The Future of Energy

Introduction

A wide-ranging interview with the former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell Jeroen van der Veer on the future of energy.

He considers the lack of an international vision and state his views on renewable energy sources, the possibilities for reducing the consumption of fossil fuels, and energy policies and strategies for the future. He argues that what is needed, above all, is a shared international vision and realistic domestic priorities to bring governments and industry together to manage innovation processes and make renewable energy commercially viable.

THE BREAKTHROUGH NEEDED IS LEADERSHIP WITH A STRONG VISION WHICH WILL DEVELOP GENUINE INNOVATIONS IN ENERGY SOURCES AND SYSTEMS.

KEY FACTORS ARE THE ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT, PUBLIC OPINION, AND ENVIRONMENTALISM.

"I have given various speeches where I always go back to when I joined the industry. It was in the early 1970s. At any moment in time, the energy industry assumed something about ten years ahead, which ten years later proved to be completely wrong". – Jeroen van der Veer

Source: Jeroen van der Veer, https://archive.org/details/breakthrough-innovation-impact/page/n135/mode/2up
This work is in the Public Domain.

The Scale Of The Global Energy System

The Energy Information Agency in Paris publishes the annual World Energy Outlook, which projects future trends in energy demand and consumption up to 2040. According to the 2013 report, global energy consumption will grow 56 per cent, and world electricity consumption will grow 93 per cent. Because this growth of demand is much faster than the growth of renewable energy sources, the ever-increasing challenge for the coming century is to satisfy demand while reducing carbon emissions to meet the targets set in the Kyoto process. If it is said that we need to reduce carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2030, while global energy consumption will double, then what is really being asked is that CO₂ emissions need to be cut by 80 per cent.

There are no easy answers to this challenge, especially since renewable energy sources are not yet able to compete commercially with fossil fuels. Even if Europe and the West conserve the maximum amount of energy possible, this would have little effect on the growth of energy demand and consumption, especially in India and China.

We asked Jeroen van der Veer, the former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, to share with us his thoughts about the future of energy: what visions and ideas for innovations and breakthroughs there are for overall energy systems; what processes these should be attached to; and how innovations should be managed to support the development of a viable energy future.

Addressing three factors - transitions in energy, the redesign of our energy system, and the increase in the use of renewables - van der Veer says: "It is relevant for all three factors that people simply don't realize the size of the world's energy system," both now and in future.

With the present energy system, van der Veer argues that one cannot simply identify a current problem with fossil fuels, and "do something intelligent in the desert, where we can develop solar energy and then we put some money into it and that solves the problem in ten or twenty years. That is nonsense, because in about forty years the energy system is going to double in size".

The world's population is set to grow from 7 billion to 9 billion with a growing middle class. "Whatever the middle class does - think about Asia - they will use more energy. And in that estimate of the system doubling in forty years, the assumptions of better energy conservation and improved energy efficiency are already included. If you don't assume that, then the energy system will more than double.

"So the first point is that the world energy system is huge. And to change that system will always take time. If you have a huge system, you can't change it in one day. You simply lack the investment capacity. Even if you agree on the vision, concept, and execution, it will take decades before you see material change".

The underestimation of the scale of the global energy system is only one part of the problem. At the international level, there is no shared vision on the future of energy.

"There is no consensus in the world about what the right solutions are. I am talking about the right mix of energy sources. Take for instance the World Economic Forum in Davos, where I chaired a session on the New Energy Architecture. They are now looking ahead to the year 2050 to help decide on the right energy mix. But there is absolutely no consensus about it today. And if there is no consensus about such an important question, what do you do?

"Then you have to go one abstraction level higher. Because there is no point in arguing if you can't agree. You can argue forever but you will never convince the other side".

Acceptable, Available, Affordable

"Why is it so difficult to reach consensus at the international level? The answer is that individual countries differ in perspectives on three criteria: I call them the three A's - the acceptability of different energy sources (such as nuclear energy); the availability of energy in their own territory; and affordability.

"First, is this form of energy acceptable? These are very often environmental concerns. Think about C0₂ emissions and coal. Think about nuclear energy and nuclear waste. Think about space: the huge windmill next to your house. All that has to do with the word acceptable.

