Read the full transcript of Dr Scott Tinker’s talk titled “An Honest & Sensible Conversation about Global Energy” at The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference (November 8, 2023).
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
DR SCOTT TINKER: So you’ve got to help me do something here. My four grown kids, we send pictures to each other from around the world. So everybody wave. I’m going to send them this picture. Oh, you guys are awesome. One more. I win. All right.
So let’s get started today here. Little philosophy. It’s the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Wouldn’t that be nice if we could just have some civil dialogue, right?
And so when we think about these things, I’m going to feed on what Jordan introduced us with the last couple of days. Faith is the process of removing doubt. And science is a process requiring doubt. Would it were not so, as a scientist, we are filled with doubt. We are always skeptical, and we are always challenging. And you can think of them kind of in this way. They don’t have to live separately. Faith and science can live together. But if we remove doubt from science, it becomes religion. And that’s when things get unsettled in science, OK? Science is never settled.
I’ve been called a pragmatist, a realist, an optimist, accusationally and complimentary. I’ll let you determine after this is done where we are with all this. But here’s the world, the world as we know it. And there are a lot of big things in the world that are going on, big issues, right? And these ones that I’ve colored orange here, they’re human flourishing. They’re related to the economy. Energy sits up here, as does climate change.
And another way to look at this, we love Turner triangle diagrams as geologists. Everything has to sum to 100%, right? Reliable energy, affordable energy, and low-emissions energy. If you want 100% low emissions, you get zero of everything else. There are trade-offs in this very real world that we have to work with and deal with. And I’ve called this the radical middle for a very long time.
And interestingly enough, I noticed there’s an A and an R and a C in the radical middle. And it’s kind of where the ARC is sitting. Isn’t that a neat coincidence? Maybe it was my journey to be here and join the ARC.
Energy Security and Healthy Economies
Energy security underpins healthy economies. It flows this way. Every big economy in the world has reasonably secure energy. And that allows for what? Environmental investment. It flows that way.
And we can take a little waltz around the world, pre-Paris, and then we head up toward post-Paris, toward climate, and COVID pulls us back. And then the IEA says, “No, let’s talk about net zero emissions,” which leads to COP26 in Glasgow. And Mr. Putin says, “No. No, I’m going into Ukraine. I’m going to weaponize gas. Physically and economically.” And COP27 in Egypt kind of pulled us back. And then Germany goes into a recession. And recently, Israel.
So we’ve been waltzing around this radical middle. And wouldn’t it be nice if those things could all come together closer and not be quite as dramatic as they seem to be in the world? And again, this is the role of ARC.
We have another famous philosopher in the U.S., Yogi Berra. He said, “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.” And we know it’s not a perfect world. We don’t live in a perfect world.
Global Experiences and Perspectives
I’ve been fortunate. I’ve visited over 60 countries. Here they are, color-coded by number of visits. And we’ve made a couple of films, one on the energy transition released in 2012, one on energy poverty. And these pictures are from that.
This man my age in Ethiopia had tears in his eyes when he told me his grandkids had something he never had. They’d come out of the bush, and they were in school for the very first time.
And we go over to Kenya, and we meet Sana Kanchi. She’s cooking indoors with wood like 2.8 billion other people do, a biomass of some kind. And at the SETI Memorial Hospital, we see kids die of breathing indoor smoke, and moms, too, of lung issues and lung diseases and cancers.
Come back to Africa, a school doubling as a church with light bulbs, and these kids walking to school over mounds of pollution, polluted water, polluted soil, polluted air, in their uniforms to get educated.
We go to Vietnam. We meet Thanh, who carries her crippled son on her back across this plank every day. So he can go to a school, this theme repeating over and over. India, some of the most severe poverty I’ve ever seen, and some of the most severe wealth. Quite the disparity.
And we bring you back to the Western Hemisphere, the village of Gunchukwa, the Iroquois people, where we installed first solar, 3.5 kilowatts, half of your house. Put light bulbs in those mud huts and thatched roofs. The world organizations call that electrified. We would call it a brownout. But it’s a start for them.
