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Topic: India

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[Episode #220] – Climate Capitalism

Mar 20 2024

Mini Episode

What is the recipe for an energy transition at the scale needed to limit global warming below the crucial 2°C threshold?

Bloomberg journalist Akshat Rathi has identified some of the key ingredients, based on his interviews with ten of the world’s most influential personalities working on climate solutions. In his new book, Climate Capitalism, Akshat recounts their stories and makes a case for how capitalism and the dynamism of the private sector are essential components of the global race to zero emissions.

We take a deep dive into Rathi’s work, confronting the criticisms of capitalism, examining how its varied implementations around the world produce different results, and exploring potential reforms for improvement. We conclude by weaving in some ideas drawn from topics discussed previously on the show, including “command capitalism,” how the energy transition requires long-term planning with a system thinking perspective, and the tension between forces driving for international cooperation versus competition.

It's a thoughtful look at the state of the global energy transition from someone with a front-row seat to the investment flows around the world, and we know you’ll find it an illuminating and inspiring discussion.

Guest:

Akshat Rathi is a senior climate reporter for Bloomberg News and is the host of Zero, a weekly climate podcast for Bloomberg Green.

He has a PhD in chemistry from the University of Oxford, and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. He has written for Quartz and The Economist, and his work has been cited in global publications including New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.

On Twitter: @AkshatRathi

On LinkedIn: AkshatRathi

On the Web:  https://akshatrathi.com/

Geek rating: 4

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[Episode #201] – India Update Part 2

Jun 28 2023

Mini Episode

This is part two of our interview with Mohua Mukherjee, a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Previously, she was a development economist and project manager with the World Bank, working in over 40 countries.

In this second part, we dive into India’s use of oil and natural gas, and why it has continued to purchase these fuels from Russia, even as the West has implemented trade restrictions. We go on to explore India’s unique approach to transitioning mobility to vehicles that run on electricity and CNG. We highlight India's strategy for developing domestic industries in battery manufacturing, solar energy, hydrogen electrolyzers, and other clean technologies. We also take a closer look at India's astonishing progress in expanding electricity access to its vast population. We examine the challenges faced by electricity distribution utilities in the country, and their efforts to enhance efficiency. Finally, we address India's progress on its climate initiatives and the importance of ensuring a "just transition" as the nation reduces its reliance on coal-fired power.

Be sure to check out part one of this interview in Episode #199 for a review of India’s overall energy mix, including a close look at its use of coal, solar, and wind.

Geek rating: 5

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[Episode #199] – India Update Part 1

May 31 2023

Mini Episode

This is part one of our interview with Mohua Mukherjee, a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Previously, she was a development economist and project manager with the World Bank, working in over 40 countries.

In this episode, we discuss the overall energy mix in India, and explore the dynamics of the coal power sector. We then take a deep dive into the solar power sector, including India’s innovative financing strategy leveraging a World Bank loan. Finally, we wrap it up with a look at the wind power sector.

In the second part, which will run as Episode #201, we’ll talk about India’s use of oil and natural gas, including why they are using gas for transportation. We’ll explore India’s investments into manufacturing clean technologies. We’ll review how their distribution utilities are improving access to grid power and improving efficiency. And we’ll end with a discussion about how India is taking a “just transition” approach to winding down its dependence on coal-fired power.

Geek rating: 5

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[Episode #124] – Energy Transition Progress Report

Jun 24 2020

Mini Episode

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.

Geek rating: 6

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[Episode #120] – Carnage in the Oil Patch

Apr 29 2020

Mini Episode

The coronavirus shutdown has taken a huge bite out of demand for oil since everyone has been forced to stay home. Exacerbated by a pricing war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, oil prices have crashed to levels not seen in nearly two decades, and oil producers are losing money hand over fist. Not only will this oil crash have wide-ranging effects on the oil industry, it will also have huge impacts on the budgets of oil-exporting countries, the economy as a whole, and the prospects for energy transition.

Can the world get past the economic impacts of the coronavirus? If it does, will oil demand recover to previous levels, or will it be permanently reduced? Which oil producers will survive this period, and which ones will go bankrupt and be swallowed up by larger rivals? And how much market share might the rivals of oil—especially rivals like electric vehicles—pick up in the aftermath of the shutdown?

To help us sort through this incredibly complex picture, Bloomberg’s Liam Denning returns to the show for a 90-minute deep dive into oil prices, supply, demand, the outlook for the world’s producers, and the outlook for the world in this episode.

Geek rating: 7

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[Episode #110] – Death Toll for Petrol

Dec 11 2019

Mini Episode

Electric vehicles have many fairly well-known advantages over conventional, petroleum-fueled vehicles. But what most people are yet to realize is the massive energetic advantage an EV can have when powered by renewables over a conventional vehicle powered by oil. In fact, an EV powered by wind or solar can deliver six to seven times as much mobility as a typical car powered by gasoline. This startling finding implies that in the long run, oil prices would need to drop drastically for conventional cars to remain competitive with EVs running on renewables. In fact, the price of oil would have to fall far below the current breakeven price for producing it. In other words, it could mean the end of growth in oil demand. In this episode, we take a deep dive into all the numbers involved in this fascinating analysis by a veteran sell-side analyst with BNP Paribas. Oil producers and automakers ignore these findings at their peril.

