Latest / The Clean Energy Show / The Plan to Phaseout Fossil Fuels; Hospital Emissions

Transcript

The Plan to Phaseout Fossil Fuels; Hospital Emissions · The Clean Energy Show

• 1:00:03
  Hello and welcome to episode 310 of the
• 1:00:06
  Clean Energy Show. I'm Brian Stockton.
• 1:00:08
  I'm James Swittingham.
• 1:00:10
  This week, Gorilla Solar is taking off in
• 1:00:12
  the Philippines.
• 1:00:14
  Congratulations to all the
• 1:00:15
  gorillas in the Philippines, now powering
• 1:00:17
  their treehouses with solar power.
• 1:00:20
  Wait, I'm being told that's the wrong
• 1:00:22
  spelling of gorilla. Wait,
• 1:00:25
  I'm also being told that I'm an
• 1:00:27
  idiot. The world's largest battery maker
• 1:00:29
  is showing that new sodium
• 1:00:31
  ion batteries could power the
• 1:00:32
  planet's electricity grids cheaper than
• 1:00:35
  anyone imagined until
• 1:00:36
  recently. Now, if we can get sodium
• 1:00:39
  into batteries and out of my diet, I
• 1:00:41
  might live long enough to reap the
• 1:00:43
  benefits of the new world.
• 1:00:44
  A doctor in Australia is fighting the
• 1:00:46
  waste and carbon footprint
• 1:00:48
  of hospitals. It turns out
• 1:00:50
  nitrous oxide, also known as laughing
• 1:00:52
  gas, is a potent greenhouse
• 1:00:54
  gas. I guess we have to cancel
• 1:00:56
  our plans to do a bonus episode while
• 1:00:59
  huffing laughing gas. The
• 1:01:01
  good news is that helium is not
• 1:01:03
  a greenhouse gas, so we can do an episode
• 1:01:05
  on helium. All that,
• 1:01:07
  your letters, the lightning
• 1:01:08
  round, and more on this edition of the
• 1:01:10
  Clean Energy Show. Okay, it's
• 1:01:14
  the first show of the month,
• 1:01:14
  and we give shout outs to our Patreon
• 1:01:16
  members who make this podcast possible.
• 1:01:19
  Thank you everyone for
• 1:01:20
  financially supporting us. You can do it
• 1:01:23
  for as little as zero at
• 1:01:24
  patreon.com slash clean energy
• 1:01:26
  pod. You don't have to pay money, but it
• 1:01:28
  helps us if you do. The high
• 1:01:31
  rollers are going to get them
• 1:01:32
  out of the way. First, the Clean Club
• 1:01:33
  executive, Green Bastard, Brent Rowley,
• 1:01:35
  Tiernan, and the Clean
• 1:01:36
  Club Plus members, Bob Armstrong, John
• 1:01:39
  Hayes, Wes S. and Glenn
• 1:01:41
  Wright. Thank you so much for your
• 1:01:42
  generosity, and we'll give more shout
• 1:01:44
  outs at the end of the show. All right,
• 1:01:46
  James, it is time to
• 1:01:48
  play Jeopardy. Back to you, Greg.
• 1:01:51
  Business history, 800. The
• 1:01:54
  end of an EV tax credit in 2025,
• 1:01:57
  hurt sales for Tesla and other makers
• 1:01:58
  like this one about to introduce the R2.
• 1:02:01
  Alice, what is Rivian? Right. Oh, he got
• 1:02:04
  it. Yeah. I normally put
• 1:02:07
  these on the show because they
• 1:02:08
  often get them wrong. They're very
• 1:02:09
  smarter. This one included a
• 1:02:10
  visual clue, which was a picture
• 1:02:13
  of the Rivian. So that was easy for me.
• 1:02:17
  They're listening to this
• 1:02:17
  podcast, as we suggested all
• 1:02:19
  Jeopardy contestants do, in case they get
• 1:02:21
  questions like this as part of your
• 1:02:23
  homework is to listen
• 1:02:24
  to our podcast. You know what? I think
• 1:02:25
  that's an excellent idea.
• 1:02:27
  All right. So we have a bonus
• 1:02:29
  question from the same episode of
• 1:02:31
  Jeopardy. So play that first one. Let's
• 1:02:35
  do map 16. The answer
• 1:02:37
  there. Another Daily Double. This is the
• 1:02:42
  last one in the game, Greg.
• 1:02:44
  How much do you want to wager?
• 1:02:45
  Let's do 6,000. 6,000 this time will take
• 1:02:48
  you to 22,400, if
• 1:02:50
  you're right, on the map.
• 1:02:52
  The name of this Alberta city refers to
• 1:02:54
  an actual accessory called a Samus. The
• 1:02:57
  Samus, James, do you
• 1:02:59
  know what the Samus is? No, Brian. I
• 1:03:02
  don't know what the Samus is.
• 1:03:04
  Yeah. And this has nothing to
• 1:03:05
  do with clean energy, but this is about
• 1:03:07
  sitting near us. So I did
• 1:03:09
  not get this either. So I'm
• 1:03:11
  always embarrassed when I don't get the
• 1:03:12
  Canadian clues, especially
• 1:03:13
  the ones that are near us.
• 1:03:17
  So when you're ready, go ahead and play
• 1:03:18
  the answer. What's Moosejaw? No.
• 1:03:23
  What's the right city here? Oh, I put the
• 1:03:25
  buzzer in. I don't think
• 1:03:27
  there's enough buzzers on
• 1:03:28
  Jeopardy. So I put that in. No, no. But
• 1:03:31
  they guessed Moosejaw,
• 1:03:32
  which is the city right near us,
• 1:03:59
  which we love to talk about. What was the question again? What is a Samus? Samus.
• 1:04:01
  Well, it's not a traveling through Medicine Hat on my way
• 1:04:03
  to the mountains or my relatives.
• 1:04:05
  You know what? We stopped there last
• 1:04:07
  time. They have an amazing ceramics
• 1:04:09
  museum there. So highly
• 1:04:10
  recommended to visit the ceramics museum
• 1:04:12
  in Medicine Hat.
• 1:04:14
  Ceramics? Yeah. Okay. I'm not
• 1:04:18
  following you. It's a museum of pottery?
• 1:04:22
  Yeah, pottery ceramics.
• 1:04:23
  Medicine Hat is known for its
• 1:04:24
  pottery. They must have good clay
• 1:04:26
  deposits there or something, but they
• 1:04:27
  have a long history of
• 1:04:28
  ceramics in Medicine Hat and they have an
• 1:04:30
  amazing museum. Okay. Well,
• 1:04:32
  I had dinner with my son's
• 1:04:34
  friends. They asked me, it was very
• 1:04:37
  unusual. Have you ever had
• 1:04:38
  your kids say, I want you to have
• 1:04:40
  dinner with my friends, you know, adult
• 1:04:43
  children. It was a very
• 1:04:44
  unusual request and I didn't think
• 1:04:46
  twice about it. Of course I was going to
• 1:04:48
  do that. And his friend is an
• 1:04:50
  engineer who went to school,
• 1:04:52
  graduated before my son and he's living
• 1:04:55
  in our city now with his
• 1:04:56
  girlfriend who's in pre-med
• 1:04:59
  and they are looking at a future here in
• 1:05:01
  our city. They like our
• 1:05:02
  city. They're from a small town.
• 1:05:04
  They're from Swan River. I won't mention
• 1:05:06
  the person's name because
• 1:05:07
  I don't want to out him,
• 1:05:08
  but they're from Swan River, Manitoba,
• 1:05:09
  which is a small 4,000
• 1:05:11
  person town and it's kind of a hub
• 1:05:14
  in the area. So there's a lot of car
• 1:05:16
  dealerships and the car dealerships
• 1:05:18
  apparently sell cars for
• 1:05:19
  like 9,000 more than they do in the big
• 1:05:21
  city down south. So, but
• 1:05:24
  people just go for it. They don't
• 1:05:25
  question it and they're very right wing
• 1:05:29
  and traditional and
• 1:05:30
  not pro EV in any manner.
• 1:05:33
  This guy, he went and got himself a
• 1:05:36
  Lexus, brand new Lexus
• 1:05:38
  for like 1% financing,
• 1:05:40
  less than 1% financing from the city. His
• 1:05:43
  dad cosigned the loan and
• 1:05:44
  you know, so he set up with
• 1:05:46
  a car. I'm sure my son would do the exact
• 1:05:49
  same thing, but this
• 1:05:49
  guy, he loves his car
• 1:05:52
  and he wants to know where in the city to
• 1:05:53
  live. Cause I grew up
• 1:05:55
  here. I have lots of
• 1:05:56
  knowledge about our city. So I know about
• 1:05:58
  different neighborhoods, but
• 1:05:59
  of course I spent most of the
• 1:06:01
  dinner getting them up to speed on
• 1:06:04
  pollution and saying,
• 1:06:06
  frankly, if I had the choice,
• 1:06:09
  I wouldn't live in the city period
• 1:06:10
  because I don't know how far the
• 1:06:12
  pollution goes. And it's,
• 1:06:14
  my monitoring is showing disturbing
• 1:06:16
  things every night. Now
• 1:06:17
  it's bad. Now there's,
• 1:06:20
  there's temperature inversions at night,
• 1:06:21
  but it wasn't this bad last
• 1:06:22
  summer. It wasn't happening
• 1:06:23
  like this last summer. Every night
• 1:06:25
  there's, if it's no wind or very light
• 1:06:27
  wind, there's horrible
• 1:06:29
  things. I don't know. The steel mill I
• 1:06:31
  think is putting out
• 1:06:32
  pollution more than they used to.
