Cheap solar could create volatile electricity markets

In his introduction, Markham says "Conference Board of Canada" rather than "The Conference Board," which is the US organization for which economist Alex Heil wrote the report, “Too Much Sun? Heavy Focus on Solar Might Create Volatile US Electricity Markets.”

What is Energi Talks?

Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.

Markham: 00:04

Welcome to episode 277 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hislop. Solar is now the cheapest way to generate electricity, which is why the United States is installing so much of it particularly in sunny states like California and Texas. But solar, as we often hear from its critics, only generates power when the sun is shining. But as you often hear on this podcast, solar and wind are not, and I can repeat that again, are not drop in replacements for dispatchable sources of power like hydro or nuclear or thermal in the in the case of of natural gas, and they require power grids to be reengineered as the amount of renewable generation grows.

Markham: 00:51

This is a point I emphasize over and over again. Failing to modernize a grid is a recipe for trouble. The conference board of Canada is worried that too much cheap solar is its own recipe for trouble south of the border. I'm joined by Alex Heil, senior economist at the board to talk about a new report, Too Much Sun, Heavy Focus on Solar Might Create Volatile US Electricity Markets. So welcome to the interview, Alex.

Alex: 01:20

Thanks for having me, Markham.

Markham: 01:23

Well, I, you know, I wanna talk about this because here in Canada in particular and I should mention for you that our audience, while, primarily Canadian, we also get plenty of American and European and some Asian, audience members as well. So I am fond of saying that in Canada, we've been a little too complacent. We've had such a good, you know, 84% clean electricity because of hydro and nuclear. Our grids are, in most provinces, stable. Prices are low.

Markham: 01:54

We've not had a lot of incentive to innovate or change things the way they have in the US. And the US is just, it's a madhouse as they try to reengineer that creaky old grid and and, so they can they can increase generation and prepare for electrification and integrate, wind and solar and other sources of energy. So in all of that, as context, then maybe explain the argument that you're setting out in your report, please.

Alex: 02:30

Yeah. So I think the way to look at, you know, this whole energy transition now is we've made tremendous progress when it comes to renewables. The costs have fallen, you know, depending on what you look at and over what time frame, 90% in particular solar. Solar has played a critical role as well as wind and and other renewables in reducing the energy, the carbon intensity of the grid that's that's resulted in significant reductions of, greenhouse gas emissions in the US. If you compare to 2,005, we're down about 17% all in for the economy.

Alex: 03:11

And that's that's a story of greater renewables, greater efficiency. There's an electric vehicle adoption story embedded in that as well. There is a substitution story there of, you know, coal being being replaced by natural gas. You take this all together and solar is going to be a critical a critical avenue here of further decarbonizing the grid. So there are states, as you as you alluded to, that have moved ahead in that transition much further than others.

Alex: 03:43

So California is the one I looked at some of the data for the state of California from their from their ISO, and it's it's tremendous, the extent to which I believe the the share of electricity, coming from solar in in California It's about 4 or 5 times what it is for the country overall. California sort of scratching at the 20% mark that they are about. And with that comes, you know, lower carbon intensity comes lower cost because it is the the most cost advantageous form of energy electricity now, but also comes variability of when it actually when those when those resources can can supply electricity to the grid. And there are half there are days depending on you. So if you look in the in the spring, middle of April in California, you know, where there is an oversupply of electricity in the middle of the day when it's not warm enough that everybody has the air conditioning on, people don't, you know, have all their devices connected, and all of a sudden, there there are some instances when, wholesale power prices have even turned negative.

Alex: 04:49

So my my argument here is to point to some of those variability and then also suggest that what really will be required going forward is much more of a comprehensive planning effort that includes, storage that that builds on other power sources, for instance, nuclear that are low carbon, but that have a high base load component.

Markham: 05:14

I wanna get into the discussion around planning. And and the way I'll set up the question, Alex, is a a little graphic I got from an International Energy Agency presentation, from a couple of years ago, and it was about the integration of renewables into power grids. And it just structures it so nicely, that I refer to it a lot. And it says there are 6 phases of integrating variable, renewable energy, inverter based resources into power grids. And the first two, with very low penetration, the system operator can handle without too much trouble, just forecasting and and some other, activities.

