The Unpopular Truth About Energy. Why Net Zero Is Failing and What Comes Next

Full Transcript:

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:00:07] Hello everybody, welcome to the Energy Newsbeat Podcast. My name’s Stu Turley, President CEO of the Sandstone Group. We’ve got a fantastic episode today. We have the author, Dr. Lars Chackenar, and he is the author of the Unpopular Truth about electricity and the future of energy. I do not have his updated version yet, but you can go to his website. It is the unpopular-truth.com. And I mean, it is packed with information. Dr. Lars, how are you today? And it is so great to have you here.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:00:39] Well, it’s an absolute pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much for the invitation. And I’m actually quite well because the sun just came out in the late afternoon in Switzerland. So I’m very happy about that. And I can see the mountains with the snow on top. So it’s very beautiful.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:00:53] How are you? Fantastic. And do you get to ski much there? Are you a much of, I know you’re a bike rider.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:00:57] It’s the plan once the ski slopes open.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:01:00] That’s the plan absolutely. Oh I love skiing I’ve always loved skiing but I also like bike riding and I’ve before the podcast I noticed that you had your bike that you were sitting on I have got to buy one of those bikes because uh now if we can attach a generator to that bike we’re going to talk about how to generate bike electricity while you’re working that’s not Bad idea. Exactly. Exactly. Do something good for the world.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:01:26] Be ha ha.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:01:27] But let’s take a step back. Your book is phenomenal. I’ve tried to interview you for three years. I mean, I’m a stalker. I love all your work. But let us take a look at energy policies that have been made on net zero and what impact do you think Bill Gates has just flipped around by, he’s put the whole world on notice and saying climate change is not. Uh, the biggest existential threat that everybody thought, what’s Greta going to do?

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:02:01] Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, look, it’s interesting that it’s not only Bill Gates, of course, but you have seen in the past year, year and a half, probably starting slowly creeping up since the Russian invasion, to be honest, that energy reliability and actually also affordability have become more important. And it’s a serious subject. It’s a very, very serious subject and you and I spoke before, right? This is not about politics. It is about having reliable and affordable energy. And the subject of energy is a bit more complex than some people think, especially when it comes to electricity itself. And that’s why I wrote the book to really make people understand. And just think about it, my job luckily takes me around the world and I’ve been traveling to people like Bangladesh and Pakistan. In Bangladesh and in Pakistan, it’s together 400 million people alone, those two countries. And they consume this much energy compared to this much in the US or Europe, right? And I was just thinking, how are these people going to power themselves in 10, 20, 30 years. And that’s actually really what inspired me to write this book, for people to understand a bit more about how this works and what doesn’t work and what does work, and what we may do to better our world in the future.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:03:13] You know, Pakistan is an amazing country from the standpoint that it’s a very populous and it broke my heart. Uh, I believe it was a year and a half ago or two years ago, kids were carrying, uh, natural gas or, or, uh, gas in, in trash bags. I mean, and it is just sad that you’ve got Pakistan that the last mile we’ve got to eliminate energy poverty. By getting the last mile propane and LNG and all those other ways, if you’ve got propane or any of those others, that’s fabulous. Let’s get off of this. We’re in an energy addition. We are not in an Energy Transition. I think that the energy, we need all the energy but let’s do it without subsidies.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:03:58] That would be nice. I mean, look, energy has been subsidized for four decades, right, at the whole. And for good reasons, because having reliable and affordable energy for the people is one of those fundamental key things in life, right? I think about it, right. I mean there’s the food, there’s energy, and then there’s health, right those are the fundamental things that you need. And when I think of just take a step back and think of, you know, we come from two, three hundred, four hundred years ago. If you think about it, our world was doing nothing but keeping ourselves warm and feeding ourselves. That’s basically energy. So, you know, while historically… You know, we were just doing that, collecting, during the winter, in the summer, you know, growing stuff, you to feed the animals in the winter. You know keeping ourselves warm, building house, all based on biomass, of course, everything completely green. And that’s what we’re doing. And today, because of the energy efficiency we have created, you now our energy infrastructure, our energy world only consumes less than 10% of GDP. So you can see