Because these kids, half of them will die before they reach adult of a tooth infection or diarrhea. It wouldn’t kill us. So that last night with a mama or the chief when we turned on the switch and they saw each other for the first time in their own village at night, other than over a fire, was very powerful.
And this is our world. This is the world of optimism and hope. And it’s interesting, the irony of the optimism and hope that these people have as they look to the future, they seem more hopeful than we are. Even though they have very little.
I’m not going to talk about ESG, but right now. To them, clean water, clean air, clean soil, the environment matters. Social? How about a school or some health care? Governance? Get me out from under this autocrat so I can actually have a voice. It matters in that real world because so much of the world lives in poverty.
Income, you see the reds and yellows? They are the lowest income. And this is the most or least livable cities in the world I’ve superimposed. Guess where they are? Where it’s poor. And here’s the most livable cities, blue on blue, where it’s rich.
Energy Poverty and Affordability
So as you think about these emerging economies, they’re just getting started. They live in energy poverty for the most part. It’s everywhere in the world, but concentrated sub-equatorially. And they need something, some affordable energy, just to get started.
And you think about the developing world, the pinks. Again, broadly distributed, but Latin America, Eastern Europe, and parts in Russia. They’ve got energy, but it’s not secure to them. It comes and goes, so they need reliable energy. About 60% of the world lives in some level energy poverty today. Five billion people. It’s a phenomenal number when you think about it.
I put out a piece called “Net Zero Poverty.” The editors changed titles, but that’s what it talks about. And then there’s the rich world in blue. Not that extensive, is it? We want climate security. We want it clean. Well, where’s the cleanest air in the world? The green countries, where it’s rich. Where’s the dirtiest air? The red countries, where it’s poor. Same with soil, same with water. Poor countries simply can’t afford to clean up the environment. They have other priorities.
Bring that all together, and you start to realize that energy security, it varies tremendously across the globe. It’s a paradox. I first said this 10 years ago in Ecuador, I think. Energy won’t end poverty, but we can’t end poverty without energy. It’s time to power the people. It’s time to bring energy access for all.
So when you think of this conundrum, energy access for all, and managing climate impacts, it’s not an easy challenge. It’s not a binary challenge. We used to cook with wood indoors 10,000 years ago. The sun is the first form of energy. It grew the hay that powered our vehicles. They pulled their own food. And then we started collecting the wind and the motion of water to do useful work in bigger dams. And we killed whales to light our homes. And this is old energy.
Evolution of Energy Sources
And then along came coal, and that changed the world. It’s very dense. Boil water, make steam, turn a turbine, run a generator, and make light. That changed the world. Oil comes along. We refine it and put it in our vehicles. And then natural gas, and finally nuclear. And this is the new energy.
And why am I showing you all this? It’s because of this concept of energy density. Michael talked about it yesterday. We’ve gotten a lot denser with energy. Not a little bit. Hundreds of times denser. It drives modern societies. Dense energy does.
And we have words for this stuff. Renewable, thermal, clean and dirty. A little judgmental. Industry has its own terms. Intermittent and reliable. And how about weather dependent and firm? Let’s call it electrons and molecules. The stuff on the left makes electricity. We can burn molecules to make electricity, but we do more with molecules. A lot of heat to make cement and steel. Molecules for plastics. Molecules for fertilizers. Ammonia for fertilizers. The world needs both. We’re not going to electrify everything. We have to have both.
So we’ve got to strive to be completely factual and factually complete in this world. I said this testimony to Senator Manchin’s hearing on climate a couple years ago. What does that look like? Well, my slides are color coded. These are the color scheme.
Oil and coal are still going up in the world today. They’re very dense. They make a lot of CO2 when you burn them. Natural gas is growing tremendously. So is nuclear still. It’s very dense. Less CO2. And finally, hydro and solar and wind and other things are going up as well. They’re not dense. They don’t make much CO2. There’s trade-offs in this real world of ours.
