The Second Coming of the Lord Turner - Ep148: Lord Adair Turner

Michael Liebreich  
Hello, I'm Michael Liebreich and this is Cleaning Up. And welcome to the last episode of 2023. And we're establishing a new tradition here at Cleaning Up because my guest this week was also my last guest of 2022. It's Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, Adair Turner, former chair of the UK Financial Services Authority, former Director General of the Confederation of British Industry, and now Chair of the Energy Transition Commission, or as we call him on Cleaning Up, he is the Lord of the net zero transition. Please welcome Adair Turner to Cleaning Up.

ML  
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ML  
Cleaning Up is brought to you by our lead supporter, Capricorn Investment Group, the Liebreich Foundation and the Gilardini Foundation.

ML  
Welcome back to Cleaning Up.

Adair Turner  
Thank you. It's great to be here again, about a year exactly after we last did this together.

ML  
That's right. So we did this in December last year and we called it "Lord of the Net Zero Transition", so here you are again, we're now doing "Lord of the Net Zero Transition Redux", the one year update. 

AT  
Well, yes, and hopefully we've made some progress, I think the world has made some progress over the last year which we might explore but still obviously not enough progress to limit global warming to the extent that we'd like to.

ML  
Fantastic summary and those who are of an impatient nature can probably stop listening now. But let's take that as a jumping-off point because you and I are both back from COP 28. Now, people listening to this by the time it comes out, will, I think probably be fairly sick and tired of chewing through "this word was used" and "did they say abate" and whatever, but what was your overall impression, you know, Are we exactly where we were last year in terms of the trend- the trajectory?

AT  
Or have we lived? I think we've edged fours. And one of the people will find it very surprising to to have that judgement. And because one of the key sets of words was transitioning away from fossil fuels. And I think a lot of people would think well, "how can that be progress when it's so absolutely bleeding obvious that there's no way of limiting climate change without moving massively away from fossil fuels?" But that was a step forward in terms of getting 190 countries - you have to remember, this is a unanimous decision making process, any one individual company can just kill it. So it's a-

ML  
Country.

AT  
Sorry, country. So at one level, it's bizarre, in a way, that we get anything out of it, but simply getting the recognition that we are going to have to move beyond fossil fuels is a valuable thing. The were also, on the mitigation side where I focus my attention, again, the commitment to tripling renewable capacity by 2030. A lot of that will happen in any case, but it's still valuable to make sure that everybody knows that's where we're heading, because it does mean that people think, "oh, we're heading in that direction, so now I will invest behind it," and a lot of this is about creating a set of expectations against which people invest, which then brings the expectations true. So I would say, some of the key things in the final agreement is: the transitioning away from fossil fuels. There's a interesting phase about tightening up what is in the national determined contributions before COP 30 in Brazil, and saying that those ought to set out, for every sector and category, what countries are going to do to be compatible with 1.5 degrees Centigrade, and that is more pinned down that that is what an NDC should involve than it was before, and it's not going to be for the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the ongoing body, to try and make that a real. And then there were these commitments which they initially got individual countries to sign up to and then were in the final text, on tripling renewables and doubling the pace of energy efficiency improvement. Now, at one level, again, that's a declarative statement, but it gives you a framework to then say, "okay, now what specifically are you going to do to deliver that?" So it was an edging forward, but it still leaves us highly likely, I'm afraid, to overshoot 1.5 degrees Centigrade.

ML
And I think I've now reached a point, maybe it kind of comes with a little bit of grey hair and sort of a few miles on the clock, I've just turned 60 in the intervening years since I last spoke. I just think this kind of- the phrase "bending the arc" is just incredibly sort of descriptive for what these processes do. I wrote, after the Copenhagen, COP 15 disaster, and then there was another one which I think was in Cancun or something like that, and I wrote a piece called Ya basta! Enough! Just stop- this is discrediting those of us working on solutions, because we're not getting the breakthrough, we're not getting the result, and it's just embarrassing, you know, flying off around the world and doing this year after year. But you now sort of see that each time- and obviously of Paris was a big jump forwards, Glasgow was a big jump forwards, but even these kind of intermediate COPs, they do kind of bend the arc just a little bit don't they?

AT  
I think the bending the arc is exactly that, you know, Paris got people to agree that there was a clear objective-

ML  
That there was an arc.

AT  
-that well below two degrees centigrade, ideally 1.5. And it began to indicate how rapidly we have to get emissions down. There was then further work by the International Panel on Climate Change with its report on 1.5. Out of that, you then had the International Energy Agency, in 2021, for the first time putting out there a scenario of how you would have a reduction in the use of fossil fuels which was compatible with 1.5 degrees centigrade. Now, it established a benchmark that you could look at. Glasgow got us to, "we've got to phase down coal," and now effectively, "we've got to phase down fossil fuels." And alongside that, there is just a gradual development of the technologies and the markets, which can reinforce it. Now, it's all slower than we want, I would say on the basis of existing policies, we'll still warm by over two degrees centigrade, but it is beginning to head- we are bending that arc down, and we just need to keep working at it.

ML  
Yeah, and I think last time that we spoke, I actually asked you at the end, "do you think that we will, you know, that 1.5 degrees is- is 1.5still alive?" And you said, "probably not." So the frustration is, of course, we are bending the arc, but we're bending it really towards, you know, I think it's, kind of- you could still say, well below two. It's currently over two,  but if we keep on bending, bending, bending- and of course, it's the real economy that actually has to deliver this stuff. But I can see us getting below two, I gave up on 1.5 almost exactly when that IPCC 2018 report around that same year was when I decided I just can't see us doing the things required to stick to 1.5.

AT  
Well look, 1.5 is certainly technically possible. If if either you or I, Michael, were the benevolent dictator of the whole world, we could I think, limit to 1.5. Well, you're suggesting you couldn't do it? I'm confident- I think we can.

ML  
I think we can, but I would be very careful. If we were going to do it, I'll tell you what I want to do before launching a whole bunch of sorts of Great Leap Forwards and collectivization of the farms-type initiatives, I would want to actually play out the unintended consequences of moving to 1.5, which I don't think I've ever really been explored in terms of-

AT  
Well maybe I'm more of a technological optimist. I think we could limit to 1.5, maybe with a tiny overshoot, with technologies that we already know, with really trivial effects on living standards. And so I think we're probably not going to get there, but that's because we're just not going to succeed with the degree of political coordination across the world required to get there. I think we're more likely to end up warming the world by 1.7, 1.8. But now, let's be clear, limiting it to 1.7, 1.8 is transformational compared with allowing global warming to run to 2.5 or 3. And I think we should still be trying to make sure that you know, 1.8 is 1.7 is 1.6, you know. In this range, 1.5 to 1.8, there's a hell of a lot to be said for getting it as low as possible,

ML  
For sure. And I am a Paris fundamentalist in a sense, you know, well below 2 and as close to 1.5 as possible. 

