Climate Basics Podcast - Ep 9, Show Notes (Solar & EV Dominance: China)
- Greg
- Dec 15, 2025
- 27 min read
Updated: Jan 20
China installing 277 GW of solar in 2024
River vortex generator, video and image clips:
Episode 9, Climate Basics Podcast
Transcript for Ep 9:
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[Music] Welcome to Climate Basics, a podcast about the global energy transition and
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the challenges countries face, presented in an optimistic and realistic light.
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Here are your hosts, Ty and Greg. And please remember to like and subscribe.
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Hi Ty. Hey Greg. How's it going? Good. Another episode. Exciting topic.
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Yeah, very. Yeah. Today we'd like to talk about the solar market and the manufacturing of
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solar panels. And then as well we'll talk about the EV market and the production of EV vehicles, electric
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vehicles and hybrid vehicles. And our focus will be on the role that China is
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playing. As almost everybody knows, China has a dominant position in both
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the solar panel manufacturing industry as well as the EV market industry. And
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so we're going to talk about you know how did they get there? How did China arrive at the position where right now
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they are the dominant force and also they are the ones producing um all the solar panels that countries around the
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world are snapping up and as well you know EVs they are producing the EVs at
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scale and for a reasonable price prices that we're just not used to. Yeah,
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that's right. And uh this is a story of policy. It's a story of innovation on
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technology that we've been sitting on for a hundred years and haven't really advanced until recent decades. It's also
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a story of resource acquisition. You know, uh it helps to have twothirds of the rare earth metals on the planet in
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your backyard essentially. It doesn't hurt, right? No, it doesn't hurt. Okay. Well, before we get into the this
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exciting topic, um I was wondering whether or not we could do this new segment that you and I have talked
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about, which is just a piece just a piece of good news just so that for people who are afflicted with eco
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anxiety, which is all of us um you know that that there is some good news for people out there. So, um why don't you
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start Ty? Okay. Uh let's see some good news. Oh, we've got a new type of water energy
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generation system. It's basically called a vortex generator. This is instead of
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having one giant hydroelectric dam displacing everybody that used to live in the valley and the entire forest that
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used to be over there and just flooding the whole thing and then having a giant system where the whole state gets its
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power from. Instead, what about in every little canal in every fairly large
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rainwater drainage ditch in all the major rivers, you have these little systems. They're smaller than the size
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of a car where basically you capture the water from the river. There's a spillover, of course, so the fish can
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get through, but uh you capture the water and get it going in a circle going down to a central drain just like in our
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sinks. And then that way with the water already moving in this lateral motion, you put one vertical axis turbine right
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in the middle there to catch the water pushing it through as it's going through. It's much more efficient than
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uh the traditional horizontal axis watermills of centuries past.
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And it's very clever because very little intervention on the ecosystem actually
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creates more habitat for algae and snails and everything and frogs. Uh, this is something that doesn't use rare
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earth metals. You can build it out of steel and concrete and it can power maybe a dozen or two dozen homes at a
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time. Wow, that's phenomenal because this the size and sort of the practical
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implementation that sounds sort of perfect for so many locations. Yeah, if you've got for we've talked
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about eco villages in the past. If you've got a community of 10 or 20 houses that are collectively trying to
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get off the grid or to get as close to zero carbon as possible, install one of these on the local river and you might
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be set. Oh, that's fantastic. Well, that is good news. Um and so this
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week my good news is um that it was just recently reported that uh estimates or
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official reports and estimates have come out as to how much solar China is installing in its country again this
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year in 2025. And so, um, the short answer is this is that last year 2024,
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China just shocked everyone, just blew everyone out of the water because they installed about 277 gawatt or 300 gawatt
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of solar panels um in their own country in 12 months. And so that's an enormous
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number. And so the great news is that year to date, so January to September
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2025, um they're on track to meet the same amount or exceed it in 2025. So you know
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the the how much is 200ome gigawatts? Uh help us
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out. What put that in context for us? Um short answer, it's a lot. So 277 gaww
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is ballpark. And this is just all sort of rough to give us an indication. It's ballpark how much the United States has
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in solar installation as a country. And so China in in total and so California, Texas, those
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superpowers, everybody else, China installed the equivalent of the US solar
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panel system in one year. In one in one year, they installed
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everything we've built in the last 40. That's right. And then in the next year after that they're doubling it.
