Rethink Energy Podcast

• Rethink Energy 217: Data centers and the energy trilemma, Aus-NZ transmission link

  Data centers are pursuing a mixture of renewable energy, gas, and nuclear power to ensure they have a supply of sustainable, reliable and affordable power, in a microcosm of the energy trilemmaA 2,600-kilometer submarine HVDC line has been proposed to link New Zealand and Australia - with huge arbitrage potential across demand peaks over a 2-hour timezone distance.Europe's leadership has proposed a $100 billion clean manufacturing fund - is this enough to finally shore up domestic manufacturing in the face of China and the US' Inflation Reduction Act?

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• Rethink Energy 216: Transmission build out limitations, Germany's lacking energy strategy

  German elections have seen the Green Party sidelined and a centre-right government taking power - but this seemingly won't be enough to prompt a restoration of mothballed nuclear plants, even as German industry shrank for the seventh quarter in a row due to energy costs. The IEA has published a report on the lengthening lead times and supply bottlenecks for transmission infrastructure - this problem will shape Western energy deployments for decades to come, skewing investments in favour of distributed resources and microgrids. Flexible solar panel products are appearing using silicon cells, demonstrating that the limiting technology is more the encapsulation solution rather than the need for flexible semiconductors such as perovskite. HD KSOE is exploring the development of a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) built into a container ship - and floating nuclear could be useful off US coasts as well.

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  23:17
• Rethink Energy Talks Ep. 13: AXIS Capital and insurance in the energy transition

  In this episode of Rethink Energy Talks, we're joined by Joe Dutton, Axis Capital's Innovation Lead, to discuss the role of insurance in the renewable energy sector, beginning with offshore wind and Chinese imports, then expanding to a sweeping discussion of the energy transition as a whole.

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  33:32
• Rethink Energy 215: China's power market reforms, Trump Admin's fossil fuel agenda

  China will switch its renewable energy power projects over to market-based pricing from June 1st 2025, while also abolishing battery co-location requirements, following on from ever steeper time-of-day pricing, and a 2024 reform which introduced capacity payments for coal and gas plants. China's reform parallel the more gradual reforms cutting Feed-in tariffs and Net Metering across multiple Western markets. The Trump Administration intends to boost domestic oil and gas production and exports - this is bad news for renewable energy investments worldwide, as would a loosening of sanctions on Russia, but transmission is the main limiting factor in many mature markets anyway. Compressed-air energy storage (CAES) is being built out in artificial excavations in China at prices which aren't wholly worse than lithium-ion BESS, considering the relative youth of the technology. Perovskites and solid-state batteries face the same problem - the mainstream technologies of silicon PV and LFP batteries are already cheap and high quality, and are also still improving their quality, preventing a 'moving target' to the more innovative future replacement.

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• Rethink Energy 214: Estonia's underground pumped hydro, green hydrogen's cost-viability

  As the Baltic states switch synchronization from the Russian to the Western European grid, construction will soon begin at an Estonian pumped hydro project with deep underground excavation works. meanwhile Norway has backed off from an offshore wind expansion which would have increased its international transmission connection across the North Sea.Australia's CSP company, Vast, is working towards FiD at its Port Augusta project - concentrated solar power is niche, but by no means dying off.China's north is the most likely site for the world's green hydrogen, but actual project construction remains low in absolute terms, with more price improvement needed to become truly profitable.

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  32:59

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