
This is the most hope I have had for the future in 20 years!!!❤❤❤
Tony Seba is a visionary, it's so nice to hear the positive view of technology rather than the negative view of the future with technology.
Tony Seba is just brilliant, amazing how few people actually gets this. When I told people around me in 2013 that everyone would be driving electric vehicles in 2030 and EVs would be cheaper than fossils this year (2023) they would just laugh at me... look at what happened.
I don't remember when I first heard Tony talk but he is always on point with great research, well done!
Edit: RUclips knows, I first saw Tony back in 2017, time flies!
We are still laughing at him :) Solar and wind will not work past 20% to 30% of grid.
@@shawnnoyes4620 ? Denmark is at 60% wind + solar 🤦♂️
@@Arpedk And has one of the highest prices per kWh in the world.
@@Arpedk ... and depending on the Swedish and Norwegian grid if the wind stops blowing. 😏
In 1974 I worked for an aluminium company in Norway having worked for British Aluminium in Scotland. The cost of aluminium in Norway was a fraction of the cost to that in Scotland, but the cost of transport levelled the cost. Both countries used hydro power to generate the electricity to make the aluminium. Then came aluminium products from China ... game over.
I very rarely can listen to a podcast longer than 20 minutes… this one I could listen without losing my attention
Thanks Robert for this brilliant chat with Tony. Like you I have followed Tony Seba's lectures and presentations on the clean energy and transportation disruption for years. Tony uses facts and stats to demonstrate our rapid transformation to clean transport and energy which is most uncomfortable for the legacy industries that either choose to ignore the inevitable or spend millions on lobbying governments to prevent it.(eg: Toyota and Oil and Gas giants). Wonderful insights. You must get Tony back again soon. Cheers
Finally two of my favorite people have a conversation! Why did it take so long?? Everyone please learn from Tony Seba and his presentation of indisputable facts which he presents in a clear and concise way that is easy for everyone to understand. Thank you for this episode.
Tony Seba the man that showed us what we are living through now decades ago. Who's laughing now?! Thank you so much for having Mr. Seba on, he still doesn't get enough credit for what his think tank has said that have been proven to be correct.
Excellent content! My compliments to addressing food as well. I know it's not the core focus of fully charged. But as the channel expands I love to see and hear more about the "land liberation" (which, imo, more importantly includes Animal liberation) that Tony Seba concludes with.
The good news: you don't have to wait for 2025 - 2030. Fantastic plant-based foods already exist. As far as I understood the PF will """only""" mimic animal protein at lower cost.
Actually, the same technology that uses yeast to grow human insuline is now being developed to produce dairy and meat products, and recently read about using it to grow wood to whatever shape you want; this and other developments will free us from growing crops and raising livestock in large corporate farms, that are highly prone to bacterial outbreaks. Furthermore, the setup for vertical farming can easily be adapted to growing meat and dairy; likewise using far less water, energy, etc, in a safer and cleaner environment.
Irregardless of the eventual impacts of A.I., automation, robotics, etc, the abundant renewable energy that will soon make energy virtually free, will transform the face of our global society to such a scale it will be hard to imagine it's impacts.
The best Hour I have spent in some time. I was furiously writing down the info shared on this talk so I can use it to further educate my sphere of friends & family on what phasing in passive power can mean for the future. I'm trying to promote Clean Energy and EV's while taking away negativity about our future. Thanks, Robert and Tony. I will go through the day and the months ahead with a more positive and hopeful demeanor.
TONY IN THE HOUSE!
I need to remember the Amazon AWS analogy. One of the other bad arguments against solar I see regularly is “We build enough for summer, but what about winter?” No one would say “Amazon will build enough servers for regular business, but how could they possibly handle Christmas?”
The old electric grid has about 140 per cent of generation! That extra 40 per cent was only used for the peaks! The rest of the time it was not generating. With over capacity with green energy, you keep generating but use it to make ammonia, desalination, recycle aluminium, steel lots of things. Very cheap electricity. You have to think outside you tunnel vision. EVs are a small part of the what has to be done!
Actually almost 80% of the total capacity built in the last 30 years is either peaker or frequency modulation assets. The most expensive part of the industry to operate, and the easiest for storage to disrupt. We are already seeing its effects in Australia now.
One of THE BEST interviews I heard in recent years! Damn, this was so eye-opening.
