I 'm going to talk today about energy and climate .
And that might seem a bit surprising because my full-time work at the foundation is mostly about vaccines and seeds , about the things that we need to invent and deliver to help the poorest two billion live better lives .
But energy and climate are extremely important to these people , in fact , more important than to anyone else on the planet .
The climate getting worse , means that many years their crops won 't grow .
There will be too much rain , not enough rain .
Things will change in ways that their fragile environment simply can 't support .
And that leads to starvation .
It leads to uncertainty .
It leads to unrest .
So , the climate changes will be terrible for them .
Also , the price of energy is very important to them .
In fact , if you could pick just one thing to lower the price of , to reduce poverty , by far , you would pick energy .
Now , the price of energy has come down over time .
Really , advanced civilization is based on advances in energy .
The coal revolution fueled the industrial revolution , and , even in the 1900 's we 've seen a very rapid decline in the price of electricity , and that 's why we have refrigerators , air-conditioning , we can make modern materials and do so many things .
And so , we 're in a wonderful situation with electricity in the rich world .
But , as we make it cheaper -- and let 's go for making it twice as cheap -- we need to meet a new constraint , and that constraint has to do with CO2 .
CO2 is warming the planet , and the equation on CO2 is actually a very straightforward one .
If you sum up the CO2 that gets emitted , that leads to a temperature increase , and that temperature increase leads to some very negative effects .
The effects on the weather and , perhaps worse , the indirect effects , in that the natural ecosystems can 't adjust to these rapid changes , and so you get ecosystem collapses .
Now , the exact amount of how you map from a certain increase of CO2 to what temperature will be and where the positive feedbacks are , there 's some uncertainty there , but not very much .
And there 's certainly uncertainty about how bad those effects will be , but they will be extremely bad .
I asked the top scientists on this several times , do we really have to get down to near zero ?
Can 't we just cut it in half or a quarter ?
And the answer is that , until we get near to zero , the temperature will continue to rise .
And so that 's a big challenge .
It 's very different than saying we 're a 12 ft high truck trying to get under a 10 ft bridge , and we can just sort of squeeze under .
This is something that has to get to zero .
Now , we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year , over 26 billion tons .
For each American , it 's about 20 tons .
For people in poor countries , it 's less than one ton .
It 's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet .
And , somehow , we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero .
It 's been constantly going up .
It 's only various economic changes that have even flattened it at all , so we have to go from rapidly rising to falling , and falling all the way to zero .
This equation has four factors .
A little bit of multiplication .
So , you 've got a thing on the left , CO2 , that you want to get to zero , and that 's going to be based on the number of people , the services each person 's using on average , the energy on average for each service , and the CO2 being put out per unit of energy .
So , let 's look at each one of these and see how we can get this down to zero .
Probably , one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero .
Now that 's back from high school algebra , but let 's take a look .
First we 've got population .
Now , the world today has 6.8 billion people .
That 's headed up to about nine billion .
Now , if we do a really great job on new vaccines , health care , reproductive health services , we could lower that by , perhaps , 10 or 15 percent , but there we see an increase of about 1.3 .
The second factor is the services we use .
This encompasses everything , the food we eat , clothing , TV , heating .
These are very good things , and getting rid of poverty means providing these services to almost everyone on the planet .
And it 's a great thing for this number to go up .
In the rich world , perhaps the top one billion , we probably could cut back and use less , but every year , this number , on average , is going to go up , and so , over all , that will more than double the services delivered per person .
Here we have a very basic service .
Do you have lighting in your house to be able to read your homework , and , in fact , these kids don 't , so they 're going out and reading their school work under the street lamps .
Now , efficiency , E , the energy for each service , here , finally we have some good news .
We have something that 's not going up . Through various inventions and new ways of doing lighting , through different types of cars , different ways of building buildings . there are a lot of services where you can bring the energy for that service down quite substantially , some individual services even , bring it down by 90 percent .
There are other services like how we make fertilizer , or how we do air transport , where the rooms for improvement are far , far less .
And so , overall here , if we 're optimistic , we may get a reduction of a factor of three to even , perhaps , a factor of six .
But for these first three factors now , we 've gone from 26 billion to , at best , maybe 13 billion tons , and that just won 't cut it .
So let 's look at this fourth factor -- this is going to be a key one -- and this is the amount of CO2 put out per each unit of energy .
And so the question is , can you actually get that to zero ?
If you burn coal , no .
If you burn natural gas , no .