"Second, is it available? The easy one is solar energy, which is only available in daylight. Gas may or may not be in the ground. This question includes the very interesting debates surrounding shale gas. And within availability you have a sub-category of questions: maybe it is available but not in your own country. That is typically the Middle East. If you use it in the United States, it raises all kinds of geopolitical questions. So is it available under your own feet, or in your own neighborhood, or not?

"Third, is it affordable? This is simply the price: can people pay for it? In this way you can describe every form of energy, including renewable energy.

"Now you can see why people don't have the same vision, because the three A's work out differently according to country and region. For example, if you have a lot of gas, you will be more relaxed about other forms of energy. If you have a lot of sun in the middle of Algeria then you may prefer that.

"It was probably initially a political choice, but the French developed second-generation nuclear energy and they think it is acceptable. They built many of those nuclear power stations themselves. So far so good and that is the French perception.

"So you balance those three A's all the time, which is basically a political decision based on national thinking".

The Difficulty Of Long-term Planning

The problems of perception with regard to the global energy system begin with the questions of scale. Given the differences of the three A's, the objective differences of availability combined with the subjective differences of acceptability, one consequence is the lack of a shared international vision. But it doesn't end there. "For politicians," van der Veer notes, "it is not their natural habit to think in decades".

Because energy is one of the most vital interests of a state, he says, "the political system has part ownership or full ownership" of its energy industries in most countries. Today we witness frequent protests by large crowds, celebrities, and retired politicians in Western capitals taking to the streets demanding immediate action on climate change. The European Union seeks to impose unrealistic targets on its member states. The political classes are inclined to relieve these pressures from above and below by doling out generous subsidies for renewable energy sources as a short-term political gesture, with little consideration for the physical limitations, future trends or economic viability of doing so. The priority of subsidies for current technology over investment in research and development reflects this short-term thinking.

Van der Veer goes on: "The problem is that they are in too much of a hurry to develop a certain form of renewable energy. What is the best example? Building an offshore wind industry could be attractive for a country like the Netherlands, because we have wind, we have an offshore industry and we like to do things in the sea. So we have a lot of support industry to operate there. But offshore wind is in fact very expensive today. What is our government's reaction? We put huge subsidies into it. [Former Environment Minister] Jacqueline Cramer poured €4 billion into it. Now we have the Dutch Energy Agreement for Sustainable Growth,' which has announced another €4 billion. And you don't even get that many kilowatt-hours out of it.

"So I disagree with that. People may think, 'Oh, he comes from Shell, so he will disagree with renewables'. That is nonsense. I do agree that offshore wind can be attractive for the long term. What you have to do is carry out a lot of research and development to get this form of energy to produce kilowatt- hours at a lower cost".

Towards A Smarter Innovation Policy

At technical universities we make use of the learning curve, or cumulative learning, which is used in all industries. The economics of a learning or experience curve are reflected in a lowering of cost for successive generations as technology improves and production increases in scale. The learning curve of 'Henderson's Law' found an average of 15 per cent cost reduction for every doubling of output. This is an empirical law based on averaged findings without a firm theoretical basis. It was found useful for developing cost projections in a variety of industries, including cars, aviation, televisions, and high technology. Both the economies of scale and the innovations of new generations factor into cumulative production output to enable an average learning curve of 15 per cent cost reduction per cycle.

Instead of misguided innovation policies promoted by central government, van der Veer points to the dynamics of the learning curve as instructive for the development of the renewable energy industry, especially offshore wind farms, which are currently not market-viable.

"With this kind of technology, it is reasonable to estimate that if you build the first generation, then the second generation probably already has a lower cost of 15 per cent. And then the third generation is 15 per cent lower than that figure, and so on. A learning curve for 15 per cent is not unreasonable". In this iterative process, four such cycles, leading to a fifth generation, could halve the price per unit of electricity.

Rather than blow an entire budget on merely subsidizing the manufacture of an expensive first generation, a smarter innovation policy focuses on research and development according to the learning curve, bringing industry on board for new public-private partnerships. This way offshore wind energy could be developed into a genuinely market-viable industry, rather than a way of meeting regional targets in a wasteful manner.

"So you have to build not too many expensive wind turbines, but you have to build a few. You do a lot of development and research and you put a target there: the price per unit of electricity should be much cheaper.

"Now if you do that seven times, and if one cycle takes two years - that is pretty fast, by the way - then in 14 years offshore wind may be roughly commercial. That is very important, because if it is commercial it doesn't need subsidies. And the industry wants to build it, because you can make money on it.

