Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 547. The Truth About Russian Oil, Net Zero, and North Sea Drilling About this episode With the UK and Europe sweltering in yet another record-breaking heatwave, will we ever actually reach net zero? How close are we to a “lights out” scenario due to the Iran war, and how did we become so dependent on Russian oil? Is North Sea drilling for oil and gas a matter of national security, or an environmentally reckless fantasy?
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's edition of Question Time, with the European Commissioner for Energy and Housing, Dan Jørgensen.
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Transcript 11,431 words · 9 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Alastair Campbell? Two wars, first in Ukraine and now in Iran, have delivered two monumental oil and gas shocks to the global economy. But they've also made the politics of energy impossible to ignore, from the cost of living to national security. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is still on his drill, baby-drill mission. The climate debate has regressed into yet another culture war battleground between left and right. And here we are, in the middle of another sweltering, record-breaking heatwave. If that wasn't enough, we now need more energy than ever to fuel the enormous data centers which the AI masters of the universe insist that we need. So no surprise that my recent debates with Rory on net zero and the climate crisis have generated a lot of interest and many, many questions. How close are we to a lights-out scenario?
0:44 Alastair Campbell? Will we ever actually reach net zero? Is an all-see drilling a matter of national security or an environmentally reckless fantasy? To answer all those questions and more, we're delighted to be joined by a real expert, European Commissioner for Energy and All Things Climate, Dan Jürgensen, for this special edition of The Rest Is Politics: Question Time.
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2:07 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
2:09 Alastair Campbell? And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.
2:22 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve, and of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
2:45 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not already sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
2:52 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rusthispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rusthispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
3:08 Speaker 02 A BetterHelp ad. Imagine carrying a backpack every day, every conversation, every mistake, every expectation. You probably wouldn't notice how heavy it was until someone asked if you wanted to put it down. Sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all. Better is personal. It's therapy tailored to you to help lighten what you've been carrying. Match with a therapist who truly gets you. Visit betterhelp.com/rustpolitics.
3:47 Rory Stewart? Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.
3:50 Alastair Campbell? And me, Alastair Campbell.
3:52 Rory Stewart? Let's start by, Dan, firstly, just explaining to people briefly how we met, which is we were at a summit in Helsinki. And it seemed to me, and this is where a lot of the questions are going to go. That we're dealing with four different things. We're dealing with decarbonisation, climate. We're dealing with energy security and independence. We're dealing with affordability and bills. And we're dealing with industrial strategy. And I guess the big question that keeps coming through again and again is when do all those four things overlap neatly and when are there some tensions between them? But let's start with a question from Chris, which comes straight out of Iran and straight of Hormuz. How close are we to lights out due to the Iran war and the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz?
4:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, so thank you for that. There's no doubt that we are in an energy crisis right now because of the situation in the Middle East. But this is more of a price crisis. And really, it's more of a fossil energy crisis than an energy crisis in general. However, if this continues, now hopefully there's a peace and hopefully the strait will open again and hopefully things will normalise. That will take some time, maybe we can get back to that. But hopefully we are on that route. But if it doesn't, if the war breaks out again, then this can transfer into a crisis of security of supply. And then, of course, we are in a much more serious situation.
5:18 Speaker 03 We know that the commercial stocks on jet fuel will be depleted approximately at the end of this summer. Then, of course, countries have their reserves, their stocks that can then be released. But since we only refine around 70% of our own jet fuel in Europe, we can indeed be in a situation where we have a deficit and where it will affect our aviation sector. Now, next could be diesel. And if that happens, of course, then then the economic consequences will be quite severe. And of course, this is nothing compared to how many of our friends in Asia and elsewhere in the world are affected as we speak. So for us, this is something that might happen.
6:02 Speaker 03 For them, it's something that's the reality every day right now. And then I haven't even spoken about the effects on fertiliser and many other products that are now in a deficit in the world. It is quite serious and we're not out of the woods yet. But of course, if there is a peace, then the situation is is more manageable than it would have been.
6:24 Alastair Campbell? Question from Gemma, which relates to how did we become so dependent on Russian oil? If you put those two things together, the two big energy shocks, what did we do wrong? That we ended up being so dependent in parts of Europe's case, Russia for gas and then the Straits of Hormuz. And this weapon now that the Iranians have got and they now know they've got it.
6:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, so maybe let's start with with Russia. We were indeed extremely dependent on Russian energy. I served as Minister for for climate, energy and public utilities in Denmark in in February twenty two. When Putin made his full scale invasion in in Ukraine. And I remember how we spent the first weeks making emergency plans for what we would do if indeed Putin decided to turn off the taps for us. And and we would have had to to force companies to close down, send send people in uniform if they didn't. To make sure that we had enough gas to our hospitals and and and so forth. And this was in Denmark and we were not even half as exposed as a country like Germany, for instance.
7:26 Speaker 03 So imagine if Putin had had turned off the gas to Germany, the entire Europe would have been in in an economic recession. So that showed us just how vulnerable we were. And therefore, we decided, of course, to get out of this dependency as fast as possible. It wasn't only gas, by the way, we got fifty percent of our coal from Russia. That's down to zero now. We got twenty seven percent of our oil, that's down to three percent now. And and we got forty five percent of our gas and that is down to around ten percent now. And we've decided that it needs to go down to zero. So therefore, we've actually banned import of of gas from from Russia. It was a big wake up call for all of us and it led to us reducing our our use of gas in Europe. So we use around twenty percent less now than we did in twenty two.
8:11 Speaker 03 Huge progress and we've diversified our suppliers so that we're not as vulnerable anymore. But that then leads us to the second crisis, which is, yes, now we're not dependent on one supplier as we were, but. We're still dependent of what happens geopolitically in the world. And because the world market prices has gone up as they have, we also are now hit by a price shock. It's not as big as it was in twenty two, even though the crisis in many ways are worse because we're better prepared. But it's still very serious. And for me, the conclusion is very clear. We need to get out of this dependency.