• 1:06:35
  That's my hunch, but I can't prove that I
• 1:06:38
  can't do anything about
• 1:06:39
  it. I move far, far away,
• 1:06:41
  but that seems to be what's going on.
• 1:06:44
  Like last night, my partner
• 1:06:46
  came in the door and said,
• 1:06:47
  it's horrible out there. It smells like a
• 1:06:48
  paint can, but the wind
• 1:06:50
  was not from the refinery.
• 1:06:51
  It was from the north. It was from a year
• 1:06:53
  downwind from the steel mill, the
• 1:06:56
  electric arc steel mill.
• 1:06:58
  And I, of course I've searched up all the
• 1:07:00
  different things that
• 1:07:01
  can come out of these
• 1:07:02
  two things. And I've shown pictures on
• 1:07:05
  our Patreon page of what
• 1:07:06
  is on my car every morning.
• 1:07:08
  And I was setting up my e-bike with a new
• 1:07:11
  bike computer that I got
• 1:07:13
  that has GPS on it and lots
• 1:07:16
  of different functions. You don't need a
• 1:07:17
  sensor. It just works with
• 1:07:19
  GPS and gives you your elevation
• 1:07:21
  gain, your speed and all that. So it's
• 1:07:23
  very simple and easy to use. I was
• 1:07:24
  setting up and I went away
• 1:07:25
  for a couple of hours. I came back and
• 1:07:27
  there was soot on it in the
• 1:07:28
  middle of the day, like little
• 1:07:30
  specks of gray on it. And I'm thinking,
• 1:07:34
  you know, what's in my
• 1:07:36
  garden? Should I buy lead tests?
• 1:07:39
  And how far does this go? How far does
• 1:07:40
  this go? Cause it's, it's
• 1:07:41
  happening all the time now.
• 1:07:43
  And I really don't know what to do about
• 1:07:45
  it, but I feel pretty
• 1:07:46
  helpless. And I expressed that day.
• 1:07:47
  And I also expressed that the refinery
• 1:07:49
  has been known to ruin car
• 1:07:51
  paint. They have fusions of
• 1:07:53
  emissions. That was a long time ago. You
• 1:07:55
  were, you were more
• 1:07:56
  knowledgeable about that than I,
• 1:07:57
  because you said cars were driving around
• 1:07:59
  cause they didn't take
• 1:08:00
  the insurance. So they had
• 1:08:01
  bad paint for years and years. It was
• 1:08:03
  about 30 years ago, there was some
• 1:08:04
  emissions. So everybody
• 1:08:05
  kind of in your neighborhood, a bunch of
• 1:08:07
  the paint started peeling
• 1:08:08
  off cars and everybody got
• 1:08:10
  a settlement, like a check for a thousand
• 1:08:12
  or $2,000 to cover a new
• 1:08:14
  paint job. But not everybody
• 1:08:17
  did it. They just took the money and then
• 1:08:18
  they drove around.
• 1:08:19
  There was tons of cities,
• 1:08:20
  tons of cars that are city that had
• 1:08:22
  peeling paint. Yeah. Well, that's
• 1:08:25
  somebody, I was at a book
• 1:08:26
  launch a couple of years ago, almost now
• 1:08:28
  there, they refinery
• 1:08:30
  workers said that they lived in
• 1:08:32
  uplands and the peel, sorry, the paint
• 1:08:34
  was peeling off their sheds
• 1:08:35
  or something. I can't quite
• 1:08:36
  remember. So it was quite a, quite an
• 1:08:38
  event. And that got his
• 1:08:40
  attention. He loves his car.
• 1:08:43
  He's one of these people who really loves
• 1:08:44
  his car and takes care of
• 1:08:46
  it. And it's all about his car,
• 1:08:48
  which is fine. And he thinks he'll get an
• 1:08:49
  electric car one day. And
• 1:08:50
  he listens to our podcast
• 1:08:51
  sometimes. So shout out to you. You know
• 1:08:53
  who you are and your girlfriend and
• 1:08:56
  thanks for dinner. He
• 1:08:57
  also paid for the check, which is
• 1:08:59
  important when you're a podcast. It's
• 1:09:00
  very nice of them. Thank you.
• 1:09:04
  Didn't have to do that though. Renewables
• 1:09:06
  have got big sort of bit of
• 1:09:09
  momentum last week because 57
• 1:09:11
  countries, we haven't talked about this
• 1:09:13
  yet, except for when it was
• 1:09:14
  announced on the, like the
• 1:09:16
  annual COP, the meeting of the countries
• 1:09:20
  to discuss climate
• 1:09:21
  change, which happens every
• 1:09:23
  late November, early December. And they
• 1:09:26
  were so frustrated because
• 1:09:26
  they couldn't utter the word
• 1:09:27
  fossil fuels last time. They weren't
• 1:09:29
  allowed to because the petro
• 1:09:30
  states, you know, foreboded.
• 1:09:32
  Yeah. So they came up with a new
• 1:09:34
  conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, that
• 1:09:37
  just took place last
• 1:09:38
  week. 57 countries showed up. They're
• 1:09:40
  largely from the global
• 1:09:41
  South Europe and Canada as well.
• 1:09:43
  Although I don't know how Canada can do
• 1:09:47
  this. So just discussing how
• 1:09:49
  we can phase out fossil fuels
• 1:09:50
  at all. There's no agreements like COP.
• 1:09:52
  It's just like, you know,
• 1:09:54
  let's get the other and talk.
• 1:09:55
  At the last COP in Brazil, several
• 1:09:57
  countries blocked even the
• 1:09:59
  mention of fossil fuels from
• 1:10:01
  the main agreement. Somewhat out of
• 1:10:03
  frustration, Colombia and the Netherlands
• 1:10:06
  announced they would
• 1:10:07
  move ahead with the transition
• 1:10:08
  regardless. Those keen to be part of the
• 1:10:11
  new era joined them in
• 1:10:13
  Santa Marta, a city on the northern edge
• 1:10:15
  of Colombia next to the Caribbean Sea.
• 1:10:18
  So yeah, it was refreshing not to be
• 1:10:20
  combative with petrol states like us,
• 1:10:23
  like Canada and certainly
• 1:10:24
  the United States who wasn't there, by
• 1:10:26
  the way. They just wanted
• 1:10:27
  to figure out how to get off
• 1:10:28
  fossil fuels. France is the only country
• 1:10:30
  to announce a total phase
• 1:10:31
  out. They did that last week
• 1:10:33
  and they set 2050 as their goal. But
• 1:10:35
  France is the only country
• 1:10:36
  so far to actually say we're
• 1:10:38
  phasing out. China is also against this,
• 1:10:40
  by the way. One of the
• 1:10:41
  leaders in renewables is not
• 1:10:43
  saying that they're going to cut out
• 1:10:45
  fossil fuels, which is too bad because
• 1:10:47
  they perfectly well have
• 1:10:48
  the ability to do so. And all the
• 1:10:51
  countries, by the way, Brian, were
• 1:10:53
  democracies. So there's kind
• 1:10:54
  of a split now between democracies and
• 1:10:57
  petrol states and
• 1:10:58
  authoritarian states that want to,
• 1:11:01
  you know, the politicians have been got
• 1:11:03
  to by fossil fuels in
• 1:11:05
  those areas and it's very
• 1:11:06
  difficult to phase them out. But of
• 1:11:09
  course, as everything we
• 1:11:10
  talk about on the show,
• 1:11:13
  the momentum is there. It's already being
• 1:11:14
  phased out. We just need,
• 1:11:16
  you know, little nudges here
• 1:11:17
  and there basically at this time. The
• 1:11:19
  transition is happening
• 1:11:20
  regardless, but meetings like this
• 1:11:23
  can help move it forward. All right. So
• 1:11:26
  from Bloomberg, a doctor
• 1:11:27
  in Australia is trying to
• 1:11:28
  stem the tide of waste in the healthcare
• 1:11:31
  industry. Now, anytime you've been to the
• 1:11:34
  Dr. James, you've probably noticed how
• 1:11:36
  they're always kind of
• 1:11:37
  peeling something out of a piece
• 1:11:39
  of plastic, unwrapping it, you know,
• 1:11:41
  using it on you and the
• 1:11:43
  whole thing gets thrown away.
• 1:11:44
  I just had a scoped on my throat and by
• 1:11:48
  the way, highly recommend
• 1:11:50
  it. I don't want to diverge too
• 1:11:53
  much here, but I was probably going to
• 1:11:54
  mention this anyway in the intro. Good
• 1:11:57
  drugs don't remember
• 1:11:59
  a thing. And my dad died of esophagus
• 1:12:03
  cancer. So I had acid reflux. It's been
• 1:12:07
  treated for 20 years,
• 1:12:09
  but they just, before they do this
• 1:12:10
  operation on me this summer,
• 1:12:11
  they wanted to have a lucky Lou
• 1:12:13
  and my esophagus got a clean bill of
• 1:12:15
  health, which was a relief.