"To fund that or to contribute to that kind of research with public-private partnerships with the government will cost much less money than the large sums of money that the Netherlands is currently putting into it. So they have a wrong model. I can't be more straightforward. They are really on the wrong track.

"Now if you explain that to the minister, as I did at the time to the Minister of Economic Affairs, you'll see that they are not deaf. So why did they pursue the policies that they did? It's quite interesting. They will say, we have agreed targets in Europe: by 2020 we have to have so much renewable energy and we are a country which, if we agree something, likes to adhere to that. And within all the alternatives we have, while this may be waste in your view, it is the lowest waste. Now you may have an intellectual debate on whether that was the best choice, but I think they should have turned back.

"The planet will not be saved by having 20 per cent renewable energy in Europe in 2020. You can help the world in a much better way, but maybe some years later by applying more commercial technology. Then you can discuss how many years later, when you have unsubsidized commercial forms of renewable energy. That is what the debate should be. But there was simply not enough momentum in Europe to go back to Brussels to adjust the 2020 targets".

"So, you have first to achieve a lower cost per unit of electricity before you build a lot of wind farms. Development targets should be based on the cost per kilowatt-hour without subsidy. That is what should have happened. And, by the way, this applies to other renewables as well, not only offshore wind".

Is the Dutch wind farm policy an example of politics without vision that is focused on the short term and leads simply to the wrong decision?

"Yes, exactly. By imposing too strict targets too early, you get sub-optimisation, because you do the wrong things".

Do subsidies slow down innovation?

"I think in general if you subsidize research in early development, especially if you do it in public-private partnerships, it can be a good thing. Take those wind farms. Before you say that offshore wind is too expensive, look around to see how it can be done cheaper. You go to Boskalis and Van Oord, who will say, we are dredgers and work on the normal tariff, but if the order is big enough, we can build special ships. Then you can go to Heerema for construction, and so on. All these industrial players like to make money, but no one wants to invest in research and development. Now they have their eyes on a huge pile of short-term government money. That is the wrong approach.

"What you could have done together with the top industrial sector is to form a new public-private partnership, to go through the first three or four cycles in the learning curve. My estimate at the time was that the cost to make wind energy commercially viable is about €800 million, and we could create a fund. We invest €400 million in stages, subject to achievements, and leave €400 million in a fund. Then you form a consortium with Boskalis and Van Oord. with Heerema and other firms, who fund the other €400 million to match the investment by the government. And you can use that money especially for the early phases of the research and development, of going through those learning curves".

As we saw in our case study on the cyber domain, the early stages of the development of the technology happened entirely inside the US government, and it was a political decision by President George H. W. Bush to bring it to the market. In this case, Jeroen van der Veer and former Defense Minister Hans Hillen agree that the investment should come from both parties, with both government and industry sharing responsibility. When the development process succeeds, then industry can take over.

"Or to put it more directly: in the first round, the government funds the wind farms to the tune of about 65 per cent. But in the second round, we go down the learning curve, and the government pays 58 per cent. In the third round we are already below 50 per cent, and so on. For the industry this can be quite attractive, and for the government results can be achieved at a relatively low cost.

A European Energy Policy?

"What then can we do - apart from complaining about what we can't do?

"If I focus on Europe, we come back to the previous point, because every country has different perceptions for the 'three A's': in Germany they are closing nuclear power stations, in Finland and in France they like to build them. We say about Kyoto that we have to reduce Co₂ but we now use more coal in Europe than when we agreed Kyoto - and in the United States less, by the way. But it shows that if we continue with an energy mix policy country by country, we will end up nowhere.

"We will not achieve the A of acceptable. Even if we do it for one country, its neighbor will think that it's not acceptable. I think we will probably end up with more expensive electricity for our industry and our consumers than for instance in the States. So it is not only the A of acceptable, I don't think we will achieve the A of affordable either.

"So the first thing we need is a real European energy policy.

"You need to have an overall energy policy. Now there are two remarks about that. You can't have an energy policy if you don't have a European foreign policy, because for a European policy you have to decide how much to import from Russia, how much from Algeria, and how much from the Caucasus. How do we do that? Do we have a pipeline through Russia or around Russia as with the Nabucco pipeline? Or do we use liquefied natural gas (LNG) ships from the Middle East? For a European energy policy, you need to have this kind of foreign policy thinking. That is only the A of availability, which includes the security aspect.

