Season 4, Episode 126 : Mats Larsson

Will Richardson 00:03
Welcome to the Green Element podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today, I'd like to welcome Matt Larsson from the Global Energy Transformation Institute, thank you so much for coming on the show, Matt.

Mats Larsson 00:15
Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Will Richardson 00:17
Brilliant, and you are phoning in from Sweden. And could you tell us a bit about, you know, who you are? And what it is that you do? Because it's really, really interesting.

Mats Larsson 00:31
Yes, I'm a consultant in sustainable business. And I'm a management consultant, I've been working a lot with business development in for 30 years now. And, and I've also written a number of books on the big picture, the high-level picture of the transformation to sustainable transport systems, production and distribution systems, and so on. And my most recent book was published only a few days ago now, the blind guardians of ignorance, COVID-19, sustainability and our vulnerable future, which basically, is aimed at telling politicians, decision-makers at big companies, and so on, that it's time to get started. And it describes the magnitude and the complexity of this transformation, which I believe many people are not aware of.

Will Richardson 01:38
And, and I know that mine arrived, thank you very much, a few days ago. What would you say are the key takeaways from this book?

Mats Larsson 01:53
Well, I'd say that there are many companies that are working hard and working successfully to become sustainable and to develop sustainable business models and, and to launch and sustainable product services and so on. But there is, the magnitude of the transformation is so big, that it's there is a need for government financing in many areas, in order to drive this development forward. And that has been present that need has been present in previous technology developments. And it's present here as well, because of the number of customers that are available in the early stages of technology development for example, in e-mobility in different areas of circular, circular and sustainable business. And there are too few customers at present to finance the very large investments that are necessary in order to build this development and drive this development forward on a large scale.

Will Richardson 03:12
And you mentioned the e-mobility What do you mean by e-mobility?

Mats Larsson 03:18
Electric mobility, the transformation of transportation to electric cars and electric trucks. That's and for example, the British government has announced a 10 point plan to promote sustainability over the next two decades. And one of the measures there is to ban petrol and diesel cars by 2030, which sounds like a very, very good idea and it is a very, very good idea, but it brings with it the need for preparations that I don't think most people and perhaps not even Boris Johnson are aware of, because, in order to drive the entire car fleet of the UK on electricity, there will be a need for about 20 nuclear reactors or the equivalent of course, in terms of power from wind or solar, in order to drive fuel, only the car fleet there will be a need for the similar amount of energy in order to fuel the truck fleet. And so, so these changes in them are of a such a large scale, and that they are very complex because it's not only a matter of cars, charging posts and electricity it's also a matter of distribution, of electricity and the control of the power grids, and so on that that makes this a very complex endeavour, indeed, and a very challenging, challenging process to drive forward in any country. And now we see that the UK has decided to go forward with this. And we see similar plans in other countries. So, so there will be a very, very large demand and a very rapidly increasing demand for electric cars, electric trucks, which are still at a very early point in their development, and quite expensive compared to existing cars. And yet, all Brits are expected to buy electric cars, or other renewable fuel cars in only 10 years time. So So preparing for this change is a very, very, will be a very, very big endeavour.

Will Richardson 06:13
And I think it's going to happen faster than we anticipate as well, I was chatting to one of the largest fan dealerships a couple of days ago, one of the owners, and he was saying that 10, they are expecting on the figures from this year 10% of their sales to be electric vehicles next year. So if you do the math, it actually means that by 2025, we will be purely electric within the vans

Mats Larsson 06:45
In terms of sales.

Will Richardson 06:46
In terms of sales. So we and that almost exacerbates what it is that you are talking about. And I agree. And I think one of the things that would be quite keen to ask your opinion on is the battery technology and where we mined for batteries? Because we know that there are only a few places around the world that we can mine for batteries. How does this, how is this taken into consideration when we talk about e-mobility?