AT  
Yeah. 

ML  
And I still think that that was a brilliant formulation, because I think it does allow the ambition but without creating sort of a rod to beat- although we have created a rod to beat our backs in many ways by becoming so fixated on 1.5-or-bust kind of yeah thinking.

AT  
Yeah.

ML  
What do you make of the sort of- is there something to be learned from the linguistic kind of travails in- because, you know, there's always- there are people who will march and go to the barricades over whether it uses the word "abated" rr whether it's "phasing-out" or "phasing-down," it all seems

AT  
Well, no, I think there are two different issues in what you've just said, one of which I think really is important, and the other is less important. I've always thought that the linguistic argument between phase-down and phase-out is a very odd one, because I haven't seen any scenarios, which suggests that we literally end up with the zero use of fossil fuels. I think we will continue to use some methane to make blue hydrogen with carbon capture and storage, I think we will continue to use some oil to go into petrochemicals and plastics.The Energy Transition Commission is probably as radical as anybody else about how much we expect fossil fuels- that we think fossil fuels could and should come down by 2050: 70%, down for gas, 85% coal and as much as 95% oil, which makes us an outlier. But because it's not 100%, I tend to say "phase-down" not "phase-out", because I'm a bit of a logical fellow, and it strikes me the phase-out ought to be zero. But you get people who are signed- you know, who don't actually suggest that it'll go to zero, but still are fixated with phase-out. So I've always thought phase out versus phase down is a bit of an odd debate. Abated versus unabated: this is an important debate, because what you will get is OPEC say, "we agree that we will have to phase out the unabated use of fossil fuels," but what they then do is say, "and we can still go on consuming 80 million barrels of oil a day in 2040, and 50, because we're going to do 20 gigatons of carbon capture and storage or removals. That I think is a real debate. I think we got to have a real debate about: in getting to net zero, what is the balance between actually reducing fossil fuel consumption and production, and what is the bit that we offset with carbon capture and storage or removals? And our answer at the Energy Transition Commission is 85:50, roughly: 85% of the reduction has actually got to come by using less gas, coal and oil and only the last 15% is offsetting it with carbon capture and storage and removals.

ML
But I'm going to pushback because I don't- I still don't kind of follow it, because you're saying that you are going to allow abatement, right, you're gonna have a carbon capture and storage, but presumably in your figures, you have no unabated- effectively to get net-zero, no unabated. 

AT  
Yeah.

ML  
So what's the problem with the wording that says, "we're going to phase out unabateed"? 

AT  
Oh, I would say, oh, no, I'm not against that, it's just, that's not sufficient in itself. To be very clear on what I would like to say, is to completely phase out the unabated use of fossil fuels, and it is to rapidly and dramatically phase down the consumption and production of fossil fuels, even if they are abated. 

ML  
But if they are abated, what harm are they doing to the sort of- what's the problem with that?

AT  
Well, because you've then got to say- I mean, there's nothing wrong with phasing out unabated, but it won't be sufficient because I simply don't think we are going to be able to do the scale of CCUS and removals for that to be sufficient without bringing down the use of fossil fuels. And I think there's a real danger that if you simply buy off on unabated, and don't get a commitment to actually running down the actual use of fossil fuels, you will have people saying, "okay, we're going to put- that abatement is going to come later," right, and they'll invest in coal, they'll invest in oil, they'll invest in gas. Their model has- "and in the 20s- in the 40s, we'll do 20 gigatons of offsets," but when we get there, they won't do it. I think this is a risky strategy. So I do think that we've got to be clear that we are very specifically going to run down the use of fossil fuels. So to us, it's important to have a vision that the vast majority of the reduction is actually from using less fossil fuels. 

ML  
And I see the risk on, sort of leaving retrofitting of abatement very late in the process, and that needs to be- that would need to be closed off. But equally, you have people who say, "abatement doesn't work, and therefore you shouldn't use the word you know, unabated and so on because it just doesn't work." To which my response would be: well if it doesn't work, then you can't rely- then you've signed up to this thing and you shouldn't be, you wouldn't be relying on it. And you're saying, in bad faith-

AT  
Our position is that there are some sectors - let's take cement - where we do think that carbon capture and storage will be required. We don't see a technological solution to the process emissions from cement production, the way that calcium carbonate turns into calcium oxide and produces CO2, we don't see a role for that without carbon capture and storage. We do see a role, but it's more limited than green hydrogen- sorry, blue hydrogen. So at one level, we end up with maybe point source CCUS accounting for 4 or 5 gigatons of abatement from the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use today is producing about 38 gigatons of CO2, but 38 down to 5 is reducing the use of fossil fuels and the last 5. Now, you're quite right that, in that, we are assuming that we will get carbon capture and storage to work on that scale. But we're just unwilling to make a bigger figure than that, because when we have put, you know, our scenarios, of how we get to 4 to 5 by 2050, we're not going to hit the pace required to do it. I mean, we had assumed that we could get to 1 gigaton by 2030, on route to 4 or 5 by 2050. And at the moment, we're not getting there. And there are a lot of problems with carbon capture and storage. So if anything, I sometimes think we may get to 2050 and we'll have relied less than that 5 gigatons. I think it's a bit incredible and implausible to start putting in much bigger fingers.

ML  
I think- the reason that I push on it is I think it gets something of an allergic reaction from the oil companies and also from the oil countries, the oil-producing countries, if we try to rule out the activists - and to a certain extend yourself,  yourself - try and sort of rule out or minimise the role of abatement, because they do see that as a sort of a hill to die on.

AT  
Well let me- what I challenge the oil and gas countries on this is clear: a lot of them have been saying for the last 15 years, "we can go on and keep producing at this level, because we'll do carbon capture and storage," and they have an enormous self interest in making carbon capture and storage work. 15 years later, the progress is minimal in terms of quantity, or in terms of reducing the cost, or in terms of Gorgon- the Chevron Gordon plant in Australia, in proving that they can get high capture rates. So you have to sort of say, "guys, you're the guys who first of all have the technological capability to do this, you've got the greatest incentive to do it, and you've been telling us for 15 years that it's a key part of the answer. If, at the end of the day, we're not making progress with this technology," I feel I've got to be a bit cautious about it. 

