A Michael Liebreich Reality Check on "Net Zero," Trump's "Energy Emergency" and more
I hope you can spend time with, and share, this bracing climate and energy conversation with Michael Liebreich - a longtime clean-energy investor, consultant and brash, but data-based, communicator. He’s best known for founding, in 2004, what is now Bloomberg New Energy Finance and for the weekly “Cleaning Up” podcast he co-hosts with Baroness Bryony Worthington.
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I've long found Liebreich an essential voice on just about any technical or financial question related to the path from fossil-dominated energy systems to ones that promote human thriving without planetary overheating.
You want to get beyond the spin around hashtags like #netzero and #greenhydrogen, carbon offsets, green steel, Trump's #energyemergency plans? Join Liebreich with me and fire away.
A prime focus in our chat will be clarifying what “net zero” really means. It is a classic entry in my Watchwords series of terms that too often confuse or divide more than clarify.
Liebreich wrote a valuable pair of pieces on net-zero for BNEF laying out the enthusiastic and cautionary cases for this pathway to an energized and still-comfortable planet.
Here's his "easier than you think" post: https://bit.ly/3WrYeLg
Here's his "harder than you think" post: https://bit.ly/40iOKDb
Liebreich remains a senior contributor at BNEF and his latest piece there, on generative artificial intelligence and the energy arena, is an essential read. Amid all the talk of giant information companies building their own giant generation facilities, he points out the wisdom, and bright prospect, of these companies facilitating wider grid reliability and greening
[I]t may look easy to co-locate power plants with data centers, but it won’t be. That would multiply the complexity of building the data center by the complexity of building and running the plant. This would be particularly risky if the plant in question is an innovative and unproven nuclear design. If you build the plant off-grid, what you save on transmission fees you will spend dealing yourself with every potential mismatch between demand and supply. And if you remain grid-connected, you have achieved nothing by co-locating, as you still have to meet all the rules set by the grid operator and regulator.
Just as for other industries that risk imposing significant externalities on those around them, AI data-center owners will reduce cost and risk not by centralizing assets and building a wall around them, but by working with other stakeholders. Who knows, by leaning in, hyperscalers could even become popular contributors to the development of an affordable, resilient and green local grid.
Who else do you follow on these issues?
Here’s my most relevant recent post and webcast:
