council. dr. wilkinson, it's great to talk to you. thank you very much for finding the time. it's a pleasure, it's lovely to be here in saint petersburg and now every now and then the international community comes up with certain bosworth that per political speeches . and right now it's energy transition, the replacement of fossil fuels with renewables for a trip to generation. how far along are we into this process? there has been many energy transitions. we happened to be in a certain era of energy transmission, which is the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. but they've been previous transitions we could think about the transition from biofuels would perish. we bent forest and then we discovered coal, coal safe, the foreign when we found oil oil safe, the whale. and now we're in an area where we're trying to save the planet. we want to be able to use energy and have better lives, but also to live on a healthy planet and, and the challenges with energy. it's the emissions of carbon dioxide or other

greenhouse gases that we're trying to manage. and there's many different ways of doing that. so transition has begun in transition and it's proceeding along many different routes. some ways how far along our into this process are only in the beginning stage or somewhere, let's say, because many countries are talking now about the current one is ation horizon. i think 75 percent of them have already said certain goals doesn't mean that we are pretty much advanced internet richer if we, i mean, the energy system has been d comp and i think with a cheaper and producing less carbon for more energy for century. but what we're trying to do with accelerates the paste, the bat. scientists say that we need to be below 2 degrees, homing on from pre industrial time. so we try and work out then this is how much carbon which could be used put into the atmosphere. what does that mean for energy

use? and so the, the challenge is to find ways of view, sanitary, walked, emitting life, greenhouse gases, not speaking about acceleration because this whole discussion about climate change generates not only urgency, but also a lot of i would say. and the central anxiety there is a lot of do they talk and the deadlines for saving the planet, you know, just changing how much of rushes warranted or even you know, goods in discussions on climate change. well i, i would encourage old society to avoid politics of fear of the future because i think it brings out the work behaviors and everybody the, the tree phase. if we looked 30 years ago when we were talking about climate change, we would be talking about temperature a price is about to $12.00 degrees centigrade. and we've already managed to move the needle down to possibly 2 degrees or 1.5 degrees centigrade the challenges. we

still have a long way to go, because the population is still growing and people need more energy and with more energy come more emission. so the question is, how do we use more energy but less the mission and we're not there yet. we're still in a way that says we would get to more than 2 degrees morning. but there's lots of different initiatives happening, lots of innovation and government companies, communities, keith, i started to declare these different targets. i think we're in this area of what i would call target some timeline. it's going to be followed by a period of roadmap. and i come from the world energy council, which is the community a route built. you can have the best plan in the world. but actually the best approach has to be felt. a lot of people talking about i was essential, dangers of climate change are flying in personal jobs, whereas millions of hello around there will still have to gather wood to cook their

dinners. i heard you use the term energy justice. how does it factor in into this whole discourse on energy transition? so in a world of $7000000000.00 plus people, the reality is that it nearly a 1000000000 people lack any access to any form of modern energy. they don't have any electricity at all, but 3 and a half 1000000000 people lack access to clean cooking. and if you're to just the cooking, it's women. so if you can't have clean cooking, you you okay for and you have all the air pollution, you have a short life span. so energy justice is about how do we provide quality energy access to everybody everywhere so that they can live better live. i'm how do we do that? i mean, why should we start with carbon? let's say, i mean, the carbon is the most immediate energy source for many of the disadvantaged populations around the world. why should we start with demonizing fossil

fuels, rather than, let's say, asking the most privileged ones to give up on that luxury? well, it's a one size fits all solution. you need all, you need people to be more energy efficient. they've got lots of energy, consuming, lots of energy, you need them to be responsible about how you make them to be responsible. governments can make people be responsible for people, amy government, the most privileged them there. and they're the ones who leave the, the biggest footprint, carbon footprint, they're talking about those issues, but then i'm changing the behaviors. they want the other somebody else to do that. well, i think we can all change out, but we can all adopt better behaviors. i mean, the different states, if you live in a country where you have no energy, then you get a different conversation about what needs to be done. and if you live in a country that has lots of energy and to base this new, single, new,

same starting point, right? if i take africa, one of the cheapest way of getting energy to people who live in the countryside in rural community, is to give them a solar panel. and i'm a mini grid. and that will help them buy some basic access cheaply. but it wouldn't help them with clean cooking and it wouldn't help them with industrialization about like going to need or a centralized power system. so they're either going to use common, well, they going to use gas with some form of carbon reduction on it. so that the challenges to get, move away from this conversation of them all this versus that and think that it's about we and how we fit these solutions together. i want to ask you about the recent electricity collapse in texas, where millions of people were left for 4 days without he been lied and food he and people died because of that, that's an interesting question. whether it's some sort of

