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·Posted in Home
Tue, Mar 25

Does the energy industry need a climate reality check?

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For decades, we've heard about the need to reduce carbon emissions and transition to a low-carbon economy. Yet despite corporate pledges, policy initiatives, and technological advancements, global emissions keep rising. Now, we find ourselves at a crossroads: either we take immediate and radical action, or we brace for accelerating climate impacts and economic upheaval.

So, what does this mean for the energy sector? Can utilities, policymakers, and business leaders move beyond incremental changes to the kind of transformative shifts that climate science demands? To explore these questions, this week's Power Perspectives episode welcomes Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester and co-founder of Climate Uncensored. Known for his blunt analysis and data-driven critiques, Kevin has spent his career exposing where we've gone wrong—and, more importantly, outlining where we go from here. If you want to cut through the noise and understand the true scale of the challenge ahead, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

Prefer to Read vs. Listening? Scroll Down to Read Transcript

Want to watch the conversation? Video of Power Perspectives are now being posted to YouTube

 

 

Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Power Perspectives: West Monroe

 

Key Links:

A factor of two: how the mitigation plans of ‘climate progressive’ nations fall far short of Paris-compliant pathways: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2020.1728209

Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven't We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?: www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104

Ireland's Climate Justice Obligations, Presentation: https://urlisolation.com/browser?clickId=DB605BC0-9E7C-4D1E-817D-29EC03C1D45C&traceToken=1742828331%3Bmanchesteruni_hosted%3Bhttps%3A%2Fclimateuncensored.com%2Fire&url=https%3A%2F%2Fclimateuncensored.com%2Firelands-climate-justice-obligations-presentation%2F

Climate Uncensored: https://climateuncensored.com

Ask a Question to Our Future Guests: Do you have a burning question for the utility executives and energy industry thought leaders that we feature each week on Power Perspectives? Leave us a message here for your chance to be featured in an upcoming episode: www.speakpipe.com/EnergyCentralPodcast 

 

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price:

For decades, we've heard about the need to reduce carbon emissions and transition to a low carbon economy. But despite well intended policies, corporate pledges, technological advancements, global emissions have continued to rise. That leads to the crossroads at which we sit today. Either we take. Immediate and radical action to cut emissions at unprecedented rates. Or embrace for a future of accelerating climate impact. Acts and economic disruption. So what does this mean for the energy sector? What role do utility executives, policymakers and business leaders play in confronting this reality? And most importantly, how do we move beyond incremental change to the transformative shifts that science tells us are now unavoidable to help us navigate these pressing questions? We're joined by Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate change at the University of Manchester and Co, founder of the Think tank Climate Uncensored. Kevin has spent his career cutting through political and corporate rhetoric, using hard data and blunt analysis to expose where we've gone wrong and. Importantly, where we go from here, I'm Jason Price podcast host and coming to you from New York City and with me, as always, is Matt Chester, Energy central producer and community manager from Orlando, FL. Matt, I know that the climate policy and corporate sustainability are always hot topics in the energy centric community with our utility. Leaders discussing right now about the urgency of emissions reductions.

 

Matt Chester:

Yeah, Jason, within our energy central community, the utility leaders, they're increasingly acknowledging that the pace of emissions reductions it, it does need to accelerate. But the challenge that they of course face continues to be balancing that need with their obligation to prioritizing reliability of the grid affordability for their ratepayers. So we're seeing many focused on scaling up renewable energy, grid modernization and energy storage. But the debate within our Community also regularly highlights that, you know, incremental steps they they. Possibly won't be enough, so there's a growing focus on regulatory hurdles, market incentives, the role of emerging technologies, things like AI, carbon capture. How are those gonna change the decarbonization pathways we have? So it's obviously a massive topic and and of course, 1 without an easy answer.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah. Thank you. That, and also big thank you to West Monroe for making today's episode possible. So without further ado, let's get started with the critical conversation we're going to have today. So Kevin Anderson, welcome to Energy Central's Power Perspectives podcast.

 

Kevin Anderson:

It's it's great to to join you and it's really nice to be engaging again in the United States.

