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Rathi","energy-storage-will-be-the-bottleneck-for-a-clean-energy-grid-qa-with-author-akshat-rathi","article/energy-storage-will-be-the-bottleneck-for-a-clean-energy-grid-qa-with-author-akshat-rathi",{"_uid":547,"date":548,"tags":549,"editor":553,"content":563,"excerpt":749,"featured":50,"reporter":750,"_editable":754,"component":755,"seo_title":543,"categories":756,"visibility":763,"author_company":49,"featured_image":764,"seo_description":749,"author_full_name":49,"author_job_title":49,"formattedDate":768,"formattedArticleDate":769},"d7f75876-6348-4ab5-be84-5fde8d1aa638","2023-10-27 00:00",[550],{"slug":551,"name":552},"qa","Q&A",[554],{"slug":555,"name":556,"content":557},"matthew-bird","Matthew Bird",{"job_title":558,"image":559,"bio":561,"linkedin":562},"Senior Editor - Supply Chains & Data Visualisation",{"filename":560},"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287943243085208/512x512/14738033ec/matthew-bird.jpeg","Matthew writes, edits and produces content for Benchmark Intelligence and Benchmark Source across the whole mine to grid supply chain. He also acts as a liaison to the press. He has a PhD in electrochemistry from the University of Nottingham.","https://www.linkedin.com/in/birdmatthew/",{"type":564,"content":565},"doc",[566,580,585,600,605,610,617,622,627,632,637,642,647,652,661,666,671,676,681,686,691,704,709,714,719,724,729,734,739,744],{"type":567,"attrs":568,"content":569},"paragraph",{"textAlign":49},[570,573,578],{"text":571,"type":572},"Akshat Rathi’s new book, ","text",{"text":574,"type":572,"marks":575},"Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions",[576],{"type":577},"italic",{"text":579,"type":572},", argues that it is now cheaper to save the world than to destroy it. ",{"type":567,"attrs":581,"content":582},{"textAlign":49},[583],{"text":584,"type":572},"He details how entrepreneurs, innovation, and sound government policy can accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies, and help us lower global emissions and reduce the rise in global temperatures. ",{"type":567,"attrs":586,"content":587},{"textAlign":49},[588,590,598],{"text":589,"type":572},"It is an optimistic book that aims to provide a framework for thinking about policies, investment, as well as how large incumbent companies can transition. Each chapter profiles a character or company that has driven change, including Bill Gates, the Chinese battery producer ",{"text":591,"type":572,"marks":592},"CATL",[593],{"type":594,"attrs":595},"link",{"href":596,"uuid":49,"anchor":49,"target":49,"linktype":597},"https://source.benchmarkminerals.com/article/western-australia-awards-1-billion-in-contracts-for-battery-energy-storage-includes-catl","url",{"text":599,"type":572},", and the former chief executive of Unilever. ",{"type":567,"attrs":601,"content":602},{"textAlign":49},[603],{"text":604,"type":572},"Rathi is an award-winning senior reporter for Bloomberg who previously worked for Quartz.",{"type":567,"attrs":606,"content":607},{"textAlign":49},[608],{"text":609,"type":572},"Benchmark Source sat down with him to learn more about the book and his views on the current state of clean energy. ",{"type":611,"attrs":612,"content":614},"heading",{"level":613,"textAlign":49},4,[615],{"text":616,"type":572},"Your book is very optimistic. I wondered if you’re still feeling that optimism now, given we have oil companies backtracking on efforts to move into renewables, and a backlash in some areas against government climate policies? ",{"type":567,"attrs":618,"content":619},{"textAlign":49},[620],{"text":621,"type":572},"I would say I’ve always been realistic. That’s been my goal to try and look at the trends as we see them in the past and where they’re going. And in that sense, the progress we’ve seen has come despite a huge amount of barriers – both from the oil and gas industry first to sow doubt on climate science, and cause public disinformation on the subject, to then policymakers dragging their feet for the longest time about future threats. ",{"type":567,"attrs":623,"content":624},{"textAlign":49},[625],{"text":626,"type":572},"To the point where we are now where the green energy transition is taking off, where governments of all kinds, from the US to Europe to China to India, are committed to goals and are deploying whatever legislative power that they can muster for the energy transition. ",{"type":567,"attrs":628,"content":629},{"textAlign":49},[630],{"text":631,"type":572},"So we could have been in a better place, no doubt, but we are in a pretty decent place, despite the sort of backlash we’ve seen from the oil and gas industry, from some right-wing parties, and from a growing movement towards not investing in sustainability … calling ESG and sustainability ‘the enemy.’ Those are real things that we need to think about. But from an energy transition perspective, it is two steps forward, one step back, and not the other way around.",{"type":611,"attrs":633,"content":634},{"level":613,"textAlign":49},[635],{"text":636,"type":572},"The chapters on China show the importance of policy in driving electric vehicle adoption. Are you worried about that policy continuity in the West, given what we have seen in the UK recently, as well as the upcoming US election? ",{"type":567,"attrs":638,"content":639},{"textAlign":49},[640],{"text":641,"type":572},"That is a real worry, in the sense that finally the lesson governments have come around to realising is that investing in clean energy isn’t just about tackling climate change. It’s also about energy security, and it’s about global competitiveness. Are they too late in recognising that and will they continue to back that transition in the same way that the current leaders have? That is a worrying one. ",{"type":567,"attrs":643,"content":644},{"textAlign":49},[645],{"text":646,"type":572},"But what we do see though is that at least in Europe, outside of the UK, that commitment is much firmer. So take the example of Siemens Energy right now … the German government is stepping in and recognising that it’s a strategic asset that needs to be supported. That kind of thinking will have to be embedded in all major economies if they really do want to grow this industry domestically, and make it competitive in a global landscape. Otherwise China’s just waiting to eat the lunch. ",{"type":567,"attrs":648,"content":649},{"textAlign":49},[650],{"text":651,"type":572},"The problems are for real, there’s no doubt about it. But the cost, the pure cost of convincing people that climate action is beneficial to them, has fallen over the last decade. And so there are political headwinds right now … but that is part of how politics works. When we look at the larger trend of people’s understanding of climate change and of the benefits from climate action, it is growing. And that trend is much more stable than the political swings we are watching.",{"type":567,"attrs":653,"content":654},{"textAlign":49},[655],{"type":656,"attrs":657},"image",{"id":49,"alt":658,"src":659,"title":49,"source":49,"copyright":49,"meta_data":660},"","https://a.storyblok.com/f/287943243085208/75e218bbdc/bm-akshat-rathi-book.webp",{},{"type":611,"attrs":662,"content":663},{"level":613,"textAlign":49},[664],{"text":665,"type":572},"You write in the book about the power of law to change the flow of capital. But that cannot be good for every country – the US IRA attracts investment away from Europe, for example, won’t there be winners and losers? ",{"type":567,"attrs":667,"content":668},{"textAlign":49},[669],{"text":670,"type":572},"We’ve always been in that world, in a way – we run a capitalist economy globally. And that does lead to winners and losers. If anything it has been the other way around, where now governments are much more understanding of the nature of the energy transition, and the fact that China can just win if they don’t actually create the policies and incentives for their own companies to be able to compete with China. ",{"type":567,"attrs":672,"content":673},{"textAlign":49},[674],{"text":675,"type":572},"So there is clearly a risk that governments recognise that China is going to have the capacity to beat them if they don’t create that capacity domestically. The risk is … in trying to protect their own domestic industry, and their own domestic markets, a country may go too far. It may create too many trade barriers, too many tariff barriers, and make the transition much more expensive than it needs to be. ",{"type":567,"attrs":677,"content":678},{"textAlign":49},[679],{"text":680,"type":572},"They may end up in a place where they haven’t really cut emissions at the pace that they need to, nor created the domestic champions that they were hoping through these barriers. ",{"type":567,"attrs":682,"content":683},{"textAlign":49},[684],{"text":685,"type":572},"So we are seeing a swing in government recognition of the energy transition towards trying to grab the opportunities. But we also have to be careful that governments don’t go too far. Because that will ultimately be bad for the energy transition, and will not even benefit the countries that are trying to attempt it.",{"type":611,"attrs":687,"content":688},{"level":613,"textAlign":49},[689],{"text":690,"type":572},"You write about the importance of innovation in the book, and the efforts of Bill Gates to fund this. You say that the costs of energy storage may need to come down to $10 a kWh to allow renewable energy to really become dominant on the grid. What kind of possibilities do you see there? ",{"type":567,"attrs":692,"content":693},{"textAlign":49},[694,696,702],{"text":695,"type":572},"I think one of the things that have been possibly the most fun to cover is the level of innovation we’ve seen in the energy storage industry. Of course, the majority of that has come in the form of ",{"text":697,"type":572,"marks":698},"lithium ion batteries",[699],{"type":594,"attrs":700},{"href":701,"uuid":49,"anchor":49,"target":49,"linktype":597},"https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/price-assessments/lithium-ion-batteries/portal/",{"text":703,"type":572}," and very many different kinds of lithium ion batteries you can make. But it’s been surprisingly shocking. The best analysts, the best projections, are often wrong and the industry becomes bigger and bigger than anybody expected it to