Jarand Rystad: 0:03

The energy transition would have happened in any case, even without the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because basically new technologies, the electrification will enable us to actually produce energy cheaper and better in the future.

Tom Raftery: 0:22

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 207 of the Climate Confident podcast, the go to show for best practices in climate emissions reductions and removals. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and if you haven't already, be sure to follow the podcast in your podcast app of choice so you never miss a new episode. Before we dive in, a huge thanks to our incredible supporters. Your backing keeps this podcast going and I really appreciate each and every one of you. If you'd like to join our community, you can support the show for as little as three euros or dollars a month. Less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you just click the support link in the show notes or visit tinyurl. com slash climatepod. Today, I'm thrilled to be speaking to Jarand Rystad from Rystad Energy. And in the coming weeks, I'll be speaking to Professor Annalisa Bracco from Georgia Tech. Ryan Schermerhorn, an IP lawyer. We'll be talking about climate patents. Dr. Jemma Green, founder and exec chair of PowerLedger, where we'd be talking energy autonomy. And Puja Balachander, founder of UpGreen. But back to today's show, and as I mentioned on the show today, we have Jarand. Jarand, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Jarand Rystad: 1:44

yes, I'm Jarand Rystad, education as a physicist but started Rystad Energy 21 years ago. So we are a global company, 830 employees, 37 offices all over the world. And we are basically analyzing the global energy system. Every single element of it. So yeah, that's me.

Tom Raftery: 2:04

Okay, fantastic. And Jarand, talk to me a little bit about Rystad Energy. Why did you set it up? Who are your clients and what is it you do for them?

Jarand Rystad: 2:16

Yeah. Well, I had eight years in McKinsey working on energy related questions. And I used a lot of energy data, especially within the oil and gas space. But I found myself struggling to get that data to be precise enough to describe the future. Because doing historical look back analysis, I saw that what we said five years ago and ten years ago was very different from what actually happened. And then since I have a background in physics six, I'm also statistics. And as a computer programmer I, I saw that it would be possible to, to change the data, the assumptions to make it fit better with the future. And I started to develop a lot of algorithms to do that within McKinsey. And I said, let's make a global database for all the energy in the world. And they said, yeah, I don't, you're too optimistic. This is completely unrealistic. We cannot do that. So then I thought, okay, lemme do that myself. And to use that as a foundation for consulting and advisory to the energy companies. So that was the background for this. And I thought it would take four months to develop this database. It took me four years, but we worked as consultants all the way. So we had the self financing of this. Since then we have been expanding this from from oil and gas to, as I said, wind solar, batteries hydropower, every single energy form, refineries, storage and use of energy, et cetera, and to be very bottom up, have all the data basically, and based on bottom up data, try to say something meaningful about the future. Trade off between the different costs, et cetera.

Tom Raftery: 3:49

Okay. And who would be a typical client and what problems are you solving for them?

Jarand Rystad: 3:54

Yes. So our typical clients, they are subscribing to our services. So that's all the large energy companies of the world. You can name any one of them. That would be our clients, but also investors into energy, the supplier companies into the energy supply chains and also governments and institutions. So I think if you have been on energy seminars or whatever, you will see that in the lower left corner source the riser Energy. That's something we'll find very often.

Tom Raftery: 4:24

Okay. Very good. And, you know, with your background in physics and strategy, what's, do you think the most important lesson you've learned about tackling big systemic challenges like the energy transition?

Jarand Rystad: 4:38

Ah, that was a big question. But, but I think that the world is changing all the time but more in a few steps where we get disruptive technologies coming in, meaning new technologies that has the potential to be cheaper and better and basically taking over the entire old technologies. So typically technologies are stabilizing at a certain level until you get these new disruptive changes to happen. And, and one example is the media and telecom revolution. You know, until 1990 it was a quite stable media picture with newspapers, television, and then data computer communication or something else. But then all of this was merged into completely new platforms with internet and with the smartphone. So this is a good illustration that all the business models changed, et cetera due to this disruptive technologies coming in there and just now we are facing similar changes in the energy Uh.