"But if we decide for instance that we would like to have it as a kind of insurance against an uncertain future, we need to have nuclear energy in the basket, because nuclear is in itself very interesting as it is the only large-scale solution with basically no CO₂. If that is part of an energy policy, then you need a process on how to decide where to build this nuclear energy capacity. Because the Germans will say: put it in the Netherlands. And the Dutch will say, put it in Belgium. And they say put it in France.

"I think that nuclear energy is part of the solution for Europe. Suppose a European Commissioner produces a great policy result, backed by good research - but then I think it will get stuck in the process to decide where it should go. I think that will be very tough.

"You will get a lot of maneuvering, but it is better than no European energy policy. You have to start somewhere. So the first step is to map the overall picture for Europe on the three A's, and then to initiate the processes to allocate what to do where. Then it is very helpful in my view if Brussels doesn't make life difficult for itself by having too tough energy targets for 2030.

"Because 2020 is near, the Commissioner (Günther Oettinger) said we would like to have targets probably for 2030, but these are not yet agreed. The present proposals, supported so far by Dutch civil servants, is that by 2030 we should have a 40 percent reduction in Co₂ since 1990, which is the reference here for Kyoto. Now I always like simple calculations. By 2030 our GDP has doubled compared to 1990, in fact I hope it is a bit better. So if we save energy by 40 percent vis-à-vis 1990, then per unit GDP we have to reduce our Co₂ emissions by 80 percent. Is that achievable?

"I am not against the Greenpeaces and all kind of environmental thinking, but we should understand what we are doing. The new target may be more disruptive than the 2020 target was.

"I always go back to central energy policy, funding research and the processes of allocation. That is the way to accelerate the energy transition".

In other words, a target that is too severe will in fact take us farther away from it if it leads to subsidies of inefficient and suboptimal outcomes, ignoring both economic viability and economic growth.

A Global Energy Policy?

While it would be a big step to have a European foreign policy, energy remains a global foreign policy issue and an expression of global power. Beyond national interests and processes we are currently unable to develop a coherent European energy policy, but to do so globally is even more difficult. Does van de Veer agree that the global political field of energy is often underestimated?

"There are two strong global aspects to energy. The first is the IPCC report on climate change.2 The second is the IEA, the International Energy Agency in Paris, which is more focused on availability and its effect on the political dimension. The IEA updates its World Energy Outlook annually, and the IPCC revisits its assessment report every six years. If you use those two as a basis, then you have enough overall, let's say think tank, capability in order to form a real European policy.

"On the matter of climate change - what would be the outcome if we were super-clean here in the Netherlands? Imagine that on the A of acceptable we do a perfect job, but our electricity prices have become so high that we can't compete. Then we are out-competed by products from China based on coal- fired power. That is one extreme.

"The problem is that we now have a country policy, and we need to get it to a regional policy. For that you need new Kyotos, new kinds of agreements, to solve this second problem.

"But don't underestimate the Chinese. While they still build a lot of power stations and they still build new coal-fired power stations, many of the new ones are running on gas. So they do react and of course very much helped by all the problems they have, especially in Beijing with the air pollution that brings it pretty close to home for them.

"So to take one step back - for climate change we need global coordination to a certain degree to do something about that CO₂. If you take it to a higher abstraction level, then coal should eventually be left in the ground, because per kilowatt-hour it generates by far the highest Co₂. So if you look from a global perspective, it is probably the lowest-cost solution to minimise the use of coal.

"Now in all projections over the last 10 years, the use of coal has grown more than all the renewable energy sources. And that may happen again. So coal production is still on the increase. And every additional ton of coal ends up in Co₂ as well. So the first challenge is to stabilise the use of coal or even to force a reduction. These are large problems that require large-scale solutions. With all due respect, wind turbines next to your farm will not solve that.

"What then are your options? Your options are nuclear and gas. Gas is not perfect but there is a lot of it, it is relatively easy to extract and quick to distribute. Shale gas in the US is driving out coal there. But in Europe the problem is that the price of our gas is much higher than coal. What is then your option? There is the ETS, the European Trading System, or a tax on CO₂, or a tax specifically on coal. But that can only work if you do it within at least a European context. Otherwise one doesn't have a level playing field for the industry.

