“I find it scandalous that serious politicians, that energy ministers, will look at the economy and don't know what powers it. Measuring the energy use of our economy in primary energy units is like measuring nutrition by how many acres are used in agriculture. And yet that's what we're doing.”

Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change · Climate & Energy · September 2026

Context

Liebreich and guest Jan Rosenow spend the episode on what they call the primary energy fallacy — counting the coal and oil that goes in rather than the useful energy that comes out, which makes the switch to electrification look far bigger than it is. Rosenow replies with a story about posting a Sankey diagram of rejected energy and getting a very senior European Commission official asking staff why nobody had told them about it.

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Transcript

Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change Around 00:00 into the episode

Michael Liebreich

I find it scandalous that you actually look at the economy, that serious politicians, that energy ministers will look at the economy and don't know what powers it. Measuring the energy use of our economy in primary energy units is like measuring nutrition by how many acres are used in agriculture. And yet that's what we're doing. Don't you find it just astonishing?

Jan Rosenow

It is. And when I posted the Senke diagram from Lawrence Livermore lab at some point, someone in the European Commission, very senior, that person asked their staff, why has no one told me about this? That person wasn't aware that we have these huge losses, this huge amount of rejected energy. And…

Michael Liebreich

Hello, I'm Michael Liebreich and this is Cleaning Up. Energy discussions can seem to be dominated by engineers presenting technical solutions, politicians talking in generalizations, lawyers and consultants having a field day, regulators left doing their best to keep the lights on, and investors…

Jan Rosenow

It is an absolute pleasure, Michael.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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