script on power. ah, i'm going to liberate this where a new documentary follows he's known boiling campaign to bring down a corrupt regime. astonishing outcome with i am not alone on mimi is velvet revolution on al jazeera. here of a lead is a place to turn the north sea into a renewable power engine. they want to cut the use of fossil fuels and reliance on russian guess the plan is radical and costly but what it was and where will the money come from? this isn't so story. ah ah ah ah welcome to the program on the moron con, finding a new sources of green energy is no longer merely an aspiration for many

governments with the risks from climate change. now felt all around the world in europe, the war in ukraine is force countries to seek alternatives to russian gas. harnessing sources which replenish themselves like wind and wave power, is the aim of european leaders who want to turn the continents norman sees into an engine of renewable energy. we'll discuss how realistic this is in a few moments with our guests. but 1st, alexandra buys that reports on what northern european leaders have pledged at a summit in belgium. her resilience sovereignty made in europe, but also meeting ambitious climate targets. those were the aims of a summit in belgium on monday, where leaders from 9 european countries pledge to rapidly speed up the construction of offshore wind farms and dramatically changed the balance of energy supplies in europe. this summit, martin important milestone

a milestone to make of the north sea, the biggest green power plant in the world. we aim for a capacity of a 130 gigawatts 520-3300 gigawatts. by 2050. by then, we will be able to provide electricity for 300000000 households. on the european continent, the blocks promised to be carbon neutral by 2050. but after russia's invasion of ukraine, energy security has become a bigger priority. in the fall out of the war, moscow cut it's deliveries of energy supplies to europe. we have to make sure put in no longer has to means to extra pressure on us by turning off the gas step and producing clean energy is the best way to achieve dish and enormous potential of the norris's. she reach this indispensable. here the leaders say bel, improve the security of the north sea energy facilities to fears of attacks have

grown after the sabotage of the nord stream pipelines last year. and recent reports of a russian spy ship in the north sea region. al critical infrastructure is under threat and we know it since the we have experienced the summer touch of nor stream a pipeline or last year. so this is the reason why we have stepped up in the european union, our actions concerning preparedness. the commitments made in belgium will essentially quadruple the current offshore wind capacity in the north sea. leaders acknowledge it will take a huge investment, but they say for the security and sustainable future of europe, it must be done alexander buyers for inside story. ah, unless bring in our guests now in stromness, in the old he island scotland at garth davis, founder of aqua, tara,

and environmental and sustainable energy consultancy. his company is involved in the planning of future marine offshore real rules across europe in brussels, sandrine dixon, declare that co president of the club of rome, a climate policy advisory sandrine is also the you ambassador of the energy transition commission and in london. no. o'brien, eastern hemisphere, editorial director for energy intelligence, no specializes in european oil and gas companies. a warm welcome to each of you before we get into the politics of this, let's get into the tech and i want to begin. ah, in the o carolyn's with a garret davis garrett. as far as i understand this as a lay person, what effectively is going to happen is you're going to interconnect a bunch of wind farms and harness wave energy. and somehow that will replace rushes gas for a whole continent. i mean is that about these? some of it unfortunate says little more complicated than that. and,

and i think that's the challenge is that if this isn't a simple solution, it is in our view, an achievable solution, but it needs a lot of different parts put together. so. so what is really important is to have the, the policy or the strategy lead, if you like, and to understand that, that's the political will to make these things happen. and then we need to then go to the next level down and get the strategy in place to deliver the investment in the infrastructure that's needed. i mean the, that some of the technology advances that are gonna make this possible. but there's a lot of progress that's being made in the last few decades. and you know, this is the right time probably to launch the initiative of this time. but let's talk about that. take care of, i mean you say that the technology has come on in leaps and bounds the last couple of decades present quite there yet. is that one, i'm understanding but what we've done really is made huge advances in

wind and actually something that has to be mentioned this week, solar energy. but this could also be something that's part of the next, but certainly offshore wind, as i think exceeded everybody's expectations in terms of how much we put out to deliver it up. what price, what the next step entails is going into deep waters. and going to windy at parks of the waters around europe. so bringing the turbines up around scotland and where we're based off in the islands. often also scotland, this is probably going to be the next focus. and in fact, there are no plans being prepared for $28.00 gigawatts of new offshore wind, around all clean shaven the western isles. and these turbines, as well as being the traditional founded turbines buried into the sea bed. we're also looking at it and said floating turbines, which have started to be introduced, but the expansion of that is a major advance for the industry. and now let me bring in brussels hair and sundry

