The Exchanges

Q that you define it. Completely reinventing how we design The weight out of cars, design mechanical systems out of buildings. How are you thinking about efficiency in this context, and how can we ramp up the kind of efficiency, deep efficiency, you're focused on in a way that can, for example, eliminate the use of Russian gas? What are we thinking about in terms of time frame for deep efficiency?

A Faster than we thought. It's not clear how fast it will be, but interestingly, a lot of the extra efficiency we can now buy doesn't require you to go back to school and learn a bunch of new theory. It can be spread just by seeing a picture of different ways to do things. My favorite example is that half the world's electricity runs motors, half the motor torque Turns pumps and fans that move fluids through pipes and ducts, but most installers and designers have paid rather little attention to wringing the friction out of the pipes and ducts, and if you make them fat, short, and straight, rather than skinny, long, and crooked, you can reduce friction by 80 to ninety-odd percent. In fact, in this building, 97%. That means, in turn, that the pumping or blowing equipment Gets 80 to 90 odd percent smaller and therefore cheaper. So you end up with lower capital costs. You have this order of magnitude energy saving sufficient to save about a fifth of the world's electricity or half the coal-fired electricity, and you recover your investment in typically under a year fixing old buildings and factories or instantly in new ones. And yet this is, this method is not yet in any Government study, industry forecast, climate model, standard engineering textbook. Why not? Because it's not a technology, which is what most policymakers look for. It's a design method, but actually, if you show a p…

AI assessment note: “Faster than we thought. It's not clear how fast it will be”

Q closer together. And so Germany is obviously reevaluating that decades long Approach to its energy relationship with Russia, and it is now realizing that in a timeframe that seemed inconceivable just a few months ago, it needs to try to eliminate its use of Russian natural gas and eventually Russian oil. So how much of an abrupt turnaround is this in a country like Germany? And where does Germany go?

A It's a very dramatic change for Germany and many other European countries. It now looks like the purchases of Russian gas will be cut by two-thirds this year alone, and probably be gone by Next summer, at latest, next autumn, and what's even more surprising is that a similarly aggressive path off Russian oil is now taking shape very quickly. There will be some disruption, some economic pain from these switches, but all the evidence we have so far from around the world is that efficiency of renewables can With aggressive policy, deploy very much faster than we've done before. The, the big surprise for many is that the efficiency resource and what you might call flexi-watts, using electricity timely in a way that doesn't inconvenience the user, those resources are about three times bigger than had been thought. And, uh, if you combine them with the Renewable supply side revolution. We really have a lot more options than we need, but we, we don't need to wait for miracles.

AI assessment note: “It's a very dramatic change for Germany and many other European countries.”

Q fossil fuels, how would it do that? There are a lot of potential pathways. Electric transportation to cut petroleum use, heat pumps, wind, solar, hydrogen, and renewable gas to offset fossil gas, and then there's efficiency. Not just the change your windows and insulate your house kind of efficiency, although that's important, but the kind of super efficiency that Amory has been living and proving. The rip-out-your-mechanical-system-and-grow-tropical-fruit-in-the-middle-of-your-house kind of efficiency?

A I would expect, ah, probably half, maybe more, of the energy security, climate, health, and economic solution to our energy problems It's gonna come from efficient use, the rest from clean supply. The market's gonna tell us how these things compete with each other if we allow them to compete. Most policy makers, though, only let supply compete with other supply, not with savings. But if we let all resources compete fairly with each other, we will end up buying a lot more efficiency, we will need less supply, therefore we can phase out the fossil fuels faster, easier, and cheaper. And that is, I think, where we're going to end up in countries that really pay attention. And this is not only about installing efficient new stuff, but also uninstalling inefficient old stuff. It's not just in with the good, it's also out with the bad.

AI assessment note: “probably half, maybe more, of the energy security, climate, health, and economic solution”

Q of Renewables built. But demand for petroleum products, gasoline, plastics, jet fuel, hydrocarbon liquids, they have all steadily climbed. And demand for natural gas continues to climb every year. So what's the story of today's supply disruptions in the wake of COVID and Russia's attack on Ukraine? Why are we, from a, from a demand perspective, why are we just as vulnerable today, even with all these global efficiency improvements?

A You're right that until just the past few years, renewable supplies have added on to fossil fuels rather than displacing and reducing them. But that is starting to change, because even before the pandemic, fossil fuel growth in the world was coasting to a halt, and then the pandemic crushed fossil fuel demand for a year or two, while renewables kept on growing much faster. Which surprised a lot of people, and the result is that peak fossil fuel almost certainly occurred in 2019, globally. Putin's war really puts the last nails in that coffin, turning what was usually forecast as a bumpy plateau of fossil fuel use for most of the rest of this decade into a steep decline. If you read the, what, what Germany and the European Commission are doing to get very aggressively off Russian oil and gas, and how that is likely to speed up similar actions around the world, it's really a remarkable change. German energy policy just changed more in 10 days than it had done in 10 years.

AI assessment note: “the result is that peak fossil fuel almost certainly occurred in 2019, globally.”