 

Jason Price:

Kevin, we're thrilled to have you here and we always appreciate and value a European perspective. And I know it's late in the day for you. So thank you again for joining us on this important topic. Kevin, you've been outspoken about the reality that we've now left it too late to limit global warming to 1.5°C to start with, how did 1.5°C become the established limit? And where are we today?

 

Kevin Anderson:

Well, I think before focusing directly 1.5, we almost need to go back to 1992 and the what was called the Rio Earth Summit. And out of that came the first of the big negotiations and conventions on climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Climate changes are washed for these terrible acts. So that was established then and the two key elements of the UNF Triple C, which every country, almost every country in the world signed up to. One was Article 2, which was actually about holding emissions down sufficient that we would avoid the. The language was dangerous, anthropogenic interference with the climate system. In other words, cut emissions down to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. And the second article was to was to cut emissions with fairness, international fairness, equity absolutely at its core, and every single agreement that we've made ever since then has built on that UNF Triple C Foundation. But it was 23 years before we finally defined, at the political level, what what is dangerous. I mean, scientists can't tell. Scientists can tell you what's dangerous. Science cannot tell you what is dangerous. Science can inform the debate about it. But if you're if you're a scientist that works in the coastal strip of Bangladesh, your view of danger will be quite different to scientists who works where I am today. In Sweden. And so, it wasn't until Paris, the Paris Agreement in 2015, where it was then the negotiations were coming to a head about what what levels of temperature increase, which relate of course to impacts and impacts. Ultimately what it's about, what climate impacts are we prepared to. Debt and the the impacts were related to 1.5 and 2°C were considered to be where the threshold of what was dangerous. The 2°C was quite a surprise to emerge from Paris, and it was pushed very hard by some of the more vulnerable parts of the world by their governments and their by their their negotiators particularly. Some of the small island states that we're gonna lose. You know, pretty much lose their their their homelands, but also some of the more vulnerable parts of the world. So 1.5 was really pushed hard by the more vulnerable countries of the world in terms of climate change. And that was finally embedded within the Paris Agreement. So as 1.5 and 2°C and initially 1.5 was seen as a secondary. Criteria. But since 2015, not only have we dumped another third of a trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but in addition to that, the science has proved improved significantly. So now we recognise that the difference between 1.5°C of warming and 2°C of warming. Actually, that's a very large difference. There's a very big difference. The amount of energy we're putting in the atmosphere. And there are lots of. Other. Dangerous impact issues that occur before between 1.5 and two, and I think it's fair to say that today from the science realm, we would say 1.5°C of warming already starts to embed what we considered to be dangerous. Unfortunately, that has occurred at the same time that we're pretty much hitting 1.5. So we've left it too late now to actually hold to not going above 1.5 and we're rocketing towards 2°C and there's no signs that will stop at two that once we once we get there, we'll probably go straight through that unless things fundamentally change.

 

Jason Price:

Kevin, I have in front of me a presentation that you had given and it my understand is that it gained considerable attention, particularly the hard hitting stats you you built in the presentation. Presented and the tagline of I'm reading it right, it tagline is pessimism of the intellect, optimism. Of the will. What do you mean by that? And who are you talking to?

 

Kevin Anderson:

Well, what? Well, firstly, as I say, I'm borrowing that from Antonio Gramsci. That was a sort of motto he had. He lived a very hard and challenging life. And I think that's where we are on climate change. I spend my I've spent years, almost decades now, trying to unpick the numbers and they get worse every single year. Climate change is a cumulative problem. So that expression is the motto of that was the motto of Antonio Gramsci. And the reason I think it's valid today is that. I've been unpicking the numbers on climate change for decades, and there's no way that I can look at those numbers and feel ending, other than deep pessimism, that our missions today are 60% higher than they were at the time of the real Earth Summit. Emissions are still rising. Last year they went up again, probably by about .8%. We know the impacts are occurring at a faster rate than we expected. There are a whole series of discontinuities, more commonly referred to as tipping point, issues that are that look like they're closer than we initially thought. There is no government that's driving an agenda that is anywhere close to what would be necessary to deliver. Even on the weakest interpretation of our Paris commitment, so there isn't there is at the collective level, there is no good news out there. That's not to say there aren't little pockets here and there, but the collective level, everything points towards pessimism and the optimism of the world is that the only way we get out of that is by driving change. You know, we don't want hopium. Hopium isn't something we just hope would occur. Hope emerges out of action, action emerges out of a will to drive change. So whilst intellectually from all of the analysis I feel deeply pessimistic, that doesn't stop me having some optimism for driving change and that that's that again, is partly why we why you're having these podcasts is to try and drive and facilitate. Change now if someone asks me, do I think we'll succeed? No, I think we're gonna go to Helena handcart. That's that's a guarantee. If we don't try and so it's incumbent on people like me to make every effort I can to engage other people to make their efforts as well. And so that's where I see this pessimist, pessimism of the intellect from their analysis and optimism of the will. And there are things that we can do if we're prepared to drive change. The problem now is that. Those things that we have to do are not incremental. They're fundamental and profound at every single level and and they're underpinned by the maths and the science that help us understand climate change.

 

Jason Price:

Right. So we all, we all understand that this is going on, but we're it sounds like you're suggesting that in some degree. We're all sort of. Stuck like a deer and. In a set of headlights, right? We're just we see it coming. Just don't know what to do, not denying it. It's coming. It's just we see it coming and we. Don't have to. Do and you said that there's pockets of change happening. I'd love to hear some of that. And and knowing that we have a utility audience that listens in, how are the rent, how are the utilities ranking here?

 

Kevin Anderson:

Well, they're they're ranking like everyone else, really. I'm not aware of any utility. Not just on energy, but some of the other other ones as well. That is in any way shape or form facing the challenges that are around the corner that already occurring. I mean a lot of our utilities, utilities are not even up to speed with where we are today. I mean, they can't deal with current weather changes, so extreme weather causes problems for you till it is now let alone. What we're locking in with climate change, so unfortunately I have to say that the utilities have for 30 years failed to address climate change. And the problem for your utility executives today is that they are facing the legacy. That has been bestowed on them by the executives of yesterday of 2010, of 2000 of 1990, thirty odd years now 1/3 of a century of failure in the utilities in every single facet of modern society, not just the utilities have left us where we are today. And we are using up the carbon budget. The amount of carbon we can emit. For just for a 5050 chance of 1.5°C, which I say, I don't think it's viable, we're using that up at 2% every month, 2% we even for 2°C globally. We're using up the carbon budget at about .6% every single month. We need reductions of 20% year on year, starting beginning of this year for 1.5. Not a hope in hell that we'll do that, and even for 2°C we would need 7% reductions every single year, starting this year globally. Now that remember that when we signed up in Paris, we signed up and in the UNF Triple C on the basis of. So what? What utilities are really thinking through international equity, so that Nigeria, Rwanda and some of the other poorer countries of the continent of Africa or other places in Asia, so they can actually use more energy and more fossil fuels in the short term, that means that we have to reduce our emissions even faster than the global average. This is this framing. Is simply not within the realm of the executives who are looking at the utilities, but it's not in the policy realm either. And indeed I have to say a lot of my academic colleagues are still very reluctant. To accept what their own analysis tells them, we're living in a delusion on climate change, and we have been for 30 years and we are not yet prepared to escape that and face the reality of what 30 years of delusion has brought us. To.

 

Jason Price:

Kevin, you know in your presentation you also talk about and you emphasize this point around non. Non radical futures either we make drastic changes now or we face equally drastic consequences later. And you're you're touching upon some of this now, so you might be reiterating some of the answers to my question that I'm about to give you. That is, what do you mean by non radical futures and drastic consequences? And then I guess, you know, maybe you can frame that also. And are we really beyond the opportunity of any smooth incremental transition? Is it really not viable anymore and. Just. Talk to me about that and I and talking. You're. And me with three children on the. Age of 10, so this is. Not the most we're.