• 1:12:16
  Cause my dad died, I think about
• 1:12:19
  seven years older than I am currently. So
• 1:12:21
  who knows what could have
• 1:12:23
  happened? He was a smoker
• 1:12:24
  for part of his life and that contributes
• 1:12:25
  as well to such things. But
• 1:12:27
  they also found polyps in my
• 1:12:29
  stomach. One of them could have been
• 1:12:31
  pre-cancerous. So they snipped that off
• 1:12:32
  to have a look. We haven't
• 1:12:33
  got the results back. It's a slow growing
• 1:12:36
  thing. And it's part of,
• 1:12:38
  actually they come up because
• 1:12:39
  you do take this anti-reflux medication
• 1:12:42
  for long-term. You can have
• 1:12:43
  little polyps in your stomach,
• 1:12:45
  but usually they're benign. So that was
• 1:12:46
  just a precautionary thing. And you know,
• 1:12:49
  the scope up the other end, which I've
• 1:12:50
  had three times, a lot more involved. I
• 1:12:53
  don't mind the scope
• 1:12:53
  itself because they give you drugs for
• 1:12:55
  that, but it's the preparation of
• 1:12:57
  diarrhea and then having
• 1:12:59
  to clean out yourself. That's not
• 1:13:00
  pleasant. But to scope down this end, I
• 1:13:03
  was worried about it for
• 1:13:04
  a long time. Really good. And of course,
• 1:13:07
  highly recommended. We
• 1:13:09
  don't know if they threw that
• 1:13:10
  scope away after they stuffed it down.
• 1:13:11
  Oh, they did not throw the
• 1:13:13
  scope away. They sterilized it.
• 1:13:14
  But I had lots of plastic. I remember
• 1:13:17
  thinking about this because
• 1:13:18
  they said, "Put your clothes."
• 1:13:21
  Well, they said, "Take off your pants." I
• 1:13:22
  don't know why I had
• 1:13:22
  to take off my pants.
• 1:13:26
  I'm getting the scope on this end. And it
• 1:13:28
  wasn't in the apartment
• 1:13:29
  where they did both ends,
• 1:13:30
  but they said, "Take off your pants and
• 1:13:32
  put on a gown." So I did.
• 1:13:35
  And then they said, "Well,
• 1:13:35
  put your pants and everything in your
• 1:13:37
  jacket into this giant
• 1:13:39
  bag," which was plastic bag.
• 1:13:42
  Not just a bag, but it would have been a
• 1:13:44
  huge garbage bag that you
• 1:13:45
  would use in your yard or
• 1:13:47
  something. So I noted right there that
• 1:13:50
  that was a waste. And then there was
• 1:13:51
  other things as well.
• 1:13:52
  Yeah. I've used those before at the
• 1:13:53
  hospital and for sure they throw those
• 1:13:55
  things out. Often the
• 1:13:56
  gowns are single use, depends on where
• 1:13:59
  you are. But all kinds of
• 1:14:02
  things in health and medicine
• 1:14:04
  are single use. Now, here was the
• 1:14:06
  shocking thing. I did not realize
• 1:14:08
  greenhouse gases come
• 1:14:10
  from things like anesthesia. So when
• 1:14:13
  there's an inhaled gas like nitrous
• 1:14:16
  oxide, which is laughing
• 1:14:17
  gas, you inhale it and then you exhale
• 1:14:20
  it. And then it's a very potent
• 1:14:22
  greenhouse gas. I had no
• 1:14:24
  idea. It is potentially thousands of
• 1:14:26
  times higher as a greenhouse gas than
• 1:14:32
  CO2, thousands of times
• 1:14:33
  higher. Now, it's hopefully a small
• 1:14:35
  amount, but nevertheless, various
• 1:14:38
  anesthesias are a bad
• 1:14:41
  greenhouse gas. And I'm going to be
• 1:14:42
  getting some this summer. Yeah. So
• 1:14:44
  anyway, there's some stats
• 1:14:46
  here in the article in Australia.
• 1:14:48
  Hospitals are responsible for an
• 1:14:49
  estimated 7% of national
• 1:14:52
  emissions. And in US, healthcare is about
• 1:14:55
  8.5%. Globally, if the
• 1:14:59
  healthcare sector were a country,
• 1:15:01
  it would be the fifth largest emitter,
• 1:15:04
  well above Japan and
• 1:15:05
  Canada. These are quite shocking
• 1:15:09
  numbers. I will point out that my good
• 1:15:11
  drugs were not anesthesia though, for
• 1:15:13
  this procedure. They
• 1:15:14
  put it in an I.T. And I don't think those
• 1:15:17
  admitted, although I was
• 1:15:18
  somewhat gassy afterwards. I don't
• 1:15:20
  know if that counts. But I was sad to
• 1:15:22
  hear that because, you know, I love
• 1:15:24
  getting nitrous oxide,
• 1:15:25
  I'd say at the dentist. It's a nice, nice
• 1:15:27
  little, you feel guilty
• 1:15:29
  about it. You can't feel good
• 1:15:30
  about your nitrous oxide. Anyway, so
• 1:15:32
  there's a doctor, Forbes
• 1:15:33
  McGaine is his name and he's at
• 1:15:35
  Melbourne, Australia's. That's not his
• 1:15:38
  name. Forbes McGaine.
• 1:15:39
  Forbes McGaine, that's his name.
• 1:15:41
  It sounds like a cartoon character. I
• 1:15:43
  mean, it's like a three
• 1:15:46
  strip cartoon in the paper.
• 1:15:48
  Exactly. So it's Footscray Hospital in
• 1:15:52
  Melbourne, Australia. And so this doctor,
• 1:15:56
  he's become the associate dean of
• 1:15:58
  healthcare sustainability at the
• 1:16:00
  University of Melbourne
• 1:16:01
  and is trying to implement as many
• 1:16:03
  techniques as possible to help reduce
• 1:16:06
  their carbon footprint.
• 1:16:07
  So at his hospital, they have
• 1:16:09
  decontamination rooms and staff in navy
• 1:16:12
  scrubs and hair covers,
• 1:16:13
  rinse trays, reassemble surgical kits and
• 1:16:16
  load bundles of linen
• 1:16:18
  into a wall of sterilizing
• 1:16:19
  machine. Green and yellow plastic bowls
• 1:16:22
  are stacked on a
• 1:16:23
  trolley waiting to be washed,
• 1:16:25
  packaged and put back into circulation. A
• 1:16:28
  lot of hospitals would
• 1:16:30
  not have this at all,
• 1:16:31
  says Forbes McGaine, nodding toward the
• 1:16:34
  reusable bundles. It would
• 1:16:35
  all just be chucked away.
• 1:16:37
  So they're going to switch. We were going
• 1:16:39
  to switch to
• 1:16:40
  disposables because everyone said
• 1:16:42
  it would save us money, he says. But in
• 1:16:44
  reality, it doesn't. That's
• 1:16:45
  what I find disturbing. These
• 1:16:47
  assumptions get made without any
• 1:16:48
  scientific rationale. So to
• 1:16:51
  take just one example, his
• 1:16:52
  team's time in motion study found that
• 1:16:54
  even after paying staff to wash and
• 1:16:56
  sterilize equipment,
• 1:16:58
  single use products are still more
• 1:17:00
  expensive. Really? But I think people,
• 1:17:03
  yeah, just make that
• 1:17:03
  assumption that this is a cheaper way to
• 1:17:05
  go. So, you know, this is a
• 1:17:07
  massive, massive market. So
• 1:17:09
  this is going to be difficult to disrupt
• 1:17:12
  or interrupt. The global
• 1:17:14
  medical plastics industry
• 1:17:16
  alone is on track to surpass 87 billion
• 1:17:20
  by 2030. And for
• 1:17:22
  decades, manufacturers equated
• 1:17:24
  disposability with safety, a narrative
• 1:17:27
  that built a global
• 1:17:29
  supply chain on fossil fuels
• 1:17:31
  and throw away products. It says here
• 1:17:34
  during the height of the pandemic,
• 1:17:36
  McGaine's hospital threw away more than a
• 1:17:38
  million gowns in a single
• 1:17:40
  year. And by November 2021,
• 1:17:43
  COVID-19 vaccinations had generated an
• 1:17:46
  estimated 144,000 metric tons of syringe
• 1:17:50
  and needle waste globally while test kits
• 1:17:53
  were responsible for
• 1:17:54
  731,000 liters of chemical waste,
• 1:17:58
  according to the World Health
• 1:18:00
  Organization. So this all
• 1:18:02
  started after World War II,
• 1:18:04
  when plastics got cheaper and the trend
• 1:18:07
  hardened in the 1980s
• 1:18:08
  amid HIV fears and aggressive
• 1:18:11
  manufacturer marketing that sold
• 1:18:13
  throwaway items as safer.
• 1:18:17
  JS Right. Well, we always talked about
• 1:18:19
  the pandemic as we started
• 1:18:20
  this podcast in the pandemic
• 1:18:22
  about how emissions went down. But who
• 1:18:25
  knew that we weren't
• 1:18:27
  thinking about that other end of it,
• 1:18:28
  the mass vaccinations would actually
• 1:18:31
  cause emissions because of the plastics.