Tom Raftery: 5:43

And there are several reasons behind the energy transition, obviously and why it's happening. One of the big ones is obviously climate change, and this is the Climate Confident podcast. Do you think that we are changing our energy systems fast enough to meet the targets that we've set for ourselves for climate change.

Jarand Rystad: 6:08

Yes. First, let me take one step back then because you said that yes, the energy transition is about getting down the greenhouse gas emissions. I think yes, that is one of the important drivers. But I say that actually, the energy transition would have happened in any case, even without the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because basically new technologies, the electrification will enable us to actually produce energy cheaper and better in the future. For all other technological reasons also that all that only avoiding emissions of methane and especially CO2. So there's several drivers. And then the question is with respect to global emissions of CO2, are we getting those fast enough down? To get to the different targets of the greenhouse gas budgets that we have and it's actually very, because originally the Paris agreement was to get below two degrees global warming. And that is quite robust that is quite big carbon budget that will be allowed to get below two degrees. But then afterwards, the target were adjusted to get down to 1.5 degree. And then the budget is only 500 gigaton for the rest of the century, from 2020, which is very little actually. So for two degrees, yes, it's going more than fast enough. I think for the 1.5 degree, it's not going fast enough. So we are in between those two limits. And you need to be a quite negative view actually on the future to land at about two degrees, I think. So with the pace we see now in solar, wind and batteries, the three most important technologies, we are trending towards below two degrees. But the nuances and the fine tuning here is how much below and with which pace. And maybe we can come back to that.

Tom Raftery: 8:17

Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about that. Let's, let's, let's dig into that. How much below the two degrees do you think we will land at and why?

Jarand Rystad: 8:26

Yes. I think with the, current pace and also taking into consideration all of this kind of maybe negative news for the green shift that we have got recently with, you know a new administration in, in the US not really prioritising the green shift to put it mildly. These are things that that will slow down the green shift. But however, looking at the actual implementation of, for example, new solar last year is beating any record, you know. Just China, for example, they had a target of getting to 1300 gigawatt renewables by 2030. They reached that target 2024. So they were actually six years ahead of time. So we are seeing things going slower and things going faster. But if we assume a similar pace as we have seen in absolute value in added new technologies then we are tracking towards just below two degrees. If we see an accelerated pace, more like an S curve, we are tracking well below two degrees.

Tom Raftery: 9:37

Okay. Good. China has a track record of setting extremely ambitious goals for itself and then beating those goals admirably. And we've seen, as you mentioned, a roll back on ambitions in the US. What do you think are the long term implications of that for the economies of both nations? I mean, I got to think that if we are going into an energy transition, which we are de facto, it means that the energy systems globally will all transition over time. It looks like China is well ahead of that curve in terms of developing the technologies to enable that transition. Whereas it looks like the US is rolling back and going to sit back and let China take over that market. Would that be a fair comment do you think?

Jarand Rystad: 10:26

Yes, I think what you just said is correct. You know that to own the future, you need to own the technologies of the future. And yes, China is completely dominant in the green value chains or, or, you know, solar especially, and batteries. They are a complete dominant are having the leading technologies to produce it and also the leading products on this. And this is the future in any case, there's no no reasons why would we would over the next 20 years what should I say shut in the electrification of the world and the renewabilisation of the world and go back to fossil fuel simply because it will be much more expensive. So solar, wind and batteries are much cheaper than basically coal gas and oil as a system to provide the energy the world is needing long term. But of course, we have a lot of install based in the fossil fuel system. And the pace of replacing that installed base with something new is, is really what will determine kind of the pace of the energy transition and, and some, in some cases, if you do it too fast you might get stranded asset and you might get not the optimal solution. So it's not that you should immediately, you cannot immediately shut down the fossil fuel system either, but in that sense, back to your question. With a country kind of betting on the past or betting on the future, of course, it will be much better off betting on the future, but I think it remains to be seen what will actually happen in the United States. Because still, you know, a state like Texas, where people have a tradition to be very commercial, looking at what is really a value creation, still there, that's where we see the fastest growth of renewables in US, faster than in California at the moment, simply because it is very competitive. So I think that the economy will be a very important driver of also the development in the United States. So, the green shift will not stop up even if you have an administration that is not a promoter of it.