Best show you’ve done. Thanks Robert. Would love to hear Tony again
Another very thought Provoking discussion involving Tony Seba, TBH I have heard most of this from Tony before but that is no reason not to go over it again. The majority of the world are not aware of these ideas. Tony predicted the rise of electric vehicles and large automotive makers laughed. Now Tesla is showing how these ideas move from theory to reality and the large OEMs are clearly struggling. A cleaner transport system is a worthwhile goal Thank you Robert for helping to bring such ideas out in to the open.
I had some trouble understanding what he was saying. Some visual aids such as graphs would have helped. Maybe you might be able to edit them in at a later time? Until then, the pdf you can get from that link appears to have all that.
One thing I would change Solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) to Solar, wind, and storage (SWS). A lot of storage can be done with pumped water. Also, the batteries we use now can only hold their charge for a limited time, and also wear out and need to be replaced. Flow batteries promise to solve both problems, but are not grid scale yet.
Also, I don't quite agree with "We will not need to impose a severe carbon tax on incumbent industries to force them to go clean", because the money from the tax could be evenly distributed to all adult residents who could use that money to go green.
The pdf also seems to assume that our power grid is capable of transmitting any amount of power you want any distance you want. The reality is that the biggest problem right now in increasing our production of renewable energy is the hopelessly antiquated power grid which will take many decades to fix - there is no fast easy way to do this.
Well, I have truely be open to many great possibilities which I don't know exist. Thank you Tony and of course Rob
This is an incredible vision for the future. The idea of getting to superabundance by making smart choices now in a clearheaded way is refreshing. This is not some pie in the sky thing. It's choices we can make to get to a dramatically better future that would be unrecognizably better from what we experience today.
Tony is a modern day Oracle
God, I hope so.
I have been enjoyed, so thank you for delivering.
Was bummed about lack of video...started listening and holy heck this was interesting! Well worth the listen, exciting times ahead 😍
I’ve noticed a lot of critics and anxiety saying we can’t scale up solar because it takes energy to make the panels, or because we don’t have enough materials, and it’s such nonsense. The energy footprint to make a solar panel is about one year of its power output (that’s counting a real-world capacity factor of 20% or so), so they easily pay for themselves there. And solar panels are very simple. There’s an idea that they’re made of rare, exotic materials, but they’re not. They’re just spicy windows - a pane of glass with an aluminum/plastic frame, some wiring, and a thin silicon wafer (silicon is the second most common element on Earth) with a little doping of not-super-rare elements like boron. The most expensive material by far is the silver in the wire - about $20 worth in a panel. And there are no moving parts and no chemical reactions, so there’s very little to go wrong. Modern panels degrade about 0.3-0.5%/year. They’ll still be working a hundred years from now. This is SO vulnerable to economies of scale, both in manufacturing and deployment!
With that in mind, it’s hard to see how solar wouldn’t come to dominate our energy. Tony Seba’s GOD (generation on demand) model blew my mind with its clarity. Solar will become so cheap that it’s cheaper just to install solar locally than transmit energy over a complex, expensive centralized grid. It will be cheaper to just add more solar panels than to add storage much of the time. They idea of paying for electricity as a service will fall apart - and with it, all the “necessary” base load power. Base load is already struggling, because we’re hitting points where solar drives grid cost to zero regularly. Base load can’t dial down, so they’re paying for the coal to make electricity they can’t sell, can barely even give away. As Tony points out, this breaks the economic model well before total replacement - it just hurries the transformation along.
I should add here that GOD energy with effectively zero cost leads to industrial uses that follow the supply curve. Another one of those “We’ve always done it this way, so doing otherwise must be impossible” things is the idea that industrial processes require 24/7 energy. A lot of things, like chemical fuel synthesis (green hydrogen, ammonia, hydrocarbons) and (yay!) carbon capture could be done with available energy, dialed down when it’s not there. The market will encourage this. GOD energy will create whole new industries, just as powered transportation did, and the internet did.
Robert, nice to see you like Rock & Roll!!... Having......
Tony Siba!!!!! An absolute Rock Star!!
Nice podcast ! Thank you.
Very excited about precision fermentation!
What a super interview. Another brilliant podcast. Thank you Bob and Tony. More light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
Enlightening Innovative Concepts .. Gives me some optimism for our future ..