"If you look at Availability, you come to the role of the Middle East. There are still huge gas reserves in the Middle East, e.g. in Iran and Qatar. They are huge and will be for many, many decades. When I started to work for Shell, we thought that the world's gas reserves would last for 20 to 30 years. Now we think they may last 200 years. Nobody knows.

"But gas is not evenly spread. So you cannot avoid geo-political thinking. And that is why it is not up to the industry to choose the energy mix for a country. In the end, it is always a political choice".

Alternative Energy Sources

Will severe emission targets make a country uncompetitive if the price of energy remains too high? Is solar energy a solution?

"Solar energy is, thanks to the Chinese, already commercially available: decentralized solar for domestic use. The question arises again, what should a government do? Should we subsidize solar, as the Germans and the Dutch do? Or do you say as a government: if you build a new house with a roof on the south, you are allowed to do that, but it should be a solar roof. So basically do you use the power of government to set rules?"

"I think that is much more powerful and in the end costs less, not only for the government but for society as well, to do it that way. Now maybe solar technology is not developed enough to say that every roof that has to be built should be a solar roof. But then government can say something else: in Europe, we can say that by 2024 every roof facing south should be at least 50 percent solar. And by 2030 it should be 75 percent. If you set those rules, then companies will start to do research because they are assured of a market. That is a much better incentive than subsidy".

"But when it comes to large-scale projects, such as solar farms in the desert in Algeria, can they work? I think so. But are they commercially viable? No. Is Algeria a country where you feel comfortable to have a very large investment sitting there for over 30 years? I'm not so sure".

"So there is a form of solar energy which may over time become commercial as well. It is here that you need smart grids. You have to connect grids, which is not easy, the difficulty being that you have to transport electricity over long distances, so you need special investment to go from one type of current to another".

"Solar energy can play a big role in this, but not soon. That is my message on those factors. It is important to continue to do some experiments, but it doesn't solve the equation".

"Then you have onshore wind, which can cost less than offshore wind. But nobody wants to have it next to their home, so you have a problem of space".

"With energy from ocean waves, you have the same problem as with large- scale solar plants - technically possible but not commercial as yet. Over time, you still have to do research in that area".

"And you have all kinds of alternative solutions. You can say, OK, what do I do with solar? I generate electricity and I transport it to Europe. Or you can say, in Algeria we have a lot of sun. I generate electricity and with the electricity I make hydrogen, and hydrogen is much more flexible to transport than electricity. So you have different pathways".

"Research and development are also needed for traditional gas as well as shale gas. While shale gas is not ideal, I find it strange that this country [the Netherlands] doesn't like to do exploration. We need exploration to see whether we have commercial shale gas or not. If I were the government, I would like to know that, because later it could be an alternative to Russian imports".

"In the Shell scenarios shale gas was mentioned but as unconventional and with a minor role. Nobody had foreseen the major role that shale gas now plays for the US, so that they are substantially reducing their imports of oil and gas and they have electricity prices which are substantially lower than in Europe - 40 to 50 percent lower, in that order of magnitude. Nobody had foreseen that. Some of today's forecasts will be wrong in ten years".

Despite the difficulty of long-term predictions, and the impossibility of forecasting the role of new technologies that may emerge, some generalizations are possible about larger trends.

"There are two likely scenarios. One is that after 2060 you will see a real major contribution from solar energy, but much more decentralized. This is not so much the Algeria desert scenario, but one where solar-based technology becomes a part of everything you build, with solar roof panels, walls and windows. And the other scenario is basically gas, with natural gas and shale gas as the big breakthroughs that will drive out coal".

"In both scenarios you can help the overall system by imposing a penalty on coal. There is then the disaster scenario in which you fail to drive out coal, but I think that is unlikely. Because if you continue to increase coal, people will notice. Either you get local air pollution as in China, or you get completely unacceptable climate change, and coal will be seen as the culprit".

With a major role for gas in the present and future, and despite the role of shale gas, Europe will continue to have to rely on Russia for supplies. Taking a global view of energy politics, there will be a great deal of interdependence. Is the way Europe and Russia are currently behaving towards each other in light of the Ukraine crisis helpful for a global energy policy?

"No, it is not. But first, to be fair to Gazprom, they have so far, even in the Cold War, supplied Western Europe with a track record of too percent. That is incredible. They have never failed, not even technically. So the first reality is that they have perfect contract compliance. And, they will bend over backwards to keep that record".