Mats Larsson 07:21
Well, I, I believe that governments, when they make this type of decision, they don't have a complete picture of all the aspects involved in this transformation. So that they assume that all the issues involved can be sold, as they will be solved by the market forces once the decision has been made and the process is set in motion. But it's clear as you say that, that the batteries will present a challenge. And of course, we have the lithium will challenge that lithium is by some described as a metal that may become scars, as the demand for electric car batteries will increase. And I don't have the answer to that. But one of the measures that I believe will be necessary in order to be able to charge all cars and trucks is to build electric roads, which reduce the need for batteries we can because cars can be charged and trucks can be charged while driving through cracks in the road and pantographs have been discussed. But that's only possible for four trucks because they are higher as so tracks in the road and different developments in that this area tried in different parts of Europe. But the tracks in the road would help to reduce the need for batteries because you can charge along the way. But it would also reduce the need for charging posts. If you consider that every car in the future, in this vision of the British government, the vision of other governments will have to be charged or would have to be charged at stationary charging posts. It would mean that that along all roads in cities and in all parking spaces where cars are parked during the night. And during the day there would be a need for charging posts and that would be not only a very big investment but also logistics challenge in order to get and to make these may make pavements free for people to walk on them and, and to keep streets free and to avoid cluttering of city environments by a lot of stationary charges. So, as long as we don't have too many electric cars, electric vans, electric trucks, it's not a problem in any way because we have enough electricity, the power grids have enough capacity to for to distribute it and we have some charges and installing new charges can be managed for the small amount of cars that we have. But if you think about the picture 10-15 years from now, when a large, very large share of all vehicles may be electric, there will be a need for much more electricity, much more capacity in power grids, smart grid technologies to manage charging, so that not all cars and trucks are charged when the owners plug them in, in the afternoon. And you have a need for, you'll have a need for many more things and of course services like payment services and other services and to build this entire sector in business and sector in society over only period of 10 years is a daunting proposition, I think.

Will Richardson 11:56
Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah, I think it is. I think it is and I think I agree with you. And I'm not convinced that they've possibly thought it through I know a number of friends have been talking about this. And so your, your book is aimed at the senior bif business leaders and politicians and discussing what we've just been talking about.

Mats Larsson 12:24
Yes, but it's also the subtitle, that's the bottom line here is that it's a handbook for change leaders, young and old. It's a handbook for all of us, because, we can't send this to Boris Johnson and other members of the British Parliament or the EU parliament and other national leaders and hope that they will read it and start to work along these lines and analyse and start to drive development in the way I suggest. It's that there has to be or there have to be many people who learn about these things and learn about the challenges and start to take them seriously on different levels in society in order for these ideas to start to permeate the debate to start to permeate the thinking of that is going on at companies and among citizens among governments, local governments, regional governments or everyone needs to give be involved in different ways in this development, because in order for all of these things to happen, and the lead has to be taken, of course, by national governments, as national governments have taken the lead in the past, in the development of railways in the development of phone systems, and in the development of, of space technology in the case of NASA and the United States and, and other areas. And this is a transformation that's so big and so complex, that it has to be in various ways led and also to a large extent financed from a high level from by people, by agencies and organisations that have access to the big picture and have an understanding of what's needed.

Will Richardson 14:42
Hmm, interesting, so what I mean what's your background where, how do you know this?

Mats Larsson 14:51
Yes, that's, I started to work 30 years ago, as a business consultant with business strategy and development issues and actually, in1998 together with a colleague, David Lundberg, we wrote one of the early books on e-business, Your Business Strategy: the transparent market, which was published in the UK, US by Palgrave Macmillan. And that was, one of the big learnings for me is to the predictions, we did that then that, we said that, due to the cost-effectiveness, and the accessibility of the internet, all companies will, in different ways, do business on the internet, and use the internet for communication and so on. And, at that time, not very many believed what we were saying. But we have seen that, that it's come true, we can study now, we can see the process behind it, and we can say that. And I said that 10-15 years ago, when I started this development of development mentum ideas, and I started writing books about large-scale transformation of society, transport systems, and production and distribution systems to sustainability. When I started this, I said the same thing as I did back then, for the internet, that this transformation will have to go on a large scale, and everyone will have to adopt sustainable practices, all companies need to adopt sustainable practices, as citizens need to learn about sustainability. And we need to understand how to consume and how to behave literally live, live our lives in sustainable ways. So that we can participate and take and, and contribute to this development that we are seeing ahead of us. And now 15 years later, governments are starting to make these decisions, develop 10 point plans, like the British government, decided, like the EU government that the EU will be carbon neutral by 2050, and so on, and making all these decisions and, that's suddenly a platform for me to say, hey, in order to do this, we need to realise the magnitude the complexity of it all, and what are the different players in society, from citizens to governments, to companies, how they how we all need to contribute to realise this?

Will Richardson 18:06
And if a business, you know, leader came to you or me and said, we're a logistics company, we are looking at transforming our fleets. And should, what should we do? And because you've got hydrogen fuel cell as well, which, interestingly, hasn't been spoken about huge amounts. And obviously electric, and what sort of advice would you give a company like that? But either lot? And would that advice be different if you're a small company or a large company?