ML  
I had a very interesting experience in COP: I moderated a panel on the transition as part of ADSW, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, which they shifted to coincide with COP, and I had this panel on the transition and one of the people on the panel was Lorenzo Simonelli, who's the CEO of Baker Hughes - Baker Hughes, they make turbines, they do all sorts of oilfield services, there's a bunch of companies, Schlumberger, and Halliburton, there's a few of them to do that. And so we were talking about the transition, and I said, "you can talk about all the wizzy new things you're doing, the hydrogen, the exciting stuff, but I need to hear what you're doing with the old things as well, because it's a transition." And we heard about the the response, lots of stuff about the new things, and sort of acknowledgment that the old things had to be reduced, they had to become 'cleaner', was the word the he used. And I challenged him to say, "okay, you're a service company, you sell services, and you sell turbines, and you acknowedge that we have to get to net zero. So is there a year where you will no longer work with clients who are doing unabated oil and gas?" And I did not get an answer to that. Because it's obvious.

AT  
Well, to me it's obvious. And that's why, in our fossil fuel report, which we issued just before COP28, we talked about the need to phase down the actual consumption and production of fossil fuels, but we were absolutely clear that oil and gas companies should have targets to be net zero in Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3, by mid-century, because we're not going to get to net zero unless oil and gas companies are at Scope 3 by net zero. They've got to own that, when they sell oil and gas, they're doing it into applications where either it has point source CCUS against it, or they are doing really credible removals that offset it, because otherwise we're just - you know, we're just fooling ourselves.

ML  
Yeah exactly, I mean, the Scope 3 for Baker Hughes is working the-  not abating. And it's interesting because, when you think about it, it's absolutely clear that oil can only go into petrochemicals, which then have to be not burned, but-

AT  
-they've got to be recycled or stored permanently-

ML  
-or single-use, as long as they go into the proper landfill and so on. Gas has perhaps more of a future going into blue hydrogen or into CCS post-combustion, althoug I'm dubious about that, and the Allam cycle, which I mentioned. Let's just- COP: it was controversial because it was held in Abu Dhabi- sorry, in the Emirates, in Dubai, and the President was the CEO of an oil company- somebody I know well, Dr Sultan Al Jaber - who had actually started his career as a senior executive with Masdar, the clean energy bit. But it was controversial. Was it - in the end, do you think - helpful- is it helpful to have these sorts of events in out-and-out petrostates which is what this effectively is?

AT  
Actually I think it was at the end of the day, and I think some- I think one does have to give some credit to Dr. Sultan for for having [hosted] and he put a lot of work into this final commitment to transitioning away from fossil fuels. And to have that in a country which clearly relies on fossil fuels, I think is quite useful. Now, that doesn't mean we should always have COPs in fossil fuel countries - though we are going to have next year because it's going to Azerbaijan which produces a significant amount of oil - but it should rotate across the world. And as it rotates across the world, it will rotate between countries in very different positions. So COP 2030 in Brazil, I'm sure is going to have a lot of focus on deforestation, on the appropriate role of bioenergy and appropriate role of hydro- I mean, Brazil has a very distinct and different energy and ecosystem than other countries. But I think, on your narrow question, I think getting - you know - the CEO of ADNOC, to be out there arguing, "we have got to have some language that recognises we're moving away from fossil fuels," even if people are worried it was still a bit weak, I still think that's helpful. 

ML  
Even if he gives interviews where he says that that would mean that we'll end up back in caves? 

AT  
Well, I think- that wasn't I think the interview, he ended up in a very odd spat with Mary Robinson about it. And actually, it was a very odd comment because it was completely contradictory with other stuff that he said at other stages, where he had said, "we do have to commit to running down fossil fuels," I think he probably just felt a bit personally riled by that situation. But, I mean, what we've been absolutely clear on - and I said it earlier - we got to commit to a very significant rundown of the use of fossil fuels, and I think it's helpful that at least, for the first time, we've got, you know, some understanding that that is the direction of change, and that that is now universally agreed. 

ML  
There was at one point, in the text, something that I quite liked, which was: it talked about "phasing down," "phasing out," one of these, but it talked about doing production and consumption of fossil fuels. And to me, that's really important, because they have to both be wound down at the same rate. If one goes faster than the other, then you'll either get a huge price spike, or you'll get the collapse of revenue for the failed states amongst the petro-producing countries. So that I rather liked, but it kind of came out. 

AT  
Yeah, that disappeared and, you know, we were very clearly calling for commitment to reduce the use - the consumption - and the supply - the production - of fossil fuels. That got taken out, and I suspect that what got taken out was the production bit, because what you do get, from the oil and gas countries and the oil and gas companies of the world, is to say, "I can accept that you've got to reduce consumption, and we're just passive producers," you know, "you drive down consumption, and we'll drive down supply." I absolutely agree that the highest priority on policy is to drive down consumption: so electrify our road transport fleets, shift to sustainable aviation fuel in aviation, a shift from the use of gas to heat pumps in residential heat, so it is driving down demand. But I think there is also a role for constraining supply because I'm worried that if - let's take gas - we want to be ending up, not with 4000 BCM (billion cubic metres) a year but 700 or 800, and if people go and put in place capacity, which assumes that the answer will always be 2 trillion or 3 trillion, once that's in place, it will run at marginal cost and it will run at a price - as it were, supply will find its own demand. So it is appropriate to have policies that say, "no more exploration. Let's stop developing fields other than we've got at the moment, alongside the absolute priority, which is driving down demand." 

ML  
And the naive activists who say, "the problem is oil and gas so we should simply turn the taps off." Of course, that would mean a huge price spike and enormous suffering. So it's got to be demand-driven, the demand has to clearly come down and possibly has to lead the way down. And- but you've talked about the sort of "the locking", if there's too much supply, then obviously that creates its own demand. What do you say, though, when you hear about Saudi-Aramco, that has got a program called the Oil Demand Sustainability Program (ODSP), which is all about promoting- they'll call it access to energy and access to transport in the developing world, but it's basically what the cigarette companies did. When they couldn't advertise in the West, they went off into Asia and found new markets for their cigarettes. What does that make it- how do you respond to that?

