Episode 5: Electricity Generation with João Pedro Gouveia

Welcome to the Drawdown Agenda Podcast. A collaboration between the Sustainability Agenda and Drawdown, a truly inspiring project that ranks and evaluates the 100 most powerful carbon reduction solutions that can help us achieve drawdown. When green has gas concentrations peak and begin to fall, my name is Fraggle Bern. Every fortnight I speak to leading drawdown researchers who have worked to identify and measure different drawdown solutions. We explore the research, discuss how these solutions work in practice and learn how we can take collective action to achieve drawdown and help reverse global warming. So the energy revolution will bring and is already bringing a more flexibility, innovation, collaboration in a smart network of technology and consumers. But of course, this energy revolution in place is bringing additional challenges to the market, especially to the market design and also a need for an evolution of current regulatory and policy regimes. This is crucial and this is the thing we have to tackle the most. I'm very pleased to welcome Drawdown's Senior Fellow, Joao Pedro Gavaya, to the podcast. Joao is an environmental engineer with a PhD in climate change and sustainable development policies at the Centre for Environmental and Sustainability Research from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Nova University of Lisbon. We also work as a research associate addressing and modeling energy systems and performing related economic and policy analysis. So thank you very much, Joao, for taking the time today to join me on the drawdown agenda podcast. Thank you very much and thank you for the invitation. So can you talk a little bit about your background, Joao, and how you got involved with drawdown and your role there? So I have a PhD on climate change and sustainable development policies from Nova University of Lisbon in Portugal. I'm a research associate also there and I'm a senior fellow for energy systems and specifically electric generation sector at the project drawdown. Great, great. So what was your goal? What were you trying to do? So at project drawdown, our objective is really to lease the solution and then understand if we can reach drawdown. So we wanted to assess all the sectors that can contribute to that goal and I was responsible for the electric generation solution. So from wing to solar, nuclear energy and other options of renewable energy sources. Right, you got the short straw, the easy one then. Something quite easy to summarize. Can you maybe just set the scene a little bit and talk about maybe the scale of the global energy system and how it operates maybe just roughly a breakdown of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources? Well, energy is a fundamental driver of everything we do and global energy demand grew by more than 50% between 1973 and 2015 and this was really supported by fossil fuels which accounted for more than 80% of primary energy consumption. But when we look just to let electricity generation and evaluating major trends, we have seen that more or less in the last 45 years generation of electricity have grown from 7,000 kilowatts hour to just over 22,000 and this was mainly due to new uses and electrification trend in the different end uses. And this is because electricity is more convenient and controllable form of energy. Right, right. Now you mentioned fossil fuels and I guess that's something that struck me looking at recent figures and recent graphs and so forth is the continuing presence of fossil fuels, notwithstanding the growth and fast growth and falling course. So maybe we can talk about that a little bit about renewable energy sources but it just does seem to be still very present. Yes, from on the total electric generation, fossil fuels still represent 67% so it's a really large number and nuclear around 11% and renewable energy sources just over 24% but attention because the bulk is more or less 18% is from large, either power systems, 2% only from biomass and waste and only the remaining four are a combination of wind, solar and geothermal. So as you can see, this is still very residual. We have a long way to go on this but one interesting thing is when you look to the last 25 years, it took this time to multiply by 10 the share of renewable energy sources in the power system and in the last decade we have seen that significant growth was made and now on wind specifically and now we are starting to see that growth in solar. This is because of course solar photovoltaic modules are now more than 80% cheaper than they were 2010 and the wind turbine prices also have fallen on average by around half over a similar period. This might already show the future trends and what we might see on the development of the energy system because in a couple of years, all mainstream renewable power generation technologies probably can be expected to provide average costs at the lower end of the fossil fuel cost range. So this is important. Right. Now can you talk a little bit about nuclear as well because I understand that's a part of the picture when we see the growth that there has been in renewable energy and yet some countries are stepping back, many countries are stepping back from nuclear some more aggressively than others. 