How green is the energy revolution really?

most people realize that we are in deep trouble, we hear a lot about the urgent need to get off fossil fuels. I will do everything in my power to win the Clean Energy Future, so how are things going on this front? We are at this incredible inflection point. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has transformed the

energy

landscape in ways that could not be expected. Someone asked me what a wind generator sounds like and I said it sounds like money to me. What is stopping the global

energy

supply from going completely

green

? Show me this Frankenstein of a car you have here and how fast the world is moving towards this goal it's 8 in the morning and the next generation climate campaign group is preparing for another protest these activists call themselves the last generation that can stop climate collapse German authorities like so many others Around the world policies have been declared to reach net zero by mid-century, but these protesters are deeply frustrated by the pace of the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy.

Today, their goal is to block one of the busiest roads on NE B and the group manages to close it for 45 minutes. Such tactics are not popular with many, but protesters insist they will not be deterred. We managed to take our peaceful protest to the road. The police will not stop us through further repression or anything else. The group is part of a network of climate protesters using similar tactics to make their message stick. They've glued themselves to tunics, poured fake oil on a climp, and poured mashed potatoes on a jumpsuit. We need to get rid of fossils.

Resources for 2030. We do not need any negotiations. leave by then, not by 2045, as our government proposes right now, we have waited too long and this is a death sentence for society, so while leaders respond to climate change, is the world moving fast enough towards a clean and safe? Climate activists say things have been done. Made worse by the global energy crisis, Russia's invasion of Ukraine presented a historic opportunity for ecological change, but activists insist Europe failed to seize it until Russia turned off the taps; It supplied Europe with more than 40% of its imported gas and around a quarter of its oil, and yet to plug this gap, governments across Europe turned to fossil fuels to keep the lights on.

The government is currently fueling the crisis by continuing to subsidize fossil fuels by extracting more oil and more gas in January 2023. The German village of Lerat grabbed global headlines with the mass occupation of a site where the government gave permission to expand a coal mine you are the change and you are the hope, the fact that

green

party ministers also backed the plant only fueled the anger, it

really

encapsulated some of the tensions the governments faced. Reacting to the invasion of Russia, which was a desperate time and governments took desperate and controversial measures, governments turned to fossil fuels immediately afterward for a very simple reason: that they were available to fossil fuel companies, it was time to boom again. big increase, particularly in oil and gas prices, it's extraordinary to see the levels we're getting for that wholesale gas price another day, another record high in the price of gasoline, oil prices in June 2022 rose above of 120 dollars a barrel and then, in natural gas, the increase was even more extreme, in August 2022 prices were approximately 10 times higher than in the years before the invasion, including coal, the most fossil fuel Dirty on everyone, it enjoyed gains that many thought were long gone after it appeared to peak in 2013.

Global consumption. in 2022 P 8 billion tons for the first time in history, does this mean the world will never find the will to switch to green energy fast enough? Not necessarily, so one would think, hearing all this, that it's been a terrible time for In the energy transition immediately after the invasion, it looked like the energy transition might slow as governments turned to coal and natural gas , but what we have seen instead is a real acceleration in investment in green energy sources in 2022, with global installations of rooftop solar panels increasing by half and investment in solar and wind energy increasing from 357 billion to 490 billion, surpassing investment in oil and gas Wells for the first time and in 2023 total investment in clean energy is predicted to reach $1.8 trillion compared to $1 trillion for fossil fuels Vladimir Putin's energy threat to The West appears to have been counterproductive the war in Ukraine may have accelerated the global transition to green energy by 5 to 10 years by skyrocketing fossil fuel prices Russia made renewable energy look more attractive than Oil and gas once became They became

really

expensive and that's why other forms of energy are looking more and more attractive, especially in the long term, and so governments are really interested in energy security, particularly domestic sources of clean energy, because of this growing concern about excessive dependence on hostile governments that diversify a form. of Russia for fossil fuels and massive investments in renewable energy around the world, regions and governments have announced major investments and partnerships, the Inflation Reduction Act was the biggest climate step forward ever, creating new manufacturing hubs green and jobs in unlikely places, one of the most notable.

The interesting thing about the last few years in the energy transition is that you see parts of the world that were previously dedicated to fossil fuels becoming something completely different and there is no place where this is more obviously than the North Sea because it is an absolutely huge resource of wind and is relatively shallow, making it easy to install large turbines in England. Hull has become a manufacturing site to help assemble these giant turbines. Governments around the world want to create jobs and generate votes, although new green policies are accelerating large investments, it is not clear that the promises of green jobs will bear fruit on a large scale, so the main bottlenecks in the bureaucracy and infrastructure to allow the new wave of renewables to come online.

It is a phenomenal construction project and invisible to most people deep in the streets of London. That's exactly what Alice DEA Hunty is working on, so we're about 30 meters below the surface here and this train is transporting the waste from what came out of the Tunnel Boring Machine she's overseeing a billion pound project to get back to rewire south London with a new 32km underground tunnel, so this is the forest air circulation into the tunnel so we have good air to breathe, this makeover is essential if London's network works. to cope with an increase in green energy supply, it's a huge project, a 7 year construction project deep inside London, basically to rewire it and replace what were old cables with bigger, higher capacity cables to that the city is prepared for the future against the electrification of transport, the growing need for electrification. um quietly passing under city roads without people noticing, but this is just one wire on a much larger global circuit board and as wind and solar farms skyrocket and power plants of fossil fuels are reduced, there are long signals to connect to the grid.

If green energy operators do not have enough capacity to step up to the challenge, by 2050 the world will need to generate much more electricity than today to meet climate goals, including more than double to reach net zero, now that we are at this incredible point To completely reconfigure grids to accommodate renewable energy and transition to clean energy, more grid connections and less red tape could help accelerate the global move toward green energy by 25%. %. New ways of storing the energy generated by renewables are also needed and sharing it connecting to other countries also plays a really crucial role because that means we can share our energy so when the wind blows here but more energy is needed in Denmark , we can send it that way and vice versa to do that with more networks.