The 2019 Great Recession, global, you see the dip in energy there in the world. That happens when the world doesn’t move around as much. And here’s the COVID recession. A little deeper, we’re already consuming more energy than we did pre-COVID. Nothing structural changed. We consume more coal and oil in the world today than everything else combined. That’s the actual data. Those are the generation. Nothing has gone down. We just keep adding energy. Energy addition.
Look, there are three kinds of people in the world. Those are good at math and those aren’t. Which of the three are you? Here’s a little math for us, maybe. It’s completely factual that the sun and the wind are growing faster than everything else. It’s a rate. It’s exponential. Let’s scale it and make it a little more factually complete. There they are in the global increase. It turns out they represent about 10% of the growth in energy demand. 10% of the growth, not the base.
So here we sit, where are other things? Well, coal and natural gas represent 52% of today’s energy, down from 53% 70 years ago. And gas, more than coal now. That mix has changed. Why coal? Well, here’s why. China consumes a lot of coal. This isn’t for electricity. This is total energy. More coal than all the other energy combined in China. And it’s not slowing down, no matter what you hear. Building about a coal plant a week still in China. A big one.
Let’s lay India right on top of China. Here we go. India passed China in population April this year. About one out of every three people on the planet live in these two countries today. Watch what happens when I scale India to be proportional in energy consumption to China. It’s less than a quarter today. And why is that? Because the GDP per capita in China is about 5x India. India wants to do what China has done.
So watch now as I move India to the left. 25 years, a quarter of a century. Look familiar? If they do what China has done, it’s game over climate. Too much coal. Some other mix would be good. Different options. Yet they’re building coal.
And I don’t blame Mr. Modi, who said to the G20, “Don’t blame us. Don’t lecture us about climate change. You did it. UK, US, Germany, China. We’re doing it.” So coal consumption in the rich world has been cut in half. Here’s coal consumption in Asia. And here’s the rest of the world, essentially none. Overwhelming. And it’s not just China. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, other countries. It is, despite energy transition, a long, prosperous life ahead. Absolutely it is. It’s an Asian story.
Unless you’re Germany, and Mr. Putin cuts off your gas. And then you increase your coal by 13%, and you shut down the nuclear reactors at the same time. Climate scientists are aghast. They should have been. Cut down the stuff that doesn’t emit. I mean, Germany could afford to do that, mostly.
Global Priorities and Energy Security
Here’s the reality. Global leaders prioritize energy security over climate. Watch what they do, not what they say. This is a critically important point. And here’s how they do it. These are the top three producing countries of oil and gas in the world. And here’s the top producing or extracting countries of key metals for solar, wind, and batteries. This is extraction.
Watch what happens when we see where it’s processed. China. Brilliant. Belt and Road and other initiatives have bought the processing, because they need the EVs, don’t have much oil. They are making the solar panels and the wind turbines. They need to own these metals. Half the lithium market, just about two weeks ago, tight hold on graphite, et cetera, for electric vehicles. China controls the global supply chains for these things. And we need to understand that, at least. We might move OPEC for vehicles to China for vehicles. China relations are critical for security. All these things have impacts.
Left to right, biofuels, yes. You grow them, you have to process it, refine it, move it, and you burn it. It’s a carbohydrate to a hydrocarbon. Solar, wind, and batteries, all this stuff. You mine, you manufacture, et cetera. I was walking through this field in Spain, thinking, where are these all going to go? Have you seen a solar farm after a hailstorm? And they wear out non-catastrophically.
And you know what this is? It’s the floor bed of a Tesla S. There are 7,000 batteries in this car, 7,000. You do the math on EVs, and you get into the trillions of batteries that have to be made, and they wear out. Have you seen lithium mining? How many, raise your hands, how many think mining is green? Oh, come on, you chickens. I’m a geologist, I don’t mind mining. It’s not green. OK, we mine everything.
And Michael showed this yesterday. We bury these. This is about 100 turbine blades being buried in Wyoming. Texas has 40,000 wind turbine blades now. And we are burying them in sweet water.
