Empire of the sun: a solar power revolution

No energy source has ever increased as fast as solar photovoltaics. The technology will transform humanity’s energy consumption–even when the sun doesn’t shine. Many people associate champagne with success but wine collectors often shun it. Now global sales are fizzing (10:51). And many chief executives are early birds (https://www.economist.com/business/2024/06/06/is-it-better-to-be-an-early-bird-or-a-night-owl), not night owls. Does it really pay to be up with the larks (18:32)?

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[Music] The [Music] Economist hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist I’m your host Rosie blor every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the event shaping your [Music] world champagne may be the drink of Celebration but wine collectors have long sniffed at the bubbly stuff now the global market is growing and Souther bees is staging its first champagne onlyi auction the market is looking rather sparkling and are you an early bird or a night owl I’m sure you know which of those you are but you might not know how that affects your career prospects our correspondent got up with the Larks to share his conclusions [Music] but first this evening thousands of people will descend on Stonehenge at Sunset Druids pagans tourists are all United by one thing the desire to see the solstice the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere and the event this prehistoric monument was built for when the sun’s Rays shine Into the Heart of the ancient stone circle but you don’t have to be dressed in Druids robes to appreciate the awesome power of the Sun and I really do mean power these days we channel the sun’s Rays less through Stone formations than via silicon panels these solar cells increasingly help to power our greedy planet solar accounted for about 6% of electricity consumption worldwide last year a humble but important share and one that is growing extremely fast the Ancients really were on to something a revolution in solar energy is just on the horizon the rate at which we use an energy source and the cost of that energy source are coupled and what that means is that as we use more solar power the cost of it is going down incredibly quickly Hal Hodson is the economists America’s editor and also writes about technology what this ultimately means is that Humanity has a whole new relationship with energy and the way that we use energy is going to be completely transformed in the next few decades how you say we’ve got a whole new relationship with energy it sounds incredible just how fast has the increase been so in 2004 the world installed about 2 and a half million solar panels these are the black panels you see on rofes increasingly around you and this this year the world is on course to install 1.4 billion solar panels solar is growing so fast now that it’s on track to generate more electricity than the world’s nuclear power plants by 2026 its wind turbines by 2027 all of the hydroelectric dams by 2028 then it’ll overtake electricity generated by gas in 2030 and coal in 2032 and at that point it’ll be the biggest source of electricity on the planet the biggest source of electricity on the planet that’s just stunning what’s powering this solar Revolution so the thing that is making all of this happen in truth is a giant manufacturing ecosystem in the heart of industrial China but there’s slightly more to it than that the real thing that’s making solar go so fast is the nature of the technology itself solar cells those are the chunks of silicon that make up a solar panel are essentially identical and whether you need 10 solar cells or 10 billion solar cells you’re going to use the same manufacturing ecosystem and what that means is that solar much more than any other technology can benefit from returns to scale if you know that the world is going to use more and more of these things you can build really really gigantic factories to make the solar cells to make the inputs to those solar cells and you build this feedback loop between supply and demand that keeps driving the price down and to date the price has come down since 1974 by 99.9% it used to be $100 a watt now it’s 11 cents per watt and it is still going Hal I keep expecting you to come in with a butt here you’re telling me that prices are going down and rates are going up can this extraordinary rate of growth really continue well there is a big butt that should be familiar to most humans on the planet which is that the sun only shines during the day and solar panels only generate electricity when the sun is shining on them so that seems like an absolutely enormous butt but to that butt there are numerous ways around it and the key thing to bear in mind is that all that matters is that you keep expanding the amount of solar panels installed on the planet and keep growing the rate at which they are produced and that’s going to keep driving your costs down so yes the sun only shines during the day but the vast majority of countries have not installed a large amount of solar panels yet and even though the sun only shines during the day we have other Technologies which allow you to take the energy generated from the panels when the sunshines during the day and use it later in the evening these are batteries and very fortunately for solar panels and for humans really in general the rate at which batteries are getting cheaper it looks very similar to the rate at which solar panels are getting cheaper so if we’re finding ways to make Sunshine power us even through the night what could this explosion of renewable energy mean for climate change this is definitely good news for climate change there’s no way to cautiously say that it’s not good news if you look at European emissions even just since the Ukraine war they’re down and the reason they’re down is largely because