Geek rating: 9

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[Episode #104] – 4-Year Anniversary Show

Sep 18 2019

Mini Episode

In this anniversary episode, we welcome back Jonathan Koomey to talk about some of the interesting developments and raucous debates we have seen over the past year. We’ll be talking about the flawed concept of “committed emissions” and how we should be calculating future emissions instead; we’ll expand that discussion and critique the conflicting stories that we’ve been hearing about the expectations for coal usage and emissions in India; we’ll review some of the efforts to execute so-called “just transitions” in coal country; we’ll take a little excursion into a recent raging dialogue on Twitter about RCP8.5 which had its genesis in the PhD thesis of our producer, Justin Ritchie, which we explored in Episode #49; we’ll move on from there to discuss the communication challenges around climate change science, and what’s wrong with the kind of hysterical journalism being practiced by writers like David Wallace-Wells in his book The Uninhabitable Earth; we’ll take a look at Jon’s latest research on the energy demands of Bitcoin mining; we’ll consider the rapid deployment of utility-scale storage and what that might mean for the future of the grid; we’ll review Jon’s update of global energy intensity data and ask what it all means; and we’ll wrap it up with another look at the energy transition modeling work of Christian Breyer’s team at Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland, which we explored in Episode #95.

Geek rating: 6

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[Episode #93] – Energy Transition in India and Southeast Asia, Part 2

Apr 17 2019

Mini Episode

This is Part 2 of our two-and-a-half hour interview with Tim Buckley, of the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, based in Australia. We featured Part 1 in Episode 91, in which we primarily discussed the future of coal fired power in India. In this second part, we expand on the India story and look more broadly at energy transition across Southeast Asia, and consider the outlook for coal, renewables, and nuclear power in China, Japan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Malaysia, among others. As he did in Part 1, Tim shares with us in this episode a fascinating set of data on the future of energy in Southeast Asia that is oftentimes at sharp variance with the projections that we hear from energy watchdogs like the International Energy Agency. Tim tells a much more hopeful story about energy transition in the developing world. For example: If you think that China’s building more coal plants means that its coal consumption is going to go up, think again! Energy transition is moving ahead, and will move ahead, much more quickly in Southeast Asia than any of our major agencies project, and that is great news for the climate.

Geek rating: 4

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[Episode #91] – Energy Transition in India and Southeast Asia, Part 1

Mar 20 2019

Mini Episode

It has long been assumed that India, China, and other developing countries of Southeast Asia would power their vigorous economic growth for decades to come with coal. We heard over and over that China is building a new coal-fired power plant every three days, and about plans for multi-gigawatt sized coal-fired power plants in India. As long as coal was the cheapest form of power, addressing our climate emergency seemed like a lost hope.

But that nightmare is now evaporating thanks to the continuously declining costs for solar, wind, and battery storage. Although there are far too few policymakers (not to mention the major energy agencies, like EIA and IEA) who appear to be aware of it, the future of coal is fading by the day, as solar and wind take the lead as the lowest cost forms of power. And nowhere is this new reality more starkly evident than in India, where a remarkable pivot away from coal has been under way for about five years now, radically reshaping the outlook for India’s energy consumption, and stranding billions of dollars in investments in coal plants that will not be used as expected. At the same time, India is busily electrifying 18,000 villages, pushing forward on the electrification of transportation, and developing demand-side technologies that together are more likely to make India one of the world’s great success stories in energy transition than one of the world’s largest upcoming carbon emitters.

Our guest in this episode has been closely watching these markets for three decades, and is one of the sharpest observers of what’s happening in India and Southeast Asia. This episode is Part One of our two-and-a-half hour conversation with him, which mostly covers India and coal. Part Two of this interview will be featured in Episode 93.

Geek rating: 4

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[Episode #88] – Energy Trade in Transition

Feb 6 2019

Mini Episode

The global energy trade is enormously complex, and its geopolitical implications are vast, but they are only made more complex by energy transition. If the US exports gas to Europe and Asia, might you expect it to largely displace coal in their power plants? Think again! What will be the geopolitical ramifications on our relationship with Russia, as we send more of our gas to China and India? And as the US weans itself off of coal, and seeks to export more coal abroad, will it be stymied by energy transition in foreign countries, as well as political impediments at home?

And what of US “energy independence?” Does it mean that the US is actually self-sufficient in energy, or even just in fossil fuels, in the sense that we may not need imports anymore? And what is the value of it anyway, especially if it also means increased dependence on export markets abroad?

Tune in as we explore some of the fascinating questions about the implications of energy transition on energy trade in this interview, and be prepared to be surprised by some of our guest’s answers!

Geek rating: 8

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