8:43 Rory Stewart? One dependency you talked about was of course gas. And then before that, you were talking about jet fuel and diesel. Why were we not expecting a crisis on jet fuel and diesel? And maybe also explain to listeners who don't follow this all the time. Why does the renewable revolution not actually deal with the problem of jet fuel and diesel with current technology?
9:03 Speaker 03 Let's start with, why did we not know this? Hmm, okay, I don't want to sound provocative, but but but didn't we know this? Uh, I think we did. I mean, it's it's it's no. It's no surprise that we import a very large share of our energy in Europe still. Last year, we imported for more than three hundred and seventy billion euros worth of phosphorus. So this is why we are on a mission to transition away from this as fast as possible. Now, the transport sector, and that can then lead me to answering your second question, is of course one of the sectors where this is more difficult. Why? Because in the aviation sector, for instance, we haven't really yet got the alternatives to jet fuels.
9:46 Speaker 03 Those alternatives will arise, but we haven't got them yet, and they will be expensive, especially in the start. With regards to vehicles, the cars that we drive in the streets, that is actually going pretty fast in the right direction. And a crisis like the one we're in now is also leading to an increase in in in the buying of electric vehicles. Even in a country like Germany, the combustion engine leading country in the world, they're now buying more electric vehicles than combustion engine cars.
10:14 Alastair Campbell? The conference already mentioned in in Helsinki, there was a presentation that Norway is now. One hundred percent.
10:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:21 Alastair Campbell? One hundred percent.
10:22 Speaker 03 The oil country Norway, same in in in my own country Denmark, we also sell now more uh EVs than car to drive on on on diesel or gasoline. But of course, these are all political choices, because uh really what sets the price of a car that you buy in in many uh many countries are also very much determined by the tax levels. So in Denmark, for instance, we had the opportunity of lowering the taxes on on EVs, uh and that, of course, then then sparked this change. And in Norway, if if we have to be honest, uh this is also a very rich country with some opportunities that most other countries do not have with regards to subsidizing. But nonetheless, it shows that it it it can be done. And what we're
11:03 Speaker 03 seeing now is that the prices are going down for EVs. And the market is also being driven by the fact that for consumers, when we're in a crisis like this, you really see how much cheaper it is. Not only is it more comfortable to to to drive an EV, it's like when you change from a normal car to an EV, it's like changing from a old fashioned typewriter to a computer. But it's also much, much cheaper to drive it. Uh and and that that that is going fast in the right direction. But of course, it will take some years, e- even decades.
11:31 Rory Stewart? Let's just focus on that final one, which is that we have a problem in the short term. And we particularly have a problem with things like trucks and planes. So one of the challenges, you may be tr- right, in ten, fifteen years' time, that you're there's some revolution where we're not dependent on jet fuel and diesel. But if we lost our jet fuel and diesel today, we would be in real trouble.
11:53 Speaker 03 Sure.
11:53 Rory Stewart? And the solution to the problem this year, next year, and the year after, has to be securing our jet fuel and diesel supply, because you don't have a technological solution to how to fly aeroplanes or drive trucks at the moment without it.
12:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, so that is true. So we need to make sure that the refinery capacity that we have, which we need for the jet fuel, is adequate, and that the stocks that we have in reserves are adequate. This goes, by the way, also for more widely used commodities like natural gas. So in in the European Union, we legislate on this, and we try and coordinate as best we This means knowing exactly who has how much, what are the inflows and outflows of the union. On gas, we have legislation on how much to store and when to store it, and we coordinate when member states buy it so that they get it as cheap as possible. All of these things we're trying to to work on to to make the negative consequences as soft as possible.
12:51 Speaker 03 But but I I do need to underline that we cannot lose focus of our main objective. And that is to get rid of the black molecules and have some green electrons instead. So electrification, more renewables as fast as possible, but also energy efficiency. You being from Britain know this very well, that there's huge potential, both in buildings and in in industry, in electrifying and then becoming more energy efficient. And that's, of course, the cheapest source of energy. That's that's the energy that you don't use.
13:21 Alastair Campbell? Let me just give this question from Francesca Malillo Villas. If Europe were to achieve net zero emissions today, but China, the US and Russia did not substantially change course, would the impact on the global climate be significant enough to justify the economic and political costs borne by European citizens? If so, why? If not, what should the alternative strategy be?
13:40 Speaker 03 Okay, so so two main points there. First of all, it would be wrong to talk about the green transition as a transition that is expensive for us. On the contrary, this will make energy cheaper for us. We have paid fifty billion more for our energy without receiving one extra molecule since the crisis started in the Middle East. That is unsustainable also economically. Looking at what is the price of energy? The cheapest energy to produce today is solar, then it's onshore wind, offshore wind, and then it's gas and coal and nuclear. So for us, this transition is also one that we do for economic reasons.
14:22 Speaker 03 But of course, climate change, for me, that's one of the reasons why I went into politics. And for me, it's still the biggest crisis that we face. And and contrary to the other crises that we end, which will hopefully will disappear, and we will solve these problems. Climate change, I'm afraid, will be here for the rest of our lives, and it's going to be much more serious than it is now. So we do need to fight it, and we do need to take leadership.
14:45 Speaker 03 I think it's important to to realize is that it's not us doing it alone. China is actually the country on the planet that's deploying the most renewable energy right now. India is also moving in that direction. And even in the US, where of course we have a government that does not agree with my point of views. A state like Texas, they are raising record numbers of wind turbines every year. So this is done to fight climate change for some of us, yes, but for others it's it's simply done because it's healthy economics.
15:15 Rory Stewart? We were at a conference and the the great line at the moment is green energy is cheap energy.
15:20 Speaker 03 Sure.
