Inside the UK's Clean Energy Culture War – Chris Stark Explains | Everything Electric Podcast

32:32But it is that framing that leads to the difficult politics that you talked about because people hear that and think it's an impossible mission. And the reality of it is it's very achievable. I mean, what we, and I'll cast back to my old job in the Climate Change Committee now, if you want to achieve net zero, what you've got to do is deal with the fact that in day-to-day life all around us in cities like this, there are people using fossil fuels for their lives. in ways that benefit them. And what we can do is tell them we can't have that. So that's never gonna work. So what we're doing is progressively replacing those fossil fuels with something else.

33:11And that is a story of progress. It is also a story that although I'm in a very hurry, I'm very much in a hurry to achieve it, doesn't need to happen in one fell swoop. So we're largely replacing the things around us that use fossil fuels with something cleaner. and that cleaner thing is usually some sort of electrical device. So we're in an EV today. That's a very good example of a technology that replaces a fossil fuel version of itself. What we want is for people at the point when they sell their car to start thinking about buying an EV or renting an EV. And that idea of this being an overall replacement of things rather than a sort of big upturn to people's lives is very much, I think, how we will achieve a successful transition.

33:58And as you say, if you look across all the things that need to be done for net zero, what that looks like is a huge investment programme for the country. We've got to do a lot of investment in things, some of which cost more than their fossil fuel cousins. The general payback is that in using those things, like EVs, the running cost of it is lower. So if you look across as a country, there's a sort of investment challenge up front and then a benefit in the use of those assets which you can think of as CapEx, capital expenditure up front and then OPEX saving, operating expenditure saving after that.

34:37And you see that right across the whole economy. So in the heat pumps, in the electrified technologies that businesses use, in the transport sector. So this is the period when we do the investment and then we get the benefit after that. And that is the difficulty of this framing is that we're in the point now where we have to dial up investment. And I work on clean power. That's probably the area where you see that most. We need to invest historic levels of capital expenditure in that sector in a way that it really could do with. And framing that properly so people don't think of it solely as a cost is very difficult.

35:16So I think we're going to have to tell a different story that this is about essential investment in the country. It's the fabric of the country that we're doing here. Also, that we're not going to come and rip out gas, boil, all this sort of very violent language that often gets associated with it. This is about a natural replacement cycle of stuff. And you're going to want these things. Like the different technologies that will get us to Nezio are things that people will want. And I think that, again, as you picked up in this, I haven't mentioned climate once. Like I think we've got to, people do care about climate change in this country.

35:52It's generally my experience, 15 years and more of working on it. But it's probably not their principal driver of things in life. And what they want to see is that things are happening and feel reassured by that. But they mainly care about other stuff. And I think we can talk about the benefits of the things that get you to net zero in different ways. So for me, the stuff I work on, this is as much, if not more so, about energy security than it is climate security. it is definitely about British industries producing the technologies and the components that we need in this new power system we're building, it's the jobs that go with that and it's about a reduction in bills, we've got to get focused on that because if people start to use cheaper electricity it's going to make it a hell of a lot easier for us to get heat pumps installed across the country, so building the narrative around that is I think a better way than telling them that we're saving the planet even though we are Yeah, and I suppose this is always going to be the challenge of investing now in order to realise lower energy bills in the future.

36:58That sounds great, but if you're feeling the pinch right now, that can feel like quite an annoying thing to hear, I imagine. And I wonder how, I guess even from a branding perspective, how we even talk about energy security, how we can take people on that journey so that they're allowed to think and enjoy in that long-term view of things. I think, do you know one of the best communicators at all on climate is Arnold Schwarzenegger of all people. I find him fascinating because he's right of centre, big in all ways, American. And he talks about EVs. He's like, I like them because they're big. I like them because the torque you get from an EV is better than a gas park, as he would call it, gas car, it can carry more weight.

37:50You know, his politics and his deframing of it is about abundance. Yeah. And I think we should probably learn a thing or two from that, actually. We're often quite poor-faced about the environmental stuff. Yeah. We should do less of this. But actually, most people want to hear a story about what the country's doing in terms of us moving to a future where the constraints we have at the moment, which are largely driven by the fact we don't have enough fossil fuels. Yeah. We've been through a period where it's the gas price that was set largely because Russia invaded Ukraine that led to abject misery in this country.

