Ep15: Auke Hoekstra 'The Debunker-in-Chief'

Transcript

Michael Liebreich

If you've ever followed a discussion on Twitter about forecasting of renewable energy, about electric vehicles and whether their emissions are more or less than internal combustion, about electric vehicles versus fuel cells, about the future of trucking, long distance trucking, sooner or later, you will end up at some posts by my guest today on 'Cleaning Up'. Auke Hoekstra. Auke is a researcher at the Eindhoven Technical University. He also runs his own small consulting business Zenmo solutions, and he's an authority on everything renewable energy. Let's bring Auke into the conversation. Hi, Auke. Great to see you again. And it's fabulous to see you in person because on Twitter, and when we talk on the telephone, I forget that you really look like an energy guru should look like, I have this little rubbishy beard, but you know, you really look the part.

Auke Hoekstra

Hi, Michael. Thank you.

And I hope you've got it with you because we're both in Europe, and it's the evening so we're both allowed to have a drink. Cheers. And I've done a few of these with Australians and Americans. And it's very embarrassing because they sit there drinking water and coffee, and I'm drinking beer, but... there you go! That's the way it rolls.

When you're close to Belgium or something, you love beer, I would say.

Oh, don't get me started. I should do this with a Duffel, but this is actually alcohol free. It's net zero. I will be driving later. Now. We met, as with so many of my 'energy friends' now, on what is colloquially known as 'energy Twitter'.

Yeah!

There's a bunch of people very active. And we really get stuck into the details of discussions. And your name, your posts... You know, we're talking probably 10 years ago, just kept coming to my attention. I first became aware of you as this, you know, as this guy who was kind of always right on Twitter. You were doing some really interesting things on tracking forecasts of renewable energy against outturn, which I was also doing, but not... I was behind you. How did you get into that?

Yes... By the way, did you know, you are one of the first people who sort of discovered me? I was still... There was nobody who knew me on Twitter, when you sort of got interested in me. I was also in Holland, I was still trying to make my mark, so to speak, trying to convince people, even though I lacked the credentials. Back then, I was thinking about, and you immediately saw: wow, this guy, he's onto something. I like to see you as someone who's very good at spotting trends. And in my case, you immediately picked out the stuff where I was right.

It was very notable that you know, a lot of the people who are authoritative, and they kind of point to their papers in their work, they are with universities, they're with companies there, they're kind of known. And then there was you. This work that you were pointing to was a blog. I tried to find out a bit more about you. And I found that you had just been on a sabbatical and you had been doing some R programming with your wife. And it was a very non-traditional background for a real guru and an expert. But that was what I found. Let's go back to that period. What were you actually doing sort of with your time and what... how are you? Why were you doing what you were doing?

So in a nutshell, I was a project leader for internet projects. And I've seen how the PC came and I sort of saw that, and how the internet came, and how to the mobile phone came out, a smartphone came. All the time I was one of the first people saying: look, this is logical, this is going to be the next big thing. But I got bored basically. I took a sabbatical. And, indeed, together with my wife, who is a programmer. I learned how to do better statistical modelling, that sort of stuff. And I basically found out that solar wind, batteries, electric vehicles, were very predictable, fast growing phenomena, which were sort of not given their due I think in the in a bigger community, etc. And so from there, I basically chose after the sabbatical: I'll work on this. So I'd had no background whatsoever, wrote a couple....

Which year was the sabbatical? Which year was all of that kind of. ?

13 years ago. So that's 2007 - 2008.

And so then, before that you were doing IT...

Yes.

....then around 2007 - 2008, you just said 'this is all old stuff boring. But there's this new thing. And I think, I see something that other people are not seeing in terms of what's going to happen next', right?

Yeah. And I had enough money on the bank, basically, to try something new. And I thought, let's make my life worthwhile, basically, by choosing a mission that, I also thought there must be some way to, you know, earn a living there. Turned out it was not so easy in the beginning.

Right now, it's quite doable but in the beginning, was quite small. You also noticed probably that when you started BloombergNEF, it was harder than it is now.

Absolutely. When I started BNEF, even if we go back to 2004 - 2005, even when people were very interested, corporates were very interested, banks or investors, they have no budget for information.

Exactly!

That really came at 2006/2007/2008/2009. I mean, around. Actually, if you think it was hard when you started, you should have tried it in 2004.

Yeah, yeah. Hats off to you.

But just a question, how did you come to the solar and all the energy stuff? You know, there's a few different motivations. And I'm always fascinated. Was it intellectually interesting? Did you think 'I'm going to make some money'? Or was it the environment and the planet? You know, what were the sort of underlying motivations for choosing the sector.

The money was basically something, I thought... This should be some way to make some money but it was absolutely not important for me. I was making very good money before that. I'm not

making that kind of money now. I don't need to. So the first reason was really the environmental angle. I learned from my elders, basically, from my mother and my father, that we should ditch fossil fuels someday. And we're ruin the planet, basically. But it's probably not going to change because, you know... We being who we are. And then, I found out: hey, but it is going to change. Let's change it quicker! And then it also became a sort of intellectual puzzle.

It's interesting, because the last guest - actually the episode has just gone live today as we film this, it is episode, I think, 12 - Ramez Naam who's another of the 'energy Twitter' who spotted these trends. It's quite often people, myself as well, who came out of an IT background who see, you know, Moore's law is like... obviously? And then you look at solar, and it's obvious, but if you come out of oil and gas, solar has astonishing cost reduction.

