Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #13 "The Energiewende" with Noah Rettberg

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Bad Idea #13 "The Energiewende" with Noah Rettberg · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

0:00
We are making 240 terawatt hours of wind and solar electricity in
0:05
absolute terms. So we have built out more and
0:08
more and more, yet the increase in absolute production is quite
0:11
low. Absolute emissions have declined
0:13
significantly. We are not quite meeting our
0:17
targets, but CO2 consumption is decreasing, but a large degree
0:21
of CO2 consumption decreasing comes from the economic
0:25
downturn, comes from these energy intense industries
0:28
shutting down. I mean, this is potentially the
0:30
cheapest clean energy availability in Europe right
0:33
now. And it kind of makes me angry to
0:35
think that every day that passes, this is being further
0:38
dismantled and it's almost like vandalism of a huge clean energy
0:43
piece of infrastructure. I think there are generally a
0:46
lot of people in the Green Party who are quite willing to
0:49
continue burning coal for a long time, but most of them, I do
0:54
believe, are sincerely opposed to coal, and they're doing
0:56
mental gymnastics in order to justify this.
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Nuclear is a friend to anyone. If you are a reliable person or
1:03
an reliable producer of electricity, you can become a
1:07
friend to anyone. Nuclear can become a friend too
1:10
cold, become a friend to gas can become a friend to renewables
1:14
can become a friend to hydro. You're not dependable.
1:17
You can be used for very little. This goes for for your friends,
1:21
for your colleagues, and this goes for power plants.
1:25
Welcome to saving the world from bad ideas.
1:27
I'm Mark Linus and I've had a few bad ideas in my time.
1:31
I used to go out in the night time to destroy GMO crops and I
1:34
also posed nuclear power. But then when I looked at the
1:36
science I found I got it wrong. Oops.
1:39
I've learned the hard way that none of us are right all the
1:41
time. So now I'm here to challenge the
1:43
assumptions that we all too often take for granted because
1:46
the future depends on us getting it right.
1:49
Welcome to saving the world from bad ideas.
1:51
Today I'm speaking with Noah Retberg.
1:54
Noah is a German physics laboratory technician and
1:57
precision machinist. But most of all, he's a leader
2:00
inside the German pro nuclear movement and a major contributor
2:04
to a report and recent conference on restarting German
2:06
reactors. Welcome to the podcast, Noah.
2:09
So the format of this podcast is saving the world from bad ideas.
2:14
And the bad idea that you're saving the world from is the,
2:17
well, it's one word, the energy vendor.
2:20
So tell us what that is and just explain a bit of the context so
2:25
we can dig into the discussion. So energy vendor means energy
2:28
transition or energy turn around.
2:31
So different people, different thinkers on this topic in
2:37
Germany in the past had different ideas what they meant
2:39
to do with this. The original ideas for an NRD
2:42
vendor published by the German green think tank Udro Institute
2:47
in the 70s and which was still their view for almost the entire
2:55
20th century, is that Germany should embark on an energy
2:59
transition of ditching nuclear, then ditching natural gas, then
3:06
ditching oil and have a final energy supply which is made-up
3:11
by 50% of coal. The remaining being a lot large
3:16
degree of biomass and then a bit of hydro, wind and solar.
3:21
This is how this idea started. So it started quite terrible.
3:24
It necessary didn't get better. It did get better somewhat in
3:29
the way that from the 2000s onwards they also wanted to
3:34
abandon coal electricity, especially as we came into the
3:38
20 tens. But what was set into actions
3:42
with the Red Green coalition of Canstar Schroeder was an energy
3:47
policy of embracing Russian natural gas, embracing some new
3:53
builds of really large one GW units of German lignite and hard
4:00
coal power plants, as well as phasing out nuclear electricity
4:06
by the 20 early twenty 20s. This was transfer Schroeder's
4:12
idea and in order to substitute for renew for nuclear, they
4:18
wanted to bring on the era of wind and solar electricity in
4:22
Germany. And in order to do this, they
4:25
granted generous feed and tariffs for guaranteed feed and
4:28
tariffs for wind and solar. And they gave feed in priority
4:34
to wind and solar so that no matter what is happening on the
4:37
grid, wind and solar can still feed in.
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And this is still the case in Germany today.
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These wind and solar installations that got these
4:47
rights, they'll have these rights and the new ones, they
4:50
can only be curtailed in the very extreme situations, which
4:55
leads to situations in the European energy market where we
4:59
have negative electricity prices sometimes because these
5:03
renewable assets which are largely unreliable, these dead
5:08
guaranteed feed in tariffs even when their electricity is not
5:10
needed. Though this has been somewhat
5:15
curtailed, it's still a huge effect.
5:17
And this brought on the energy vendor for goods since we've
5:21
seen them in the late 2000s, the ever growing amount of wind and
5:26
solar on the German Ridge, which continued over the 20 tens in
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2009. Around the 2009 election, the
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then leader of the Conservative Party of Germany, Angela Merkel
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ran on among other things, a promise to slow down the face
5:48
order of nuclear energy, to delay it by 10 years.
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Because in her mind at the day she thought that wind and solar
5:54
would not be ready in time to replace this.
5:56
So she wanted to delay it. She didn't want to stop it.
5:58
She wanted to delay it. However, which she did.
6:02
In 2010 there was was these life extensions by 10 years was
6:06
signed into law. However, in 2010 she did an
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immediate turn around after Fukushima. 2011 that.
6:14
Was 2011, I'm sorry. In 2011 she did the immediate
6:17
turn around after Fukushima she closed down several reactors and
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she then largely reinstated the OR the original shutdown goals
6:29
by Chancellor Schroeder so that German nuclear would be phased
6:33
out by the twenty 20s. So I mean, it seems to me that
6:36
the energy vendor is essentially an anti nuclear project and you
6:40
can tell me whether this is true or not.
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And it's, it's sort of very much wrapped up with the the
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increasing influence of the German Green Party had on on
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domestic politics and coming into coalitions.
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I think the first coalition was in when was it 2000?
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And. The first coalition was in 1998.
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OK. The first federal ones though,
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the Green Party came into state governments bit earlier.
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And where the Green Party entered into state governments,
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they used the authority of the state governments on
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environmental matters in order to bully the nuclear industry.
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Because the way that the German regulatory context works is that
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on the federal level, the rules that the nuclear power plants
7:29
need to follow are set the Cartier and these are then
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executed on a state level. So the people that are actually
7:36
going into the nuclear plants and enforcing these rules, these
7:39
come from the state. And this creates a situation
7:43
where you have states which are much more pro nuclear regulating
7:51
the nuclear industry a lot of more efficiently.