AT  
Well it sounds like it ought to be renamed the ODAP, the Oil Demand Addiction Program, because it's trying to keep people addicted to oil. I didn't know about that, but, you know, I think that is part of what is going on. There are people who say, "I'm happy for demand come down," but back around the corner they are- which is what the the tobacco companies used to say. They used to say, "well, you know, the demand is out there, I'm not stimulating it, advertising doesn't change the total demand for cigarettes, all it does is make somebody prefer one brand against another." But their actions were the other way. I don't think we should be doing that and I think those countries are ill-served by that, because I think there are many technologies which enable us to move faster beyond fossil fuels, in particular oil, but also gas, far faster than we used to think. And I think to lock people into oil and gas demand is to lock them into less-secure sources of supply, which are more susceptible to global geopolitical and economic risk and volatility, and to lock them into, for instance, local air quality pollution from the use of oil in transport. So I'm not entirely surprised to hear you tell me about that, but it is clearly completely contradictory to the standard oil and gas company argument which says, "we are simply passive, we'd love demand to come down but we simply passively respond to it." It's clearly not consistent with that.

ML  
And what we'll do is we'll put a link into the shownotes so that anybody listening can read the news stories about when this programme was discovered. Sadly, it's not that rare. Even in this country, we have something called the Energy Utilities Alliance, which is essentially the gas heating, sort of lobbying group, the CEO of that, Mike Foster, former Labour junior minister, and they were caught because he had charged a PR company based in Birmingham with a campaign whose target was to spark outrage about heat pumps. And of course-

AT  
Well one's reminded of the old stuff which was discovered from Exxon 30 years ago, "our product is doubt." At that stage, that was aimed on just spreading doubt about the very existence of climate change, telling people the science was uncertain. And it was very successful, I think, you know, for 15 or 20 years before it became so obvious that there's climate change that almost nobody could deny it. It helped to give people an out to say, "I didn't really believe that." No, and it's quite clear at the moment- I didn't know that that was specifically that. Let's be clear: heat pumps work. Now the one thing that has happened, Michael, since we met last year, is I have a very good working heat pump in my country cottage, which is not one of the best-insulated - we put in some double glazing and some stuff in the loft, but it's not a super-insulated house - and it works. And I think this mythology that heat pumps only work if you've insulated your house to the absolute limit is nonsense. These things work very well.

ML  
And that's in Ecchinswell? 

AT  
That's in Ecchinswell. Yeah.

ML  
I've forggoten how to pronounce it since year. So the UK has the lowest heat pump installation rates in Europe, and Mike Foster is out there telling people it's because of the geology- something to do with the geology of the UK, that they don't work. I mean, it's extraordinary stuff. We actually had Naomi Oreskes. So I have a co-host now, Baroness Worthington-

AT  
Oh yeah, Bryony!

ML  
Who I'm sure you know very well. And she did a very nice episode with Naomi Oreskes who wrote the book, The Merchants of Doubt, and is the big expert on this and we'll put a link to that as well in the shownotes. What I want to do is move on from COP, I think we've now really exhausted that scene, I think. Can we do the following: can we - fairly rapid fire - go through some of the sectors that we talked about last year? Because we went sector by sector by sector, but you've actually been doing work on slightly different- a lot of the work that the Energy Transitions Commission has been doing has been on what I would call horizontals, looking at finance and planning rules, those sorts of things. But let's do the sectors first. Just give us what, if there's anything, you think new and exciting about, for instance, the power sector, you know, we talked about how it was going to grow from 27,000 terawatt hours to 90,000, and those are going to be 60, 70 80% variable renewable. Anything new and surprising?

AT  
Broadly speaking the same direction. Our latest figures are probably a bit lower, maybe 70,000 terawatt hours of direct electricity use, but then a significant amount on top of that for green hydrogen. I think what is different across this last year is a divergence of the progress that we're making on solar versus wind. What is happening on solar costs across the world is just extraordinary. You know, solar panels, which, you know - the cheapest solar panels you could buy out of Chinese producers at the beginning of the year, were about 19 cents per watt, and they'd ended the year at about 12.5 cents per watt. And this just goes on and on and on. It's worth really stepping back on solar: in 1975, solar PV panels were $100 a watt. This isn't the price halving or going down 10 times, this is a 99.875% reduction in the last, say, 45, 48 years. And it's going to go on. There's going to be an extra level of moving to perovskite-silicon tandem cells. And solar installations across the world - heavily driven by China, but also a lot of other countries - are running ahead of our expectations and heading towards the sort of role that we expected to see in a fully decarbonised a economy- electricity system across the world by 2050. Battery technology is going on - the cost of battery storage is coming down. I do think in many parts of the world, not where we are at the moment in this gloomy December weather, but in the the tropical and equatorial areas, I think solar plus battery is going to be the killer app of the energy transition. I think it's going to be amazingly cheap, far cheaper than we thought. So all of that is very, very good news. And we, like everybody else, are continuing to up our forecasts. As you will know, Michael, this is a wonderful way of teasing the IEA about showing their series of parts forecasts for solar, each of which always undershoot by an extraordinary extend. 

ML  
I've been doing that for 15 years!

AT  
And I think it's still going on: solar is coming down. Wind has been more challenged over the last year. We've seen people pulling out of offshore wind contracts. What happened, I think, was there was a period of great exuberance, people put in very aggressive bids - you'll remember, three years ago, we saw bids in the UK of £37 per megawatt hour offshore wind - the price of steel shot up, and people had made fixed price commitments. There was generalised inflation, and the US had contracts which aren't inflation indexed. So that's been a setback, and if you look in the UK, in Europe and across the world, unlike with solar, the pace is not in line with where we need to be. So there are certain things, looking at the wind supply and really working out how to accelerate that. In other sectors of the economy, I would say that what's happening in aviation and shipping and steel is roughly what we expected. The commitments to get to net zero are there. The early examples have been put in place. I think last year, I told you, I've been in Sweden, and seeing SSABs - hydrogen direct reduction plant in Lulea. Two months ago, I was in Hebei province in China, looking at a hydrogen direct reduction plant run by HBIS, which is about the number three of the Chinese steel producers. We are seeing Maersk opening orders for methanol-burning ships. I was with the International Chamber of Shipping in Dubai last week. So all of those- we always knew that the progress in the 2020s would be limited, because you've just got to turn over a large capital stock. But it is - you know, it's beginning to get there. One technology which is, as I mentioned earlier, moving more slowly than we had hoped is carbon capture and storage. What else? Heat pumps are beginning to roll out across the world, and I think it's increasingly clear that heat pumps is really a fundamental technology. Of course a heat pump and an air conditioner or just the same thing turned around the other way. So in a lot of the world, which has relatively small heating needs, it's going to be: you put in an air conditioner, but you make sure it's two-way to cover your limited winter heating needs. But I think heat pumps in Europe and UK are going to be the future. And then one extra thing: we see more and more evidence of potential to industrialise- to electrify industrial heat, both at the sort of medium-temperature heat, the sort of food-processing 200 degree heat, but even at what's called the calcination heat of up to 1000 degrees. I think we can see electrification possibilities pushing into more sectors of the economy than we've previously thought.

