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India's Highly Ambitious $268 Billion Highway scheme!
60 Plays2 months ago
This week, with Jason overseas in Asia, Sam is back in the hosting seat alongside Carlos to cover some huge schemes across the world.
The two cover the truly gargantuan road & Highway scheme coming out of India, the recent government approval of a plan to send Australian made power to Singapore, and then finish on Ukraine's focus on renewable energy to bolster its energy infrastructure.
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Transcript
India's $268 Billion Highway Scheme
00:00:00
Speaker
Just looking at those two, they do 20 billion each. and each day They need to do the revenue of those two companies every year for the next 10 years to deliver this project. so like What was the total number again? two hundred and sixty eight billion um So we're doing the revenue of every construction company in India combined every year just to deliver this highway scheme. Among everything else. You'd expect a huge spike in that. Yeah.
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome back to the pod. um So today, Ollie, you need to get the klaxon sound ready. um Jason is on a retreat with the product team. So we have Sam back who was in just what, two or three episodes ago? Yeah, I think so, yeah. This is your third, sorry, third episode that you're in there.
00:00:47
Speaker
um yeah So, Sam, thank you for coming back to the show and stepping in for Jason. No worries. What's the news saying this week? There were a couple of good ones, but the the one that stood out was the the renderings have dropped for the new stadium um they're building in Casablanca for the 2030 World Cup.
00:01:07
Speaker
ah didn't even I didn't realize who was hosting it, but it's going to be Portugal, Spain, and Morocco are hosting it. I guess due to how well Morocco have been doing in the football, they're going to have a crack at building the world's biggest football stadium, which is the world's biggest. This is the interesting thing. So it says the architects have said it's the world's biggest, but then it says it's potentially the world's biggest. So.
00:01:31
Speaker
Apparently, there's a stadium in Pyongyang, which is about 140,000, but we all know Kim Jong likes to exaggerate a little bit, so they don't know the exact size of it. Anyway, 115,000 people, which is just nuts. The current stadium that's in Casablanca is 47,000 people. so It's you know a bit over double, nearly triple the size of the existing biggest stadium they have. and so The obvious issue is there.
00:01:58
Speaker
it's a who's going, they're putting the stadium 40 kilometers out of the city next to this tiny little town. There's no public transport out there. There's nothing out there. And yeah, they're going to, they're going out to try and build the world's biggest stadium. So I was pretty impressed, but not surprised by the ambition. It seems like this becomes the, um, a bit of a dick measuring contest, doesn't it? Every time a new world cup comes around to see it to build the world's biggest.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, I'm actually really happy that an Australian has joined this podcast and mentioned football because normally I get shot down for Jason if I ah talk about football as a sport. um Yeah, mad that they're building that big a stadium. Was it 40 miles outside of Casablanca? I've just Googled Casablanca. It's like 3 million population. So that means... Yeah, to be fair, it doesn't seem like it looks like 40 minutes. Google maps, but there's like one road, maybe like two roads. Yeah.
00:02:52
Speaker
So you imagine but that's like 5% of the population of Casablanca could fit in that stadium. So like, yeah, and that's going to be empty. Well, it sounded crazy, but they're pretty football mad. I think it's like, it's as much a religion there as it is in the UK. So, but here's the real, this is the really shitty thing. Like in classic form, they followed the, the like Tottenham way, only 60,000 seats are for GA and the rest are all VIPs and boxes. So the GAs at either end.
00:03:22
Speaker
like general admission and then the rest of it is VIP hospitality which is a bit shit but I really like if they build it like the odds have got to be 80% that it's going to be derelict after 10 years you'd have to say like they surely they can't be able to keep that up there's enough there's enough precedence out there for it i wonder if it's even just for the tournament because yeah you're just it's going to be empty and nice little time in there that's always yeah i went I went there, I went to Morocco back in 2018 and I had ah just the story of my experience there of how the sort of knee-jerk shit that they do. We went to catch a train to go out to an airport and we got to the train. The train was at three o'clock and we got there at two. The train had gone or it wasn't showing and we went and asked the attendant like, oh you had, there's a train advertised at three o'clock, where is it? And they're like, oh no, the clock's changed for daylight savings.
00:04:19
Speaker
What do you mean? It's it's not on Google as I oh know the government decided three days ago to change the time. I just changed what they were doing for one year. And the people looked at us like we were stupid. Like, what do you mean the government changed it? Unbelievable. Yeah.
00:04:35
Speaker
I once did a thousand kilometer race across Morocco on these 100cc monkey bikes across the Atlas mountains. you You went across the Atlas on monkey bikes like the Honda monkeys.