Exactly, exactly! I really have a very strong feeling... ICT guys for them... This feels native, all these learning curves, etc. And for the energy world, the traditional energy world, this is very alien, yes.

I still get asked, when does the experience curve in solar stop? And like, you know, no, no, it doesn't stop. But of course, if you're digging coal, but once you decide where to dig and you build your railway... That's it, your costs are largely going to remain the same for... Very, very different sort of economics.

Exactly.

And you did a sabbatical, and then what was your plan of action? Sort of coming out of that? Because you still needed to get engaged and build it...

How it went is very simple. Let's just cut to the chase and we can get into super interesting topics that people like even more than my background, maybe. I wrote a couple of books in Dutch because I thought when I do that, people will sort of believe that I'm an expert.

Fortunately, that got published by the Ministry and then people believe that I was an expert. I did the rounds, speaking at congresses, etc. Then I got hired by the largest grid operator, because they said: we really want to know what the impact is going be, if all this new stuff on our grid. I knew the CEO back then, and then I found out: wow, this university, for example,

Eindhoven, they're finding out stuff. That's way ahead, basically, of where the the grid operator is, and where the energy companies are. I should be there, because there is where the newest stuff is happening. So I set the grid operator 'could I, please, be at university, you still pay me quite handsomely, actually, but I'm going to start a PhD. So I became the best paid PhD, I think, from the University of Eindhoven. But nevertheless, it worked. And then I basically said 'okay, I can't keep doing this on the money of the grid, I'll start my own company'. So that's how I now make my living. I'm going to try to start some new initiatives at the Eindhoven. Now that succeeded. So now I have 35 people potentially, because we're still in the starting phase. At least, I funded working on this new project of mine, and I'm doing my own consulting company. So that's...

Another big project is something called NEON, right? Give me the sketch of NEON , give everybody, our audience, a sketch. And then we'll probably come back to it in more detail, because I want to get into some of the topics that you've kind of dug into along that route, but... NEON, 35 researchers, and they all hired, I notice you're hiring.

We've only hired 10 or so far.

We'll put a link into the show notes. So if anybody wants to...

If you have a good background in sustainable energy, and you're really interested in modelling it, and sort of getting a grasp of how things will go from here... Now, I think it should be interesting for you to apply.

And what is the purpose of NEON, what are you modelling with NEON?

Basically, we had kick off, the big kickoff actually last week, and it went fabulously, was really, really nice. And basically, the central point of NEON is: let's bring together researchers from very different backgrounds - so people who know about psychology, people who know about sociology, and where society wants to go, people who know about regulation, and then of course, the large contigent, that's always there... Let's say the data scientists, the people who know about windmills about solar energy, etc, etc, etc. So we made it, a group of 20 professors, basically, in 20 companies, from all these different angles. And the whole point of NEON is: let's

try to bring all these fields, all these viewpoints together in a model that can enable, basically instead of writing it down... I call it a 'quantified narrative' instead of just writing it down as a story.

But it's a narrative of what? What are you watching, modelling?

How we get away from fossil fuels. The tagline is 'Neon lights the way to zero emission energy and mobility'.

For the Netherlands? For Holland?

Officially, yes. That's where we have the money for, but...

<laugh>

We want to look broader....

Okay, so I'm going to cut. I haven't kind of shorthand, when I explain to people what you do. I say, basically: he's building a Holland simulator to run energy scenarios. Is that a fair description?

That's a fair description, actually my last master student, said 'when I started my master thesis, I was very unsure how I didn't feel like I had a grip on the energy transition or traditional fossil

fuels to renewable energy, on electric vehicle, etc. And now I feel like I made a cockpit and I'm the pilot now. So now I can choose how this energy just goes, basically, in the computer.'

And you're using agent based modelling yourself. Is that NEON is going to be based on and. ?

Or does everybody use their own methodology?

No, no, no, no, Agent based modelling is going to be the way to bring everybody together.

Okay. So tell us, because what I'm trying to do with these conversations is, you know, bridge between enormous expertise. And you know, anybody out there who's just interested in, some people are relatively new to all of this... So tell me what is an agent based model? And what is not agent based model and why what you're doing is better?

Agent based modelling is a quite recent development, actually. It's sometimes called even a 'third way of doing science'. Although, that's maybe a little bit big. But the idea is that you basically make a duplicate of the real world in a computer, like a strategy game, basically, or a computer game, and you sort of replay the reality in different scenarios. Because, of course, you can replay the world. We can run a simulation or we can build a new world and simulate how the world could be... So we have to simulate a new computer. So we make a copy, a simplified copy, of the reality in the computer. I would say, the core of agent based modelling is that everything that happens, happens because entities are mostly humans, but can also be cars or machines. They live their life, I would say that, they take their own decisions based on their own environments. And the whole, entire system basically emerges from that. So it's very different from a usual model, where you basically say: this is how it works and now let's try different settings. I don't know how it works, I just say: Michael is going to buy, finally going to buy, an electric vehicle because now there's going to be this new 4x4, which sit seven children or something. So now he finally has a chance. So now he can make... This is an agent that basically close to you. There's another agents...

And then presumably, you say right, how many people are there like Michael or something like that?