a massive amount of solar panels have been installed on the grid the butt here is is because solar doesn’t directly provide energy during the night and because you need batteries and other things to help you do that that becomes a bit more expensive if you are a poor country looking at this you’re just going to say oh well I’m going to run a bunch of coal power plants and a bunch of solar plants and so it comes down to the cost right the two cheapest forms of energy on the planet are solar and coal and only one of them can go through the night without adding on other bits of technology that make the whole thing more expensive now it’s possible that solar batteries as a combination get so cheap so fast that even countries that are thinking we’re going to build massive coal plants say oh no actually it doesn’t make any sense anymore it’s just cheaper to do it using these Technologies but that’s not guaranteed at all you’ve also got to consider just the political implications of shutting down your coal mining industry which probably employs a couple million people if you’re a large country like India so there are both technological and political considerations that mitigate against solar sort of miraculous price declines completely solving climate change it’s almost certainly going to remain a problem over the next few decades how it’s incredibly rare to hear such a good news story that continues all the way through to the end to be a good news story just tell me what does very cheap solar energy mean for the global economy as a whole if you think about it energy is probably one of the only things that is an input into all products the entire economy runs on energy even to a much greater extent than it runs on say information process so the first way to answer your question is just everything gets cheaper a more speculative way of thinking about what does this do what does it mean to have such cheap energy coming from solar is what could you do with how much solar panel and the scale of this energy source and the fact that you can just buy a bunch of them and put them in a field and do something with them makes you start to think rather wacky you think about doing things like using solar panels to treat all of the drinking water in the world so that you would eliminate waterborne diseases that’s going to require an AM of solar roughly that the Chinese ecosystem makes in a year yeah you’ve got to install it and all of these finicky things but just thinking about how much energy is required to do what job we’re now in a world where a single country produces a machine that makes enough energy to do that job every year to give humans drinking water that doesn’t kill them you could also think about just making all of the fuels that we need instead of digging them out of the ground sucking them out of the ground you could just make them using water and carbon dioxide again energy needs to be very very very cheap for that to make any sense but that’s the whole point of this story energy is getting very very very cheap and the geopolitical impact of all of this I think it’s quite clear that it’s going to be geopolitically stabilizing to have a machine thousands millions billions of which exist in every country that just produces energy by being pointed at the sky that’s completely different to the flows of oil and gas that currently cause so much geopolitical Strife but there is another consideration which is that everyone’s a bit worried about the Chinese producing so many of these machines these solar panels that are going to provide all of this energy the way that the world responds to that it matters quite a lot because if the world responds in such a way that it says we’re not going to even allow Chinese companies to set up factories in our country we’re going to completely ignore everything they’ve done and we’re going to try and build our own versions of this then you might break this wonderful scaling effect whereby you make more you learn to make it more cheaply and the cost of solar goes down if the West tries to go its own way and doesn’t learn from China it might have to start at the top of that process again and that would be really bad for the world then you’d have much higher price solar panels and you would break the whole cycle of deploying more having more demand producing more reducing the cost of the solar energy so that’s a sort of geopolitical worry that I have but even if that does happen and the West totally turns its back on China and forges its own path there’s no reason to think that the same exact process can’t happen because what we’re really talking about here is a very simple very easy toake machine that produces 30 years of energy just by being pointed at the Sun the world really has not woken up to the consequences of having thousands millions billions of those machines all over the world on every house on every business in the field behind your house Hal thank you so much for bringing some sun to our lives thanks Rosie thank you very much for having me and if you want to know more about the solar Revolution keep an ear out for next week’s episode of babage where we’ll also be exploring space-based solar power for those enlightened enough already to be subscribers to Economist podcast Plus thank you for everyone else you’ll need to buy a subscription to listen find out more in the link in the show notes this is the first time that anyone has ever offered a single owner wine auction focused entirely on champ I’m not sure that um this will ever come up [Music] again today in Paris sbe’s is holding the first ever champagne only auction expected to raise around $2 million given how famous the French wine is some may wonder why it’s taken the auction house so long to come around to the fizzy stuff well it’s all about reputation for decades connoisseur have been rather sniffy about bubbles preferring Reds and