Fascinating interview - looking forward to hearing more from Tony in future episodes.
A brilliant podcast, Tony is a genius! I loved the food section, I had no idea cheese was precision fermented.
Thanks Robert, great as always, I know exactly where you are sitting, not very far from our home!
Keep up your great work, absolutely fabulous. 👍
Listening to Tony Seba with his forward thinking and positive outlook has always amazed and fascinated me ever since the very first time I watched one of his videos, probably close to ten years ago. Having him interviewed in this show was really icing on the cake, thanks (to both of you) so much.
I’m binge listening to past shows. They are so good.
Seba focuses on the disruptive potential of technological advancements and the rapid adoption of renewables, Mark Mills The Last Optimist podcast underscores the physical, technical, and economic challenges inherent in this transition, suggesting a more gradual shift in the energy landscape.
🤗 THANKS ROBERT,WE APPRECIATE TONY FOR YEARS…EVER SINCE FIRST HEARD ABOUT HIM…OF COURSE,NO ONE IS RIGHT ALL THE TIME 🤷♂️🤗💚💚💚
Met him 13 years ago. I have been using his model to track and predict technological unemployment trends in my Modern Anthropological studies. These trends are ALL OVER the value chains of our society now. Labor is adverse to productivity and efficiency in the digital autonomous era we are now transitioning into. And Technology Convergences have been responsible for the creation, and eventual obsolescence of every social/economic/political system in history. This will be the eighth such occurrence in our evolutionary history.
@@davefroman4700 🤗VERY INTERESTING DAVE 🧐💚💚💚
@@davefroman4700 Interested in the eight Technology Convergences you mention - do you have more on this somewhere accessible I could explore please?
Finally, someone with a good long interview with Tony Seba. I'm tired of of other networks interviewing so called experts and their premise framed wrong usually and their conclusion is wrong and they don't state their sources or if they do, it's a fossil fuel nonprofit think-tank organization.
I am not sure about all his predictions bit sometimes things really move fast, like here in Latvia where I live we only had 40 MW of solar installed and analysts said well in the coming years every next year we will have 15-20 MW added more. Then came war in Ukraine and spike in gas prices which is how a good portion of electricity in Latvia is generated and there was 120 MW of solar added, with another 240 MW still in various stages of development, and the total projected amount for a few coming years is over 1GW which would exceed Latvia’s needed capacity in the solar generating period.
Gas is now again way cheaper and it may prevent as fast build up of solar as projected, but electricity prices are still higher than they were pre-war and the more solar panels go up on the roof, the more people also install, neighbors etc. With EV adoption that also grows. Sometimes the S curve can happen just like that, of course in this case there were external factors same as with Norway’s EV adoption due to gas car taxes, but at a certain point when the price is right and cost of old solution becomes too high, it happens
The social implications are immense, of the topics Tony Seba has covered.
This podcast made me feel so happy
I watch/listen on RUclips exclusively. I like to see your faces. But I will obviously still listen. Thank you for the heads up, too, Robert.
March 2023: Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with about 60 reactors under construction.
Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region, though there are major plans for new units in Russia.
Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading.
Plant lifetime extension programs are maintaining capacity, particularly in the USA. In the 2022 edition (WEO 2022), the IEA's 'Stated Policies Scenario' sees installed nuclear capacity growth of over 43% from 2020 to 2050 (reaching about 590 GWe). About 100 power reactors with a total gross capacity of about 100,000 MWe are on order or planned, and over 300 more are proposed.
Great interview 👍
Tony Seba the GOAT
Tony Seba is a genius and an asset to humanity.
well above average show. great pick and great job!!!
Awesome interview! I sure hope he’s right about the precision fermentation thing.
The move to renewables is not just significant because it may save us from a climate catastrophy but because it may operate as a catalyst to social and political change via the mass liberation of people from dependency upon the institutions that currently provide the basic necessities of life. If we can solve the housing problem, (having to live as bonded/mortgaged laborcr in order to afford a house) then things will/may be even better!
HOWEVER:-
What are most of us going to do if AI and automation leave most of us with no jobs?
Governments need to address this issue as much as they need to address climate change. Of course they are most unlikely to because as we all know, governments attract the wrong kinds of people and are habituated to and more interested in excercising power over others rather than considering what their rightfull role should be.
Power corrupts and so many are in Government NOT because they wish to emancipate humanity but because they enjoy controlling it, for their own perverted and egotistical ends!