Exactly, exactly. We make a population, that resembles the real world. And it can be very heterogeneous, right? So it can be thousands of different types of people, not millions, or billions, but thousands at least. So Michael is basically representative then for, let's say, 10,000 people in Netherlands that are close to Michael, etc. And everybody has his own position, it's also something that most models cannot do. So for example, if you live in the country, you will buy other cars then when you live in the centre of the city, right? So positioning makes it... And also the grid, for example, makes a big difference, of course, where you are, what problems you cause on the grid, etc, etc... Makes for renewable energy, makes a lot of difference where everything happens. So a windmill can be an agent of the windmill in the middle of Holland, it

will produce much less energy. Now it's the middle of the North Sea, for example. So positioning is spatially explicit, as they say in modelling terms, and then it's temporarily explicit. So it happens over time, with short time steps of 15 minutes or something. And you can really see how this world evolves and how people make different decisions in every 15 minutes.

And you must see sort of clusters of behaviours. Some people who put together, I don't know... This many holidays with this sort of vehicle, but they want to live in that sort of apartment or that way... And of course, the classical model, the systems dynamics type model, they tend to sort of say: well, everybody replaces their car after 15.2 years. And then they say: that was 14 years, but they don't be as one group replaces it every, every year. And another one that keeps it for 30 years, right?

Exactly, exactly. If you really model those, those early adopters in those laggards... But even more specifically, if you find that people who are. So this is exactly the sort of dynamics that

you can find with agent base models and incessant dynamics, for example. You have to aggregate into a few kind. So there's not Michael, there's basically, let's say, one or two, or

three, types of consumers, and they have all the same behaviour and that's it. By the way, if I may economic models, most economic models are still equilibrium models, so this is even simpler, I would say, in a way than system dynamics models. And you have this rational actor, you know, this guy. So basically, one consumer: he knows his utility function, he knows exactly what he wants, he knows exactly where to get it, entire market is completely rational. And this is not how it works.

Right. Right. And you're gonna tell me, his name is William Nordhaus, and he makes these rational decisions...

No, no, no, no. I'm not. I'm not completely sure what exactly the modelling that Nordhouse does... I think so...

I think what they're certainly rational that it's about these integrated assessment models are based on some kind of a rational actor adding resources to an energy system. So that's your sort of. That's what you're doing. But along the way, you came across, and you've been, you

know, immersed in other people's forecasts. I'm thinking particularly of the IEA, you call it the EAR, but that's in Dutch. So we call it the International Energy Agency. A few years back, I don't

know when you first did it, but you basically sort of... It was palpable, that you were just hugely unimpressed. You did this analysis, which is actually an absolute classic. There's a whole genre now, which I've contributed to, analysis, showing: look, this is the forecast, and this is the outturn, and then as a new forecast, and then there's a new outturn So how did you get into doing that?

But actually, the IEA I should say... I'm pronouncing it right now...

IEA.

IEA was one of the parties that really got me into the energy transition. Because during this sabbatical, I found their forecast and I found a book published by the IEA, or at least sponsored by the IEA, by professor, which explains learning curves, which were completely at odds with their regular forecasts. And then I thought 'oh, my God, I know this. I know this from internet and all these other...' This is the big expert who tell things that never... So the IEA was actually an instrumental in.. as a way to say, At least, I know that they're doing it wrong, so I should be doing differently.

It's funny, because I go back to the early days of New Energy Finance, 2004/2005/2006. These IEA forecasts at the time...It was essentially that renewable energy, modern renewable, not hydro... So wind, solar, bioenergy or something, would be, you know, 1% of electricity or less, forever.

Exactly that line. They would say such nice things about them. Like, let's treat them very nicely, but they will be small forever.

Yeah. I want to make sure that everybody knows it's not just the IEA... I mean, is the Americans have one called a the Energy Information Administration. But it was also all the big oil companies. They were all producing these forecasts, everybody. They were saying, some of them was saying until very recently, that, you know, all of this stuff doesn't add up to a hill of beans. And what was funny, I remember around 2007 or 2008, these forecasts were so bad... I knew because in New Energy Finance, we were tracking financings, which is a leading indicator of installations, right? Because when you finance, you make a final investment decision before

you build. We knew what was in the pipeline and it was bigger than some of these forecasts were saying, could was going to happen in like 10 years later or 20 years later. And I was like: look, we already know, I can list the projects that prove your forecasts are wrong. In one year, they're going to be wrong by 10 years or whatever.

So basically, we agree a hundred percent. You were five years earlier or something so... Hats off to you!

You put this beautiful graphic together, which is the 'grandfather' of all the analysis, all of these...

What I basically did is, I said: they're looking from a fossil perspective, how much energy gets burned in total, etc. That's not how this works. If you look at solar, basically the same thing you were doing with the pipeline, if you look at solar, you have to say: we have an industry that can build an X number of solar panels. And this industry that builds X number of solar panels per year. Is thi industry gonna grow? Or is it going down? And if you sort of transformed the IEA predictions, and put them on that kind of thinking, because you've got usually two universes...

First derivative you said.

Exactly.

And actually, that was the brilliance of it. Going back to my early days as an analyst in mid 80s, drawing a chart of showing forecasts and out turns... I call them hedgehog charts, because quite often, they kind of look, they go like this and they look spines, like a porcupine or a hedgehog. But what was great about what you did, was you took the derivative, right? You said: okay, well, if... because everybody was talking cumulative, like they were all talking about cumulative solar, there'd be this much solar, there'd be that much solar in place. And what you said is: yeah, but the assumption behind that is they're only adding this much, year by year. And you prove that it was going down. So you proved that they were assuming, that these industries were all about to go into a massive recession. Wind and solar, both of them, and that was the brilliance to show: that's what they were founding it on.

