Alex Bakir (Norrsken Evolve): Europe’s AI ambitions need a new electricity system

0:00Alex Bakir:I'm going to tell you a story about why Europe does not run absolutely freaking everything on cheap, clean electricity. I'm going to try to convince you that we should and that you should join the Electro Union. Energy drives economic and political transition. Coal sparked the Industrial Revolution. The 20th century was largely a story of oil and gas. That influenced borders in the Middle East to the rise of the U.S. as the economic hegemon. And today they are equipped with their own commission on energy dominance. Electricity is increasingly going to underpin tomorrow. AI data centers run on electricity.

0:40Alex Bakir:If we don't have them, that's going to be a problem. We fully have what we need here in Europe to run on clean electricity. We have the technologists building solutions. We absolutely do have the capital. Don't let anyone make you think otherwise. The money is there. We know what rules need to change, but the problem is all of this stuff is just too We are live and five we are live. We are live three two

1:15Alex Bakir:For a few minutes we are going to talk about electricity. I'm going to tell you a story about why Europe does not run absolutely freaking everything on cheap clean electricity. I'm going to try to convince you that we should and that you should join the Electro Union. So for context, I'm Alex. I work at a place called Norsken. It's a foundation and VC fund that invests in people trying to solve tomorrow's challenges. But I want to start with the 1980s. The 1980s were fabulous. Wall Street exuberism, unbridled capitalism, and some of the finest music that our species has ever produced. New Order, The Pet Shop Boys, Queen, and the 1989 smash hit, The Fall of the Berlin Wall.

2:13Alex Bakir:Now that moment marked the end of a European chapter that began when we stopped fighting each other in around 1945. Back then we were actually super happy to align ourselves with our friends, I might say saviors, the United States. The Truman Doctrine provided the economic capital we needed to rebuild all of this. and the security guarantees that made disarmament affordable and frankly viable for a continent that had been at each other's throats for centuries. The U.S. was the de facto economic guarantor of the first Pokemon evolution of the European Union, the 1952 steel and coal community. Now, that not only marked the start of the European project, it also hardwired fossil fuels into our industrial system.

3:06Alex Bakir:And that industrial system grew a lot until World Trade Organization rules kicked in. About 1975, we decided that we should build an economy based on finance and services. So we ended up being able to import the stuff we wanted from the Far East. We could import our energy from the Middle East and later Russia, and we could continue to import our security from the United States. This was the good life. If anyone has seen this meme, you should see it. It's awesome. These guys are living the good life. So, what went wrong?

3:49Alex Bakir:So this picture was shown in 2013. It was designed to shock delegates at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to actually do something. This is a hypothetical France in the year 2050. Now, if anyone went to France this year, you're also going to know that this isn't really hypothetical. We're right here a full 24 years ahead of schedule. This is not a talk about climate change. It's really not. But you should know that I studied environmental science at Cambridge and full-on believe that we are on course to leave a planet that just isn't survivable for future generations. And our current generation seems to be somewhat distracted.

4:37Alex Bakir:We're distracted because we're at war. The front line, believe it or not, is less than a day's drive away from right here. Yet we continue to import fossil fuels from our enemy. The gas we are no longer importing from Russia, we are buying from the U.S. via rapidly constructed LNG terminals. Now, I think anyone that's read the prize, there's a hidden book reference there, read it if you haven't, will know that energy drives economic and political transition. Coal sparked the Industrial Revolution. The 20th century was largely a story of oil and gas. That influenced borders in the Middle East to the rise of the US as the economic hegemon.

5:23Alex Bakir:And today, they are equipped with their own commission on energy dominance. So what the heck is that? It does exactly what you would expect it to do. It tries to make sure the U.S. dominates global energy based on the resources it has, which is oil and gas. Now, Europe doesn't have a lot of that. Instead, in Europe, we have shocks. We are currently living through our third energy price shock. in four years. And while the story is always slightly different, the vulnerability is the same. Europe runs on fuel it doesn't own, ship through waters it does not control. And it freaking hurts to the tune of billions of euros.

6:15Alex Bakir:Europe paid an extra 50 billion in the first 100 days of the US conflict with Iran, 50 billion, we seem to have no options. There's like no hedge. But it's wrong. The one form of abundant energy we could generate domestically on our soil is electricity from things like solar, hydro, wind, even nuclear. Solar costs have dropped 90 % in 10 years. For the first time, renewables are actually powering most of the world's electricity.

6:51Alex Bakir:I forgot what I meant to say here, but it will come back to me. So Europe powered most of the world. Okay. So what exactly is the problem? Why are we not able to run a continent of electricity? And electricity is increasingly going to underpin tomorrow. AI data centers run on electricity. If we don't have them, that's going to be a problem. So why don't we have abundant, cheap, clean electricity today? Well, there are a bunch of problems. Fred is not one of them. Fred was actually pretty awesome. Fred was one of the engineers that helped build our electricity system in the 1950s and 60s. The problem is no one's upgraded his work since.

7:35Alex Bakir:The line to connect to the European grid is decades long if you're trying to put up a new renewable energy project or battery system. Decades long. And the line to connect the AI data centers we need is even freaking longer. The second problem is electricity here, the stuff that powers this beautiful festival, is actually really expensive. It's like 50 % more than it costs in China or the US. So that not only hits economic competitiveness, it's also something that we have designed through the world's most complex system of tariffs, trade barriers, and the fact that our national grids don't connect to each other.

8:13Alex Bakir:This is all under our control, and it is not okay. The third problem is today our attempts to electrify everything rely on swapping one dependency for another. Rather than importing fossil fuels we're at a big risk of importing electronics at the tail end of a supply chain that runs through China and is largely driven by increasingly rare earth and metals. So there has to be a better way. I believe that we fully have what we need here in Europe to run on clean electricity. We have the technologists building solutions. We absolutely do have the capital. Don't let anyone make you think otherwise.

8:55Alex Bakir:The money is there. We know what rules need to change. But the problem is all of this stuff is just too fragmented. There is no momentum. So Norskund created the Electro-Union. The Electro-Union is a call for Europe to become the world's first electro-continent. So what do we mean by that? We mean a continent that runs at least 50 % of its economy on clean, domestically produced, domestically sourced, domestically manufactured electricity. And about 100 organizations have already joined us, including some of the guys you heard talking today. Corporate giants like H &M and the technologists building what we need, the full electrification stack.

9:37Alex Bakir:But this is not enough. No one pays attention to what's going on, but the European Commission just released a report charting our future to electricity sort of independence, and guess what? There's like no targets in it, so we need more. We need you. We need you to join us. We need you to sign up to the electoral union, because now is the time to collectively raise our voice. And if when you leave here you need a reminder, I would encourage you to take a picture of this QR code. because you will not only get to listen to some of the world's best music from the 1980s, you'll also find a link to join Make Your Voice Heard.

10:18Alex Bakir:So please, jump in. The water is not yet too warm.