Transcriber: Amanda Zhu Reviewer: Peter Van de Ven
Hello everyone.
Thank you very much for tuning in to our TEDx Countdown event.
I’m Marc Schaus.
And I’m taking part in Countdown
because while you've probably heard a lot about climate change
by now
and all the trouble that we're in trying to deal with it at this point,
there's a solid chance that you haven't yet heard
about another side of the climate conversation
that is equally crucial in trying to get more people to talk about,
and that's the side of the conversation
in which we actually talk about what we're going to do here
to solve the climate crisis.
So, my daily work involves
combing through new academic publications coming in from all around the world
in about a dozen different scientific fields,
literally every day, every month of the year.
And what the bird's eye view of all that new incoming scientific data looks like,
especially pertinent to climate change,
is, yeah, there's a lot of bad news that we could be talking about here,
but there's also a lot of good news that we could be talking about
in terms of human progress towards various climate solutions;
moreover, that that progress has actually been picking up pace,
over the last several years especially.
Because as more nations
have come to recognize climate change as the existential threat that it is
and more scientists have dedicated themselves
to the various tasks we need to overcome to solve this problem,
the trickle pace of new scientific innovations
that we've been seeing for clean energy over the years
has picked up pace considerably now, leading into the present.
And what that looks like, that progress,
is in new scientific innovations, new technological upgrades,
that are allowing us to transition away from fossil fuel energy sources,
more towards clean energy sources to cut our carbon emissions.
And so while cleaning up our energy sector is not everything with this problem,
it is a huge part of it;
and the good news is
that new progress has been coming in for all of our clean energy options
all across the board,
anywhere from the staples of clean energy,
like solar and wind,
to 24/7 continuous forms of renewable energy
that fewer of us tend to talk about,
like geothermal energy and tidal energy,
and other clean energy sources, like nuclear energy and hydrogen fuel,
and advancements in new biofuels as well.
There have been so many dramatic new innovations
in clean energy technologies over the last several years
that I can realistically only give you a highlights montage
in the amount of time that I have here
to really try and do any of them justice.
So if you're ready for that ...
Consider solar energy specifically.
Solar cell technology
has been improved so dramatically and fallen so steeply in cost
that some analysts expect humanity
to be producing tens of thousands of new solar panels per hour
over at least the next half decade,
and that because scientists or engineers
have managed to improve everything
from solar cells being more powerful, more efficient,
more durable, longer lasting,
and, especially, cheaper,
developing communities all around the world
can much more readily access this technology,
even in place of a new fossil fuel energy plant driving the demand further.
So I mean, those kinds of things,
making technology better and cheaper,
is really what will spur more people into wanting to use it
rather than just immoralizing people into using it.
So I mean, even more recently,
scientists have managed to create transparent solar cells
that could be placed in glass greenhouse rooftops
and integrated into the windows of your home
or all along the window sides of skyscrapers in our cities,
or we even have some engineers developing solar canopies
to line select highway roads.
And other new innovations -
we even have new solar panels now that not only allow homeowners
to harvest renewable energy for their homes off the grid,
but they also gather the moisture in the surrounding air
to collect clean drinking water for your home at the same time.
And the company developing those panels
has now even partnered with remote communities
in water scarce parts of the world
to try and bring them more clean energy and more clean drinking water
at the same time.
And those are exactly, again,
the kinds of innovations that you would want to see
in terms of spurring more use of this technology.
Or how about new indoor solar cells
that harvest lower levels of indoor ambient light
to power microelectronics and, you know, room sensors and thermostats
and even security systems.
Or how about whole new locations
for placing our solar cells, like on floating, buoyant solar pads
that rest atop, you know, bodies of water -
so-called "floatovoltaics" -
that can rest on lakes and reservoirs or, you know, on top of running rivers,
that are also supplying hydroelectric energy at the same time,
or, of course, all along shorelines in parts of the world
where, you know, spare land is in short supply,
where you get the added benefit of cool operating temperatures -
you know, raising cell efficiency levels
and the massive added benefit
of not needing to go and demo huge swaths of land first
to make way for your massive new solar farm.
Or how about new so-called anti-solar panels
that take advantage of the fact
that the sun's rays hit the Earth’s surfaces
and a sizable portion of that energy just gets absorbed as thermal energy -
hot sunny day, hot surfaces -
and that slowly, over time, it dissipates back into space.