Exactly. I think what people didn't understand, that if you build solar panels, you know, if you have a factory building solar panels, if this factory doesn't go bankrupt, it will add a certain output every year. Taking the first derivative is actually very close to how the world operates in solar, you know. Solar is not cumulative, solar is, is... How big are the plants going to be this year, and next year, etc, etc. And if you look at it from that perspective, if you take the derivative, it was very close to the actual way that the industry worked. Then all the prediction became completely nonsensical!

Completely nonsensical. And even a few years ago, I think it was only two years ago, two or three years ago most, of the EIA forecasts for solar was essentially 40 gigawatts globally to be added, forever, or for the next 20 - 30 years each year. And I knew that there were single companies in China that had an investment plan that was, you know, approved by their board. That was to build factories with outputs of, something like, 30 or 40 gigawatts of silicon, or cells or whatever. Single players in China, we're going to be outputting more than the entire forecast for the globe, in these forecasts. So anyway, we agree.

I don't want to put you on the spot, Michael, but you're great friends now with the IEA. Strange.

Sorry?

Doesn't it feel strange?

Well, not really. No, because... I tell you what. They have always, always done an absolutely brilliant job of herding the basic data. Everything you do, everything I do - we could not do it without the IEA...

True!

...working with countries. Because it's not just that they gather the data, they have to work with the companies to explain the data, to normalise the data, and then year in and year out. So that was always brilliant. Their output is not just a single scenario. I mean, I used to get very upset

with them when they talked about reference scenario, right? And then they move to the, you know, the reference scenario is always this one that, no policies ever change. Because it's kind of what happens if you don't change.. Well, if your model, if your scenario for the future is based on your existing policy, then any sector which is new is always disadvantaged, there's a systematic problem. But then they did new policies, and then they've done the technology futures. They've done the sustainable development scenarios. I think that they have gotten on the forecasting, which they call scenarios, but it's clearly forecasting. They've gotten much better. I still think it's conservative. But of course, you know, and I know, by the way, we have a new target, which is, you know, we've spent years that pushing for the IEA, and by the way, also the oil companies to base their work on current costs and on much more realistic assumptions. And then we've discovered, the whole world of the IPCC modelling, where the IEA is not actually pessimistic about clean energy, it's absolutely at the leading bleeding edge of optimism, compare to what the IPCC modellers are coming up with.

In my worldview, we now have, let's say, three kinds of actors. The first is, and I would just like to single them out...

For modellers,

Yes. So first, we have, let's say, the IPCC, which basically uses science that is very old, and models that are very large, to predict the future based on assumptions that are completely outdated. Then we have, let's say, the IEA , and we have the energy world, I would say, the energy community, it is much less behind the curve, I would say so. So therefore more optimistic in our world. But still, I would like to say that, I think what is most important. If readers are listening, if you apply to NEON. Because I think the future, where we're going to make the biggest difference, is parties that look ahead and say: look, we have those learning curves, how can we actually speed up those learning curves? So not only are we going to be optimistic? Or at least realistic? But also are we going to find out what are the tipping points that we can use to sort of make the system completely out of whack, as soon as possible?

Because we need that, we need tipping points. IEA I would say, it's conservative and sort of rejecting tipping points. And we actually need to look for those tipping points and actually we need to exploit them, we really need that. So I would say, we need to be sort of like the destabilising modellers that find out: how can you make the system change as quickly as possible?

Well, you're opening up... There's a whole fascinating question about whether... We are sort of modelling the future or building the future, and of course, in a chaotic system, it may actually be modelling it might require infinite resources but changing it might only require finite resources. Maybe we should just forget to stop kidding ourselves that we're modelling, and suddenly... I mean, what's funny for me, because I came like you, I was not an expert, I came out of IT, .com, all sorts of things. And the idea that I might actually be in a position of sufficient influence that what I say about a sector changes, the trajectory of that sector, is amusing.

Yes, so basically, that's actually... You always have a way of framing things better than I do. So the framing should be: we have the science that is very much behind the curve, unfortunately, we have the IEA, the energy community. That is a little bit more current, but still sort of lagging a little bit in predictive power. And then we have the people who actually going to make the future happen by predicting it. We're going to change the future. That's the whole point of our models.

Around the time that I started to really kind of get under the skin of these forecasts, in fact 2005/2006/2007, there was a forecast of wind and solar by Greenpeace. And I loved it, because it was completely bonkers. These, you know, the curve went shooting up like this. And I liked it, because... Not because I agreed with it, but because you then had all of the conventional modellers down here saying 'nothing ever changes'. And you had Greenpeace going: oh, it's gonna go like this. And I could go somewhere in between and say: well, this is what I think is going to happen. and I didn't seem like the crazy people because there was crazy Greenpeace.

So Greenpeace, they sort of opened an Overton window, you move the Overton's window...

They served a fantastic function of the, you know, of the activists, you know, whatever. Here's the funny thing, I though. There was also about seven or eight or ten years after that, which would have been 2015 to 2006. There was an analysis of whose forecasts have been the best...

Greenpeace!

And it was Greenpeace.

I didn't want to jump, I didn't want...

And I spoke to the modeller, just to come back to the point about whether we're modelling or building the future, and I asked him, I said: well, you know, really, as the French say 'chapeau bas', hats off, you really did a good job. He said 'no, no, we didn't forecast anything. We said what we wanted to have happened. And then we went out, and we worked as activists to make it happen.'

Still, what you always see, I love it, but what you always see with learning curves, with exponential developments, people collectively underestimated. So it's basically if I was sort of a betting person, I would always bet on the highest forecasts,Tony Seba, let's go there, but the highest more or less realistic forecasts, and they would usually be right.