• 1:18:33
  JS Yeah, for sure. Now there's another
• 1:18:35
  footnote here. One of the most
• 1:18:37
  frustrating setbacks for
• 1:18:39
  Forbes McGaine was when he lobbied for
• 1:18:41
  the new hospital to be
• 1:18:42
  built without gas heating. And
• 1:18:44
  the idea had support from hospital
• 1:18:46
  administrators but was ultimately
• 1:18:48
  rejected. Large contractors
• 1:18:50
  and service providers are often biased
• 1:18:52
  toward longstanding gas
• 1:18:54
  infrastructure, making all
• 1:18:56
  electric builds harder to push through.
• 1:18:58
  So that was a setback. But
• 1:19:00
  there is a new hospital opening
• 1:19:02
  in the area in early 2026.
• 1:19:05
  And it will be all electric.
• 1:19:08
  JS Well, that's good to hear. Yeah, I
• 1:19:09
  can't imagine hospitals
• 1:19:11
  easily taking a stand on this,
• 1:19:14
  especially for some reason, I think of
• 1:19:16
  the American hospitals, which
• 1:19:17
  are private for some reason.
• 1:19:19
  JS Yeah.
• 1:19:19
  JS It is a money saving
• 1:19:20
  thing. Maybe we could argue that.
• 1:19:23
  JS Yeah, clean energy almost always will
• 1:19:26
  save you money. So that's the way to go.
• 1:19:27
  JS Well, that's an interesting story. And
• 1:19:28
  I had no idea about it. I
• 1:19:29
  wanted to also interject here
• 1:19:31
  because I bought this drone a while ago,
• 1:19:35
  about 2017 or something.
• 1:19:38
  And it had a single battery
• 1:19:39
  from a department store, but it has a GPS
• 1:19:41
  because my low point in
• 1:19:43
  fatherhood was when I got a kid's
• 1:19:46
  drone from Costco, flew it myself, lost
• 1:19:49
  contact with it in the
• 1:19:50
  wintertime, and it flew over a
• 1:19:52
  school and landed on the school roof. And
• 1:19:54
  that was that. There was not
• 1:19:54
  a damn thing I could do about
• 1:19:55
  it. And I felt bad. So I went and bought
• 1:19:58
  a GPS drone where
• 1:19:59
  that couldn't happen to,
• 1:20:01
  because if it loses a signal, it comes
• 1:20:02
  back to base. Okay,
• 1:20:03
  that's part of the story. But
• 1:20:05
  it hasn't had a working battery in a long
• 1:20:07
  time. This is the battery for
• 1:20:09
  it. Okay, it's just a small,
• 1:20:11
  almost like a pack of gum or something,
• 1:20:13
  right? This isn't like a
• 1:20:15
  DGI drone. This is just a
• 1:20:17
  department store kind of drone that's
• 1:20:19
  about $100 Canadian at the
• 1:20:20
  time. And I finally got a new
• 1:20:22
  battery for it because the thing's been
• 1:20:24
  hanging on the wall. And I
• 1:20:25
  thought, well, you know, it's
• 1:20:27
  been hard to get a battery for it. Well,
• 1:20:29
  I got one. And now the new
• 1:20:30
  batteries after these years
• 1:20:32
  are basically 50% more energy in them in
• 1:20:37
  the same space. So that
• 1:20:38
  speaks to energy density that we
• 1:20:40
  always talk about in the show for cars
• 1:20:42
  and storage, how that's
• 1:20:43
  improving. Well, even for my little
• 1:20:45
  drone, same space, same weight, it is 50%
• 1:20:50
  more energy now. So it
• 1:20:50
  was difficult to replace the
• 1:20:51
  battery because sometimes these things
• 1:20:52
  are kind of meant to be
• 1:20:53
  thrown away. Well, yeah, this is
• 1:20:55
  just a generic battery that somebody made
• 1:20:59
  in China and imported it
• 1:21:00
  to Amazon here in Canada.
• 1:21:03
  So it had been hard because I haven't got
• 1:21:06
  one. Like I've been
• 1:21:07
  looking at them and sometimes
• 1:21:08
  they were expensive. This was only $20
• 1:21:10
  though, which is like $15
• 1:21:12
  US money for a new battery.
• 1:21:15
  It'll go 10 minutes instead of seven
• 1:21:17
  minutes. Let's put it that way.
• 1:21:18
  But was there soldering involved or did
• 1:21:20
  you just snap it in?
• 1:21:21
  No, these things they come with, you can
• 1:21:23
  buy multiple batteries.
• 1:21:24
  So they come with a little
• 1:21:25
  plug. And that's why I think what's
• 1:21:26
  unique about this is the plug.
• 1:21:28
  It's got a red plug instead of
• 1:21:30
  a white plug and it's a bit different. So
• 1:21:32
  that was a bit tricky to
• 1:21:33
  find. So yeah, now I have that.
• 1:21:34
  Yeah. Because sometimes products are made
• 1:21:36
  with a battery that's
• 1:21:37
  really not meant to be replaced.
• 1:21:39
  And that sucks. This was an Australian
• 1:21:41
  company, Skyviper. Shout
• 1:21:42
  out to Australia if we haven't
• 1:21:44
  given you enough attention in the show
• 1:21:45
  already. By the way, CATL,
• 1:21:48
  the world's largest battery
• 1:21:50
  maker, they are in China. They are saying
• 1:21:52
  that these new sodium
• 1:21:54
  ion batteries are basically
• 1:21:56
  mainstream ready and they've signed a
• 1:21:58
  massive 60 gigawatt hour
• 1:22:00
  deal. So sodium ion batteries are
• 1:22:03
  these new batteries that have been around
• 1:22:05
  for a couple of years now
• 1:22:06
  developed mostly in China.
• 1:22:08
  Although I'm sure lots of people are
• 1:22:09
  working on them, Rivian's
• 1:22:10
  working on them in America. You
• 1:22:12
  mentioned them in the Jeopardy section
• 1:22:13
  earlier. Well, they're
• 1:22:16
  saying that these are so ready
• 1:22:18
  that by the end of this year, they're
• 1:22:19
  going to be mass
• 1:22:20
  producing them and they're already
• 1:22:22
  starting to produce them on lower scale.
• 1:22:26
  So sodium is
• 1:22:27
  basically lithium ion battery,
• 1:22:29
  but you replace the lithium, which is
• 1:22:30
  kind of hard and kind
• 1:22:31
  of expensive with sodium,
• 1:22:33
  which is salt, not any salt, but it's
• 1:22:35
  pretty available. This
• 1:22:37
  kind of salt, the sodium that
• 1:22:38
  they can get and there's a drawback to
• 1:22:42
  it, but there's also some
• 1:22:43
  advantages. One of the drawbacks
• 1:22:44
  is that you can't get as much energy
• 1:22:46
  density in it like I was
• 1:22:48
  talking about my drone battery.
• 1:22:50
  So if this was sodium ion, maybe it would
• 1:22:52
  fly for seven minutes instead of 10
• 1:22:54
  minutes, but it would
• 1:22:54
  still be the same size, right? And there
• 1:22:57
  wouldn't be any, you know, drone
• 1:22:58
  batteries and batteries
• 1:22:59
  like that. They all make lithium so they
• 1:23:01
  can go as far as they can,
• 1:23:03
  but not all batteries have to
• 1:23:05
  be this small and fly in a drone. Some of
• 1:23:07
  them are huge batteries that
• 1:23:09
  are the size of a container
• 1:23:10
  on the back of a big truck that would be
• 1:23:13
  parked in a grid somewhere
• 1:23:16
  with the power of the grid.
• 1:23:17
  You'd have a bunch of these batteries,
• 1:23:18
  the size of containers, shipping
• 1:23:20
  containers, and in them,
• 1:23:22
  they would power the grid. And we even
• 1:23:24
  have some close to where I live, but
• 1:23:25
  they're not sodium ion.
• 1:23:27
  Well, the point is that these sodium ion
• 1:23:29
  batteries, their advantages
• 1:23:31
  are great for grid storage,
• 1:23:32
  but they're also, CATL said they're
• 1:23:35
  putting them into cars now, but they're
• 1:23:36
  going to put them in
• 1:23:37
  the mass, produce them in cars by the end
• 1:23:40
  of this year. So what will happen is
• 1:23:43
  those cars will be a
• 1:23:44
  lower, a lower mileage. They'll have a
• 1:23:47
  lower range. They'll
• 1:23:48
  have probably around maybe a
• 1:23:50
  max of 500 or so. So there'll be kind of
• 1:23:52
  more city cars compared to
• 1:23:53
  the longer range cars now,
• 1:23:56
  but you will have, they'll be cheaper,
• 1:23:58
  but the right now
• 1:23:59
  they're about the same price,
• 1:24:00
  but they see them getting a lot cheaper
• 1:24:02
  as they go along.
• 1:24:04
  Cause these are brand new.
• 1:24:05
  So they claim sodium ion mass production
• 1:24:08
  is solved because there
• 1:24:09
  was some problems with that.
• 1:24:11
  And this 60 gigawatt hours is a lot,
• 1:24:13
  right? That is a lot.
