Here is the full transcript of physicist Julio Friedmann’s talk titled “How to Harness Abundant, Clean Energy for 10 Billion People” at TED 2023 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Most Common Question
The question I am most commonly asked about climate change is, “Should I be optimistic or pessimistic?” I thought about this question a lot. My career has been at the intersection of climate science, technology, policy and industry, mostly working for you, at one point working for a US president and now as Chief Scientist and Chief Carbon Wrangler at Carbon Direct. At that intersection, I think about that question in terms of energy flows and carbon abatement options.
So I ponder a variant of that question, “How much energy should 10 billion people use?” I was first prompted to think about this question by the late, great Richard Smalley. Nanotechnologist, Nobel Prize-winning chemist, co-discovered buckyballs. Total mensch.
Richard Smalley’s Talk
He gave an important and influential talk almost exactly 20 years ago, in which he laid out the top ten challenges to humanity: energy, water, food, poverty, the environment, health. And then he said something kind of obvious. All of these are energy challenges.
Water is the most straightforward. Three quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. It’s too salty to drink or use. The primary cost of desalination is energy.
Food. I like food. Eighty percent of the food consumed around the world moves through modern agriculture. That means synthetic fertilizers, combines that harvest, refrigeration, shipping — they’re all energy.
Climate. That’s my day job. How do we go from 54 billion tons of greenhouse gases every year to less than zero very quickly? And so on.
The Need for Abundant Clean Energy
Abundant clean energy can make progress against this whole list.
So Richard estimated what he thought it would take for 10 billion humans to live more or less like the United States. And his answer was: 60 terawatts. Keep that number in your mind: 60. For reference, today the world uses about 26 terawatts of energy. About eight terawatts of that are electricity.
Now the urgency of climate means that we have to — For all of the energy we use today and all future energy really has to be abundant, sustainable and cheap. Abundant, available where you want it, when you want it. Everybody should have energy, including the three billion people who use less electricity than my refrigerator uses.
However, it should also be sustainable. We can’t emit a lot of greenhouse gases. We can’t trash nature. Ideally, it’s cheap, a lot cheaper than today. Maybe half or a third of what the US pays. That would be 20 dollars a megawatt-hour or a dollar a gigajoule. And remember it’s energy, not electricity. We also need heat for heavy industry. We need clean fuels, things like clean hydrogen or sustainable aviation fuels.
The Challenge of Providing Abundant, Sustainable, Cheap Energy
Well, that seems hard. And it is. But if you know that’s what you need or what you want — abundant, sustainable, cheap energy — we have a new question to ponder. How do we get 60 terawatts of that to 10 billion people?
Well, the good news is every day the Earth receives 163,000 terawatts of energy from the sun. About half of that bounces back to space, but about 80,000 terawatts arrive at the Earth in a form we can use. For example, the air, land and oceans convert some of that into about 870 terawatts of wind.
These are bigger numbers than 60, and we’ve got more than solar and wind. We have geothermal, we have hydro, we have nuclear. There’s other kinds of clean energies, and some of the best resources are, in fact, in the global South. These places are not simply future climate victims. These places are latent energy superpowers. And we’ve made some good starts.
Chile’s Clean Energy Initiatives
Let’s look at Chile, blessed with abundant hydro, solar and wind. They can make green electrons on demand. A lot of those green electrons are going to get turned into hydrogen and ammonia, the key ingredient for fertilizer, itself a good fuel and a great way to move clean energy around the world.
Now Chile has prioritized using these green electrons and hydrogen to decarbonize its own grid and for domestic energy use, for things like mining. They are also building infrastructure. They’re building out the grid and ports for trade and commerce. This prioritization, this emphasis on infrastructure is the difference between a neocolonial economy and a new economy built on abundance.
Let’s go to Kenya, home of the second most productive wind farm on Earth in Lake Turkana, home of the second largest geothermal program on Earth and future home of the Great Carbon Valley, where this abundant, sustainable, cheap energy will create whole new industries and pull CO2 out of the sky. Now those are good starts.
The Need for More Investment and Development
But we have far, far to go. Hashtag “WeNeedMore.” Specifically, we need new investment vehicles, and we need development mechanisms that recognize the opportunity of abundance as opposed to being built on the scarcities of the past.
My favorite example, Namibia. A young, rapidly growing nation full of promise. One of the very driest places on Earth. Namibia has excellent solar and wind resources, in particular in the southwest. Unsurprisingly, a giant 10-billion-dollar project is bouldering along that will land 3,000 megawatts of solar on the ground, 3,000 megawatts of wind that will feed 3,000 megawatts of electrolyzers that will make clean hydrogen and ammonia for export to Europe, and European countries and European industries are providing the long-term offtakes.