38:29And there's nothing much we can do about that unless you are not dependent on fossil fuels in the first place. I actually think that future of abundant, mostly renewable power, this is a wonderful place to have wind in particular, and the freedom that comes with that is a framing that we should embrace. And yes, we are investing in that kind of future. We're going to get to a place where, very quickly, I hope, we don't really need to worry about some of those things. And I think that would be, it's going to make people who work on climate and environment, it's going to make their jobs a hell of a lot easier when we get to that future.

39:07And yes, we're in a difficult phase now, but the other part of this, and I generally find this when, you know, certainly I meet people, is that people definitely understand the need for a country to get going on this. Yeah. And we are in definitely the difficult phase of that, but we also need to, like, we should celebrate the fact that we're doing something exciting. I mean, we are trying to do with my stuff on Clean Power. There isn't really another country in the world that's trying to do that. That's UK leadership. And we're going to feel good about trying on this. I really, I feel we should be proud to try something like that.

39:42And I know that I'm being slightly contentious, partly because I know that so many people listening to this podcast are so bought into the mission. And I think the concern comes from like, okay, well, we're really bought in, how can we ensure that that message continues to spread? And, you know, you've painted a picture there of abundance, of that certainty, of having low energy bills, etc, etc. And the UK leadership in that as well. And yet there are some people that think that what you're doing is a very bad thing. Why? Why do they think it's a bad thing? Well, I think it's, I mean, I'm a civil servant, not politician.

40:21But I observe the politics of this from a particular standpoint. And there is definitely a very obvious thing that has happened in the last few years where net zero has become, I think it's interesting where you You often hear politicians talk about net zero, they put the word agenda at the end of it now. Yes. So that tells you something because it's not an agenda, it's a sort of scientific goal that I'm afraid you're going to have to reach. And we don't reach global net zero, it's very simple, temperatures keep going up. Well, it's a non-negotiable planetary boundary. It's a non-negotiable because basically we keep adding to the thing that causes the planet to get warmer.

40:53So that's what net zero is. The idea of it being a national target, I suppose, is slightly more contentious, but it's not that contentious. So we've got vast proportion of the world's GDP now sitting under some sort of net zero target so you see this thing happening particularly in the asian economies it's become very obvious to me that they are pursuing the transition much more quickly than we are in the west now so the sort of weirdness of it is i think that it's been captured as a sort of framing in british politics not just in britain but in british politics for a load of stuff that people don't want to see happen for whatever reason and i think it's very unhelpful because the the net zero should have a more fundamental point to it.

41:38I think you've just got to play the game as you see it. So it has become an unhelpful term, my general take on it. I think there is a feeling wrongly that it's about telling people what to do with their lives. And I think I'm very much of the view that we can provide that point about abundance is just one way of describing it. But this is about facilitating a whole load of stuff that people really want. I mean, I think we're in this car. An EV is, I think, clearly better technology. And I realise I'm playing to the audience when I say that, but it is obvious when you get in an EV that it's better technology.

42:13We need to sort of build the case that that is true in other aspects of net zero, I think, too. It's definitely true in renewables. It is definitely true that a home that is heated from an electrical technology, whether that's a heat pump or even just electrical heat, allows you to be more flexible in the way that you heat that home in a way that you couldn't with gas. so there's a sort of story here about progress which i think is you will help us combat the politics of it but i'm not going to deny to you that it's difficult i mean i've the last five years things have changed immensely on this and we've got to keep swimming with that i think so interesting because you're so right like you know if you were to take any kind of politics out of this it'd be like how do we convert energy from one form to another in the most efficient way that we can, in the cheapest way that we can, and in a way that is fundamentally comfortable and capable.

43:02For example, the heat pump, the fact that you can have your heating on all day. For someone like myself, who is constantly cold, that is dreamy. And yet, we often don't talk in those terms. And without talking in those terms, that's when the opportunity to create that division arises. But I wonder how much China comes into this, Because you mentioned there that this is an opportunity for British industry, for British industry leadership. And that's definitely true. But also in working towards net zero, we are also very, very dependent on supply chain, overwhelmingly concentrated in China. And I wonder how you think about it as a department in terms of, OK, we are exposed for a short period of time as we procure some of these materials to basically a single market.

43:53versus, OK, we should also diversify that and build a homegrown battery industry or battery cell technology industry. And also whether that over-index on China helps facilitate some of the political division as well. It definitely does. I mean, I promise I'll deal with China, but let's just set it aside slightly and say that it's not good for us to be dependent solely on any one country in this transition. and we want to have as much diversity as possible because essentially that's an insurance. Just to go back to, again, some of the climate framing, you actually see that. Climate change itself makes it more worrying when you are linked to one geography because climate comes along and destroys supply chains with a flood, that sort of stuff.

