The interviewees are Lord Adair Turner, head of the Energy Transitions Commission, and Arnout de Pee, a partner at McKinsey’s Sustainability and Resource Productivity group.
They talk how the energy transition is necessary, about “how we build economies using enough energy to deliver prosperity for everybody, but with much reduced carbon emissions”.
They highlight that we already know how to take the carbon out of electricity production. And with the decreasing price of renewables and batteries, with gas turbines as backup, they added that “we are very confident that we will be able within 15 years to build energy systems at a price of only seven US cents per kilowatt-hour”.
They comment regarding the industrial-materials areas, one thing that we should focus on is “how we recycle much more, how we get more of a circular economy so that we don’t need to produce as much new raw steel”.
They also remark the importance of longer-term outlook of policies for energy companies: “most of the energy companies I talk to, what they need is a longer-term outlook of how policy will develop in order for them to make the investment choices that meet that future outlook. As long as we don’t have that, it becomes very challenging for energy companies to make proper investment decisions here.” Moreover, they talk about some policies and approaches that governments have used that they find interesting and useful.
To listen to the podcast or read the full transcript of it, click here.
