When it comes to energy, Jarand Rystad is the numbers guy. The former McKinsey & Company partner founded Oslo-based Rystad Energy, an independent research and energy intelligence company that sells data and analysis on oil, gas, coal and renewable forms of energy.
A physicist by training, Rystad is an optimist about the chance of containing climate change through introducing new technologies. He brings numbers to back up his views, based on the company’s extensive databases.
Q: When are we going to see peak oil consumption, peak fossil fuel consumption?
A: I think peak coal is very soon. It could even be this year or next year. We are close to peak thermal in China, most likely this year or next, meaning coal and gas electricity generation. China is half of the coal market, so it’s very relevant.
In Europe and the U.S. coal has been trending down for many years. The trend down in Europe and America is balancing the trend up in India and Indonesia and a few other countries and Pakistan, and then China’s peaking. So they are very close to peak coal.
Peak oil, we were in a very good place with EV adoption in Europe and America though it has stalled a little bit due to lack of subsidies. And then we have peak gas, which as you know, consumption is going down in Europe much faster than anyone believed. So taking these three fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—in aggregate, I think we are talking about maybe the end of this decade will be a peak for fossil, maybe even slightly before.
Q: Is that good news?
A: I think it’s good news, of course. The only way to get rid of oil, gas and coal is to compete with the use of oil, gas and coal through introducing new technologies. So what you need to work on is solar, wind, batteries, geothermal, EVs, etc. All these technologies will make the use of fossil fuel no longer competitive.
Q: Where are oil prices going?
A: OPEC is managing the market because there’s actually too much oil in the market. So OPEC is cutting 3 million barrels, without that there would be an even bigger difference between the fundamental supply and demand.
I see weaker fundamentals meaning I see weaker prices and with a small risk of asset price collapse as well. The price collapse will not last for very long, but typically it is almost a V-shape and these could go deep down and they could go up again.
Q: You said there were 24 key technologies. What are the top five?
A: So let’s say that it’s 38 gigatons of emissions that you need to mitigate. Solar photovoltaic alone will mitigate 11 gigatons. Batteries and EVs separately are the next important, which is about 5.5 gigatons each. And CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) also has the potential to mitigate 5.5 gigatons. The fifth is wind, which is also like 5.5 gigatons.
Q: What’s the one technology no one has heard about yet?
A: For instance, high temperature energy storage. One is called “the sun in the box,” this big block of graphite, or black carbon, and you can heat the block to 2,000 degrees, and you do that when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.
You can have solar panels inside producing electricity from the wavelength radiation from the block, and you have pipes into it with super hot high pressure water, so you can choose whether you want to take out the energy as electricity or as hot over-pressurized water, for instance for metal production . . . Just one example of a new long duration storage technology.
Q: I haven’t heard the word “hydrogen” in our conversation.
A: It’s very inefficient to take it from electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity. This will only be a special application, more a niche than a pillar for applications like steel, chemicals, shipping fuel, ammonia production. I don’t believe we’re going to be driving hydrogen cars because it’s not competitive with electricity.
Q: The energy transition is sometimes viewed as a matter of banning things and introducing things that are going to cost more. Can you speak to that?
A: If you look at those technologies that are really taking off like like solar and batteries, they are taking off because they are cheaper and better than thermal. So they’re already past a tipping point . . . The cheapest option by far will be solar. Even if you are installing batteries to deal with the intermittency, it will be competitive versus building new thermal plants.
Q: What can be expected from the United Nations climate conference in Azerbaijan next month?
A: Some countries like Germany for instance have suddenly slowed down their incentives for electric vehicle adoption. They need to keep up these kinds of measures. And you need this kind of international pressure. The difference between active policies and weak policies is at least 0.4 degree of global warming. We have a lot of technologies that will drive a green shift regardless of policies. But with policies, you drive it faster.
Q: Are you an optimist or a pessimist about holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century?
A: Some people call me climate optimistic but I’m quite fact-based on this. It is possible, for CO2 alone, to limit emissions to 650 gigatons, which corresponds to 1.6 degrees warming, and if you do something with methane on top of that, 1.5 degrees is still within reach.
The iPhone disrupted the media, and solar and batteries will be such a disruptive technology, because they’re cheaper and better. People underestimate how fast it will go. In 1945 it was all steam locomotives and by 1960 they were all diesel electric, only 15 years to change a gigantic system, because the new technology was cheaper and better.
—David McHugh, Associated Press business writer