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I'm going to talk today about energy and climate.

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And that might seem a bit surprising because my full-time work at the foundation is mostly

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about vaccines and seeds, about the things that we need to invent and deliver to help the

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poorest two billion live better lives.

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But energy and climate are extremely important to these people.

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In fact, more important than to anyone else on the planet.

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The climate getting worse means that many years their crops won't grow.

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There'll be too much rain, not enough rain.

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Things will change in ways that their fragile environment simply can't support.

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And that leads to a surveyation that leads to uncertainty, it leads to unrest.

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So the climate changes will be terrible for them.

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Also, the price of energy is very important to them.

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In fact, if you could pick just one thing to lower the price of to reduce poverty by far

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you would pick energy.

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Now the price of energy has come down over time.

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Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.

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The coal revolution, the fuel, the industrial revolution.

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And even in the 1900s we've seen a very rapid decline in the price of electricity.

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That's why we have refrigerators, air conditioning.

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We can make modern materials and do so many things.

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So we're in a wonderful situation with electricity in the rich world.

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But as we make a cheaper and let's say let's go for making it twice as cheap.

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We need to mean a new constraint.

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And that constraint has to do with CO2.

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CO2 is warm in the planet.

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And the equation on CO2 is actually a very straightforward one.

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If you sum up the CO2 that gets emitted, that leads to a temperature increase.

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And that temperature increase leads to some very negative effects.

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The effects on the weather perhaps worse the indirect effects in that the natural ecosystems

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can't adjust to these rapid changes.

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And so you get ecosystem collapses.

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Now the exact amount of how you map from a certain increase in CO2 to what temperature

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will be and where the positive feedbacks are.

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There's some uncertainty there, but not very much.

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And there's certainly uncertainty about how bad those effects will be.

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But they will be extremely bad.

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I asked the top scientists in the several times.

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Do we really have to get down to near zero?

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Can't we just cut it in half or a quarter?

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And the answer is that until we get near to zero,

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the temperature will continue to rise.

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And so that's a big challenge.

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It's very different than saying we're a 12 foot high truck trying to get under a 10 foot bridge.

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And we can just sort of squeeze under this is something that has to get to zero.

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Now we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year over 26 billion tons.

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For each American, it's about 20 tons.

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For people in poor countries, it's less than one ton.

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It's an average about five tons for everyone on the planet.

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And somehow we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.

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It's been constantly going up.

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It's only very a economic changes that have even flattened it at all.

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So we have to go from rapidly rising to falling and falling all the way to zero.

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This equation has four factors, a little bit of multiplication.

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So you've got a thing on the left CO2 that you want to get to zero.

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And that's going to be based on the number of people.

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The services each person choosing on average, the energy on average for each service,

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and the CO2 being put out per unit of energy.

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So let's look at each one of these and see how we can get this down to zero.

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Probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero.

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That's back from high school algebra.

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But let's take a look.

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First we've got population.

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Now the world today has 6.8 billion people.

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That's headed up to about 9 billion.

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Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services,

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we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15%.

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But there we see an increase of about 1.3.

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The second factor is the services we use.

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This encompasses everything.

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The food we clothing, TV, heating.

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These are very good things.

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Getting rid of poverty means providing these services to almost everyone on the planet.

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And it's a great thing for this number to go up.

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In the rich world, perhaps the top 1 billion, we probably could cut back and use less.

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But every year this number on average is going to go up.

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And so overall that will more than double.

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The services delivered per person.

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Here we have a very basic service.

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Do you have lighting in your house to be able to read your homework?

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And in fact these kids don't.

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So they're going out and reading their schoolwork under the street labs.

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Now efficiency, e, the energy-freeed service,

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here finally we have some good news.

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We have something that's not going up.

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Through various inventions and new ways of doing lighting,

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through different types of cars, different ways of building buildings.

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There are a lot of services where you can bring the energy for that service down quite substantially.

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Some individual services even bring it down by 90%.

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There are other services like how we make for a laser,

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how we do our transport, where the rooms for improvement are far, far less.