29 countries have operative nuclear plants so they produce as I just said 11% of the world's electricity and it represents the significant amount of current generation at the global level so this is really relevant but since it's really expensive, most of the plants will not be the decommissioned earlier than they are expecting the lifetime as an overall average. My project brought down we can see that nuclear as a regret solution. It has the potential of course to avoid greenhouse gas emissions compared to coal or natural gas but of course there are many reasons for concern so we have the legacy waste, we have deadly meltdowns, tritium releases, abandoned uranium mines. So this means probably that the social impacts and other environmental externalities might not justify its increased adoption. Right, can you explain what a regret solution is? So it's a solution as a potential of course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because that was the goal at project drawdown but their social and environmental impacts might be really significant so it's not a solution we want to adopt vigorously as mostly all the other solutions represented in project drawdown. Right, right. Now can you talk a little bit about because we talked about the falling cause, the dramatic falling cause, particularly with wind and also increasingly with solar? Yes, we talked about fossil fuels still being very present. Can you talk a little bit about the impact of subsidies and fossil fuels subsidies? How important are they in the continued continuation of fossil fuels and how do you see that playing out? So energy subsidies in general artificially lower the price of energy by the consumers or rates the price received by producers or lower the cost of production. So when we look to subsidies supporting fossil fuels, they represent greater threats to the environment specifically. So the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies worldwide would be the one of the most effective ways of reducing greenhouse gases. From a study last year, it was estimated that at the global level, fossil fuel subsidies were about 5.3 trillion dollars in 2015, which represent 6.5% of the global GDP. And China and the United States were among the biggest subsidizers and more or less 60% of the subsidies are for oil and the remainder is larger for natural gas. There is less subsidies now for coal and for coal power plants. And of course, on this, there is the urgent need for a broader reform of fossil fuel prices in order to include and to fully reflect the cost of associated with global warming and other environmental externalities, of course. Important also on these concepts of subsidies and fossil fuels is the stop fossil fuel prospecting and start decreasing their extraction. We need to keep them in the ground if we want to get to the objectives we set for climate. Yes, and what kind of assumptions have you made about the rate of decrease or elimination of subsidies? How important is that in your modeling, Rao? So in project Rao down, we don't model intensive-based policies and financial mechanisms, such for example, carbon tax or a congestion price, even subsidies and taxes. We focus on technological ecological and behavioral solutions. So because our aim was really to analyze these existing solutions, as they are, for their potential to reduce and draw down greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and not to play and work around with assumptions on future trends of subsidies and taxes and so on. Right, absolutely. Assuming in the sense that the subsidies continue therefore, it's quite a conservative vision of how things are going to plan out. How important is that in terms of would you say today maintaining the status quo to the extent that we have done with fossil fuels. So, a portfolio of renewable energy technologies is becoming a cost-competitive in an increasingly broad range of circumstances. So in some cases, providing investment opportunities without the need for specific economic support when looking to renewable energy. So of course, we have to withdraw the subsidies, start declining the subsidies from fossil fuels. But the cost of renewable energy, electricity, airfoil, and more rapidly, then only a few believe to be possible just a few years ago. So in, for example, in northern Chile, prices obtained in auctions for solar power supply fell by 90 percent in 10 years. Even in last study Germany, price reductions of around 80 percent have already been achieved. Wind energy costs have fallen by around 70 percent, and also batteries have declined by around 80 percent since 2010. So those subsidies in green energy technologies that are not yet competitive probably are justified in order to give an incentive to investing into technologies with positive externalities as the one's renewable energy are with clearly additional environmental and energy security benefits. So we can say that probably to achieve a fully decarbonized energy system, of course, there is still the need to support technological research and development on several technologies. Energy storage systems, for example, but of course there are several technologies that we see that giving an incentive, they will play an important role in the future energy system, and since they are now in still early development stages, they need more research. Absolutely. Now, we'll move on in a moment to the three biggest impacts that you found in the study. Can you talk just at a very high level again about the importance of storage, and I guess importance of the energy grid as well, I know one of the critiques of our criticisms of renewable energy is that it's very lumpy, it comes at times, you know, it comes and goes, and the need to distribute that energy as well, and I know there's been some pretty eye-popping kind of figures as well with a drop-in in storage prices. If you could just maybe just paint a little bit of a picture where they fit into the overall picture. You are right, so with the growing capacity of the electric generation portfolio of variable renewals as wind and solar, of course there is the need for the ability to retain energy produced to be used in different periods of time. So when the sunshine or breezes are not available, and there is of course a demand for electricity. And we can say that there are different types of energy storage to the electricity grid, so we have, for example, gravitational potential energy, so this is really the pump electrolytic energy storage. We have chemical energy storage from batteries. We have other technologies as fly wheels or compressed energy storage. We have kind of the thermal energy storage from concentrated solar power technologies, and possibly in the future hydrogen storage. And let's say that storage units have several benefits. It's important to incorporate them on the systems and the electricity grid because of course they enable time shifts of energy delivery, delivery as I was saying. They supply additional capacity and kind of a credit to delay investments in