Tom Raftery: 12:37

Yeah, that makes sense. China, of course, have a huge lead as well in the electrification of transportation. I mean, they have more electric buses than the rest of the world combined, more EVs, and they're also electrifying shipping as well, to an extent, there's more electric ships coming out of China than anywhere else as well. So it's, it's not just the renewables, but it's a combination of the two, which are going to make a huge difference as well.

Jarand Rystad: 13:02

Yeah. And, and You know, basically when we are summarising the technologies needed to mitigate all emissions we are pointing at three groups of technologies which can be summarised in three main tasks. The first task is to decarbonise the electricity system. The second task is then to electrify everything. And the third task is then to get rid of the rest. And in terms of emission reduction these tasks to put it simply is 40%, 40%, 20% of the current emissions And if you look at electricity historically, it's actually been the sector with the highest emission per kilowatt over. So meaning that if you start to electrify, you will increase emissions globally. So it's only when electricity on average have less emissions than the typical consumption of fossil fuel by the end user from non electric applications that it really makes sense to electrify. And in that sense, it's not a big problem that you are a little bit slower on the electrification as soon as you have a high pace on the decarbonising, the electricity system. And this is really what China as a step one still but in parallel they are doing electrification as well. But globally also we see that the first task, which is the most important task to be done first, is also the one that has the highest pace at the moment, which makes me slightly less worried. About some of these kind of negative signals for a slowdown in electrification and especially also in this get rid of the rest, which is carbon capture and storage and use of hydrogen and biomass as a fuel, for example.

Tom Raftery: 14:53

We'll, we'll come back to those in a second, but just want to dig into China one little bit more because I know, for example, if I read correctly, China rolled out more renewables in the first 11 months of 2024 than America did in all of its history, just to give people an idea of the scale of renewables that are being rolled out in China. But on the other hand, China is also rolling out a lot of coal as well. So how do you square that circle?

Jarand Rystad: 15:24

yeah, you know, China has over the last 10 15 years still taken a lot of development decision for the power plants. And those are now being executed and completed. It's not many new decisions at all taken now by coal fired power plants in China. But they are typically now used less and less so they're used as a a backup of renewable energy systems many places. So I think it's also, you know, you saw the same in India that they also approved two new coal fired power plants, but explicitly made an argument that that is what we need for the monsoon season. And some of the reasons why to enable a renewable energy system to be to give power 100%, you need some thermal backup in addition to the battery backup. So partly it's the backup part of it, and partly it's energy security. But we see that the utilisation of coal fired power plants is going down, so we shouldn't be too worried about this on behalf of the climate, because energy security is still a higher priority than only looking at emissions. But coal will only be competitive when the renewables is not able to deliver due to the weather situation. And when the weather situation is as it usually is, renewable will really be the electrons that is coming to the market. But there just now is a lack of storage. So in China, in the northern and the western regions, they had more than 5 percent curtailment in many of these regions of renewable power last year, meaning that they just had to give away the power or stop actually curtail the power plants because it was too much. So just know they're also implementing a lot of battery storage, or providing more flexible thermal storage. Coal is, honestly, it's not very flexible. You can do about 50% flexibility, while, for example, gas power plants, you have 100% flexibility

Tom Raftery: 17:25

So why aren't they rolling out more gas instead of coal?