that we have now over 90s of the time to do other things like play soccer or you and I talk on this on this broadcast, right? We couldn’t do this 200 years ago and not because, I mean, of course, also because it was on the internet, but just think about there was no time. We had to feed ourselves and keep ourselves warm, and today we don’t have to do that all the time. Today we have other things. And that comes because of energy efficiency, not in consuming energy, but energy efficiency in producing energy. You see, we have become so amazingly efficient by getting away from biomass, getting away from wind and solar, also biomass wind. We had always been in Europe, you see the Dutch windmills. So we found that energy dense coal and then oil and then gas and then amazingly uranium. So we have been able to improve the efficiency of how we feed ourselves energy and because of the efficiency we have able to develop positively.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:05:57] I love the way that you articulate that in your book. And again, I keep holding it up as a prop for our podcast listeners, because it is a great one. And I noticed that you have the new one. I’m going to have to go buy the new on there as well.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:06:09] Yeah, let me see. No, I don’t. OK, I do.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:06:12] I do I do love the fact that you articulate exactly the difference that we’ve not been talking about even in the as a guy writing energy I write 10 stories a day on energy and I don’t talk the way you’re talking I talk about whether or not the molecules are we going to start buying more natural gas than oil because now data centers need more natural gas. And I love the way that you’re articulating this. We’ve got to look at this as a not the energy addition, but what impact do you think Comp 30 is going to have? I know we don’t wanna talk about politics, but Comp 30’s a little bit of a politician standing up there saying, we still need to be afraid of climate change. But if we did actually what Bill Gates is now saying, let’s take care of the environment and other things. What are your thoughts on that? Or what are you hearing?

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:07:08] Actually, if you think about it, I mean, look, the COP events, which are UN-sponsored events, maybe 50,000 people, I don’t know, 500 million dollars it costs, I don’t think if you if you would put that kind of energy, human energy and financial energy into solving our energy problem. Right. I mean, what could you do with this kind of brain power and this kind of money, right? Because I mean look, it’s very clear. All of us, all of us. We want to have the cleanest and best environment. There’s no question about that. The cleanest best environment is completely useless to me. If I can’t keep myself warm at the end of 40 energy, right. So, so, so what comes first is always, always reliability. Once I have reliable energy, only then can I actually make it affordable. Cause it’s useless to have afforded energy is not reliable. You see, I can have free energy that’s not reliable, it’s useless. I first need reliable energy, then affordable energy. And once I’ve made it affordable, then I can spend some of that money in reducing the environmental impact. You see, I cannot start here. If I start here, I mean, I can have zero environmental impact, I can’t have no energy. Fine. I mean that’s what we had in all 300 years ago, right? Or so I mean you can go back to the past and that’s what many people have said, you know, but think we can go back to stone ages, to some of the extreme exam, but it’s exactly what it is. And it’s not about being anti-green or anti-environment. No, it is about logical. You can only be sustainable if you’re first economically sustainable. And then you can be environmentally sustainable. The other way around doesn’t work, I’m sorry. And the COP events have focused on one specific subject, how can I try to reduce the CO2 in the world and by that we’re gonna save the world from all the disasters we’re going to have in the future. Completely forgetting that maybe first it’s useful if we have some energy that we can afford and it’s reliable. And yes, so yeah, the book tries to summarize it and it now I think it’s in seven or eight languages and every time you buy a book I get one coffee so I’m very happy about that. Thank you for sponsoring one coffee for me.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:09:04] I appreciate that. I have no problem. I’m gonna be buying a few more to hand out. So this is gonna be fantastic. I’ll tell you, when we sit back and take a look, let’s take a Look at ERCOT. ERCot in Texas is the Texas grid and there is 181 gigawatts of nameplate capacity on the grid. They only used 82 in 2025. They had a max load of 82 gigawatts. And you take a look at the billions of dollars that they had to pay for transmission lines to get the wind and solar in the United States. We’re facing a huge financial crisis that is not being talked about. The wind industry was taking nameplate upgrades and under the inflation reduction act and everybody says it is the cheapest thing on the planet and Dr. Larson you’ve got a fantastic video that you just put out talking about silicon and how much energy it takes to create wind and solar That was a phenomenal video and when you sit back and look at the overpurchasing on the grid, holy smokes, nobody’s got a crayon. I went to Oklahoma State University and we have crayons. It’s a big crayon now to calculate how much extra you have to put on the grid in order to support that wind and solar. But you started it. Even when you create it, your video was phenomenal. Sorry for being nice to you, I’m sorry.