7:54
And then you have states which are anti nuclear, which have
7:57
anti nuclear politicians leading the environmental ministry like
8:01
Les Wichhorstein, where they purposely do everything they can
8:06
in order to delay any license they grant in order to make it
8:12
as hard as possible. For example, when the Brokdorf
8:17
nuclear power plant in Germany applied for their
8:20
decommissioning license, the state government came up with
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ideas like all this, this decommissioning license, we need
8:29
all the the files, we need them accessible for blind people, so
8:34
they need to be audio transcribed.
8:36
And so they come up with with several things in order to delay
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this process. And for this reason, the
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Brokdorf nuclear power plant got its the commissioning license
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only just now, and now three years ago when it was was shut
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down for this reason. It is still in a very pristine
8:54
condition and can be turned back on rather easily.
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If that happens, it will be very much an own goal for the green
9:03
regulators which caused this. Yes, that sounds very ironic
9:06
that that the green regulators would would delay decommission.
9:11
You think they want to destroy the plants as quickly as
9:13
possible Because as, as I understand it, the anti nuclear
9:17
advocacy, you know, it's sort of it's the DN is it?
9:20
Isn't it like the central DNA of the German Green Party?
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Like how important is it? It is extremely important,
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especially to the older people. To the people who've joined the
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party or the movement from like the early twenty 10s onwards, to
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them it doesn't matter that much.
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But towards the older people in the party it matters a lot.
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And there is quite a certain gerontocracy that is holding the
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Green Party back in this manner. Because these people, even
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though the Green Party is comparatively young for German
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politics, still has a rather old membership, but it's
10:01
comparatively young. There are a lot of old
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influential people which are funding a lot of Green NGOs,
10:08
which are working together with the Green Party, which are
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holding large amounts of influence about who rises to
10:16
power within the party. And for example, just last year,
10:22
you've seen a situation where the entire head of the Green
10:27
youth of the youth wing of the Green Party left the party in
10:31
unison just last year, because they were in in a great deal of
10:36
disagreement with the and if the party leaders whom they
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perceived to be not stalwart enough in following their green
10:46
principles. But in these green principles
10:49
that EU wing wanted to pursue, anti nuclearism wasn't really a
10:55
priority. It's not that they are pro
10:57
nuclear. They are, they see nuclear a bit
11:00
like a more like a distraction, but they don't think a lot about
11:04
it. They think more about stuff like
11:06
coal, combustion engines, meet speed limits.
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These are the stuff that they concern themselves with, not
11:13
really that much with nuclear, but the old people.
11:16
For the old people in the party, nuclear power will be the OR the
11:21
position to nuclear power will be the last stuff they will
11:24
abandoned. Yeah, so they'll take that to
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their graves, by the sounds of it.
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And the energy vendor then predates concern about climate
11:34
change, right? The NID vendor predates concern
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about climate change, and if you go back to German energy
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discourse of the 80s and 90s, you will see climate talk
11:48
conservatives and climate denial greens because denial greens.
11:55
Yes, they weren't so better than it was.
11:58
So in in the 1980s, you had several conservative politicians
12:03
which were extremely supportive of nuclear energy, especially
12:08
from Bavaria, which doesn't have any coal resources.
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So for Bavarian politics, from, from the Bavarian point of view
12:15
of the Bavarian Conservative Party, they it's they wanted to
12:19
pursue nuclear power to a great extent because a large chunk of
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the supply chain of the industry was in Bavaria.
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Bavaria didn't have any coal. So this was the road they wanted
12:30
to grow, while other parts of Germany with the coal resources
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were opposed to this and in order to get another reason for
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pursuing nuclear energy. You have seen people like the
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arch conservative France, Joseph Strauss arguing for nuclear
12:48
energy against coal energy. And his reason for this is
12:54
climate change. There are recordings from German
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public debates from this where you see several left wing and
13:02
green politicians calling Franz Eouser Strauss an idiot when he
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says that if we burn more coal this will be a crime committed
13:12
to future generations and we should focus on nuclear energy
13:16
instead. So the position on climate
13:19
change shifted greatly over the course of the late 90s and
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2000s. From a Green Party which didn't
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care about it or even saw climate change as a distraction
13:33
that kept them from pursuing the nuclear phase out to the then to
13:38
thousands where the Greens were forced to embrace an an agenda
13:44
that is climate talkers. Especially in the context where
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phasing out coal might be viable if the renewable stuff grows
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great and we can import a lot of Russian gas.
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Yeah. So that's how the energy vendor
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started. How's it going?
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That depends on what you want to look at and what you don't want
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to look at. If you are quite supportive of
14:07
the NID vendor, you can look at record numbers of installed
14:11
capacity and record numbers renewables right of renewables
14:15
of wind and solar. You can look at record numbers
14:19
of relative electricity generation and point to that in
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order to make the case that it is quite, quite going well,
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yeah. And if you if you've.
14:30
Got negative prices then that's too cheap to meet her I mean
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more more could you want so clearly that's.
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Going well there, there are people who are who are mating
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this taste. So there are genuinely among the
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probably less respectable but still above the the less
14:51
respectable pundits, but who still have a lot of influence.
14:54
They do make this claim. Oh, look, the renewables are
14:59
making the electricity cheaper just around the time when wind
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and solar are overproducing, which is kind of the inversion
15:06
of the more critical people who are posting.
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Oh no, the grid is extremely dirty and extremely expensive
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right around the time when renewables don't produce.
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But even if you don't want to look at like individual short
15:22
moments on the grid, but more on the bigger picture, what we are
15:26
seeing is that while we are massively, we have massively
15:30
increased installed capacity and we have seen capacity factors
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decline to largely also for wind and solar.
15:41
Yes, we have produced. So now I think we are at almost
15:46
100 gigawatts of solar. We are at I think almost 80
15:50
gigawatts of wind and we are making 240 terawatt hours of
15:56
wind and solar electricity. In absolute terms.
15:59
If you look at a couple years ago, we were at 60 gigawatts of
16:02
both and we were making more than 200 bit more than 200 Tera
16:07
doors. So we have built out more and
16:09
more and more, yet the increase in absolute production is quite
16:13
low. And while there is an enormous
16:16
increase in relative production in relative to entire
16:19
electricity production in Germany, electricity production
16:22
in Germany as a whole has massively declined over the last
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10 years. OK.