44:42So I think what's been interesting looking at China, again, over the 15 years or so I've worked on these issues, China has over that whole period been pretty singularly focused on building up the supply chains that we're now seeing them dominating you go back to Beijing Olympics 2008 there was an attempt because of air quality issues when Beijing hosted to move transport more quickly onto battery vehicles and most notably the buses and they didn't quite make it so in the end I think the buses were hybrids rather than full battery electric. But right from that point onwards, this sort of idea that they would build a supply chain for EVs in China only was landed and rooted.

45:30And I think I'm right in saying that to this day, they don't produce any fossil fuel vehicles in China. So there's a sort of, it is solely built around the idea that battery was the future. And that is the thing I, like I have no deep desire for us to replicate China. But that sort of very clear sighted view that this was obviously a technological race that was going to be won in one direction. And sticking with that is something I think we could learn from. There is a direction to this. It's nothing to do with climate. It's to do with the fact that the technology is clearly going to win. And that is what has led them to stitch up supply chains for all this stuff so clearly.

46:09And it's fundamental as well. I mean, you talked about batteries, for example. the minerals required for net zero globally uh they're not really rare earth at all they're just kind of new mineral supply chains yeah uh china owns an extraordinary proportion now of the uh processing of those minerals which come from all around the world and that is again because a very clear sight of view and we i think need to just come to some sort of accommodation about how much of that we want to see in this country and how much of that we don't i mean in the in the future we will be freed from many of the geopolitical problems that we have at the moment because we are not so dependent on importing fossil fuels that's going to be the number one thing that idea of building a renewables based energy system energy system not just power system is um it's going to it's the thing that will free us up from that and in this country it will be wind that's the dominant source along with a bit of nukes um and we will be more free also of some of these supply chain issues in that future.

47:08But I also feel we should own some of that. So, you know, the idea of building stuff here, having located here the production of some of these key technologies is not just a sort of nice to have. I think it's essential. We've got to make that happen. And that is what traditionally in this country we haven't done so well. And that is what China is doing much better than us. And just to deal with China one more time. And the other thing with China is that they have the production facilities for this. They are also in their own energy system pursuing the transition to something cleaner much, much more quickly than anywhere else in the world and at bigger scale.

47:47So yes, they are opening new coal. And that I think is a question they should have to answer for. And that is definitely driving the climate problems that we see all around us now. They are also, in a slightly schizophrenic way, pursuing transition to cleaner technologies more quickly and at a bigger scale than anywhere else in the world. So if you look at EV rollout, for example, or solar and wind rollout, you know, in each year, and this is not the first year this has been the case, you know, they are putting more on their system than the rest of the world combined, you know, and they are also producing that stuff.

48:25And we need to, we have to be aware of that. I mean, And if you take your eye off that, you will miss that they are pursuing that strategy for entirely self-interested reasons. It's not to do with climate, although it helps. It is to do with the fact that these are better technologies, which they produce and lead to a more efficient economy at the end of it. And we should also be doing that. So I've been talking recently about us being overly focused on the petro-states. And we should be more focused on what I've been calling the electoral states. And China's well on the way to becoming one of them.

48:57so should we. And what does an electro state look like to you? So an electro state is one where you've got you have built your economy largely around the production and use of electricity and you are doing so because that is generally a much more efficient use of the energy that's produced from that and that leads you to all sorts of wider games the consumer games that we've talked about but also the productivity games to the economy and that is because and again this EV is a good example of this. It uses that electricity, that energy much, much, much more efficiently than a fossil fuel car would.

49:30You could tell that because the bonnet of this car is not going to be roasting hot when we get out of it. And that is wasted heat in a petrol car or a diesel car. So that is the future for an electricity is that you are across the economy seeing that efficiency gain. And it also happens that the newer technologies go with this tend to be, you know, smarter technologies that leads to a whole other story of a more digitised economy that goes with that. So that is what an electrostate is in my mind. And they will be the successful states of the future. So you kind of alluded to it there. You know, the interesting thing I think about climate change and about energy security is that it's not something that you can pocket up into sort of one box.