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:10:39] You’re very kind. No, no, thank you so much. No. But I mean, it’s look, I consider myself like a macro energy economist. Why do I do this? I mean I just I love the challenge of trying to understand and I still understand this much of what I want to understand. But I always try to look at, you know. The whole life cycle, the whole system, because in the end, I like saying electricity is not a product. Kilo Watt hours. Electricity is a service making kilowatt hours available when you need them. Huge difference. Huge difference, right? Because you don’t go to Starbucks to buy a coffee, a product, you go to a Starbucks for a service. Because that’s why you pay much more than the product. Right and it’s the same with electricity right so with electricity you basically you need to have a system available to give you electricity when you need it not when that you know not not when the weather allows you to have it but when you needed and that you make me understand wow we have to look at this entire system what it takes to put the system into place what it to operate this system, more it takes to dispose of the system. And yet our entire energy policy is based on counting CO2. The whole idea of pricing CO2 is economically completely wrong. And again, it’s not about not supporting any environment. It’s just about giving wrong economic incentives to a system like what in terms of despite your building. You’re building, you know, ridiculous wind and solar capacity, which is zero CO2, which is not the case. It doesn’t have zero CO 2, but they claim it says zero CO, too. And now you have this capacity which is useless in the winter, especially and of course at night. Also, it doesn’t do much. So so I mean, the the the problem about wind in solar and people say, look, Lars speaks against wind and so always so much. Why does he do that? Well, I mean it’s not again. I have nothing against the solar panel or against the windmill. I actually ran a wind park myself for three years. It’s funny enough. Wow. I was actually a director of a wind park, a small wind park in Germany, for three years. And the reason why I’m vehemently expressing that wind and solar are a big problem at grid scale is actually not only the intermittency. Not only the intermittency that you know that the sun doesn’t always shine the wind doesn’t always blow there’s two other problems the second problem is the energy density right the energy density that means the amount of energy you can collect per square meter is limited by nature that’s energy density. Right so and that energy density you cannot change with technology you see think about it the sun shines and this this this energy of the sun is unlimited we agree and it would be beautiful if you can harness it. It would be amazing. But the fact is on our planet only very little energy, dilute energy comes per square meter when the sun shines. That means we have to now build this infrastructure to collect this free energy, this huge infrastructure. Right, by the way, coal from the ground is also free energy I get from the ground. It’s not unlimited as the sun is. I understand that. Trust me, I understand that. But of course, I now have to collect the solar energy or this wind energy and have to build this infrastructure, right? So the intermittency, obviously a huge problem. In Germany, the sun shines 10% of the time. That means 90% of time it doesn’t shine. In California, it shines 25% of a time. That means 75% doesn’t sign. In the UAE and Emirates, maybe it’s 30% of the time, maybe 33% of it shines, right. And so now you start to understand, you have the intermitency plus you have to density. That’s actually the fundamental problem because the density means I need to have a huge investment, not only of money, but also of infrastructure. Means raw materials and energy. I have to actually invest energy to build this infrastructure. I’ve built now infrastructure that lasts not 50 years like a coal or gas power plant for 60 years. It lasts, actually the modern solar panels last 10, 13, maybe 50 years. You’re lucky. The old ones lasted 25 years, but not the new ones. They’re so thin and so optimized. You’re building infrastructure that only lasts a few years, but you have to replace it three times more than a coal, gas, or nuclear power station.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:14:36] Until you see a hailstorm in Texas and then it’s white.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:14:38] Until you see it’s wiped out and all those things and so the third key problem is this lifetime, what I call the lifetime, operational lifetime. So you have the intermittency, the density and the lifetime and those three things you really cannot change the technology. That’s the misunderstanding. People always say, no, but Lars, we are getting, it’s getting cheaper. It’s getting better. You know, technology will solve this. I’m sorry. You cannot solve the intermittency problem without putting additional infrastructure in place to store blah, blah, blah, and all those things. We talk about storage, but the density is not solvable. And the lifetime gets worse. It doesn’t get better. The more complex the system becomes, the less it lasts. Our phones last today less than they last, you know, 10 years ago, right? I mean, so the more advanced technology becomes, always the shorter it lasts. So whoever talks about this differently, I’m sorry.