THE CARBON WAR

We want to play our part 147
I sit and reflect how lucky I have been in the past, with Solarcentury, when
times of existential pressure arose from mistakes I made. The answer is very
lucky indeed. But can that luck hold?
It doesn’t. In the seat in front of me a young social entrepreneur from
the Philippines throws his arms in the air and marches beaming to the stage.
I tap out an e-mail to the SolarAid and SunnyMoney teams immediately.
All the five short-listed projects are brilliant. So are many of the thousand-plus
others considered, no doubt. We can be happy that so many people are working
so hard for the future-energy transition, and proud that we came so close.
I have no time to contemplate the near miss, and the difficulties SolarAid
and SunnyMoney could have avoided in the year ahead. I return to my hotel,
another marbled five-star palace, for the next meeting on my agenda. I sit alone
for an hour with Khalid Abuleif, a senior official at the Saudi Ministry of Oil
who is the Kingdom’s envoy at the climate negotiations, and his lieutenant.
They have agreed to swap perspectives on the carbon bubble and the solar
revolution. I tell my story of relative advantage for the Kingdom, as we see it.
Saudi oil is low on the carbon cost-curve, and will be among the oil of choice
in a world transitioning to sub-two degrees. The Kingdom’s scope to become
a hub in the global solar revolution is substantial, and the need pressing, given
domestic consumption of oil. There is already Saudi leadership in the region.
A Saudi company, ACWA Power, has just installed the cheapest solar energy
in the world in Dubai. The 200 megawatt plant will produce electricity at 5.85
cents per kWh, a world record for low cost solar, cheaper even than a gas fired
power plant.
Khalid is a quietly spoken man with degrees in environmental engineering.
He knows all that I tell him, of course, and much more besides.
I wonder about the role of batteries in your narrative, he says. Is the scope
to disrupt oil’s transportation market as potent as you say? Not based on what
I have seen in China.
I am not a technologist, I reply. I have to rely on those around me who
are. I may be subconsciously cherry picking my sources, I admit. But let’s see.
So much of this will play out fast in the short-term, as with the solar cost-down.
Apropos which, are you able to tell me if your ministry has modelled the transition
to a sub-two-degrees policy regime, and how the Kingdom would fare
in such a world?
It has, he says. We don’t think it can happen as fast as you say.
I don’t ask him to elaborate. I know from press reports that he thinks a
hundred-percent-renewables by 2050 target is impossible.