dixon, a declared sundry once again. this isn't about the environment, this is about climate change, isn't about anything. this is about politics and russia and the war in ukraine, affecting gas prices and gas supply. so it's once again, politics is driving something that actually we should have been doing a long time ago. right, well i think it's a mix of everything to be frank. i mean, yes, absolutely. the ukrainian invasion has put to actually the transition to renewables and energy efficiency, i hope, which is also part of the mix. by the way, we can't forget that we have to think about consumption. all of this has been put on overdrive because we want to wean ourselves off, rush and gas. and actually over the last year we've done phenomenally well in transitioning. the key here now is making sure that we scale it up to the level that it has to go. and that means actually increasing. for example,

the wind turbine production capacity by 2 times by 2030. it means bottom fixed foundations capacity 4 times an installation vessel capacity 2 times. i mean, this is a lot of shift in particular for example in offshore wind, but as was indicated by the previous speaker. we also need to think about coupling that and with investments across solar and then think through around energy efficiency. and we know that clean electrification is the backbone of the transition to net 0. and we know that we need to radically dramatically increase actually investments and wind and solar capacity by about 5 to 7 times by 2030. i think the key now is to think through how do we get there one, eliminate the perversity in the market. the currently exists that don't enable us to actually invest and shift capital towards renewables. infrastructure to, to make sure that we actually put in place the right funds. and we're starting to

see that this is coming out of the european union in terms of the temporary crisis and transition framework and the thinking through the new e u sovereignty fund. and then 3, very importantly, how do we ensure that actually people understand that this is a potential solution to energy poverty that we to show that renewable electrons can be in parity with gas prices. and then we don't actually induce even greater energy poverty across the european union, based on what we're actually saying. now. i want to bring no abriana in here. no, there is a danger here that if we're doing this because of the russia of russia's actions in ukraine to try and win ourselves off a russian gas in europe, then that's not the driver. the needs to be because russia is not gonna be in war in ukraine for a long time. you know, at some point it's, the gas is going to come back on. there is another, there's nordstrom on,

there's no tree to which isn't back on line yet. effectively brush and gas will be cheaper and this is a massive investment and there's a danger here. if we're doing it for money, not for the environment, it will simply just go away once russian gas is cheaper or moral friends again. well, i mean, i think i would be a little bit careful that i'm thinking that russian gas is simply going your attorney, should we see some sort of pause or some potential long term resolution with the ukraine conflict. i mean, the companies that we talk to, the traders that we talk to, all of them have a pretty cautious view and, and i would say the diplomats that we talked to as well. i have a pretty cautious view, a pretty pessimistic view. they really ever returns to, to russian gas. i mean, this is both from a, you know, if you think of it from a geopolitical perspective. but i mean, also simply from a security of supply perspective, this is an energy source that has kind of been choked and throttled and very

strategic times to create some of the really the highest gas and power prices that the european continent has seen. and so i think, you know, what does make this much more likely to move ahead of me. what gives the impetus and the urgency is simply that it is not simply an environmental push that's driving this forward. it is an energy security pushing for economy like europe that really doesn't have a lot of domestic resource potential when it comes to, especially oil and gas. course. this is what energy security looks like. garrath. clearly the momentum is now on the side of this. people do want to get this going, but it's going to cost billions in investment. it's going to require a buy in from the energy companies. energy companies already said we don't have the money for the infrastructure here. where is that money gonna come from? well, in the end or all of our energy system, money comes from us, the customers that pay for about energy. the question is about investment and how

much up front investment happens rather than things getting fed into the system. and we've been doing some analysis which looks at how much we spend as a society at the moment, year on year on energy and, and then competitive with the kinds of investments that we're looking at. and from our calculations, it suggests that in europe, at the moment, we're probably spending around 500000000000 pounds a year across year on our energy sources. and the investment that we're talking about, say for $300.00 gigawatts of energy, would perhaps be around $600000000000.00 to a trillion pounds. so effectively what we're saying is each year we spend about 50 percent of what we actually need to make that kind of investment. so over the next 20 years, which is, you know, we've got 20 years to do this. you know,

if actually we have the time to make the investment from the cost that we're already in kind of trying to system. what has to happen is instead of us paying that money into the existing oil and gas and to the service and coal pathways, we need to redirect back revenue into renewables. and that's what the common transition is all about. sundry, that's an i watering figure. half a $500000000.00 to a trillion in investment just to get this up and running. gas is always going to be cheaper. at some point. there's going to be a will surely, people are going to want to spend this money. but this is exactly what i'm saying. i mean, i think that we need to bring back into consideration. the fact that actually gas is increasingly going to be costly, that we can't continue to move down that route, that we have to take, perversity is out of the market to enable actually those renewable electrons to be