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:15:28] No, you’re spot on.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:15:30] And you see, and when you think about it now, you have this intermittency issue, they have the lifetime issue and your density issue. That means you have to build this vast infrastructure. Not only that, you now have to built what I call auxiliary infrastructure to try to overcome part of those problems. Storage, basically storage, transmission grids, you know, all those things, short duration storage, long duration storage, right? And in order to overcome the intermiddency, you have to vastly overbuild the infrastructure. And not five times, ten times, hundred times, if you charge the storage. And all this infrastructure lasts a fraction of the time of an existing old power plant. So you’re replacing a coal or gas fired power station, not one solar panel. You’re replacing it with unbelievable amounts of solar panels and windmills, plus the short duration storage batteries, plus a long duration storage hydrogen, plus the infrastructure network integration. I mean, this is making my head this is this is a step back in in in development, right? This is the step back. It’s not a step forward. Right. And again, I am all for energy efficiency and forward thinking. I am against wasting energy and raw materials. I’m a commodity trader. I care about commodities. I care what energy and that’s why it’s for me so obvious. And I still struggle why politicians, including… The European Commission recently just said again, you know, wind and solar are the lowest cost ever. In October 2025, with Germany being the master of wind and solar installations in the world, the highest energy cost, not the highest the UK is doing worse, I’m sorry. But I mean, I don’t understand how politicians cannot try to want to understand why Germany is in trouble and why the UK’s in trouble from any perspective. It is purely because of wind in solar. Nothing

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:17:24] Well, the goals and striving to net zero are a false advertising campaign saying that net zero, you bring this up constantly. And that is it takes coal diesel. You got to get those solar panels and then end of life. You briefly touched on the end of life in the United States. We’ve got a problem with our turbines. We’ve got big bucks. I’ve calculated about $89 billion liability for partial land reclamation of wind farms, this nobody, not one of them. I cannot find one wind farm that has been land reclamation. Budgeted and and i’ve talked to several executives and and dr large they sit back and say oh if we put that in the budget it would drive the prices up even higher so we’ve got all of these things the inflation reduction act was subsidizing nameplate upgrades instead of repairing a turbine they were calling it a nameplate upgrade and getting the inflation Reduction Act, this is a huge problem. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in the United States, they’ll pay $4 to get rid of a end of life solar panel rather than the $14 to $20 to recycle it. This is not sustainable.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:18:49] Look, I mean, it’s it’s completely I mean it’s environmentally, I’m sorry, I would go as far as the disaster is environmental disaster, right. And it doesn’t mean that coal, gas and nuclear don’t have environmental issues. Of course they do. Right. Every every industrial operation we have has environmental issues as our job as professionals to minimize environmental issues. And but but um i mean we’ve been untruthful to to our i mean not we but many people have been untrustful to the population about the positive or not that’s a great title for a book thank you thank you and and by the way the national center of energy analytics which was a support and mark mills um just recently had had a had a paper on the issue of the the money that’s not being accounted for in the disposal issue

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:19:33] I’ve got to interview Mark twice as well too. He is a cool cat. He’s one of my all time heroes too. So I appreciate you letting me be a stalker with you and Mark.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:19:43] No, but I think, let’s try to unpack some of these fundamental things because we can talk about the issues here and costs there, but trying to always try to explain some of those fundamental issues and the energy system, electricity system or electric grids. 120 years ago, you know, we chose to go for alternate current, right? And that means, let’s take the US where you are, it’s the same in Europe, right? You have this grid system where, you know, at 60 hertz you are I think, right, 60 hertz up and down, 60 times a minute, and it’s exactly the same synchronized across the entire US. It means the turbines, nuclear turbines, gas turbines, coal turbines, are turning at 3600 RPM, right. Exactly synchronized it across the entire system. Now, you put solar panels or wind up. Which is actually, in the end, giving you DC power, direct current. Now, this direct current is like nothing to do with this electric current, alternating current. And that now needs to be converted with inverters by computers, basically, to try to mimic that waveform, right? And of course, that mimicking is a unnatural way of doing it. And what happened in Spain was