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And so overall here, if we're optimistic,

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we may get a reduction of a factor of three to even perhaps a factor of six.

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But for these first three factors now,

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we've gone from 26 billion to it best, maybe 13 billion tons.

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And that just won't cut it.

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So let's look at this fourth factor.

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This is going to be a key one.

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And this is the amount of CO2 put out for each unit of energy.

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And so the question is, can you actually get that to zero?

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If you burn coal, no.

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If you burn natural gas, now, almost every way,

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we make electricity today except for the emerging renewables and nuclear puts out CO2.

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And so we're going to have to do it a global scale is create a new system.

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And so we need energy miracles.

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Now when I use the term miracle, I don't mean something that's impossible.

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You know, the micro-processor is a miracle, the personal computers are miracle,

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the internet, net services are a miracle.

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So the people here have participated in the creation of many miracles.

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Usually we don't have a deadline where you have to get the miracle by a certain date.

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Usually you just kind of stand by and some come along, some don't.

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This is a case where we actually have to drive it full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight time line.

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Now I thought, how could I really capture this?

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Is there some kind of natural illustration, some demonstration

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that would grab people's imagination here?

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I thought back to a year ago when I brought mosquitoes and somehow people enjoyed that.

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It really got them involved in the idea of, you know, there are people who live in the

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mosquitoes. So with energy, I like to come up with, is this.

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I decided that releasing fireflies would be my contribution to the environment here this year.

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So here we have some natural flyflies. I'm told they don't bite in fact they might even

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not even leave that jar.

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Now there's all sorts of gimmicky solutions like that one, but they don't really add up to much.

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We need solutions either one or several that have unbelievable scale and unbelievable reliability.

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And although there's many directions or people seeking, I really only see five that can achieve the

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big numbers. I've left out tied, geothermal, fusion, flyapules. Those may make some contribution and if they

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can do better than I expect, so much the better. But my key point here is that we're going to have to work

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on each of these five and we can't give up any of them because they look daunting because they all

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have significant challenges. I'll let's look first at the burning fossil fuels either burning coal

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or burning natural gas. What you need to do there seems like it might be simple, but it's not.

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And that's to take all the CO2 after you burn it going out the flu, pressurize it, create a liquid,

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put it somewhere, and hope it stays there. Now we have some pilot things that do this at the

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60 to 80 percent level. But getting up to that full percentage, that will be very tricky. And a green

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arm where these CO2 quantity should be put will be hard. But the toughest one here is this long-term

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issue. Who's going to be sure? Who's going to guarantee something that is literally billions of times larger

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than any type of waste you think I've been in terms of nuclear other things. This is a lot of oil.

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So that's a top one. Next it'd be nuclear. It also has three big problems.

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Costs, particularly in highly regulated countries is high. The issue of the safety,

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really feeling good about nothing can go wrong that even though you have these human operators,

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that the fuel doesn't get used for weapons. And then what do you do with the waste?

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Although it's not very large, there are a lot of concerns about that. People need to feel good about it.

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So three very tough problems that might be solvable and so should be worked on.

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The last three of the five I've grouped together. These are what people often refer to as the

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renewable sources. And they actually, although it's great, they don't quite fuel, they have some

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disadvantages. One is that the density of energy gather in these technologies is dramatically

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less than a power plant. This is energy farming. So you're talking about many square miles,

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thousands of times more area than you think of as a normal energy plant.

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Also, these are intermittent sources. The sun doesn't shine all day, it doesn't shine every day,

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and likewise the wind doesn't blow all the time. And so if you depend on these sources,

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you have to have some way of getting energy during those time periods that it's not available.

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So we've got big costs, challenges here. We have transmission challenges. For example,

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say this energy sources outside your country, you not only need the technology, but you have to

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deal with the risk of the energy coming from elsewhere. And finally, this storage problem.