 

Kevin Anderson:

Comfortable conversation. No, this isn't a comfortable conversation. We can have a comfortable conversation if we want. We can talk about pseudo technologies and things in the future, but that isn't gonna help our children. We can carry on with. I mean to cut it to to say bluntly. Lies, delusion, misleading use of pseudo technologies we can carry on with that. And then we will face the absolute radical impacts of climate change hitting home, and those impacts will play out. Initially, they are starting to play out, of course, in some of the poorer, more climate vulnerable parts of the world. And but we're also starting to see some of that in in, in the northern, the wealthy northern hemisphere, the global N where. In fact, with in the cause of cause of most. To those most of the climate change that we're seeing. So those things are starting to play out, but they're going to play out worse and worse year on year and that will affect everything. Other food, food security or migration. It'll affect military tension that exacerbate all sorts of other problems that we're seeing socially around the world, one way or another. So the situation will get climate change will be an exacerbated of existing tensions and then it will be the tension itself. It will fundamentally change whether, which will change food security, which will change, where we get our food from the price of the food, who can afford the food and the and the wealthy parts of the world. Well, so it it is at every single level. This is this. This is a fundamental threat. To avoid that, would be and that will take a few years to play out, particularly in the global. North. To avoid that means we immediately have to undertake radical changes, not just to our physical infrastructure, to the technology which we will have to do. And it's not just on the supply side, it's also on the demand side. It's the built environment, it's our transport. Network as well as and electrifying most of the energy system. And then the electricity generation itself. We've got, we've got all of that. We would have to. Do. And that would have to go along with profound social change, because we've left it so late that whilst we, we do need to technically change the structures we have. That now is just simply not going to deliver. There are lots of discretionary emissions that are locked into the lifestyles and this is where it becomes particularly. Changing the lifestyles of people like me and no doubt most of the people listening to this, that we are the high emitters in our society and I don't mean a little bit above the average way above the average. And those emissions are discretionary. We like our big houses, we like to fly sometimes business class, sometimes first class we have big cars, we travel a lot of places, we have double door refrigerators. We might have a second. Home we've completely. Normalised in our part of the world. We've and when the communities we're with, we're within within our own countries, we have normalised very high levels of consumption and very high levels of emissions. Like it or not, they're discretionary. And if we are serious about sticking with our Paris commitment and I'm talking here more about the two degree C framing, which is disastrous in many respects on the 1.5, if we're serious about that. And that comes back to the fact is, if we're serious about the prospects for your three children. For people who are aunties and uncles and parents, for the people that we care, love about and love, if we're serious about their futures. Yeah, the changes will be profound and radical. If we're going to try to do this in, in the organised fashion, so the choices between immediate, organised but deeply challenging changes that we take control of or waiting a little bit longer and bequeathing our children and already other people elsewhere in the world, the chaos. Of an of an increasingly rising temperature and all the climate impacts that that will go with, that there's no easy way out of this. And again I come back and I repeatedly emphasise this. That is the product of 30 years of doing nothing about climate change. But watching our emissions rise.

 

Jason Price:

Kevin, when we met in the pre call, you, you you understand the United States energy structure, the regulatory environment and how it works on the state level. So you you understand, so the conditions of how the US operates, knowing that many of our listeners are the utilities and utility executives and. Decision makers. We've got regulators that listen into this podcast, get a a diverse audience in the energy space. What does this reality mean for them? If they're if they're gonna take all this seriously, you know, what should they be doing today that is fundamentally different from what they've done in the past? What? What is that message you want to make sure they.