Markham: 05:55

But once you get into the phase 3, then your penetration is high enough, and maybe it's around 8 or 10%, something like that, then you need to begin reengineering your grid. You need to do things differently. And as you go from phase to phase, which is more wind and solar, more variable energy, then you have to do, greater reinvention of your grid. And I think that while that maybe is self evident today, when California began doing its transition, because it's been kind of a leader in North America in this, it wasn't as self evident. And and they've had plenty of growing pains, all sorts of issues, outages for a while, and and, now they're trying to curb the growth of rooftop solar because that's affecting prices.

Markham: 06:46

I mean, there's just one thing after another in California, but they're they're sorting it out. And I I wonder if when I was reading your your work, I was wondering, are we asking the wrong questions here? Is it how to avoid volatility created by or caused by solar, or should we be asking, we know renewables are intermittent and volatility is part of that, how do we build a grid designed to accommodate variable power? Or maybe maybe I'm I'm overstating it. What what's your take?

Alex: 07:20

No. I think that's a good point, and I think we've certainly seen California sort of move into that phase that you you described where, solar becomes a large large share of the energy profile. And it's really I think about it as diversification at least to a certain extent. Right? The the the extent to which solar can be, you know, supplemented with wind power, they don't necessarily work on the same intermittency or variability pattern.

Alex: 07:51

So they they smooth out some of the peaks and and troughs, if you will. And a system in which and I think there's going to be much more focus, you know, placed on this now going forward where storage becomes a much bigger part of this conversation. I think we have, real I I did some additional work earlier on, I believe, in the fall of 22 when, you know, state of California was basically, you know, that communicated to some of the the customers that they really should be reducing energy demand during the day, and the utility sent out text messages, and they reduced some of the peak and avoided some of the worst consequences. But if you look, you know, at those extreme days at some of these patterns, it's really if there had been utility level storage available or even storage on the on the, you know, the the other side of the the customer level. This would have avoided a lot of those disruptions.

Alex: 08:44

So I do think that a much more comprehensive effort that takes that into consideration is going to be crucial, and California is already in the middle of it because their share is so large. And depending on what other market you're looking at, in the United States in particular, which is the region that I focus on primarily, that that is going to be part of that conversation. And and then, you know, it comes down to a question of cost effectiveness. It comes down to a, you know, how do we actually, accomplish storage at various different time intervals, very short time intervals, longer, even seasonal storage? How do we can how we can make that happen?

Alex: 09:24

What extent does and this is getting a little off topic certainly, but, you know, bidirectional charging of electric vehicles, is that something that at some point is going to be providing an avenue for for storage options? All of those are on the table, and I think it really requires a a much more careful look. And it's it's the same with everything. What what when you have a very low penetration rate of a new technology, it gets lost. It gets lost in the system.

Alex: 09:52

And then when you are at the very top end of almost everybody uses it, it's widely adopted, then you have sorted out the problem. It's that transition in the middle where now you really need to think about. Right? That that's when the problems that you might have anticipated now that when they're really on the table.

Markham: 10:10

Well and let's talk about why why, so many jurisdictions are adopting solar, in significant quantities. The first one is cost. We we know, that China over the last decade or 2 has been scaling up its solar solar panel, manufacturing. And now I saw a great little graphic. It might have been a Wood Mackenzie graphic, but in the US, US manufacturer, it's 40¢ a watt.

Markham: 10:44

In Europe, it's 22, 24¢ a watt. And in China as of late last year, it was 12¢ a watt. And then okay. So that's cheap enough. That's already now a very cheap panel, But the forecast from the International Energy Agency is that we're gonna see a doubling of renewable installations over the next 3 years, And then what happens is Wright's Law kicks in, and we see a x percentage reduction in price again.

Markham: 11:11

So the the guess is that it'll be another 2 or 3¢ lower, coming out of China. And then in 18 months after that, we'll see probably see another doubling again, which would mean another you know, who knows what they would be want a cent or 2. It it looks like we're headed for for panels that are down in the 6 to 8¢, a watt mod, range. And, so it just gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, and that's why I would expect that so many, place are are adopting it now or planning to.

Alex: 11:44

Oh, there's there's no question. I think the the you know, with if you look at not only the panel cost, but also the efficiency that's improved to it's a it's a story of both, really. And it's it's undeniably the case that at this point, solar is is really the first option for a lot of jurisdictions when they look at electricity, generation. It's for a lot of individual customers. And projects that 5 years ago didn't make any sense, all of a sudden, they now make sense now.