a backup system. also based backup system should continue to exist. i wonder if this whole thing changed. the way you think about those issue. tech has been remarkable in increasing the amount of renewable electricity in it system. and when it at experienced an extreme weather event. it's also in texas, texas has its own system. it doesn't want to be integrated within the rest of the united states. that's a historical issue. and the challenge of why so many people were affected, it was, it was poor and vulnerable people who died is because the market, if you just leave it to the market alone, the market goes to have a pay. the highest price, when you got very little electricity, the price goes up very high and people can't afford it. so for the last 10 years, we've been developing what's called the energy trying to enter index, and it measures a form of government and how they managed their energy systems. so we look at energy, secure energy, affordability, and equity,

and environmental sustainability. and we encourage government to learn from each with each other about how they can do better. and texas could look at that. we can take that down to the state level. we can take it to the city level. so we can encourage government and we can encourage citizens to hold government to account about how their energy systems are performing. as far as i understand, one of the factors in what happened in texas and power outage was wrong. whether in demand assumptions, because people simply underestimated how call they could get how widespread they do and demand could become. and this is just a tax problem. we are seeing extreme weather conditions all around the world right now. isn't a risk to rush food be they had with a changing the energy balance while the ground conditions are also changing? san predictably, are there potential risks with too quick over a change?

the way the human being to the benefit of what we weigh against the risk. so the challenge is not just to transition the energy system, but steers in a way where we get clean, affordable, and reliable. so you want resilient. well, obviously we want guarantees, but not nothing gives you guarantees, but that you said before, there were many previous power transitions or energy transitions around them, but they always happens in their own pace. and when it's, when that piece is natural, you know, that gives you some sort of a hedging. i mean, always to be all are walking into the unknown. but if the pace is moderate, then you can make adjustments as you go. you're advocating and many people in the world are advocating in needed very urgent action and that i was supposed increase his risks of possibilities that we still cannot account for. i'm not advocating

a pace of change which is urgent or immediate. i'm not advocating for pay for change, which is bearable to society. i'm saying that we don't have any choice. we're going to have to move cost or if we don't want to. if we continue business as usual pace of change, we will end up in a, a warm well, which is bad for everybody. but we can't say, if we can say 20502060, we want to get to climate utility. then we have to say, how do we do that? and the how, if the real determinant of what's affordable clean and what so she job. so there's no one to move away to the future. that's right for everybody need different options. so come to some african variable to you guys, so it's not going to be it doesn't produce hardly any carbon emission, but it doesn't have enough energy for anybody. so it needs to get to 2050 and be climate neutral, but do it in a way where it can use more gas,

more nuclear and more renewable. and it's not a question of either or the question of and if we want to go further together and we want to go fast and further together, we need more degrees of freedom. the less degrees of climate change. so we need more options. now, i heard you say ones that if you want to talk about anything other than renewables, you are the devil. and that's probably a problem. and i think there are some countries including russia, where, you know, the pace of change is a little bit slower for economic and political reasons as well as cultural ones. but do you think it may become easier for you and others to look at the problem in more or present this problem to politicians, to the world community in more detail without presenting renewables as the option

is the only moral option. because sometimes the, this whole discussion seems to be very much focused on on one source advantage. well, i would agree with you. i think the energy leadership landscape is become more crowded, more fragmented and more polarized. next october in st. petersburg will run for world energy congress, the 25th world energy congress, and it's on energy for humanity. i represent the world's oldest world energy community. this is the community that since 923 have worked on energy for peace, energy for prosperity. and now we work on energy for people in planet. how do we get a more inclusive? how do we get a more affordable, clean and socially just energy transition pathways? we don't, i talk about the race to be around this new winner in a race to say it right. there are races to the road. and we've got to make sure that the way we have this conversation allow more space to talk about renewables

and best friends. we can scale up renewable unless we use more oil and gas, dr. wilkinson. we have to take a very short break right now. we will be back in just a few moments state you me or i join me every thursday on the alex solomon show and i'll be speaking to guess on the world, the politics sport, business and show business. i'll see you then. me look forward to talking to you all that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except when such orders that conflict with the 1st law show your identification. we

should be very careful about artificial intelligence. the point obviously is to great track, rather than fear i would take on various jobs with the artificial intelligence we'll summoning the demon a robot must protect its own existence with me. ah, welcome back to one of the parts with angela wilkinson. secretary in general, i'm feel of the world energy council wilkinson. we are recording this interview in russia, which has benefit tremendously from traditional energy sources from fossil fuels.