the capacity generation portfolio. Also they provide the agreed operational support to facilitate the smooth of the electricity supply system, support and provide transmission and distribution, delay of investments also, and of course maintain power quality and reliability. So three energy sources are in the top 10. Can you talk a little bit about those, Rao, how important are they? So just a step before on this sector, on the energy generation sector at project Radan, we have considered 19 solutions. So they include available technologies with potential for scaling. Most of them are already cost effective or expected to be in the near future. So the solutions include several distributed electricity and degeneration solutions, utility scale renewable energy sources, and a couple of enabling solutions of a massive deployment of renewable energy such as energy storage, micro grids and grid flexibility. And the top three renewable energy sources with the most impact on emissions avoidance according to our plausible scenario are wind on shore, is the second on the overall ranking. Wind grows from around 3% of the market to near 25% in 2050. And in the plausible scenario with the near 85 gigatons of CO2 emissions avoided, because in many locations wind is already competitive or less expensive than coal generated electricity. The second solution for this sector is ranked on its place on the total ranking is solar farms or utility scale solar power plants. And this is a really important solution also with its significant impacts on emissions avoidance. The third solution is also related to solar energy, solar rooftops. It comes on the third position within this sector and then 10 on the overall ranking. And this is the centralized form of electricity generation. Right, very interesting. Now wind, that's a tremendous increase in its scale according to the figures that from your analysis. It seems that there's been quite important changes in technology there as well. The scale of the wind farm, scale of the turbines and the locations and so forth. You maybe talk just a little bit about that. Well, yes. So we have seen a huge development of the technology of wind on shore and the last decade or so. We have seen increased capacity factors. We have bigger turbines, we have bigger axis. We are already seeing in some locations around the world a repowering of the older, older turbines that reached the end of the lifetime. So we are getting more electricity in the same locations. We have the previous, previously installed the wind turbines. And now we are single to the development of offshore parks. So we have floating offshore parks starting to be evaluated around the world. Right. So can you talk a little bit about solar farms then and how you expect them to grow? Why they're an interesting source of renewable technology? So we can say that we have four solutions that grasp the potential of solar energy. We have the part of course of solar PV rooftops. We have the solar farms. So PV rooftops can be used in buildings and our small scale systems that can be applied in grid connected areas. So we can use rooftop panels that can put electricity in the ends of the households. Or in hotel parts of the low income countries, they can leapfrog and support the needs for large scale centralized power grids. So they will accelerate access to affordable and clean electricity. Regarding solar farms, they are bigger, they are utility scale level. And they take advantage of solar energy with the large scale areas of hundreds, thousands or even millions of photovoltaic panels to produce electricity. Also regarding solar energy, we have as a solution also concentrated solar power, which is technologically different from photovoltaics because it's solar thermal electricity. Instead of converting sunlight directly into electricity like photovoltaics do, it relies on the core technology of fossil fuel generation. So steam turbines. Therefore, the difference is then rather using cooler natural gas, concentrated solar power uses solar radiation as its primary fuel. One important thing compared to standalone PV systems is that concentrated solar power technology makes it before it makes electricity and heat is easier to store. Of course, when you can also join storage systems to PV panels, so there is a bit of competition on the use of those technologies. Absolutely. Now, the fall and costs associated with both of these have been dramatic. And I think probably exceeded modeling at the time and what experts have thought. Is that continuing? Sure. Technology development is huge in this stage. We are seeing really an energy revolution with the huge deployment of renewable energy, a lot of research in different technologies. So we will see, for sure, in the coming years and decades for some technologies because they are in different maturity levels, a really huge deployment of these type of technologies. Yeah, that's interesting. I had a conversation with an energy expert who's been studying the energy system for 40 years or so. He said a lot of what looks like innovation in the energy sector isn't really innovation at all. It's been around for a long time and decades in some cases. So obviously, a lot of the fall and cost in the computer industry have been driven by Moore's law. I wanted to get a sense of what factors you think have helped drive down costs in the energy sector. So what we are seeing here is the development of technologies driven, not only, like, of of course climate change. global warming, that's a drive for sure in the at least in the back mind of stakeholders and companies. But we are seeing because people are getting hurt. So we got still level rising in several countries. We are seeing impact of hurricanes, floods everywhere. So not only in developing countries, but also on developed countries, Europe and the United States. We are seeing an alpha conditions in cities. So air pollution, we see that a lot in China with the coal power plants, with the natural gas and the vehicles in the cities. So this transition is not only the perspective of global warming, but also a perspective of sustainable development and people's health and well-being. So