ML  
That's a fantastic roundup of what I think as well, so agree furiously on, I would say, almost everything, we'll come back to hydrogen in a second. But, absolutely, so solar is running, again, ahead of anybody's expectations. There's a fantastic statistic: when I started New Energy Finance, as was then, 2004, it took one year to install a gigawatt. Six years later - so by that time, 2010: it took one month. 2016: it took one week, and this year, we go through the point where we'd be doing a gigawatt per day of solar. And it's not going to stop.

AT  
And by 2030, I think we're going to be doing a terawatt a year. So that's where we're heading for: roughly a terawatt a year by the 2030s. 

ML  
Now wind's travails- and there's also a macro economic background as well-

AT  
Yeah, higher interest rates I think is an interesting, big challenge for the energy transition, yeah.

ML  
Wind is interesting, and I'm going to link it to hydrogen, because all of these plans are hydrogen, these huge plans, your own plans started north of 800 million tons, you tell me the Bloomberg NEF plan started at 1,000-

AT  
-an even higher one, of massive hopes within the power sector.

ML  
-and I think they are still - I mean, this is an area where I still write for them but I don't represent them - this is also an area where they and I- one of the few areas where they and I would perhaps disagree. So, in terms of- so just to give you a- triangulate the numbers, right now we're at about 100 million tons of hydrogen in the economy, fertiliser and petrochemicals largely, all of it filthy, almost all of it. 

AT  
Yeah, almost all of it.

ML  
And the numbers I've thrown around for 2050, they go from the very high - the 800, the 1000, which I think is now starting to be seen as improbable - but there's a lot of forecasts, and your own as well, in the sort of 300 to 600-

AT  
300 to 600, we're still in that range. 

ML  
-and I'm sort of thinking: I just think it's implausible. And I'm much more- without having done any of the clever modelling, but just a lot of systems thinking, I'm in the sort of 150 to 200 million, so more than today, but not this kind of vast expansion of hydrogen. And a lot of it how just the economics - not of producing hydrogen, but the economics of transporting it and the economics of using it, which don't get nearly as much focus in the world. I link it back to wind for one reason, though, which is: if you want to make hydrogen, you do need to run your electrolyser - green hydrogen - you need to run your electrolysers at high capacity factors, which solar can't do. 

AT  
Oh now, I disagree with that, that I disagree with. 

ML  
How does solar do that? 

AT  
Once your electrolysers are cheap, it doesn't matter if you only run them a couple of 1000 hours a year. Once electrolyzers get to $200 a watt, which I think - sorry, a kilowatt - which I think they would do, I think we will see a lot of green hydrogen, not based on grid-based electricity, but on captive renewables, only running 2000 hours a year, because once you get your electrolysers that cheap, 90% of the cost is - and even running at 2000 hours year - 90% of the cost is the renewable energy costs. The actual capital depreciation costs get sufficiently small that it doesn't matter. So you can put it next to captive solar - and if you look at the developments occurring, for instance, in India, most of them are not assuming grid connection to run your electrolysers at high capacity utilisation.

ML  
I think it's more complicated than that, and the reason they do is because more of the cost is actually- the electrolysers will do the same as what solar did and the same as what batteriess did and they will go to - not zero but - they will assymptote towards zero. But so much of the cost in this is actually pumps, and compressors, and flanges, and the substation, the electrical equipment, and then you've got to get the pipeline to get it somewhere. It's all gonna be made out of fabulous steels because of, you know, embrittlement and so on. So, you know, this idea that hydrogen's cost is going to drop by 10x just because batteries did - and certainly for the user -it absolutely, categorically won't. 

AT  
Well, we're still bullish that green hydrogen will come down to $1.50 a kg. 

ML  
By 2050? 

AT  
Oh, I think before that, I think by 2050 it will easily be there. I mean, let's remember, you have people out there - and maybe they're overstating - and Mukesh Ambani in India says he can get into $1 a kg by 2030. Now, I don't think he's gonna get into $1 per kg by 2030, he may get it to $1.50, certainly south of $2. But to go back to your point-

ML  
I'll have a bet with him or with you that he doesn't do that.

AT  
Right? Well, I'll think about whether I'm taking that bet. I think the crucial point you made earlier though is: even if it gets to that level, there will still be a green premium on its application. So if you turn that hydrogen into ammonia, to run ships on, even at $1 or $1.50 a kilogram, that will be more expensive than using heavy fuel oil. And I do think we have to accept that there are some sectors of the economy - cement, shipping, in particular, probably petrochemicals and plastics - where even in the long run, there will be a cost premium to having a zero carbon economy. Now, I'm-

ML  
I don't think that- heat which you mentioned earlier, unfortunately, is-

AT  
Well and that may be one of the inputs to that, so you have to take advantage of the petrochemical process. Now, we mustn't get into a situation of saying, "we're only going to decarbonise those where there are new technologies are as cheap or the old technologies." There can be a net cost to the economy, because if you decarbonise plastic production - and plastics cost you 50% more, the impact of that on a plastic bottle full of Coca Cola is so small that you're not even going to notice it. If you decarbonise shipping, and even if the freight rates are 100% higher than they would otherwise be, the impact on the cost of a pair of jeans made in Bangladesh and bought in New York or London is so small, it doesn't matter. So we do have to accept that there are some sectors of the economy which will need carbon prices or regulations to overcome that green premium. And we shouldn't be afraid of that: that is part of getting to a net zero economy.