50:13It's so pervasive. It impacts every single other thing that we do. It impacts health outcomes, for example. It impacts food security. The list goes on and on. And I wonder how collaborative you are alongside other departments and how you're able to action some of this stuff because there is that holistic view. So, again, I'm not going to lie. It's difficult, right? So there are lots of things to do in government and lots of priorities that do compete. but the challenge of net zero is such a fundamental one that it cannot be done by one single partner alone and therefore you've got to have other bits of government that have an interest in this and you're framing and the question you've I think you've framed it the right way that they're unlikely to be so driven by the climate outcomes and much more likely to be driven by the wider outcomes so you've mentioned health for example we do see those health benefits that come largely things like cleaner air, warmer homes, better insulated homes.

51:13And that therefore means in terms of preventative health outcomes that that is something the Department for Health is interested in. I think you could, if you work through the various departments in Whitehall, there isn't one that is doesn't have some sort of stake in the net zero story overall. The ones that we are most aligned with are the ones you'd expect. So the Department for Transport, which has a very work through plan for moving the whole country onto electrified transport. and that is now happening you see it all around us particularly in cities I always think that's where you see it those green registration plates and the charging infrastructure the next phase of this is probably the park for housing so MHCLG which is the most unwieldy of the names ministry for housing communities and local government that's the housing ministry and this idea of better insulated homes with solar panels on new homes and uh and heat pumps in those homes you can see that perfectly framed in the future home standard um and that is all about sort of using the power that we have in government to drive these longer term outcomes so future home standard is quite an interesting one because it's not that's for new properties so these are properties that we build today that will be around for the next hundred years if we're building in solar panels mandatory solar panels on the roof and no gas boiler, then clearly you're sort of locking in that future for the country.

52:40And that is the right way, I think, to think about how we should be going about things. But it's hard not to find a bit Whitehall or wider government that doesn't have some stake in this. And you've just got to keep reframing the arguments so that everyone stays focused. Let's fast forward to 2030. Yeah. And you've achieved 95 % clean power by that point in time. You've popped open a bottle of champagne with Ed, having a little cheers. But what does the country actually look like and what will it feel like? Well, there's different ways to answer that question. I mean, the first thing it says is it's going to look like this, right?

53:15I mean, this is a kind of fundamental shift and I'll just briefly talk about the wider goal of achieving net zero if I can. Because we did the work back in 2019, I think it was, 2018 perhaps, on net zero while I was at the climate change committee and the way the climate change committee works is you've got a committee of experts that the team works to and does the analysis for and one of those experts I remember memorably around the table before we'd agreed the final package of things that we were going to publish in the analysis said what sort of world is it you know and what's interesting about what we were able to show is that it was the same like you people's lives were the same so they could still drive their cars they could still, you know, they have largely the same jobs, they'd be still flying off on holiday each year, that was a little, you know, we're much within the carbon budget.

54:06And there's a bit of that with Clean Power 2030, I think, too, like we don't, this is not some huge shift in people's lives, I'm talking about here. But what we will see is a big shift in the stuff that's behind the meter that people are not thinking about, hopefully. So we'll be generating power in a totally different way, and you could think of this as being the sort of final stage of the story of us moving away from a power system that was planned around coal, turning the grid inside out, as I occasionally describe it, so we're moving to a world where instead of us focusing on the places where we used to have coal seams and coal power system and coal-fired power, we're going to be moving to particularly the seas around Britain being the primary source of power generation.

54:50That will happen over this period and we need to build a grid to facilitate that. So in certain parts of the country you will see grid infrastructure that's not there and that is definitely one of the more difficult things in this story overall it is essential that we do it and it is not carpeting the country in pylons but we will see some of that infrastructure and you will also see some new onshore wind again well well-sited sites and you'll definitely see some solar we've done more in the last year to consent solar than the last decade before that. Wow, yeah. So you'll see some of that in the country, but it's interesting how little land that's going to take up.

55:34So there's a whole story about solar dominating now, which is not true. But we'll see some of that. I think the main thing, though, is you'll also see on the consumer side, at the level of people, I would hope a shift in the way that we move to becoming a more smart energy system. so brilliant companies like Octopus are already sort of pioneering a lot of this stuff but we're going to move definitely to a more smart system in homes and again I'd like to accelerate as much as that's possible and I think that's the positive story but rather than that being a frightening thing that's going to be where all the benefits are so some of that I hope will be around in 2032 but mainly I suppose I don't want I would prefer us not to see too much of this actually I think People need to get comfy with it being actually not a big shift in their lives.