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah,
Global Infrastructure Projects Overview
00:04:53
Speaker
but yeah, that's a story for another time. but yeah So our topics for this week. First up, we're going to be talking about India's massively ambitious transport infrastructure plan, um which is a huge $268 billion. Then we're going to dig into Australia's new energy export, basically the collection of renewal projects that's powering it. And then we'll finish up talking about how Ukraine plans to bolster its damaged energy infrastructure with I think a 20 billion um scheme of sort of renewable energy projects to get their energy back up and running. So um nice few solid ones on the docket. So first up, yeah, we've spoken quite a lot this year about some large schemes outside of the UK and Oz like rail, Baltica and some of the big transport schemes in America. But ah yeah, quite shocking to see the scale of some of the schemes outside of the typical regions that we capture the news. So the NHAI, which is the National Highways Authority of India, so I guess the equivalent of Highways UK, I guess yours is state by state, isn't it? So they've set out plans for this highway upgrade, which is $268 billion. dollars
00:06:04
Speaker
And I guess just to give some colors to that. So the timeline, ambitious, 2 on 2030. So we got eight years where they want to build 200,000 kilometers. Sorry, they want to get to a network of 200,000 kilometers. And at the moment they're at like 110,000, so 90,000 kilometers of additional highways. so yeah They want to do 35,000 kilometers by 2025, which is like Yeah, next year we'll wait. And I don't think they're very far along that. But they've basically got this horrible network issue. And I went to India a couple of years ago. It's very hard to get between cities. It's lots of small winding roads. So they're building a series of highways or super highways that can connect the major cities across the country. um And the crazy stat was 15% of GDP is the cost of logistics, which is like, if you think about 15% of GDP is just transporting goods across the country. So yeah, pretty massive scheme. yeah
00:06:57
Speaker
How many $300 billion dollars highway schemes are there in us? i know it's a ah For all of these, I love with these international projects, you just instantly go and snap to fire out. We spend a lot of money here in Australia on trying to do things.
00:07:13
Speaker
you know, how, how likely it is that they get this done is like remains the same. It's pretty ambitious. I think I didn't work out how many football stadiums or Olympic swimming pools it was, but the distance of, of a national highway, like high speed network was, I think it said 18,000 kilometers and yeah the total, the total highway network in Australia is 19,000.
00:07:37
Speaker
So they're trying to build like the equivalent of all the new highway in Australia in eight years, which is just crazy. Even if they, even if they took half that, that's something that we could never even come close to doing here, which is just, I don't know. I think it shows, it shows how much red tape we run, you know, in Oz and I imagine, you know, really the UK going out and getting something done.
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think like just the labor and labor plant materials factor alone. Like you just can't understand how they could be doing that. Yeah, the role would put it together. Yeah, in that amount of time. Obviously, countries, so if you if you look at like the biggest ever construction schemes, there's obviously the Trans-European network that we spoke about previously. Yeah.
00:08:22
Speaker
That's like split up across every country in the EU. So like it seems manageable because it like bite sized chunks. Yeah. China's done some pretty crazy schemes. So there's the national trunk highway system where they're basically all roads lead to China across Europe and Asia.
00:08:36
Speaker
You kind of get it with India and China due to population manpower is probably not the issue. It's probably transporting goods to site and trying to. Because they, they go out and they source their manpower from like neighboring countries and like, I know they go out into Indonesia and they put work contracts together. People are coming from all over the world to do this. So you'd think they're ready to go out and source that. But I just, the raw material to build, you know, that much road is nuts.
00:09:04
Speaker
Yeah, you wonder if it's like the same grade as like a superhighway here. Like are they using different types of aggregates and just compacting them rather than doing like blacktop that you would in, um, it'd be interesting to see that like the spec. To be fair, the way they're looking at it is get the road down. It's going to solve the problem. Even if it's, you know, you lose 20 years on doing a ship build, it's still better to get that road in there. and Because, I mean, I haven't been there, but by all accounts, it's a, you know, it's fairly underdeveloped for the size of population they have. So you can see why the investment's there. Yeah, for sure. Interesting to see what they can get done. I was looking into the top contractors in India. So Larsen and Tilbro, they are the biggest. They do like 20 billion. Where are they from? So Larsen and Tilbro and Adani Group are both Indian, I believe. They're both around the 20 billion revenue mark. Yeah.