Jarand Rystad: 17:28

Oh, okay, because gas is more expensive for them. Know But they are actually also ramping up quite much gas power plants now and gas power plants has been trending down for many years, but just over last, especially in America, but also other places increased again because because we see that they, they're efficient to stabilize power supply in, in the intermittent of, of renewables. It's one of the drivers.

Tom Raftery: 17:53

What would you say is the single most overlooked challenge in the energy transition right now?

Jarand Rystad: 18:03

over the challenge. I think, I mean, at least the one that are tracking is that is slowly that a, for example, aviation aviation is the sector that will grow the most. And still a sustainable aviation fuel is a very small percentage of current consumption. And so this is at least one thing that we haven't really seen technologies that are up and running and are already competitive. We are far from being there in aviation. Very slightly closer to be there in shipping because ammonia is is promising For short sea shipping electricity has more potential than we thought only a few years back. In steelmaking, we also see progress on the kind of technologies that could be provided. But also yeah, so I see a lot of solutions in all sectors, also in all the different energy sectors that are using a lot of energy even high temperature heat. Is now a some new technologies that can offer electricity based heat up to 1800 degrees, which is needed in metal making etc. But these are less progress. So at least that what I mentioned is this last 20% which is get rid of the rest of the emissions through non electrical technologies. is maybe most overlooked, but still a lot of very positive research, but we are more on the pilot stage. They're less mature technologies.

Tom Raftery: 20:48

Okay, and when we think about solar, one of the big arguments against it is it's land use. How do we resolve the conflict between energy needs and preserving land use?

Jarand Rystad: 21:03

Yes. Okay. I will give you a few positive kind of developments over the last year that will illustrate this. One is the concept of agrivoltaics, meaning combining agriculture with solar farms. And if you design it the proper way, you can actually even increase the yield of the farming. Still have a solar production at the same acreage. And we know of course that farmlands is abundant all over the world. So if you're able to, combine it with solar it is a lot of acreage available and in some regions, it, it is not only kind of a compromise. It's even an enabler for crops, especially in the desert, desert like areas, very hot, very high solar radiation, too much for anything to grow. But in the shadow of a solar panel, you can actually have farms working in regions like the Middle East or North Africa. So this is one thing that where we see a lot of positive news from the last year, a lot of piloting and even some commercial, big, big commercial projects already happening. Also with also with the cattles, for example, combined with shadow from solars are increasing the animal welfare actually. So some positive as well. The other is I just came from Malaysia last week and they told me that for example, a hundred megawatt hydropower plant, they covered it with only 2% of solar panels on the acreage producing 50 megawatt. So all hydropower reservoirs have a tremendous potential tenfold, actually, their capacity from using a floating solar on the top of these reservoirs. Not for us in Norway, we have too much snow in the winter, so it will not work here. But most places globally where they have a hydropower reservoirs, you can actually combine it with floating solar. A third is of course, all building integrated buildings. You can even have already solar panels in buildings that are invisible. You don't see that the solar panels, it is actually still integrated. So both vertical and on the roof and on the walls and on the horizontal, on the roofs are possible. And the third, and also we have, for example, covering channels, covering roads in the railroads, using all kind of already destroyed nature. It's a lot of acreage available like that. So we just need to be innovative. And then we will find a lot of space available.

Tom Raftery: 23:36

And of course, if you're covering reservoirs or covering agricultural land, you're also minimising in the agricultural land, you're reducing the need for irrigation. And in the reservoirs, you're reducing a lot of the water loss as well. So it's a, it's a, another win win. Okay.

Jarand Rystad: 23:53

Spot on, spot on. Win, win, win. Sometimes I think it's more a trade off. You have to accept lower yield. But other places you can actually even increase the yield and reduce cost also.

Tom Raftery: 24:06

Very good. And what about the prospects for long duration energy storage. I mean, you talked about using a thermal to back up renewables, and batteries are great, obviously for short term. But what about the longer term? I've seen some some kind of advances and things like sand batteries and things like that. Have you seen anything that's that looks promising for long duration?

