Well,

talking about policy, you've traditionally been careful to be apolitical, but there's no avoiding the fact that a second Trump term controlling all the branches of government and without the so-called adults in the room may well have serious impacts on the energy transition. Are you willing to venture any thoughts about that? Well,

we've seen this movie before, and it's always disruptive, but I think the disruptions to our polity and economy will be less severe for energy than for many other sectors because there's this fundamental economic driver at play. a weak federal policy apparatus and framework. Most of our big energy decisions are actually made at a state or local level. About half the states will not just continue, but intensify their efficiency and renewables efforts. And many of the others will as well. Something like 80% of the funding coming out of our Inflation Reduction Act under the current administration has actually gone to Republican-led states. That's partly because there's this big wind belt down the middle of the country from Texas to the Canadian border. So Texas, for example, a deeply Republican state, is by far the national leader, not just in wind, but also increasingly in solar power, and will any year now surpass California in that regard. Because Texans are very good at building things and at making money. They're not doing it because it's green. They're doing it for profit and also for resilience. They've had serious grid interruptions from both hot and cold weather and want to get out of that position, and they're doing so rather rapidly. So we're in for interesting times, but the fundamentals favor continuing the transition, no matter how much the White House would rather have a different outcome. We have had, of course, one Trump administration previously, and we've had a number of other conservative administrations that would try to shut down renewable research and deployment, but it kept going merrily along and in many cases accelerated. Just because the economic and security and environmental and health benefits are so strong, they're irresistible. The last time, I think it might have been even under President Reagan, that they tried to shut down the Renewable Research National Lab. Many of its staff simply migrated into private sector and state government and brought their expertise there. And it was a great infusion of new skills and energy that spread things up. Can

I ask you about energy security as well? Because one takeaway from our experience with COVID is that many of the global supply chains turned out to be more fragile and vulnerable than we'd previously thought. Does your analysis of energy have any implications for how countries can avoid having their energy supplies disrupted by geopolitical or other changes? Oh,

very much so. The most obvious thing is that if you do efficiency renewables, you're no longer dependent on fossil fuels. To be sure, you may be dependent in the short run on renewable technologies, about three-fourths of whose supply chains are based in China, but that's rather rapidly diversifying. That is, I think, a short-term dependence, and it doesn't mean you can't get the stuff. It just means that you're importing it as we import fuels today. But there's more certainty of getting it. China certainly wants to keep exporting its solar panels and wind turbines. And the growth in alternative exporters, including India, that will scale to be quite large, impressive. But there are other kinds of energy security concern that just import dependence. There's also the fundamental resilience of the supply. If your solar power is coming from your own roof, there's a lot less to go wrong getting it to you than if it's coming hundreds of kilometers through a fragile grid, which is where most power failures originate. Your solar cells do depend on weather, but again, that can be diversified, and there are 10 ways to even out on all timescales the fluctuations in the solar and wind output, whereas conventional power plants, including nuclear ones, are quite vulnerable to weather. You can have frozen up coal plants, frozen canals so the barges can't move, high temperatures that make power stations get inefficient or even shut down restrict their output. Renewables are generally less vulnerable to climate change, including sea level rise affecting coastal installations that were put there for cooling water. And then, of course, there are the cyber vulnerabilities of the grid, and those can be well resisted by local renewable supply. And all of these interruptions become less important with efficient use, which not only makes the needed supply smaller and cheaper and faster, it also makes things fail slower. The temperature of your building, for example, will change much more slowly if it's better insulated. And that gives you more time to fix what's broken or to improvise new supplies.

If some of our listeners are encouraged and inspired by what they've heard today, which one of your 31 books should they pick up and start reading first? Reinventing

Fire. It's from 2011, but it's surprisingly fresh. What's

the basic premise of Reinventing Fire? Reinventing

Fire synthesizes in the context of the United States, but in a world setting and with many references to other countries' experience. what happens if you combine modern efficiency with modern renewables in a well-designed grid? I think you'll find it quite surprising. Nowadays, I would say it's very conservative because although we did expect renewables would get a lot cheaper, they got even cheaper, even faster than we'd said. So we were a bit more conservative than we intended, but that just strengthens the conclusions. Now

you're sending a copy to the new Secretary for Energy in the Trump administration? We'll

see if that's worthwhile, but there are many, many copies on desks already around the world, and particularly in the Pentagon, where it was very popular, because of course, they see the current energy system as a major threat multiplier, and efficiency and renewables as major sources of better security. And indeed, they are within the US government, the national leader in deploying those technologies in their own operations, so that they can have mega missions in the Persian Gulf mission unnecessary. And they really like that idea. Well,

Amrit, I think your view of the energy transition is more optimistic than most people's. And I find that very refreshing, especially these days. So thank you very much indeed for joining us on the London Futurist Podcast. You're

welcome. Thank you for having me. It's

been a real pleasure. Thanks.