00:09:56
Speaker
Looks like Larson and Torbo have their own labor because they've got 340,000 employees. So I'd imagine they self-delivered, but like just looking at those two, they do 20 billion each. They need to do, they need to do the revenue of those two companies every year for the next 10 years to deliver this project. So like, what was the total massive spike? 268 billion. Um, so we're doing like the revenue of every construction company in India combined every year just to deliver this highway scheme. You'd expect a huge spike in that.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I don't know like that wind energy programs like Yeah, yeah, it's not got the entire industry. Yeah Yeah, I haven't seen or didn't come across any sort of foreign contractors or the the big European contractors or anyone going in and doing any major work So it'd be interesting to see how they're actually gonna yeah keep some of the volume of work Yeah, someone's gonna have to gear up for it. So But I mean if the cash is there people will come so it'd be interesting to see Yeah, that general rule of thumb works most places. But ah yeah, no, interesting one. Massive scheme. We'll definitely keep an eye on it. So a
Australia's Sun Cable Energy Export
00:11:03
Speaker
few weeks ago, and conveniently it was one of the episodes you were in on, we talked through that list of sort of energy schemes across the world. Yeah.
00:11:11
Speaker
And one of those that we touched on was in Australian northern territories, they've got these giant renewable energy farms to produce power. And they're going to be sending energy to Asia, more specifically, I think Singapore. Yeah.
00:11:28
Speaker
It's called the a Australia Asia Powerlink. And I guess just to dig into a few details to give it some context. So the solar farm in the Northern Territory, you're going to know way more than me on this in Darwin is 12,000 hectares. That's massive to go back to what is now a fairly useful stat.
00:11:46
Speaker
9,000 football pitches to to sort of see what that looks like. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and it's, I think it was 20 gigawatt of solar energy being captured and like 40 gigawatt of battery storage. They're then laying a cable on the seabed across to Singapore, which is over 4,000 kilometers and is by far the longest undersea cable um and basically will power 15% of Singapore's energy needs. So yeah, um you'll probably know a lot more than me on this. Yeah, yeah, it's, um it's definitely like a project of stats. I think it said that it would have the same, it would power the same like energy energy output as all of New South Wales yearby year by year.
00:12:29
Speaker
um It has the same, it's going to export every year, the same value as the whole of the dairy industry, which is massive. So truly like monumental job. I think it it used to be called Sun Cable. I don't know if they've changed the name or they've split it up. It's fairly well known, I'd say, across Australia, just because it came out in the woodwork probably four or five years ago.
00:12:51
Speaker
the guy who who was, do you know, Tweaky Forest, like the mining magnet over here. He um so he was involved with it. And then there was Mike Cannon Brooks, who was one of the Atlassian founders.
00:13:05
Speaker
and he So it ended up buying one or the other out. um So Mike Cannon Brooks is like heading it up now where he was in part of an investment group. And so they've got disapproval now. So yeah, it's a fairly well-known project. I looked into it because you asked the question last time and it interests me around how the cable works like how the hell would they run that sort of cable and it looks insane does it lose power as you go like how efficient yeah so it's it's the main issue is about the sizing of the cable which is what you were getting at there's a heap of background and experience in lane subsea cable not sure if the
00:13:44
Speaker
like what they're trying to do here. they're going to be I imagine it's going to be a custom size conductor, but interestingly, they need to they're going to have to do a full survey of the seabed because it's all affected by what it gets buried in. I just thought they laid the cable on the seabed, but they have a trowel that digs it in about a meter and a half to three meters down the sea floor.
00:14:06
Speaker
And so I always wondered what all the environmental groups were losing their minds over. You know, oh like you just lay a table on the floor. It's just a bit of dust. It's like they're dragging this plow through the ocean, just absolutely destroying the seabed. um You know, it's a good thing like Singapore is a massive center of population. It's not like they're going anywhere. So they need power.
00:14:28
Speaker
and why not? We've got a heap of space, we can build a big solar farm. it's I like the ambition. We don't usually go for the ambitious things in Australia, so it's good to see. Yeah, for sure. I had no idea that they actually dig a trough. is that Sorry to sound really potentially stupid, but it's a lot of coral around there, right? like We're doing serious damage to... like I know the Barrow Reef is a bit further east, but yeah yeah well like it's going it's going straight through Indonesia, right?
00:14:54
Speaker
ah Yeah, so it's their water and it looks like they're getting some supply out of the deal, which would make sense. Like if I was Indonesia, I'd be like, well, if you i can dig through my backyard, I'll take some free power. But yeah I read the approvals are still pending.