Alex: 12:14

Right? Payback periods have been shortened so much that all of a sudden, those become economically viable projects. Just anecdotally, when we moved into the suburbs of New York City, you know, 10 years ago, we looked at solar on on the roof of a house, and, you know, the developer have to be going through this, told us, oh, this the the payback period is 16 years. And now we have solar panels on our roof and the the, if all, you know, pencil it sort of works out as pencil penciled in, and the, the payback is just over 7, which is tremendous. And this is largely due to the the effect that you described, which the cost have come down.

Alex: 12:49

Stoller manufacturing, cattle manufacturing is now a cut through a business. There's no the profit margins are gone. And so this is now becoming an industry in which, it if the economies of scale, they are tremendous. And these costs are continue to drop. I mean, we're so low now that the cost on a on a project almost almost insignificant in many cases.

Markham: 13:10

Now you're an economist, and I've heard other economists argue that we are fast approaching the marginal cost of 0 for for solar. And maybe as you point out in your paper, maybe, you know, at some points, even negative. The the the developer has to pay to have somebody take away their solar. So what how does that marginal cost of 0 for a kilowatt hour or megawatt hour of electricity, how does that change the calculations within an economy? Because now you can it seems to me like you can do all sorts of other, things that maybe weren't economic before, but your energy costs are so low that you now can do them, and maybe that's making hydrogen or maybe it's who knows?

Markham: 13:59

What's your take on that?

Alex: 14:01

Yeah. I think that's true. I think it opens up a lot kinds of opportunities where electricity can be used. I and I look at this from you know, they are the economists, they talk about incentives. Right?

Alex: 14:11

It's about the incentives for for investment. I think if we have these these price patterns that vary tremendously throughout the day that mirror the the pattern of, let's say, silver electricity generation, then that's going to create incentives at only at certain times of the day and not when prices have essentially, you know, marginal cost have dropped to 0. So that's if you're if you're trying to, you know, incentivize people to provide sort of base load power, well, there's certain times of the day when there simply is no market for the base load because it's been taken up by solar. And also additional solar capacity at those times don't necessarily have, you know, positive prices that would be would be generating a return on on on investment. So I think that's that's problematic from that point, but I think we've also trained, you know, our thinking to say, oh, we we may not want to, you know, operate in certain peak periods because we need to save energy and shift it into the shoulder and into the off peak.

Alex: 15:09

Well, the shoulder and the off peak are changing, frankly. So maybe there's sort of a question here. Well, what maybe some of the energy intensive activities, they can now be conducted when when the, when the the energy generation from solar is the greatest in the middle of the day. And, you know, in terms of the the hydrogen that you're mentioning, any kind of large plant is going to look for patterns that basically, you know, suggest utilization in in upwards of 80% in order to to be able to amortize the cost. Well, that's that needs to be then basically accompanied with the electricity generation, especially the energy intensive industries and processes that we're talking about.

Alex: 15:54

So I think there are these kind of incentive problems that have shown up here. So it's now the challenge to to generate this on a grid perspective that doesn't have as much fluctuations in price and and, where when taken together, the grid load is actually stable and the price overall does not provide a disincentive certain times a day.

Markham: 16:17

One of the projects that I find very interesting, it's kind of based on this idea of cheap solar and what to do with it, is called it's either LA Hydrogen or Hydrogen LA. I can never remember. I can never get it straight. But the idea is there there's a number of stakeholders within Los Angeles, including the city, including some utilities, including some big players in there, you know, in the in the power sector, space. And what they wanna do is, take really cheap solar that's currently being curtailed that has really has no value at all, and they wanna make hydrogen out of it, store it, probably underground, maybe in the same way as as natural gas, and then use it during those off peak hours or, you know, when when when it's dark or or, or, you know, maybe cloudy or rainy, whatever, and and send it to power plants that maybe have dual fuel, gas turbines.

Markham: 17:19

So you can burn gas, natural gas, or you can burn hydrogen. And I don't know if this is gonna work. I I mean, it's really my very kind of a pilot project to see if it can, but it sure is intriguing. And I and it and if it does work, is that not a an example of how we can build this grid I was talking about without resorting to new nuclear or, you know, well, new nuclear, let's say.