• 1:24:15
  That's like storing, you know,
• 1:24:19
  a nuclear reactor for two and a half
• 1:24:20
  days, basically the output
• 1:24:22
  of it. It's a lot of power
• 1:24:24
  and it's hyper strong as a company,
• 1:24:27
  largest sodium ion battery
• 1:24:29
  order ever. So this is not
• 1:24:30
  a novelty. This is what this point of the
• 1:24:32
  story is. This is not a
• 1:24:33
  novelty. This is not some new
• 1:24:35
  technology that we think, Oh, great. This
• 1:24:37
  is actually going into
• 1:24:38
  production and we'll start
• 1:24:40
  solving our problems of the world right
• 1:24:42
  now. Half of CATL's total 25 energy
• 1:24:46
  storage output is going
• 1:24:47
  to be this one order of sodium ion
• 1:24:49
  batteries. So these big battery
• 1:24:51
  companies, they make a lot of
• 1:24:53
  battery storage for the world. This is
• 1:24:55
  half of it for one order for one company
• 1:24:58
  and it's sodium ion,
• 1:25:00
  not lithium ion. It is a big milestone.
• 1:25:03
  CATL says it has solved
• 1:25:04
  key manufacturing challenges,
• 1:25:06
  such as energy density, which will
• 1:25:09
  continue to improve moisture
• 1:25:10
  control was an issue for them,
• 1:25:12
  as well as some production issues. And
• 1:25:14
  they claim it is now ready for mass
• 1:25:16
  deployment. And so it
• 1:25:19
  uses sodium acetyl lithium, which is much
• 1:25:21
  more abundant in the
• 1:25:22
  world and cheaper. It's best
• 1:25:24
  suited for grid scale storage because you
• 1:25:26
  don't have to worry about
• 1:25:27
  the weight or the size as much.
• 1:25:30
  And the cost matters more than the size
• 1:25:31
  and the weight. But this is
• 1:25:32
  a huge hedge against lithium
• 1:25:35
  price volatility, which goes up and down.
• 1:25:37
  It's going up right now.
• 1:25:39
  So sometimes that can slow
• 1:25:40
  down the transition when lithium goes up
• 1:25:42
  in price. It has, if you're
• 1:25:44
  into specs, 160 watt hours per
• 1:25:46
  kilogram of energy density, and they see
• 1:25:48
  that improving 15,000
• 1:25:50
  charge cycles, which is a very
• 1:25:52
  large lifespan. That's the amount of time
• 1:25:54
  you can go from completely
• 1:25:55
  empty to completely full.
• 1:25:57
  Lithium ion batteries were typically
• 1:25:58
  started around a thousand
• 1:26:00
  cycles when we started making
• 1:26:01
  cars for the world. This is 15 times
• 1:26:04
  that. So if it, that will means it'll
• 1:26:06
  last that many years
• 1:26:07
  longer or that much more longer, 15 times
• 1:26:11
  as long, depending on how
• 1:26:12
  much you use it. And so that
• 1:26:13
  means the cost per kilowatt stored, the
• 1:26:16
  amount of energy stored in it
• 1:26:17
  gets really cheap. If you can
• 1:26:19
  use the same battery for a long, long
• 1:26:21
  time, and it's efficient, it's 97%
• 1:26:24
  efficient. So you're only
• 1:26:25
  losing 3% when you charge it up and
• 1:26:27
  discharge it, which is a really good
• 1:26:29
  thing. It's better than
• 1:26:31
  lithium in most cases. And it works in
• 1:26:33
  extreme temperatures, which
• 1:26:35
  we like because we live in
• 1:26:37
  extreme place and we are hard to
• 1:26:39
  decarbonize place and they always using
• 1:26:41
  cold weather as an excuse.
• 1:26:43
  This is great for cars too. If you and I
• 1:26:45
  ever get a sodium ion battery in our car,
• 1:26:48
  or maybe we check that off as an option
• 1:26:50
  someday. Minus 40 degrees
• 1:26:53
  Celsius, which is also minus 40
• 1:26:55
  Fahrenheit up to plus 70 Celsius. So
• 1:26:58
  batteries can be affected by cold and
• 1:27:01
  they can be damaged by heat.
• 1:27:03
  So this is great news. They are very
• 1:27:06
  versatile. You can put them in a desert.
• 1:27:07
  You could put them here
• 1:27:09
  and you won't have to worry about the
• 1:27:10
  thermostat, the
• 1:27:11
  temperature, the mercury going down
• 1:27:13
  to minus 40, which it does occasionally.
• 1:27:16
  Didn't this year praise
• 1:27:18
  the winter gods, but it can.
• 1:27:21
  And it is designed to be compatible with
• 1:27:24
  existing lithium ion
• 1:27:25
  infrastructure. So it's not
• 1:27:27
  a whole new thing. It's the same thing in
• 1:27:29
  a different package.
• 1:27:30
  It's like this battery,
• 1:27:32
  but there's a different chemistry in it,
• 1:27:34
  but it still would work
• 1:27:35
  in my drone, right? If they
• 1:27:36
  wanted to do that, theoretically, same
• 1:27:37
  thing for a car, same thing
• 1:27:39
  for existing grid energy storage
• 1:27:41
  systems, which makes it cheaper and
• 1:27:43
  faster, faster to decarbonize
• 1:27:45
  the world when that happens.
• 1:27:47
  It does have EV potential. CATL plans
• 1:27:50
  mass production for EVs
• 1:27:51
  by the end of this year,
• 1:27:52
  targeting LFP level performance in a few
• 1:27:56
  years. It's around 600
• 1:27:57
  kilometers. So LFP is another kind
• 1:27:59
  lithium iron phosphate formula batteries,
• 1:28:02
  except for the very long
• 1:28:03
  range cars. That is very common
• 1:28:05
  now. It is the majority of cars, that
• 1:28:07
  sort of chemistry, which
• 1:28:08
  is great for its own reasons
• 1:28:10
  because it has its own advantages as
• 1:28:11
  well. For instance,
• 1:28:12
  charging to a hundred percent,
• 1:28:14
  you can leave it at a hundred percent and
• 1:28:15
  not worry about it like
• 1:28:16
  you can with traditional
• 1:28:18
  higher density lithium ion batteries. It
• 1:28:21
  is the first sodium EV is
• 1:28:23
  already launched and CLT,
• 1:28:26
  ATL batteries are going in there. And
• 1:28:28
  rivals like BYD also developing sodium
• 1:28:30
  techs are lots of people,
• 1:28:32
  but CATL like they usually are because
• 1:28:34
  they are the world's
• 1:28:35
  biggest battery company,
• 1:28:36
  have tens and tens of thousands of
• 1:28:38
  engineers working on
• 1:28:39
  this around the clock,
• 1:28:40
  is far ahead in real world orders of
• 1:28:42
  scale. Some call this a potential deep
• 1:28:44
  seek moment. Deep seek
• 1:28:46
  is the Chinese AI company that sort of
• 1:28:47
  surprised everyone. And people are
• 1:28:49
  realizing that this could
• 1:28:51
  dramatically lower, dramatically lower
• 1:28:54
  energy costs, storage costs. Like why is
• 1:28:57
  this important? It's
• 1:28:57
  because renewables are variable. Solar
• 1:29:01
  obviously only makes energy in the
• 1:29:03
  daytime and specifically
• 1:29:05
  mostly sunny days, more so than cloudy
• 1:29:07
  days, but it does do
• 1:29:08
  stuff in cloudy days as well.
• 1:29:10
  But the more you can have a really cheap
• 1:29:13
  storage for this, the
• 1:29:15
  longer you can pay to storage
• 1:29:17
  and the more renewables you can use, the
• 1:29:20
  more you can rely on
• 1:29:21
  those renewables. I mean,
• 1:29:23
  if batteries were free, right, we could
• 1:29:24
  use solar panels and wind
• 1:29:27
  and that would be all we would
• 1:29:29
  ever have to do, right? Well, the
• 1:29:31
  batteries are expensive, but technology
• 1:29:33
  like this is starting
• 1:29:35
  to become cheap and showing a potential
• 1:29:38
  for very, very cheap energy
• 1:29:40
  storage on grid scale basis,
• 1:29:42
  which means we can decarbonize
• 1:29:44
  electricity generation and some
• 1:29:46
  industrial processes.
• 1:29:48
  So this is a big deal and it could
• 1:29:51
  accelerate the clean transition, which
• 1:29:53
  you and I are all about.
• 1:29:56
  All right, from Clean Technica, Gorilla
• 1:29:58
  Solar takes off in the
• 1:30:00
  Philippines. So the Manila
• 1:30:02
  Electric Company, which is known as
• 1:30:04
  Maralco, they're the largest private
• 1:30:07
  electric distribution
• 1:30:09
  utility in the Philippines. They serve
• 1:30:11
  seven million customers
• 1:30:12
  and they're pressing the
• 1:30:14
  Philippine government to tighten
• 1:30:15
  technical requirements
• 1:30:16
  for rooftop solar systems
• 1:30:18
  and the contractors installing them,
• 1:30:20
  citing a rapid expansion of
• 1:30:21
  unregistered installations
• 1:30:24
  that operate outside of the formal
• 1:30:26
  regulatory oversight. So
• 1:30:28
  net measuring the Philippines,
• 1:30:30
  like many places, allows distributed
• 1:30:33
  solar users to export their excess
• 1:30:36
  electricity to the grid
• 1:30:38
  and exchange for bill credits. Your meter
• 1:30:41
  runs backwards, but the
• 1:30:42
  process has been widely
• 1:30:43
  criticized in the Philippines for its
• 1:30:45
  permitting complexity and
• 1:30:47
  long approval timelines. We talk
• 1:30:49
  about this all the time on the show. Red
• 1:30:52
  tape can be a real
• 1:30:53
  killer for the expansion.