15:21 Rory Stewart? But this is quite a dangerous line politically because it raises the question, what happens when green energy is not cheap energy? And which is more important? And you're trying to say you don't need to make that choice, but actually often we do need to make the choice. Because the costs of distribution are very high, the costs often of having backup. So in the United Kingdom, we don't have hydro. So we need gas powered stations when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. How do we confront the question of why are industrial energy prices lower in the United States? Than they are in Europe and in the United Kingdom if it's true that green energy is cheap energy?
16:00 Speaker 03 Even if we wanted to follow the American example, which I would warn against because we still need to fight climate change. But even if we wanted that, it wouldn't actually be a possibility for us because we do not have those resources. We don't have that much gas, we don't have that much oil. But I I do really need to be quite clear on on this matter about prices. If you look at what constitutes an energy bill, it's three things. It's the price of the energy, it's the taxes and the levies, and it's the transmission costs. Now, the only things that that is physics and just basically the market works working is the price of the energy. The rest is politics, if you will excuse the pun. So the levies and taxes, well, that's up to the governments.
16:45 Speaker 03 And one of the things that we are recommending member states of the European Union is, why don't you lower the tax on electricity? In many member states, and I believe this is also the case in the in the UK, if I'm not mistaken, the taxation is actually. The opposite, so there's less tax on gas than there is on electricity. Some member states of the European Union, there's four times more tax on electricity than on gas. And and that's a political choice. And if you chose instead to make it much, much cheaper to use electricity, you would alleviate some of the burdens on your industry. You would make it easier for your citizens to pay your bills and you would also help the transition that we need long term, which is to get these black molecules out and the green electrons in.
17:28 Alastair Campbell? Donald Trump keeps going on about, you know, why don't the Labour government drill, baby drill in the North Sea? Tom Wood, why can't we do both drill oil and invest in green? Allegra, is there a way for concern for UK security and for the climate not to be mutually exclusive?
17:44 Speaker 03 The North Sea is going to be key for energy in Europe in the future, but not because of oil and gas, because of wind. We have huge untapped resources in the North Sea that will help generate electricity for for all of Europe. On on the gas and and oil question, so Denmark, the country that I come from, we have actually to some degree since the nineteen seventies financed our welfare state by selling oil and gas that we got from the North Sea. But we decided when when I was minister to put an end date to production of oil and gas in the North Sea and to stop all future licensing rounds. Uh, not an easy decision because we were actually the biggest oil producer in in the EU when we made that decision. Why did we do it? Well, the primary reason was climate change.
18:29 Speaker 03 We did believe that some countries needed to take the first steps and show that you can be a competitive society without this. But actually also, when we looked into the economics of it, it turned out that it was also just a good business decision. Because the investments that are needed to explore and extract more oil and gas compared to how small the reserves actually are, compared to how much the prices are going down on renewables, really just shows you that this, even if there was no such thing as climate change, even if there was no such thing as security, which are indeed two very important reasons for why we need to get out of this dependency, but even if there wasn't, then it would just make sense to go go the other way and. Have a a a more clean homegrown energy base.
19:12 Rory Stewart? Following up from that, the Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gustavsdórr, who we've also interviewed, is now saying we're in a crazy situation because he's saying that Norway is not able to extract its own fuels. And we are making Europe dependent on either the Middle East or Russia or the United States, when Norway would be able to access its own and provide independent security for Europe. So he's pushing back against you. What's your answer to that?
19:41 Speaker 03 First of all, I don't think it's healthy for us to be dependent on any one supplier. Now Norway is of course not to be compared to Russia or or even to the US. But nonetheless, yes, Norway is our friend. Yes, they are supplying us with gas. But they're not supplying us with cheap gas. They make a lot of money on selling this to us, which is fair enough. That is the market. But for us, it's not an economically sustainable situation to be in. And also, again, why? When we have the alternatives, why not exploit the alternatives that are right there, right in front of us? There's so many low hanging fruits that we can that we can pick.
20:25 Speaker 03 And by the way, we are actually doing it. It's not going fast enough, if you ask me. But in Europe, we deployed the year before last seventy eight gigawatts of new renewables. Last year, close to ninety gigawatts, and one gigawatt is enough to supply one million homes with electricity. We produce now more solar and wind electricity than than fossil. So we are doing this and we see a very clear connection in Europe on on how much renewables have you got in your system and how cheap is the energy? There's two factors that decide how cheap the energy is in in Europe, or expensive. And one is how much renewables have you got? And two is how connected are you to your neighboring countries? Because of course, this is a an energy system that builds on you being connected and flexible.
21:09 Speaker 03 So you can do some with storage, but you do need to have the opportunity of getting some baseload from other countries if the wind doesn't blow and the sun is not shining. Of course, on the other hand, you will probably produce more than you need when the wind is actually blowing, and then you need to get rid of that by selling it to to your neighbors. So that is the core of our strategy, more renewables and and better interconnectedness.
21:32 Alastair Campbell? Is it possible that the United States and Trump? Is knowingly and willfully damaging the European energy market. America, as you say, doesn't need to worry quite as much as we do about the consequences of what's happened in the straight of almost they've got they they're a massive exporter now they're making a lot of money out of energy. So the geopolitics of this, it seems to me, are quite
21:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, I will not. I'm not going to be speculating on on the motives of the American president, but there are some facts, and one of those facts is that this year was seen to be a year where we would have a surplus of oil production in the world. Now, because of events, that is not the case. Now we have a deficit and therefore the prices have gone have gone up. It's also clear, of course, that in the American government, there is a council called the American Energy Dominance Council. So we don't have to speculate on what their mission is. Their mission is to dominate the world in energy. And with energy, I mean fossil energy. That's obviously an issue where we disagree because we think that that's the wrong way to go.