Alex: 17:53

Well, it's certainly a way to to have more storage available. I think, ultimately, that's what this is. Right? When you use very cheap electricity that is generated from renewable sources, you can you can create hydrogen, for instance, and then you can use that hydrogen in other uses either, you know, to to fill in the energy balance in the off peak, which solar may not be generating. So that becomes a a solar sort of so solar option certainly.

Alex: 18:20

So I think there's there's the general recognition that storage does not have to come down to just a big battery installation. There are other ways that you can store some of the cheap solar energy that that was that was, you know, generated, during peak periods during the middle of the day, and the sunny conditions, and then you can use it. And the advantage of you can use it off peak essentially, you can use it at other times, and the big advantage then also would be it's not necessarily needed it doesn't need to be used right away, right? With batteries you may not have the longest duration that you know, they can store electricity, but with the hydrogen if that's becomes a feasible economically sensible option that might also be something that is longer term storage that might be supportive for for the grid.

Markham: 19:11

Yeah. There there's a lot of, misconceptions and and debate around and around these kinds of issues and particularly the role of batteries. I saw someone just the other day saying, well, the batteries can only do an hour or 2 or 4 hours and, you know, and but, really, you only need, batteries for a short period a lot of storage for a short period of time. So if your if the sun goes down at 7 PM and households require 2 more hours of, you know, high capacity or high demand, for electricity, then if you've got a 2 or 4 hour battery, that's when you deploy it. And or if you have grid stability problems or issues during the day and you need you can call on those batteries.

Markham: 19:57

And and then there's virtual power plants. This is something Jigger Shaw from, the Department of Energy, loan program is big on these days is there's so much rooftop solar is get aggregators, to bring them all together, and then the aggregator has software that will basically, it's it's electricity arbitrage. You release it into the system when there's demand and high enough prices, and then the the basically, the the residential users, you know, get to make money, and sometimes more than enough to cover the cost of the of the system. So it seems like there's all these clever ways to take advantage of this electricity, the surplus electricity, the cheap electricity, and and it's really more an issue of deployment rather than the availability of the technology.

Alex: 20:48

Yeah. I think that's true. And I think when we're talking about storage, it's important to keep in mind there's different there's different types of storage. Right? There's basically storage that is used at very, very short time periods, basically, to make the grid function instantaneously matching supply and demand.

Alex: 21:04

And then there's the there's the, you know, the 15 minutes. There's the hour. There's the 2, 3 hour gaps. And they all, you know, to a certain extent, if it's very short duration, probably the traditional batteries are the best way to do this. But once you get into longer, time horizons, then other forms of storage like the hydrogen option that you mentioned, they become much more viable in that case.

Alex: 21:28

So I think, yes, this becomes a a challenge and a question of how you can you, you know, interlock some of these different energy forms and energy technologies in order to overall optimize, you know, we're trying to get out of all of them, while also at the same time reducing the carbon intensity of the grid.

Markham: 21:46

Your, your paper addresses the issue of, increasing volatility in, like, in US electricity markets. And we've been talking a lot about about California, but are you worried about those other markets that are maybe not as far along as California, maybe are not as advanced in their management of the grid or the reengineering of their grid to to accept variable power. Is that where the volatility maybe has the most potential to for damage, economic damage, and so on?

Alex: 22:21

You you mean in the US, other markets?

Markham: 22:24

Yeah. Like, for instance, in, Colorado. Or Yeah.

Alex: 22:28

Know. I think I'd looked at some data for instance of the the New England, you know, power grid, essentially, and, you know, they are nowhere near, you know, conditions that that exist in California. But it it's moving in that direction despite the fact that it's obviously much less suitable for solar up in the northeast of the US compared to, you know, Southern California and and Texas and other parts of the country. That's certainly true. But I do think that they are in they're you know, along the lines of what we've been discussing, they have very important lessons to learn, what this means for, power grid operators, what this means for electricity generation, and what this means for just just lessons to keep in mind to avoid some of these problems.

Alex: 23:11

If you attack them early on and make sure that the operation of your grid is supplemented with adequate, you know, base load that comes from, essentially, no low carbon, sources nuclear if that's part of your grid mix, that that storage is built into all of this so you can you can offset some of these irregularities and these variabilities. I think that's important, and we will see this become much more of a problem in other parts of the country.

Markham: 23:38

I I your report, touches upon the importance of planning, and this comes up over and over and over again when I do these kinds of interviews is is the importance of planning. And in the US, they're set up better than Canada. They had a a federal, energy regulatory commission at the highest level. They have regional transmission organizations. They have other regional organizations that do, that do planning, and and then they have they're much more market oriented than than than Canada is.