Almost every way we make electricity today , except for the emerging renewables and nuclear , puts out CO2 .
And so , what we 're going to have to do at a global scale , is create a new system .
And so , we need energy miracles .
Now , when I use the term miracle , I don 't mean something that 's impossible .
The microprocessor is a miracle .
The personal computer is a miracle .
The internet and its services are a miracle .
So , the people here have participated in the creation of many miracles .
Usually , we don 't have a deadline , where you have to get the miracle by a certain date .
Usually , you just kind of stand by , and some come along , some don 't .
This is a case where we actually have to drive full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight time line .
Now , I thought , how could I really capture this ?
Is there some kind of natural illustration , some demonstration that would grab people 's imagination here ?
I thought back to a year ago when I brought mosquitos , and somehow people enjoyed that .
It really got them involved in the idea of , you know , there are people who live with mosquitos .
So , with energy , all I could come up with is this .
I decided that releasing fireflies would be my contribution to the environment here this year .
So here we have some natural fireflies .
I 'm told they don 't bite , in fact , they might not even leave that jar .
Now , there 's all sorts gimmicky solutions like that one , but they don 't really add up to much .
We need solutions , either one or several , that have unbelievable scale and unbelievable reliability , and , although there 's many directions people are seeking , I really only see five that can achieve the big numbers .
I 've left out tide , geothermal , fusion , biofuels .
Those may make some contribution , and if they can do better than I expect , so much the better , but my key point here is that we 're going to have to work on each of these five , and we can 't give up any of them because they look daunting , because they all have significant challenges .
Let 's look first at the burning fossil fuels , either burning coal or burning natural gas .
What you need to do there , seems like it might be simple , but it 's not , and that 's to take all the CO2 , after you 've burned it , going out the flue , pressurize it , create a liquid , put it somewhere , and hope it stays there .
Now we have some pilot things that do this at the 60 to 80 percent level , but getting up to that full percentage , that will be very tricky , and agreeing on where these CO2 quantities should be put will be hard , but the toughest one here is this long term issue .
Who 's going to be sure ?
Who 's going to guarantee something that is literally billions of times larger than any type of waste you think of in terms of nuclear or other things ?
This is a lot of volume .
So that 's a tough one .
Next , would be nuclear .
It also has three big problems .
Cost , particularly in highly regulated countries , is high .
The issue of the safety , really feeling good about nothing could go wrong , that , even though you have these human operators , that the fuel doesn 't get used for weapons .
And then what do you do with the waste ?
And , although it 's not very large , there are a lot of concerns about that .
People need to feel good about it .
So three very tough problems that might be solvable , and so , should be worked on .
The last three of the five , I 've grouped together .
These are what people often refer to as the renewable sources .
And they actually -- although it 's great they don 't require fuel -- they have some disadvantages .
One is that the density of energy gathered in these technologies is dramatically less than a power plant .
This is energy farming , so you 're talking about many square miles , thousands of time more area than you think of as a normal energy plant .
Also , these are intermittent sources . The sun doesn 't shine all day , it doesn 't shine every day , and , likewise , the wind doesn 't blow all the time .
And so , if you depend on these sources , you have to have some way of getting the energy during those time periods that it 's not available .
So , we 've got big cost challenges here .
We have transmission challenges .
For example , say this energy source is outside your country , you not only need the technology , but you have to deal with the risk of the energy coming from elsewhere .
And , finally , this storage problem .
And , to dimensionalize this , I went through and looked at all the types of batteries that get made , for cars , for computers , for phones , for flashlights , for everything , and compared that to the amount of electrical energy the world uses , and what I found is that all the batteries we make now could store less than 10 minutes of all the energy .
And so , in fact , we need a big breakthrough here , something that 's going to be a factor of a hundred better than the approaches we have now .
It 's not impossible , but it 's not a very easy thing .
Now , this shows up when you try to get the intermittent source to be above , say , 20 to 30 percent of what you 're using .
If you 're counting on it for 100 percent , you need an incredible miracle battery .
Now , how we 're going to go forward on this : what 's the right approach ?
Is it a Manhattan project ?
What 's the thing that can get us there ?
Well , we need lots of companies working on this , hundreds .
In each of these five paths , we need at least a hundred people .
And a lot of them , you 'll look at and say they 're crazy .
That 's good .
And , I think , here in the TED group , we have many people who are already pursuing this .
Bill Gross has several companies , including one called eSolar that has some great solar thermal technologies .