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So it's about what's the proportion of renewables, wind
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and solar Van, in terms of overall electricity production
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in Germany, 60 percent, 60%, yes, well, which is, which is
16:38
very high. I mean, that sounds like a big
16:39
success, except now you're telling me that overall
16:42
electricity production has declined.
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So where's do they have to import more?
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Where's the extra coming from? We are to a large degree we are
16:49
importing, but also to a large degree electricity consumption
16:54
just went down. Most of this comes from reduced
16:59
industry. So the more recent part of this
17:01
comes from reduced industry production.
17:04
Over the 20 tens, we have seen efficiency gains creating a
17:12
decrease in electricity consumption.
17:14
But the sharp decrease we've seen over the last few years,
17:18
this is more the consequence of deindustrialization rather than
17:24
efficiency gains. And keep in mind, while these
17:28
things that are causing a decrease in electricity
17:30
consumption are happening, we are seeing electrification of
17:35
heating via heat pumps and transport via electric cars, not
17:38
to a large extent, but at least to an extent where you would
17:42
think that it would counteract this and at least cause a small
17:45
increase. But now we are seeing an overall
17:48
decrease in absolute consumption.
17:50
Right, right. So the electrification of the
17:53
economy, you'd expect to increase the amount of
17:56
electricity that's being consumed.
17:58
But actually that's not, that's not been the case.
18:00
I mean, does, does is deindustrialization a big issue
18:03
in German politics with the loss of jobs and, you know,
18:05
industries moving abroad and so on?
18:07
Yes, the deindustrialization is a, is a is a big issue for
18:11
German politics, especially since Germany has seen so much
18:15
less deindustrialization than it's European neighbors.
18:21
Compared to to France, Germany has has a lot more industry
18:24
right now, but we are currently in the process of losing this
18:30
which will cause hundreds of hundreds of thousands of people
18:34
getting laid off, which causes our economy to be stagnant or
18:39
even in in a in a low recession right now.
18:43
So for for three years now, we've seen no economic growth.
18:48
Actually, you've seen the economy decrease a little bit if
18:52
you adjust for inflation. And this is for most people in,
19:00
in in Germany for, for for the average citizen, this is
19:02
probably the largest political issue right now or one of the
19:09
two largest political issues right now.
19:11
Economic issues and the and immigration issues are what
19:16
concerns Germans most right now. And yes, this, this energy
19:21
policy has caused us significant amount of of hardship to our
19:26
economy, which in turn causes a lot of political hardship for
19:31
the German political landscape. In a situation where the
19:36
geopolitical context really doesn't allow for this time of
19:40
hardship and really doesn't allow for the time of of this
19:43
type of turmoil that has ensued. In a situation where we should
19:48
have unity in order to confront foreign policy problems.
19:53
We don't have unity because we bitter about environmental
19:59
stuff, about economy stuff, about immigration stuff.
20:02
And electricity's got a lot more expensive, right?
20:05
Yes, second highest electricity prices in Europe.
20:08
I think the highest of the UK where I live and we have very
20:13
expensive electricity and that's not due to a nuclear phase out.
20:16
I mean it's due to multiple different issues, price of gas
20:20
and so on like that. So how much of the
20:22
deindustrialization and the electricity price and the can
20:25
you paint on the on the greens and the energy vendor?
20:28
You can make the case that even if the electricity is expensive
20:32
as it is, this would not necessarily cause a recession in
20:36
Germany because just Germany can just reduce some industries and
20:44
increase others. There are Germany just doesn't
20:48
only do heavy industry and chemical industry.
20:51
We are one of the most diversified in the nations in
20:57
the world when it comes to our economy.
20:59
We produce almost anything. So in theory, if you say we want
21:03
to embrace this lower energy pathway of economical
21:07
development, Germany can probably still made it by
21:13
focusing on industries that generate high value but use less
21:18
energy. However, this is hindered by
21:22
stuff like regulations and Ted station in Germany, the already
21:29
existing heavy and chemical industries in Germany.
21:33
However, these suffer severely from basically double attack of
21:38
high energy prices, high regulations and high taxes and
21:43
they have really no way of going out of this.
21:48
And we see these industries currently retreating from
21:52
Germany as we speak. So have the Greens suffered
21:55
political damage as a result of, well, basically breaking the
21:59
German industrial model? Yes to an extent, but most of
22:04
the people who now utterly despise the Greens are people
22:08
who have not voted Green before anyway.
22:11
Yet still the Green Party lost severely in the German
22:15
elections. I think they had like 16 or 15%
22:21
in the 2021 elections and now they have a bit above 12 of
22:25
above a bit above 11%. So they have lost in the
22:29
election, though most of their voters are still sticking to
22:35
them. Large degree why the Greens lost
22:38
is because participation in the election has actually increased
22:42
sharply. So a lot of people who are
22:46
disgruntled about the state of German politics and we have not
22:50
voted before, went to the elections and voted the current
22:55
government out. And this has caused all of all
22:58
of the centre ish parties in German politics to lose and it
23:04
has caused a gain for the far left and the far right.
23:07
Yeah. And of course, that's a big sort
23:11
of restructuring of the German political scene, which we've
23:14
still don't know the outcome of. I mean, it looks like there will
23:18
be. And you know, I'm not sure when
23:20
this podcast is going out, but, you know, we we shouldn't
23:23
concern too much about daily current affairs.
23:25
But we look, looks like we're going to see a new coalition
23:28
between the two centrist parties, the Social Democrats
23:31
and the CDU, presumably with the Greens in there.
23:34
So are they is is that is that right or not?
23:38
So the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, they have
23:42
together more than 50% in the German parliament.
23:47
However, there are certain things which the government
23:50
wants to do for which it needs over 66% in the parliament
23:55
because you can only amend their German Quan institution with
23:59
with a vote of more than 2/3 of the parliament.
24:03
This becomes problematic if you consider that the German state
24:09
has run out of money. We have a big hole not just in
24:14
the current budget, but even in the coming budgets of I think
24:17
around €180 billion that the last government has left us.
24:22
That even our our government expenses are so high that even
24:27
with the high taxes the state has, it can no longer pay for
24:32
it. So it either has to increase
24:35
taxes even more, reduce spending, or go into debt.
24:42
Since we have a lot of issues that need money right now and
24:46
reducing spending just overnight will not work out quite well.
24:52
You have a lot of commitments that you cannot easily abandoned
24:54
without consequences. So having a lot of additional
25:00
money right now is quite helpful to our situation.