Markham: 24:09

When you get to Canada, we're like 10 little fiefdoms. Every province, you know, there is some east west trade, but most of whatever electricity is traded in Canada is traded with with the American states. And the lack of plan or even in institutions in which to have the conversations about planning in Canada seems to me to be a real, shortfall, like it's a reliability, because we're just now starting to see provinces go, oh, hang on a second. We're electrifying here. We're gonna have electric vehicles.

Markham: 24:44

We're gonna have heat pumps. We're gonna have electric industrial processes. Okay. We need to expand, and all they think about is their own province. They don't think about east west trade and Alberta doesn't, you know, talk to BC about inter ties with its hydro, that kind of thing.

Markham: 24:58

And and it seems like the Americans are much better at that planning and have the the institutions do it than Canada does. I mean, what's your take?

Alex: 25:09

Well, I think it's easy to to to, you know, so I give credit here. I think that, you know, the US certainly has issues with grid operations. It's not one national grid. Right? And we've just saw, you know, just a few years ago what happened in Texas during the the winter ice storm, and all of a sudden, this created a massive problem for for customers, outages in the middle of the winter.

Alex: 25:35

There there were lots of issues with that, and I think that if you I think one yes. There's there's probably a a national conversation that takes place, but on from the operation side, the different grid operators, the separate grids that operate in the US, I think, you know, they probably would benefit from also more coordination for more planning. I think some some greater collaboration that would work and could go a long way. And there's these there's the issues of interconnection. There's the issues of, you know, how you actually plan for additional capacity, how it gets built in.

Alex: 26:09

There's long lags when it comes to siding and permitting and, you know, a lot of these grid, structures. So I do think that even in a place you know even if we're saying okay fine in the US there are there are some of these conversations that are taking place and some of the planning takes place, but they're even there, there's a long way to go in order to make this a smooth transition.

Markham: 26:29

1 I given that we're talking about solar and and we're even considering the possibility of the marginal cost of 0 for solar, the the the the £800 gorilla, in the room is, from my point of view, is self generation by industrial and commercial, you know, big operations. And I know this has got the Alberta, the attention of the Alberta operator. They are really worried because if these big operations opt out of the grid, then the remaining customers have to pay the pay the freight, and then their costs go up. And but if I'm a, I don't know, a a paper mill, if I'm a man big manufacturing plant in in in Texas, maybe I'm maybe I'm Tesla, and I'm cranking out, you know, EVs all day. I'd seriously think about putting solar everywhere I could and and batteries and maybe just keeping the grid connection as as a backup.

Markham: 27:29

And I'm wondering to the extent to which that is already happening, and the potential for it.

Alex: 27:37

I think microgrids, like the one you're alluding to, I think that's a real, that's a structure that a lot of analysts and observers are sort of assigning a lot of, you know, positive benefits to. And it's simply the case that, you know, there's there's greater resilience in those micro grids if they are functioning properly, and certainly grid outages can be can be managed much better if if there are significant. No. I'm I'm not an expert at the engineering aspects of microgrids, but basically from from the limited research that I've done, they are beneficial and I think more and more folks, large institutions, large organizations, large corporations that have big campuses, big connected buildings, there's a lot of there's a lot of connected energy demand there that they can manage themselves, there's a lot of the of those of these these internal grid issues that they are facing in their own facilities. For them, that may that might make a lot of sense.

Alex: 28:36

And it'll make them resilient if they are, you know, operating, on their own if you will and then use as you said, you know, basically the the the the bigger grid connection is a backup and I think that can work. And it also will will frankly take some stress off the main grid if if the subunit is measured efficiently.

Markham: 28:58

Yeah. I I think that's that's correct, and I imagine we're going to see a lot more of that, in as as time goes on. I'm I there are, jurisdictions like Alberta, which, I mean, like, 84, 86% of the electricity is consumed by by industry and big, you know, and commercial and business operations because they have the oil sands, which is, you know, use a tremendous amount. They have refineries and petrochemicals and heavy industry like that. And so, you know, we keep we keep thinking about the the residential consumer when in fact, the it might be a lot easier and beneficial from a grid planning point of view to really to put more emphasis on the industrial consumers, particularly in some areas more than others.