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They're doubling it. And so to give people an indication, so 277
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gawatt of solar panels, that's a lot. But how much? So using the US average
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house consumption because the US does consume a lot per household as compared to other um municipal or other
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jurisdictions around the world. For example, the the average amount is higher than in Europe. It's higher than other nations, but using the US average
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household, that would be enough 277 gawatts to power approximately
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45 million homes. Wow. And so if things were perfect, if you could install them, if you could get
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them to um the homes and using an average about 4 hours of sunlight per
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day. And so during the summertime when there's 10 hours, you know, you you
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reduce it down to four and then so on so forth, you get 45 million. And so in the US
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ballpark, there are 140 million homes. And so in one calendar year, China
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installed enough solar, you know, to to power almost onethird of the US homes.
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Wow. Isn't that incredible? 40 out of 140 g. Yeah. Wow. That's
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that's amazing really. I mean it also uh it's very needed too when you
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consider that globally energy use is going up not not just for the US with
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their uh AI bot farms etc. uh but also a
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lot of developing countries are increasing their electrification. So we need to see this type of capacity if
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we're going to match the expected demands for energy production. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. You're right.
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And so I think this is a nice segue. So the segue being that solar panel
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production around the world has been increasing. And uh as you can talk
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about, but as as a lot of people know, solar panels have been around for a long time. And the big problem with
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installing solar panels up until very recently was that it was not the the
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cheapest way of getting electricity. So, you had to be prepared to pay more for it, install it, and it wasn't uh, you
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know, sort of the best way. I'm talking about 20 years ago. I'm talking about even 10 years ago. So, what's happened
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in the past four or five years is that China has really upped their game. And
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so, now other countries are following, but China really up their game. and the the number of solar panels that they
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have produced year-over-year from 2020 to 2021 to 2022 23 and 24 which we just
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talked about and now 25 it's really increased really ramped and along the
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way China has too many factories producing solar panels and so they have
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too much inventory but they haven't stopped and so what they've been doing is offering it to other countries and
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the price of solar has just dropped and thank goodness for that. You and I have
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talked about this and I suspect we'll keep on talking about it. Thank goodness someone has solved the solar panel
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problem. Some you know thank goodness someone can produce it at scale and for cheap. But maybe you what you can do Tai
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is start us off with the listeners and and talk about how how in the world did
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China get to this position where they're producing the majority of the solar panels and they're producing it for cheap. Where did it all start?
9:32
Uh well it started in the ground specifically uh in the ground is uh
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lithium uh silicon variety of other core elements that are required to make solar
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panels and a lot of electronics that we depend on in our day-to-day lives. uh
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having vast stretches of desert with good amounts of uh the right minerals in
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them is the beginning of what now is a plan for technological leadership on the
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part of China. There are other places where you can get raw materials for construction, but the giant western
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deserts of China and going into Afghan all of the stands
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uh to the west of there uh this was where China and until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia were extracting
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huge amounts of critical minerals. And those critical minerals are the basis
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for a supply chain that China grew very intentionally from scratch and developed
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to maximum peaks of efficiency because of central planning and long-term
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thinking. Right. Right. So, so the story starts
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off with having the the uh the minerals as you say and to and and China has
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that. They also have extensive relationships in in Africa. Does that have anything to do with the solar story
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or the EV story? Well, definitely as a as a destination for sure. We see really great
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improvements from Pakistan growing in solar and from parts of coastal east Africa. There are economies that are
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benefiting not just from China helping with building bridges and dams and uh hydroelectric facilities, but also just
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energy generation as you said from cheap solar panels that can get to their market really quickly. And this is a
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huge benefit for as I said a lot of developing countries that need to get better access to education, to
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communications, to news for their citizens. Everyone watching this show is
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used to having access to the internet, but there are a lot of people in the world that do not have this source of
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infinite energy, entertainment, and often distraction that we all take for
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granted and get to choose from a variety of clever podcasts to listen to, right?
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We want to get more people in that global conversation, right? And we need
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those solar panels to make that happen, right? And so China started off with
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having um the critical minerals, the minerals in the ground, the rare earth
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minerals, all those sorts of things. And as you already mentioned, they have central planning. And so as many people
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know, they the the communist party is the ruling party, the only party in the
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country. And what they do is they actually come up with five-year plans. And so the 5-year plan is basically uh
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as you've explained it in previous episodes, it's top-down planning. It's the the federal government setting up a
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plan and basically directing the provinces to go and and take whatever steps is necessary to implement this
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plan. And so from from and these are very transparent. I mean, countries
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around the world monitor these five-year plans so that they have a general idea of what the Chinese would like to do.