• 1:30:54
  It's a big deal. It really changes the
• 1:30:56
  price and viability of
• 1:30:58
  solar. Like they figured it out in
• 1:31:00
  Australia, but they haven't figured it
• 1:31:02
  out elsewhere yet. It becomes the
• 1:31:04
  bottleneck if people are
• 1:31:05
  constantly waiting for permits for this
• 1:31:07
  stuff. So Maralco said
• 1:31:08
  there's more than 20,000 registered
• 1:31:10
  rooftop systems. That's about 170
• 1:31:13
  megawatts, but there's 370 megawatts,
• 1:31:16
  almost twice as much
• 1:31:18
  in the commercial sector alone that does
• 1:31:20
  not have formal
• 1:31:21
  registration. More than twice as much.
• 1:31:25
  We're talking about warehouses, I'm
• 1:31:29
  assuming things like that,
• 1:31:31
  that have just thrown solar
• 1:31:32
  on the roofs or whatever space they have
• 1:31:35
  and not worrying about it
• 1:31:38
  going back into the grid when
• 1:31:39
  it's sunny in the middle of the day and
• 1:31:41
  they make too much of it.
• 1:31:42
  But are they storing any of it?
• 1:31:44
  I mean, how are they using it? Not
• 1:31:46
  typically, but these things
• 1:31:49
  have to be built with safety
• 1:31:51
  systems, mainly safety cutoff systems, so
• 1:31:53
  that if the grid goes down,
• 1:31:55
  your home solar system isn't
• 1:31:57
  exporting electricity to the grid because
• 1:31:59
  somebody could be
• 1:32:00
  working on the grid and get
• 1:32:01
  electrocuted from the excess power. So
• 1:32:03
  that's one reason. And just
• 1:32:06
  the ability of the utility to
• 1:32:09
  just keep track of how much power they
• 1:32:11
  have on the grid. They need to
• 1:32:12
  be able to manage their grid.
• 1:32:13
  They need to know how much solar is out
• 1:32:15
  there to factor in the way
• 1:32:17
  they run the grid because
• 1:32:18
  that affects ramping up coal plants or
• 1:32:21
  nuclear. Sometimes nuclear
• 1:32:23
  tries to stay steady, but it's
• 1:32:25
  not always. And natural gas turbines as
• 1:32:28
  well has to be ramped up and
• 1:32:29
  be on the ready. So if they
• 1:32:30
  don't know how much solar is out there,
• 1:32:32
  rogue solar, then
• 1:32:35
  what are you going to do?
• 1:32:36
  So the red tape is one reason. The other
• 1:32:37
  reason is power tends to
• 1:32:39
  be kind of expensive in the
• 1:32:40
  Philippines. 18 to 22 cents, US cents per
• 1:32:46
  kilowatt hour. So
• 1:32:47
  that's on the high end. And
• 1:32:48
  you know, the Philippines is not a high
• 1:32:50
  income country. So I
• 1:32:51
  imagine that can be quite a drain
• 1:32:53
  on people's resources there. And that
• 1:32:55
  leads them to just throwing
• 1:32:57
  up their own solar panels. And
• 1:32:59
  really, anybody can connect any wires to
• 1:33:01
  any other wires, you know, if you think
• 1:33:04
  you know what you're
• 1:33:04
  doing. But that's why we have regulations
• 1:33:07
  and that's why this stuff
• 1:33:08
  needs to be taken care of.
• 1:33:10
  Well, when the zombie apocalypse comes,
• 1:33:12
  I'm going to throw up
• 1:33:13
  some solar panels in my yard
• 1:33:14
  and connect it to a couple of 12 volt
• 1:33:17
  batteries from a car and
• 1:33:19
  put an inverter on there to
• 1:33:20
  convert that electricity into AC. So I
• 1:33:23
  can, I don't know what I'll run, like
• 1:33:24
  something, maybe my car.
• 1:33:27
  We'll see. But so I can run from the
• 1:33:29
  zombies. The Mad Max future will very
• 1:33:31
  much be solar powered.
• 1:33:33
  Well, there you go. And certainly if you
• 1:33:35
  had solar rate on your car,
• 1:33:37
  that would be even cooler. Let's drop
• 1:33:40
  into the mailbag for a moment
• 1:33:41
  here. We've got a letter from
• 1:33:43
  Millie, who seems to be in Calgary,
• 1:33:45
  Alberta, Canada. She says,
• 1:33:48
  Hi, I was just listening to
• 1:33:48
  your OPEC episode and heard you talking
• 1:33:51
  about how long gas would last in a
• 1:33:54
  plug-in electric hybrid
• 1:33:56
  plug, PHEV with a 600 kilometer range.
• 1:33:59
  Yeah, we were talking
• 1:34:00
  about that because these cars,
• 1:34:02
  they're a hybrid, but then they can have
• 1:34:04
  this battery that allows
• 1:34:05
  it to just go in EV mode.
• 1:34:07
  So you can charge it up at home. I
• 1:34:10
  remember cars that were 28
• 1:34:11
  kilometers and they went up to 40.
• 1:34:13
  Toyota had their Prius plug-in that went
• 1:34:15
  up to 40. Now they're like
• 1:34:16
  70 or 80. Other cars we've
• 1:34:19
  talked about in China have 600 just on
• 1:34:22
  their own, just before the gas engine
• 1:34:25
  kicks in. And I'm like,
• 1:34:26
  you're carrying around a gas engine
• 1:34:27
  because you can, I don't understand, if
• 1:34:30
  you go 600 kilometers,
• 1:34:31
  go pee and charge your car. Especially in
• 1:34:34
  China, you can charge it
• 1:34:35
  in five minutes, maybe.
• 1:34:36
  And the concern is you can have this gas
• 1:34:38
  in your tank that you don't
• 1:34:39
  end up using for a very long
• 1:34:40
  time and gas eventually expires. It goes
• 1:34:43
  stale and doesn't quite
• 1:34:45
  work. This is a concern because
• 1:34:47
  my use would be, I don't make a lot of
• 1:34:49
  trips and what I do,
• 1:34:50
  they're often in the summer
• 1:34:51
  for little vacations and things. So I
• 1:34:54
  would never use a gas engine. So, and I
• 1:34:56
  think you're kind of
• 1:34:57
  the same way. You would basically around
• 1:34:59
  town, you plug in every
• 1:35:00
  night and use the EV mode,
• 1:35:02
  because that's the cheapest and most
• 1:35:03
  luxurious way to travel.
• 1:35:05
  But she says, I have a PHE,
• 1:35:07
  PHEV with a much smaller range, but the
• 1:35:10
  gas tank is pressurized to
• 1:35:11
  make the gas last longer.
• 1:35:13
  I didn't know that. I have to push a
• 1:35:15
  button and wait a few
• 1:35:16
  seconds before filling it.
• 1:35:18
  I've gone at least four months without
• 1:35:19
  filling it, without any
• 1:35:21
  problems. The gas engine also
• 1:35:22
  runs when it's colder out, colder than
• 1:35:26
  minus 15 Celsius and the
• 1:35:28
  engine gets up to temperature.
• 1:35:29
  Now, I've never understood why she says,
• 1:35:32
  since electric cars
• 1:35:33
  function at that temperature,
• 1:35:34
  they do. My guess is that it's so that it
• 1:35:37
  can change to gas, to
• 1:35:39
  the gas engine seamlessly,
• 1:35:41
  if it needs to. That's true. That is why
• 1:35:42
  they do it. But they also
• 1:35:45
  benefit of that by running
• 1:35:46
  the engine. It's not using a lot of gas
• 1:35:48
  to just idle it, but it does
• 1:35:50
  also charge the battery and
• 1:35:52
  it does also have waste heat, which they
• 1:35:56
  use in the cabin to heat
• 1:35:57
  the cabin in cold weather.
• 1:35:59
  So that's quite a bonus. But, and it does
• 1:36:02
  make sense to do that.
• 1:36:03
  But when I test drove one of
• 1:36:05
  these, I hated that the gas engine went
• 1:36:07
  on when it was cold. I
• 1:36:08
  didn't want a gas engine. I wanted
• 1:36:09
  it there as a backup. And oftentimes they
• 1:36:12
  don't work as backups in
• 1:36:13
  cold weather and winter.
• 1:36:14
  People have winter. Yeah. She says you
• 1:36:18
  can also choose to
• 1:36:19
  run it in gas only mode,
• 1:36:21
  which is good. Sometimes you can, if
• 1:36:24
  you're coming to the city and you know
• 1:36:25
  you can charge up in the
• 1:36:26
  city, you get more mileage in the city.
