Daily Energy Standup Episode #170 – Weekly Recap: Powering the Future: Texas Energy Grid’s Renewables Revolution & Freyer Battery’s EU Grant Triumph!

The United States and China failed to reach new climate agreements despite “productive” conversations, special climate envoy John Kerry said Wednesday after a four-day visit to Beijing, an outcome that underscores the tensions between the […]

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro
01:43 – Texas must upgrade its energy grid to accommodate the new renewable power
04:04 – Freyer Battery is Awarded a 100 million EU Innovative Fund grant
06:08 – Cyber risk in the big picture
09:06 – Global Oil Demand to reach Record High in 2023 this is out of the IEA
12:20 – Kerry’s trip to China yields no breakthrough on Climate
17:18 – Outro

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Michael Tanner: [00:00:07] What is going on Everybody, Welcome in to a special edition of the Daily Energy News Beat Stand up here on this gorgeous Friday, July 21st, 2023. As always, I’m your humble correspondent, Michael Tanner, joined by Stuart Turley, bringing us the Weekly Recap, its a great week a lot of solo shows this week. [00:00:25][18.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:26] Oh, we both were on Assignment Everywhere man, I do appreciate you. It was a great week. [00:00:31][4.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:31] Great week. A lot of shows, do you have a favorite segment? My favorite one was was talking about the IEA coming out with their oil demand concept. I anything that allows me to poke fun at the IEA I’m all for. [00:00:42][10.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:43] Well, Michael, with this you and I have always had over the last three years of our Podcasting, IR Guy of the Week, Investor Relations guy creating things to make himself look better. [00:00:57][13.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:57] 500 Pristine drilling locations. [00:01:00][2.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:01] I yes, I think we need to give a new award instead of IR Guy of the week. Let’s have most stupidity reporting, I don’t know let’s ask our listeners bring up a great award for stupidity. [00:01:20][19.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:21] Yeah let’s rename IR Guy of the week, hit the description below you’ll see a way to get in contact with us drop what you think it should be. But I’m going to leave it up to the Weekly Recap guys we will see you on Monday. Have a Great Weekend Enjoy!. [00:01:32][10.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:33] Let’s stop at Texas first coming around the corner, I’m sitting here in Dallas and I’ve been in West Texas for the last four months. But as we take a look at Texas must Upgrade its Energy Grid to Accommodate the New Renewable Power. Some interesting stats on this we know that ERCOT is the grid manager for Texas, Texas is the number one in Wind Energy and Second in Solar. [00:02:03][30.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:04] Wind energy alone produces 21% of all electricity in the state, according to the American Clean Power Association this is pretty darn good. Here’s where we are still, you know, under threats in Texas for the potential of rolling blackouts. [00:02:23][18.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:24] Rolling blackouts are because the amount of stress that renewables put on the grid just a few months ago, or I believe it was two months ago, the Texas legislature, they have approved four more natural gas plants that seems to me a very good standby power, however, they’re also looking at adding in a bunch of storage, adding in storage brings up a couple hot points on me. [00:02:54][30.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:56] So without expanding ERCOT’s electrical transmission network and storage capacity, congestion and curtailments will rise, said the IEA. The strong projected growth in renewable energy in ERCOT over the next decade could be constrained by transmission capacity. [00:03:14][18.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:17] I believe it was around 3 billion. 3.5 billion is what it took to get the transmission lines from West Texas where all the wind farms are coming across. That was just for cost to get into the transmission lines to the Dallas area as well. [00:03:33][16.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:34] So let’s take a look at my expectations one of my biggest hot buttons for storage, how much does it cost? But the single most important thing to me is renewable batteries. Not many of them out there have been able to answer that fact I’ve only found one battery company, one storage battery company that has been able to answer that and that’s Freyr Battery out of Norway. [00:04:02][28.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:04] Freyer Battery is Awarded a 100 million EU Innovative Fund grant. I get to have a interview and I interview Jeremy on a Friday, and I’ve interviewed Tom before their CEO and now I’m interviewing the president. They are producing a lot of new jobs and new things in the United States. [00:04:35][31.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:36] So. Fryr Battery has their batteries recyclable, so if you have big batteries and they’re not recyclable, it’s not really Eco friendly, is it? So as the Tom Jensen who I interviewed, he says, we are delighted from that with the news that we have received from the EU’s Innovation Fund to support Fryer’s Giga Arctic Project. [00:05:07][30.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:09] This grant is a recognition that batteries represent the key catalyst of the energy transition, supporting regional energy security through faster deployment of renewable energy. Moreover, this significant financial commitment provides timely support to development of the Giga Arctic Project. [00:05:30][20.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:32] It was been under development since June 2022 and it is going to be 100% powered by 100% Hydroelectricity. This to me is a phenomenal project and when you sit back and take a look. Recyclable batteries, they’ve got new technology coming around in the battery storage. They are really looking at renewables in the hydro I’m all in with Fryr Battery so well done. [00:06:07][35.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:08] Cyber risk in the big picture, Brian Tepper from Hawaii’s Elect Electric Cisco and Information Assurance manager in 2018 pointed out to them in an interview. More advanced the system the larger attack service becomes surface. Excuse me, Our grid’s attack surface area has been steadily getting bigger over the last two decades. [00:06:38][30.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:40] Not only is this going, as he pointed out back then, it’s even extending out to anything that you have, kind of like your stove electric stoves, you know, that’s why you want to keep your gas one. And this one’s kind of interesting, Electric cars have been more potential that transform for the world for the better. I might agree with that, they provide an environmental and it advantages, it depends jury’s still out. [00:07:12][32.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:13] But when you’re talking about they found everything from the possibility of hackers being able to track users with vulnerabilities that may expense expose home and corporate wide find networks to a breach. All your car in your garage and it may be snooping around your house for your access point and your phone. [00:07:37][24.