00:15:10
Speaker
it'd be like Aboriginal heritage as well. I imagine that whole area, they're like, they're going to be digging through fairly sensitive waterways. So I imagine there's going to be a lot more, you know, outside of just the approval they've got now because yeah, digging a big trench through the sea floor doesn't sound great.
00:15:26
Speaker
And why Singapore? Has Australia met its energy needs? Or is it because Singapore will pay them more per gigawatt? like i think ah I think the issues, a lot of the issues in Australia is the getting the grid. I don't think we have an issue with space is that we don't really have the infrastructure to transport that level of um energy and then distribute it around odds. So I think that they can work out because Singapore is such a small land area that like Singapore just don't have the land area to make the renewables, which is why they're buying it elsewhere is what I've read. so I guess there's a dollars and cents argument that we can make it here in Oz or produce it and send it there, which is crazy to think because you're right, we need it as well. yeah so
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You say, oh, do we have the ability to like yeah transmit the energy? But someone somewhere has decided that a 4,000 kilometer seabed cable is the most efficient way to get that power across. So yeah, I guess if Singapore paying for it, they obviously don't have the space for that. It's tiny. So um we have a pretty dark dark history with, um, how we buy and sell and develop energy in Australia. So I'm sure it's, um, it's not a great, it's not the best result for Australia. It's definitely, um, there's investors involved, so it's got to make sense dollar wise. So yes. yeah yeah
00:16:49
Speaker
It'll be good to see. I mean, I think there's it's good that we're doing ambitious things and they're getting pushed through government because, you know, otherwise there's no chance we're going to come close. to This will open the door to other sort of energy development projects, and which is where we need to head to the 2050 targets.
00:17:07
Speaker
yeah And um from a construction point of view, is all the money in like the manufacturing of the solar panels and the laying of the cable, do you think? Or is there thousands of people that's got to go work in the middle of nowhere? It's near Darwin, right? It's not the biggest or most populated area? Or is that me being naive? it's I think it's it's only maybe 300,000, 400,000 people there. But it's a town. There was a big offshore gas project there. And so it's a town that's used to having like fly-in, fly-out workers. so There'll be no issue manning up for it. I actually don't know, like there'll be a lot of workers to build, you know, install that many solar panels. It's a lot of cable to run. um But I think the cable laying, you know, once it's manufactured on the boat, it's just like boats pulling those cables along. It's just a matter of time. so
00:17:56
Speaker
It'll get a lot of people out there, but you know, when you break it into its small pieces, it's probably not that interesting a job, but as a whole, it's sort of, you know, a very interesting project, the purpose of it. But it's just repeated.
Ukraine's Renewable Energy Ambitions
00:18:08
Speaker
I don't think they're doing, I can't imagine they're doing anything engineering wise, which hasn't been done a hundred times before. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:18:15
Speaker
Good. Right. So on to the last topic. So obviously we're all aware of the conflict going on in Ukraine. um Most of the focus, news-wise, is on obviously the developments of the war with Russia.
00:18:30
Speaker
um But a huge amount of damage has been done to the infrastructure of the country, um particularly related to energy supply, which is I think is predominantly nuclear power plants. ah But there's news out at the moment, which is effectively saying to fill the gap in energy supply, ah Ukraine's looking to invest $20 billion dollars um into renewable energy, which is great to see.
00:18:54
Speaker
for any country going through what Ukraine is going through. To still have the mindset of renewable energy is a really nice thing to see, rather than just doing the quick and dirty of firing up coal power stations. yeah I'm sure it's not as easy as me just saying, yeah, just fire up the coal power stations, but like it's great to see that that's still front of mind.
00:19:10
Speaker
um So a couple of targets add for some context, they want to go, so they want to decarbonize the energy sector completely by 2050, and they want to completely phase out coal by 2035. So a couple of key steps to get to their carbon um objective.
00:19:30
Speaker
Um, and then the actual renewables themselves that they're going to be focusing on. Um, it looks like the biggest is wind, 140 gigawatts, pretty, pretty substantial. Um, and I think they're focused around, uh, it's the red sea or the dead sea. i go so a bla ah Black sea.
00:19:45
Speaker
yeah you those the black say ah So yeah, lots of wind, uh, there's 80 gigawatts of solar, so substantial. And then some of the smaller stuff, um, was around hydro electric and, uh, yeah.
00:19:58
Speaker
pumped storage and hydro hydrogen production. And I think they're planning on exporting hydrogen to to Europe or back to the EU. So um yeah, yeah pretty pretty impressive that they've got these these goals in mind while they're going through what they're going through. yeah But um yeah, what's your what's your thoughts?