Jarand Rystad: 24:30

Yes, absolutely. As you mentioned, batteries are very good for day cycles, even two times a day cycles, then they get very high capital productivity. But for the longer wind cycles, that are typically four days long, and you may be consuming in another four days, then batteries are not efficient, but you have a new generation of flow batteries that could be sufficient, just very big water tanks with some special ions in that water tank and you can store for longer term. Heat storage, like you mentioned, in sand, but also in rocks, for example. I just I'm sitting here in Oslo and I'm actually looking out of the window and then I can look forward to the walls towards the hills where we're having the waste incineration plant in Oslo. We are seeing that the heat is stored. It's taken from a very hot rock that was heated in the summer because during, during the summer you have to burn all the waste and then nobody's asking for that heat for the district heating. So they are heating up the rock below this plant to more than 100 degrees and that heat remains in the rock until the winter. So in the winter, you can take that heat up to the district heating and distribute it to the city and this is done today. And so this is a big implementation of it. We also have smaller implementation like just another school in Norway. They have just implemented this for three years. So they got some usage experience now. And they are having water filled panels on the roof of the school. Using that to be pumped down to heat the rock. And to about last season it was 60 degrees. And using that summer heat to heat the school building in the winter. So these are two examples of actual implementation of, of this, they call it geothermos, using heat storage over the seasons.

Tom Raftery: 26:45

Does that require a specific geology to implement that, a specific type of rock or do you think that could be done in any kind of rock and any kind of geography?

Jarand Rystad: 26:54

I think it's different efficiencies on the rock. I think also about the leakage et cetera of the heat in terms of, of fractures and, and water, et cetera. So it's partly the rock and partly, I think, geostructural properties of the rock. But I think it has a quite general application, but I think it to what degree it'll be open or closed systems and, and a lot of other features you have to kind of special design it. So I think that the cost will vary also based on the type of geology, that's right.

Tom Raftery: 27:27

And we've seen huge advances, obviously in solar and wind, as you mentioned earlier, and storage as well. And a lot of those are down to learning curves and things like that and economies of scale. But what about other technologies, things like, AI, data analytics, how are they changing the energy game?

Jarand Rystad: 27:48

Yes, first data centers are growing quite fast in energy consumption. They, for the last three years, they have been growing from about 180 to 400. And now I think from the last five years. Before that, they were actually not growing very much for 10 years. Because efficiency of the computers went down faster than the end usage of the services. And AI is clearly a driver on this new growth. So we are at 400 terawatt hours today. And we think that this could uh, three to fourfold over the next uh, five to to seven years based on the explosion of AI applications. Still this is, less than 10% of, of the total growth of energy, of electricity consumption. So yes, it's growing fast, but it's it's not kind of the only thing that is growing, you know, for example, air conditioning In the, of course, the warm areas of the world is also driving very fast. You know, even, even in Africa, South Asia, et cetera, air conditioning is, is growing very fast at the moment. And also electrification of transportation. But still this is creating some headlines now on the need for new energy. And we see that, for example, this new gas fired power plants in the US, in addition to renewed interest in nuclear, is also ways to deal with this in addition to renewables. But overall, with the pace we have of renewable growth and the competitiveness of it, I think we are actually, energy shortage will not actually be the big problem going forward.

Tom Raftery: 29:26

I come from a data center background. I developed a data center in Ireland back between 2006 and 2008. And one of the things that I was proposing at the time was that data centers could be actually a solution rather than a problem in that all data centers have very high connectivity for bandwidth and for energy and also for a backup for redundancy. So given a signal from a grid operator, they could go offline at a point in time, work off their batteries and then come back online. So they could be part of a demand management solution. And, you know, you see the same kind of ideas being proposed for electric cars as well with vehicle to grid. You're seeing it being rolled out in parts of the US where we're seeing, for example, electric buses, electric school buses in particular being used as backup as virtual power plants, essentially. Have you seen or do you think data centers could be similar kind of virtual power plants or at least demand management solutions to help the grid be firmed up?