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And so with the the solar panel uh industry as well as the EV in terms of timing, it seems like China really
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started to focus in and tried to make this a national plan around the
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beginning of the century. So 2000, so approximately 25 years ago. So what is
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it that what is it that they did? What was it that sort of happened from their time? Uh well f for the and I've never
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been to China so uh I I wasn't involved in the development of their electric car market but uh first and this is a
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strategy we've seen in previous decades uh first you create a good presence for
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that industry in your country by inviting other companies to take advantage of the cheap workforce and
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prevalent abundant materials for raw materials for production. ction and build factories and then once you have
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those factories there there's a cultural osmosis of the best practices for that
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industry. So you end up have having after a few years Chinese experts in say
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for example with Tesla moving a a few factories over there a couple decades ago uh you now have a bunch of Chinese
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experts in electric vehicle manufacturer and that's the type of thing that's the type of raw resource like of lithium a
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pile of engineering experts that are focused on making efficient electric car
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production And that's a resource you need to grow that industry.
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And China has been putting in the work for this is as as you said, I think the fifth 5-year plan. And in those they've
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been continuously moving towards having an educated workforce that's pumping
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pumping out a ton of academic papers, a ton of research materials and a ton of
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sites experimenting with what's the best way to not only build them but to site
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them to find the right locations to install solar panels. Right? I remember a story going around
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where there was a area of desert where they installed a bunch of solar panels in western China and found that there
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was uh more shade cooling the the top level of the soil allowing seeds of
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grass to grow back where normally they would be too hot for them which ended up
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affecting the solar panels cuz the grass grew taller than the solar panels. But then new solution, they brought sheep
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and now they've got uh uh agravaics going where you've got sheep pasturing
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underneath in between the solar panels to take care of the grass. So you basically desertified a chunk of land
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just by using marginal non-productive land as uh solar panel area. You've now
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accidentally created a better ecosystem that you can farm in the future, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a that's a a
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beautiful story to be able to take unproductive land and then to make it very productive in in every way
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including for animals. Yeah. Um so with with the solar panels now the solar panels uh industry and the EV industry
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they do differ. The EV industry of course is hotly contested. The autom
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industry is uh one of national pride. countries have built their um their
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identity around it as well as built uh you know very large percentage of their GDP around it etc and but but solar
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panels it seems really flew under the radar in the sense that for a long time
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here China devoted uh and allowed its provinces to pursue a strategy of doing
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two things which is number one as you indicated trying to own the vertical
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uh sort of scale of mining, extracting and then refining the minerals and then
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secondly using those minerals and then building factories and create solar panels. And so and in terms of this um
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you know the general way that the uh federal government the communist party in China does this is they just set out
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dictates which is it's almost like guidelines to the provinces saying it's
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okay for you to spend time and money offer very low interest loans uh or no
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interest loans to encourage new businesses to start in these areas and
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we'd like these results. And so by doing that for you know if they've been doing this for 25 years
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really they are you know they are a a a recent overnight success story 25 years
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in the making they were not a big news story for solar 10 years ago because the
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cost of solar was not uh was not competitive. Yeah. Right. They've only become the biggest
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news story recently because everybody's just sat back and said how did this happen? like how did you create this
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industry that's pumping out all these solar panels and why are they so cheap? And and you really hit the nail on the
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head talking about the vertical integration of the entire value chain.
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Uh so that that's some jargon to explain to the audience. Uh basically if you're
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making chocolate first you start off with some very tropical looking trees
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that I'm sure most people would not even recognize if they bumped into one. Then you have this giant uh shelled fruit
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that you have to break open and get then you have to uh ferment and dry and grind
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and do all these different steps and eventually you have a powder that you can mix with milk and sugar and make
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what we identify as chocolate. But every step of that processing
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you are somebody is doing effort and somebody is getting paid and it gets
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more expensive the more steps you go. So this uh this value chain basically
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in general in the world the person mining or fishing or farming the raw material is going to be paid the least.
