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Topic: Electrification

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[Episode #238] – Transition in Europe 2024

Dec 4 2024

The outlook for energy transition in the US may feel bleak at the moment, but Europe continues to make significant progress. So if you’re ready for a little good news and thoughtful conversation about the energy transition in Europe, this one’s for you!

Our guest in this episode is Jan Rosenow, a veteran European energy observer, analyst, and policy advisor with extensive experience in energy regulation and market design. As Vice President of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), he supports their European team with a focus on power market design, energy regulation, electrification, the gas transition and energy efficiency. Jan’s resumé includes roles at the World Economic Forum, the International Energy Agency, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the UK’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, and the British House of Commons, among many others. He is also an accomplished academic who has contributed extensively to hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, technical reports and opinion pieces on energy and sustainability.

In this episode, we explore where Europe’s energy policies are delivering results and where it is still falling short. We discuss the enormous need to improve building energy efficiency across the continent and how electrifying heating systems can help. Jan also explains why balancing electricity and gas prices is key to supporting the energy transition. And Chris offers a few thoughts on how the re-election of Donald Trump might impact energy transition in the years ahead.

Guest:

As the vice president of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), Jan Rosenow partners with RAP’s CEO and senior leadership team on global strategy while providing programmatic direction to RAP’s European team with a focus on RAP’s initiatives in Europe on power market design, energy regulation, electrification, the gas transition and energy efficiency.

Rosenow serves in various board and expert committee roles with current and past roles including the World Economic Forum’s Senior Executive Group on Electrification, the International Energy Agency’s Executive Committee of the DSM TCP, the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (eceee) and GLOBSEC.

He has also advised the International Energy Agency, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), government departments in a number of countries and the UK’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, as well as serving as an expert witness on several occasions to the European and British Parliaments. He is a former special advisor to the British House of Commons and the lead author of the International Energy Agency’s first global assessment of market-based instruments for energy efficiency.

An accomplished academic, Rosenow has contributed extensively to energy research. He is a research associate at Oxford, Cambridge, Sussex and FU Berlin. His scholarly work includes hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, technical reports and opinion pieces on energy and sustainability, which have been widely cited and used to shape policy discussions.

Rosenow is also a highly sought-after keynote speaker, regularly invited to present at national and international conferences. His speaking engagements include the United Nations, the International Energy Agency, the World Economic Forum, the European Parliament and more. He is also the co-founder and co-host of the “Watt Matters” podcast, where he discusses energy and sustainability issues with leading experts.

In recognition of his impact in the energy sector, Rosenow has been named one of the top 100 players in the global climate space and among the top 25 energy influencers and top 15 sustainability influencers worldwide. Additionally, he is one of LinkedIn’s Top Green Voices. His commitment to advancing the UK’s energy future led to his election as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and his contributions to the energy sector have earned him a fellowship at the Energy Institute.

Jan Rosenow earned several postgraduate qualifications, including a master’s degree in environmental policy and regulation from the London School of Economics and a doctorate from Oxford University.

On Twitter: @janrosenow

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janrosenow

On the Web:
https://www.janrosenow.com/
https://www.raponline.org/experts/jan-rosenow/

Geek rating: 7

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[Episode #225] – Demand Side Solutions

May 29 2024

Mini Episode

Energy transition is often depicted as a choice between different supply-side technologies such as wind or solar versus oil and coal. However, the demand side of the energy transition — focusing on efficiency improvements to buildings, adopting walking and biking over driving, and electrifying consumer appliances — deserves just as much attention.

Would you believe that widespread adoption of demand-side measures like these could cut the UK’s energy demand in half without sacrificing services or quality of life? That’s one of the key insights our guest in this episode has to share.

Nick Eyre is one of the most well-informed experts on the demand side of the energy transition. He is Professor of Energy and Climate Policy, and Senior Research Fellow in Energy, at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University in England. He serves as the Director of the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, which is UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI's) primary investment in energy use research. He is also a Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, which is undertaking research on the combined, technical, economic, social and policy issues in moving to electricity systems with very high levels of variable renewables.

For the past five years, Nick has led a comprehensive project involving hundreds of researchers to review nearly 500 publications on the demand side of energy. This project concluded at the end of 2023, and he joins us today to share its key insights. He’ll help us understand the most important demand-side decarbonization strategies in 2024, and what we can do to accelerate their deployment. It’s a really comprehensive, yet very accessible (and not too geeky) discussion that offers at least a few practical insights that all of our listeners could readily consider applying in their own lives.