this supports this huge transition and we, along to a few years back, everybody said about the peak oil, but now we understand that's kind of it was a theoretical thing because probably we won't get without oil anytime soon. So this this transition is companies and governments are understanding this is a major, not only for economies, to avoid big resource depletion. So this mix of technologies without focusing only on coal oil and gas. It's really paramount for technology development, countries, economies and social well-being of the population. I think that's an important thing to this development of technology. So of course there are energy technologies that have distinct time frames of adoption and of course they are on different stages of development. So it's common to hear that energy efficiency is a low-enging fruit. For example, with low capital costs and huge impacts on energy savings, but then we have a lot of technologies that still are kind of costly. So when we think about wind offshore or wave technology, they are starting to be developed. Of course they have a huge potential because we have the wind offshore is more constant than the wind on shore. Wave technology can grasp the potential of the sea, but these are not known mature technologies yet. We are still trying to understand what could be the winning technology and the winning mechanical system. Let's put it like that. And so some are already in the market, available, probably cheap in most locations, but others that are competing with the same markets needs more development and probably some support, at least are in this support. Great. That's very helpful. Can you talk just a little bit about the transition regret solutions which we just touched on before? I'm particularly interested in discussions about natural gas and also to some extent to talk a little bit about biomass, which is, I know, a controversial topic. Yes, great. So under Project Robdown, a regret solution, of course, has a positive impact on overall carbon emissions. However, as I said before, the social environmental cost could be harmful and high. On another situation are transition solutions, like, for example, using biomass or waste for electric generation, because they represent technologies that can be used to better solutions and less impactful are most cost effective and mature. For example, biomass energy is only a true solution if it uses appropriate feedstocks, such as, for example, waste from meals and agriculture or sustainably grown perennial crops. We have assessed that various life cycle assessment studies performed on annual bioenergy crops such as corn. It is shown that there are not much better than fossil fuel energy sources in terms of climate and in energy impacts when we see the lifetime. So there are many times even worse than fossil fuels. Of course, using native forests is not a solution in these nonsense. Therefore, regarding biomass, it is crucial to understand and then manage the drawbacks of this type of energy for regulation. Most important is to clearly understand that biomass, if carefully deploys, is a means to reach a clean energy future and not the destination itself. Yes, it's always interesting to understand why it seems to have quite the support that it does, given, as you say, the underlying economics and underlying efficiency. Yes, each country tried to use their resources as they seem more appropriate. I think that's also the question, because there is the potential for renewable energy is different across the world and even fossil fuels, of course. The resources are different. So when countries try to foster biomass, they are trying to use their own resources, trying to avoid energy dependence from foreign countries. So it's an option, but we have to start changing that view. Yes. What about natural gas travel? Well, natural gas is sometimes seen and a lot in the United States and some European countries as the bridge fuel toward the lower carbon system. But natural gas are indeed lower than the ones produced emissions are indeed lower than the ones produced from burning coal or oil. Though it's still a fossil fuel. So combustion of natural gas still results in continued carbon dioxide emissions. And considering that the residence time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is thousands of years. And we have a clear carbon budget associated with the coal set forward in the Paris Agreement, for example, thinking on natural gas for lateral generation as a mitigation option. Of course, it risks locking of the sector into an emissions-intensive infrastructure that is clearly not aligned with the required commitment in the long term. And this way, a gas bridge could delay the widespread adoption of renewable energy across the world. Yes, it's interesting. You talk about infrastructure and clearly that's a really important question in terms of what kind of change needs to happen in infrastructure and piggyback on existing infrastructures. What about a large scale hydro? So a project rather than we do not include hydro as a solution. But we consider that as part of the energy system and the large generation portfolio till 2015 in our scenarios. Because there is an existing infrastructure that represents a lot of generation. So that's why we are considering that in the modeling, but not as a solution to be highlighted. The environmental side effects of the creation of large reservoirs of water from large hydro projects are significant. So flooding land for a reservoir as an extreme environmental impact, because it destroys forests, for example, wildlife habitats, agricultural land, and scenic lands. And sometimes even promotes the relocation of entire villages, as it happens in China, for example, with the free gorgeous them. Yes, very controversial and very problematic. Now, energy grids, we touched on them. How do they need to change to accommodate renewable energy and to really further the carbonization of the energy sector? So they will have to incorporate, as we have already mentioned, storage systems, the microgrid development, integration of smart meters. So we need a smarter network. That's what we need to try to include