and it is sometimes presented in western media as oppositional or even disruptive when it comes to renewables. they think that's true. have you seen an example supplies behavior? i think russia is a major resource holders. that's pretty cool. it's got lots of oil. it's got lots of gas, it's. it has lots of technology around nuclear. it has lots of technology around hydrogen. moving into all these different frontiers of the new energy future. i think it's important to think about what energy future we're aiming for. when we used to talk about energy in the 19th century, we used to talk about supply side with what we were trying to do. we were trying to find how could we find more energy in the well, to give it more people. these days were worried that if we have abundant tendency, we might have not enough plan in. right? so the differences, now we are when energy abundance is changes to compensation. russia like other countries are looking to prepare for a customer centric climate neutral,

abundant energy future that changes the economics of oil and gas. it's not just all about where it provides the opportunity to cause a technology innovation. this is a country that, that put my name space talking space. i can't believe that there isn't a lot of technology innovation going on, and i'm waiting to hear what the next big thing to come out of. rochelle, i think, is not defensive about even way exploring oil and gas, at least for the foreseeable future. in fact, it's actively looking for new fields and building new pipelines, just as other fossil fuel producers. and what's interesting is that the united states, as one of the leaders in renewable, is also pretty dollars in undermining conventional energy projects. don't you think that's an indication that neither side believes that oil and gas, they,

the number you know, the amount of energy, emotional, political energy they're putting into those new projects. isn't that suggestive that they still believe that on to some extent, traditional fossil fuels also have a future? let's talk about the energy system rather than the politics of the energy system. because if i point out the reality have been, we might understand why there's still some development today in the world energy system. 20 percent one. if electrified 157 percent is renewable electrification. so that means that a large part of the energy system is not. and even if you look at all the best road maps, they will tell you that by 2050, we might have got electrification up to half of the energy uses. so there's no doubt. but even though we're trying to get to climate, you're trying to key,

we're still having to produce more energy. so i would like just to think that it's not energy that the problem, it's the emission for the problem. and that's what we're offering. that's what government the big going to be held accountable for. the emission before debility and the equity. know the supply economics. and it also depends on how you calculate . i know that there are some experts who believe that we should take into account not only emissions that are taking place in the geography cohesion, but rather rather the emissions that are going into satisfying our needs. if you consider the consumption level in the developed world, even, even if you know would be the good that they're consuming, is produced. how the world, the way they are so contributing to those emissions on the other side of the globe . other ways to factor all of that in because if it's i think it's easier for

wealthy people to feel good about, you know, driving a hybrid car or an electric car and still would about themselves to good about, you know, protecting mother earth. you know, the batteries when that star was produced, you know, how the world, the way in, in very, very dirty condition. you know, a, you know, the, this is, the general is usually in the detail. i agree with you, but i'm also from the road building community, not the road, not communicate. i'm not sending the target. i'm not, i'm, i represent a community of people who change and manage energy systems across the well. they do that in a way where they're all looking to make it clean, affordable and reliable. so i can look at story from peru, stories from india, from story from different. but let's, let's look at the story from the united kingdom and the united states, because i think that message is not resonating. find out that it's not only about how much we're emitting job graphically. it's also about how much we are consuming

county. so the climate change issue without fundamentally thinking about our own lifestyle, we, oh, i agree, that's why we have a platform that we need to get to the 90 percent solutions, not the 2 percent reduction. and we're not going to be able to do that with only thinking about the supply side that we've got to prepare for this customer centric climate neutral energy future. we're going to find demand solution there. awesome, remarkable stories from around the world. so it's not impossible to do, it's just that we take, we spent so much time talking about technology and investment. we forget that what's really going to make competition work is involving more people in creating solutions that is suitable for that situations in lifestyle. and i said, i'm, i, i get, i go into international forum and i'm very pleased to see that we've got timelines and target. but i'm very aware that no blueprint guarantees a future of society. it's the implementation of the blueprint while you find out

whether it works or not, or how to make it work. so we're road building community and we'll build different roads of different shapes and sizes, but naval more 90 percent of the population to get clean energy. now let's talk about all those different roads and how they're structured because energy has always been a synonymous with our not just electricity power, but political power. and as the energy equation is being received, bound to have some sort of an impact on international politics, on how the various countries relate to one another. have you given any thought? do you think it's going to make a world a safer place on the country? more contentious, i like to say we were founded as a community in an area where there was a concern about energy for peace. if any governments developed for the whole system didn't think about societies or about the effects, the pool,

then we would end up in a very different well. so we don't have in 1923, just after an influenza pandemic. and just before the great depression, talking about energy for humanity, a 100 years later, we're still talking about and you will be talking about it for, i guess another few 100 and moving it forward, right? so. so the question is, yes, but the politics of energy is changing. it's no longer all about oil and gas. what's happening if you're getting a more multi polar politics going on internationally? you're getting a much more centralized conversation around energy and the nature of or comment to involve more people for it's getting messier that create more complicated coordination challenges. and for that, we have to equip society business system government to what to get the better to achieve. one of the big players in the renewable sector is china. it controls much of the production chain, from lining rare earth materials,