Since he raised his name, I mean, the problem with that only is that: you have to have numbers that add up and stuff that isn't patently stupid. Because anybody can pull a high forecast out, you know: you say 10, I say 12 - you say 12, I say 50. You know, but what I love...

To come back to that, if I may, trying to do with NEON is basically we're going to tell each other stories, right? But then we have to make them work in a quantified model.

Exactly.

That's pretty hard. Most stories you pull out of your hats... Actually, you can't make them work if you really try to get input from our experts. But if you can get them to work, if you find a really compelling story, and if you can get it to work in, for example, our NEON model, then you're sitting on something.

Right. That's great, because then the numbers still add up. I mean, I'm just a little bit allergic to Seba... Because in his modelling, what he said was that the ratio of battery costs are going to go down, and the ratio between the battery and the car stays the same. So a car ends up costing,

you know, a Mercedes, you know... That seven seat SUV or truck ends up costing $5,000 or

$10,000. And it's just stupid stuff. And it makes it difficult. I try to be serious, and it makes it harder.

Yeah, I think Steba was absolutely visionary. He's very good at framing stuff that, I think, a lot of people are sort of latching on to, and it's directionally right. But his quantifications... I cannot agree with.

So let's move on, because otherwise, I'll have to think of other nasty things to say about him... You get a lot of pushback. So this idea, that solar, and of course to a lesser extent, wind, but also, you know, I'm working with this company Eavor, and it's geothermal. They will also have a learning curve, you know, it's heavy engineering is a bit different. But batteries, there will be these learning curves and it will look more like IT than it looks like oil, gas, coal, and so on. Some people really find it difficult to get their heads around that. And they start talking about things like energy return on energy invested. And there's always a subtext behind it.

By the way, one quick anecdote that I really like. I know a good friend, his company has coined the term Wi-Fi, so he was ahead of the curve. And he sold it. And then another friend, he started the first ISP in the Netherlands. And they said to me: explain to us the energy transition. So I prepared a very, very big presentation. And after three minutes, they said 'yeah, we get it, can we just skip the slides ourselves?'. And they went through all the slides of my 45 minute presentation in three minutes and said 'all completely plain". This is sort of a very extreme example to me, and a very humbling example of how normal this cutting edge and intuition thinking is for visionaries in ICT. They really get it. So, just underscore your point.

That's right. And, you know, of course if you go to California, then they'll talk about singularities, what you call tipping points, singularities. And it's very, very natural vocabulary for somebody who has not been educated in oil, gas, coal, nuclear.

Exactly.

On energy return. I want to just because that's one of the. One of the objections that's raised. But I think you did some stuff looking at, well, the solar panels can make the solar panels.

Yes. And I almost thought: have I inspired Elon Musk?

<laugh>

Because that very day,. Probably not, probably it's independent thinking, but he also said it, if we start making solar panels using solar panels, and windmills using windmills, and we use those for the mines and for the factories, our emissions can basically go to zero. So that's a very important sort of mental model that CO2 emissions, if you use renewable technology to produce another technology, you can get extremely close to zero. So basically, forget CO2, if you will... But then energy return on investments. I've never understood how so many people can fall for that, because it's completely clear that if you take the energy influx of the sun, into the earth system, that all the foundational works around you... Energy return on investment.

They become bollocks to use your term, right? It's nonsense. And then if you look more closely, you'll basically see that there's sort of very, I think, emotionally attached to this idea that growth, must be finite. So basically, they're the degrowth disciples... Who use energy return on investment, as a way to sort of give some... Sort of scientific source to their thinking, but...But yeah, it's simply not...

the energy return on energy invested . I've usually had, are thrown at me by nuclear fans. So not degrowth. They may use it as well. Because nuclear, you know, Well, it's got a 60 x return. And, and that's a solar has got a 20 x. So nuclear must be better, of course, a 20 x return over a 20 year lifetime and a 60 x return over a 60 x lifetime, are identical. They are dynamically identical.

Yes!

And because, what's important it's not their energy return, it's the energy return per year. It doesn't drive me crazy, I just feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for people who raise this stuff without understanding how stupid it sounds.

But do you have a feeling these are also, let's say, academic luminaries? Who throw the issue? Or is it simply

It's people who are... not thinking. They're not thinking for themselves. They're just using meme... Or they could be academics, or it could be Twitterati, but they're not really thinking... I think what they're doing... essentially... what's happening is is motivated reasoning. And they've decided they like thorium And so then they use whatever and some others I mean, to come back to the the degrowth. The degrowth is I mean, that one is usually the way that what usually it's about how much material is used, sort of how much copper, how much glass, how much of everything. And that is something that I think that lots of clean energy, you know, fans haven't yet got their head around, and they need to that existing transition is going to involve a lot of mining.

Exactly.

ultimately everything will be recycled, you can stop mining. But in the interim, the next few decades, gonna be a lot of mining. Get over it, do it properly, do it ethically, but there's gonna be a lot of mining.

Exactly. That's also where I'm sort of directing everybody in NEON around it now. I say, CO2... We're managing that... We're going too slow, we have to speed it up. But this is, let's say a philosophically, we sort of solved that. We're not there yet, by alone, by any

stretch, eventually, We're near peak of emissions, it's my thesis. And...