ML  
I think though- there's a number of different issues I could take with that. One is that it's very easy to sit here as sort of wealthy people in the rich country saying, "well, it doesn't matter if jeans cost a bit more, and it doesn't matter if the bottle costs a bit more, and it doesn't matter," and you add it all up, and what you're really talking about is driving a bunch of inflation that can be very painful-

AT  
No but it's very, very small, it's very small. I mean let's take- freight rate oscillations are not a major driver of inflation. Freight rates go up four times and back down 80%. They do it regularly, and we hardly see it in the global economy. I mean, shipping is an incredibly cheap and incredibly efficient way of moving things around the world. So there are some of these things which have a relatively small- a really small impact. The amount of the cost of the global economy which comes from buying steel, buying shipping freighting, and buying plastics, is a very small part of the global economy. The bit to worry about in distribution is residential heat. That's where there are real costs that people may resist. So, I mean, I do think one has to run the numbers here and see- I don't think it matters at all, to the global economy or to the standard of living of anybody, if in 2050, the cost of steel is 25% more than it would otherwise be. Its impact on the global economy is trivial. 

ML  
So I did some numbers around hydrogen - there's a piece- and we'll put a link into the show notes so that the audience can follow it - where I looked at: why is it that so few of these projects have reached final investment decision? The Bloomberg database - there's 170 million tons, there's enough projects to do nearly double the amount of hydrogen - clean hydrogen as the hydrogen we use, but less than 1% of gone ahead. And the way I figured it out was this: that dirty hydrogen is about a buck and a half, and clean hydrogen is about three and a half bucks. So there's a couple of bucks delta. And if you just want fertilisers or petrochemicals to use the clean stuff, somebody's got to meet the $2. But it's more than $2 if you want to then push hydrogen into things like steel or - of course - transportation, all these kinds of- ammonia and shipping, because they are not currently using hydrogen, so clearly, it's a worse solution for them, you have to do something else to get them to, not just use clean hydrogen, but to use hydrogen at all. So I averaged it out, plus or minus at about, let's call it $3 per kilo that you need in terms of green premium. And then you start to look at some of the targets - some of the numbers, there's a figure that the hydrogen energy ministerial came out with in September in Tokyo, they no doubt signed this document and had a good lunch and outset the fabulous statement, they said that there will be 90 million tons of clean hydrogen by 2030. And you multiply 90 million by three, which is the premium somebody has to sort of find down the back of the sofa, you get to $270 billion gap. But you need to find 10 years of it to do project finance. So there's a $2.7 trillion gap that has to be filled by finance ministries to put 10 years worth of money on the table today to meet the output of hydrogen that the hydrogen energy ministerial said was needed, that's needed according to the IEA, you know, to be on track for net zero. It's just improbable, it's just improbable.

AT  
Well, Michael, I'd have to sit down, those are a set of figures that I'm not quite good enough at mental arithmetic to get that absolutely clear. But look, the slow progress of hydrogen doesn't surprise us at all. If you go back to our report on hydrogen, we very clearly saw that the takeoff of total hydrogen demand would be very small up to 2030, you know, only 10 or 20 million, it might go up from 100 million to 120 [million]. All of the take off that we believed - even on our 800 million figures - was in the 2030s and 40s, because we always knew it would take time for people to work out whether they were going to buy methanol-burning ships or ammonia-burning ships, place the orders for them, there's a there's an S curve of, you know, even if you replace the whole fleet, we always knew it would take time to- we build models which assume that you switch to either hydrogen - direct reduction - or to methane-based direct reduction and CCS when blast furnaces come up for relining. And when you did that you realise you wouldn't have- so we, in our hydrogen report, said policy should focus on stimulating early demand, because we thought we'd get supply running ahead of demand. And that is precisely what has happened. So in a sense, the way that this has played out in the short term has not surprised us.

ML  
I think all I'm adding to that is this idea of: it's not just that it takes time to reline the furnace, etc. but it takes time to actually put the policy in place to pay the green premium. Where there is a green premium, it is hundreds of billion

AT  
-we need clear policies. Now, I'll tell you - and we were discussing earlier, you don't necessarily agree with this. I think one of the most obvious things in the world is we should have a global carbon price on global shipping. It's something that President Ruto of Kenya called for at the meetings in Nairobi in September, it is absolutely clear to me that we do not have a route to the decarbonisation of global shipping which can be produced just by technological advancement and by a voluntary act, a sort of Walmart or IKEA voluntarily paying the green premium. You know, those things help to get an industry going, but if you want it to be universal, you need a carbon price. It's a global industry, it could be a carbon price and it could be a stream of money to help development in low income countries. That to me is one of the most obvious things and we should be putting these ones on the table. And we should be making people realistic about those areas of the economy where the green premium will entirely disappear. Road transport electrification, heat pumps in residential houses, and those may- it might disappear eventually, hydrogen direct reduction, and those where  almost certainly it will never disappear: shipping and petrochemicals.

ML  
The only area that we disagree - because you said that we disagree - I agree that we need a carbon price on shipping to drive the transformation. I just think that carbon price is what's needed to go to a more expensive shipping technology, ammonia and methanol. The issue that we disagree on is whether there'll be some surplus amount that you could then levy to go and do - I don't know - loss and damage, which is what Avinash Persaud wanted to do on one of the last step episodes, or to help with any other-

AT  
No, let me be clear, I assume that that carbon price doesn't come out to the industry profits. I mean, everything I know about taxation, you know, as an economist before I started playing around with energy is that, you know, ultimately taxes fall on consumers. That's where they fall, that what most tax incidence theories tell us, in which case, the money is not coming out of the industry. 

ML  
No, but the question is whether that money goes back into then paying for their higher fuel costs, whether there's some extra amount on top that can be sort of grabbed by the UN and directed at some other goal. And that's the bit that I have biggest-

AT  
It'll produce higher shipping rates. So the higher fuel costs will be made by the highest shipping rates and they'll be a taxation- and I think there will be taxatioavailable.

ML  
So the shipping industry - just to be clear about what you're saying - the shipping industry will not only have to invest in new ships and higher cost fuel, but will also generate more cash to be directed at other climate-

AT  
-carbon price. I said that to the International Chamber of Shipping in Dubai on Sunday, and far from getting lynched, a lot of people came up to me afterwards and said, "this is so bloody obvious, we've got to get on with it."

ML  
Well I'd be surprised if they understood the details of it to be honest. I'm gonna do more on shipping. Bryony Worthington - Baroness Worthington, who's doing some of the hosting - she actually had Johannah Christensen- shipping expert

AT  
-Johannah Christenen, yeah, Global Net Zero Alliance.