more renewable energy in the system to make the grids, let's say, more smart. And it's important to integrate also the internet of things, technologies on the grids, even on the consumer side. So probably in the future, I will not be like the owner of my washing machine. Some utility or some application will manage when I can put it working. Absolutely. Now, in terms of the questions we've been looking at here, how does the differ between the developed world and the global south? Are there a couple of important features and notable factors to take into account in the analysis? So looking for global south countries, they are, of course, less developed on the part of renewable energy integration. So what is important to tackle in the next couple of years is to address the synergies between the United Nations sustainable development goals and, of course, delivering the low-carbon transition as set under the Paris Agreement goals. So this should be recognized and the global efforts behind them should be aligned. Because for developing a system, a low-carbon energy system in the global south countries, it happens also on the developed countries, the importance of private capital in financing this transition. But for those specific countries, there are several funds that were set up by different entities. For example, the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, they have directly fund mitigation and adaptation strategies and solutions in the developing world. And they have the potential to become a major force, of course, since killing a private capital for the carbonization in the developing world, driving economy growth and the low carbon transition. And all is also supporting the SDGs, so the sustainable development goes from the United Nations. - Yes, yes. Now you touched on a very important topic there, this question of investment in capital. And I've seen some figures recently about the sums of money involved. They talk about, I think, what's some trillion dollars per annum needed up to 2050 to hit the target of Paris, well, you know, two degrees at least. And the kind of investments we've been seeing, seem to be in the scale of 250, 300 billion, still pretty substantial sums of money. Can you talk a little bit about how important this investment is or to what extent it plays into your modeling and how you think about the transition? - So at Project Radan, we addressed this topic at the global level, looking for the impact of the combination of all solutions. So from replacement solutions as renewable energy technologies, to reduction solutions as electric vehicles, and then to solutions that sequester carbon from the atmosphere like a first station. So our overall analysis, combining all the solutions, show that the costs of doing business as usual are higher than the costs of implementing the solutions to global warming when we address and include both implementation costs, operation, and maintenance costs, and fuel when it's appropriate. So if we try to understand the amount of money needed for example for decarbonization, that's a different thing. And probably from our rough calculations, we can see around 155 trillion dollars of global investment till 2050. And is aligned with a recent study from the new Climate Foundation that reports estimates of the world needing to invest 90 trillion in new and replacement infrastructures by 2030. Even comparing a business as usual, growth pathway or low carbon pathway. So this is more or less $6 trillion a year. That is about double the current levels of investment. So we need a lot of new investment coming on board. - Absolutely. And in terms of financing this transition, I guess looking a little bit at the implementation side of this, it's an area clearly where the state is an important role to play and corporates. And can you talk a little bit about the role of different stakeholders? - So as I just mentioned, we need really a lot of investment and we need early action to reduce emissions and avoid locking of emission intensive infrastructure. If we want to get to the Paris Agreement targets and to the 1.5 in average increase of the temperature. So this also relates to concerns about energy security, of course, energy poverty, air quality, global warming and economic competitiveness of the different countries. So this are really major drivers for this transition. And we have seen that in recent studies indicated that we are not on the other good trajectory to reduce the emissions, even accounting for the impact of the nationally determined contribution. So the contributions of each country. So the shift of global capital toward investment in more sustainable infrastructure and services cannot wait. We'll need very significant capital cost to replace the existing high greenhouse gas emission technology portfolio by the low carbon technology. So the finance sector has a crucial role here. We have seen the already taken big steps towards this. Well, supporting the bridge to gap between the expiration targets and the current reality. But we need to mainstream this. We have to build on this progress and governments need to set out a clear vision of their infrastructure needs and provide the right national, regional and international policy framework. So different agencies, of course, have different roles and perspectives. And all drawdown solutions depend on individuals choosing to invest their time, energy, finance, and thought really to reach drawdown as an objective. So and to take part on the energy transition. So I would say that each individual decision can make a difference. So whether this is a consumer opting for, I don't know, a rooftop solar panel, you and me, or a company director selecting to invest in a window of short farm, for example. Absolutely. Now we talked about the importance of subsidies in the fossil fuel sector. What about subsidies for renewable energy and in the wind and solar? And they have played a role. What war needs to be done there? So we have seen that international policy, it's important to set a long target goal for the development of technologies. So and therefore, we need this overall coordination. But of course, each individual