Jarand Rystad: 30:31

Absolutely. I think what you mentioned is the new development. Where I like, again, to go back to the media revolution to see how we get integrated solutions between all the different traditional, you know, newspapers television, everything integrated into one platform. And what we see now is the same is happening in the power market, like you mentioned, the data centers. But let's first give you one other example. It's a company called Octopus. Very attacking, you know electricity sales to users in many countries, I think from EU, they started in the UK and they are offering the charging of your electric vehicle for a discounted price. That's only the kind of value proposition to the end user. But what they are then doing is we have to install the hardware box and the software box. And what they're doing is they're using this hardware to use your car as part of the power system. And in the early morning typically when you need a lot of electricity and you have a little renewable production, they are already the biggest seller of electricity actually in the UK. And also other places. So they, they're using the electric vehicle as this virtual power plant. But of course, data centers have all these backup solutions. So for a short term, for arbitrage on, in in the minute and maybe over space, yes, they could be very relevant as well since they have this flexibility. But basically, are two types of, of data centers in terms of of, of the application. One is the new learning centers. AI where you have to just process you know, billions of, of documents, et cetera, to, to do the training of, of the AI neural networks, et cetera. And they don't need to be 100% operational. They can be operational when you have cheap power. While the applications they need to be 24 7. Also then you can design it such that you have more load flexibility on some kind of data centers and also place those data centers where you need that load flexibility, while other data centers must, of course, be very operational, but they have this battery backup, as you mentioned. But also data centers, they can be far away from the usage. It's much cheaper to move. information through fiber optic networks than it is to move electricity still. So you can put the data centers where you have access to cheap electricity also, of course, data security is also very important. So, so still there will be some limits to this for the risks of data security etc.

Tom Raftery: 33:00

Going back to things like hydrogen, which we've mentioned in passing, and carbon capture as well. Do you think that they have a serious role to play in reaching net zero or do you think...? There's a lot of negative talk about carbon capture as it's being used potentially as a way to not reduce emissions by energy companies, for example, it's been touted as that and hydrogen, of course, is being touted as some kind of unicorn solution to everything, whereas we know that the production of hydrogen today causes a lot of emissions and it's not an efficient energy carrier. There are huge losses associated with the use of it. The likes of using hydrogen for transportation has been shot down in most kind of modes of transportation for various technological and efficiency reasons. So, talk to me a little bit about that. Where do you see their utilisation being useful?

Jarand Rystad: 34:01

Yeah, let me start with hydrogen then. And let me first refer back to some, some documents and visions that existed in the 1970s, especially developed by Japan. That was this talked about the future hydrogen society. And basically in that society, everything was running on hydrogen rather than fossil fuel -cars, ships, everything, you know, heating et cetera. That vision of the hydrogen society is never going to happen. We never get that hydrogen society because the electricity society and the electricity and battery is for most applications much more efficient. Still, hydrogen has a role, very important role to play. But more as a niche application by end users. And also hydrogen is one way to store energy when you have surplus energy from intermittent renewables, you know, when typically from wind systems, they have two to three times the capacity versus what the market is asking for. If you, if you have a 100% kind of renewable set up. So, so when the wind is blowing, you will produce much more electrons than anyone can absorb. And then to, to sink this extra energy into hydrogen is then a need you have on the upstream side. The best thing is then to use that hydrogen by the niche applications downstream where you really need it. Because it's a big energy loss associated. We're actually reproducing electricity back to the grid with hydrogen, then you have lost 70% of the energy, so it's not a good solution. Only for extreme cases, you know, whether we're extreme weather conditions. Yes, then it can maybe the reproduce some some electricity. And those applications. It is steelmaking. It is all the kind of chemical industry applications of hydrogen. Basically all the hydrogen applications you already had today, even desulfurisation of fossil fuel, you need a hydrogen. Maybe shipping but then maybe in the form of ammonia, green ammonia or blue ammonia. And then you have for aviation hydrogen is very light, very so, and lifting of, of the fuel is, is a lot of the energy you're using innovation to lift the weight of the fuel. So we need fuel to lift the fuel. And then with hydrogen, you're saving a lot actually on that, since it's three times as energy dense in terms of weight, not volume, bigger volume, but less weight versus aviation fuel. So that is at least I mentioned a few applications for hydrogen. So niche applications is for this last 20% of emissions that could be mitigated partly through hydrogen and partly through you still will have emissions where you cannot get rid of the emissions to the atmosphere. So we have to compensate that by CO2 capture from the atmosphere and that can be done directly with direct air capture or indirectly through capturing CO2 from burning of biomass. Which is also some kind of air capture because first the plants are capturing it from the air to the plants and then you're capturing from the plants when you're combusting it which is also two ways. So this kind of CCUS will be needed to get to the down to a net zero society, still very expensive applications. But also with the scaling that we needed, and this can be done anywhere in the world. Actually, you can find the way with cheapest available renewable energy, then you can steal some business cases we can look at in the 2030s and 40s, where it actually makes sense that this could be the cheapest way to reduce CO2 content of the atmosphere.