We will manage. We have to go down much quicker, quicker. But this is sort of... In the end will get very close to zero emissions. But will not get very close to zero resources in a very, very long time. On the contrary, the resource use will go up. So I think the biggest wins, right now, are to be made in more sustainable mining, basically. Because often even small changing or, at least, cost wise, small change into mining practices, can often bring enormous differences in terms of environmental impact. And basically, by the way, below resource use is biodiversity. If you use a lot of resources, for example, from a mine, which basically is in the middle of nowhere, and if you dig hard on the surface area, for example, the mine more or less stays the

same. It's no problem. The problem arises, and there's some very good recent literature on this, when you open new mines everywhere, and for example, close to natural areas. And you do this without thinking through what your impact will be. Because often you can limit this impact quite easily. And this is really something that, for example, European Union and Great Britain, hopefully together, still can sort of push, push towards... Because it's...

Very interesting. I don't know if you noticed that I've been appointed to the Board of Trade, as advisor to the Board of Trade. And these issues are... I have to get my head around what we can do. Because obviously, you know, whether we're importing finished goods or raw materials, the terms under which we do it, need to be, I don't know... The question is, do you build them into your trade deals? Or do you deal with them separately, but still aggressively, because we can't just let, you know, we can't just say: well, we're all virtuous, we're going to net zero, but there's these horrible things happening in South America and Africa or in Asia, in Australia or wherever.

Exactly.

And it must be zero... Going back to the, you know, degrowth, you know, it's kind of, you know... It is amazing how people almost decide whether they are pro thorium, anti capitalist, or pro... you know, sort of technology enabled human progress. And then everything else is sort of just fits in. People are not solving like your models, they don't just let the thoughts and the data go. And so let the answers emerge.

I find that a lot of people are extremely invested in being pro or anti capitalism, pro or anti growth, or pro or anti technology. On a deep level, I've never understood this. For me it's very simple. We have to improve happiness and reduce suffering. And I want to make life on Earth... basically, help life on Earth in all, its diversity, stay healthy, stay the same. So these are my basic goals. And anything that helps in that direction is okay with me. And if more technology doesn't work... it doesn't work.

But what's great about what you do, and the reason that so many paths lead to you and your work, is that you just relentlessly expose the figures. I get involved in some of the kind of I sometimes call it culture hacking. It's basically getting into arguments, right? You know, an RCP

8.5 is absurd, absurd scenario from the IPCC. I started the hashtag #RCP85isbollox because I... But you know, I could... You were just, you know, trying with people that I consider to have left

rational thought long before you were still trying to argue, not argue, discuss. And another one, I want to actually... They don't want to go down the RCP 8.5 rabbit hole too much. The one recently, that you have been brilliant at, you know... informing was internal combustion engines versus electric, where some people are so invested in. I don't know what resisting something that they, you know, will produce these very biassed. Well, not that, I mean, you tell me, what were they using? How did you deal with it?

Actually, what I did a couple of times now and I think it's one of our most valuable contributions, even though is intellectually boring by now, is basically every time someone comes out with a study saying: yes, but electric vehicles, when you look at everything, they actually emit more CO2, to basically squash that to basically SWAT that every single time very, very, very boring. But it's easier. But...

Electric vehicles are, you know... Emit more on a whole life life cycle basis than diesel. And how many times have we seen that? How many times have you seen that story?

Well, very often, but I think there's about six or seven serious studies that I try to debunk, basically. If I may, I think most people by now get that battery production is emitting less and less CO2. The grid is greening continuously. And for that reason that basically the only scenario in, at least... In the future, most people get that to low CO2 is either electric or hydrogen, maybe you can look into that later. I would also use, like to use, this podcast for is to point out that I've never... I've been very much into trucks, you know, electric trucks.

Right.

And for five years or so, I've been looking for the reason that electric vehicles, electric cars, yeah, that will work. But electric trucks, that's something different. And for five years, I've been talking to everybody, basically asking them 'so, what makes truck so special? Why can't it worked for trucks?'. And I've never ever gotten a good answer. And I've done a couple of studies myself, I have five master students now who did parts for me. And basically, my conclusion is that if you electrify a truck thoroughly, then the weight you gain by changing in the drive train, the diesel drive train, and the tank for the electric drive frame, plus the battery that in four or five years, that's basically awash was right.

Right. So to complete, in case anybody who is new to this, didn't quite follow. You've essentially proven and you've debunked repeatedly, that it's simply not true that diesel is better than EV. You debunk that completely. For anybody who didn't pick that up in this conversation

Just go to Twitter @AukeHoekstra and I can convince there

You've been recognised, I think it was, it was... The CEO of WV . People have referred to your stuff now at the very highest level. You've kind of...

I really love the fact that two weeks ago Mr. Diess, who is the CEO of Volkswagen, which is the biggest, biggest carmaker in the world - at least in terms of number of vehicles - basically said: listen to this guy because he knows his stuff

Okay, but now you've got this other campaign... I'm gonna call it a 'campaign' because they are like...

Crusade!

And that is... I don't use the word 'crusade' because it's got implication.

Yeah, you're right.

I don't go there. So that's these...

Campaigns, yeah.

And this is about electrification of trucks. And I'll tell you one of the reasons why I think you get so much pushback. It is from the 'hydrogen fuel cell car brigade'. Because that was one we have

also interacted on that... I think, finally, my campaign was to get people to understand that a hydrogen fuel cell car for most use cases is absolutely foolish - very inefficient, very complicated, makes you go, you know, to hydrogen fueling stations every week, which don't even exist rather than charging in the house, etc, etc. But now the 'hydrogen brigade' have decided that trucks can only possibly be done by hydrogen. And I think that's why they push back when you say: oh no, actually, they work just fine, you know, same as a car, as a light vehicle. I think that's why you get that pushback.