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:38] Elon just tweeted yesterday, Phones are not secured. Missing anything that Elon puts out and is that specific worry. So anyway, and there was an article that just came out in in conjunction that was actually a little ahead of this one from TechCrunch. [00:08:01][22.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:04] Taking a look, Hackers could remotely turn off lights Don’t mess with Tesla’s infotainment center. Almost sounds like me when I was in college. So when you take a look at how the hackers can now get in with just a Bluetooth, which is what they used to call a paying personal area network a billion years ago, those they could walk up to the car when you’re in range of Bluetooth. [00:08:32][28.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:34] Here’s where it gets a little I. Into this now is that once they get in via Bluetooth, they can hop over into the underlying core of the software. And once you get into the core, it your all bets are off on what you can do. So I’m not sure that I want that much control allowed to a car. So with that, can’t wait till I can get that Tesla as my second car, I’m not ready to have one of the Primary yet. [00:09:05][31.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:06] Global Oil Demand to reach Record High in 2023 this is out of the IEA. Yeah I’m I’m a read a lot here from the article because what this is is they’re what they call, as I mentioned, their latest Oil Market Report out of our favorite energy analysts over at the IEA. 100% credible we subscribe to every word they do. [00:09:25][18.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:26] Topline numbers global oil demand will increase by 2.2 million barrels per day to reach a record high of 102.1 million barrels per day in 2023, courtesy of our favorite data analyst. To dive into those numbers a little bit, China is going to go ahead and account for about 70% of global gains really off the back of their petrochemical use. [00:09:45][19.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:46] The quote out of the IEA says China’s widely anticipated reopening has so far failed to extend beyond travel and services, with economic recovery losing steam after a bounce back year yet there’s accounting for 70% of the global gains, so we’ll have a little marketing twist there, IR Guy of the week right there. [00:10:03][16.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:04] They do actually project some growth to slow to 1.1 million barrels per day in 2024. The quote, there saying, The world oil demand is coming under pressure from challenging economic environment, not the least because of a dramatic tightening of monetary policy in many advanced developing countries over the past 12 Months. But interesting, no major renewables. It’s all in the Global financial. Interesting, interesting little pivot there. [00:10:26][21.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:27] They forecast Global oil production to rise by 1.6 million barrels to 101.5 million barrels per day as output from Non-OPEC production nations is expected to increase by 1.9 million barrels per day. They also see Global oil supply rising to 102.8. So they think fairly imbalanced with about 700,000 barrels over balance, that’s interesting because we’re seeing prices rise right now. [00:10:52][24.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:53] What I find hilarious is that, you know, price is off the back of this rise when they show, well, maybe we’re oversupplied now. You know, when we see oil supply, quote unquote, outstripping oil demand. But again, I think a lot of what’s going to is we’re looking at that refined product and I think some of the the environment that we’re seeing is the downstream capabilities. [00:11:13][20.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:15] Observed Global Inventories rose by 19.4 million barrels to its highest levels in September 2021. World oil demand and I’m trying to just read down here a forecast for Global Demand, China, blah, blah, blah. [00:11:32][17.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:33] We also saw this this is a separate IEA report, Fossil fuel investment are set to rise by more than 6% to around 950 billion for 2023, based on analysis from the amount spending of planned larger, medium sized oil, gas and coal companies. [00:11:46][12.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:47] So there you know, again, I think you’re going to I think this is a this is not specifically for Quarter 4, as I mentioned in Segment 1. But I do think you’re going to you know, there is a sentiment of there was a lot of CapEx spent, maybe more than people expected on the back of what was higher oil prices, sort of the fleshing out of that process. [00:12:04][17.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:05] So all in all, the IEA seems to be sort of bullish, sort of not, I find it funny how they think we’re oversupplied. Everybody thinks we’re going to be undersupplied. So the IEA trying to come out and I don’t know, I think they’re using the same crayon Stu uses so we’re going to check their math on this one. [00:12:20][14.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:20] Kerry’s trip to China yields no breakthrough on Climate. Let’s have a moment of silence for his trip. Okay. That moment of silence went way too long sorry about that. The United States and China failed to reach new climate agreements despite productive conversations, Special climate envoy John Kerry said Wednesday after a four day visit to Beijing, an outcome that underscores the tension between the two world’s biggest carbon polluters and economies. Hey. [00:12:57][37.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:59] I mean, I do what you want me to say, we fly carry out their private, you know, we get a staff out there, you know, they’re staying at, you know, by the Ritz-Carlton over there in Beijing, you know. [00:13:10][11.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:11] Right. He quotes here, Michael, We had a very extensive set of frank conversations and realized it was going to take a little bit more work to break the new ground, said Kerry. So we’ve agreed we’re going to meet intensively. What? [00:13:31][20.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:32] Okay. When you sit back and take a look at Kerry. Kerry lied to the Congress the other day he says, Do you does your family own a. I’ve never owned an airplane. He’s married to the Heinz folks they’ve had jets. [00:13:48][16.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:50] We know that. Yes. [00:13:51][0.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:52] So I still remember watching him testify in Congress, My dad was being shot at in Vietnam and he was a draft dodger so I’m not a Kerry fan we’ll just leave that one alone. Now Normal Climate diplomacy. Do what?. [00:14:11][19.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:12] There. Just. [00:14:13][0.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:13] Okay. Climate Diplomacy between the U.S. and China is back on track. Hogwash. I’m going to call bull hockey on this one it’s because Kerry went over there to do this. Miss producer, can you fly in this video I’m going to show you in this next 32 second video. [00:14:36][22.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:37] Sit back and take a look at this video. It is the Biden administration and in there, funding of $14 million, I believe, of what John Kerry‘s office is all about. He’s not even approved by the Congress, he’s not even approved anywhere in this. So this 33-second video for our Podcast listeners is very important you’ll hear some noises. These noises, Michael, and I’ll tell you what’s going on right as we come back from this 33 seconds John Kerry treating the U.S. customers. [00:15:20][42.8]