cheaper. yes, we are investing, but a lot of that capital is shifting from investors that are de risking and saying that actually renewables are the way forward and are actually the type of energy that we want to think about. i mean, in the current international context, if you look at energy security in the work that i'm also doing on the board of e, d p, which is the electricity company for a port to goal. it's very clear that they have diversified, they're pulling out of coal. in fact, they will be out of coal already by a 2025 and fully green by 2030. there are many companies, electricity companies across europe that are doing the same thing. they put in place just transition plans to come out of coal plants and actually have already done. so for example, in e t p, case and cns. and what they're thinking is that the investment makes sense and floating offshore wind energy, the way in which they're addressing renewables in a variety of different countries, including in the united states,

in latin america and elsewhere. so this is also creating a competitive european industry, not only in terms of electricity companies themselves, but through the full supply chain and industry opportunities. i mean build besides actually delivering the clean energy offshore, wind energy impact is the creation of new supply chain opportunities. also in the area of solar and this is helping industrial companies, it's creating new new jobs. and it's exactly what president vander lane has been calling for through the new green deal. so i think this is the industrial and the energy revolution that 3 really going to transform europe. we have to stay ahead of the game. otherwise, we're going to lose to china and to the united states who's put in place, actually the inflation reduction act and is moving very quickly in this direction. oh no. where does this leave the traditional oil and gas companies? they must be looking at this tech, and i must be worried. well, i mean for the european majors, you know, the company is like a,

b p and so tal energies the shell. i mean, this particular, particularly offshore wind renewable power in general is a major color of their energy transition strategy. this is different from their u. s. peers, but i mean this offshore when the scenario where these companies feel that they can bring competitive advantage around managing a supply chain engineering working in these complex, offshore environments. you know, i think it's also really important as we point out, that this is an industry that, you know, has opportunities globally, whether it's in the u. s. where they do have the inflation reduction or in parts of latin america. you know, there is an opportunity that they are, that they can choose where the best returns are. they can try to understand where the best regulatory environments are, where there are incentives, where there is financial capacity to be able to partner, whether it's with financial firms or,

or with government. so i think the idea that you're really needs to get this right to be able to attract the amount of investment, to check the expertise, the capacity that it needs to realize. these are very, very ambitious plans is critical. simply saying that this is the goal that we have, and then, you know, finding ways to incentivize it and to realize it in a way that's cost effective and comes through on time and on budget. so it's, it's a very, very difficult undertaking. i don't think we should, should kid ourselves than getting this right. is both important and, and will be a challenge if that's an important word, isn't it ambitious? we keep hearing not a lot. so i just want to give you an example 20 years ago. it felt like that we were talking about solar energy being the future solar energy being something that was going to radically change everything yet a real 20 years later. so relying on fossil fuels are still relying on electricity . and that hasn't quite materialized in the way that it should. why will this

it's, it's a number of factors. i think we have to recognize that the incumbent forces enough political and economic systems have been to the, for in the last 20 years. and that's held back the deployment of technology, but as one of the other contributing said that there was the fact now the wind, and indeed even offshore wind as well. the solar actually going to be our cheapest energy sources going forward and asked to address your question about russian gas. it's very unlikely the russian gas level reach prices the undercut where renewables are going to get to in the next few years. so renewables will be our cheapest form of energy. it is a question that of mobilizing the supply chains and creating the infrastructure to take that forward and their opportunity to, you know, countries particular communities that happen incredibly ambitious to get involved

in that. and i think, you know, the islands where i'm speaking to you from are exactly one of those places where as a small community, we embrace the opportunities that renewables can create. and we've got 400 people we've got 20 or so companies in our small community that are focused on renewables and, you know, those companies are really interested now in getting involved in this huge revolution that we're talking about with regards to offshore wind and helping deliver it at an affordable price, and an accelerated way will be used to learning that we've established over the last 20 years or so. now fundraising, we are talking about the north sea. now, that is a big, significant challenge. like, i mean, that is go to make diets go to give you polls, charlie. yeah, no, clearly it is a challenge, but i think that there are many countries that are ready for that challenge. and if you look at the storm declaration, for example, that is looking at the north sea challenge in particular,

those are the countries of belgium, denmark, germany, the netherlands, france, and ireland luxemburg nori and the united kingdom have all wanted to already start to invest very clearly in the offshore wind. i think the key here though is that in some ways, we're saying that offshore wind farms can get to commercial scale in europe by 3 years. but in many cases, we're seeing that there is a real problem in terms of lack times on permitting. so coming back to how do we scale this up? how do we really start to ensure that we get the infrastructure where it needs to be in the transmission lines as well? i mean, let's not spots speak about some of the politics that we're seeing across different countries. but if we continue to bring those time lags down, then we will see that the development of the projects can go much faster. and i'm a bit worried about these timeline. and actually this is