We can only continue to live in hope!
Great conversations. I agree with the idea of building a system for winter so in summer you have more than enough. I think car makers need to re-think the design of a car so they are even more efficient. Most people don't really need a big suv, a smaller car would need less battery resources. For the odd family road trip a roof pod and rear bike rack / smart trailer would be handy.
Autonomy satisfies those requirements.
it's not really the "size" per se the issue, it's the design: Tesla's, Hyundai Ioniq's original design or Ioniq 6, have what is needed: aerodynamics.
Autonomy will negate the need of ownership for 80% of the population. At 1/10th the cost.
Thanks for the expose on the Capex needed. Would love to see this being extended to an opex cost comparison with the situation as-is.
Wonderful conversation! I was really looking forward to this one
The grid as energy storage? For example, Washington State sends electricity to California during summer, their peak use period - while California sends electricity to Washington State during winter, our peak use period. Is a smart grid cheaper than local battery storage?
I understand and support Tony's idea of 'super power' through over production of renewables. I am however struggling to understand why a market system would build out wind and solar to 400% of demand for 11 months of the year without significant financial incentives. Falling renewable energy prices will surely curtail capacity build out. I am already seeing articles from the wind sector about falling contract prices, low government support (including windfall taxes) concluding that the business model is unsustainable - despite crazy electricity costs.
Secon time I've listened to thi one. Superb discussion.
Great interview!! Would love another one sometime in the near future 🙏🏼😁🙋🏻♂️
Awwwwwwwwsome! Luv Tony and his team’s research.
Very impressive. Thank you for the podcast!!
You get some brilliant guests!
Wonderful discussion.
tony is a genius. 💯
Quality for the food planet and human care. Trinity Vandenacre thanks
Ahhh! the Soothsayer Seba. Nice one Rob
Nice to see optimism.
Tony Seba, represents a strand of Techno-Optimist thought, pretty disconnected from reality. For a more realistic vision of the probable future our own, Helen Thompson: Disorder Europe's Energy Reckoning is a better reference point...
His SWB predictions are becoming our Australian reality with the penetration of rooftop solar and it's interesting watching the energy companies trying to deal with it - at the moment curtailing excess production, but more recently in NSW, energy companies are designing tariffs around a two way flow from homes to grid. Naturally, some media are calling this a 'solar tax' in an attempt to slow the change and are no doubt funded by those with vested interests in staying with the old system. if these new tariffs do come into effect and the cost of batteries continues to fall, then this will just accelerate the SWB reality as we all store our midday production and either use or sell it to the grid after 4pm.
Robert, in regard to Seba's total disruption explanations you should have a look at Munro Live's Why Sandy is Disappointed in Audi which just dropped on YT. The title is an an understatement and he demonstrates that Audi/VW just don't get it and seem incapable of change.
@49:45 among people who control their property (rent/lease a physical piece of land vs just rooms in a larger building) I think solar adoption is happening fastest among the poorest cohort. The trailer parks near where I live are absolutely covered in solar panels, most of them leaning against buildings or screwed to bits of wood on roofs... These aren't new panels, and the installs certainly aren't permitted, but the residents aren't paying for electricity when the sun is shining 👍
Why everyone think things will get cheaper? Things will get cheaper to produce but not cheaper to buy. Companies always take the profit.
They will have to compete on price. They can't just have any margins they want even if there isn't much competition. Solar panels will be do cheap to make that energy companies wont be able to limit supply of energy to keep profits up. Price of electricity must fall as a result
I hope the aspect of freeing up land really happens. That would be transformative
An interesting question, if it took 15 years to convert horse to automotive why is it taking 25 years to go from ICV to BEV?
Raw materials, infrastructure and production capacities are limitting factors.
Even in 2040...2050 new ICE cars will be sold in Russia, parts of China, Africa and South America.
What about the problem of producing enough solar panels? Specifically there isnt enough silver. As we try to increase the production of solar panels we will very quickly consume the entire amount of silver mined eac year just for solar panels.
It is highly likely prices will rise again.
Wind energy is facing the same problem.
In the winter you can still transport electricity from places on or over the equator. This is a quite vulnerable though. I think we also need some long term storage, for example aluminum powder, or synthetic kerosene (kerosene made from: air, water, and clean electricity).