exactly that when you had 80% or 70% of solar and electric grid and there was a problem which happens from time to time, it happens also with coal, gas and nuclear, there’s a problem. And then suddenly the power turns off at a few large solar farms. One second, it’s gone. It’s gone, that means your frequency goes haywire and in the end leads to black wire. In a normal system, the turbines would keep spinning. They would keep spinning because they are synchronized. They would keeps spinning, synchronized across the entire system despite a problem. They would keeping spinning. And that means you have valuable seconds or even a few more seconds to try to solve the problem. In Spain, they couldn’t solve the problem when the country went dark. Within five seconds, I think half the country was dark. So there is another issue which very few people have thought about and I didn’t think about it. I wrote on my blog, the website also has a blog where I write about it, so I wrote about Spain and what happened and. And what my understanding is of why this is rightly so by Bloomberg, the green Bloomberg sets the first blackout of the green era. Right? Very true. Because we are destabilizing our grids with DC power that is not synchronized in computer-generated waveforms and trying to replace those large wheels, the heavy inertia with computers. And of course, those computers and those solar panels, those inverters are coming from one place in the world. And that one place in the world has ways, if they want to, to influence that and to turn things off as well. That has happened in the, in, in in, so talking about energy security. So there’s all those things we have to think about. And again, the electric grid is a complex system. And if we let people who have little understanding about how this works manage and make decisions, then the disaster is coming. And I promise you. Europe will have another big blackout in the next four years, five years. Wow. No way around that. There’s no way around because Europe is turning off coal, has turned off nuclear, and it’s trying to build new gas, pretending that gas is better than coal, which is actually not. It’s different, right? Right. It’s not better. Both have their plus and minuses. And basically, we’re turning off reliable power, putting huge, like in Texas, huge, huge wind and solar up, you know. I’m sorry.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:23:16] It almost makes my head hurt just a little bit, like I said, with Oklahoma State, we have crayons the size of a windmill, and moving those gets a little tough. You brought up a gigantic, gigantic problem. It’s a feature. When you buy equipment from China that they have back doors in it, whether or not energy security starts at home and when you manufacture your own, you’ve got the AC versus DC, but that transition has got to be made under your own control. If you have other things in there, we have 492 major grid interconnects in the United states that President Trump pulled out in his first term. President Biden put back in, I can’t get the Department of Energy to tell me that they’ve been pulled back out again. They could take down, I’m guessing about 12% of the US grid. If 12% percent of the us grid goes down, millions would die. I’m just saying, it’s a big deal nobody’s talking about and I can’t get an answer on it.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:24:25] The issue of critical infrastructure and protecting critical infrastructure is huge. And what do you think when you make your energy system more complex? What happens? Despite the fact of, let’s say, you know, it just becomes more vulnerable, right? And the whole idea now we’re in an age of, you know, we’re talking about AI and data centers and electric vehicles, and we’re only talking about electricity, electrification, making it electric. I’m like, where is electricity coming from? How complex are those systems and who controls those systems? And, you know, it’s much easier to control or at least protect one large power station. And these new power stations are amazing. It’s much easy and simpler to do that than to protect or like a complex system of huge parks and battery systems and hydrogen, electrolysis, and I don’t know. And, I mean, just think about it that naturally, even if people are not malicious, this is going to cause problems, right? And those problems will have a bigger impact today than they had 30 years ago, because the world is much more connected today and much more complex and much more dependent on electricity, right? No, 30 years I could write a letter to make a business today, and then I had a fax, but today I have a couple other things to take care of that all require electricity. So things are different, and that means we have to think about electricity completely different. It is now one of the most fundamental things that we need to protect. And build and have secure, because if we don’t have that, there is no clean water, right? There is no food, there’s no transportation, there no schooling, there nothing, right. There’s no hospital. There’s not hospital. And that’s why for me, that subject of the security of energy is the number one. I am sorry. That is for me more important than trying to save a couple of tons of CO2, right, which happens to also be the basis for all life on earth. But the the This fact of energy security is so important and the decisions being made by politicians who have very little technical knowledge about this. I don’t know everything, but if I don t know something, I ask someone, right? Or I educate myself. But how can you decide on not billions, but trillions of dollars of taxpayers money and say that we are going to save the world by doing that? No, you will not save the word. You will cause significant harm, especially and to the poor.