Mats Larsson 18:49
Yes. I assume, I'd say for a large company, there's a need to embark on this type of development and find out how they can transform their business on a large scale in order to make it sustainable, it may be to investigate the opportunities to change their way of transporting, their products, or transporting them, working together with our logistic operators in order to transfer as much as possible of that. Cargo to electric trucks, electric transportation opportunities, to investigate the opportunity, perhaps to use what we have at a small scale in Sweden at present, but that's growing really rapidly. And it basically transportation transport bicycles with systems substantial capacity for taking about two pallets of load.

Will Richardson 00:01
Yeah, I've got a friend who transports flowers into London on one of those bikes and cargo bikes. And it's the size of a double-decker bus. And they come in every single morning.

Mats Larsson 00:14
Yes, and so and the capacity to transport, the speed they can do transportation in big cities like London or Birmingham or, or other big cities around the world is quite high, you can transport that to higher speeds with using a bike than you can. With a by car in, in a city environment, in many cases, at least. So so that's a very competitive way of transporting things and a resource-effective as well. Because bicycles are, require much less material to build, they require much less electricity to operate, and so on. And you can use them driving on bicycle lanes and other routes that are not available to bands and trucks in the city environments.

Will Richardson 01:18
Guys interesting is Pedal Me that I'm talking about. Ben Knowles is his name. And we, he's he did a study, and they tracked their bikes, and they tracked vans, and through the city of London, and did different routes, and it was actually they came out as quicker, more efficient, faster, and cheaper for and so yeah, I mean, down to the average speeds, they would go they were faster, you know, everything it was it's phenomenal. What actually we can do now with that.

Mats Larsson 01:58
Yes, that's a company moved by biking in Malabo did the same type of study and found the same thing they can go closer to the addresses where they're going to pick up or hand out parcels and so on, which makes them faster. Yes, this is only one example of an opportunity that exists to make transportation and business more sustainable. And companies can actually use these opportunities that exist. And, and build on those, but there is also a need to, for governments and large companies to develop new opportunities, new materials that can replace fossil plastics, for example, and sharing business models instead of business models, that the traditional ones where we own the things that we use, in almost all cases. So So there are many things that can be done at present, but there are also a very large number of new systems and new technologies that needed to be developed and to be expanded to be available on a large scale, in order for this to be possible to develop so that we all can use sustainable and resilient ways of living our lives.

Will Richardson 03:37
Yeah, I think we are gonna see a huge change. And I think one of my takeaways from this conversation has been, let's not get carried away with what change has to be made. Let's work about how we, how we change, and what's the best way to change.

Mats Larsson 04:00
Yes. And I think also, there's a need to develop strategies that focus on the most important areas, like the most, say, low hanging fruit, where we can, where we can do get the best results in a reasonable period of time. And that's a reasonable investment and costs, instead of investing a lot of money in and time in pursuing things that have little potential that have that that are not very promising or that we can achieve only at a very, very high cost. That will be investments, like in electromobility, for example, where we can't avoid doing transforming on a large scale and implementing very large new systems, and these need to be planned. But there are also things that can be done. I believe that on a grassroots level, or by small companies and in individual initiatives that can be driven at present from the situation where we are right now.

Will Richardson 05:19
Yeah, brilliant, and what would be one, one takeaway that you'd like to have our listeners take away from this conversation, please?

Mats Larsson 05:32
I'd like to say that the challenge is much more complex and the and we need to make bigger changes than most people expect. So, we add we need to focus our efforts on a smaller number of areas not trying to do a little of everything like at present basically, but to find the areas where we have the potential to achieve rapid and large-scale change using a reasonable amount of resources. And then also for governments and large companies to make available the resources for the changes or changes that we need financial and other resources that are that will be necessary in order for this to go forward.

Will Richardson 06:35
And we can find out more about you from the book that you've written. And you can buy that in the UK from all major bookstores. Brilliant, and can you buy online?

Mats Larsson 06:52
Definitely, you can buy it via Amazon or any online book retailer.

Will Richardson 07:00
Okay, brilliant. Brilliant. Thank you very much for being on today. How do we find out more about you, other than just buying the book?

Mats Larsson 07:08
Well, I've written books, audiobooks, but you can also contact me via email or and chat with me. I'm happy to connect with anyone who wants to discuss or well discuss project opportunities or have ideas for transformation efforts that you can try in, in your local community.

Will Richardson 07:47
Brilliant. Thank you very much for coming on today. Thanks, Matt.

Mats Larsson 07:50
Thank you. Well, thank you for having me.