56:25This is mostly upstream of people's lives and therefore should be quite an easy thing. The big question is, can we get to the point where we reduce bills through this? And that is something I'm very, very keen to see happen. So I guess two questions off the back of that then. So firstly, when do you think we will see lower bills for households? Well, bills have within them a whole host of costs that need to be recovered. So you think about the actual bill that you're paying, your electricity bill has within it all the costs of the system that are recovered over time from the consumer. So all the network costs, all the costs of building that network.

57:09It also has the cost of generating the electricity in there. And at the moment, it's the cost of gas that's driving the bill to be high because gas is the price setter in the market. So as we displace gas with more and more renewables, we will displace its price setting role as well. So the more wind farms we can get on the system under a long-term contract that we find through an auction, the better, right? So we take last year, more than 90 % of the time, it was gas that was setting the price in the market. We need to take that down to as low a level as possible. when we think we get down to probably a third of the year can be set by gas, which is still too high.

57:50But that will have a tremendously big impact on bills. The other thing is the gas price itself may fall. So that's the other, but that's not a policy you can pursue because that price will be set globally. And then the other thing we can do, if you think through those system costs, is we are doing a lot of investment in that system. So we want to make sure that that isn't an immediate cost to the consumer. So that investment is what facilitates these new cleaner power sources. but we can spread the cost of the grid over maybe 40 years. So the consumer gets the benefits up front of that investment, but the costs get spread out over future decades.

58:27And that then facilitates more and more of the renewable stuff that then brings down the price. So that is the logic of it. What does that mean in terms of what the consumer sees? It does mean we're in a difficult phase where we're doing the investment and we're trying to get a lot of this stuff through. But I'm pretty confident that you'll see some of those benefits more quickly so we're paying extraordinary we have been paying extraordinary high prices for electricity because of the gas price as the gas price looks a bit softer now as it starts to come down and as we start to implement these uh policies that uh bring more and more renewals on the system that has an immediate impact and i think we'll be able to tell the story more clearly uh hopefully this year actually um about that starting to filter through into bills and I suppose actually you know the more distributed and self distributed power and self-generation that there is also people start to feel that more acutely as well which I know I need to ask you about the consultation on solar car parks for example yeah what is that and what's the benefit to everyday people so with solar car parks slightly weirdly to me that's taken on one of the most uh consequential things we've done in the first year to me it feels like a a no-brainer that you've got something like 20 ,000 car parks up and down the country that could have solar on them.

59:46And that that solar could be feeding directly into charging stations for the cars that are parked there. Other countries in the world have done this better. There's no question about that. If you go to Germany, for example, you don't find a car park that doesn't have solar and can't be above that. So we're consulting on that. But the big challenge that we need to address is not so much the concept, which seems to me pretty locked in is how we make sure that those things are grid connected so in terms of what we're doing a clean power that is also the big challenge so grid connections uh are the biggest single barrier to us having a clean power system yeah and if you look at the grid connection queue so right now we're in this car we could come up with a project you two of us it'd probably be a kick-ass project.

1:00:31I think it would. We could imagine a bit of the world where we want to put solar and then we can go and get a grid connection for that. And you don't need to do too much more than that. You've got to create a company and go and have a realistic prospect of building it. But you then join a queue. And the point is that that queue is it has grown tenfold in the last five years. And that queue is first come first served. So the really exciting stuff that we've done with the Clean Power Target is to say, well, hang on, that's just not going to work for us. So we've set out a goal across the key technologies, including solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, batteries, energy storage technologies.

1:01:19We've aimed high in all of those. And then what we're going to do is turn to the queue and look into the queue for the projects that are best able to deliver those numbers across the country so we'd set a national goal for those things that we've then turned into a regional goal for our ultra wind and for solar yeah and then we use those regional goals to reorder the queue i see and the really exciting thing about that is that basically you pull to the top the projects that are most able to deliver the strategic outcome that we're seeking but also and as we speak we're a few weeks away from this we are also looking for the projects that are most commercially ready to deliver it yeah so they have the planning so they have done more than sit in a very nice electric car and come up with a project they've actually got the passion land they want they're ready to go with this they might even have started work on it so what we're trying to do is look for the projects that are most ready and then we will give them an earlier connection date uh so we're doing that with NISO the empty system operator and they're full credit to them and they've done an amazing job of going into that queue and reordering it.