33 Second Video: [00:15:24] Heigh!, Heigh!, Heigh! [00:15:27][2.5]

33 Second Video: [00:15:42] Heigh! Heigh! Heigh! [00:15:42][0.3]

33 Second Video: [00:15:51] Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! [00:15:52][0.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:55] But I mean, Stu, if he he he [00:15:58][2.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:00] Okay. That hurts! That hurts! You know Michael, What did you think of that? I mean, wasn’t it kind of like the consumers are getting it in the nuts? [00:16:09][9.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:10] I think. I mean, yeah, I think as always, I mean, this. I mean, of all the things we’ve got to worry about China with, I them nuking us, them cutting off Taiwan for, you know, chips, you know, the did you know their eventual invasion of Russia. You know. [00:16:27][17.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:29] All the things we have to worry about with China and we’ve got to worry about climate like climate change like I hate to agree with Mitt Romney, but he’s got a great quote on this in here. He says, you know, the you know, what was it? I missed it here, let me pull it up here. [00:16:45][16.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:46] What does Mitt say? [00:16:47][0.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:47] Climate change is probably not our highest priority in dealing with China, but if we can get them to reduce their emissions, that would be a good thing. Senator Mitt Romney told POLITICO before the announcement. Like, that’s how I feel. [00:16:58][11.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:00] They’re putting in two coal fired plants a week in. What are the odds ..Huh? [00:17:06][6.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:08] Make coal great again. [00:17:09][1.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:10] Make coal great again. [00:17:10][0.0]

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