 

Kevin Anderson:

Walk away with if each day they come home from work and they feel comfortable they haven't succeeded, what they're going to have to do every day. Now is going to be deeply uncomfortable to every you know to all of their business norms, their structures and their societies and and their institutions. Rather, the values within their institutions. And how they engage with the regulators, those relationships between the regulators and the utilities and indeed with the customers, all of these will have to fundamentally change. It's really hard to to demonstrate really where this has been done elsewhere. I don't think it has. We have never really faced anything quite like this. Probably the nearest thing we've seen is mobilisation for wars. And I don't particularly like wars as a metaphor. The progressive change, but when we we can, you know, we obviously we did in in 1939 and 40 just a year or two later for the states we mobilized we completely changed the productive capacity and outputs of our society. We're talking about doing that and I sometimes use the language of the Marshall Plan on steroids. The reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War. But even these don't really touch the scale of change that is necessary. If you just play out the numbers, then you start to realise that that that no, no element of our society is not is is going to be untouched. Everything our built environment, you think about the electricity in the in the in the US, I think it's a bit like most most industrialized countries, about 20% of our final energy consumption. Is electricity the other 80% is broadly fossil fuels. Right. So just 20% is electricity. If we're going to decarbonise our complete energy system, is what we need to do on almost overnight. You've got to electrify virtually every other sector. So there are then we might get some hydrogen production and so forth, but most of that will be through electrolysis. So basically this system hasn't become electrical and that electrical energy has to be provided with from from zero carbon so. But on on the other side of that is the demand side. You look at our transport networks, how how much transport in the US is reliant on someone that weighs. I'm trying to do it in, in, in pounds and and tonnes now rather than kilograms. And the other side of the equation that we really mustn't miss is this is the demand side. So there are plenty of things we can do. On supply, but they need to be done almost tomorrow and they will be challenging technically, but the demand side is also key. I mean in you look at the states, I I don't know the numbers exactly for the states, but I'm guessing that your typical car is probably somewhere like two and two 2 1/2 to 3 tons. So what's that 66000 pounds 6500 lbs in weight carrying what's inside some somewhere between 100 and 300 lbs to being? I mean, people are in the car and we've normalized it. That's a perfectly reasonable way to get around a few miles in when we're travelling to pick up our groceries or pick up our children from school, we've normalized that. Those things will have to fundamentally change. You cannot continue. To operate with the sorts of levels of inefficiency that are totally normalised in modern societies today, and do that via the renewables or other really low carbon options, we've only able to do that because what we've done, we've taken out of the ground and millions of years of energy that's been stored. In fossil fuels and we've burnt it almost overnight. And so, because we can't carry on doing that, we're gonna have to find other ways to power our societies. And so to have functioning progressive societies, we will not be able to use energy as simply as we have been in the past and just simply squandering it through deep inefficiencies that are structurally locked into the demand side and then met by the supply side via fossil fuels. So I mean, all of those elements have to change the demand side and the supply side. It's also worth bearing mind of course that most energy is not used by the average people in our. Party. It's used by those of us who are in quite privileged positions whose energy consumption will be far above that of the average for even in a country like the US. So the US typically, and the average citizen in the US, is gonna get somewhere between 14 and 17 tons of carbon dioxide a year, and that equates to how much fossil fuels they use. But there be a huge number of people in the US who will only be emitting. 5 or 6 tons, maybe even less, and there be other people in the US who emitting 607080 or maybe even several 100 tons. And so this is even within our countries. If we're serious about climate change, the equity lens is absolutely key. We're concerned about affordability, but affordability to professors is pretty irrelevant. Affordability to postal workers is really high. And and so even our society, these some of these things we're like we view it, we're all in this together. We're not. We're not all in this together. Impacts are not spread. Evenly. But responsibility is not spread evenly and that it adds another layer of uncomfortableness into into addressing these challenges because it's as much about equity and fairness now as it is about the technology. As I often say, you can't squeeze emissions out of people that don't admit and understand the difference between structurally. Opt into an infrastructure and discretionary emissions of those of us who are quite fortunate at financial positions in our countries is really key. If we're going to respond to climate change in any sort of.

 

Jason Price:

Timely fashion. Well, Kevin, I want to ask you about technology for a moment. You know, there is technologies like carbon capture. I've always been, you know, a little suspicious on whether the technology is. Can prove it out. Prove out what it says. It can do. But the technologies like that it do exist. What's your opinion of carbon capture and and any others that could have addressed this issue? Will it help us get out of the situation that we're in in?