22:39 Speaker 03 Certainly for us, I mean, even again, if there was no such thing as climate change, which of course I think is the most important issue that we're dealing with, but even if there wasn't, still for us, it's much more wise to not become a petro state like the US, but an electro state like China is getting close to being now. And again, if you look even in the US at what's at what is actually going on in many of the individual states, many of them are actually continuing to deploy more renewables because it's it's fast and it's cheap. And we need to also look at the fact that, yes, one of the reasons why the bill can sometimes be a little bit higher than what or sometimes much higher than we would want
23:23 Speaker 03 is transmission costs and they are related to us having to expand our grids. And you can then say, well, why don't we just then use the existing fossil infrastructure? Well, that will not be enough either. So so there's no way around us if we want to use more energy, which we need to because we will have data centers and we will become richer and our economies will grow. And even if we deploy more energy efficiency, still we will need more energy. So the question is not really, do we need to invest? We need to invest. The question is, what do you want to invest in? Do you want to invest in what is cheapest? Yes, big companies, even in the US, do this, even in Texas. Or do we want to, for political reasons, say, no, we think a fossil way of doing this is better?
24:05 Alastair Campbell? We had a lot of questions about the whole net zero debate. And my sense is it's being pushed backwards, whether that's down to Trump, whether it's down to populism, whether it is down to Iran and Ukraine, we can dispute that. But Daniel, will we ever reach net zero? And here's a very interesting question about the way people behave. Henry, to what extent is it possible to motivate behavioural change among a disengaged public? I do feel sometimes that this debate has been weaponised, it's become part of the kind of polarisation, left-right politics. That, it seems to me, is adding to the challenges that you're facing trying to persuade people that you're on the right track.
24:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, so normally, actually, I would answer that question by giving you yet another long speech of why this is cheaper and why it's healthy economy and why it's necessary for our security. But I think I would actually use the opportunity to speak about climate change instead. Because today is going to be one of the hottest days probably ever recorded here in the UK. When I was nineteen years old, I carried suitcases for a year in a hotel in London. At that time, the only reason we knew it was summer was because the rain was a little bit warmer. And we used to joke that if the colour of our skin, that wasn't the tan, that was rust. But now you have heatwaves every year, and we have them all over Europe, and people are dying. And we are the continent heating the fastest. Climate change is extremely serious and it's here right now.
25:29 Speaker 03 And it can spin out of control. And it's hitting the vulnerable parts of the world even harder, of course. So also, if you're interested in security, like I know you are, Rory, really, climate change, that's the biggest threat multiplier we have on this planet. And it will lead towards an insecurity and immigration. We need to continue to speak about this issue. And we need to use it to also mobilise the will in our populations to do more. Now then, we can, we can take that back to, to, to the main arguments of what it is that we need to do. And then we can, we can turn it back into a positive argument because it really is very fortunate for us that what we need to do to save the planet is the same
26:13 Speaker 03 things we need to do to lower prices and to become more, more independent.
26:17 Alastair Campbell? So why does it feel that the argument is being pushed back? Is it, is it just politics? Is it, is, and, and how big, how big a factor has Trump been with Drill Baby Drill and his genius for slogans that connect?
26:29 Speaker 03 I don't, I don't think, to be honest, I don't think many Europeans look to Trump and say he, he is our leader and we want to follow, follow him as well. So in that sense, I, he has of course affected the world economy and the fact that they produce now more liquefied gas LNG and sell it to us and we need it, of course. In that, in that sense, he's indirectly affected our energy policy in Europe. But, but, but I, I will actually say that one of the effects probably of, of the US stepping back on the, on the green transition will be that some of the money that were intended to be invested there, many of the big institutional investors and companies that were investing in green transition in the US, although a
27:13 Speaker 03 lot of it is still continuing, will go to Europe. So it, it indirectly can help us also attracting the investments that, that we want. But to, to, to the question, what has happened? Why, why is it not as high on the agenda as, as, as it used to be? Really, I, I struggle to find the explanation. These things fluctuate. In 2019, we had an election in Denmark where for the first time ever, climate change was the most important topic on the agenda. Now we just had an election and it was on the agenda, but certainly not the most important. And it's not as if we've solved climate change in the, in those years. So why it is, it's, it's difficult to, to say. Okay, let's take a quick break and then back for more.
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29:27 Speaker 05 Mr President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.
29:31 Speaker 06 On October 2.
29:32 Speaker 05 Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
29:37 Speaker 06 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
29:44 Speaker 07 What would happen if I stopped moving? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.
29:48 Speaker 06 With great power comes great deniability.
29:51 Speaker 07 I'm not the first then.
29:53 Speaker 06 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.
30:03 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart. And me Alastair Campbell. So Dan, following up from where you were, and I'd love you really to talk about the politics of this. So Matt, how can we sell the long-term abstract benefits of net zero without alienating folk in terms of cost of living? And I just want to challenge you as a politician.
30:27 Speaker 03 Sure.
30:28 Rory Stewart? Whatever's being done at the moment is not working. This story is not working. So what is it that needs to happen in the communication to reassure people like Matt?
30:39 Speaker 03 Well, first of all, I certainly don't neglect the worry that Matt has. But I will challenge you a little bit Rory, because it's really not, you say, you pose the question by saying you as a politician. Well, yes, you used to be a politician yourself also, and you know very well that just because we haven't solved the problem 100% is not the same as saying that what we're doing is not the right thing. So yes, we do pay too much for our energy in Europe. But fact of the matter is that had we not followed the route that we are now, had we not deployed more renewables, we would pay far more. Let me give you two numbers.
31:18 Speaker 03 The IEA, International Energy Agency, they have calculated that we save approximately 33 billion euros a year in Europe on our electricity bills on newly deployed renewables. So that's what comes on top of what we already have every year. And ASA, the regulatory institution that we have in the European Union on energy that looks into energy prices, they say, well, probably more or less the same amount we save on being as interconnected as we are. So are we interconnected enough? No, we need much more connections, including with the UK. But if we were just 27 individual member states in the EU, we would pay Between thirty and forty billion euros more than we do.