The Reality of Energy
Oil and gas and coal, are you kidding? All of these things happen. Mine, manufacture, drill, refine, transport, we burn it. It’s done better in the wealthy, regulated world. But here we sit, we mine it, we make it, and we dump it over and over. And I said this to 1,100 students during a TED talk, there’s no renewable energy. And I ducked. I lived, I’m here. But this was a shock. There’s no renewable energy, it all comes from the earth.
Nonetheless, we’re proposing EV mandates in the US, in multiple states. I put out a piece that reducing options doesn’t work, mandates don’t work. Markets hate reduction of options. Markets like optionality. We can tell our kids, “There’s ugly energy and there’s pretty energy,” you know. But we’re not doing them any favors with this message. They need to start to think deeper.
So the emissions from all this look like this. The rich world, level emissions, growing economy, Asia’s emissions are going up, and the rest of the world’s just getting started. Asia emits more CO2 than the rest of the world combined now. And it’s not because Asia’s bad, it’s because of this. Above that red line, countries consume more stuff than they produce, and below it they produce more. The United States makes five billion tons of CO2, but we still need more stuff. China makes 10 billion tons, but they make more stuff than they need.
Most of the non-rich world and non-OECD are producers. The rich world, you and us, are consumers. We say, “Send us our stuff on an Amazon truck, one item at a time to the front door.” And what are we effectively saying? “Put out our CO2, use coal, so it’ll be cheap, and just send it our way.” Is this a zero emission strategy? There’s only one atmosphere in the world, one. This doesn’t do it. This is called a shell game, the offsets world.
We’re well aware of the benefits of reducing emissions, but what are some of the unintended outcomes of it? These are happening. Consumers’ electricity and fuels, higher prices, industries are damaged from non-level global playing fields. You’re seeing that happen here in Europe. Wealthy nations, we think green. Coal nations make our stuff. Mining, manufacturing, and dumping accelerate. Unreliable grids, oversaturated, intermittent energy, and well-intended policies that eliminate options. I say well-intended.
The Energy Transition
So as with most things, the trade-offs with NGE, there are trade-offs, and we’ve got to discuss them and carefully consider them. So this thing called an energy transition. I think some people think, here we are in today’s energy, and we’re just going to go watch closely to tomorrow’s energy in flip-flops, sandals. This is not a transition. This is an idiot. If you don’t make it, it’s over. The cost-benefit, the risk-reward isn’t there for that kind of a so-called leap.
Energy transition, what is it? It’s adding energy and lowering emissions, not net zero, just reducing emissions. So we come back to our world and the income in that world, and we fade into the light world at night. Look where the lights are on, and look where they’re off.
Here’s the mixes of energy around the world, and I’m going to scale them to be proportional to actual consumption. Asia, almost half the world’s energy now, makes our stuff. People want to get rid of coal and oil, that’s interesting, and gas and nuclear. And some even don’t want to build dams, what’s left? 6%. Let’s just darken the world’s lights by 94%. Here we go. How’s that look to you? Seriously, how’s it look to you? It looks like the past, not the future. Got to turn those lights back on.
A billion people don’t have anything. They need something to get started, education and health care. Women are disadvantaged by energy poverty disproportionately a lot. Growing populations are slowed by education and access to energy, migration away from autocrats, the environmental investment, and adapting and mitigating climate change. These are the big issues in the world today, and they’re all underpinned by secure energy.
Final Thoughts
So I’ll leave you with these thoughts. No one has a patent on truth. We just seek it. That’s all we can do as scientists is seek it. It’s vital for human flourishing. Energy is vital. All forms have pros and cons. There’s nothing clean and dirty, good and bad. There are trade-offs in this real world. There are real trade-offs. We’ve got to end this divisive binary narrative. Black and white, clean and dirty, believe it or deny it, doesn’t exist in the real world.
Here we go. We must move past politics, misplaced emotion, via public and factually complete civil dialogues, public education and civil dialogues. Radical Middle, ARC, this is our mission.
So I appreciate your attention today. Thank you.
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