Anti-solar panels capture some of that heat energy
on its reverse passage back out into space.
Now, obviously,
it's not a monumental amount of energy at that point,
but a new study cites getting about 25 percent
of what you would get from your traditional solar cell,
which, I mean, is a marked improvement over the zero percent of energy
we're harvesting overnight from our rooftop panels right now.
Now, obviously,
we could do more with sunlight
than just rooftop panels and transparent energy harvesters.
We can also look to nature
and learn from plants and trees and other photosynthetic organisms,
like algae,
and learn from photosynthesis
in either trying to get those organisms
to produce just a little bit more of the energy that they produce
and maybe share some of it with us,
or mimic the process
with advanced new technology in artificial photosynthesis.
Now, in terms of the former,
scientists have obviously long recognized
that plants and trees and other photosynthetic organisms,
like algae,
they take in sunlight,
draw in CO2,
and use them to generate their own energy
while producing the biomass that we see on the outside.
If we harvest the energy that's stored in that biomass -
burning it would be one way -
and then we capture the carbon that's also stored in there
at the same time,
we can find ourselves in the admirable situation
of being able to generate energy while lowering CO2 levels.
That is the immense promise of new biofuels.
Now, obviously, that's been a tricky situation
to find ourselves on the carbon negative side of,
or else we'd be doing it already.
And biofuels themselves have gotten a lot of bad press recently
in some high-profile documentaries,
but those almost exclusively focus
on just the most poorly planned biofuel facilities that we've ever had
and in no way showcase the real potential,
the best-case scenario,
with biofuel facilities.
I mean, algae-based and cyanobacteria-based facilities especially,
they can exist anywhere in the world,
anywhere with access to sunlight,
and what's different now
is that scientists have scoured the world looking for unique genetic variants.
What they'll do is just a little bit better
in terms of being able to produce the materials that we later use for fuel.
And thanks to new advancements in gene editing technology,
scientists have begun to improve upon those components further synthetically,
though, obviously, not to a level of bringing us carbon-neutral biofuels
at the scales that we would like for our societies,
but that's exactly where an emerging new field
of synthetic biology can come in
to try and tweak core biological processes
to improve upon them even further.
Because, I mean, photosynthesis, as amazing as it is,
is still wildly inefficient in doing what it does,
and new advancements like these
could forever change the way we think
about how we get energy from sunlight on this planet.
Because if a novel cyanobacteria just existing in a vat somewhere,
in a desert facility or anywhere else with access to sunlight,
could just sit there in a tube tank
and take in sunlight, draw down local CO2,
and produce more energy than we spend trying to refine the process,
we will have solved a significant component of the climate crisis.
And early research results are already very promising,
and some labs around the world
are even experimenting with additional avenues
of trying to get algae strains to do additional things
besides just sitting there existing -
new things like remediating the waste water.
They may happen to be
in cleansing out toxic materials from the batch ponds;
they might be in something to offer fuel producers another revenue stream
to potentially make it more viable as something that we can do.
Now, obviously, aside from sunlight,
wind - wind energy as well - has evolved considerably over time
to the point where a modern wind turbine,
for example, could generate about 100 times more power
than models from the ‘80s did
while costing only a fraction of what it used to cost to do so,
to the point now where new research tells us
that if a country like America
just retrofitted all old turbines with technology that we have now,
they could already reach their 2030 energy goals.
And so when it comes to something like that,
it’s thanks only to small but incremental, persistent new progress
in new science and new technology
where an evolving science, like nanotechnology, for example,
could contribute with, you know, lighter but more durable materials -
a great combination for turbine blades.
It can then potentially spin
with less mechanical force needed to make the move.
And in terms of talking about some of the core criticisms
of, you know, renewable energies like solar and wind -
their intermittency in the sun not always being around
and the wind not always blowing -
advanced new science and technology can help there as well.
We have a whole new suite of technologies called P2X technologies,
and they all essentially revolve around the idea
that we can take excess renewable energy produced during times of plenty -
like when the sun is around -
and we can channel that extra energy and put it to work,
and we can power up other equipment to put it into a state of potential energy
that we can then cash in on when we need more energy later,
when the sun goes down.
