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- I'm Edie Lush and I'm
here with Maurice Berns.

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OK, Maurice, so tell me,
I want to hear a grade

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for the energy transition, A to F.

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How are we doing?

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- Well, thank you, Edie.

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I'm pleased to be here.

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Let me try to answer that
in two ways, actually.

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Let me do it first looking backwards

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and say how have we been doing?

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And then I'll say a little bit more

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about how we are looking forward.

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So if we're looking backwards, I'd say

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we barely get passing marks, really.

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- OK.

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- We're in the midst of an energy crisis.

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We all know how high prices are right now.

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We are on track to be well
above three degrees in terms

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of global warming if we
continue on the current path.

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- Worrying.
- Very worrying.

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- If you look at the
factoids right now, by 2030,

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if we continue on this
path, we'll actually have

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11% more emissions when we need
to have 43% less emissions.

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So all of that looking backwards,

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I want to go, "Mm, not
very good, not very good."

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- [Edie] Not so good.

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- If we look forward, though,
I'm a lot more optimistic

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and I'm a lot more optimistic

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because I think we are
taking some actions today

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and have been the past 12 to 24 months

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that make me feel a lot better
about where we're going,

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and those are actions on the policy front.

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I think people are well aware
of what's happened in the U.S.

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with the IRA and how that has
positioned us going forward,

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how it's funding a lot of
the low-carbon technologies.

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I look at the technology side
and you see solar and wind

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have really come down that cost curve.

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And right now, in most places
in the world, solar and wind

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are not only competitive,
but they're less costly

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than forms of generation -- other
fossil fuel forms of generation.

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CCUS is reaching commercial scalability.

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Hydrogen has a lot of potential

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and everybody's investing behind it.

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So as I look forward,
I'm a lot more optimistic

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and I would give us better
marks, but I would say

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stay tuned.
- OK.

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- And if people are marking our homework

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in a year, in two years, in
five years, in ten years,

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got to keep the pressure on.

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- All right, keep the hard work up.

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OK, you also say that we
are at an inflection point,

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and it sounds like I can hear why that is,

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because the work needs to continue.

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Tell me a little bit more about that.

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- Yeah, I would say we're
at an inflection point

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in the energy transition
for a few reasons.

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First of all, I think many of us are aware

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of the energy trilemma, which
is how we need to balance

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sustainability with
reliability with affordability,

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and I think in the past couple of decades,

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we've spent a lot of
time and had the luxury

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of focusing a lot on
sustainability because we've had

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mostly low-cost and
mostly reliable energy.

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What we saw starting last
year at the early part

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of the year with the crisis
erupting and the war in Ukraine

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is that we have not
invested as we needed to

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in reliability and in affordability.

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And why does that matter?

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It matters because we've
seen what's happening now

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with the price spikes, with inflation,

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with a drag on growth,
and if that happens,

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it slows down the energy transition.

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So we haven't built the resiliency

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into the system that we
need in order to ensure

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a smooth energy transition.

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So I'm optimistic and I think
that the inflection point

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comes because policy
makers are taking note

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and they're creating more sensible policy,

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because technology is getting
the investment it needs,

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and because people, the
world has seen what happens

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if we don't truly balance the three parts

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of the trilemma adequately.

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- So what needs to happen now?

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- OK, well, I'll give you the roadmap.

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(laughing)
- I'm going to

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keep it simple, actually.

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I think you could do...

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There's four things that need to happen.

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I'll talk about that and
then I'll talk a little bit

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about the policy that's underpinned it.

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The first thing is energy efficiency.

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- It seems easy.

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Is it?
- It requires changes

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in behavior and it requires
sensible policy incentives

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to get there.

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So changes in behavior, I
mean, let me just give you

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some numbers to bring it to life.

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More than 40% of energy produced
is what we call rejected,

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which means it's not even used.

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It's wasted, right?

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Other things can be done
through simple regulations.

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If you look at the
U.S., 1.3% of the energy

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goes towards lighting.

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If we just changed all that
lighting over to LED lighting,

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we could reduce the demand by 50%.

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So that's the first thing,
focusing on energy efficiency.

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Secondly, electrify as
much as you can, right?

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We are on the path there towards EVs.

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A lot of good progress.

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Need to continue electrifying
heat is another one.

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So electrify everything you can.

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And then in parallel,
you need to decarbonize

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our electricity generation.

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So that's back to what
I was saying earlier,

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solar, wind to start with.

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- Hydrogen.
- Well, hydrogen,

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and that's my fourth point, which is-

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- [Edie] All right, sorry, just trying

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to scoop you along there.

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- -everything you can electrify,

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then you need to put in
place hydrogen, CCUS,

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and eventually direct-air capture.

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So those four things are what you need.

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And what you need to make all of that work

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is sensible policy.

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- Maurice, thank you very much

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for stopping by the
studio here in Davos 2023.

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- Thanks for having me.