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I don't I I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying that's how it's been going lately. And the next people are
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going to be getting bigger and bigger chunks of the profit from that value chain as they add in the next step in
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shipping, storing, processing, refining etc. the raw material into the finished
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product. So the difference between a country like India, China, the US and a
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country like uh Congo, Nigeria, South Africa is not really size or available
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resources. It's whether you were fortunate enough to own your value chain
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in your country or whether through colonialism and u fate uh you ended up
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being a country that is extracted from that sells raw material and then buys it
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back as a finished product losing money on both ends. China saw that it had an
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advantage early with the rare earth metals and then decided to lean in on
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that and build up that entire value chain inside China so that if you are in
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a in one of these states that was encouraging EV growth, you had access to
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dirt cheap highquality batteries way earlier than a lot of other people in
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the same sector, especially if they were in Germany or Japan or US.
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Right. Right. Yeah. And and I mean so it's it's a different political system
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and they they run by different rules than than say the US does. And the US is
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more um allow companies to compete and sink and swim based on your own merit.
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If you have a great idea, other people will follow. But then capital, as you've indicated previously, is here so that
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capital can infuse into your company and then help you grow. Whereas the Chinese, it seems like with the solar industry,
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they were willing to absorb and really sort of ignore, not focus in on losses
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and unproductive uh sort of investments for an extended period of time. Because you know when
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you have a system and you are trying to build it up for 10 or 15 years and
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you're allowing your provinces to to offer very low interest uh rate loans in
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order to to to create this industry basically that's a system which um it it
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can't easily be replicated in other countries. it can't and there is so there's a comparable uh equivalence to
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how they have in China these large mandates that provide security and root
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funding for these big long-term projects in the west what we have instead is
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venture capital they are the people doing giant piles of risky bets one or
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two of which might pan out and become hugely profitable but with the venture
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capital world. If you want to be one of these startups, you have to be able to prove that you're going to get to a
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marketable product fairly fast. This is we're talking like two-year turnaround,
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not five, not 10, not 20. So, we have a similar model that is all rooted on
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capital and capitalism, but it can only do kind of midterm level planning. It's
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uh I think for honestly it's one of the reasons why we're still moving so slowly
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with nuclear fusion energy. Fusion has been 20 years away my entire lifetime.
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Yeah. Right. And I wonder if a centralized
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planned economy that was willing to just burn a pile of money at it until you had
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something was really focused on nuclear fusion if we might not have that already
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right. Yeah. Uh yeah I don't know. Yeah. China China is the country which
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is installing nuclear plants you know at scale. I think that there are 30 nuclear
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plants under construction or or or final investment decisions, you know, such
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that it is and so being built. So, so yeah. So, a country that's willing to
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absorb these losses for a long-term goal because they would like to um
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essentially create and then of course dominate an industry. That's that's something where it could have failed of
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course, but thank goodness it hasn't. And so um when you talk about uh sort of
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the the you know a different system it the US does have a different system. Now, in the past administration,
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um they they passed the IRA, the inflation reduction act, and that was of course like an onshoring type of bring
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the jobs back here, bring manufacturing back here, but it really did kickstart a lot of investment in these renewable
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technologies. And solar, I've read, you know, has increased to 50 gawatts of
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production in in the US per year under the IRA requiring these subsidies or
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these tax credits, but but you know, it was the US way of trying to build this
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industry, trying to build uh a supply chain, trying to get in the game. And of
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course, that's on pause right now. But yeah, but but the US has ways of doing this.
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Yeah, I think it just takes really um some strong leadership saying we're going to use the the bulk of the
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government to try to encourage this to send market signals to the private sector to put money in and and they did
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and the the certainly the private money did follow under the IRA. Yeah, absolutely. So Ty, if we're
25:13
talking about car market, so we're talking about automakers and the new car market and so EVs, electric vehicles,
25:22
um, obviously are making a big push in the US and across the world. Of course,
25:28
when Tesla landed, it was just this boom, this this huge bomb that went off
25:34
in a good way, which was that my goodness, um the this EV vehicle, not
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only are they fast, not only are they wonderful to drive and and fun to drive,
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but you know, other than the fact that you have to fill them up, charge them in a
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different different manner from industrial uh than from the ICE vehicles, um you know that they're fantastic and
26:00
and probably you're the same. You know, I know I've run into dozens and dozens
26:06
and dozens of families over the years that have electric vehicles and really
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none of them say anything but amazing things. It's almost like you you go to electric vehicles, you're never really
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going to go back. You're just going to enjoy that. But of course, this is a
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really hot topic. It's very political. Patriotism,
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you know, uh being economically scared for your country, jobs, everything is
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tied into the automaker market, isn't it? Well, protectionism is nothing new.
