Transcript: Solar energy’s moment in the sun

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Solar energy’s moment in the sun’

Sonja Hutson
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, September 18th and this is your FT News Briefing. BlackRock and Microsoft are trying to give AI more juice and solar energy is heating up in the US. Plus, the FT caught up with the EU’s outgoing competition chief. We’ll play you some of that conversation. I’m Sonja Hutson, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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BlackRock is partnering with Microsoft to launch one of the biggest funds raised on Wall Street ever. The more than $30bn fund will invest in the infrastructure to bring artificial intelligence to life. You see, running AI computers requires a ton of power, and the new fund will be putting money towards data centres and the energy projects needed to keep them online. In order to meet demand Microsoft has already poured $10bn into a renewable energy fund by Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management.

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BP has put its $2bn US onshore wind business up for sale. It wants to focus on solar energy instead. The pivot is a sign of growing excitement about solar in the US. And here to discuss is the FT’s energy editor, Malcolm Moore. Hi, Malcolm.

Malcolm Moore
Hi there.

Sonja Hutson
So before we talk about this broader shift, first, can you give me the details about what BP is doing here?

Malcolm Moore
Yeah. So BP owns all or part of ten wind farms in the US. And they’re basically exiting the whole business. They’re saying that they don’t want to be in onshore wind any more. And the reason they’ve given is that they want to focus on a company called Lightsource, which they are in the process of buying. And Lightsource is primarily a solar energy company. It’s an interesting move because, you know, these wind farms, they’re up, they’re operational, they’re making money, they’re connected to the grid. Whereas solar, it’s a very competitive landscape. But on the other hand, you can see that if they think they’re not going to install any more wind and grow that portfolio significantly, then maybe solar is the place where you can see a lot of growth.

Sonja Hutson
And Malcolm, why would a company like BP be interested in solar right now? Like just how popular is it getting?

Malcolm Moore
So basically, just looking at the next phase, people are expecting that over the next ten years or so, there’s going to be significantly more solar installed in the US than there is wind. Wind is currently about 10 per cent of the US power generation capacity. And solar is about 4 per cent. But we’re going to see solar catch up really quickly.

Sonja Hutson
Yeah, explain that a little bit more.

Malcolm Moore
So basically, solar is just easier to do if you think about a wind farm. Firstly, they’re big. You’ve got to import them. You’ve got to install them. You’ve got to get the permits for them. All of that is kind of tricky and it’s kind of an established industry. So all the places where there’s a lot of wind, there are already quite a lot of wind farms. So there’s kind of a natural slowdown in the growth there. Whereas in solar, they’re relatively unobtrusive. People don’t protest against new solar panels going up and they’re kind of cheap and they’re not difficult to install.

Sonja Hutson
Yeah. And you know, this seems like a really big turnaround for solar.

Malcolm Moore
Yeah. If you rewind to 15 years ago, back then, wind power was seen as the great hope of the transition because the costs were coming down, turbines were going up everywhere, People have found a business model that worked and people were installing wind farms. At that time, solar was seen as incredibly expensive and something that was going to really be difficult to scale. And then suddenly they worked out how to make these panels very cheaply. And they have the lowest cost of electricity generation while the sun is shining out of any energy form out there. And actually, you kind of need both, right? Because sometimes the best times for wind farms are at night. And that’s, of course, when solar panels don’t work.

Sonja Hutson
Malcolm Moore is the FT’s energy editor. Thanks, Malcolm.

Malcolm Moore
Thanks for having me.

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Sonja Hutson
Now on to Meta, which is laying down some ground rules for teenagers. The tech company said on Tuesday that its app, Instagram, will now have 18 accounts feature. These accounts will only be visible to their followers, plus they’ll see less content deemed sensitive. The feature will be turned on by default for all teenagers. Both parents and lawmakers have been calling on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to do more to protect young people on Instagram. That’s after growing evidence that social media platforms seem to be harmful on multiple levels.

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Europe’s powerful competition tsar is about to step down. Margrethe Vestager has spent most of the last decade trying to rein in big tech. My colleague Javier Espinoza has been covering part of that journey and he recently sat down with Vestager to talk about it. I’m going to play some of their conversation for you now.

Javier Espinoza
So thank you very much for being here executive vice-president.

Margrethe Vestager
It’s my pleasure.

Sonja Hutson
The interview came on the back of a couple of big wins for the commission last week, one against Apple for having to pay a pretty significant chunk of change in back taxes and another against Google in an antitrust case.

Javier Espinoza
So what’s the lesson for the likes of Apple and other companies that feel that they are untouchable and that regulators are just getting in the way of innovation and greater good?

Margrethe Vestager
Well, it is very simple. Nobody is above the law. And this is not about innovation in big companies. This is about innovation as such, because if a smaller company innovate, well, it should be for their ideas, their work ethic, their investors to be able to get to their customers. It shouldn’t be decided by some gatekeeper whether you’re successful or not. We’re talking about the most valuable, the biggest companies on this planet with immense market power. And yet we find over and over and over again that they are on the wrong side of compliance to competition law. And that is quite thought-provoking that those who have made it in the marketplace still feel that they should not compete on the merits.

Javier Espinoza
Have you detected that the strategy basically is just to delay and see what they can get away with?

Margrethe Vestager
Well, I do think that it is part of the game, but of course, it’s also completely justified that these businesses can defend themselves. The thing is that there is always be a asymmetry because it’s much faster to break the law than to investigate it and take it to court. So, of course, we’ve been trying to speed up and I think there is an important debate about how to do intermediate measures. Because one of the really painful things, for instance, in the Google AdSence case is that that market died. Even though Google stopped its behaviour that market has never grown back. So I think there is still much to do to say, well, we cannot do away with this asymmetry in form, but can we better use our tools? Can they be better suited to deal with the consequences of this asymmetry so that the market can faster recover from unlawful behaviour?

Javier Espinoza
You said that this was the end of the beginning in the fight of Big Tech. So the next five years, if your successor is sitting here, what should they take on? What’s the key thing that, you know, as you hand the baton to the next commissioner?

Margrethe Vestager
Well, first, of course, enforcing the Digital Markets Act. That is the main avenue of work, having sufficient resources to do that. Because what that did to markets and gives you is speed in fighting anti-competitive behaviour that we know so well. And then of course continue the specific cases. But the Digital Markets Act holds the potential of opening the market for more innovation. And I think making that a priority is absolutely crucial. And that goes for everyone because Europe is open for business.

Javier Espinoza
Excellent. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Margrethe Vestager
It was my pleasure. Thank you.

Sonja Hutson
That was our EU correspondent Javier Espinoza, interviewing the bloc’s outgoing competition chief, Margrethe Vestager.

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You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.