So, for example, we have some engineers around the world
experimenting with, say, taking a reservoir of water,
pumping it into a confined space
so it can then be released
to spring out and wash over waiting turbines
to produce energy when we need it.
So much like we do right now with pumped hydro,
where we have, you know, a running river producing hydroelectric power,
we pump just a little bit of that uphill and kind of keep it there
and then release it to flow over turbines when we need extra energy,
but the new innovation here
is that you could do that essentially anywhere in the world
without needing a large river right next to your city to make it happen.
Or we have new engineers
exploring the concept of using excess renewable energy
to pump compressed air into confined spaces
and then venting it to create kind of a mechanical force
to, again, work on the same principle of moving turbine-like technology
and creating excess electricity when we need it.
Or we have still other engineers around the world
taking excess renewable energy
and using it to hoist heavy weights up to high heights in a controlled chamber
where a system managed by AI
can detect even micro dips in the grid's energy supply
and engage to slowly lower those weights to kind of pull on a pulley mechanism
to, again, create a mechanical force
that will spin turbine-like technology and create electricity when we need it.
But, I mean, all of that is entirely aside
from continuous 24/7 forms of renewable energy
that fewer of us tend to talk about,
like geothermal energy,
where new innovations are using smaller, more scalable, modular designs
to take a little tank of water
and then tap the immense heat that comes from deep inside the Earth
and use it to heat up that water, turn it into a vapor,
where it then rises
and exerts a mechanical force on another mechanism inside the chamber
to create electricity
and then, when the vapors reach the other side of that barrier,
cool down, turn back into liquid form
and then rejoin the initial supply,
and then we can create
an essentially never-ending form of continuous renewable energy
that exists for as long as we have the geothermal heat there.
Tidal energy, likewise,
takes advantage of Earth's essentially never-ending tidal forces
to create a mechanical force on equipment
that we can try and use to generate electricity
and augment our grid supply,
especially during times after hours where the tides don't stop,
when we might need just a little bit of extra power.
And all of that
is aside from clean but not necessarily renewable technologies
like nuclear energy,
where new innovations in nuclear energy will use, say, molten salt technology
to lower the risk of an explosive release of gases,
which, FYI, was already very low to begin with, that risk.
Or we have other new innovations
with labs swapping out potentially dangerous fuel sources
like uranium,
with far less dangerous fuel sources
like thorium;
or we have other new innovations
taking the heat that's produced during the fuel production process,
piping it out for district level heating
as free heat to all local communities
that exist around one of those facilities.
So all those kinds of innovations are taking place.
And all of these new scientific and technological innovations,
they all paint a slightly less grim picture,
offer us a more nuanced narrative than the all bad news model would suggest,
and they paint us a picture of a future
in which we are taking cool new solar cell technology,
placing it in cool new places,
having it do cool new things
we never thought that those panels could do before;
or a future in which, I don't know,
where we're lining the undersides of our sidewalks
with compression-based, energy-harvesting technology
from the power of human footfall
from pedestrian traffic all around our cities;
or a future in which we're taking wireless charging pads
like we use for our phones now, but bigger, more powerful ones,
and putting them in parking lots
so an electric vehicle can just pull in overtop,
and placing wireless charge pads,
at, you know, highway rest stops and loading zones and things like that;
a future in which we're pulling the hydrogen
out of our vast amounts of sea water
to power zero-emissions, trans-continental passenger flights
with H2 fuel;
a future in which we want to try and reverse climate change eventually
by pulling down some of the CO2 in our atmosphere
and trying to store it in our soils -
and we have genius-level bioengineers empowering crops to do that naturally,
store more carbon in the soil than they otherwise naturally would have,
crops that we're going to plant year after year anyway;
or a future in which we want to plant a lot more trees on our planet,
but now we can much more readily with advanced technology,
like aerial drones that can self-pilot
thanks to new innovations in imaging software
coupled with satellite data
that allow them to fire germinated seed pods into the ground
10 times faster than we human planters can manage by hand
and far more cheaply,
to the point where we have one company on paper now
telling us that they're going to plant billions of trees over the years to come
using precisely this kind of technology;
in short, a future in which we rise to our moment,
solve the climate crisis using new science and new technology
coupled with all of the wonderful naturalistic options we already had
and where we don't let future generations down.
Okay, thank you.