• 1:36:29
  If you're in EV mode, because you
• 1:36:31
  regenerate with your
• 1:36:32
  braking, some people can do that. I can
• 1:36:34
  also choose to run it in
• 1:36:35
  gas only mode. I don't,
• 1:36:37
  but I expect you need to do that once or
• 1:36:40
  twice a year in a car such
• 1:36:41
  as with big electric range.
• 1:36:43
  That's from Millie. Thank you for that
• 1:36:45
  letter. Any comments? No, I
• 1:36:48
  think that about covers us.
• 1:36:49
  If anybody else wants to send us a
• 1:36:51
  message, cleanenergyshow
• 1:36:53
  at gmail.com voicemail at
• 1:36:55
  speakpipe.com slash cleanenergyshow.
• 1:36:58
  Please get in touch with us.
• 1:37:01
  We are an independent podcast
• 1:37:02
  powered by listeners like you.
• 1:37:04
  Patreon.com slash cleanenergypod. You can
• 1:37:07
  support us for as little
• 1:37:08
  as a dollar a month. You get ad free
• 1:37:10
  episodes, early access, exclusive
• 1:37:12
  content. There is a private
• 1:37:14
  discord. Patreon.com slash
• 1:37:17
  cleanenergypod. Thanks for keeping
• 1:37:19
  independent climate journalism
• 1:37:22
  a lot. Coming up next,
• 1:37:24
  it's the lightning round.
• 1:37:29
  It's time for the lightning round. The
• 1:37:31
  lightning round is a
• 1:37:31
  fast paced look at the
• 1:37:33
  latest headlines in climate, clean energy
• 1:37:35
  and transportation.
• 1:37:37
  Chinese car company BYD sales
• 1:37:38
  in April vis last year inside China down
• 1:37:41
  15.5% are struggling.
• 1:37:44
  Car makers are struggling,
• 1:37:45
  particularly BYD. It's the eight straight
• 1:37:48
  month of declines of sales in China,
• 1:37:50
  which is why they've
• 1:37:51
  come out with this blade two battery and
• 1:37:53
  this, you know, they put up
• 1:37:54
  like 5,000 chargers already.
• 1:37:56
  The announcement is only six weeks old
• 1:37:59
  and they put, it's incredible what
• 1:38:01
  they're doing and they're
• 1:38:02
  doing it in deserts. They're doing it
• 1:38:04
  everywhere, but outside China, BYD sales
• 1:38:07
  are up 35%. So they're
• 1:38:09
  pushing that. And guess what? My son just
• 1:38:14
  before the show sent me a
• 1:38:15
  picture of a BYD sea lion
• 1:38:19
  in Lucerne, outside of Lucerne,
• 1:38:21
  Switzerland. My son is
• 1:38:22
  traveling through Europe right now.
• 1:38:24
  You should have seen the plane he went
• 1:38:26
  over on. It looked like a
• 1:38:27
  joke. I wasn't sure he was going
• 1:38:29
  to make it. But yeah, he's traveling
• 1:38:32
  through Europe and he's
• 1:38:33
  finding it very expensive. He
• 1:38:34
  did find a bowl of spaghetti for $2.50 in
• 1:38:38
  Switzerland. Euros?
• 1:38:40
  Not Euros. It's crowns
• 1:38:43
  maybe? I don't know. But sorry. I know we
• 1:38:45
  have people listening in
• 1:38:46
  Switzerland. I apologize.
• 1:38:48
  But yes, so he came across as the first
• 1:38:50
  one he's seen. I've told him to
• 1:38:51
  investigate high speed
• 1:38:53
  rail, everything else and get back
• 1:38:55
  charging infrastructure,
• 1:38:56
  whatever he can see over there
• 1:38:57
  while he's traveling through various
• 1:38:58
  places. I think he's
• 1:38:59
  going to Germany. He landed in
• 1:39:01
  Germany, went to Switzerland. He's going
• 1:39:03
  through Amsterdam and maybe not
• 1:39:05
  traditional places though,
• 1:39:07
  because he wants to avoid touristy
• 1:39:09
  things. He doesn't want
• 1:39:11
  to backlash against tourism
• 1:39:13
  like Paris. So Azerbaijan has sent five
• 1:39:16
  electric buses to Ukraine for
• 1:39:18
  humanitarian purposes.
• 1:39:21
  Would they be hard to charge? I'm not
• 1:39:22
  sure because Russia is
• 1:39:24
  always bombing the power grid in
• 1:39:25
  Ukraine. But also the supply of gas is
• 1:39:28
  disrupted as well. Gas and
• 1:39:31
  diesel. So who knows? It might be
• 1:39:32
  yeah, that's kind of interesting though
• 1:39:34
  that they're sending
• 1:39:34
  electric buses to Ukraine
• 1:39:35
  as a humanitarian effort. Oil happy
• 1:39:39
  Canadian province Alberta is
• 1:39:40
  adding a $14 per solar panel
• 1:39:44
  eco tax to solar panels. Eco tax. Because
• 1:39:48
  they just want to find
• 1:39:50
  another way to discourage people
• 1:39:51
  from using solar. So because they can
• 1:39:54
  supposedly dispose of it. You know, if
• 1:39:56
  you pay a eco tax on
• 1:39:57
  say a car tire here, they will take the
• 1:40:00
  car tire and recycle it or
• 1:40:02
  do something with it, right?
• 1:40:04
  Well, there is no process anywhere in
• 1:40:05
  Canada to recycle solar
• 1:40:07
  panels right now. So unless they're
• 1:40:09
  sent to the United States, it's just an
• 1:40:13
  obvious ploy to discourage
• 1:40:15
  solar. I bet we get that where
• 1:40:17
  we live anytime soon. Yeah. CES fast
• 1:40:22
  fact, India went from 15% to
• 1:40:25
  70% internet access in a decade.
• 1:40:29
  Mobile phones, they skipped the landline
• 1:40:30
  went straight to
• 1:40:31
  mobile phones and that gave
• 1:40:32
  everyone access. So that's our world and
• 1:40:35
  data. Oh, here's another
• 1:40:37
  CES fast fact about 30% of
• 1:40:39
  residential lamps, light bulbs, if you
• 1:40:42
  will, we were just talking about this,
• 1:40:44
  are yet to be upgraded
• 1:40:45
  to LEDs 30% of them. And 15% of the
• 1:40:50
  existing bulbs are early LEDs
• 1:40:51
  nearing the end of their life.
• 1:40:54
  Yeah, we talked about this, the amount of
• 1:40:56
  electricity used by
• 1:40:57
  lighting has plummeted,
• 1:40:59
  absolutely plummeted, but it could
• 1:41:00
  plummet even more if that
• 1:41:02
  remaining 30% are finally
• 1:41:04
  switched over to LEDs. New analysis shows
• 1:41:06
  Canadian households with EVs
• 1:41:08
  can save hundreds of dollars
• 1:41:11
  every month. Of course, gas prices are
• 1:41:12
  high. They're, I think,
• 1:41:15
  $1.90 per liter of gasoline here.
• 1:41:19
  And if you translated that to US gallons,
• 1:41:21
  you would be shocked to the
• 1:41:22
  United States how expensive
• 1:41:23
  that is. And that's what them taking 10
• 1:41:25
  cents a liter off the gas,
• 1:41:28
  which would be about 40 cents a
• 1:41:30
  gallon temporarily. It's about this is if
• 1:41:33
  you had a single detached
• 1:41:35
  house with one economy car
• 1:41:37
  and one medium sized SUV, if they were
• 1:41:40
  both electric instead of
• 1:41:41
  gas, every month you could
• 1:41:42
  save $361 in Saskatchewan, that's where
• 1:41:46
  we live, where we have crappy
• 1:41:49
  electricity, but still fairly
• 1:41:51
  cheaply priced. But the cheaper the
• 1:41:54
  electricity in places that have existing
• 1:41:55
  hydro like Quebec and
• 1:41:57
  BC have even greater savings of around
• 1:41:59
  $500 per month, per month,
• 1:42:02
  Brian. I mean, how long do you
• 1:42:04
  have to have a car before you start
• 1:42:06
  saying, get an EV? And that's
• 1:42:08
  based on one economy car and
• 1:42:10
  one medium sized SUV. And we know many
• 1:42:13
  people around here that
• 1:42:14
  just drive two gigantic trucks
• 1:42:16
  or two gigantic SUVs. It's insane what
• 1:42:20
  their gas bill must be.
• 1:42:21
  Yeah, that's a relatively
• 1:42:23
  reasonable household around here. And
• 1:42:25
  probably through much of
• 1:42:27
  the United States and Canada.
• 1:42:28
  New research shows that sector
• 1:42:30
  integration lowers costs for
• 1:42:32
  electricity. What is sector
• 1:42:33
  integration? Well, when in solar
• 1:42:35
  combinations is better than we always
• 1:42:37
  talk about solar. Well,
• 1:42:39
  we even compared it to nuclear. Yeah. But
• 1:42:41
  if you mix in wind, wind
• 1:42:42
  takes up some of the nighttime
• 1:42:44
  slacks, you don't have to put batteries
• 1:42:46
  in. So that's cheaper. And
• 1:42:47
  it also takes up the slack on
• 1:42:49
  cloudy days. Cloudy days is often
• 1:42:51
  windier. So potentially
• 1:42:53
  costing half as much as nuclear,
• 1:42:55
  depending on regional conditions. So that
• 1:42:57
  is a story on the
• 1:42:58
  energy mix. Nuclear fans can
• 1:43:00
  yell at them. Don't yell at me, please.