26:41
We've been dealing with this for a long time. There were uh periodically in US
26:47
history, for example, there were times when we would just flat out deny accepting imports of certain items
26:55
because they were too competitive with I cheaper than uh what we were producing
27:00
domestically. And it's sometimes uh not that there's any real intellectual basis
27:06
for the uh tariffs that are coming out uh lately from the US, but what
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historically did happen was periodically you would use these tariffs in fights
27:17
about trying to defend domestic production against uh super cheap imports. Uh that said, with cars, it
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hurts extra when you start losing market share because cars have historically
27:33
been such a huge chunk of the economy. For countries like Germany, the US and
27:39
Japan, this has been up to I don't know something between 10 and 20% of their
27:44
whole GDP at at at peak times in history. So this is really really
27:51
impactful when you start losing you know half or a third of that market share to
27:56
a uh foreign importer. Right. Right. And and so
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as you've said the US Germany
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um uh these are the traditional ICE internal combustion engine the vehicles
28:14
that require gas. Those are the the traditional makers and they've they've dealt with these sorts of waves of new
28:22
entrance before. The Japanese came in like nobody's business and offered
28:27
smaller cheaper cars. So the South Koreans also did the same um offered
28:32
little cheap Hyundai which improved quickly in quality. But but the EV issue
28:38
is different because um the Japanese and the South Koreans
28:43
came in with the same technology. They just simply did it better. They they did it better. Just in time manufacturing.
28:49
The quality was better and consumers voted with their feet. They went uh to to this dealership instead of going to
28:56
the one that, you know, my parents went to. But EVs, it's a different technology
29:02
and the ability to make batteries at scale and cheaper really is a key
29:07
component on the overall price. like this is just a more mortal threat for
29:12
for the US and also for Germany and other other makers, isn't it? As opposed
29:18
to the Japanese and the South Koreans. Well, it's true that it's a new technology and you know the cheap
29:25
batteries we talked about that vertical integration is a huge advantage but even when it was even when we were just
29:32
talking about uh internal combustion and hybrids I mean sure you say uh Tesla
29:39
made a big splash I think an equally large splash uh 10 years before that was the Prius.
29:46
Yes. Right. a really functional hybrid that gets you maximum mileage and energy
29:52
efficiency throughout the system. That was really popular and for my friends
29:58
that was the first generation of oh you have one of those
30:03
you know that was the first generation of that. Uh Tesla of course was in the mix reminding Americans that there can
30:10
be innovation at all in auto manufacturer but uh the BYDs the uh
30:19
we're talking about we're changing the basic cost of owning a vehicle. That's
30:24
not just saying oh here's this you know new fast engine, new more reliable
30:29
battery. No, no. That that's a fundamental shift is saying that you can buy a new car for 20 or 30 instead of 40
30:37
or 50,000. That that changes the game in a way that
30:43
uh just slightly more improved models uh a Saturn instead of a Honda or whatever.
30:50
That's incomparable to the fundamental shift of maybe bringing cars down in costs by 20% 30%.
30:58
You're right. Uh it does change everything. Yeah. And so and and so for our listeners, so what are we talking
31:04
about? So currently the new car market globally around the world is is ballpark
31:10
around 110 million new vehicles sold per year. And of that, China's market is
31:16
approximately 25 million new cars per year. And so the US as well as Germany
31:23
as well you know all the car makers were allowed Italy were allowed into China uh
31:30
25 30 years ago they formed partnerships uh joint ventures JVS and as you've
31:38
indicated the Chinese offered uh cheap labor cheap land cheap everything the
31:44
traditional automakers brought over their technology and then the Chinese learned off that and They cop they
31:50
copied off of it. They did whatever. Now, in terms of this, the EV market is similar to solar because in the 5-year
31:59
plans, China really started to focus in on EVs um back around 2000. And they did
32:07
so because internally they made the decision, look at Germany and look at the US, the ICE engines, we're just not
32:15
going to be able to to do anything with them. These are mature technologies. These guys are making ice engines very
32:21
well. I don't think we're going to be able to do something better and cheaper. So, they decided to go and build the EV
32:28
market. And so, it it hasn't been pretty like it. So, the the numbers are
32:34
astounding. And what we're referring to is is that last year, China produced
32:40
over 12 million EV vehicles. They did that in 12 months. And so, you know,
32:46
that's half of their domestic production, but it it hasn't been pretty. They did the same thing as they
32:53
did with solar with EVs. They built the value chain. They built the supply chains. Um, and they also allowed their
33:02
provinces to go just nuts and just to compete against each other. Some of the
33:08
stats I've read is that at at some point they had 200
33:13
EV makers because all these just startup companies were getting cheap loans. They were building factories. Just way too
33:20
much capacity. I I heard an analyst Steve Ratner talk the other day on
33:25
Bloomberg saying he still thinks that currently the general estimates are that China's got 50 EV companies too many
33:34
still. So their internal market they've just it's huge. They've got so many makers, but out of this absolute chaos,
33:42
some winners have come out. And BYD um is, you know, their their equivalent
33:49
of GM plus Ford. You know, they're the equivalent of Mercedes plus BMW plus
33:55
Porsche plus Jetta. I mean, you know, they've come out, they are behemoth. So, you know, in terms of this, um, this
34:02
same analyst that I'm talking about, um, said that BYD has made a big splash, and
34:08
I didn't know this, big splash in Europe recently, and maybe you could tell people about that.