whites from places like burgundy or Bordeaux but last year Global champagne sales hit a record high of $ billion now even wine collectors are waking up to the joy of celebratory Sparkles champagne has been having a moment but one of the interesting things is how differently people see champagne Alexandra SE bass is culture editor of The Economist so in some ways you have some of the most famous brands in the world world the Vos Krug cryistal that are incredibly well known by people and are brands that one aspires to purchase during times of celebration on the other hand you have people who take wine very seriously and champagne has not been on the top of their list when it comes to their celebrations of Fine Wine recently however that started to change Alexandre I’m amazed to hear that people have been paying enough attention to Champagne why hasn’t it captured the attention of connoisseurs before this I’ve been doing what is probably the next best thing to drinking champagne which is reading histories of champagne and Robert Walters an Australian wine writer makes the point that champagne has always been pedal as a bubbly drink for bubbly people you see it in the marketing for people who are going to clubs or perhaps rapper so I think part of it is the marketing that it’s kind of a mass luxury major champagne brands are owned by Louis Vuitton Mo Hennessy one of the largest luxury conglomerates in the world and so it’s a brand to Aspire to but the wine connoisseurs see that and don’t think it’s as artisanal unique and complex as some of the other wines from regions in France and elsewhere Alexandra I hope you’ve been drinking some champagne as part of your research for this piece tell me why that started to change I of course take my job and research very seriously so I did oblig a few things have changed in terms of how wine collectors investors lovers have seen champagne one was Co and that left people with a lot of time on their hands some extra cash for the well-healed who were not going out to dine in restaurants as much people found themselves with a lot more time to study champagne producers methods of blending and adding do which is a mixture that includes cane sugar and sweetens champagne before bottling um I’m the third generation of L B producer I’m back in the Estates in 7even years ago taking over my parents who took from their parents from from my dad parents that’s Arthur lonier of lonier berer champagne house they get as for wine they understood that there is not only Big Brand and not only bubble that there is wine behind the Buble and that’s at first he thought it would take 5 years for champagne to bounce back from covid but instead demand surged and it took about six months there’s another Factor driving wine efficient Autos to look at their champagne flutes a little bit differently and that connects to lonier Bernier which is appreciation for smaller houses that produce limited quantities of high quality bubbly they often have really strong and unique unque viticultural practices and really give a sense of Terre or the place that wine is grown so it’s sight specific and very unique we’ve seen prices for grower champagne Skyrocket on the secondary Market people who collect it have seen prices double if not more for certain makers since the start of the pandemic presumably it wasn’t just Co that was responsible for this interest and surge in prices for grower champagne what else has been going on the fact that champagne has been reviewed more often I think did Drive interest as well the fact that wine effici AOS were taking it more seriously in places like the wine Advocate and elsewhere drove people to give it a try themselves but I would say it’s really some call it a burgund ification of champagne which is a clunky way of saying that just like people take wines from burgundy very seriously and think about how the different plots give you a very different experience people are starting to do that with champagne historically champagne has been Blended both from the grapes from different areas in Champagne grown by different people and also Blended across different years it’s probably the most processed wine that’s produced in the world but we’ve started to see that change with grower champagne houses and what they’re doing is doing very sight specific releases that really give a sense of place and I think that pequs the interest of wine enthusiasts and we have enough wines and grapes really to isolate to choose to select and only keep so very best for G the very best is I visited the offices of lauron perier on the rof of ban to try their gr Prestige CU and they told me all about the champagne making process and also invited me to taste some can I have your your glass thank you so you have probably if you consumers are looking to buy products that really connect to local communities so we see that Trend in Gastronomy and Cuisine we are also seeing that in wine and that has given grower Champagnes a real boost and how does that interest in local growth apply to the growing Global Market in Champagne it used to be that the French bought the majority of champagne but that changed in 2012 and it became the rest of the world we’ve seen America buy more champagne the Japanese who buy a lot of prestige cuvet which are expensive bottles and we see growth in the rest of Europe as well I do think that there is a question about pricing and how much the market will tolerate how much prices have risen in recent years for some of the best Champagnes I think think it is worth watching the sou bees auction in Paris to see how much wine collectors are seeking out new bottles of classic vintages and it will be a really interesting test of champagne being taken more seriously thank you so much Alexandra next time over a glass of champagne I hope thank you Rie I look forward to it [Music] my mother famously said that she pied