The Brussels Report Podcast Episode 26 – with nuclear energy expert Björn Peters
The Brussels Report Podcast
BrusselsReport.eu
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🗓️ 10 November 2022
⏱️ 46 minutes
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Summary
Dr. Björn Peters is a German physicist and energy economist. He is also an investor into the newest generation of nuclear power plants, as co-founder and CFO of Dual Fluid Energy. He heads the research and consulting institute Peters Coll, which he founded, and advises entrepreneurs and politicians. On a voluntary basis, he is a founding member of the Nuclear Pride Coalition as well as a member of the federal board and head of the energy policy department at the economically liberal think tank “Deutscher Arbeitgeberverband e.V.” (German Employers‘ Association), where he is responsible for the energy policy column „The Energy Question“.
In this this episode of the Brussels Report podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe discusses the following topics with him:
- What is the cause of the energy crisis?
- The German debate on extending nuclear power plants
- What to expect from the new generation of nuclear power plants, as for example small modular reactors (SMRs)?
- How to assess the EU's response to the crisis, in particular the proposals for price regulation?
- Can shale exploration in Europe offer solutions?
- Are energy blackouts to be expected in Europe?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Brussels Report Podcast. |
| 0:10.0 | Welcome to a new episode of the Brussels Report podcast. |
| 0:18.0 | My name is Peter Klepper. |
| 0:20.0 | I'm the editor-in-chief of BrusselsReport.EU. And I'm really happy to have as my guest today, Bjorn Peters. |
| 0:28.5 | Bjorn is a German physicist. He's an energy economist. He has been working at McKinsey, Deutsche Beurze, Deutsche Bank. He's a prolific writer, a political |
| 0:42.9 | commentator, has played quite a big role in the German nuclear energy debate. And he's just |
| 0:50.3 | not only a commentator, he's also an entrepreneur. He's very much in the field at the moment. |
| 0:58.7 | He's busy with the new generation of nuclear power plants. |
| 1:05.4 | So that's super interesting to hear his thoughts. |
| 1:09.3 | So welcome, Bjorn. |
| 1:12.3 | Thank you very much for having me. |
| 1:19.7 | Great. So let's maybe start with this tiny political issue that's keeping some people awake, |
| 1:27.0 | the energy crisis that has engulfed Europe. I think you can say over the last year. I mean, it's definitely started before Putin invaded Ukraine. |
| 1:33.4 | So in a nutshell, what is the cost of this energy crisis? |
| 1:39.4 | Well, as you rightly said, it started in the first half of 2021. |
| 1:46.0 | And the Ukraine crisis, of course, amplified it, but it was not the root cause. |
| 1:52.0 | The root cause is policy driven in two regards or two dimensions. |
| 1:59.0 | One is that we made ourselves more and more reliable, dependent on |
| 2:04.6 | unreliable sources of energy, so weather dependent energy forms. And unfortunately, across several |
| 2:12.6 | regions of the world, the nature didn't play with us very well. So we had substantial less wind power |
| 2:22.6 | in Western Europe in the first half of 2021. Hence, what do people do? They rather burn gas and switch |
| 2:33.5 | the gas power plants up in order to get the power they need. |
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