32:02 Speaker 03 So I don't neglect that there's a far way to go. I don't neglect that the prices are too high. But if we were to follow a different path and if we were to stop the green transition now, that would be very, very irrational because what actually brings the prices down are indeed this transition.
32:23 Rory Stewart? Dan, let me try again. Matt's question is how do we sell it? So when I said you as a politician, I mean, how do you communicate this? What isn't the fact that we're having this conversation is happening partly because a lot of the European public is not convinced.
32:38 Speaker 03 Sure.
32:38 Rory Stewart? Maybe let's start from the question of why you think the European public is not convinced that our policy is delivering cheap energy?
32:46 Speaker 03 So first of all, I think probably we need to acknowledge also that there's big differences between countries. And I think the situation, I'm not an expert in bridges politics, but I think it's probably a little bit different here than in many European countries. I think if you go to Spain, I don't think you'll have a problem selling the point that renewables are cheaper because they see that with their own eyes. They were a country very, very hard hit in twenty-two because they were dependent on gas. Now they've really managed to transition away and primarily renewables now, and that has lowered their bills significantly. And if you go to Italy, you'll see the opposite. They are very, very dependent on fossils and they pay very high prices.
33:28 Speaker 03 And if you go to the southeast of Europe, you'll see many member states that are actually deploying a lot of renewables, but that are not gaining or harvesting the benefits because they're not enough connected to the rest of Europe. So I don't really see that big of an opposition towards more renewables faster in Europe. What I do see is some opposition to some of the tools that we are using. Because one of the reasons why this is happening is also because we are making it more expensive to use fossils. We have an ETS system, as you know, which is basically a tax. It's not a tax, but it works like a tax on fossil emissions. And some parts of industry have argued that that is making it difficult for them to compete. Now, I will counter argue to that.
34:10 Speaker 03 Well, listen, friends, there's no way around this. We're not neglecting your difficulties. But if we do not move away from fossils, then you will be vulnerable every year. In all of eternity for price shocks like the one we are experiencing right now. And if we look at even just the short term or medium term, does anybody think that we're looking into a more stable world the next five or 10 years? Unfortunately not, I wish we were, but we probably are not. So using all of the economic instruments, financial, political instruments that you can to really help this transition is what we need to do.
34:51 Speaker 03 Now, in Europe, when you see, for instance, very famous example is the yellow jerseys demonstrations on the streets of Paris because of tax on fossil fuel. That was an example, I don't think, of people arguing against doing something to fight climate change. This was because they didn't want their expenses to go up. Or another example, the home country of Greta Thunberg, Sweden, in the last election, the young population voted primarily for a right-wing party, not because of immigration, as you might think, but because of this question of tax on fuels. So I do acknowledge that even populations who want to fight climate change, if it hurts
35:34 Speaker 03 their own wallets, then they will tend to maybe care more about the wallets than the climate, which is, that's just the way it is. So we need to take that into consideration and also use policies to alleviate that and make the incentives right. That's also why earlier, when I tried to explain what is it that constitutes an electricity bill, an energy bill, really it's up to politicians and that could maybe where we agree, Rory, although we also disagree on issues, maybe we can agree that if politicians meant this, decision-makers like myself, but so I'm also responsible, but if it really meant this and took it very, very, very serious, and it was the most serious thing for us to deal
36:15 Speaker 03 with, then we could do stuff tomorrow because we could lower taxes on electricity, we could invest even more in our grids, we could invest even more in the renewables, we could invest even more. And subsidize even more if we wanted to, energy efficiency measures.
36:30 Alastair Campbell? We've got tons of questions about solar and a lot of our listeners and viewers seem to think that we're we're missing a lot of tricks here. Zoe Fletcher, could more commercial buildings like office blocks etc. Have solar panels on top of them. Felix, why isn't rooftop solar being subsidized more considering it reduces grid constraint etc. Andrew, surely if we put solar panels on top of buses and trains and buildings, we would reduce the need for. So what more could we do on solar and why aren't we doing it?
37:01 Speaker 03 So, um, solar is really expanding fast and if we look at globally, how much is being invested in solar and wind, actually it's twice as much as being invested in fossil. So that's also an argument in itself for why this is good business. And by the way, most of what's being invested in fossil is being invested in maintenance of existing infrastructure. So, so the investments are really moving towards where's the best business case in that solar and wind. So that helps us a lot. What can then be done politically? Well, one of the big problems right now, and to be honest, the biggest bottleneck that I see and danger that I see is that we do not expand our grids fast enough because it doesn't matter if we do as I want,
37:44 Speaker 03 deploy more renewables, if those renewables cannot come online. And we have some very terrible examples of what this might lead to in Europe. So again, if I can, if you'll allow me an anecdote from when I was minister in Denmark, I had to sometimes persuade Danish taxpayers that it was a good idea for us to use our money, subsidizing wind turbines. And then when the wind was really blowing and we were producing too much energy, sometimes the German taxpayers' money would be spent to pay us to stop the wind turbines because their grid was not able to take it in. So that's what we call curtailment. So this is why one of the main objectives on my list of things to do in my job is to make sure that we expand our grids and connect our countries
38:28 Speaker 03 better in Europe to get out of this problem. Now, that's also a problem sometimes for solar, but solar has the advantage very often. Often that it's it's also very uh local uh production, it's decentralized production. So I do think that solar is is going to be one of the main components of our energy systems in in the future. Countries do it differently, use subsidies, yes, for sure, I I I'm all for that, it's subsidies is not a it's not a a great thing to have as a long-standing measure, but to to get something uh up in scale and down in price, it it can work. Now, many countries will see now that actually solar does not need these subsidies because it's so cheap. Uh so it's more about making sure that you have the grid expansion and
39:13 Speaker 03 very, very important point, I know you struggle with this in the UK also, permitting times. It takes way too long to get a permit to build a new solar park or to build new grids.