all the way to electricity cables. there is there, there is a lot of concern in the developed parts of the world about empowering china. but in a way to bind the if you want to push with the renewable sector, you will have to end up benefiting china. economic which, which of these 2 challenges climate change or an empower china? do you think concerns western worlds more? i don't name. i think it probably varies from country to country, but it's not what concerns me. what concerns me is that we're moving out of an era where energy futures were determined by technology and money and into energy future, where they are going to be determined by societies and demand that's in dr wilkinson. i mean, it's always going to be determined by both. i mean as much as we want to believe in the human spirit. you know,

the history of humanity and jazz is not always the goodwill and the people's intentions. determine, be in the flow of history and power will always remain power both as a resource for, you know, living our lives and as an influence. but when you move on to an era that's defined by the gas to your fossil fuel, into an area that is defined by more abundance and diverse sources of energy, the power, the value is moving closer to the usa. that's a different take. so i'm not saying it's about good, well, and being nice to each other. i'm saying the reality is, the value generation is moving closer to the end use that, that gives the end, choose more thing, a shift in power in energy. now, any solution always creates a problem that's the way i developed. and one of the major logical issues associated with renewables is the, is the problem of storage. you know,

how much the store, how much do share with your neighbors. do you think we have reached the point where we can really have enough trust in one another in our neighbor in, you know, not only internationally but even domestically. we mentioned to texas example. and it's a good example of, you know, not even the lack of trust for him wanting to, you know, to secure everything yourself. how much, how much is the impediment to you and the kind of philosophy that you try to spread? i think i see a lot more country of having conversations the need for regional cooperation, regional cooperation for gas grades, as well as regional cooperation project, trusting with hydro electric games. that's always the challenge of the reality of that. you know, the question is when things go wrong,

who can manage the system in this koby crisis? what we've seen is society want more local control. so we're seeing more community and what we saw is the lack of trust than the failure of previous agreements, even though the most basic level. yes, think we, we live in this, they were low trust. i think we have the trust policy so, but i think if we, if we, if we fail to think about the fact that every trusted only local when we come from the local society, we won't have all the benefits of progress, but have come from being able to trust at a distance. so i think the thought you have to work on more self sufficient. they i'm more cooperation. i don't think it's an either or i think i'm going to ask you the last question. for the most part, we've been talking about the quality of energy the 4th is derived from, but there is also an issue of the quantity energy demand is projected to increase dramatically can be realistically address the issue of climate change without thinking about how much energy we can i think we have to attend the demand side?

like you said, one of the supply side, the system has pieces. we have to think the fact that the ways in which we're using energy is changing and who's using an engine changing. i think we have to stop thinking of renewables versus or gas versus the future. manage is going to be more diverse on the supply side. you said going to be very different as well. the situation slope clear very different. and what we've got to do is to move away from this mentality that we know what people, all that locally clean is good, but it's globally dirty and unfair. and we're gonna have to connect these don't between global and local between those but happen, those that don't have and between clean, affordable and job. what not just means. we've got to move away from this linea and narrow mindset and work and integration in cooperation. and the only way to do that is communities, because governments alone can't do it. the community takes

a whole community to change the entire energy as well and non linear thinking is the hardest. a challenge for humanity in my opinion, but we have to leave it there. thank you very much for talking to us. has been great pleasure. it's been a pleasure to be here and thank you for the conversation. i think it's well and thank you for watching. i hope to see you again next week, as well as the pardon me, the me ah, you know, for the, you know, my back on i would've been like, obviously lucky you lucky. but you're,

so you'll have a lost his bus because i just got any of them. you just got to go. we just have to be on my way. my thought, why don't you put the story now says you know what? it was you're not pull up. i got your math almost. what did i'm already whatever sped up i read me just go to me. i mean, it was, i don't know what can think of when i went up and i really just don't get it until then it's 50 to santo risk, but i wanted this, but i'm like obviously this is what it is on. wheels came on my side unless you go to kind of all my you're just part of the 33 and he thought of the thing i was calling with you and your team, samantha katie. yeah. my thought me just got to go to the the

the, the we just go rallies and choose top pulls and canadians venting the right through the discovery. the remains of more than a 1000 children. a former indigenous residential school from by the catholic church during the songs this weekend, marking is the birthday behind bars as the key witness in the case against the lawyer. and so i'm saying no them that could be fatal to american legal action against wiki leaks found the highly infectious delta strain of the corona virus plunges russia into a new wave of the panoramic. moscow makes code with the status passes 9 to 3.