ML  
I promised you we would get to look at some of these kind of horizontal issues you've talked about, that you've also - not just talked about, you've done reports on. So, we've talked about your fossil phase-down work in the context of COP, but you've also worked on materials and resource requirements, supply chains, and also planning processes, the need for speed in planning. Do you want to take those in any particular order?

AT
Well let's take the planning one. I mean, lots of countries have aggressive objectives for rolling out renewables. The world has now agreed three times tripling at the global level, the UK has a target of 70 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035. But at the moment, things are just not - particularly on the wind area, not so much the solar - they're not occurring at sufficient pace. One of the issues there is grid conductivity; we need to invest in grids and we're going to be doing a lot of work on that next year on how we invest in grids ahead of development. But one of the problems is planning and permitting, it takes a long time. So we did a detailed piece of work on: why does it take 11 years on an offshore wind farm to go from the initial concept to actually the thing operating? What are these processes? And what you discover is: a lot of them are- they're failures of a well-designed process. You have steps in the process which are sequential, which don't need to be sequential; they could be parallel. You have processes whereby every time you do an offshore wind farm in a particular location, you do the environmental assessment all over again, rather than having done an environmental assessment for that whole large area, and say, "this is an area where we are happy to go ahead with wind farms." There are a whole set of different- you also have in some countries just: there aren't enough officials trained in the ministries. So the things just get held up by a sort of, you know, "it's in the intray and we haven't gotten around to it." There is also then opposition from - often - environmentalists who want us to deal with climate change, but don't want those wind farms or those transmission links. And what we set out was a report which said, "here's how to do it, but here's how to do it without, you know, just tearing up environmental standards." And for instance, we deliberately went to Nature Conservancy Council and World Wildlife Fund and made sure they were happy to endorse the report and say, "this is getting the balance right." So it isn't saying, "ignore whether this is a migrating birds, you know, area." And so there is a lot to be achieved there, and one of the things we were very strongly stressing to governments of the European Union is: you've got to have a heavy focus on this, because otherwise, you can see you stand up as the Prime Minister and set your target, but you'll find it doesn't get delivered because of all this really nitty gritty stuff.

ML  
That takes me back, actually, to stuff that I was doing at McKinsey: core process redesign. There was a huge practice and I was very involved in just debugging these sequential processes, and doing instead in parallel what you can. And it's an issue- the transmission issue is an issue around the world. It's not just transmission. The planning is also the actual land use, and it leads to the next one, which is mines, minerals, resources and processing thereof. What have you- have you been able to debug- because they say that it takes 16 years to start a mine?

AT  
Well it varies, it varies. We look very carefully at all the demands which would come from the energy transition question, whether it be rare-earths like neodymium that's going into magnets in wind turbines, or the battery metals: nickel manganese, cobalt, lithium. Or - crucial one: copper. Copper for transmission lines. We looked at how much our reserves are in the world? Don't worry about that; there's lots of these minerals out there. We looked at how long it takes to develop mines and processing; processing is often as important as mines. We looked at local environmental impacts. And basically, we ended up saying, "these are manageable problems and they're going to have to be managed." Take local environmental impact: it's very important for us to focus on local environmental impact. It is also important for us to place it in context. Of course, mineral- mines that mine for minerals - will have a certain footprint across the world, you will take a perhaps rather beautiful or sensitive bit of a landscape, and for a period of time, you'll be tearing it apart from mines. But let's be clear: all the mines in the world are a trivial pin prick on the Earth's space compared with agriculture. Look at water demands in all the mines, and also everything for electrolysers to produce hydrogen out of water: you end up with figures in the sort of, you know, 4 billion cubic metres, and you end up with 4 trillion cubic metres used in agriculture. So- and by the way, in mining, it turns out that one of the most destructive bits of mining is gold mining. And that's not because we need gold mining for the energy transitions. So look: hugely important issues, but we were clear: they're manageable. One of the ways that we can get manage them is by recycling, and we've got to be really ferocious about recycling all of our lithium and nickel and manganese and cobalt, which we can do. The other thing which makes you feel good about it is technical innovation. Five years ago, everybody was terrified the cobalt supply would be a restriction on electrification. Do you know where the cobalt price today is? It's about at a historic-low. Forecasts of how much cobalt we will need in 2030 have come down about 60%, even as our forecasts of electric vehicles have massively gone up: because people simply realise that there would be a shortage there, so they designed cobalt out of the batteries. You don't need cobalt in a battery. So they are hugely important issues, but we're convinced they're manageable issues, as long as you anticipate them well in advance. 

ML  
Recycling is a fascinating one. I recently tweeted a short thread because there are more and more companies that can do 95%+ recycling of pretty much all of the different critical metals in batteries. And what I've thought about is well: hang on a second, because in the 15 years, 10 years, 20 years that that battery operates, technology improves. So by the time we remake the battery with those materials, it's probably more than 5% better than the old battery.

AT  
Yeah.

ML  
So you lose 5% that you don't recycle, but the next battery is better. And so actually, these minerals that we take- if you now take minerals out of the earth, put them in a battery, they will actually be doing their service as a battery forever, as long as we can improve battery technology faster than the losses. And people went crazy. Half the people on Twitter thought this was fantastic, and half of the people on Twitter thought this was absolutely untrue, inconceivable, the arithmetic-

AT  
Quite a complicated concept to get a hold on, but I think I've got it. But look, I mean, one crucial thing is, of course, we do need primary battery materials, because we've got to have the primary battery materials for the first generation. But you're absolutely right, that we will be reducing the battery need- the mineral need per kilowatt-hour of storage. And by the way, we're seeing this across the whole economy: silver use in solar PV panels has come down dramatically over the last 10 years. We continue to get better at these technologies.

ML  
So the first leaf battery - Nissan Leaf - 70 mile range, today: 210 miles range. And it's broadly speaking the same weight. So, if you could recycle even one third of that first Leaf battery, you could still power a Leaf with it. 

AT  
Yes, that's true. 

ML  
So that's where that maths comes from.

AT  
-so that's where the maths- right. I mean, I think the good news is that in relation to nickel, manganese and cobalt, even without regulation, people will recycle because the recycled costs will probably be less than the primary costs. Lithium: we we will probably need- lithium ferrous phosphate batteries, we will need regulation. But we should have regulation; we should have a regulation that requires pretty much total recycling of these materials.