Tom Raftery: 38:01

If there's one thing that listeners could do today to help accelerate the energy transition, what would it be?

Jarand Rystad: 38:10

I would say to look at the political system who we are voting at, you know, because this difference between two degrees and 1. 5 degree, as I mentioned, this is depending on the policy support to the system. So the more policy support, the faster you can get to net zero. So I think you know, we are calculating when do you need to be at zero for the different degrees of global warming and to put it simple 1.5 is by 2050, 2.0 by 2100. And it's about 10 years. It's actually between 6 and 10 years. Delay will take you up a 0.1 degree. So net zero by 2075 is, is, I think we're 1.8 degree global warming. So we need to get that policies in place to get the year of net zero as early as possible.

Tom Raftery: 39:05

So a left field question, Jarand, if you could have any person or character alive or dead, real or fictional as a spokesperson for achieving net zero quickly, who would it be and why?

Jarand Rystad: 39:20

Yeah, I think I will be very kind of practical and down to earth and mention actually Ursula von der Leyen, not because she's a big green speaker, but basically because we just need a decent, realistic policies, need to take some risks and getting into practical with things that are able to, also combined with other political goals not see only one thing in isolation. But look at this holistically and find politicians that are able to navigate in this kind of landscape of compromises still get something through it, which is in all interests to get actually good technologies being promoted and at the same time, not with the damages, if you do it too fast and too unbalanced. But also that, that are seeing that the alternative it could impose much higher costs on the society. So just a, a, a, decent, realistic political figure is actually my, my choice.

Tom Raftery: 40:29

Great. Great. Superb. Nice one. Okay. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Jarand. Is there any question that I did not ask that you wish I did or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Jarand Rystad: 40:45

I think of course, the politics is quite important because we need to balance the energy transition with other aims, you know, like political freedom et cetera, the concept of freedom, the free speech, everything, you know. So yes there is a trade off also, especially with respect also to the role of China. It could be some cases where we actually will accept a slower energy transition versus higher kind of promotion of liberal democratic values. So I think this is an interesting philosophical discussion how we should balance this. I realize it's not time to talk about everything in every podcast, so I accept that, but this is, I think, a very interesting topic to discuss.

Tom Raftery: 41:38

We'll have to have you back for another episode and we can discuss that one in depth then. Great. Okay. Jarand, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Jarand Rystad: 41:50

It's very easy to find our websites. So we have tens of users and clients globally, and we are very visible, I think, in, in in the newspapers or all kinds of media. So just reach out and we will help you to solve your energy questions.

Tom Raftery: 42:11

Fantastic. Jarand, that's been great. Really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Jarand Rystad: 42:16

Thank you. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.

Tom Raftery: 42:18

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.