39:23 Rory Stewart? Question from James, why doesn't the government have a bigger focus on tidal power? It's so reliable.
39:30 Speaker 03 So it's probably not up to me to answer on behalf of the government in in in the UK, but I do, I do like the question.
39:35 Alastair Campbell? You get the prime minister tomorrow.
39:38 Speaker 03 So uh so tidal and wave energy, it has a huge potential, but it's it's it's still a minute uh compared to our other energy sources. But I I do actually think that this is one, this is one of the technologies that that will grow rapidly in in the years to come. We will need different types of policy instruments like the ones we used when wind technology was new. By the way, offshore uh wind that now competes even with with with coal and gas in price. Denmark built the first offshore wind park back in nineteen ninety one and then people were just shaking their heads at at how naive uh idealists we were, spending money on something as stupid as that because surely it's way too expensive to produce energy that way.
40:22 Speaker 03 Now, it's used all over the world, it competes, you know, you have it in the UK uh also as a part of your strategy. And I think that I hope that using the same policy instruments, so yes, subsidies, but also smarter solutions like contract for difference models where where you share the the insecurity and the risk in the investments between the producers and the state. That's one of the ways to make sure that these new technologies will will grow.
40:46 Alastair Campbell? Lot of questions about data centers and AI. Nicola Laporte, why are we allowing data centers to be built?
40:55 Alastair Campbell? Flossie Macbeth, great name. Do you think AI and environmental policy can ever be compatible?
41:01 Speaker 03 Yes, I do think so, but I will also say it's an imperative for us. We need it. I mean, we spoke about dependencies earlier related to energy, but we also have other dependencies. Information. Big tech companies are controlling more than governments today in the world. This is a problem, I think. So we cannot only rely on American tech companies that are physically placed elsewhere in the world. We also need our own. And of course, data centers is a part of that. I will also add to that, that actually AI can be very, very helpful. And digitalization also on a more simple level can be very helpful in us being more efficient in our energy systems.
41:45 Speaker 03 Actually, we can save a lot in the expansion of grids, but just choosing what we have more rationally and AI can help us there. Having said all of this, it is a huge challenge because the energy consumption of these centers, right now, if I'm not mistaken, it's around 2.5% of our energy consumption in the EU and that's set to double within the next five years.
42:03 Alastair Campbell? Right.
42:04 Speaker 03 So it's not, it's not a small thing. So what we're working on now in the Union, European Union, is to set the standards for energy efficiency, to make sure that we also incentivize that the data centers use, for instance, the excess heat. So is it a problem that a data center uses a lot of energy? Well, it can be if it's the wrong type of energy and if it's just used once. But if it's renewable energy and it's used first to cool down the data center and then the excess heat from that process is used to warm up or cool down thousands of homes, which we've seen good examples on in many member states in the European Union. Then, in fact, these data centers becomes a part of our energy system that's useful instead of the opposite.
42:45 Rory Stewart? Dan, at the risk of irritating Alistair and listeners, I need to do a follow up on data centers rather than just jumping to the next listener's questions.
42:53 Speaker 03 Sure.
42:53 Rory Stewart? Because this is a big issue and its energy is at the heart of this issue.
42:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:59 Rory Stewart? And when you talk to investors, they're driven mad by trying to get data centers built. If you look at the problems in Germany, a lot of this is to do with distribution and transmission lines.
43:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:11 Rory Stewart? And I'm very interested in why we don't talk more about transmission and distribution and energy. I mean, very few of our listeners' questions are actually about that subject. So explain why that's such a big issue for data centers and for so much and what the cost of these distribution transmission lines is.
43:31 Speaker 03 So first of all, I very much agree with you, Rory. I am also surprised and I'm also a little bit embarrassed because I've I've worked with this all my adult life, so 20 years, and it's only the last five, maybe 10 years that I've myself begun to see, okay, this is probably the biggest challenge we have. If we actually succeed in doing what we want, which is to get more renewables and electrify more, if we don't have the grid capacity, if we don't have these connections, then it simply will not happen. And right now, we are then hit by an extra challenge. This would be a challenge, even if there was not a single data center in the EU, but we are hit by the extra challenge that these data centers are coming at a speed and at a magnitude that nobody could have foreseen. So we couldn't have foreseen that, I will say.
44:16 Speaker 03 But, but, but, but of course, now it's here, this is the future, what, what to do? Well, we are negotiating right now and hopefully at the end of this week, the European Council of Ministers will adopt a general approach that hopefully supports a proposal that we in the Commission have put forward, that I put forward, which is to do a number of things. One is, we need better planning. So today, it's like... So twenty seven member states trying to be a union on on energy, but in fact, it's like twenty seven different people making a jigsaw puzzle without looking at the picture on the box. Because there is no collective plan, there is no European wide scenario.
44:58 Speaker 03 So I'm asking for member states to give the power to the European Commission to actually draw up a plan for Europe. What does the most rational plan look like and where do we then need to invest? Because that will mean that we will need some of our collective funding from the EU to support, for instance, as we've done right now, an energy island in Denmark, the island of Bornholm, which will be connecting Denmark and Germany. So actually, there's some EU money in there, but actually it's Germany paying the majority, the lion's share of that investment. Imagine that. We have one country paying for energy infrastructure in another country. Why? Because really, it doesn't really make sense to look at borders here. We need to make sure that we utilize where are the actual resources.
45:43 Speaker 03 And the resources are there, in the island, around the waters around Bornholm, just as they are in the North Sea. So I see many of these projects in the future, hopefully connecting us all better. So that's just one example of what we need to do to answer that question, Rory, that you that you posed. But there are, of course, many others.