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:26:50] Right. I absolutely love my interviews with NJ Anouk. He is the director of the African Energy Chamber and absolutely a wonderful human. He is out there. He’s leading the charge, trying to get products built in Africa for Africans so they can actually do things. I love the way he’s thinking. He’s thinking the same way you are. And that is energy needs to happen at home. Energy security starts at home, I love the way you, I don’t know if you’ve met him or not. I know.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:27:26] I know him personally, of course. He actually speaks German. Very interesting. Oh, no way! No, no. I’ve met NJ several times and we’re in regular touch. So, no, I mean, it’s very, very true. And of course, it is interesting that you talk about this. So you see, we have to build like these…

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:27:43] You just let me walk, Doctor, you just let me walk right into that one, didn’t you? You are, you knew him and everything. I’m like, I’ve interviewed him twice as well too, and you just walk right, oh, Stu.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:27:55] But no, but we have to build these energy systems, right? And of course we have try to become independent and that is interesting enough that is one of the arguments for wind and solar saying, look, if I have my own solar panel, I am not independent on imports. It’s a very valid point because especially as Europe being an energy importing region rather than the US, you guys are very lucky and very resource rich. Europe used to be resource rich, but we stopped exploring for green purposes, of course. But you see, there is still a different level of dependency for Europe now, which is of course, I’m importing all my energy equipment instead of just a resource, let’s say coal or gas, which I’m important, right? But then when I import uranium, that’s probably the best, even though uranium is very, very also very centralized and very controlled. Or when I import LNG, which is also. Quite quite more difficult. The US is quite a strong LNG supplier, of course, for Europe to be a pipeline natural gas from Russia. Or if I take coal, which is a much more widely easily traded system. So there’s never independence completely, also in Africa. But for me, the system, the actual system, actual installation is actually more important than the raw you will supply. Both are important. And we have to think of where you are, and depends of course, if you’re in South Africa, you have naturally of coal, and South Africa is discussing replacing coal with imported gas. I mean, I’m sorry, how stupid do you have to be? And Germany is turning off its domestic coal power station where we have large, domestic, very efficient, very clean domestic power station. They’re all being dismantled. And we’re going to replace imported Russian gas with imported U.S. Gas. Be my guest. I don’t think it makes sense. You guys in the US are very lucky. You have a lot of gas and you have coal in your own country. You are very luck and you replaced coal with gas for a few political reasons, but also because you actually had cheap gas as well. So that made sense up to a certain level. Now, of course, you realize gas is not enough, so I actually have to start investing in coal again. So the US will soon build new coal-fired power plants. You have no choice. You have huge coal supply. And if you don’t… Use that, then you will also have a problem. So that’s clear. And then you’re in Asia. You look at the Asian nations, China, a huge coal country, India, a huge coal-country. Indonesia, a huge coal county. Then you have Southeast Asia. Right? You have Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Bangladesh. These countries all depend on imports. They don’t have enough resources themselves. So what do you do? You import. What do you import? LNG or coal. LNG is always more expensive. Much more complex. It depends on infrastructure you don’t have. Coal is easy and around the corner. So of course you have to go for coal. But they are told to move to LNG for climate reasons. Right. And that is wrong. If one believes the IPCC and the IEA, then LNG is the same or worse than coal for the climate. Right. If someone believes that. So who has an interest here? What’s going on? Why are we being influenced in these ways by politics? That’s a great question. Each nation has to make their own decisions, independent of some UN body, how they run their energy systems. That’s each nation’s right to choose that. If they want to energy security starts at home or hydro, if they have hydro, they have great river flows, they’re lucky, like Norway, right? And I mean, there’s all these things, they want you solar or winded, be my guest. So why does the UAE have one of the newest nuclear power stations? Why does the UAE have one of the newest cold power stations which just converted to gas if they have so much sun? I mean, are these guys stupid? I don’t think they’re stupid. No. Using the solar panels to produce green hydrogen. There’s the export at large amounts to Germany and Japan, but they don’t use themself because they’re not stupid, right? I mean, they keep the energy cheap. So you see, there’s all these things happening and I’m lucky enough to be able to travel the world with my job and see, you know, the Americas, Africa, Middle East, Asia all the time. And I get a sense of what’s going on. And it’s incredible. How misguided many governments are by consulting lobbies. I used to work for the Boston Consulting Group for six years, so I’m very familiar with that industry. Nothing against it, I love my job. But there is large consulting bodies who are funded and tell the governments what they want to hear, how to make an energy system working with wind and solar, plus battery and hydrogen, that doesn’t work.