Yeah, I think so too. And I think also because they sort of accepted that they can't have cars. So they at least want to have trucks. Yeah, I'm sorry, they can't have trucks and not because I say so - because reality says so.

<laugh> Okay, so let's do the 'truck thing' in a bit more detail. What you're saying, because the argument, that always goes on 'the battery is too heavy', right?

Exactly.

The battery is too heavy, you couldn't possibly do a big vehicle, the batteries too heavy. And then what you've said is that...

I say, so... So first of all, you have to understand that people are always comparing with diesel that can go, let's say, 2000 kilometres, and then quickly take more diesel. And you can go through all of Europe continuously driving. And if you can't replicate that, you don't have a good product. And now with hydrogen, maybe you can sort of get into directionally into the same area. But what I first found out, also a couple of years ago, so still fresh, is that actually most trucks drive between 500 and 750 kilometres a day. And then they get back to where they started. So that's 80% of trucks that drive 500 or 750 km...

And this is heavy vehicles? I mean, not at all the delivery vans, all the small...? 100 miles, they

I just talking about the 40-tons, the big ones.

Right.

Because actually most CO2 is emitted, most diesel is used, in a transport and freight sector, but these big ones. And these other ones are also nice, but they're basically either they follow cars, they're basically cars with a loading area, or they are in between the big trucks and the cars.

And this in-between category. With all due respect, it's a small category. So I'm focusing on the big ones.

The big rigs, big rig...

Exactly, the 18-wheelers, that sort of stuff. Actually, most of the diesel is burned in those vehicles, if you look at freight. And there's always been sort of the dogma that those vehicles cannot be electrified. And first thing I found out is they drive 500 to 750 kilometres a day, almost never more. So let's say, 10% - 20% drives more, but almost never more. And usually they come back to the same place where they started. The truck driver simply goes home to mama or papa, whatever, and eats, and the next day is another day. So this whole idea of the trucker, you know, going through all of Europe and getting away from home for six weeks is actually a small percent of truckers. Most truckers go from Rotterdam for example, to Venlo, to the south of the Netherlands. There they are repacked and then they go to another area which is, let's say, to 300 kilometres further, and that's it. So if you know that, you know that you don't need a battery for 700 or 2000 kilometres. It's simply not a business case for that. If you have a battery for 750 kilometres, even if you cannot fast charge, even if you have no charging infrastructure at all on the road, then 750 kilometres is fine. Great. 80% of trucks, that's enough. So then you start to look: okay, for those 80% of trucks - so forget the 20% -that's 80% of trucks, how much does it weigh to have a battery that can go 750 kilometres? And at the end of the day, if you also look at the fact that they are often driving empty, that driving back often empty, etc., that average energy useis about 1.3 kWh per kilometre. So you end up with about 1 MWh bateries. Big batteries. I agree. I agree. But one...

like 10, Tesla's S

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So then you're into the category of, right now I would say, 4000 - 4500 kilogrammes, 4,5 tons. But in the future, if battery day, for example, pans out or a number of

other companies which are doing the same pan out, you actually get below 3000 - 3500 kilogrammes for a battery of one megawatt hour. And then you look at the drive train. And you see: wait, if you place electric motors between the wheels, instead of going the route with a very long drive shaft, and a differential, and all that sort of stuff, which is actually pretty heavy... If you have a 40-ton truck, then you can save about 3 to 3,5 thousand kilogrammes just from changing the drive straight to electric that way. So that basically means that in four or five years, we can have a drive train a complete assembly that weighs the same. So basically just to finish this just to make sure that the readers understand: in four to five years, basically, if we use the current technology that is being used in cars, and would transplant that to trucks, which is not being done at the moment, but just imagine that we use simply car technology in trucks. That we would have trucks that weigh the same and can go this 750 kilometres. And they are about 1/3 of the cost per kilometre in terms of business case.

And more pleasant to drive because the, you know... The London taxis that are electric... You talk to the drivers, they would never go back to a diesel because of the vibrations and the unpleasantness.

Exactly. At a traffic light, you are much faster at a traffic light, for example, which is also nice if you're a truck driver.

Yeah. I'm fascinated whenever it comes to this, I'm always fascinated by what does it do to the grid. And of course, the other thing you've got, you know, even if a driver is driving those 2000 kilometres, the driver still only has the same size bladder as you and I. And in fact, regulation means they have to stop. So if you do have rapid charging, then even the 2000 kilometre journey becomes feasible.

Exactly. In Europe, in every 4,5 hours you have to have a break of 45 minutes.

And you could charge the truck but then you need megawatts of charging, right?

Exactly. So what I always like to say is to point out to people, sorry, to sort of go astray there, that those fast charges, they're important, but they're not that important. Actually, for most trucks, if they can get home basically, to where they started, which most trucks do. Then over

night, you can charge them and that's, let's say, 50 kW charger. It's a fast charger for cars, but for truck that will be slow charger. But anyway, such a charger, you have to go 10 times as fast because they're 10 times too big because the battery is 10 times as large. So 50 kilowatt charger?

If you had a megawatt of battery, that would be 20 hours, you need a bit more than 50.

Yeah, you're right.