25:06
As for in geopolitical context, like having a lot of additional
25:09
money for the army, having a lot of additional money for the for
25:13
infrastructure spending, for example, which is what the
25:15
government of what the potential future government is currently
25:19
pursuing. This does need new debt.
25:24
This does need loans in order to finance this, because even if we
25:29
reduce spending, which it looks like we are not, even if we do
25:34
this, this won't generate enormous amount of funds right
25:37
now. It will generate funds more
25:39
later in the process. But the German constitution
25:43
forbids the government from taking on additional debt if
25:48
they are over a certain debt per GDP ratio, and that ratio is set
25:53
rather low. So the German government cannot
25:56
go into debt any further, and it needs constitutional amending
26:00
powers in order to go into debt. In the coming parliament, the
26:06
centrist parties will no longer have a 2/3 majority.
26:11
The Liberals are out. The conservative screens and
26:15
short terms together don't have over 66%.
26:18
So they need to either compromise themselves with the
26:21
far left or the far right, which they are likely not going to do
26:25
in order to get additional debt. And for this reason, the
26:31
Conservative party, which won the election tries currently
26:35
really hard to, as long as the old parliament is still sitting,
26:40
which ends this month, to get these parties, the centrist
26:45
parties of the Conservatives sort, Dems, Liberals and Greens
26:48
to agree to taking on a huge chunk of additional debt to fund
26:55
the military and to fund infrastructure projects.
26:59
If this doesn't work, which is currently looks like it won't,
27:05
I'm not sure how stable a government these parties can
27:09
form. So we should be prepared for
27:13
German politics staying rather volatile in the future.
27:17
Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you said this
27:19
month, obviously we were talking about March 2025, then a new
27:23
parliament comes in presumably and they don't have the numbers
27:27
to amend the Constitution and deal with the debt issue.
27:30
And the contact changing context for this, I guess is, you know,
27:32
Trump taking the side of the Russians over Ukraine,
27:37
potentially abandoning or even destroying NATO.
27:40
So Germany's got to rearm. They've got to get serious
27:43
about, about their own defence production to, to support,
27:46
support Ukraine. And obviously this changes, this
27:49
changes absolutely everything. And the original model of the
27:52
ENIG vendor, which was broken, was it, it seems to be quite
27:55
dependent on Russia. So you know, the, the original
27:58
idea of the Greens was to, was to shut down nuclear, bring in
28:01
wind and solar and have the whole thing backed up by coal
28:04
and gas. And the gas was all was all
28:05
Russian, right from Nord Stream and from those big pipelines
28:09
that I mean, that whole, that whole thing was obviously
28:12
destroyed in 2022 when Putin invaded, invaded Ukraine.
28:17
And so how did the how did the Greens react to that?
28:19
How did the energy vendor kind of nuclear shutdown conversation
28:23
change in that kind of energy emergency?
28:26
It changed. To the extent that so the first
28:32
thing that suddenly became politically viable was building
28:37
LNG terminals, because unlike the pipelines to Russia, which
28:44
were more grandfathered in, LNG terminals were newer in the
28:49
context of German energy policy debate.
28:51
And so they were. It's they were severely opposed
28:56
by the Greens, by the left and by the environmental movement in
28:59
Germany on the issue of climate change and AS.
29:04
Soon as the cost of fuel makes sense, right?
29:06
Yes, yes, of course. But the LNG terminals allow you
29:10
to import from the international market and not be dependent on
29:14
the single source of natural gas.
29:17
And this was not considered at all in their opposition.
29:21
So as the situation with Russia soured and energy import from
29:26
Russia decreased and became a huge issue, so it suddenly
29:29
became politically possible to build LNG terminals in Germany.
29:33
This was one of the first things that changed.
29:36
Another things, another thing that changed.
29:38
It became politically possible to say that the cold phase out
29:44
by 20-30 will not work. It probably might not have even
29:49
worked before. Even if everything went
29:53
smoothly, if Putin never invaded Ukraine, the cold phase out by
29:59
2020 thirty would have been highly aspirational.
30:02
But even now it's it's it's, it's not going to fly.
30:07
Even the more serious Green politicians are admitting this
30:12
and we will be looking into burning coal for electricity
30:16
over the entire twenty 30s. I, I can't, I just can't believe
30:21
this. I can't, I can't believe that a
30:22
Green Party would choose coal over clean nuclear energy, which
30:27
they, they mean, it's one thing to pretend that you're going to
30:30
go to wind and solar and everyone's going to be, you
30:33
know, dancing merrily into the sunset and, you know, you can
30:36
shut down coal as well. And, you know, I, I might think
30:38
that's a fantasy and a mirage, but OK, at least it's a world
30:41
view. But to actually be open about
30:44
wanting to keep coal burning for, you know, a decade or two
30:49
more, it is just how can any Green Party advocate for that?
30:54
So they certainly have their mental gymnastics in order to
30:57
justify this. In the in the beginning they
31:02
were of the opinion that poll isn't even that nasty and that
31:06
nuclear is as awful as it tended.
31:09
So the beginning in the first 3 decades they were very open
31:13
about supporting troll and opposing nuclear.
31:16
Climate change has forced them to oppose troll and I I do
31:20
believe that some of them oppose it in their heart.
31:25
Not all of them, yeah. I, I think not all of them.
31:29
I think there are genuinely a lot of people in the Green Party
31:32
who are quite willing to continue burning coal for a long
31:36
time if it means that they did certain other stuff.
31:42
But most of them, I do believe are sincerely opposed to coal.
31:46
But they need mental gymnastics in order to justify this, and
31:51
they're doing mental gymnastics in order to justify this.
31:54
They are, they are kind of banning on the chicken and egg
31:59
problem of German politics that we have utilities which are for
32:04
political reasons, not interested in doing nuclear
32:08
anymore. They've burned their fingers on
32:10
this. Politics has hurt them.
32:12
And so they try to avoid nuclear energy and they are not really
32:15
excited about any talk about restarting their old plans.
32:21
And then you have politics which thinks of the silence of the
32:27
disinterests of the utilities that regarding nuclear energy as
32:31
an indication that nuclear energy is not interesting that
32:36
yeah, maybe, maybe the other countries around us they are
32:40
interested in for some weird reason.
32:43
But you see our our utilities don't want it.
32:46
So there must be a good reason for it.
32:48
So and from this kick net aid problem comes the situation
32:54
where the anti nuclear people can still claim, oh, it's too
32:59
expensive because of course if it's cheap then the utilities
33:02
would would do it. Oh, it's it's too unsafe because
33:06
otherwise maybe the politicians would do it.
33:08
They still claim that German nuclear fuel is bought from
33:13
Russia, which is not true. With enrichment capabilities in
33:16
Germany, we can enrich our own fuel.
33:18
We can make our manufacturer our own fuel elements in Germany.
33:22
I can buy uranium from Canada and Australia, or we could make
33:27
we have reactors that can run on at least 70% MOX fuel.
33:33
So to a great extent, if not entirely, all our nuclear
33:37
reactors can run not on uranium fuel imported from somewhere,
33:41
but on plutonium fuel that the French can provide to us by
33:46
reprocessing our old nuclear fuel elements.
33:49
So I, I want to get into the possibility of, of nuclear
33:52
restarts in a bit, but just before we move on, what's
33:56
happened to the carbon emissions in Germany then and the climate
34:00
targets if you're keeping coal on the grid for that much
34:02
longer? Absolute production of coal
34:05
electricity has declined and for that reason, the for that reason
34:12
the emissions have declined. Relative emissions haven't
34:16
declined that much because absolute production of
34:20
electricity also declined a lot and the nuclear went away.
34:24
And so the call the relative emissions in grams of CO2 per
34:30
kWh, they've declined a little bit.
34:33
Absolute emissions have declined significantly.
34:38
We are not quite meeting our targets, but CO2 consumption is
34:44
decreasing. But a large degree of CO2
34:47
consumption decreasing comes from the economic downturn,
34:50
comes from these energy intense industries shutting down because
34:56
these industries don't just need electricity, they need process
35:01
heat, they need chemical energy, they need transportation.
35:05
If you look at the situation pre COVID, pre Ukrainian invasion,
35:10
so 2019, you have a situation where a bit less than 1/6 of our
35:15
energy consumption comes from electricity.
35:18
So what happens on the grid, even if the grid would be
35:22
perfectly nuclear energy would not decarbonize Germany and we
35:26
still need oil and gas and some amount of coal for these Heavy
35:30
Industries. Yet as these Heavy Industries
35:34
are declining right now as we speak, their emissions decline.
35:38
And for this reasons we are in in regarding our emissions
35:43
target, we are not doing terrible.
35:46
OK, And just just before we move on from electricity, do do the
35:49
Greens actually believe you can run a modern industrialized
35:53
country entirely on wind and solar with some storage?
35:55
They do. Yes, with some storage and some
35:58
hydrogen, they do believe this. Well, I mean hydrogen we can get
36:01
to as well because that's very highly questionable to say the
36:04
least. But in terms of storage, I mean,
36:06
is this battery storage? I mean, does does does that
36:10
actually exist? So they do believe in battery
36:14
storage. Depending on who you asked.
36:16
Among them, they do believe in even battery storage for for
36:20
days on end and not just hours. It will talk in battery storage
36:24
for hours in order to meet peak demands.
36:27
I think battery storage is quite reasonable to have some amount
36:31
of battery storage on the grid. Even in a grid, if you where you
36:35
have 100% nuclear, having battery storage might get you
36:38
better utilization of your nuclear assets.
36:41
Yet what they are looking into, or what they are promoting is
36:45
using battery storage not to meet peak demand during a few
36:50
peak hours, but in order to power the country through the
36:55
night, even through a night without wind, to power the
36:59
country through potentially veeps of cold doldrums.
37:04
This is the famous Dunkle. Dunkle.
37:07
What's the word that's become kind of part of the energy
37:10
conversation and well outside Germany now so Dunkle flower is
37:13
like you've got a a big anticyclone with very little
37:15
wind and you've got low clouds and you so you don't get any
37:18
solar either because it's winter, right.
37:19
So, and this can go on for days and days and and effect more
37:22
than more than just Germany, certainly all of.
37:24
It can be. It can be perfectly dunkle
37:26
flower can exist with perfectly sunny weather just because
37:30
winter exists. And during winter solar
37:33
significantly underperforms. If you have no wind, even if you
37:37
have sunny days in the winter, you cannot power your country on
37:40
solar. At least.
37:42
No, at least a European country cannot be powered like this.
37:44
Maybe in the more sunny region of the earth it can be.
37:48
So how how so to to get to a dunk of louder?
37:51
How much battery do you need and how far off the target are you?
37:56
So if if we the the current average load on the German grid,
38:02
I think that around 55, 55 gigawatts so that for an entire
38:08
day and that for two weeks then you are talking about 2 1/2
38:13
terawatt hours of storage that you need of battery storage.
38:17
Right. And how much is there now?
38:19
GW hours so orders of magnitude less.
38:22
OK, so. And this is just.
38:24
This is just. Clearing have a thousandth of
38:28
the battery capacity you'd need to get through a whole dunk of
38:30
flout. I think we even have only a 10th
38:32
of 1000, because this assumes that we are running current
38:37
electricity consumption rates. If you assume that you want
38:42
Germany to still be an industrial powerhouse, you want
38:45
people to have good living standards and that you want
38:48
people to heat with electricity, to run their cars with
38:51
electricity, to run the entire economy with electricity, we are
38:55
talking about four to five times the electrical consumption that
38:59
Germany has now. So we are actually talking not
39:03
about 2 1/2 terawatt hours, but we are talking more about 10
39:07
terawatt hours of battery storage in Germany in order to
39:11
prepare ourselves for an auto shout, maybe even more than 10
39:14
terawatt hours. And we are orders of magnitude
39:16
below that, and we probably will never reach in a single order of
39:21
magnitude below that. Yes, because just just the
39:25
expense of it alone, I mean, I'm sure battery technology like
39:28
wind and solar will continue to get cheaper, but not to that
39:31
extent. You'd have to have, you know, an
39:32
imaginal amount of of battery parks all over the place,
39:35
presumably to to deliver that amount of storage.
39:37
And you'd also have to have a lot of additional renewables
39:40
presumably to charge up those batteries during high production
39:43
times. Yes.
39:45
And you, you would you, you would you would talk about
39:48
building batteries that would cost you hundreds of billions
39:54
more, if not, if not trillions of EUR just for Germany.
40:00
Hasn't the whole energy vendor cost 500 billion or some?
40:03
I can't remember what the figure is.
40:04
Is that correct? At the top of my head, I don't
40:07
have it, but you can. You can.
40:11
It's a German resource. It's a take for future from my
40:15
friend Florian Bloom. He has, he has written a lot of
40:19
articles where you can get all the numbers on the German energy
40:23
vendor, including the energy subsidies, but roughly it's 500
40:29
billion of subsidies that went into wind, solar and bio gas
40:34
electricity production. Right.
40:36
But if, if the batteries don't exist, then what did the Greens
40:41
think was going to back up the wind and solar that night time
40:45
and periods of low wind? Literally what do they think?
40:49
I'm trying to get a sense of how realistic because you know, the,
40:52
the the Green Party guy, Robert Hubbock was that his name was
40:55
actually running the energy policies.
40:57
So it was one, it's one thing producing advocacy reports and
41:00
shouting, but I mean, they were actually running the energy
41:02
policy of the country. So what, what, what Robert
41:05
Hubbock I, I assume that he is quite well informed where his
41:11
where his the people working him, him for him don't directly
41:17
tried to misinform him. He is and, and we know that the
41:21
people working for him have tried to misinform him because
41:26
the with the, the nuclear files, where we now know the thoughts
41:33
of his ministry in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear of, of
41:37
the Ukraine invasion, where he went to, to, to centers to, to
41:43
his underlings and said, I need resources so that I can make
41:48
nuclear look as bad as a deaths. And not only was habit trying to
41:55
lie to the German populace, but even the people working for
41:59
habit tried to lie to habit in order to not get him to question
42:05
whether what he was doing was right.
42:08
And but still, habit is one of the more informed dreams on
42:12
energy issues. And what habits?
42:15
Policy pretty much is a policy of building out wind and solar,
42:20
continuing to meet these production targets, keeping as
42:25
much firm resources as you need to keep the lights on running
42:30
and building new firm resources powered by gas.
42:35
Right. So it's a, it's a gas.
42:37
So gas was always going to be the backup it was.
42:39
Always gas. Gas with a hydrogen fig leaf and
42:43
airports. Yes, I mean, I, I looked at the
42:46
hydrogen figures just just before we, we started this and
42:50
you know, hydrogen, clean hydrogen isn't even covering
42:53
hydrogen. I mean, I think 1% of global
42:55
hydrogen production at the moment is, is, is produced
42:57
through electrolysis. So the rest of it's from fossil
43:00
fuels. So hydrogen's just another
43:01
fossil fuel at the moment? Yeah.
43:03
And it's again, orders of magnitude away from being able
43:07
to, to, to be burnt in a power station to keep Germany's lights
43:11
on. I mean, the whole, the whole
43:12
thing is, well, I guess it's as you say, it's not, it's not a
43:15
delusion really. It's a fig leaf because it's
43:16
there to to cover for the fact that they're building more
43:19
fossil fuel. It's, it's, it's a fig leaf and
43:21
it's an expensive fig leaf because this costs money.
43:25
If we we what what the old government wanted to do, they
43:27
wanted to spend €60 billion to build 25 gigawatts of new
43:33
hydrogen ready gas power plants. If they didn't exist, insist on
43:39
the hydrogen ready. These power plants would be much
43:43
less expensive. If you would just say no, we
43:46
abandoned the the hydrogen fit leaf and just build conventional
43:51
gas power plants, state-of-the-art gas power
43:53
plants. You can probably reduce this 60
43:56
billion fader to a number high enough that it would allow you
44:00
to restore 9 German nuclear power plants to operation.
44:03
All right, let's get on to that because I saw a report from
44:06
Radiant Energy. I don't know if you were
44:09
involved with that. I've said very much.
44:11
OK, I've heard you talk about that on on the Decouple podcast.
44:14
And that was just a fascinating conversation that I'd, I'd refer
44:17
everyone to, but give me a, give me a quick, a quick sort of
44:21
briefing on where things are. So all of the nuclear power
44:23
stations are now shut down. Generally they're in various
44:26
stages of decommissioning. They're being dismantled.
44:28
And what what's so what's the what's your radiant energy
44:31
report proposing there? Our reports analyzing the
44:34
situation at the nuclear power plants.
44:36
We have categorized them into four categories.
44:39
Can be turned back on rather easily.
44:42
Can be turned back on while requiring extensive repairs in
44:47
order to replace what has been torn down in the decommissioning
44:50
process. Then we have categories.
44:53
The third category, which is the nuclear steam supply system, is
44:58
completely lost beyond repair. However, the containment
45:03
building the the building of the plant is still intact and can be
45:07
used potentially for the installation of a new reactor.
45:12
What what we considered is using the these extremely massive and
45:17
generously spaced German pressurised water reactor
45:20
containment buildings to install, for example, EPR
45:23
reactors. Since EPR is a direct successor
45:29
of the German reactors, the EPR reactor technology is based on
45:33
the German reactor technology. So we can potentially install
45:36
them in a German reactor building.
45:39
And then we have the 4th category, which is all the
45:43
nuclear power plants where decommissioning has proceeded so
45:46
far that not even the building is rescue able anymore.
45:51
However, the site of the nuclear power plant still has maybe some
45:57
electricity lines running it. You have still still have the
46:00
brownfield that you could use to build a new power plant and you
46:04
have research on the suitability of the site to host such an
46:08
installation has already been done in the past.
46:11
So you don't need to do this. For this reason, these sites are
46:14
still interesting. But what we are focusing right
46:18
now because this is time critical is the category one and
46:24
category 2 reactors. The category one are we can turn
46:26
them around quickly and to power them.
46:29
Category 2, they need repair, but still they can be returned
46:32
online. And these are in total 9
46:34
reactors. And to our analysis, we could
46:39
maybe have the first one which will likely be blocked off be
46:43
running back in two years and we can have all of them running
46:49
again in eight years time for on average between 1 billion and 3
46:58
billion in cost to restore them. So for these 9 reactors, we have
47:03
a combined 12 1/2 gigawatts of of installed capacity.
47:08
We are talking about eight years and around €15 billion to get
47:16
them back into operation, though some of them are more lower
47:20
hanging fruits than the others. That's, I mean, that's, that's
47:23
seriously cheap. If it's, if you're right that
47:25
it, what do you say was 9 billion for 12 gigawatts?
47:30
No, it's 9 reactors with 12 1/2 liter watts for 15 billion. 15
47:34
billion, OK, which is about half the price of a, of a new build
47:37
EPR if you go by, you know, the, the cost that we're seeing at
47:41
Hinckley in, in the UK and Okelewota and other places,
47:45
because these things aren't cheap.