 

Kevin Anderson:

Well I should add here that that I spent a lot of my previous life as a an engineer designing and building. Offshore oil platforms. So I have a background in engineering in the petrochemical industry, it can do a huge amount. However, CCS firstly, carbon capture storage has been used so far not as a technology but as a delaying tactic. It's simply been used to avoid having regulations. The oil companies have been talk. Thing about CCS for probably 25 years now, certainly the last 20 years, I I know of a lot of strong advocacy by the oil companies. If you look at what they are actually doing today, they are currently capturing and storing about 7 to 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, 7 to 10 million globally. They would argue it's near 40, but most of that is being used to for enhanced oil recovery to get more oil out of the ground. So that's not really story that's making the situation worse. So real storage over the last 30, well, 25 to 30 years has now come to about .002% of all fossil fuel emissions after 30 years, 25 to 30 years. In other words, nothing. There is no CCS at scale. The few pilot plants we've had have proved really problematic. So the boundary down one, some of the other ones that have been on some bio schemes, most of them have proved very expensive and technically quite challenging. I think we could solve them from a technical point of. Do, but they will be incredibly inefficient and they will also not capture all the emissions. There were lots of emissions that still come from CCS. If you use CCS to produce hydrogen, that's a lot of to be university academic engineers who have often never built anything. Talk about these things. You get a lot of slit, you got a lot of methane slip. So methane emissions when you're doing this. Hydrogen itself, as it actually has a indirect carbon footprint, global warming potential of probably about 30 or so, so 30 times more over 20 years than than than carbon dioxide. So across the board CCS, if it's used on energy, it's generally a distraction from the real issue. I think Carbon Captain Storage has a really important niche role in some industries, for example cement. About 4% of all global emissions are from the process. Emissions in producing cement, the other 4% from 8% in total from cement. The other ones are related to energy and you can replace the fossil fuel energy with cement. It will be challenging, but it can be done. But the process emissions we don't know and need to wear around that. And there carbon capture storage is important. So yes, the carbon caption storage. And some niche industrial processes, and no to carbon caps and storage on energy. And in that I would include hydrogen. And it's true, quite a few of these technologies that are sort of banded around by the oil companies, they put them forward not as real technologies, but as rusers to avoid regulation, to delay regulation. And that's what the company has been doing for 20 or 30 years unfortunately. And and hence we see almost no CCS at scale. Today in 2025.

 

Jason Price:

Well, Kevin, this has been this has been an amazing conversation and I feel like we could continue with a lot of these questions and test a lot of things against. You know, the conventional wisdom is, and I could hear you and see you challenging many of the thinking. Because we're trying to reframe the solution as something that will go, we'll have this problem. Just go away and magically solve itself and you're you're bring us back to reality and making us look in the mirror and say that we've got a bigger problem on our hands. We have to take ownership of it and we need to make a some collective decisions. No matter how painful they may be, we. Need to make those decisions? Make them fast. I feel like we at West at Energy Central, we've had lots of conversations about decarbonization. We've spoken to a lot of people, but I don't think we've had a guest who has presented the numbers and the stats in the situation so bluntly, as you have, and I think it's an important message that we need to get out. So I really want to thank you for being here today. And sharing this your insight and your perspective on on, on energy central. But on that note, we're going to give you the last word. We want our listeners to. Yeah, we want. We want you to leave your message with our listeners, and we're going to give you the final word. But we first have what's called the Lightning round, where we pivot to a set of questions. We're going to throw at you for one, one word or phrase. These should be. A little more lighter and topic in nature, so hopefully they will be and you'll find them as. Much so my first question to you is with the climate situation getting too tense, do you have any key stress relieving passions or hobbies?

 

Kevin Anderson:

Yes, I do. I do a lot of long distance cycling and less so now, but I had spent about 25 to 30 years being a fairly fanatical rock climber, so rock climbing and cycling. My the two things that take me away and that takes me away in part because my friends in those areas have nothing to do with climate change as a job anyway. So we talk about other things.

 

Jason Price:

Given the weighty topic of climate change, we're collecting lightning round questions from past podcast guests to ask. Guests. So we recently talked to Danilo Priddis at IFRS, who wanted to ask a future guest the following question. What is the single most underrated innovation that has the potential to really revolutionize the energy sector and why has it not been fully embraced by the market with the industry?