1:02:24And this year, this calendar year, by the end of it, we will offer all the 2030 projects their connection needs. Oh, my goodness. That is how we'll go quickly on this. And it's super exciting. And that will include some of those car parks that we talked about because they're able to get this very, very good place to put solar. So we need those that are able to connect quickly to be connected the quickest. I suppose the thing that's interesting in a solar car park context is that actually it makes these technologies much more visible to more people in more communities and to experience a benefit that potentially that makes the charging cheaper but also their cars cooler because they're not exposed to the sun.

1:03:08Now the other thing, I've still got two things that I need to make sure I ask you. The first is that I know many, many, many people listening to this podcast are extremely keen for a future in which we decouple completely the cost of electricity from the cost of gas. Yeah. Is that possible? Is it feasible? And if it is, why are we still talking about a grid in which the cost of gas will determine the cost of electricity some of the time? And I suppose the final bit I'd add to that is because, yes, we need gas to some extent for dispatchable power for baseload. But with a sufficient number of grid scale battery storage, there is a future where that might not be necessary.

1:03:51Correct. So that's the future I want to. So just to bat some numbers around, we've got 35 gigawatts of gas on the system. Now, it doesn't matter if you know your gigawatts from your megawatts. That's a lot. and that gas power comes from what we call the dash for gas in the 1990s. We had a lot of gas coming out of the North Sea. It made sense for us to build power stations at that point that were using it and that actually facilitated the move away from coal but it turned out that in the end it also facilitates the move to renewables because gas is so flexible. So you can ramp a power station up and down.

1:04:31so you've got a lot of wind on the system you can use less gas if you need to wind stops blowing you can ramp it up so rather than rejecting that my sort of take on it is that we should try and make use of it so the 35 gigawatts of capacity that we have is that's not going anywhere we're going to have almost all of that by 2030 the goal is to use it less so to reduce the running hours to less than 5 % of the total in 2030 it's our central challenge that we've set now we come to the question could you do more to remove gas as its price setting role because that is essential for all sorts of reasons and yes you can so in raw terms the more renewables you put on the system every time we put a new renewable project on the system we're displacing a little bit more of that gas just that alone moves us to the point where gas is setting the price less frequently across the year but what I want to do is go further than that so we want to have other technologies that offer with a similar property to gas, that is the ability to generate or produce electricity when you need it.

1:05:33Yeah. And in particular, there's a set of technologies called long duration energy storage or LDES. Now LDES is a very technical term, but that is classically something like pumped hydro storage, but it might be newer technologies like flow batteries. Yeah. Or you get this very appealing technology called liquid air, which is basically a sort of form of compressed air. So you compress the air and separate into a cold store and a hot store. But you do that when the wind is blowing and then you can let it back out again to generate electricity when you need it. So those sorts of technologies are very helpful in our renewables-based power system.

1:06:11They're very helpful in displacing gas as well. So we will displace gas by having more clean alternatives on the system. We'll also displace gas, though, by having an alternative to that gas-fired power station when you need it. and that will reduce its price setting role in the system as well. And, you know, we've got to do all of this at once, essentially. And you mentioned batteries. It may be that batteries alone can do some of those things. Now, typically we think of batteries as being much shorter duration. They also do different things in the power system, like help set the voltage at the right level and do things in microseconds rather than, you know, rather than hours.

1:06:49Yeah. But it's possible that those same lithium-ion chemistry batteries will be able to do eight hours plus storage, in which case that is a real rival to gas as well. And one of the cool things with my job is we're going to find out, right? We're going to try our best to see which of these technologies succeeds and it will all progress us more quickly away from gas having that price-setting role. And I don't think you need to do massive change to the market for it to have that kind of impact. I almost feel we don't have time for that anyway so I'd rather just get the stuff on the system basically the sort of secret of what I'm doing is that we're in a pretty unusual period where we're building on top of what we already have yeah rather than having to face difficult decisions about closing things we're just putting new things on top and that's the beauty of the next five years or so is that that is the challenge after that definitely we will have harder questions about what we do with gas.

1:07:49And I would like to be in a position where we can say, no, we've justified and demonstrated that we could do without it now. That's so interesting, because I think so many people listening to this will be thinking, well, we need some sort of reform to decouple it from a market perspective. But what you're saying is, with sufficient volume of new stuff on top, actually that will happen as a serendipitous by-product. Yeah, the modeling we've done shows you that gas gas will still set the price, but it will move from 98 % of the time to less than a third. And if I'm right on these newer technologies having that price setting role instead, then we'll have demonstrated that over the five years still to come.