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And to dimensionize this, I went through and looked at all the types of batteries that get made for cars,

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for computers, for phones, for flashlights, for everything. And compared that to the amount of

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electrical energy the world uses. And what I found is that all the batteries we make now

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could store less than 10 minutes of all the energy. And so in fact, we need a big breakthrough here,

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something that's going to be a factor of 100 better than the approaches we have now.

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It's not impossible, but it's not a very easy thing. Now, this shows up when you try to get the

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intermittent source to be above say 20 to 30 percent of what you're using. If you're counting on it

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for 100 percent, you need an incredible miracle battery. Now, how are we going to go forward on this?

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What's the right approach? Is it a Manhattan project? What's the thing that can get us there?

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What we need lots of companies working on this, hundreds in each of these five paths. We need

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at least 100 people. And a lot of them, you'll look at and say, they're crazy. That's good. And I think

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here in the Ted group, we have many people who are already pursuing this. Bill Gross has several

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companies, including one called E-Solar, that has some great solar thermal technology. The

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node coast is investing in dozens of companies that are doing great things and have interesting

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possibilities. And I'm trying to help back that. I need the Merble, then I actually are

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backing a company that perhaps surprisingly is actually taking the nuclear approach. There are some

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innovations in nuclear, modular, liquid, and innovation really stopped in this industry quite some time

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ago. So the idea that there's some good ideas laying around is not all that surprising. The idea

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of a terror power is that instead of burning the part of uranium, the 1% which is the U-235,

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we decided, well let's burn the 99%, the U-238. It is kind of a crazy idea. And in fact, people had

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talked about it for a long time, but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not.

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And so it's through the advent of modern supercomputers that now you can simulate and see that,

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yes, with the right materials approach, this looks like it would work. And because you're burning

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that 99%, you have greatly improved cost profile, you actually burn up the waste, and you can actually

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use this fuel all the leftover waste from today's reactors. And so instead of worrying about them,

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you just take that, it's a great thing. It breeds this uranium as it goes along. So it's kind of

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like the candle. You can see it's a log there often referred to as a traveling wave reactor.

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In terms of fuel, this really solves the problem. I've got a picture here of a place in Kentucky.

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This is the leftover, the 99% where they've taken out the part they burn out, so it's called

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depleted uranium. That would power the U-S for hundreds of years. And simply by filtering

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seawater in an inexpensive process, you'd have enough fuel for the entire lifetime of the rest of

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the planet. So, you know, it's got lots, lots of challenges ahead, but it is an example of the

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many hundreds and hundreds of ideas that we need to move forward. So let's think how should we

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measure ourselves? What should our report card look like? Well, let's go out to where we really need to

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get and then look at the intermediate. For 2050, you've heard many people talk about this 80% reduction

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that really is very important that we get there. And that 20% will be used up by things going on

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in poor countries, still some agriculture. Hopefully we will have cleaned up forestry cement.

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So to get to that 80% the developed countries, including countries like China, will have had to

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switch their electricity generation all together. So the other greatest, are we deploying this

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zero-emission technology? We've deployed it in all the developed countries and we're in the

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process of getting it out elsewhere. That's super important. That's a key element of making that

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report card. So backing up from there, let's should the 2020 report card look like. Well, it

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again, it should have the two elements. We should go through these efficiency measures to start

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getting reductions. The less we emit, the less that sum will be of CO2 and therefore the less the

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temperature. But in some ways, the grade we get there doing things that don't get us all the way to

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the big reductions is only equally or maybe even slightly less important than the other, which is

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the piece of innovation on these breakthroughs. These breakthroughs, we need to move those at full speed.

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And we can measure that in terms of companies, pilot projects, regulatory things that have been changed.

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There's a lot of great books that have been written about this, the Al Gore book, our choice,

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and the David McCy book, the Stainable Energy without the Hot Air. They really go through it and I think

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can create a framework that this can be discussed broadly because we need broad backing for this.

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There's a lot that has to come together. So this is a wish. It's a very concrete wish that we invent

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this technology. If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years, I can pick whose president,

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I can pick a vaccine, which is something I love, or I could pick that this thing that's half the

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cost with no CO2 gets invented. This is the wish I would pick. This is the one with the greatest impact.