a large scale report that was undertaken by e t. c. the energy transition commission and which we're speaking about now to officials, to say that we absolutely have to reduce permitting times. and that construction really can take 2 to 3 years. but these permitting times of up to 10 to 12 years is going to kill the industry if it continues that way. we also need to think through however, how we can continue to be very firm and vigilant around environmental impact assessments. but by the same token, enable some of these projects to get through, making sure that we are still preserving our bio diversity and our pollution laws, the way in which we should. so it's finding that balancing act, but it's also making the scale read now and thinking through the permitting. if we compare to the united states where the permanent times are so much swifter, we're going to lose out if we don't start to think about this very clearly. noah sondra makes a point i wanted to ask you about, which is one all permit english,

one of getting all of these countries together and making sure that they're in lockstep and effectively actually starting to build this technology. now, europe doesn't have a great track record when it comes to doing this. no, and i mean, the permanent issue is huge. i think if you talk to companies that are trying to advance these types of projects globally, what they come back to time and again is permitting, what's what, you know, how quickly can they get it from an idea and getting the license that they need to moving through all the approvals, and let's be honest, i mean, these are sure from a climate perspective, when installations renewable power installations are great. but we are seeing whether it's here in the u. k. whether it's in the u. s. other places in europe push back against putting these, these, these are industrial scale. power facility is putting these in places and i think this is one reason why it has to be offshore wind. i mean,

why in the head of the fees gas and renewables division was saying, you know, offshore, wind is it has to go up. there just isn't enough land for it. but i mean, there are still going to be constituencies and tradeoffs to balance out there. whether it's fishing industries, whether it's environmental, and i think how politicians navigate that balance and how they find a way to move ahead with these projects in a way that, you know, time is money and, and if they aren't, move, moved forward in a way that preserves that rate of return for companies. it's not going to work. and i think the same thing can be just said about industrial capacity. building in the north sea is difficult when you're industry has been doing it for years. but we've also seen that when everybody tries to do the same thing in the same place at the same time, that's the cost of labor, the cost of materials, the cost to build things goes up and it can go up quite rapidly. and that kind of road your rate of return as well. and so, you know,

i think that these are 2 very difficult challenges that they certainly can be solved. but you know, those are 2 things that i would be keeping an eye on in terms of how much of this this goal actually gets delivered. well, we're lucky enough to be joined by someone who is from one of the companies that might be involved in doing this. karen davis, you run aqua, tara, and environmental and sustainable energy consultancy. there is an awful lot of red tape to get through europe, as in great red tape. could this scope put, you'll big ambitious plants. i think we're all engaged in the plan that actually it's not any one person's plan in the world needs to be carbonized energy . i mean that's a fact. it's well established. it's our biggest priority. and so getting people behind that is absolutely important. i think one nuance i would make is that, you know, the headline discussion is about that we're going to do this in the north sea. the reality is that the best wind resorts is in europe or at the northern end of the

north sea and to the west of, of scotland and ireland. and it would be very surprising if this focused on productivity didn't take the developments to those places. and i think in doing so that will avoid some of the more acute planning challenges which exist because the north sea is the busiest and the most heavily used and has some of the most valued natural communities. and so that might be a little bit more space in some of these more northern and western areas for these developments to take place. but they the appropriate planning and choosing the right places for these wind farms and other forms of technology will be absolutely critical. and, and as will the fact that we need to spread them out across the north, south line if you like of europe, because because our weather systems go east west, generally it's our, i'm sorry, gas i'm running out. we are running out to tom. i do want to come quickly to sondra is wondering, we've talked a lot about the politics, sort of the finance. we talked about the tech. are you talking to environmentalists

and scientists about they sell? are there any concerns here from those lobbies? listen, i think, said to have clearly environmental as exactly as was just said, all believe we all feel that it is time now to put in place a proper net 0 carbon plan to move towards renewable energy, where we need to be cognisant is, 1st of all how can we scale up existing technology and not just think about breakthrough technology? so how can we think through what we have now to scale it up. secondly, what many environmentalists are saying is please, let's not forget and i say the same demand side management. let's not just focus on what's bright and what we think is new, and instead look at consumption. we can do a huge amount if we reduce our consumption of energy. and then the last point, and i do think this is something that we're all thinking about and that is what will be our material dependencies. we absolutely have to reduce the use of fossil

energy to 0. we know that that's absolutely fundamental, that we also need to think through our dependencies and our substitution towards material use and rare earths. and i think that is one key concern that comes up. but that doesn't mean that we should not pull out of fossil energy. i think environmentalists across the globe are very clear as our analysts and scientists that we have to focus primarily on leaning ourselves off fossil energy and that must be done now. i want to thank o guest, so garrath davis, sandrine, dixon declared, i don't know, o'brien, i'm, i want to thank you to for watching as well. now you can see the program again anytime by visiting our website. oh, dessert oak home and for further discussion, go to will facebook patients, facebook dot com, forward slash ada inside story. and you can also join the conversation on twitter all handle is at ha, inside story for me, amman kon, from the entire team head. i finance.

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