Villians and Heroes: Michael Liebreich’s Dichotomies

By Martyn Roetter

The well-known analyst of the energy transition Michael Liebreich, author of the Liebreich ladder, was the guest on a recent unusual and remarkably informative and perceptive podcast discussing five causes for pessimism and five for optimism about the prospects for success in making the transition to a Net Zero energy economy—and ultimately to Net Negative. The goal is to stop and then reverse the impact of our extensive uses of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and drastically reduce the emissions their combustion releases into the atmosphere. These emissions  are exacerbating climate warning and hence the frequency and intensity of destructive climate events, increasing the risk that major population areas around the globe will become uninhabitable, not only in coastal but also in inland areas.

In the podcast Liebreich identifies five themes (or “supervillains”) on the pessimistic and five (or “superheroes”) on the optimistic side of the ledger. Here is one set of descriptions or interpretations of the characteristics of these “devils” and “angels.” Readers and listeners may well perceive other, possibly more important aspects, which is a tribute to the stimulation and clarification of thinking this podcast contributes to where we stand in 2024, to contrast to the pusillanimity in some quarters and the persistent attempts by fossil fuel interests to misinform and misdirect us. 

Reasons for Pessimism

1. Costs especially initial capital costs in an era of high interest rates.
2. New, formidable demands on the electric grid infrastructure to ensure reliability and resiliency of supply as the major sources of electricity become more weather-dependent, and electricity must meet a growing and eventually major proportion of our needs for energy.
3. Demand for new minerals, notably for batteries.
4. Politics or the political will to pursue policies that support the energy transition over a decades-long process.
5. The ability and determination of very powerful incumbents (the fossil fuel industry) to exploit predatory delaying strategies, opportunities for corruption, and regulatory capture to frustrate the most effective ways to make the energy transition away from  fossil fuels while perpetuating their use.

Reasons for Optimism

1. Growth of new markets for products as they achieve vast improvements in their costs (lower) and performance (higher), comparable to progress in  solar and wind sources of energy over the past 15 years, particularly where batteries are concerned.
2. Systems solutions which combine multiple approaches to enhance our ability to manage both the supply and demand for energy, to ensure reliability and resilience of our access to energy when and where we need it.
3. Competition in finding solutions (alternative energy sources to fossil fuels) for hard-to-abate energy-intensive applications such as industrial processes.  
4. Decreasing demands  for energy—for example as or if the use of fossil fuels declines, not only will the emissions generated by their customers decrease, but so will the substantial emissions that operations of the fossil fuels industry itself emit in the extraction and transport of these fuels.
5. Electricity is significantly more energy efficient overall (end-to-end supply chain) than are fossil fuels.

Listen to the podcast on the web: https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-energy-transitions-5-supervillains?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

On Apple Podcasts: https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-energy-transitions-5-supervillains?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Thank you, Michael!