34:13
Uh, yeah. Uh, I heard that there is now going to be a presence of BYD vehicles
34:20
on the European market. It's starting not with sales at uh traditional
34:26
dealerships, but instead rental fleets are adding them to the roster. So, this
34:32
is large companies that have the buying power and you know, kind of the uh the
34:37
weight to throw around in the policy space saying, "Hold on, we could use those and uh make a lot of money. Let's
34:45
buy a hundred a thousand at a time and see how it goes." And that's what we're
34:51
starting with. We're starting with one or two large purchasers making bulk orders for vehicles that can be used for
34:59
general utility. And then in the future from those, maybe those will be resold
35:04
and put in the general used car market for Europe. And by then, maybe we'll actually be able to have dealerships
35:10
where you can just go and buy a fresh one. Maybe. Maybe. Well, and and so the German auto
35:18
auto uh makers, they just must be, you know, quaking in their boots. I mean, what what do you do with this type of
35:24
onslaught, right? Well, I mean, if you look at the other European car manufacturers, I mean,
35:31
you've got some big names, right? You've got Audi, and you also I mean, I'm in Italy, I have to mention Ferrari, right?
35:37
Uh there are some really uh there are some brands with a lot of mass to their
35:45
name with a lot of weight and uh also in the UK you know you've got the the minis
35:51
right so these are car companies that have already withstood all of that
35:56
upheaval of the Japanese and then Korean cars coming onto the market and they they dealt with that. So, it's not
36:03
impossible that they'll survive and specialize by maintaining really high quality standards and maintaining that
36:10
name that they've built for themsel over decades. Uh, a Ferrari is still a
36:16
Ferrari. A Maserati is still a Maserati regardless of what else is on the street. They're inherently nice cars.
36:23
They're expensive. They're specialty, but that's a niche that they're probably not going to get knocked off of. Not
36:30
nearly as fast as say Volkswagen with its little Gulfs.
36:35
Right. Right. Yeah. But and but you know what do they do? Like here in Canada and I think it's
36:41
exactly the same in the US. You don't see any Chinese vehicles on the road. You just don't. Period.
36:47
They're not there. They're not there. Uh and and they're being kept out very deliberately because
36:52
so here in Canada, here in Toronto, if you want a starter vehicle, uh that's an
36:58
EV. um then the cost in Canadian dollars will be minimum 40,000 plus tax and so
37:05
our tax load is pretty heavy um ballpark around 13 15% and so you know 40,000
37:14
plus taxes plus all the incidentals and all the rest of it you're paying you know closer to 50,000 for that vehicle
37:21
and as you and I have covered in previous episodes the Chinese vehicles when they needed to get rid of them and
37:27
they cut costs US were selling for as low in last year uh for something like
37:33
you know there numbers like 8,000 US but 13,000 US and so that may not translate
37:40
directly because the the standard of living the price of having to to live in China is cheaper
37:46
but but as you and I said like it doesn't really matter at that stage. I
37:51
mean you're talking about something which is just almost three times cheaper. Yeah.
