Semafor Net Zero: One Good Text
After winning a $20 billion contract with Google, Intersect Power wants to “create a whole new class of real estate.”
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This is the fifth episode of a five-part series exploring the European energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If you haven’t listened to the first four episodes, we recommend you start there.
In March of 2022, European officials unveiled a plan to push their energy transition much further, much faster – and rid their dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
REPowerEU was ambitious, but it raised lots of questions about whether it would lock Europe into new dependencies.
In this episode, we take a step back and ask: what are the consequences of the energy crisis for the entire European region? And how might it influence other parts of the world?
First, we explore the push to supercharge wind and solar – and what it says about the benefits and limits of what they can do.
Then, we discuss the abrupt shift in where Europe gets the fossil fuels it uses today – and the vision to reuse gas infrastructure for hydrogen.
Finally, we end with a conversation about how Europe’s response influenced other regions, particularly developing countries.
So far over this season we've traced the global lithium-ion battery supply chain from mining to processing to manufacturing. And we've put it all into a geopolitical and economic context.
China has been the world's biggest battery manufacturer for over a decade. By 2022, according to the IEA, China manufactured 76% of the world's batteries. But that's changing.
Batteries can replace gasoline in our cars, or diesel in our generators with electricity. But batteries and petroleum-based fuels share something in common: they both rely on energy-intensive processes to turn extracted materials into something useful.
To produce enough batteries to reach global net-zero goals, the International Energy Agency says we'll need to increase production of critical minerals by six fold by 2040. It's a monumental task.
President Donald Trump has made energy a clear focus for his second term in the White House. Having campaigned on an “America First” platform that highlighted domestic fossil-fuel growth, the reversal of climate policies and clean energy incentives advanced by the Biden administration, and substantial tariffs on key US trading partners, he declared an “energy emergency” on his first day in office.
November’s election for president of the United States will have crucial implications for the nation’s and world’s energy and climate policies.
Nuclear power is being weighed in energy transition plans around the world, as countries seek to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon alternatives while also meeting growing energy demand and maintaining reliability and affordability.