"People say Ukraine's supply was interrupted. But that is a different story, about non-payment and gas siphoned off that was not measured".

Leadership And Interim Solutions

Of all the interim solutions, however, neither solar energy, nor offshore and onshore wind energy, nor ocean wave energy provides in the shorter term a commercially viable alternative to fossil fuels at present. This leaves nuclear energy, which has a very minimal carbon footprint, but may not be acceptable to many societies in the West, especially since the Fukushima disaster.

The dilemma has come to the fore as decision-makers are unable to resist the political will of electorates protesting at nuclear energy, or directives from the European Union. It is becoming ever more difficult to exercise leadership because a confluence of forces is driving reactive policies and compromises in which long-term national, regional, and global interests are sacrificed. After the Fukushima disaster, nuclear energy became unacceptable and a nuclear phase-out started in various European countries, especially in Germany, which plans to shut down all its reactors in 15 years or so. Austria and Spain have passed laws to cease production of new power stations, and other European countries are debating phase-outs. These short-term reactions are not in their long-term interest, either economically or environmentally. Nuclear energy remains a viable interim solution to reduce carbon emissions on a large scale, but in the public mind it no longer passes the test of the first A - Acceptable.

Van der Veer comments: "Mind you, Angela Merkel could have said: we will close all old nuclear power stations, but we will create a European task force that will look into how we can build safe nuclear energy for the future. That would have been a much better stance in my opinion than simply: I'm shutting down nuclear energy, full stop".

The challenge for leadership is immense. To be able to exercise leadership effectively in this area requires solid intellectual foundations and public support that does not exist. As our case study on the Responsibility to Protect doctrine shows, the ground was prepared over a long period before the diplomatic breakthrough occurred. To articulate a vision at the political level, and to gain traction with genuine public support, requires a broad campaign. It may be better to start from the bottom, General van den Breemen noted, to develop an integrated policy across the whole of government, rather than merely in one ministry. At this point in the conversation, former Defense Minister Hans Hillen interjected, "Don't overestimate politics".

Or would a top-down approach be more effective? "I think top-down," says van der Veer. "You first have to agree in Brussels that the goal in the end is to get European energy policy. So, our heads of state can say: this is our common policy. But that will take years of preparation, because people are all over the place at the moment".

In Conclusion

In this conversation, Jeroen van der Veer has provided us with valuable insights about the realities and possibilities of our energy future, and the requirements of leadership and management for genuine change. First of all, people are generally unaware of the scale of the global energy system and the fact that it will nearly double by 2050, with serious environmental, economic and geopolitical consequences. The higher abstraction level of the 'three A's' of Acceptable, Available, and Affordable of every form of energy works out differently in different countries. There is a lack of consensus, within countries and at the regional and global level, which makes it impossible to articulate a shared vision. Nuclear energy is a viable interim solution until renewables are commercially viable, but it is generally not acceptable to the public.

The availability of inexpensive fuels in the West is partly because different countries have different cultures, and there is no consensus on the right energy mix for Europe. The shale gas revolution has a great chance to strengthen Europe's strategic position if European states were more proactive in shale gas exploration. A genuine pan-European vision, energy policy, and energy strategy are required, which includes the role of Russia's energy strategy.

Renewable energy sources are largely unaffordable without subsidies at present. Most politicians' short-term horizons lead to a rush to subsidize renewables that are not commercially viable. On this last point, van der Veer proposes a very interesting challenge to us to spend less but achieve more by investing in the research and development of new generations of offshore wind energy, according to the principles of the learning curve. This is a good example of a long-term strategy where an iterative process can lead to a genuinely sustainable and viable solution. For that we need to move beyond the ideas stage.

"We don't have consensus. We have the ideas, but we don't have a common or shared vision, or a shared concept, or a shared strategy. So here we are stuck. Take the example of nuclear - there are huge problems with planning and execution.

"To achieve it you need a common vision. That in the end is leadership. I think leadership is helped by a very strong Energy Commissioner in Brussels with this as the main item on the agenda. And then it will still take some time.

"But the window of opportunity is there. The C02 problem is huge, but if we solve it one day earlier or one day later doesn't make any difference. So we have a very long window. That sometimes works to your disadvantage, because then you go too slowly. You can always delay it for a day, because the window isn't closing - unless you live in Beijing!"