45:59 Alastair Campbell? Final question, because you've got to go. Sam, and I think this sort of speaks to the view of quite a lot of the people that wrote in. Is any government actually taking the proven climate crisis seriously? From yours, from a deeply cynical twenty six year old? I suppose that goes back to point made earlier. If the crisis is, as you say, do you really feel that we're embracing it with the urgency that it needs? And how much of that is down, sorry to go into my Trump derangement syndrome, how much of that is down to the fact there's a guy over there, the most powerful politician in the world, who is so far from your agenda?
46:38 Speaker 03 So this is one of those questions that I can, I can give two speeches. I can give a very gloomy speech of why it's not very likely that we will stop climate change before the self-enhancing effect sets in and then it'll be too late. You know, Anthony Giddens wrote a book where he, he, he coins a phrase, he calls it the Giddens paradox. Must be great to be able to put a paradox off out there and then name it after yourself. But anyway, it's, it's, it's pretty smart here what he says is, when this happens, when the temperature goes to the point of no return, there will be nothing we will not be willing to do. But then it'll be too late.
47:18 Speaker 03 And if we look at what science is showing us every year, it is that it's probably worse than we think. And we're not going fast enough in reducing emissions and now we even have, some will argue, the most powerful nation on the planet going in the wrong direction. So that's one speech. The other speech that I, I like more is the more hopeful speech. I like to say that Martin Luther King did not start a civil rights revolution by giving a speech called, "I Have A Nightmare." We do need to, to, to create hope and good news is, it's not naive actually, because looking at the numbers, it can be done. We are globally investing twice as much in renewables as we are in fossil fuels.
48:02 Speaker 03 We are on track of reaching our reduction of emission targets in, in, in the EU's targets that were considered extremely ambitious when we, when we adopted them. The economics of many of the underlying transitions that we need are really good and the business cases are, are there. But bottom line to the question, are we taking it serious enough? Um, I don't think so, to be honest. I think it should be, and I'm to blame also, because I also speak more about prices and security and all these things, because it's so important and because it's, it's right now and because it's the present crisis that we're in. But actually... We will get past those crises. There will, I really firmly believe there will be a peace in Ukraine. I really firmly believe that we will get the prices down and therefore be able
48:46 Speaker 03 to compete better in Europe. But climate change, this is about fighting something that will not disappear and trying to stay below that number, that increase in temperature where the self-enhancing effect sets in at a point of no return. By the way, we don't know when that is. We might even have surpassed it now. So, yeah, okay, that's me trying to be positive and then I became negative anyway. I don't know. I apologize about that.
49:09 Rory Stewart? Well, thank you, Dan, very much.
49:10 Speaker 03 Thank you. It was an honor to. Normally, you know, I only listen to podcasts about birds, but, but, but, but you are actually one of the few exceptions. I like to listen to birds.
49:20 Alastair Campbell? About birds? Okay. What's the best? Well, tell us, what is, what's the equivalent? What is the rest is birds? What's the best?
49:27 Speaker 03 You should make one called The Rest Is Birds. Do you know, actually, that for, I read somewhere recently that it's becoming trendy for young people also to watch birds?
49:34 Alastair Campbell? I love birds.
49:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, me as well.
49:35 Alastair Campbell? But I'm not an expert. Are you an expert?
49:37 Speaker 03 I wouldn't say that, but I'm, I'm, I do spend a lot of my spare time watching birds.
49:42 Alastair Campbell? You're a twitcher?
49:44 Speaker 03 No, I wouldn't go that far.
49:47 Alastair Campbell? Well, listen, it's lovely to see you.
49:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, lovely to see you. It's an honor to be in this program. Thank you.
49:51 Alastair Campbell? Thank you.
49:52 Rory Stewart? Thank you, Dan. Bye bye.
49:55 Alastair Campbell? So Rory, more or less convinced by, well, you're convinced by the climate crisis, aren't you? I don't think there's any doubt about that. You can, what you're not convinced about is the answer.
50:05 Rory Stewart? I, I think it was wonderful to, I mean, very generous of him to come and for listeners, Alistair and he got to the Goalhanger office at seven o'clock in the morning on a pretty packed visit for the EU commissioner. So I think it's a brilliant way of understanding how the European Union thinks and the commissioner thinks. I'm afraid that if you were a European businessperson listening to that, let's say you were working in German industry, you would be tearing your hair out. And I think if you were somebody who was really focused on the big issues around climate, you would remind people that Britain is only one percent of direct emissions and the EU is only seven percent of direct emissions. So the question is, what is the exam question
50:47 Rory Stewart? that he's trying to answer? Is it, is this the most efficient way to stop global climate change? Is it?
50:55 Rory Stewart? Is this the best way of supporting European industry with cheap energy? Is it? Is this the best way of dealing with energy security and if show in the short term or the long term? And I guess I I'm still not sure that he's got the answer to those things. And and I think where I slightly differ with you is you assume that the reason these arguments are struggling is because of a conspiracy by Trump and the far right. I think the reason that these arguments are struggling is that ordinary businesses, ordinary householders sense that a lot of this doesn't quite add up as neatly as people like Dan are suggesting.
51:34 Alastair Campbell? Hmm. No, I think I think I think that's a very harsh judgment. I mean, and and also just on the somebody who's actually at the reason he's in London is because of Climate Week. Um, and somebody who's at it sent me a thing this morning, actually, on a a survey of of European business, which doesn't suggest that actually they're they're they're displeased with the the the attempt to keep the focus on renewables and also that they do see the business opportunities in it. This is the thing we'll put in the newsletter called the Business Breakthrough Barometer. Ninety two percent of business leaders seeing competitive advantage in the sort of approach that he's talking. I thought more interesting. And and also, it's not that I think there's a conspiracy theory. I think that just that, you know, politics and economics and energy, they they they
52:19 Alastair Campbell? they're not separate things. So if you go back to when Al Gore was Vice President of the United States and kind of leading the global charge on on renewable on climate change and renewables and the link between the two, then that argument was being won. The reason why I think that he, Dan, would would accept, I think, that he maybe faces a more hostile environment when he's talking about this in public. Is not just because of the cost of living, although that is a massive factor. It's also because the politics have shifted. And the reason why I'm so keen to make sure that the politics don't shift in the direction that they're going. By accepting some of the arguments that are made against the renewables agenda.