become. ",{"type":567,"attrs":705,"content":706},{"textAlign":49},[707],{"text":708,"type":572},"I do think that from a grid balancing perspective, without large scale cheap energy storage, the cleaning up of the grid to get to 100% carbon-free electricity is going to get harder. And so there is a huge amount of incentive to try and support innovation for non-lithium ion cheap energy storage technologies. And we’ve barely scratched the surface on that. ",{"type":567,"attrs":710,"content":711},{"textAlign":49},[712],{"text":713,"type":572},"You know, there are a few handful of companies – you can count them on the fingers of one hand – that have anything that even promise to be able to reach $10 a kilowatt hour. The fact that we have some that can get to $50 or $25 a kilowatt hour is kind of amazing. We didn’t have those five years ago. ",{"type":567,"attrs":715,"content":716},{"textAlign":49},[717],{"text":718,"type":572},"And so there’s a huge amount of innovation just waiting, I feel like, to be unlocked for solutions. But it does require investors who are thinking big, it requires governments who are willing to then deploy these technologies at a large scale, so that they can run down which one of these will give us the best solutions possible. ",{"type":567,"attrs":720,"content":721},{"textAlign":49},[722],{"text":723,"type":572},"But energy storage will be the bottleneck for a clean energy grid. If that doesn’t remain a bottleneck, every part of the energy transition becomes faster. If you have a clean grid everything else becomes so much easier to handle.",{"type":611,"attrs":725,"content":726},{"level":613,"textAlign":49},[727],{"text":728,"type":572},"The chapter on India and solar is fascinating. What is their path to climate capitalism? ",{"type":567,"attrs":730,"content":731},{"textAlign":49},[732],{"text":733,"type":572},"One of the success stories that I write about in India is partly dependent on foreign capital. ReNew Power, which is one of the largest renewable energy companies in India, built itself with the support of the likes of Goldman Sachs and the Canadian pension fund and a few other foreign investors. That capital was key for them to be able to struggle through what is a difficult business environment. At least it was very difficult when they started off, it has become a little bit better in the decades since. India needs to do a lot more to attract that kind of foreign capital.",{"type":567,"attrs":735,"content":736},{"textAlign":49},[737],{"text":738,"type":572},"India is in a place where it could massively benefit. From being a democracy that has its problems … but it is a stable democracy in the sense that the government knows what they need to do on their climate goals and are committed to it. But there are bottlenecks that they need to sort out, so things that ReNew has had to overcome, such as grid capacity to absorb renewables; clear payment mechanisms so that the producers of clean electricity get paid on time; regulatory certainty, so that once you build a project, you are guaranteed your 20 years of revenue and there are no political swings or regulatory swings that may damage your reputation, around certainty of payments. ",{"type":567,"attrs":740,"content":741},{"textAlign":49},[742],{"text":743,"type":572},"Those are things that are very much in government control. And many of those things India has started working on, it needs to do a lot more, but we are seeing grid expansion plans, we are seeing a centralised payment system. We are seeing losses that came about [from] trying to change power purchasing agreements being defended in court through a system that says contracts must be respected and must be honoured. ",{"type":567,"attrs":745,"content":746},{"textAlign":49},[747],{"text":748,"type":572},"So, India actually has, you know, also the potential to be able to deploy these energy technologies at scale, at very low prices, given both the resources and the human capital that it can put to work. So it is in a very good place to succeed. In a way it’s theirs to lose if they don’t put the right policies and support mechanisms in place.","Akshat Rathi’s new book, Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions, argues that it is now cheaper to save the world than to destroy it. He details how entrepreneurs, innovation, and sound government policy can accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies, and help us lower global emissions and reduce the rise in […]",[751],{"slug":555,"name":556,"content":752},{"job_title":558,"image":753,"bio":561,"linkedin":562},{"filename":560},"\u003C!--#storyblok#{\"name\": \"article\", \"space\": \"\", \"uid\": \"d7f75876-6348-4ab5-be84-5fde8d1aa638\", \"id\": \"\"}-->","article",[757,760],{"slug":758,"name":759},"geopolitics","Geopolitics",{"slug":761,"name":762},"new-energy","New Energy","private",{"id":49,"alt":658,"name":658,"focus":658,"title":658,"source":658,"filename":765,"copyright":658,"fieldtype":766,"meta_data":767,"is_external_url":51},"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287943243085208/4f83cd703b/bm-bloomberg-akshat-rathi-crop.jpeg","asset",{"alt":658,"title":658,"source":658,"copyright":658},"Oct 27, 2023","27th October 2023",[],[],1785157548422]