whoever married me that wasn’t a general comment on my character it was because I was so horrible in the morning every [Music] morning when it comes to hitting the snooze button I’m a repeat offender for me the morning of getting the kids up bag packed and off to school getting myself to the office and starting work is all done through blury eyes and with the help of at least one extremely large mug of coffee only when the day is nearly done do I feel productive and full of energy so as a nightow I’ve got a vested interest in the following question are the early birds who get half of their to-do list done before breakfast actually going to do better in life does it really pay to be up with the Lark instead of burning the midnight oil you won’t find many CEOs that extol the virtues of a li in Tomley delin is a global business correspondent and host of our sister podcast Money Talks if you look at people like Tim Cook of apple or Bob Iger of Disney they’re up between 4 and 5: in the morning exercising sending off emails getting ready for their day actually 2/3 of American CEOs are up by 6 in the morning which is about twice the share of average Americans so it certainly seems like if you are aspiring to corporate greatness hitting the snooze button might not be the way to success so Tom I need to ask you a very personal question here I’m not going to ask you if you’re aspir to corporate greatness but I do want to know are you an early bird are you a lck or are you an owl I am certainly not an early bird I have experimented with waking up early in the past and I mean I think that the benefits are certainly real you know you can get ahead of all of your emails you can squeeze in a workout and you kind of you know get the smug satisfaction of of arriving at your desk before all your other colleagues are in and one thing that that I found really funny whilst I was reporting for this piece is all the crazy videos out there on on Tik Tok of people describing their incredibly elaborate morning rituals you have people submerging themselves in I SPS and reciting affirmations and and making all sorts of weird beverages in the morning one of the most bizarre ones I came across was this guy named Chris cron who’s a business coach in America my destiny is formed before 9:00 a.m. so I’m up at 4:00 a.m. from 400 to 4:20 I do a book on double speed so I’m listening at 4:20 I’m on the treadmill with my wife and we’re doing an act of meditation together for 40 minutes it includes a Ry where we’re basically aligning the Pharmacy of the body to overd dopamine the Mind by gratitude serotone in the brain and then we shift into mind Palace which is 20 minutes of co-creating our best bodies 5:00 we then hit the weights over dopamin the Mind sounds intriguing but on slightly firmer ground is there actually any solid evidence that getting up earlier is better for you there is a number of studies that suggest it it might be one piece of research from the University of Toronto in 2012 showed that early Birds reported feeling happier and healthier night owls tend to get less sleep which can affect their mood and their health and also their productivity another study from researchers in Finland found that men who get up later make 4% less money than those who are up earlier night owls also tend to be fatter too according to some research from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and there’s also a kind of General Social stigma that I think night owls have to Grapple with one more piece of research by Jessica dech and her colleagues showed that night owls tend to be perceived as lazy undisciplined and immature which is not a particularly flattering description I ask you the next question as a lazy undisciplined and immature person um surely the early birds don’t have it all their own way surely it can’t be all good no I I I don’t think so I think there’s certainly downsides to this I mean one of the very obvious ones is that if you’re in the office early you may just get given more work to do Urgent tasks come up over the course of the day which means there’s a reasonably High chance that you’ll just end up working as late as everyone else it’s often said that the early bird gets the worm but I I think if you’re the worm maybe the best thing to do is just stay in bed but also a bigger problem I think is that being an early bird can turn you into a bit of a boore I think we’ve all had the experience of a L describing their morning routine to us and droning on about how much they got done whilst we were slumbering away which I don’t think is a particularly good way to make friends and another downside of being an early bird is it often means you’re pretty sleepy by the time it gets to the evening and we do find evidence that night hours not only drink more alcohol and take more drugs but even have more sex um not quite sure how to follow up that last one but um you know I think that lar and ALS obviously like to slug insults at each other but I’m guessing that we’re kind of stuck with how we are aren’t we yeah I mean certainly my experience of this is that it is very difficult to pretend to be a morning person if that’s not the way you’re wide so people have a genetic chronotype as scientists call it which is the natural inclination of your body to sleep at a certain time and people talk about dimming your lights at night and and buying special daylight light alarm clocks to to wake you up in the morning but really that’s not going to make that much of a difference and frankly you know if you’re going to wake up early and just spend hours staring blankly at your screen it’s not going to help you all that much thanks so much for coming on the show Tom thanks for having me [Music] that’s all for this episode of the intelligence let us know what you think of the show you can get in touch at podcast economist.com we’ll see you back here tomorrow [Music]