You might need a couple. But the other thing that was interesting. I think you and I also, we interacted with Siemens . And then there's a very brilliant Cambridge Professor called David Cebon who's been looking at using catenary. And I think one could also do the work on contactless charging, because my thesis is that the way this is likely to go all urban transport, all of it, goes electric - buses, cars, taxis, delivery, etc. And all of the large trucks that are just going, you know, sort of around the periphery of the city... So now each city is going to be effectively electric. So London will be electric, Manchester will be electric, Birmingham will be electric, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and so on. And so, now if you want to drive a truck between them, why wouldn't you just have a, if you have to, why didn't you put some catenary on the M1, and you're done? Why would you have a whole different fleet of hydrogen fuel cell trucks, with all of the stations and hydrogen complexity and the workshops? We'll have two sorts of trucks to deal with: one that does these deliveries and one that does that delivery every so often. So it just feels like the simplest solution is going to be just electric everywhere. Just electric everywhere.

Okay, you're basically raising two questions: catenaries now, and fuel cells. And for fuel cells, I would like to make two points very quickly. The first is that for trucks, actually, fuel cells are more problematic. People don't understand that but are more problematic, because even though they're lighter - so that's true, simply, if you have a 1 MWh battery and you replace it with an equivalent in hydrogen tank so, to speak, they are lighter, that's true - but there are much more voluminous.

Yeah, right.

If you go with the current setup which is very ingrained in the industry of the semi, you know, of the tractor and the trailer, then each other... Then you have to find a way to put everything you take with you in the tractor. And actually putting another 3500 kilogrammes of battery in a in a tractor trailer just described, is no problem at all because you can actually save that kind of weight in the drivetrain. And you can be a little bit lighter, theoretically speaking, if you take hydrogen, but where the hell do you get the room to put all that hydrogen. So actually, it's not that simple to go hydrogen, but apart from a hydrogen being relatively inefficient, relatively expensive and voluminous. Catenary, right? I've always thought that catenary is sort of the ideal solution, but I'm also a bit sceptical to the migration path because will people like those?

Basically, the technologie is simple. We're doing this with trains for a very long time now. So it's not rocket science at all. But you sketch, for example, cars having a way to reach up to 3,5 metres or something, 4,5 metres probably...

I don't think catenary would be for cars, I think buses and trucks... And I, you know, my concern is we're running out of time, we're gonna have to come back and do more of this at a later date. Because, you know, I look at it and say: well, you know, if you combine catenary charging or contactless charging, with driverless, you know... If I say, if you throw this thing up the M1 and it can charge as it goes. And if that driver... I'm not a big believer in driverless taxis, I don't know if we'll ever see the full taxi bot. But if a driver going on a motorway,, can go into a platoon and just follow the truck in front, or the bus in front. Then, you know, I think that's where it's going to. And then the catenary makes sense. Because you don't want it, drivers falling asleep and pulling the wires down, doing all sorts of stuff. So I'm reasonably sure that solution will beat anything else - cost wise, effectiveness, efficiency of use, of electricity, of renewable clean energy, and so on.

I think the biggest advantage of catenary systems is that you need much less resources, you need much smaller batteries. That's, I think, the biggest advantage. And the second advantage is, of course, that you need... basically, lose no time, whatsoever, for charging. So that makes them very interesting.

We must never forget, we should never lose an opportunity to say: you don't waste half of your electricity, going from electricity to hydrogen, and then from hydrogen back to electricity, which is the stupidest thing. But sensible people seem quite happy to consider.

Exactly. There's one - I must, sorry, to complicate things - one sort of exception. If we ever make a pipeline or something like that, from, for example, Morocco - or places where there is lots of solar and lots of room - to here, then you could basically take the same solar panels, put them there, have them be twice as effective there and pump the hydrogen over.

Except, it will be cheaper to build a cable and bring the electricity in. But you don't have to believe me, because you're building the agent based models that will answer all these questions, as actually I shouldn't be saying things like that. I should be saying: well, I really want to know what NEON is going to come up with. I hope that you're going to do the difficult sectors, heating. I hope you're going to do shipping, I hope you're going to do glass, the glass industry and all sorts of difficult to decarbonize sectors. But we won't be able to cover them today.

Because unfortunately, we're sort of running out of time.

Maybe I should come back in one year or something, when we have some new answers.

I think that would be an absolutely excellent idea. Particularly, if I'm still doing 'Cleaning Up' - I don't see any reason why I wouldn't be.

You will be!

I've been... My goal is to do one a week, and hopefully, not run out of friends. But you'll always be welcome back. So with that, I'm going to thank you for spending time this evening with me here. And I wish you best of luck with your 35 PhDs and brilliant geniuses that are modelling, building that Holland simulator. So that we can all learn from it.

Thank you very much, Michael. Always a pleasure.

Thanks, Auke. Good night.

Good night.

So that was Auke Hoekstra, researcher at the Technical University of Eindhoven. And next time, you're on Twitter, and you're getting into an argument about electric vehicles, electric trucks, growth rates of renewable, energy solar in particular, look out for him. I'll give you his handle. It's @AukeHoekstra, we'll put a link in the show notes. My guest next week, on 'Cleaning Up', worked his way, up the system, at the UN, becoming Director General of UNIDO. At that point, he was tasked by the Secretary General of the UN, to pull together all of the UN's activities around energy. He did it with great vision, great passion. And that resulted in the creation of SE4All all and then eventually became, what we now know as SDG7, the Sustainable Development Goal 7. Please join me next week. For my conversation with Dr Kandeh K. Yumkella.

Ep15: Auke Hoekstra 'The Debunker-in-Chief'

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