ML  
Speaking as somebody who spends a lot of time recycling - my personal hobby - I think regulation actually works. In some cases it's needed. Let's just finish off, if we can, by talking about finance, because finance can either accelerate this or it can slow it down, and in extreme cases can stop it. Where are we? How are we doing? If you relate it back to the sort of last year, we've got quite difficult conditions with interest rates. Has that sort of materially-

AT  
We produced figures in a report in April this year, similar to what other people had produced, the IEA, etc. There's a bit of sort of "what do you include in investment?" etc. But order of magnitude, we were saying then, that compared with about a trillion dollars a year going into clean energy technologies of various sorts in 2020, we have to get to 3.5, 4 trillion by the 2030s. The good news is that the amounts are going up. I mean, on our basis of doing it, the IEA believes that in 2022, we'd have got to 1.7 trillion. On our particular- we don't, for instance, count as investment, the purchase of a new electric vehicle because that's consumer expenditure, and it's just a choice of when you do or not. On our basis, 1 trillion has become 1.5 trillion, that's quite a big increase. The challenge at the moment is that the vast majority of that increase of investment that we are seeing is in the developed countries and China, and we are not seeing the pace of increase in the lower- and middle-income countries, and low-income countries such as Sub-Saharan Africa. And it is clear that in those countries, it isn't just going to happen automatically with just the private sector. I mean, broadly speaking, in the rich developed countries, provided you get all the other aspects of policy right, some combination of carbon pricing and regulation and a strategy towards your grids, a lot of it will occur and the private sector will do it. You can't rely on that in the developing countries. And so this whole agenda of the multilateral development banks, what's called "blended finance", public finance and private finance together, reducing the cost of capital in lower-income countries, I think is going to be really important. I think, if you look at the COP-28 commitment to tripling renewable capacity across the world, which really should mean five times in Sub-Saharan Africa, you know, even by 2030, that won't occur, without, you know, flows of money through development banks. We're beginning to head towards agreed reforms on that: the new head of the World Bank, I think is clearly committed to a major shift in what they're doing. But that is a potential barrier to making enough progress.

ML  
One of the recent episodes: I had Avinash Persaud who's one of the originators of the Bridgetown initiative, PM, Prime Minister Mia Motley of Barbados, her initiative. And he's now I think gone off to the Inter-American Development Bank. But he talked about this: I think that the concern - and I've been talking about blended finance, you know, people like Rachel Kyte, one of the very first people on Cleaning Up, been talking about it for nearly 20 years. And it's billions, tens of billions. Maybe you could really tweak all the dials and get it up to hundres of billions. But you've laid out the challenge. It is a challenge- the challenge is the difference between a trillion and a half, and probably 4 trillion. So unless it starts with a "tr", trillions, are we really gonna get there?

AT  
Yeah, well, I think what will happen is that the trillion up to 2 trillion, which is required in China and the developed countries, I think, could occur. The half a trillion, up to, let's say, one and a half or two, which needs to occur outside those, that does need a booster rocket. And the challenge- and part of that comes from the mobilisation of domestic savings; I'm more optimistic about that in India, I mean, India has big oligarchs, big companies, you know, capital markets that can mobilise a lot of money. But when you get to Sub-Saharan Africa, I mean, it just simply isn't going to occur without significant development banking. So, you know, we may fall short of that, but at least that has really shot up the agenda over the last two years. And I think, you know, some important things are happening there. 

ML  
It's very interesting talking to a former financial regulator, because in a way, this is a sort of macroprudential/microprudential problem that we can, you know, we can all deal with climate change in our country and get everything working, but if there isn't $2 trillion going to the Global South every year, climate change is still going to come and get us.

AT  
No, that is right. Now, I mean, it will grow there - I mean, it depends what you count - I have a worry about this for Global South, I think it's just become so unclear what exactly it is. I prefer to divide it between, you know, there's China, there's upper-middle-income countries, there's lower-income countries, and there's low-income countries. I mean, the challenges of Sub-Saharan Africa versus Indonesia and Vietnam versus India and China are very different challenges. I think you have to get granular. Look, I think a lot of progress will- I mean, I'm quite bullish on what won't happen in Indonesia, in Vietnam. These are countries which are attracting private external investment. It's the lower-income countries where I think we are a long way off target for what is required. 

ML  
Yeah. Fascinating, as last year. Thank you very much for joining me and, you know, I will already extend the invitation to come back after - what would that be? COP 29-

AT  
COP 29 in Baku!

ML  
-in Baku! Exactly another oily COP. But we're gonna have plenty to talk about, I've got absolutely no doubt. It's a huge pleasure. Thank you for joining us.

AT  
Thanks very much.

ML  
So that was Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, back for a second time - in what I hope will become a tradition - to help us close the year here on Cleaning Up. As always, we'll put links in the shownotes to the episodes mentioned during our conversation. So you could start with Episode 110, and that was Adair Turner, helping us to close 2022. There's Episode 2: Rachel Kyte - Investing in Climate Leadership, Episode 141: Naomi Oreskes - Lifting the Curtain on Climate Change Denial, in conversation with my guest host Baroness Worthington, Bryony Worthington, Episode 143 also with Bryony Worthington: that's Johannah Christiansen - Is Shipping the Easiest Hard-to-Abate Sector? And Episode 145: Avinash Persaud - The Bridgetown Initiator. We'll also put links in the shownotes to the recent Bloomberg NEF piece that I wrote entitled, "Clean Hydrogen's Missing Trillions", the thread that I put on Twitter about battery recycling, the actual agreed text that came out of COP 28, which is called The Global Stocktake, and a link to some press coverage of Saudi Arabia's Oil Demand Sustainability Programme. And that brings to an end 2023, and Season 10 here on Cleaning Up. And we'll see you for Season 11 in the new year starting on January the 10th. So enjoy the holidays from me, from my guest host Bryony Worthington, and from the whole team here at Cleaning Up. 

ML  
If you've enjoyed today's conversation, please remember to like, share, and subscribe to Cleaning Up, or leave us a review on your chosen podcast platform. And do please, please spread the word on social media or by telling your friends and colleagues. And, if you want more from Cleaning Up, sign up for our free newsletter at cleaningup.live, where you'll find our archive of over 160 hours of conversations with extraordinary climate leaders. 

ML  
Cleaning Up is brought to you by our lead supporter: Capricorn Investment Group, the Liebreich Foundation and the Gilardini Foundation.