Markham: 29:49

But, and and this potential for self generation and and microgrids. The I guess where I wanna go with this is the importance of getting this right, Alex. I mean, you're an economist and competitiveness is a big part of what you consider when you're doing your work. And I personally think that if Canada is slow to make this transition to to clean electricity or or expand in in with clean electricity, we're gonna suffer because clean electricity is like the table stakes at this game. You have to have it.

Markham: 30:31

That's what you have to have decarbonized supply chains. So somebody's building a plant, the first thing they wanna know is, can I get low cost, reliable, clean electricity? And how China is is hell bent for leather in in building solar. Europe is accelerating the US now. How important is that issue of of, you know, building an electricity system that can support industrial development and economic development.

Alex: 31:04

Oh, I that's absolutely true. I think that if we're looking at I mean, we're we're we're all living in an economy, in in a con national economies, you know, that are benefiting from electricity, from energy. That's the if you look at correlations between economic output, economic growth, and energy, I mean, they're very closely tied together. So I think it's now at the point where, however, there's both on the policy side, on the government side, on the business side, on the individual side, there's the the realization and the recognition that we need to go down the path of an energy transition that's gonna get us to a low or, you know, 0 carbon grid. And so this becomes this becomes a competitive element too.

Alex: 31:48

This becomes, you know, something that businesses are looking out for. That's something that businesses have to now report on in in various parts of the world. Right? It's, you know, what are your scope 1, scope 2, scope 3 emissions? And so the the the transparency of this is going to be further enhanced, and just the communication of this is gonna be important.

Alex: 32:08

And so this is the way we're going to go. I think we are lucky that this is aided by this whole push, you know, by by the low cost of renewable energy, solar in particular, but wind wind, generation costs have also come down tremendously. Battery costs have fallen. So it's entirely plausible to think about this as, you know, we are starting to pick up speed on this on this highway towards towards renewables, and this is something that is gonna just be gonna become the standard. It you know, electrification is part of this, an electrification of buildings, electrification of processes, moving away from other forms of energy, fossil fuels in particular.

Alex: 32:52

Those are the one that's that's something that is is possible course at this point.

Markham: 32:57

I I would agree, and I wanna get, and this will wrap up the conversation with this question. But I wanna get your opinion on something that I've been reading about, of late, and that is that as you electrify, you also increase the efficiency of your energy use because, you know, an internal combustion engine only burns 20 to 30% of the the gasoline you put into it. The rest escapes as exhaust and heat out of out of the engine. But an electric motor is 90, 95% efficient, and and efficiency. One of the beauties of renewables and other clean energy technologies is as you scale up and cost come down, efficiency is still going up.

Markham: 33:43

So you have a very nice, relationship there, and we think could think of the efficiency of solar panels, for instance, 23% now probably going up, as they integrate perovskite and other materials, prob might even hit 25, 27, maybe even 30 according to the experts I interview. Anyway, long story short, that the argument is made that switching to electricity and more and in and emphasizing efficiency, act primary energy might not rise that much, and in fact, one couple of our economists argue it could even fall compared to fossil fuels. You're an economist. What what do you make of that?

Alex: 34:24

Yeah. I think that there's certainly the efficiency argument is a very important one. So if we're looking at electric vehicles, right, there are fewer moving parts, there's there's efficiency built into that. If you look at heating homes, you know, heat pumps have become very, very efficient even at low temperatures. They're really, really effective.

Alex: 34:42

So electrification of commercial buildings, electrification of of industrial sites that can turn into, a process where on a, you know, per unit of output basis, you can actually reduce some of the the energy needs and that would imply that greater efficiency is is is playing a role there. I would agree with that. I don't know the exact sort of estimates in in in numbers on on what this may mean if we're going to on to a 100% electrified economy but you know we've we've touched on this now it's the point of the conversation to talk about the renewables aspect of this. Electrification is one one end and then on the other end, it's certainly what is feeding this electrified economy and then that's when renewables play the biggest role because ultimately you do wanna do both. Do you wanna electrify processes such as heating, such as cooling, such as mobility?

Alex: 35:34

And at the same time you wanna do it with electricity that is coming from renewable sources that is that is, 0 carbon electricity. And both of them together will, I think, be able to leverage this this trend in the most effective way.

Markham: 35:49

Great. Well, thank you very much. Really appreciate this, Alex, and, we will, we'll have you back for another conversation.

Alex: 35:56

Thanks for having me.