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, when I read it, it just, you often forget or reminds you that they're still running a country. Like in the midst of everything, you just sort of see the news and those aspects and you think that's everything. But you still, like they've still got to run a country. Like they still got to, you know, work towards what's going to happen when they get to the other side. So yeah, it's really good to see.
00:20:37
Speaker
Did they have any stats in there around their current nuclear production? Because I understood that they're currently running the heat from nuclear power. Anything in there? I couldn't see anything in it. I'm googling as we speak. I'm sure they see because you know every time a nuclear facility gets attacked like you know that, just such a huge hampering input on why that it would be it would be really scary to without these alternatives in place you just got to wonder though how like how would you go about tengering this work like how would you go about actually making this happen in the middle of the war I just can't see it
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So to answer your first question at the moment, they're 55% nuclear, so they're quite substantial. And then I remember the news actually towards the beginning of the conflict is that huge nuclear power station that will take it over. And there was a yeah huge concern that obviously, I don't know, some sort of explosive would do some serious damage.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, but it's an interesting point in terms of obviously it makes a ton of sense, not just because of the carbon aspect, but to build energy which has not got the natural dangers of nuclear, but just finding supply chain, labor, plant, bringing goods in, like, it's hard to imagine the logistical challenges they're actually going to have with building this.
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah. And it'll be really difficult to, you'd imagine, pull in international contractors because they they're thinking about the safety and wellbeing of their employees. It's a high a high risk um country to go to at the moment. So, I mean, there would be but there would be plenty of big companies out there that would tackle it, but it's, you know, when you start to dive into it, there must be, you know, specialized contractors around the world that are geared up with like procedures that they have in place for providing security, for doing construction work in fairly you know, tough environments because you imagine that, you know, not everything shut down. Like, you know, in other areas of Ukraine, they're they're probably still working in a lot of places. Yeah. So I know construction is way behind on tech, but there is a lot of tech in place. You wonder if some of these international contractors could actually run jobs without being in the country. Yeah, right. You could. You could. Right. You could locally source labor. You could purchase materials and you could run a project remotely.
00:22:50
Speaker
So I wonder if that's something that's been considered. Yeah, definitely. Like you think about the, like there'd be just so much upfront procurement on a lot of these wind jobs. Same with the solar panels. Like you could secure that, go and clear the area and then you just come in and knock it up. You really wonder like, where are these discussions happening? And like, what is like realistic outcomes? Because they've said, you know, these are all the things that they've said and they're putting this information together, but it'll be interesting to see how they go about doing it. Because like, if you know, you put the challenge to me, I'm like, I wouldn't even know where would you start? Like.
00:23:22
Speaker
Um, how would you go about and get this work done? Just turn out with a wind turbine, you open up the old Ikea manual and you just, you just, plug it in. Uh, that is a good question. This is where Ollie can add in some elevator music while I'm Googling this. So, um, Ukraine, I wonder as well if there's some, not pressure, but like,
00:23:48
Speaker
They have their own obligation. They're looking to, um, they're looking to enter NATO and you know, this is part of like their process, like that they have to sort of make these barriers as part of European community. This is so far outside of any expertise that I've ever had. Uh, but you'd expect in a war zone, the military has some capability with engineers to be able to get power up, backing up and running because like countries will fall apart, right? So, um, there must be some expertise that would help there. Um, I can't seem to see a timeline just to confirm. Yeah. It's like what what we say in Australia with our renewables targets. It's a loose plan, but it's a good to see. I think, I mean, the whole, the military has the whole engineering arms. And so when you were talking about it, like the typical thing came to mind was, you know, like the British military had
00:24:42
Speaker
you know, their own engineering division. And so
Podcast Conclusion and Engagement
00:24:44
Speaker
in, you know, war zone, they'd go in and build bridges, get power supply, supply to all the areas. And so you imagine that there's that sort of contingent, but they're sort of, but you know, they're like, I imagine they're makeshift. They're not building permanent, you know, long standing structures or like renewable energy projects. So It's probably the equivalent of like temporary temporary works and construction projects like temporary lighting, temporary power. That's probably there their bread and butter rather than permanent structures. yeah Wicked, right. Sam, thank you very much for stepping in for Jason today. Really enjoyed that. And um thank you very much everyone for tuning into today's show. um If you did enjoy today's episode, please do think about liking the video or following us on your chosen podcast platform.
00:25:31
Speaker
and We really do appreciate your support so um and catch you all next week.