Daniel Yergin

So you take California today, people think wind and solar is advanced.

It's true, they're 25% of your electric generation in California, but 43% of electric generation comes from natural gas.

So, you know, natural gas and that gets back to the data centers, you know, you're going to need to bolster your electricity power system, how much can you do with batteries and how much can you do with and using natural gas.

But, you know, wind and solar are also stories about entrepreneurship and in the quest I have, you know, I asked myself, where did the wind and solar industries come from?

And the solar industry came from two emigres who had left Europe, one of whom had driven his car out of Hungary in the 1956 revolution.

In 1969, he's a chemist working for the US government.

He and his partner decided to go in the solar business.

And that became the first solar company.

They started in 1973.

And the wind business, I like to say the modern wind business is a result of the marriage between California tax credits and the sturdy Danish agricultural industry, because it was driven by tax credits, but they needed to find wind machines that could stand up in the, when the wind blew in the Tehachapi Pass,

And so, but it took, you know, it's interesting, it took about 30 years, both those industries to become competitive.

And it only happened around 2010 that they actually became competitive.

And now, of course, they're very competitive.

But then guess what?

Now they're all tied up.

Renewables are also now tied up in geopolitics.

And, you know, in what I call the new map, the movement to, you know, the great power competition.

US just put 100% tariffs on Chinese electric cars, 25% tariffs on Chinese storage batteries.

So, you know, we just had this bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, not just, it's very recent, huge, you know, trillion dollars people, the treasury estimates when it's done.

but it's about climate and renewables.