They will have to be joined together by cables known as interconnections. They are incredible feats of engineering. They're laying these high-voltage direct current cables across the entire sea and they land at each end at what are called converter stations, which are almost scientific. They are pieces of equipment that convert electricity from direct current to alternating current, which is what we use in our homes, buildings, hospitals and businesses, so they are a really key part of the energy transition. Innovations like these could help implement more renewable energy. energy, but since the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, the world will also need new sources of clean energy, the power of the atom or the ancient ones, the greatest source of energy that man has ever discovered, nuclear energy that ran out of power.

The decades-old fad now awaits renewal in places like the Bristol Channel, where Britain's first new nuclear power plant in 30 years is taking shape. 10,000 people are working around the clock to get Hinkley Point C ready to light up in 2026. You can see us. We have 52 cranes on site and Big Carl is the largest crane in the world and Tam Alawi is its commissioning director. We are building this power station so that we can generate 7% of the UK's energy by 2027. Nuclear power hardly produces any carbon emissions and, unlike wind or solar power, can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to provide grids with the constant base load they need with the recent push for energy security around the world, there are now new eyes on nuclear energy, the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine have had an impact real in the perception of nuclear energy and has highlighted the importance of being energy independent.

Having the ability to build our own power plants will allow us to have that energy independence. Nuclear energy is much safer than energy produced by fossil fuels and even wind. turbines, but like many nuclear projects, Hinkley is over budget and behind schedule. The unpopularity of nuclear energy. High upfront costs and long construction times mean the technology has become rusty in Western countries and that is a challenge for the clean energy transformation as we haven't built something for a long time. We have to develop and establish capacity in Britain which includes the supply chain and includes our people to be able to meet all the challenges of building a massive large-scale project like Point C.

Part of that is harnessing part from the experience of In other countries, for example in China, for example, they are building power plants more frequently if the world wants to stop using fossil fuels, something must surely happen: the alternatives can not only be good for the planet, but they also need to make a lot of money. There's a place where tycoons have always known how to get the most bang for their buck in the heart of Texas. Green jobs are booming. The traditionally conservative state is leading the way for renewable energy across the country. Lanar State might not be the obvious place.

It's hard to find a boom in green technology, but today cattle generate $8 per acre here compared to hundreds of wind turbines. Someone asked me what a wind generator sounds like and I told them it sounds like money to me. Texas is a staunchly Republican state where many remain. Climate change skeptic, but hard economics is transforming another big business traditionally tied to fossil fuels. If we can incorporate modern technology into these older vehicles, we can really appreciate them and continue to use them in the future. Kevin Emma's company is giving you classic American muscle. The cars are given a new life by converting them to electric technology, although these converted classic cars form a niche market that he hopes to capitalize on.

The broader rise of electric vehicles, the process is to disassemble the vehicle, reassemble it with all the electrical components. I spent a lottime wiring it all up and finally, uh, dialing it in and tuning it, which is what we're doing today. 8.32 perfect. They've been working on this 1965 Shelby Cobra replica for the last 6 months and now it's finally time for the rubber to meet the road. This is actually our first ecobra and we will test it on the streets with the car that passed all its tests and we are ready to rock with EVS, especially custom models like these.

It is not in the budget of most nor, however, sales of electric vehicles have been boosted by the benefits they offer in terms of fuel costs and convenience. Okay, it's very convenient to charge your car at home and it's also very cost-effective, costing less than a third or so. about the cost of filling a car with electricity than filling it with gasoline, the effect of this is a much greener solution, but not everyone here is happy to eliminate gasoline, show me this Frankenstein of a car you have here. old attitudes die hard I grew up in the muscle car era between 65 and 68 in high school if you wanted a hot, hot girl you needed a hot, hot car it was that simple the continued growth in the muscle car market Electric vehicles is essential for a green future and here the figures are encouraging by 2025 EVS will represent a quarter of new car sales globally, putting a total of 77 million EVS into circulation.

This figure will rise to more than 700 million by 2040, when it is estimated that 34 of the new car sales will be electric to get there. Automakers around the world will invest $1.2 trillion by 2030. What's really interesting in recent years is the increase in money going into electrified transportation, which is now almost as large as the level of capital being invested. destined for the wind. and solar energy, and so for a long time, green cars, electric cars were something that investors were excited about, but they hadn't really hit the mainstream and now that's changed, but there are danger signs in the future.

Electric vehicles need batteries and batteries need lithium, the boom has thrown up environmental consequences. Concerns about lithium mining in places like Chile's Atakama Desert In the bigger picture, the world's transition to clean energy could stall without the crucial minerals needed to fuel the transformation to green energy, some environmentalists will likely have to change their stance.From a historical perspective, environmentalists have specialized in not building things, to prevent companies from coming in and ruining, for example, an expanse of pristine nature. Now the climate movement has to focus on building things that include building things in areas that historically an environmentalist might have wanted to protect like A desert that includes large investments in mining that are still EMI Industries, but those resources are needed to Accelerate the transition to green energy and this is just one of the many changes needed to propel the world towards the promised land of all-green energy. a journey that is just beginning, so we have seen this huge increase in investment in the United States, Europe, China, India, all of this is promising, it is also not on the scale required and it is late, the world is already warming, so This is a hopeful story. because there is a lot of action and a reminder that much more needs to be done Hello, I'm Charlotte Howard, executive editor of The Economist, if you want to read more about the energy transition, click the link opposite and, if you want, To See more of our current and upcoming series, click the other link thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe