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The chairman of the Energy Transitions Commission has highlighted the role both companies and governments can play when it comes to reducing emissions, emphasizing the importance of the upcoming COP26 summit on climate change.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” at the end of last week, Adair Turner was asked if meaningful action was actually taking place when it comes to corporate announcements related to ESG — a term which stands for environmental, social and governance — or if these lacked substance.

“A lot of meaningful action is taking place,” Turner said. “The problem is that it’s five to ten years later than it should have occurred – but it’s still good news.”

He went on to note that companies and countries across the world were “now making clear commitments and taking clear actions” to cut their emissions.

“Almost everybody has now agreed that we’ve got to get the global economy to about zero emissions by 2050,” Turner, who chaired the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority between 2008 and 2013, said.

“The other bit of good news is that the technologies to do that — the technologies of renewables, of batteries, of electrolyzing hydrogen — have ended up being far cheaper and easier to apply than we dared hope 10 years ago,” he said.

According to the foreword of a recent report from the International Renewable Energy Agency, the cost of electricity from utility scale solar photovoltaics dropped by 85% in the period 2010 to 2020. For onshore wind, costs fell by 56%, while offshore wind saw a decline of 48%.

The report from IRENA also states that, in the U.S., the price of utility scale battery storage decreased by 71% between 2015 and 2018.
 
The production of hydrogen using renewables and electrolysis — sometimes called ‘green’ hydrogen — remains expensive, but efforts are also being made to lower costs.

In June, the U.S. Department of Energy launched its Energy Earthshots Initiative and said the first of these would focus on cutting the cost of “clean” hydrogen to $1 per kilogram (2.2 lbs) in a decade. According to the DOE, hydrogen from renewables is priced at around $5 a kilogram today.

COP26

Looking at the bigger picture, Turner acknowledged that while the technologies were there and a lot of companies were taking action, even stronger commitments would be needed at COP26, which will be held in the Scottish city of Glasgow from October 31 to November 12.

“In particular, we now need to focus not just on how do we get to zero emissions by 2050, but how do we get really serious emission reductions in methane as well as CO2 — I want to stress that point — in the 2020s,” he said. “We’ve really got to get the action in place now.”

A lot is riding on COP26, which was due to take place last year but postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.K.’s official website for the summit says it will “bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

Described by the United Nations as a legally binding international treaty on climate change, the Paris Agreement, adopted in late 2015, aims to “limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.”

Much of the discussions at Glasgow will be centered around nationally determined contributions, or NDCs. In simple terms, NDCs refer to individual countries’ targets for cutting emissions and adapting to the effects of climate change.

In his interview with CNBC Turner noted how the NDCs presented at COP26 would, when added up, be “nothing like the scale of emission reductions that we need.”

“We are going to have to think about additional action on top of that,” he said. “And that will require further tightening of NDCs in future years but also, maybe, some cross-cutting initiatives at COP26 on methane, on deforestation, on accelerating the drive towards electric vehicles, which can be agreed across all countries.”

Governmental role

When it came to getting results, Turner stressed the important role national governments could play.

“You need not only corporates to be committed and to make voluntary commitments because they want to do the right thing,” he said, but strict government ”regulations and taxes and other instruments as well.”

He explained how establishing a framework to create the conditions in which businesses could then deliver was key.

One example of how governments are attempting to generate change is in the automotive industry. The U.K., for instance, wants to stop the sale of new diesel and petrol cars and vans by 2030 and require, from 2035, all new cars and vans to have zero tailpipe emissions.

“The automotive industry is pivoting towards EVs at an amazing pace,” Turner said. “But we need to make that even faster by just telling them you can’t sell an internal combustion engine car beyond 2035. So yes, you need strong action from government — sometimes the best action is regulation, sometimes it’s a carbon price, sometimes it’s a subsidy or support.”

When it comes to climate change and action, topics related to increased government regulation and carbon pricing have generated a significant amount of debate in recent times.

In a separate interview with CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick over the weekend, former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz touched upon these subjects.

Moniz said he thought the energy transition to net zero was “a $100 trillion-plus affair.” He was, he said, encouraged at how financial institutions were “demanding things like disclosure from … companies … in order to be able to shape their own investment portfolios.”

“But we know that most areas of the clean energy transition right now do not have, let’s say, the returns that an investor would like without government coming in and reshaping policy and regulation,” Moniz said. “So that I think is a key step now that needs further attention.”

He was then asked if a carbon tax would level the playing field and make renewables more attractive when compared with hydrocarbons.

“First of all, I like to say clean energy and not renewable because we need the entire space, including carbon capture and hydrogen and nuclear.”

“But yes, a carbon pricing mechanism, I think, would be the most straightforward way of doing two things. One, to shape the playing field – assuming the price, frankly, is high enough. But secondly, what carbon pricing would do is create a pool of resources that I would strongly urge be used in a progressive way.”

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Economists, experts call for governments to ditch hydrogen, go fully electric

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Economists, experts call for governments to ditch hydrogen, go fully electric

In a joint statement, French and German economists have called on governments to adopt “a common approach” to decarbonize European trucking fleets – and they’re calling for a focus on fully electric trucks, not hydrogen.

France and Germany are the two largest economies in the EU, and they share similar challenges when it comes to freight decarbonization. The two countries also share a border, and the traffic between the two nations generates major cross-border flows that create common externalities between the two countries.

At the same time, the EU’s transport sector has struggled to reduce emissions at the same rate as other industries – and road freight in particular is a major contributor to harmful carbon emissions issue due to that industry’s heavy reliance on diesel-powered trucks.

And for once, it seems like rail isn’t a viable option:

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While rail remains competitive mainly for heavy, homogeneous goods over long distances. Most freight in Europe is indeed transported over distances of less than 200 km and involves consignment weights of up to 30 tonnes (GCEE, 2024) In most such cases, transportation by rail instead of truck is not possible or not competitive. Moreover, taking into account the goods currently transported in intermodal transport units over distances of more than 300 km, the modal shift potential from road to rail would be only 6% in Germany and less than 2% in France.

FRANCO-GERMAN COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC EXPERTS (FGCEE)

That leaves trucks – and, while numerous government incentives currently exist to promote the parallel development of both hydrogen and battery electric vehicle infrastructures, the study is clear in picking a winner.

“Policies should focus on battery-electric trucks (BET) as these represent the most mature and market-ready technology for road freight transport,” reads the the FGCEE statement. “Hence, to ramp-up usage of BET public funding should be used to accelerate the roll-out of fast-charging networks along major corridors and in private depots.”

The appeal was signed by the co-chair of the advisory body on the German side is the chairwoman of the German Council of Economic Experts, Monika Schnitzer. Camille Landais co-chairs the French side. On the German side, the appeal was signed by four of the five experts; Nuremberg-based energy economist Veronika Grimm (who also sits on the National Hydrogen Council, which is committed to promoting H2 trucks and filling stations) did not sign.

You can read an English version of the CAE FGCEE joint statement here.

Electrek’s Take

Hydrogen-sceptical truck maker MAN to produce limited series of 200 vehicles with H2 combustion engines
MAN hydrogen semi; via MAN Trucks.

MAN Trucks’ CEO famously said that it was “impossible” for hydrogen to compete with BEVs, and even committed to building 200 hydrogen-powered semi truck to prove out that hypothesis.

He’s not alone. MAN’s board member for research and development, Frederik Zohm, said that the company is the one saying hydrogen still has years to go. “(MAN) continues to research fuel cell technology based on battery electrics,” he said, in a statement quoted by Hydrogen Insight, before another board member added that, “we (MAN) expect that, in the future, we will be able to best serve the vast majority of our customers’ transport applications with battery-electric trucks.”

With companies like Volvo and Renault and now Mercedes racking up millions of miles on their respective battery electric semi truck fleets, it’s no longer even close. EV is the way.

SOURCE | IMAGES: CAE FGCEE; via Electrive.

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Quick Charge | the terrifying Trump tariffs are finally upon us!

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Quick Charge | the terrifying Trump tariffs are finally upon us!

On today’s tariff-tastic episode of Quick Charge, we’ve got tariffs! Big ones, small ones, crazy ones, and fake ones – but whether or not you agree with the Trump tariffs coming into effect tomorrow, one thing is absolutely certain: they are going to change the price you pay for your next car … and that price won’t be going down!

Everyone’s got questions about what these tariffs are going to mean for their next car buying experience, but this is a bigger question, since nearly every industry in the US uses cars and trucks to move their people and products – and when their costs go up, so do yours.

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyTuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.

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Got news? Let us know!
Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.

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SunZia Wind’s massive 2.4 GW project hits a big milestone

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SunZia Wind’s massive 2.4 GW project hits a big milestone

GE Vernova has produced over half the turbines needed for SunZia Wind, which will be the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere when it comes online in 2026.

GE Vernova has manufactured enough turbines at its Pensacola, Florida, factory to supply over 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of the turbines needed for the $5 billion, 2.4 GW SunZia Wind, a project milestone. The wind farm will be sited in Lincoln, Torrance, and San Miguel counties in New Mexico.

At a ribbon-cutting event for Pensacola’s new customer experience center, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik noted that since 2023, the company has invested around $70 million in the Pensacola factory.

The Pensacola investments are part of the announcement GE Vernova made in January that it will invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities over the next two years to help meet the surging electricity demands globally. GE Vernova says it’s expecting its investments to create more than 1,500 new US jobs.

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Vic Abate, CEO of GE Vernova Wind, said, “Our dedicated employees in Pensacola are working to address increasing energy demands for the US. The workhorse turbines manufactured at this world-class factory are engineered for reliability and scalability, ensuring our customers can meet growing energy demand.”

SunZia Wind and Transmission will create US history’s largest clean energy infrastructure project.

Read more: The largest clean energy project in US history closes $11B, starts full construction


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