country can explore in isolation different policies and different subsidies, let's say. But what we are seeing in several countries is really a move away from expensive subsidies to technologies, either so specifically renewable energy technologies, and guaranteeing set prices for generators. For example, natural gas power plant or coal power plants in favor of competitive auctions and tenders. So a subsidy-free future is now in reach for a number of technologies and geographies. Right, right, very interesting. Now, you've been working in an area where there has been quite a considerable momentum. Would you agree that there's some kind of energy revolution taking place, or do you think that's an overstatement? - No, I agree completely. So what we are seeing is a rapidly evolution of the energy system. So we have reduction of electric generation technology costs which promote the rise of the technologies in the system. So we have the start of integration of storage. We have smart grids and smart management of the energy systems, and we have even a creation of new energy markets with new players as the prosumers or the energy cooperatives, for example. So the energy revolution will bring, and it's already bringing a more flexibility innovation, collaboration in a smart network of technology and consumers. But of course, this energy revolution in place is bringing additional challenges to the market, especially to the market design. Also, I would say to how to balance their relationships between the different market players, and also a need for an evolution of current regulatory and policy regimes. This is crucial, and this is the thing we have to tackle the most. - Yes, since the actual book was published, and since I guess the modeling was done, the pace of change hasn't stopped. Are there a few things that have changed that you think are significant, or that particularly make you feel more optimistic? - Sure, we have been seeing a lot of studies and reports showing a really big increase in some of the renewable energies, specifically now solar energy and the costs of solar and storage systems are supporting this development. Also some studies, some presenting projections of an increased adoption to the future if we want to eat these very stringent climate targets. - So it's promising we are single, so development of new technologies, more money put forth to invest in hydrogen systems, and on other technology, it might be important in the future of the energy system as the whole, and of course, the energy generation sector. - And do you see this model, the future, I guess ecosystem moving more from this large centralized, integrated energy companies towards a more distributed, independent kind of system? And what happens to the energy companies in that scenario? I have seen people saying that instead of trying to move towards renewable energies to the degrees that they are, that people say they should actually just give the money back to the shareholders now. Is there a few for them? - So I would say that a centralized structure of the energy system impede the incorporation of new players. So it will potentially be always present, the centralized system, but will be more and more reduced. Because if a decentralized system for generation is fostered, probably there is the vision of an increased democratized access to energy with a reduction of resources conflicts in some locations. Of course, the type of system encouraged and enabled citizens to fully participate and might be more transparent and comprehensible for the consumers. There are, of course, economic benefits too, but regarding the companies, well, this is an interesting question because what we are seeing is because the renewable energy transition is also a political struggle, efforts to shift from fossil fuels and the carbonizing societies will not prove effective without confronting, of course, and destabilizing dominant systems of energy power. And we already see that efforts are, of course, send their way from these great players to find ways to reorganize distributed energy flows into aggregated and consumerized. interest in stocks of energy and done their forms of political power. And even we have seen in the recent years a number of the large energy companies making them move to embrace and also propel the sustainable emerging energy economy. So companies as EDF, Hortsted, the former Dong, and even some fossil fuel companies. So we have seen total Royal Dutch Shell, Ecuador, the formal status from Norway are already investing seriously on renewable energy. So we are seeing that as the threats, they are seeing some companies are moving on and seeing green energy as a starting opportunity for them also. So they are moving to different types of markets. Because they now understand that renewable energy and storage are where the future growth opportunity lies. Yes. The money, following the money. What's next for you, Strao, in terms of your own work and in terms of project drawdowns work? So at project drawdown, we are starting moving on to the next phases of the research, trying to bring new people on board to develop and improve the characterization of the solutions, getting new adoption pathways, improve the data sets in order to, in the future, to get the second version of the book and to have Polish new set of results with new solutions coming onward. Well, I wish you the very best of success with that. And thank you so much for taking the time today and sharing the fascinating research you've been doing and it's been really a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to the Drawdown Agenda Podcast. I hope you found it interesting. We would really appreciate if you could help spread the word by leaving a rating on iTunes, sharing with your friends and on social media. You can find out more about project [email protected]. If you'd like to hear leading sustainability and environmental thinkers share their views in the biggest sustainability challenges we're facing. You can listen to the sustainability agenda podcast at thesustainabilityagenda.com. iTunes as well as other leading podcast platforms including Stitcher, Podbean and Google Play.