 

Kevin Anderson:

Well, this is gonna be an unpopular answer. And I would say it's rationing. But it's explicit rationing. That's the that's the innovation. We we ration energy today on price. People who can afford it get as much as they want. Other people struggle to heat their homes. And and travel where they need to. So I would I think rationing, understanding how we allocate out a scarce resource, that's what energy is and that's what all resources are. All resources are scarce. We ration them by price typically. And I think actually with some of these really key resources prices not the appropriate metric. Rationing, so as a technology we need to find ways that would we would more appropriately rational on the basis of what we may think is considered more important. We rationed in the Second World War, we rationed food, we didn't ration it on on price. We we rationed it on need, not on. And I think that's true for energy. We need to understand need and sufficiency. And their methods by which we. Can ration it's.

 

Jason Price:

That's very interesting. Now it's your turn. What lightning round question would you like to ask and challenge a future guest? Be it could be energy related or off the wall.

 

Kevin Anderson:

It could be applied to any area, I think I. Task as the guest. If these things don't fit together, do you think it's more important to be guided by political acceptability or integrity? Which of those are more important?

 

Jason Price:

Alright, so Kevin, thank you. Thank you for you've done a great job with the Lightning round. I told you I'd give you the final word. So knowing that you've got a an audience of utility executives listening in. Many who are responsible for this, the long term planning, long term energy planning that we're all facing. What is this take away message that you would want to convey to them?

 

Kevin Anderson:

Again, as this may seem a bit left field perhaps but. I would just park their role as being executives of anything. And say, think of your role. As a a mother, a father, an uncle, a brother, a sister. This is not about utilities. This is about us as humans. It's about the love we have for people in our families, our communities, our countries, and I hope to some degree, other communities and families elsewhere in the world, one way or another. Think about those. And so when you're having breakfast in the morning with your kids sat opposite or looking after your grandkids at the weekend or whatever it might be. Think about our work in relation to their futures. And that is what we need to do. And then when you go to work as a utility executive. I hope you will do the right thing as you see it, I don't know what the right thing is, but hopefully they will start to get a much better picture of the right thing by seeing it through the lens of the people that they love and care for, not just during their lives in most executives are probably older, so it's actually going to be through the lives of their children. They're no longer here, so it's it's that degree of. Humanity that I would like to apply. Or to concern for the rules of the regulator, the rules of the market, the rules of the shareholders and all those other things, these are all peripheral compared to the love of our families.

 

Jason Price:

Those are very important words, and we're again thrilled to have you here. And I know again, it's getting late for you and you're in Europe. So we really appreciate your time here. I I'm no doubt there's gonna be a lot of continued conversation. On this podcast, and we will let you know as questions come. Then Matt will forward those on to you. So keep the conversation going with the community and again, thank you for your insight in today's podcast.

 

Kevin Anderson:

It's been my pleasure.

 

Jason Price:

You can always reach Kevin through the energy. Central platform where. He welcomes your questions and comments and again a quick shout out of thanks to the podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible thanks to West Monroe, Westboro is a leading partner for the nations largest electric, gas and water utilities, working together to drive grid modernization, clean energy and workforce transformation. Western's comprehensive services are designed to support utilities and advancing their digital transformation, building resilient operations, securing federal funding and providing regulatory advisory support. With a multidisciplinary team of experts, Westboro offers a holistic approach that addresses the challenges of the grid today and provides innovative solutions for a sustainable future. Once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community EnergyCentral.com, and we'll see you next time at the energy central. Our perspectives, podcasts.

 

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

Power Perspectives features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

Power Perspectives is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

Power Perspectives is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of Power Perspectives, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

Happy listening, and stay tuned for our next episode! Like what you hear, have a suggestion for future episodes, or a question for our guest? Leave a note in the comments below.

All new episodes of the Power Perspectives will be posted to the relevant Energy Central community group, but you can also subscribe to the podcast at all the major podcast outlets, including:

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