Jan Rosenow
Oxford Professor.
“What is a missed opportunity is when governments then stop there and only do the short-term fix, because that's sticking plaster. It's dealing with the symptoms, but it's not curing the illness. And the illness is the over-reliance on fossil fuel imports and an exposure to these very volatile markets.”
Zero: The Climate Race · Climate & Energy · November 2026
Context
The host asked why governments answer an energy price shock with subsidies and new fossil supply instead of electrifying. Rosenow says the emergency response is understandable but wrong if it stops there.
Transcript
…with batteries, with renewables. But we still have places like Italy, for example, or the UK, where gas is a very dominant factor in the wholesale market. So reducing that by speeding up the deployment of storage, speeding up the deployment of renewables will also help bring down prices.
…more fossil fuels for 10, 15, if it's a new industrial build, maybe for decades to come. You've worked with governments, advised them, you've showed why an electrification system is a better one. And yet this urgency that we must electrify hasn't quite sunk in with most governments. Why is that?
I think there's always a short-term scramble to solve the crisis. And that's understandable. I mean, if you're in government and you see prices shoot up by maybe three, four, five, or 10 times even in 2022, that's what we've seen in the gas markets in Europe. You have to react. And you can't just say, oh, over the next 10 years, we're going to change the energy system. You have to do something in that very moment. And in this case, it was making sure we have enough gas for the winter that was coming. We already saw there was a cut in gas supply from Russia in, I think it started in September or August 2021. And you have to react to that and make sure there is enough energy available, right? At the same time, when prices rise, you've got to protect people from those price rises. So I totally understand why governments have acted in that way. What is a missed opportunity, though, is when governments then stop there and only do the short-term fix, because that's sticking plaster. It's dealing with the symptoms, but it's not curing the illness. And the illness is the over-reliance on…
In terms of Europe, the biggest share of emissions tends to be heating homes and buildings with natural gas. I know you have looked at electrification of heating very closely. The obvious solution is heat pumps, but there are success stories and then there are failures across Europe when you look…
Yeah, I think we know what the ingredients are and it's really quite simple. One of which we already talked about is electricity price. So we know where the electricity to gas price ratio is low. So by low, I mean at least below three, ideally lower than that. People will start buying heat pumps.…
So one unit of electricity should be a third of the price of gas? No.
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