Transcript: Rogé Karma Interviews Meghan O'Sullivan and Jason ...

JASON BORDOFF : I think that's an incredibly insightful and incisive question. For the same reasons Meghan mentioned, I believe that two things are true simultaneously. There is much to be excited about when you consider where we stand in the clean energy sector. This year, the number of E.V.s will increase by 35 percent. In the last decade, solar, wind, and batteries have all been reduced by 80 to 90 percent. We'll add the same amount of renewables in five years that we did in 20.

On almost every metric, we have exceeded our wildest hopes. We are breaking record after record in terms of the deployment of clean energy and the cost reduction of clean energy. As you stated, aside from a pandemic, or a recession the oil consumption, coal usage, gas consumption, and emissions all increase every year. This is what happens with a global economy the size of ours, when there are so many people in the world using very little energy, when populations grow, and when people have more prosperity.

The history of energy, as much as we use the term 'energy transformation', is one of addition. When we think about transitions, what comes to mind is going from coal to wood, or oil to coal. These are the great historical transitions which took decades to unfold in the Industrial Revolution. This is true in terms of a percentage. The planet isn't concerned about percentages. The planet is concerned about the amount of fossil fuels that we use and how much CO2 emissions we emit by burning them. This number has not decreased. Today, we use more wood than in the 19th Century. The denominator is getting larger. This is what happens as the energy consumption of the world increases due to rising income levels and population growth.

If we want a clean energy transformation that will solve the climate crisis, then we must do something that we have never done before. We cannot just add lots of clean energy to the mix and hope that the fossil fuel percentage goes down. We must reduce the amount of hydrocarbons and their associated emissions, or capture or store them.

MEGHAN O’SULLIVAN (English): Just to reiterate the excellent point made by Jason, in 2022 the world consumed more coal than ever before. Even though we are adding these massive amounts of renewable energy, this is essentially, simply, enough to fuel the global increase in energy consumption. It is only during a pandemic or a severe recession that energy consumption has decreased.