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If we don't get this wish, the division between the people who think short-term and long-term

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will be terrible between US and China, between poor countries and rich, and most of all, the

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lives of those two billion will be far worse. So what do we have to do? What am I appealing to you

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to step forward and drive? We need to go from more research funding. You know, when countries get

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together at places like Copenhagen, and they just discussed the CO2, they should discuss this

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innovation agenda, and you'd be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending on these innovative

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approaches. We need to need the market incentives. CO2 tax, cap and trade, something that gets

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that price signal out there. We need to get the message out. We need to have this dialogue

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to be a more rational, more understandable dialogue, including the steps that the government takes.

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This is an important wish, but it is one I think we can achieve. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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I understand more about Terapara. Can you give a sense of what sort of scale of investment this

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is? Well, to actually do this software by the supercomputer or higher all the great scientists,

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which we've done, that's only tens of millions. Even once we test our materials out

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in a Russian reactor to make sure that our materials work properly, then you'll only be up

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in hundreds of millions. The tough thing is building the pilot reactor. Finding the several billion,

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finding the regulator, the location that will actually build the first one of these. Once you get

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the first one built, if it works as advertised, then it's just clear as day because the economics,

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energy density, are so different than nuclear as we know it. And so to understand it,

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right, this involves building deep into the ground, almost like a vertical kind of column of nuclear

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fuel of this sort of spent uranium. And then the process starts at the top and kind of works down.

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That's right. Today, you're always refueling the reactor. So you have lots of people and lots of

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controls that can go wrong. That thing where you're opening it up and moving things in and out,

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that's not good. So if you have very cheap fuel, then you can put 60 years in, just think of it as a

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log, put it down and not have those same complexities. And it just sits there and burns for the 60 years

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and then it's done. It's a nuclear pop-on that is its own waste disposal solution.

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Yeah, well, what happens with the waste? You can let it sit there. There's a lot less waste under the

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approach. Then you can actually take that and put it into another one and burn that. And we start out

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actually by taking the waste that exists today that's sitting in these cooling pools or dry casking

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by reactors. That's our fuel to begin with. So the thing that's been a problem from those reactors

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is actually what gets that in the arms. And you're reducing the volume of the waste quite dramatically

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as you're going through this process. I mean, you're talking to different people around the world

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about the possibilities here. Where is their most interest in actually doing something with this?

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Well, we haven't picked a particular place, but there's all these interesting disclosure rules

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about anything that's called nuclear. So we've got a lot of interest that people from the company

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have been in Russia, India, China. I've been back seeing the Secretary of Energy here talking about

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how this fits into the energy agenda. So I'm optimistic. The French and Japanese have done

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some work. This is a variant on something that has been done. It's an important advance, but it's

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like a fast reactor and a lot of countries have built them. So anybody who's not a fast reactor

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is a candidate to be where the first one gets built. So in your mind, time scale and likelihood,

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I'll actually take a certain light this life. Well, we need for one of these high-scale electric

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electrical generation things that's very cheap. We have 20 years to invent and then 20 years to

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deploy. That's sort of the deadline that the environmental models have shown us that we have to meet.

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And, you know, tarry power, if things go well, which is wishing for a lot, could easily meet that.

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And there are, fortunately now, dozens of companies we need to be hundreds who likewise,

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if their science goes well, if the funding for their pilot plans goes well, that they can compete

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for this. And it's best if multiple succeed because then you can use a mix of these things.

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We certainly need one to succeed. In terms of big scale possible game changes, this is the

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biggest that you'll aware about that. An energy breakthrough is the most important thing.

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It would have been even without the environmental constraint, but the environmental constraint just

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makes that so much greater. In the nuclear space, there are other innovators. We don't know

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their work as well as we know this one. But the modular people, that's a different approach.

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There's a liquid type reactor, which seems a little hard, but maybe they say about us.