In addition, the port of Lüderitz is getting an upgrade and there’s going to be jobs and wealth creation in Namibia. I love this project. What’s not to like? Namibia gets wealth and jobs. Europe gets clean, secure energy supplies. Still something’s off. That’s it.
This project is ten times bigger than Namibia’s whole grid. And this project will not substantially build out the infrastructure or energy access. No refrigerators, no new course as a nation.
Doing Even Better
Now again, this is a great project. But how can we do even better? Not just here, but everywhere. How do we harness abundant, sustainable, cheap energy for all? Well, there’s three ingredients to that bouillabaisse. And if you plan to harvest abundance, you act differently in each.
First out of the gate — infrastructure. We need transmission lines, roads, ports, railroads, fueling stations. We’re not moving bits. We’re moving molecules and electrons. We need this infrastructure to get electricity to the people of Namibia and to get clean fuels out of ports like Mombasa or Cartagena. These projects take time, money and people. We need to develop the human capital as part of these investment projects for decades. Because remember, children, for the rest of our lives, every week is infrastructure week.
Second out of the gate — innovation. We need much more energy in many places, much cheaper. That’s an innovation agenda. Now you all are familiar with the profound and rapid decreases in cost associated with solar photovoltaics. That was a combination of sustained investment in innovation, plus market-aligning policies, plus mass-manufacturing. For solar, that was the United States, Germany, China and others acting together.
Well, if that’s the recipe, we can do that again. We’re already doing it with electric vehicles and clean hydrogen production. We can certainly do it by turning electricity into fuels and pulling CO2 out of the sky.
In fact, the CO2 and clean hydrogen will be the next generation of sustainable maritime and aviation fuels. We can go way farther with solar, with perovskites, with multi-exciton technologies like supermolecules we can double or even triple the output. We just had fusion!
In California! Now to harness that abundance, an objective should be cost reduction, maybe 50 or even 80 percent cost reduction. And those objectives should be part of the goals of the institutions that run innovation, for example, the US Department of Energy’s Earthshot programs.
Investment Mechanisms
Third, investment. Specifically, we need to move away from single-project finance to more systemic investment mechanisms, one that reimagine risk across multiple projects, multiple investment cycles and multiple years, some of the goals of the audacious and overdue Bridgetown Initiative. In addition, the full value chain should be part of the investment thesis.
Revenues come from many sources, including the infrastructure itself, the equipment sales, the new products and the improvements for health and welfare. Global positive investment, global positive growth that yields solid returns.
Now in the case of Chile, Japan is a key partner and Japanese firms will make money on turbines, electrolyzers, ships, infrastructure, debt. Now one green hydrogen project is not enough money to do that. You need, you know — to rebuild shipyards and supply chains, you need more than one project. So the Japanese government has in fact backed dozens of projects.
And these are anchored by bilateral agreements between Chile and Japan that include long-term offtakes. Multiple projects and long-term offtakes change the value propositions for both countries. You’re not feeding a set of shareholders, you’re feeding two nations. And Chile has maintained its commitment to this now through three successive governments. So let’s go back to Namibia. Here’s the grid today.
Reimagining Namibia’s Energy Projects
Instead of conventional project finance for one project, what would a 100-billion-dollar set of projects look like? Well, for starters, you’d sure have to build out the grid a lot. You’d have to add solar and wind, maybe supersize some projects, maybe add some hydropower.
Instead of temporary construction jobs in Lüderitz, you’d have a permanent construction industry there, and you’d be building electrolyzers all over Namibia. That would anchor supply chains across Sub-Saharan Africa, and you’d train a generation of workers. That would be big enough for desalination, bringing fresh water to the desert and to the communities and to the new industries.
Big enough for hospitals, universities, regional logistics hubs. Big enough to encourage good governance and, best of all, low-cost clean fertilizer that could be used to make food in Namibia sold there and to its neighbors. In effect, Namibia could be a global anchor for food and fuel, and the investors will get a solid return.
The Future to Be Optimistic About
Now that’s a future to be optimistic about. Because let’s be honest, whether I’m optimistic or not, the work looks the same. So, let’s reimagine that first question. It doesn’t matter whether I’m optimistic or you’re optimistic. It matters if we’re optimistic.
Collective action, building together is what makes the difficult possible and nourishes the soul through a mission and purpose. And we have a lot to be optimistic about. Infrastructure, innovation and investment are commitments to the future anchored in optimism. We also have the tools and tech we need.
We know what to do and we can act not out of anger or fear, but out of generosity and common purpose, bringing aspiration and humility together. We’re going to build a thriving, vibrant, exciting world full of generosity and full of potential that’s going to be built on the back of infrastructure innovation and investment that will harness the abundant, sustainable, cheap energy that is our planet’s endowment. Thank you.