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[Episode #124] – Energy Transition Progress Report

As the world slowly starts to emerge from lockdown and get back to business, energy analysts and climate activists alike are wondering if we will use this opportunity to accelerate the energy transition, or if we will just go back to what we were doing before the pandemic and fire up the nearest coal-fired power plant or diesel engine.

Our guest in this episode, Nat Bullard of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, thinks the trends toward energy transition and climate action are already so firmly entrenched that we should expect them to maintain their leads as we begin to restart and rebuild the world’s economies...and he and his colleagues have ample data to prove it!

Further, he argues, the world is actually quite different now than it was in the last major economic crash a decade ago in some very important ways, particularly where it concerns energy transition. Unlike 2009, we’re not worrying about peak oil now; if anything, we’re more worried about too much cheap energy. Not just cheap oil, but more renewable power than we can use in certain places and times…so much so that wholesale and even retail grid power prices can go negative. And we’re seeing an investment community that is now much more interested in the winners of energy transition than the losers.

In this episode, we take the pulse of energy transition at this ever-so-uncertain moment, and find more than a few signs of hope and progress all over the world.

Guest:

Nat Bullard is the Chief Content Officer for Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), where he has worked for 13 years. He is primarily focused on energy and transportation transitions, capital markets engagement with climate change, and highly distributed technologies. He writes for Bloomberg Green every week, and for Bloomberg Opinion on occasion.

On Twitter: @NatBullard

On the Web:  Nat Bullard’s archive on Bloomberg

Recording date: May 20, 2020

Air date: June 24, 2020

Geek rating: 6