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:32:26] And we saw that just recently with Secretary Chris Wright. I’ve interviewed Chris Wright four times, I believe, and he is a cool cat. He understands energy and getting rid of energy poverty. And when you sit back and take a look where Secretary’s Wright’s opinion on that is spot on. I had just had a senior moment. I was going down a good rabbit hole. Anyway, the whole process of going forward. Is not necessarily… I’m going to sit back and throw this to you. What can we do as citizens to go to the next level? Energy security starts at home and how these politicians are using the money, it seems like Secretary Wright, by sending the letter and stopping and saying, Wait a minute, we’re gonna not fund the IEA. The IEAs reporting has now changed. So all of a sudden funding steps back and they just put out yesterday, I believe it was yesterday, their newest report. And it’s kind of like almost sanity showed up when the funding was going to be threatened to be removed. I’m like funding equals bad energy policies.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:33:42] No, it’s incredible. But the energy poverty issue is a very, very big issue, right? And what NJ is talking about, also Chris Wright talk about, many people talk about. We have to invest in systems that are low cost and reliable, right. And once people understand that wind and solar are not low cost, then they by themselves automatically will not be used anymore. But we are basically being the untruth about the real cost of wind and solar, right? And thank you. And once we can publicly say, which has by now been proven, that wind and solar are the most expensive way of generating reliable electricity, and they actually become more expensive the more you have. It’s a very important point. They’re not only the most expensive, but they become more expensive the more you have. Once people understand that, then you can recalibrate and say, hold on. So I’m not going to support wind and solar anymore because they become the more expensive, the more I have, despite all those learning curves and all those things. And we can talk about why that is. So, and once I understand that and it’s purely energy, no politics in that, it’s pure energy economics, nothing else. So. Once we understand, then we can recalibrate. Now we can invest in newest thermal power stations, newest filter technology. I can invest an R&D. I invest in fusion and fission. I can invest geothermal. I could invest in whatever hydro. I can invest some space station. I do all these beautiful things because I don’t have to waste it anymore on wind and solar. Trillions of dollars. So there is a huge opportunity coming up. All this human and financial power that we are wasting on a wind and expensive system that is not only expensive but becomes more expensive the more you have. Once we understand that we can then actually start looking at what really makes a positive difference to the environment and to energy security.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:35:39] Your point is just my head just exploded. I just reached out to a company in Texas that got a laser drill for geothermal and they’re drilling through granite at a credible speed. They went from the lab to a drilling laser in order to geothermal electricity and it’s eight months and it already in the field in a test. I mean, this to me is exciting. I mean- Exactly. It is clean. That, to me, is sustainable.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:36:10] Absolutely. And that’s why the book is called and the future of energy, because I am thinking of what is the future energy because the energy is our future. So what is this future of energy? Because we realize now in AI has put it perfect. AI is nothing but energy. Bitcoin are nothing but Energy. There’s nothing else. I mean, of course, there’s a few other things, but practically, it’s all about energy, right? Of course, it has a lot of huge, amazingly smart people who are doing the programming behind, but in the end to scale, it is all energy, right? Because everything else does itself. Now, what is that future? And that future, of course, we will wean off and reduce fossil fuel in the future, not only because it will get more expensive as you start to deplete certain resources. I don’t think we have to worry about that for many hundreds of years, but we will at some point have to worry. And also, I think we also have to wean of because in my view, they’re not actually efficient enough. I think even coal, gas, and oil are not energy efficient enough, despite their current ridiculousness, how efficient they are, how energy dense they are. I still believe a long-term future need to be better. Fusion is, of course, that’s the most efficient energy efficient. But what else is the future? I mean, of, course, the nuclear power is a huge concept, right, which needs to be developed. And, you