Guest:

Nick Eyre is Professor of Energy and Climate Policy, and Senior Research Fellow in Energy, at the Environmental Change Institute. He is Director of the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, which is UKRI’s main investment into research on energy use. He is also a Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, which is undertaking research on the combined, technical, economic, social and policy issues in moving to electricity systems with very high levels of variable renewables.

Professor Eyre acts as scientific advisor on climate change to Oxford City Council. He is interested in the role of public policy in reducing energy demand and carbon emissions, and the transition to zero carbon energy systems. This includes the integration of renewable energy into energy systems, energy market reform, policy instruments for energy efficiency and the role of local government and communities.

Professor Eyre was one of the UK’s first researchers on mitigation of carbon emissions, and was co-author of a presentation to the Cabinet on this issue in 1989. In 1997, he wrote the first published study on how the Government’s 20% carbon emission reduction target might be delivered. He has advised successive governments and a wide range of Parliamentary inquiries. He managed a large European Commission programme on the external costs of energy and was lead author of the report used as the basis for the UK Government’s first estimate of the social cost of carbon. From 1999 to 2007 he was Head of Policy and then Directory of Strategy at the Energy Saving Trust.

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-eyre-96951a33

On the Web: Nick’s faculty page at Oxford

Geek rating: 3

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[Episode #131] – Decarbonizing the US by 2050

Sep 30 2020

Mini Episode

Is it possible to decarbonize the economy of the United States, and get to net-zero emissions by 2050? A team of researchers from 15 countries who are part of the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project think so, based on their deep modeling of the US economy as part of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). We introduced this work at a high level in Episode #129, during our conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the SDSN. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the modeling itself with one of the modelers involved in the project. We’ll look at the specific energy technologies, devices, and grid management strategies that will make decarbonization by 2050 possible, and see why they think that decarbonizing the US is not only achievable by 2050, but practical, and very, very affordable.

Geek rating: 9

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[Episode #129] – Deep Decarbonization Policy for the US

Sep 2 2020

Mini Episode

We have seen numerous models showing how a mostly- or fully-decarbonized energy system can work, but how do we actually plot a path from where we are now to a deeply decarbonized energy system in the future? What are the specific policy pathways that we need to follow? And how can we make sure that we’re making the right moves now to put ourselves on those paths?

In this episode, we speak with renowned economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University about why deep decarbonization must be our goal for the global economy, as well as some of the main pathways to that goal. Based on numerous studies, including the output of the multi-country Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, as well as several major papers which are in the process of being published under the auspices of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), we discuss how energy transition is actually very affordable and practical, and will ultimately deliver a better world on numerous fronts. Dr. Sachs shares with us not only his vision for a global energy transition, but some deep insights, based on his 40 years of study, about the importance of strong leadership in achieving it, and some of the interesting parallels between this moment and the Great Depression.

Geek rating: 3

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[Episode #101] – What We Don’t Know About Energy Transition

Aug 7 2019

Mini Episode

In this live conversation recorded at Stanford Energy Week in January 2019, Chris Nelder hosts a freewheeling chat with Jonathan Koomey about some of the things we think we know, and a lot of the things we don’t know about energy transition. They talked about:

the vogue concept in energy transition to “electrify everything,” sometimes also called “deep decarbonization”
energy efficiency
conservation
electrification
low-carbon fuels
how to reduce greenhouse gases that are not the products of combustion
the fast-changing trends in electric vehicles, and how we’re going to accommodate the loads of EVs on the power grid
the ways to move space heating and other thermal loads over to the power grid, and how we might be able to meet those needs without combustion or electrification
how much electricity storage we’ll really need in a deeply decarbonized future
how much seasonal storage we’ll need, and what kinds
differences between economic optimizations made today for a future 20-30 years off and technical optimizations made along the way
what the options might look like in 20-30 years, particularly if we are at the beginning of a vigorous and deliberate energy transition
whether space heating, transportation, and other loads might find themselves in competition for economic carrying capacity on the grid as they become electrified.

So join us for this wide-ranging romp through some of the more interesting questions in energy transition!

Geek rating: 9

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