1:08:34That means that the modeling is wrong. So gas will have an even less of a role potentially in setting the price. It'll still play a role i mean i think that the point about gas is that you turn to it last in the market because it's the thing that you can reliably turn on to match supply and demand that is why it has its price setting role um whatever you turn to will have a similar price setting role but i would like it to be something clean and uh i think these ldes technologies probably are the most obvious case of where we will turn instead of a gas fire power station we'll let water down a hill or we'll let that compressed air out of storage to generate electricity and the other thing that you know you mentioned that 2030 in many respects it will look exactly the same we'll probably see a few more renewable energy sources generating but our lives should feel more comfortable our energy should be smarter other than that it won't be this huge sort of systemic shift so is this slightly contentious phase that we're in just that just a phase that we need to get through uh i think it is just a phase i think particularly with the power system i think mostly this stuff is not going to touch people's lives um i do think the phase after that as we move to electric cars on roads being the normal there's a bit of disruption to that not much yeah we would say that wouldn't we we're in an ev i drive an ev you drive an ev and i um you know i'm absolutely sure it's a better future so this is a easy argument there i think when you look around us we're in we're in glasgow very proud to live here i love this city um but one of the things that characterizes glasgow is has this old building stock the tenemented buildings tenement buildings that we have around it's these sandstone buildings as red sandstone and blonde sandstone these are not easy to retrofit yeah so we're gonna have to get to that is that's the difficult stuff and you know ideally for a city like this you probably want to be doing something like district heating the sort of thing that you find on the continent quite commonly yeah but we're not at the point where we're able to offer that as an option to people yet so i i understand the fear of the change that's coming i think i do see how difficult it is to conceive of it.

1:10:46I mean, we've done this before. We did it with gas. I mean, we laid gas in every city in the country. We're going to have to do something similar. So, I think, I often think this, because this is a city that was built by the Victorians, you know, essentially, Victorian masterpiece in the way they laid it out. We might need to get a bit more Victorian about our ambitions here. You know, sort of laying things out properly, because we see that future, and revelling a bit in actually how big the challenges and how much well we've tackled it I think that's something the Victorians would have done but there aren't that many of these things to do right I mean I think the central thing here is that mostly what we need to do to get to net zero and clean up our power system our energy system is very manageable stuff I think this is not some sort of wartime effort that's required for this it's just about having a clear plan and making sure that each stage we keep focused on it Do you know, I think you are the first person who has ever come on this podcast and said that.

1:11:49And I find that so reassuring because you're probably the person in the UK who is most in touch with the data and understands the problem probably most comprehensively. I've used to be like, well, you know, it's doable. We just need to get on with it. Yeah. I mean, it's very difficult to do if you try and do it all in one goal. Yeah. But that's not going to be a successful strategy for us. So, you know, the 2050 framing is interesting. If you think about it, like the average life of a technology that you buy today that has fossil fuels is about 15 years. Yeah. And the 2050 framing, just sort of pause on that.

1:12:26If that's the case, then knock 15 years off 2050, you get to 2035. What that means is that around the middle of the 2030s, that's the point where we've got to stop selling the stuff that burns fossil fuels or at least start moving away from it at scale. and that to me is quite a convenient framing. I mean, that gives you 10 years to get your act together and of course that's doable. Like, of course that's doable. And the point is that people want to move more quickly than that and that's why I'm very optimistic about the transport transition now because this stuff is better and we'll win the argument, I think, overall in the end by demonstrating that this is an improvement to lives and not an imposition.

1:13:07well I think that is the perfect note to end on um thank you for being a very willing passenger in this uh magical mystery tour of Glasgow that we've done today um and thanks so much for coming on the podcast thank you for having me and thank you for coming to Glasgow

1:13:29thank you so much to Chris for taking the time to join us on this podcast and for dealing with my It's slightly chaotic driving through Glasgow. Thank you also to Polestar, who very generously lent us a car for today's podcast as well. Before you go, if you could do us the honour of liking, subscribing, sharing with a friend, all of that good stuff, we would so appreciate it. It really does mean that we can carry on telling the cool and important stories in this clean energy transition. But that's it. If you have been, thank you for watching and listening. Now visit electricvehicles.expert, where you can follow everything electric and keep current with Clean Technica, The Driven, Electric, and many more.

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