37:57
How do you deal with that? Uh, you set up a giant wall around your
38:03
country and block any imports of that entire sector. Apparently, apparently
38:08
that's what we're seeing so far. Uh, I think that as we start to see these cars
38:16
come onto the market in Europe and we see that the sky doesn't fall, that the
38:21
world keeps on chugging, that the the existing bubbles and AI and other stuff still maintain, and that the economy
38:28
doesn't turn upside down, inside out, and fall apart at once, maybe we'll
38:33
start seeing more leniency for other sectors to start bringing on these vehicles. Yeah,
38:39
I think uh yeah, there's a shock, but it's a market. It's going to have
38:44
shocks, right? Right. But yeah, so so with with the concept of solar and with EVs, we're
38:52
obviously looking for a transition here. We're looking away we're looking to move away from um for solar we're looking to
39:00
move away from the energy generation plants like coal, oil, natural gas where
39:06
you burn those fossil fuels in order to create electricity. So we're looking for that move away. And then with EVs, we're
39:11
obviously looking to move away from internal combustion engines because they burn gas and and why not use electric
39:18
vehicles, especially if you can have a clean grid. And so the the the general concept is is that um and I don't know
39:25
what this theory name is, but just sort of mathematically if the production of
39:32
your re like on a year-by-year basis, if you can produce enough renewable energy
39:38
to exceed the increase in demand. So for example, say say the world consumes like
39:46
a 100 units per year of electricity and say next year we're going to increase
39:52
that demand by three uh three units. So go from 100 to 103 units. But if we can
39:58
produce five units of renewable energy, then the five being more than the the
40:05
three of demand, you make slight progress. you've got two units less being burnt by coal because
40:11
it's then the most expensive option. That's true, but we're not actually quite there yet.
40:16
Right. Right now, we're at the level of renewable growth is actually growing
40:22
pretty much at a pace with general electricity use. So, even though we're growing in renewables, we're also
40:28
staying entirely put in terms of coal and oil and natural gas. So
40:34
it can, you know, it's funny for those who have done calculus and statistics and those who haven't, it's a completely
40:40
different outlook. If you haven't got those core skills, then you can look at the constant growth in solar panels and
40:47
say we must be winning. This is now the cheapest. But in fact, it's about rates
40:52
of change. And our rate of change needs to continue growing to really hit that
40:58
hit hit that hump and get and and start climbing back down from the precipice. Right. Right. We're we're not there yet,
41:06
but we're close. We're super close. Right. Closer than we've ever been before.
41:11
Yeah. Yeah. So So well, you know, that's good news. I I um it's
41:18
if if we manage to completely turn around energy production and transit,
41:23
that's still only about a third of carbon emissions. We then have to start talking about uh manufacturer,
41:30
agriculture, deforestation, and really importantly construction. And I think
41:36
that we should do an episode soon on construction industry alternate technologies and ways to make the
41:43
creation of our built environments that process also more uh ecologically sound
41:50
because there are ways and wonderful new materials. It's just that you know standard cheapest practices tend to be
41:56
what we go with, right? Yeah. No, it sounds great. Um, yeah, you're you're right about it's
42:03
it's only a portion, but I think the there is just this spin-off effect of
42:09
sort of positivity or at least incorporating itself into the lifestyle. EVs, cars play such an outsized
42:17
role in our lives. Whether or not you live in the city or whether or not you live outside the city, you know, cars
42:23
really interact with people on a daily basis. So, if you see the fleet turning
42:28
over, then that just reinforces positive news. And like solar panels um in Toronto at
42:36
least, most neighborhoods, they're really non-existent. And so, when I listen to
42:41
you describe European cities and the fact that you see solar everywhere and
42:46
the fact that it's the normal part of life, that's a different reality, but it's a very positive one.
42:52
Yeah. And it means something to us emotionally. It means something in terms of the uh shipping, transportation,
42:59
logistics world that these things are more available and more common makes them inherently also cheaper for the end
43:06
consumer too. So there there's there's, you know, actual logistic momentum being
43:13
built as we transition. And there's also a a calming effect to seeing just rows
43:19
of solar panels, beautifully manicured hills with flood barriers made of large
43:24
amounts of freshly planted trees that you know people are thinking about past
43:30
just this next year. They're thinking about the next major flood. They're thinking about the overall impact of air
43:36
pollution and the need to transition to uh just have fewer gas burning cars on
43:42
the streets just so we have less smog. Right. All of it's happening. It's not
43:47
happening fast enough, but it is happening. Excellent. Well said. Well, I think
43:52
that's I think that's all we can say for this this week. Thank you, Tom. Thanks everybody for listening.
44:00
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Climate Basics podcast. Please remember to like and subscribe and leave
44:07
us your comments. We look forward to seeing you next time. Goodbye.
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