47:46
But I mean, this is potentially the cheapest clean energy
47:50
availability in Europe right now.
47:52
And it, it kind of makes me angry to think that every day
47:55
that passes, this is being further dismantled.
47:57
And it's almost like vandalism of, of a huge clean energy piece
48:02
of infrastructure to, to think of it being gradually degraded
48:06
day by day under the, under this process of decommissioning.
48:09
How? How so?
48:10
Obviously you've got these different categories about how
48:14
far that process has gone, but I mean, how urgent is it?
48:17
We will see the category one reactors where we say we can
48:21
turn them around tricky. There hasn't been done a lot of
48:24
great, there has not been done a lot amount of damage.
48:28
We will see these two reactors slip into our category 2 where
48:34
we need to say we need major repairs by the end of this year.
48:39
We will also see one reactor, Philips Borg 2, slip into the
48:46
third category at the end of this year when the reactor
48:50
pressure vessel will be cut into pieces.
48:54
Because then we need to install a new reactor pressure vessel.
48:57
And then we are. If you are considering
49:01
installing a new reactor pressure vessel, then you are at
49:03
the point where you say maybe we need to install an entire EPR in
49:07
this building or the reactor in the reactor building.
49:12
Because there is just so little left of the old plant and it
49:16
doesn't really fit any more to what we can source in new
49:20
components that we should just start with entirely new
49:24
components in the existing building.
49:26
So by the end of this year, we don't have 9 reactors, we have
49:31
8:00 and all of them will be in our category 2.
49:34
And even among the reactors which will not slip into
49:39
category 3, we will see the recommissioning would take a lot
49:47
more money and then not a lot more, a bit more money.
49:51
So we will see the cost will rise and the amount of reactors
49:54
that we can restore, they will go down.
49:58
We we will have own by next year's.
50:01
We will have only 8 reactors that can be restored if.
50:04
You were to get these 9 reactors on these 12 gigawatts back
50:09
online. What would that do in terms of
50:11
the coal phase out of the all this massive building of LNG
50:14
terminals that you've got in in Germany at the moment?
50:17
So what would immediately have be happening is that German the
50:24
the supply of of German electricity would would improve.
50:27
So if you would say we have all of these reactors just stepping
50:33
back into operation immediately, German base load prices will,
50:40
will fall quite sharply, which will cause other European
50:45
countries to buy a lot more German electricity.
50:49
And this might also cause 'cause the this might cause a situation
50:57
where we won't see the coal phase out being changed because
51:02
we just have an immediate turn from electricity is
51:05
prohibitively expensive. So the industry is declining to
51:08
electricity is cheap again, electricity.
51:10
So the industry can increase it's it's transumption.
51:14
But this isn't something that happens rapidly.
51:16
It will be German nuclear on the grid will go from zero gigawatts
51:23
to 12 gigawatts over 8 years slowly.
51:26
So in in this fashion, this wall somewhat reduce electricity
51:33
prices in Germany. It will therefore it will it
51:38
will reduce interest price in Germany slightly.
51:40
It will somewhat alleviate the burden on German industry.
51:45
It will probably not displace coal because German industry can
51:52
now consume more energy. It will not displace coal
51:55
directly. It will just save Germany as an
51:59
industrialized nation. But if we talk long term, since
52:02
these reactors that we can restore now, we cannot, We can
52:07
restore them not for 10 years. We can restore them for 20
52:09
years. And even after the 20 years, we
52:12
can very much look into running them for another 20 years.
52:16
We're talking about reactors which have operated for a good
52:20
30 years and nuclear reactors of this type can run 80 years.
52:26
So these records will very much also be running eight years if
52:29
we restore them. So if we look at the long term
52:32
future, this might be something that makes a coal phase out in
52:40
the later twenty 30s viable. Because even now that the
52:44
Germany that the government will be setting their target from the
52:47
coal phase out from the 30s back to the from the early 30s to the
52:52
late 30s, there is no assurance that this will happen in the
52:55
late 30s. If we don't have anything on the
52:58
grid that can replace it, it will not happen.
53:02
As we have seen in the past, if the situation comes, if it's so
53:06
dire, we need these these power plants back on.
53:10
They will be turned back on. Even if they are in a really
53:13
shitty condition, they will be turned back on their coal
53:16
plants. But would restarting the nuclear
53:18
help or harm the renewables build out?
53:21
I mean, are nuclear and renewables friends or are they
53:24
enemies? Nuclear is a friend to anyone.
53:27
If you are a reliable person or an reliable producer of
53:33
electricity, you can become a friend to anyone.
53:36
Nuclear can become a friend to cold, become a friend to gas,
53:40
can become a friend to renewables can become a friend
53:43
to hydro. The question is, will renewables
53:47
become a friend to anything due to their unreliability?
53:54
And this largely depends on how much renewables you have on the
53:58
grid and how much storage you have on the grid.
54:01
If we have a lot of storage on the grid and if we have
54:05
renewable penetration on the grid where the renewable
54:10
percentage is similar to their capacity factor, you can foresee
54:15
a situation where this will work out.
54:17
And then you can decide. For example, with average German
54:22
wind capacity factor being 20% and average German solar
54:25
capacity factor being 10%, you can very much stress a situation
54:30
where we have 70% nuclear on the German grid and 30% renewables
54:36
and this might work. If it won't work, it will not be
54:40
the fault of the nuclear energy because this is just the fact.
54:44
If you are dependable, you are dependable and you can be used
54:48
for whatever. You're not dependable.
54:50
You can be used for very little. This goes for for your friends,
54:54
for your colleagues, and this goes for power plants.
54:56
Yes, I, I get that. And what's the political
55:00
feasibility, I mean, be honest here about for, for the
55:03
prospects of turning back on or on on decommissioning these
55:07
these nuclear reactors. If we want to prevent additional
55:12
damage from being done, we need to stop the decommissioning work
55:17
on these 9 reactors If you want to So the the federal government
55:23
can order the stop. Also, the state government can
55:27
wield their executive powers to delay the process.
55:31
For example, the the Bavarian government, where the governor
55:36
governor regularly says he is interested in bringing back his
55:41
nuclear power plants in his country.
55:43
He has the authority to stop or delay the decommissioning
55:48
process. And I know that there will very
55:52
soon a step in the decommissioning process of the
55:55
ISA 2 reactor in the varier be undertaken that makes it more
55:58
expensive. So Mr. Zurda, if you're serious,
56:01
do something about halting the decommissioning process of ISA
56:04
2. If we talk about a federal
56:07
process in all of Germany, if we want to do this, it needs to be
56:13
passed by the Bundestar that there is a stop of
56:16
decommissioning. There needs to be a perspective
56:19
here. So, for example, the Bundestar
56:21
can say we will halt decommissioning.
56:23
We will provide funds in order to keep the decommissioning
56:29
companies which are sitting at idle to keep them in business.
56:34
And we will provide funds for these idling decommissioning
56:38
companies. And some, excuse me, some people
56:45
who have the qualifications to look into whether the what
56:51
concrete measures need to be taken to restore these plans of
56:54
technically and from a legal perspective that this will be
56:57
brought and this will be advised by the companies who know the
57:01
plans, by the operators who know the plans to then decide, OK,
57:05
what does do? What do we need to do in detail
57:10
to restore this nuclear power plant from every every control
57:14
line, from every bolt, from every well that needs to be
57:18
done. That this needs to be analysed
57:20
as a concrete amount of money and time that needs to be looked
57:27
into will be taken and presented to the government, to the
57:31
utilities, to potential other investors who might look into
57:35
operating them. We could see a situation like in
57:38
America where we see the Palisades nuclear power plant
57:42
being brought back by Holtec, not by its original owner,
57:46
because the owner who sold it to Palisades could also look into
57:50
do we sell German nuclear power plants?
57:52
Or more likely, can we sell a nuclear utility in its entirety?
57:57
We have a utility in Germany which does only nuclear power
58:00
plant. Currently, it is only busy with
58:05
shovelling its own grave, but you can look into we buy this
58:09
utility, we buy the utility which owns most of Germany's
58:12
nuclear power plants, and then we provide the funds to restore
58:15
these nuclear power plants. This needs detailed analysis.
58:19
This needs time and manpower. And the government can make this
58:24
happen. This is what what we foresee the
58:27
government's role should be. Ideally, halt decommissioning,
58:32
provide for situation where a detailed assessment happens, and
58:38
also repeal the singular paragraph in German law that
58:44
makes operation of commercial nuclear power plants illegal.
58:48
Repeal this paragraph, which is easy, commit to a phase out
58:51
halt, which is a bit harder, and let then let's see if the
58:55
government is just willing to repeal the phase out, repeal the
59:00
law that made it illegal and we have an investor or an utility
59:07
with enough funds to say for at least this reactor, we want to
59:13
bring that back onto operation. You can do that anyway, because
59:16
if you say we are restoring this reactor, you can get out of
59:21
being forced to do the decommissioning process.
59:23
Then you can restore the reactor to operation even without the
59:26
government supporting this, as long as the government at least
59:32
makes it viable and doesn't make it illegal anymore.
59:35
So it's not over for nuclear in Germany and there's presumably
59:38
opportunities and for campaigners to get involved to
59:41
support clean energy and want to stop the decommissioning and and
59:45
save these reactors from being further destroyed.
59:47
What what do you recommend people people to do in terms of
59:50
actually getting involved and making their voices heard?
59:52
Get in touch with the German pro nuclear movement.
59:55
Get in touch with with with us from from Nuclearia.
1:00:00
Because this is the fight that we are fighting, we are having a
1:00:04
campaign to argue for this. We will be having events all
1:00:09
over Europe through the course of this year, which you can
1:00:13
join. The next one will likely be in
1:00:17
the city of Castle in central Germany and there will be more
1:00:20
to follow. We will hold a big conference on
1:00:26
what, what it means to restart nuclear energy for Germany and
1:00:29
what needs to be done. It has been delayed somewhat,
1:00:33
but it will be happening in around late May in Berlin.
1:00:37
So attend this conference, potentially attend our our
1:00:42
smaller events, which will be happening all over Germany over
1:00:44
the time of this year. Write to German politicians,
1:00:49
write to Germans that you know. Write to German companies that
1:00:52
you know and also if you have contacts with politicians from
1:00:58
your countries, your countries can exert political pressure on
1:01:04
the German situation. And I would say it's very much
1:01:08
in there right now. Don't have an election anymore.
1:01:10
It isn't election interference, but it is speaking out about
1:01:14
what is happening on happening in one of your neighbor
1:01:18
countries, in one of the most important neighbor countries and
1:01:23
one of the most important European countries in our
1:01:27
geopolitical situation right now.
1:01:29
And a strong, free, prosperous democratic Europe needs a
1:01:35
strong, free and prosperous democratic Germany.
1:01:38
It will just not work without it.
1:01:41
And the strong and prosperous can be, can only be achieved if
1:01:47
we have a good supply of electricity in Germany and a
1:01:50
good supply of power of of energy in general.
1:01:55
And without this, there is no situation where Germany can step
1:02:00
in and at least partially fill the void that the Trump
1:02:05
government in America has left. As much as the many German
1:02:11
politicians right now might just think, oh, we just need to pass
1:02:15
some resolutions to get more funding for the Bundeswehr, this
1:02:20
will not be it. This will become even more
1:02:23
unpopular if the economic downturn continues.
1:02:27
This will become even more unfeasible if the economic
1:02:30
downturn continues and if Germany is an industrial
1:02:34
powerhouse. Germany cannot be a country with
1:02:38
a huge defence industry. And if the German defence
1:02:40
industry is absolutely necessary to replace the void that the
1:02:46
American defence industry has left since we can no longer rely
1:02:50
on it, there are certain systems, American systems, that
1:02:54
if we want to replace them, they can only be replaced by Germany.
1:02:58
And for this reason Europe needs Germany, and right now Germany
1:03:02
needs Europe. We need your help to return our
1:03:06
nuclear power plants. This is very much a battle in
1:03:11
the broader war to safe and protect Western liberal
1:03:16
democracies. Wow, wow, I can't imagine a
1:03:20
fight which is more worth having.
1:03:21
I mean, this isn't a fight just for the climate or even just for
1:03:24
jobs. It's a it's a fight for
1:03:25
democracy itself in the heart of Europe.
1:03:27
So I wish you all the best, Noah, for you and all of your
1:03:30
fellow campaigners out there. I hope everyone who's listening
1:03:34
to this can get involved. I know we plan it's going to be
1:03:37
really helping up its game and give you all the support that
1:03:41
that you need and deserve. So just for now, I hope to have
1:03:43
you back on at some point and let us know how it's going.
1:03:45
But thanks so much Noah for your time.
1:03:47
It's been fascinating support. Thanks so much for listening to
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