SPEAKER: You know that feeling when it's so hot,
your mouth is dry, your lips are dry.
Even your eyes are dry.
You feel cooked.
This is kind of how I felt about 20 years
ago in my little French village.
I remember I was out in the field, earthing the potatoes,
and the wind was really hot on my face
and some of the dust was sticking to my face.
I just felt really uncomfortable.
And so I walked to the end of the row and drank from my water
bowl and I just spit it up, the water was hot like tea.
Instead of going back to work,
I walked to the reservoir and I just jumped into the water.
The feeling of the cool water was refreshing
and washed away some of the dust on their face.
But as I sank my body into the cold water I shivered as I realized
that this was not just the hottest year on record,
were one of the coolest year to come.
My family is from north eastern France.
I grew up in the country on top of hill with
my parents growing trees and shrubs.
This was my first recollection I've never seen
before heatwave linked to climate change.
Now here in Australia, we have experienced the bushfire,
drought, the floods, you name it,
we all have direct experience of extreme
weather events linked to climate change.
Now how these events make you feel when you look back at them,
I felt powerless and small.
My family they've had to adapt.
When you work with living beings,
you don't need to look at weather data to realize that
the apple tree is blooming earlier to grafting used
to do in summer doesn't quite work anymore.
And the plants you just used to plant
now need to be watered extensively.
And so you adapt.
You do grafting in winter, you rethink which species
are adapted to the evolving climates.
But I have to say adaptation is pretty depressing.
And most of us don't have the option to adapt.
And in the end, we just delaying the inevitable.
And so I felt ignored by the politics and decision maker.
I felt there was no lever for me to pull to drive change.
Turns out, I was quite wrong about that.
All the narratives I was exposed to were telling me we can't do this.
So, prediction from the early 2000s estimated by today,
we could only displace one coal power plant
per year globally with solar energy.
Now a few years later, when I attended a big Solar Energy Conference,
I sat down this big amphitheater,
to listen to this leading international agency telling me that
solar will keep being insignificant in the foreseeable future,
it will only replace about three coal power plants per year globally.
These predictions were wildly wrong.
How much coal power plants did you replace
per year last year, with solar energy?
Fifteen times that number or more than 40 coal power plants.
These prediction were linear or flat extrapolation while
the growth of solar energy is inherently exponential.
So, let's take a step back here.
What do we mean by exponential growth?
So, first linear thinking, linear growth.
Imagine this is a piece of paper here, 0.1 millimeter thick.
If I add another piece of paper, I have 0.2 millimeter.
If I add two piece of paper I have 0.3 millimeter.
If I add 10 piece of paper, one millimeter,
if I add 40 I have four millimeters, this is linear growth.
Now let's instead of stacking the paper, let's follow the people.
Now if I fold the paper once a piece of
paper once I get 0.2 millimeter twice,
against 0.4, three times, I get 0.8, four time, I get 1.6 millimeter.
Now, if I do that 10 times, I get 100 millimeter, if I fold it 42 times,
I get 400,000 kilometer, I have reached the moon.
This is the power of exponential growth.
So, why were predictions so wrong?
Well, one reason is that predictions are
affected by our previous experience,
and humanity as experienced many energy transition before.
In the 1900s, we had to transition to coal,
with a doubling of capacity every about 20 years.
In the 50s 60s 70s, we had to transition to oil and gas.
Again, we had a doubling of capacity every 10 to 15 years.
But what happened with solar and wind is that we
have a doubling of capacity every two years.
Let me repeat every two years,
we are doubling the amount of solar and wind installed globally.
This is back to a piece of paper, we can reach the moon.
And so why is this growth so fast?
Well, the more we use coal, the more we have to de-coal.
And every time we did more coal, it becomes harder to de-coal.
And so the price go up with increased capacity.
But for solar and wind energy, it's the opposite.
The more solar and wind energy we install, the cheaper they get,
because solar and wind are on learning curve.
That means that the more solar and wind capacity we have,
the cheaper solar and wind energy is.
Not only that, but the learning rate of solar and wind energy is 28%.
Which is unheard of before.
Now, why is this learning rate so high?
The first reason is the economies of scale.
As you have larger scale, you're building a whole ecosystem
of manufacturers of suppliers of installers.
And that drives the cost down.
Also, you're learning by doing by but the other
element here is research and development.
Research and development drives the learning curve as well.
Now, I've been privileged here to be part of teams in Australia that
have significantly contributed to modern photovoltaic technology.
These are the types of solar panels that sits on your roof,
crystalline silicon solar cell technology.
And they sit on your roof for 25 years.
And they battered by wind, by sun, by rain, by snow,
and they keep on churning out zero carbon electricity.
Today, solar and wind are the cheapest energy in history.
And so you may ask, well, if solar and wind
are the cheapest energy in history,
why are we still doing research and development?
Well, we need not only to decarbonize the electricity sector,
but we need to decarbonize transport,
and we need to decarbonize industry.
And for this to happen, we did the price of solar
electricity to go we'd never has before.
My team and UW (UNKNOWN) focus on making solar
panel cheaper and more immune to degradation.
We do this by looking at defects in solar panels.
And these defects are the size of a single at all.
It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Actually, because solar panels are and silicone
is the purest material, we can see digitize.
It's like looking for a needle in a million haystack.
And when you find such defect, we remove them and we try to deactivate
them so that panels are more immune to degradation.
And that enables for higher efficiency solar technology.
And every time the solar cell efficiency goes up,
electrifying, everything becomes easier.
Suddenly, heating of buildings with renewable
energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuel.
And as we keep on increasing the efficiency,
we love electric shipping, electric aviation,
electric steel, electric cement, we can electrify everything.
I want to come back to the beginning of my talk here.
My anecdotal recollection of the heatwave
that affected my native country in 2003.
Not 14,000 people died from heat waves that year.
These were our most vulnerable people, and we feel them.
Now, I felt pretty hopeless.
I felt there was no technology for us to
transition to the zero carbon future.
So, what are the technological breakthrough?
We need to tackle climate change today.
There aren't any?
None, we don't need to wait for breakthrough miracle
technologies to continue decarbonizing our economy.
All the technologies we need are mature.
And the less mature, keep on getting cheaper because we are
doing research on this very sophisticated technology.
Right now, as I speak, we are the cheapest form of energy in history.
OK, so but you ask, can we really do this?
Where we don't have to look very far to have the answer.
Look at South Australia, mostly hitting 100% renewable electricity.
Look at Tasmania running on 100% renewable energy.
Yes, we can.
In Australia, we already doing it in some states.
We are already doing it.
It's working.
The future is here.
We just need to step on the accelerator in other states.
As William Gibson said, "The future is already here."
It's just not evenly distributed.
We have the tools.
We have agency.
Let's make this future happen for everyone.