On 25th June, at a special evening event for London Climate Action Week, I will have the honour of being hosted by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Grantham Research Institute (GRI) on Climate Change and The Environment, to speak about my book, ‘The Edge: How competition for resources is pushing the world, and its climate, to the brink – and what we can do about it’. The event is named after the book’s core proposition that ‘we are at the edge, not the end, of history’.
The Edge explores challenging subjects but reveals a fundamentally optimistic and pragmatic approach to resolving some of the most urgent public and economic policy problems arising from the ‘polycrisis’ of climate change, conflict, cost of living and environmental degradation.
The event will be chaired by the great Lord Stern. After a fireside chat between Desné Masie (Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE) and I, we will open to a discussion with a panel of experts, including Nigel Topping, UK High-Level Climate Champion COP28, Dr Akshat Rathi, Senior Writer Bloomberg Green & Author of ‘Climate Capitalism’ and Sarah Gordon of LSE, Visiting Professor in Practice at GRI.
Free tickets are available here.
The book identifies historical patterns and a geopolitical framework linked to competition for resources that can help to contextualise contemporary news-flow. The first edition was published in the UK in October 2023 and in the United States in December 2023, in the second year of Russia-Ukraine war and immediately prior to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Much of the action centres around the seismic shifts in the geopolitical landscape, in the climate, and in energy markets in 2022, in so many ways a watershed year. It looks back to origins and root causes to identify signposts for the future. And given the news-flow and challenges to world order all around us in 2024, there remains plenty to talk about.
In the third year after it invaded Ukraine, Russia’s oil and gas export volumes and tax revenues are back to early 2022 levels, albeit focussed on markets to the East, such as India and China, at the expense of Europe and the West. Meanwhile, although Europe has achieved a remarkable diversification of gas supply away from Russia (from over 40% in 2021 to as little as 15% by 2024) in favour of the United States, the Middle East, and North Africa (including gas exported from Israel and liquified in Egypt), demand for Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) in Europe has continued to grow – since February 2022, supplies to Belgium tripled and deliveries to Spain doubled - and is still at levels comparable only with China. Meanwhile, Russian oil has avoided sanctions by being refined in India and shipped back to Europe.
The energy security challenge that was laid bare by the Russia-Ukraine invasion – Ukraine having represented Russia’s physical route to market for hitherto essential piped gas to Europe - has itself illustrated the degree to which conflict can be fuelled by competition for energy resources. Ironically, spurred on by resource wars, this also fuelled green subsidy wars between great powers, with the United States and China vying to support their domestic markets and champions, as well as to bolster energy security and to reduce reliance on increasingly unpredictable international actors. A study by the Kiel Institute released last month estimated that China’s subsidies stand at 3 to 9 times the levels of OECD competitors such as the United States and Germany, with a particular focus on electric vehicles. While European markets are at risk of being swamped, the United States is expected to raise tariffs on clean energy imports this week, and on imports of electric vehicles from China from 25% to 100%.
As energy collides with history, climatic as well as geopolitical sparks fly. Everything is peaking. Use of fossil fuels and renewables are both reaching new heights. This week, Reuters reported that renewable energy generation represented a record 30% of global electricity production in 2023. At the same time, new records are being set for atmospheric CO2 concentration, 4.7 parts per million higher than 2023 according to Scripps’ measurements from NOAA’s Mauno Loa Observatory, and attributed to the growth in use of fossil fuels. Global average surface temperatures measured by Europe’s Copernicus observation agency have just posted their 11th consecutive all-time high. Records were being set in the extreme weather of the summers of 2022 and 2023 while I was writing The Edge. Planetary and ecological boundaries, as well as geopolitical ones, continue to be tested.
The speed and scale demanded of the transition away from higher carbon emitting energy from fossil fuels to lower carbon alternatives requires a clean energy revolution. New peaks are also expected in demand and competition for metal and mineral resources to supply the construction of renewable energy systems, energy transmission and storage, digital infrastructure, and electric vehicles. Demand for critical enabling commodities such as copper, which S&P Global Commodity Insights projects to double to around 50 million tonnes a year by 2035, could drive shortages and spur extraction as well as M&A such as BHP’s recent approach for Anglo American. At the same time, the world is living through a technological revolution, characterised by advancements in digital capabilities and the development of artificial intelligence, which could triple the demand for energy (and drive demand for other commodities, including copper) from datacentres by the end of the decade. The International Energy Agency (IEA) believes that it could have doubled already by 2026 compared to 2022. The fourth industrial revolution having just been declared, there is now movement for a fifth, accelerated by the need to tackle the environmental and social implications of the pace of change.
The environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement that accelerated into the 2020s hit its own peaks and boundaries by 2022, embattled by – and facing litigation from - a competing combination of cries of ‘greenwash’ from the left and political backlash from the right. A period of ‘grace race’ has transitioned into a new era of culture and ESG wars. In the confluent worlds of energy and finance, just as some oil majors have been cutting back on decarbonisation targets, others have even been weighing legal action of their own, opening a new dimension in which management confronts shareholders. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the largest public pension plan in the United States, Calpers, is considering voting against the re-election of the CEO of ExxonMobil after the company sued the Dutch shareholder group, Follow This, and a United States registered investment adviser. The case was brought to block a motion that they put forward that called for the company to accelerate the pace of greenhouse gas emission reductions and to include targets and timetables. Exxon claims that the proposal violates SEC rules, which although amended in 2021 to allow more ESG petitions to be voted on, prevent shareholder proposals from being resubmitted each year if they don’t get an increasing level of support over time. These ones didn’t. Votes in favour from shareholders fell from 27.1% in 2022 to 10.5% in 2023. Calpers complains that Exxon continues to progress the lawsuit against shareholders even after they withdrew their proposals.
But needs breed change, and the underlying need is for energy, with less resource intensity and greenhouse gas emissions. The challenges, opportunities and innovations identified in The Edge, and tracked and traced in my Substacks, abound and will continue to do so. The scale and pace required is a function of growing needs twinned with the limited time available to decarbonise before we run out of carbon budget, as there is only so much greenhouse gas that the planet can absorb before the ecological, environmental, and climatic consequences may run away with themselves.
But The Edge does not make a case for more energy, per se, nor for less growth. It recognises the needs of a growing, increasingly urban, modern, mobile and technology enabled global population, and the social, political, and economic imperatives to reduce inequality. It seeks to be realistic about the resources, time, cost, and the societal and environmental consequences involved with the transition away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner and lower carbon energy solutions.
Rather, The Edge seeks to make the case for more growth, using less. In a world that loses or wastes up to three quarters of its energy, half of its food and a third of its water, it is increasingly clear that it is time for a new playbook. The Edge makes the case for a step change in resource efficiency, which could be the largest, fastest, cheapest, and cleanest source of greenhouse gas emission reductions, energy security and, critically, economic competitiveness and sustainable growth.
25th June at the LSE, during London Climate Action Week, will present a timely opportunity to review where we are in this story, and what we can do about it …
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The Edge is also available at Amazon and at bookshops.
To learn more about investing in energy efficiency, visit the website of the SDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust plc, or SDCL Group.
Mr. Maxwell -- EC President Ursula von der Yelen has officially requested that I apply for funding, referencing my US Patent 5,146,395 / A POWER SUPPLY INCLUDING TWO TANK CIRCUITS:
--- through the EC Horizon Europe Program.
EC / EIC Accelerator Programme Manager, Professor Antonio Marco Pantaleo / Imperial College London, is helping me with the application through the Open Proposal portal for "Break-Through /Disruptive Technology.
I am sending you this information -- because the POD MOD, or "P"ower "O"n "D"emand "MOD"ule: ---- is a total paradigm shift in electric power production.
It is based on US patented Nikola Tesla based electrical circuitry / is totally solid-state / small / lightweight / modular / inexpensive to produce / and has "selectable" VDC or VAC electric output levels of up to and including 480 V / 480 A continuous.
As such - It can be installed either:
a.) "at" any existing or new "stationary" location, i.e., any home; apartment; commercial or industrial-site - world-wide -- covering all major AC power systems in use, and;
b.) "in" any existing or new "movable" vehicle as a retrofitted, repowering power source - replacing either the battery or internal combustion engine(s) with either directly connected AC power, or Ac powered motor(s) as required -- for any vehicle - on land / sea / or in the air - including hi-bypass jet powered private or commercial aircraft.
Because it requires no "fuel" of any kind or type at any time -- it's use replaces the polluting power source - while keeping the "site" viable: eliminating the need for any more "fossil-fuel".
It's pure economics at it's best -- because it helps the consumer's economic bottom line - not the supplier's.
It has two unique features:
1.) it's a "stand-alone" unit - in that it has it's own "start-up" power source - which eliminates external connection to any power source of any kind or type - at any time.
2.) once started from it's on-board power source - it can continuously "electronically produce / "over-unity" electrical power output to it's load -- until it is shut off - where it can be restarted at any time.
It will be interesting to see just how fast it will impact the economic and Climate Change situation you portray in your book -- because it is the only technology known today that can accomplish what it can.
The changes will be controlled by the number of units manufactured and installed - and has an expected lifespan of over 30 years.
Yours,
Scott McKie / The POD MOD Project