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And so there are different ones. But the beauty of this is a molecule of uranium has a million

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times as much energy as a molecule of, say, coal. And so if you can deal with the negatives,

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which are essentially the radiation, the footprint and cost, the potential in terms of effect on land

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and various things, is in almost any class of its own. If this doesn't work,

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then what? Do we have to start taking emergency measures to try and keep the temperature of the earth

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stable? Yeah, if you get into that situation, it's like if you're, you've been overeating

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and you're about to have a heart attack, then then then where do you go? You may need heart

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surgery or something. There is a line of research on what's called geoengineering, which are various

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techniques that would delay the heating to bias 20 or 30 years to get our act together. Now you

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hope that's just an entrance policy. You hope you don't need to do that. Some people say you shouldn't

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even work on the entrance policy because it might make you lazy that you'll keep eating because

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you know heart surgery will be there to save you. I'm not sure that's why it's given the

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importance of the problem. But there's now that geoengineering discussion about should that be

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in the back pocket in case things happen faster or this innovation goes a lot slower than we expect.

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Climate skeptics. If you had a sentence or two to say to them, how might you

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persuade them that they're wrong? Well, unfortunately the skeptics come in different camps. I mean

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the ones who make scientific arguments are very few. Are they saying that there's negative feedback

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effects that have to do with clouds that offset things? There are very, very few things that they

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can even say, you know, there's a chance and a million of those things. The main problem you have

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here is kind of like AIDS that you make them a state now and you pay for it a lot later. And so

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when you have all sorts of urgent problems, the idea of taking pain now that has to do with

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the gain later and as someone uncertain painting. In fact the IPCC report, you know that that's not

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necessarily the worst case and there are people in the ritual to look at IPCC and say okay,

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you know that isn't that big of deal. The fact is it's that uncertain part that should move

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towards this. But my dream here is that if you can make it economic and meet the CO2 constraint,

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then the skeptics say okay, I don't care that it doesn't put out CO2. I kind of wish it did put

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out CO2 but I guess I'll accept it because it's cheaper than that. Well it's come before.

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So, and so that would be our response to the the Bjorn Lomborg argument that basically if you

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spend or this energy trying to solve the CO2 problem, it's going to take away all your other

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goals of trying to rid the world of poverty and malaria and stuff like that. It's a stupid waste of

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the earth's resources to put money towards that when there are better things we can do.

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Yeah well the actual spending on the R&D piece, you know say the US should spend 10 billion

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near more than it is right now. It's not that dramatic. It shouldn't take away from other things.

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The thing you get into big money on and this reasonable people can disagree is when you have

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something that's non-economic and you're trying to fund that. That to me mostly is a waste. Unless

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you're very close and you're just funding the learning curve and it's going to get very cheap. I believe

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we should try you know more things that have a potential to be far less expensive. If the trade

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off you get into is let's make energy super expensive then the rich can afford that. I mean all of

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us here could pay five times as much for our energy and not change our lifestyle. The disaster is for

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that to billion and even law and board cows changed. His stick now is why isn't the R&D

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getting more discussed. He's still because it is earlier stuff sort of associated with the

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skeptic camp but he's realized that's a pretty lonely camp and so he's making the R&D point and

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so there is a threat of something that I think is appropriate. The R&D piece it's crazy how little it's

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funded. I suspect I speak on behalf of most people here to say I really hope your wish comes true. Thank you so much.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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My name is Sonia Natoff, we have an exam foundation. How does change happen? You raise the awareness

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and you inspire the change. You come to TED, you do TEDx, you build a community, you find solutions

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and it opens and that's what we do and that's why we come to TED.

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People are playing with words. It's true. All week long people have been putting words together

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in very unique ways. I've been thinking about how food and wine are paired by experts who really

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understand the flavors and hear it TED. People are putting words together in pairs because they

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understand the meaning of reckless creativity. What a pairing that is. I'm just thinking about words

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that don't go together. We're one and one equal three. I think that's what TED's all about isn't

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is just putting things together. We don't normally think that.