• 1:43:02
  I'm just delivering that
• 1:43:05
  analysis. A YouTuber named
• 1:43:07
  SimplyGregsterEV found a parking lot of
• 1:43:11
  Chinese brand Sherry EVs
• 1:43:12
  in Toronto. They're here.
• 1:43:15
  Yeah. You know, Canada has said we can
• 1:43:18
  allow now Chinese EVs at a relatively low
• 1:43:21
  tariff instead of 100% like the United
• 1:43:23
  States. They're letting in like 50,000
• 1:43:26
  at 6%, which is reasonable. And the Model
• 1:43:30
  3, 39,000 Canadian. Yeah,
• 1:43:34
  that's amazing. And they have
• 1:43:37
  to compete now with the Chinese stuff
• 1:43:38
  coming in. But you can't get
• 1:43:41
  the $5,000 tax rebate for the
• 1:43:46
  Tesla because it was made in China. If
• 1:43:49
  you could, holy cow, I think I would be
• 1:43:51
  on the Tesla website
• 1:43:53
  now trying to get rid of my bolt and
• 1:43:55
  trade it in. I have some brand problems
• 1:43:57
  with Tesla, of course,
• 1:43:58
  but it's a really good car. And it is,
• 1:44:01
  you know, the Model Y is the
• 1:44:03
  best selling EV in the world
• 1:44:04
  by far. But the Model 3, second, Latin
• 1:44:07
  American EV sales in the
• 1:44:08
  first quarter grew a whopping 74%
• 1:44:11
  year over year. We talked about how a lot
• 1:44:14
  of people don't know that
• 1:44:15
  the world is electrifying,
• 1:44:17
  and they don't think a place like Latin
• 1:44:19
  America is going to
• 1:44:20
  electrify 74% up over last year.
• 1:44:23
  And of course, the oil shock from Iran
• 1:44:25
  makes all this even, you
• 1:44:28
  know, just data coming in now that
• 1:44:29
  is showing that this is really making an
• 1:44:31
  effect. It wasn't just my
• 1:44:32
  sister-in-law who bought a
• 1:44:34
  PHE in Calgary. This is not Millie, by
• 1:44:37
  the way, this is another
• 1:44:38
  person. It's not just her that
• 1:44:41
  made that decision. Lots of people are
• 1:44:42
  saying, "Okay, screw it.
• 1:44:44
  Let's do this." Our entire lives,
• 1:44:47
  people get upset with gas prices. Yes.
• 1:44:49
  It's a common thing
• 1:44:50
  because every couple of years,
• 1:44:51
  gas prices spike. But guess what? There's
• 1:44:54
  now an alternative when
• 1:44:56
  people start complaining about
• 1:44:57
  gas prices. We're at a different place
• 1:44:58
  now. There's lots of alternatives and
• 1:45:01
  people know people with
• 1:45:02
  EVs and they think, "Well, I want to be
• 1:45:05
  them." Tesla slashes the
• 1:45:06
  Canadian Model 3 price to
• 1:45:09
  39,490 with the China made supply shift.
• 1:45:13
  Very enticing car. Because you know what?
• 1:45:16
  My Chevy Bolt is more than that. I think
• 1:45:20
  it's like $43,000, but you
• 1:45:22
  get $5,000 off. But still,
• 1:45:24
  it's getting very interesting because
• 1:45:25
  that Model 3 comes fully
• 1:45:28
  stocked. Maybe not with full
• 1:45:30
  self-driving, but it comes with, you
• 1:45:32
  know, you don't have to
• 1:45:33
  pay extra for heated seats.
• 1:45:34
  Everything's in there. Basically, all the
• 1:45:36
  features you can pay
• 1:45:38
  for the subscription to
• 1:45:39
  self-driving if you want for $100 a
• 1:45:42
  month. So yeah, $39,000
• 1:45:43
  Canadian. That's about
• 1:45:45
  $30,000 in US dollars. So if you wanted
• 1:45:47
  to compare that to say a Chevy Bolt or an
• 1:45:49
  Nissan Leaf, you would have to compare it
• 1:45:51
  to the highest trim levels,
• 1:45:52
  which go up by quite a few
• 1:45:54
  thousand dollars, at least $7,000 to the
• 1:45:56
  higher trim levels. And
• 1:45:57
  even then, the Model 3 has some
• 1:45:59
  advantages over the technology in those
• 1:46:02
  cars. And they've been
• 1:46:04
  around for a long time, so they've
• 1:46:05
  worked out a lot of the problems. Yeah,
• 1:46:07
  the software is really
• 1:46:07
  great. Even if you don't
• 1:46:08
  get the self-driving, the operating
• 1:46:11
  system for Tesla's is
• 1:46:12
  amazing. Solar panels fitted every
• 1:46:15
  three minutes in the United Kingdom since
• 1:46:17
  the Iran conflict. So
• 1:46:18
  every three minutes,
• 1:46:19
  a new person is getting solar in the
• 1:46:22
  United Kingdom. 27,000
• 1:46:23
  solar panel installations in
• 1:46:25
  March alone, the highest monthly total
• 1:46:27
  for 14 years. So that's
• 1:46:29
  one of those examples.
• 1:46:31
  On Saturday morning, solar was supplying
• 1:46:33
  nearly two-thirds of
• 1:46:35
  the Texas power grid.
• 1:46:37
  Two-thirds solar, which means when solar
• 1:46:40
  goes up, you can see a
• 1:46:41
  graph here that I'm showing you,
• 1:46:42
  Brian. Other things go down. Natural gas
• 1:46:45
  becomes like a third or a
• 1:46:48
  quarter of what it was outputting.
• 1:46:50
  So you can see the displacement of gas
• 1:46:52
  during the daytime hours.
• 1:46:54
  And it was turning down the gas when the
• 1:46:56
  sun is shining. And
• 1:46:57
  that's mostly what they did.
• 1:46:59
  And a little bit of wind in there as
• 1:47:03
  well, but it was also, as we said
• 1:47:06
  earlier, it slows down
• 1:47:07
  during sunny weather. And that wasn't the
• 1:47:09
  case, but it wasn't zero.
• 1:47:11
  It was still pretty good. And
• 1:47:12
  it goes up and the sun is not shining.
• 1:47:14
  Just not perfect. Bipartisan
• 1:47:16
  group. This is interesting.
• 1:47:18
  A bipartisan group of US senators is
• 1:47:21
  traveling to Beijing and
• 1:47:22
  Shanghai to better understand
• 1:47:24
  China's tech ecosystem. I think somebody
• 1:47:26
  in the US Senate listened
• 1:47:28
  to our podcast. I really do.
• 1:47:30
  Somebody's getting the message. And we've
• 1:47:34
  been preaching this for a
• 1:47:35
  long time. Not only are we
• 1:47:36
  talking about the clean energy out of
• 1:47:37
  China, we're kind of... A lot
• 1:47:39
  of people don't realize they
• 1:47:40
  have biases against China thinking that
• 1:47:43
  they're backwards or
• 1:47:44
  they're still in the 18th century
• 1:47:47
  or something. It's not the case. They are
• 1:47:50
  way outcompeting us.
• 1:47:52
  All right. You can find us on social
• 1:47:55
  media like TikTok, Instagram,
• 1:47:57
  and Blue Sky. Look for Clean
• 1:47:58
  Energy Pod. That email is
• 1:48:00
  cleanenergyshowatgmail.com. And remember
• 1:48:04
  to hit that follow or subscribe
• 1:48:05
  button and you will get new episodes
• 1:48:08
  delivered every week. Yeah. Join us on
• 1:48:11
  Patreon, mochiopatreon.com
• 1:48:12
  slash cleanenergypod. And I want to thank
• 1:48:14
  those people who've already
• 1:48:15
  done that. Thank you to our
• 1:48:17
  Clean Club members. Those are the people
• 1:48:20
  who give us $5 a month and
• 1:48:22
  get a monthly bonus podcast,
• 1:48:24
  among other things. And they also get a
• 1:48:26
  shout out once a month.
• 1:48:27
  Noah Cook, Denny and Linda,
• 1:48:29
  Jonathan Dick, Bob Eaton, Josh Engen,
• 1:48:31
  Sean Ennis, Andy Fessler,
• 1:48:34
  Roshan Gervais, H. Sean Hines, Hanes,
• 1:48:38
  Hines, Sean Hines.
• 1:48:39
  Sorry, Sean. I'm getting my
• 1:48:41
  Sean's mixed up. Just Jack, Teemo
• 1:48:43
  Callenberger, David Clinkie, Peter
• 1:48:45
  O'Donnell, Weldon Penner,
• 1:48:47
  Robu, author Slade, Joel Thorsheim,
• 1:48:50
  Landon, you, and Richard
• 1:48:52
  W. Thank you all so much
• 1:48:53
  for your generosity and keeping this
• 1:48:55
  podcast going. And we'll
• 1:48:57
  see you again in seven days.
• 1:48:58
  See you next week.