53:03 Alastair Campbell? By people like Richard Tice and the Reform people, there is this right v. left polarization of a debate. And where I thought the was most interesting in the in the in all of those exchanges actually was when he. Tried to take it back to the very core of this thing, which is the climate crisis itself. And you you could see he was struggling not to terrify us because that. Deep down is, I think, where he thinks this debate is. So I think we've got a real. We've got a clash here of of of our understanding of how this debate should be conducted. Um, so I I thought it was interesting, but but I think he accepts that we actually need to. I think we need to get back onto. The high ground again and not just be talking about, you know, the the price market mechanisms and all that stuff.
53:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, I think that's that's important, and I think that's probably the most important thing, which is that. That that getting stuck in green energy is cheap energy is probably a trap. Because sometimes green energy isn't cheap energy. It'd be very convenient if it always was, but sometimes it isn't. And, uh, you know, we can get into the details of why it isn't, but. A lot of that is distribution and transmission and also what you do when the wind isn't blowing or it's blowing too hard. So then the big question is global. It's not about Europe, it's not about Britain, it's about what mechanisms we put in place globally. Not to deal with the one percent we emit or the seven percent Europe emits, but the other ninety three percent.
54:28 Rory Stewart? And that's where I think we should be looking much more at taxing embedded carbon. Making sure that when we're buying T-shirts from China, we are. Paying the correct price for the embedded carbon and setting up a global system for that. Now, that's very ambitious. It may sound pie in the sky, but it's the only way of tackling climate change. There is literally no point. Britain and Europe being good and doing what they can to reduce emissions if China and the US and India continue to emit. And the way that they are continuing to build more and more emissions. Um, so if we're really idealistic, let's not get caught up.
55:10 Rory Stewart? In what's happening in Europe and Britain, the real idealism has to be reaching out to global agreements.
55:16 Alastair Campbell? Right, but then, sorry to go back to Donald Trump. A global agreement, if you go right back to the Kyoto process and then forward to Paris, and literally one of the first things he does is come in and say, I'm not having international agreements. So that's why I think some of us do have to stay idealistic, do have to say that even though we're only 1%, that we still have a leadership role to play. And even if there is a price to pay, as long as Dan and others can persuade people that in the long term, that is the way, that is the route to cheap energy. So I think you're a bit sort of, I was gonna say nihilistic, I don't mean nihilistic, but I think you're pessimistic.
55:54 Alastair Campbell? And I think that feeds into the, one of the reasons why this debate is not in the place that it needs to be. And then is exploited by these deeply awful fossil fuel industry, the oil and gas, the Koch brothers, you know, Steve Bannon, Richard Tice, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not putting you in their cab. But this is why I was quite angry with Tony Blair and his thing recently. I mean, Dan, before we recorded, started recording, Dan said that one of the best things about climate that he's read in recent years was a set of papers put together by the Tony Blair Institute, which he said was completely on his side of the argument. And then Tony comes out with his message to the Labour Party, saying, you know,
56:35 Alastair Campbell? drill, not quite drill, baby drill, but sort of, you know, not far off it. There's another way of looking at it, if we're not a massive oil producer. So on the one hand, we say if we're not the big emitter, we shouldn't sort of worry too much unless the rest of the world does. We might say the same about, you know, if we're never going to be a big oil producer, why should we worry about what limited oil and gas resources we've got left in the North Sea? It's just a sort of crazy argument.
57:02 Rory Stewart? I think my final thing is, but maybe I'm wrong about this, is to win the political debate, people have to concede that there are problems. What worries me about the way in which some people, not so much Dan, but sometimes he falls into this trap of communicating, is they're basically denying that there are issues around price or that there are trade-offs. And I think the public is suspicious of the idea that you get the best of all and the best of all possible worlds, that we, in our normal lives, we know there are trade-offs. And I would like a bit more acknowledgement of. Yes, of course, our energy prices are really high. And this is why, and this is how we're going to get out of it.
57:47 Rory Stewart? And this is why we're in a bind and these are some very difficult choices. And sometimes we are being idealistic and spending more. Um, so I, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's better to just keep insisting that there are no trade offs and that we can decarbonize and have energy security and have affordability and have vibrant industries and there's no trade offs. But I, I think the truth is there are massive trade offs between those four.
58:09 Alastair Campbell? No, there are. I, I don't think he was saying there are no trade offs. I think he was setting out in the context of, you know, we said right at the top, these two massive shocks that we've had that have changed the way people have thought about this. Look, I, I think, I think he's, I, I think he's a good voice on this. I think sometimes there are people who probably are not, uh, don't necessarily want to get down into the detail of how the market works. We didn't really get into that. I remember when we met him in Helsinki, he was explaining how the market actually works. And it's so complicated and almost it sounds at times so random. It is like the sort of, you know, the price of one part of the sector is going up and down. And the one that's the lowest or the highest will set the, set the price for the next, the next half hour. And it's all, it sort of feels chaotic.
58:54 Alastair Campbell? We didn't get into that, but what I, what I feel he is, is a, a really strong voice. And, and I, I, I think we need more people who are, keep us focused on the fact that this climate crisis is real because you have an awful lot of people, very powerful people, for their own political and business reasons, who are pushing in a very opposite direction. So that's why I was very pleased that we gave him the platform we did. And thank you to all our listeners for all your great questions.
59:21 Rory Stewart? Thank you all very, very much indeed. And I think this is something we will come back to a great deal. Thank you.
59:26 Alastair Campbell? See you soon.
59:27 Rory Stewart? See you soon. Bye bye.
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