know, SMRs are just small nuclear reactors are just modular reactors are just one point of that. But of course the energy that within our planet is is unbelievable it’s not only the coal and gas and oil down there but it’s also the geothermal heat, the heat down there, right? If you find an efficient way to utilize that, wow, right. And of course, then the third, so one is the nuclear force, second is, in my view, the power from within our planet. The third is the power of the solar system. So the solar, but that’s basically the solar energy, right, the solar is amazing. So if we find a way to harness that dense solar energy right, there is somehow and somehow managed to get that energy down here, great. And then the fourth one is maybe some green little, you know, animal comes and shows us some new stone we haven’t known. I mean, I’m just saying, I don’t know what we don’t know, what you don’t. So something completely new, mind blowing, maybe come up there.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:38:14] Oh, absolutely.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:38:15] And so that’s the future. And until we have that future, we better invest in what we have to make it efficient, clean, and affordable, which is coal, oil, gas, and hydro, and all those things. So we have to do that. We have to invest in R&D. And until have found a new solution, we have invest in we have, very simple.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:38:38] You’re so cool, I’m sorry for being a stalker and everything else. It’s kind of funny, in 2024, Germany, who was the poster child of renewable wind and solar bought a whole supply of uranium from Russia, even though Russia’s pipelines and gas has been shut off and then they just blew up their last two cooling towers for nuclear program. The Germans, God bless your countrymen.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:39:11] I don’t know what happened, but I do believe in Germany. I think the Germans are smart people. I still believe that despite the current energy policy they have. Things will turn around at some point and I hope it doesn’t happen too late because if it happens too late, it’s going to cost money and lives. So I hope that will not happen too much. But I have confidence that we can turn this around somehow. If people start to be just critical thinkers again and open to discuss. And if, of course, this doesn’t become too political because the political right in Europe has been gaining, which is not necessarily a good thing. I think generally a center government is better than a right or extreme right. I agree. So I am of course concerned about the political harshness on both sides and that development in Europe, but also in the US. So I hope that that will happen rather soon than later.

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:40:10] But I think the world is changing, Dr. Lars. And I think that it is changing for the better in that people are gonna wake up and we’re going to see regimes change if they don’t. And I’m very positive on things. Your website is unpopular-truth.com and your book. Is the unpopular truth about electricity and the future of energy. We are gonna have the link on how to buy this in the show notes. This is gonna go out everywhere. And I really, truly appreciate you as a true energy leader. And I think it’s funny. I keep throwing these names out and you talk to them, talk to him, hugged him, had dinner with him. He stayed at my house. I’m like, man, you are too cool. You are all over the world. And What do you see coming around the corner for you, sir? Look, I mean…

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:41:03] I’m fascinated by this subject and I continue learning every day and I wish and I hope that I have the opportunity to speak to more financing institutions because I think the money is important and that financing people who tend to be smart people understand this and the discussions I’ve had with banks or with funds people have come out after say wow you just opened my mind, something I didn’t realize, right, and, and. Wow. There is this whole greenwashing going on and it has been terrible, but there is a shift, as you said, and I hope that that shift is for the better and it will not be used for extremism or for political reasons. I hope that we can really go back. You know, as energy interested people to keep our system alive, to really make smart decisions for the future. And of course, personally, I’m also in a commodity business, our business, you know we’re active in liquid and solid fuels worldwide. And I love doing that as well. And I learned so much. I learned about, you know. We also, you now, supply fuels into marine fuels, into vessels. It’s amazing what’s happening there and how they are forced to go, you and I mean all those things and it’s interesting to understand all these different aspects about energy right and to learn how they’ve come together and I see many, many good years ahead and hopefully making a positive difference. I have from time to time been able to do that and I

 

Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:42:33] for giving me the opportunity here. Thank you. So again, and I’ll tell you what, I’ve got some contacts and stuff that I’m gonna shoot you after the note. And again, my name is Stu Turley, President CEO of the Sandstone Group, and we will have all of Dr. Larson’s contact information in the show notes. Thank you so much for stopping by the podcast.

 

Dr. Lars Schernikau [00:42:52] Pleasure’s to you.