Vinod Khosla 's investing in dozens of companies that are doing great things and have interesting possibilities , and I 'm trying to help back that .
Nathan Myhrvold and I actually are backing a company that , perhaps surprisingly , is actually taking the nuclear approach .
There are some innovations in nuclear : modular , liquid .
And innovation really stopped in this industry quite some ago , so the idea that there 's some good ideas laying around is not all that surprising .
The idea of Terrapower is that , instead of burning a part of uranium , the one percent , which is the U235 , we decided , let 's burn the 99 percent , the U238 .
It is kind of a crazy idea .
In fact , people had talked about it for a long time , but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not , and so it 's through the advent of modern supercomputers that now you can simulate and see that , yes , with the right material 's approach , this looks like it would work .
And , because you 're burning that 99 percent , you have greatly improved cost profile .
You actually burn up the waste , and you can actually use as fuel all the leftover waste from today 's reactors .
So , instead of worrying about them , you just take that .
It 's a great thing .
It breathes this uranium as it goes along . So it 's kind of like a candle .
You can see it 's a log there , often referred to as a traveling wave reactor .
In terms of fuel , this really solves the problem .
I 've got a picture here of a place in Kentucky .
This is the left over , the 99 percent , where they 've taken out the part they burn now , so it 's called depleted uranium .
That would power the U.S. for hundreds of years .
And , simply by filtering sea water in an inexpensive process , you 'd have enough fuel for the entire lifetime of the rest of the planet .
So , you know , it 's got lots of challenges ahead , but it is an example of the many hundreds and hundreds of ideas that we need to move forward .
So let 's think , how should we measure ourselves ?
What should our report card look like ?
Well , let 's go out to where we really need to get , and then look at the intermediate .
For 2050 , you 've heard many people talk about this 80 percent reduction .
That really is very important , that we get there .
And that 20 percent will be used up by things going on in poor countries , still some agriculture .
Hopefully , we will have cleaned up forestry , cement .
So , to get to that 80 percent , the developed countries , including countries like China , will have had to switch their electricity generation altogether .
So , the other grade is , are we deploying this zero-emission technology , have we deployed it in all the developed countries and we 're in the process of getting it elsewhere .
That 's super important .
That 's a key element of making that report card .
So , backing up from there , what should the 2020 report card look like ?
Well , again , it should have the two elements .
We should go through these efficiency measures to start getting reductions .
The less we emit , the less that sum will be of CO2 , and , therefore , the less the temperature .
But in some ways , the grade we get there , doing things that don 't get us all the way to the big reductions , is only equally , or maybe even slightly less , important than the other , which is the piece of innovation on these breakthroughs .
These breakthroughs , we need to move those at full speed , and we can measure that in terms of companies , pilot projects , regulatory things that have been changed .
There 's a lot of great books that have been written about this .
The Al Gore book , " Our Choice " and the David McKay book , " Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air . "
They really go through it and create a framework that this can be discussed broadly , because we need broad backing for this .
There 's a lot that has to come together .
So this is a wish .
It 's a very concrete wish that we invent this technology .
If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years , I could pick who 's president , I could pick a vaccine , which is something I love , or I could pick that this thing that 's half the cost with no CO2 gets invented , this is the wish I would pick .
This is the one with the greatest impact .
If we don 't get this wish , the division between the people who think short term and long term will be terrible , between the U.S. and China , between poor countries and rich , and most of all the lives of those two billion will be far worse .
So , what do we have to do ?
What am I appealing to you to step forward and drive ?
We need to go for more research funding .
When countries get together in places like Copenhagen , they shouldn 't just discuss the CO2 .
They should discuss this innovation agenda , and you 'd be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending on these innovative approaches .
We do need the market incentives , CO2 tax , cap and trade , something that gets that price signal out there .
We need to get the message out .
We need to have this dialogue be a more rational , more understandable dialogue , including the steps that the government takes .
This is an important wish , but it is one I think we can achieve .
Thank you .
Thank you .
Thank you .
Thank you .
Thank you .
Just so I understand more about Terrapower , right -- I mean , first of all , can you give a sense of what scale of investment this is ?
To actually do the software , buy the supercomputer , hire all the great scientists , which we 've done , that 's only tens of millions , and even once we test our materials out in a Russian reactor to make sure our materials work properly , then you 'll only be up in the hundreds of millions .
The tough thing is building the pilot reactor , finding the several billion , finding the regulator , the location that will actually build the first one of these .
Once you get the first one built , if it works as advertised , then it 's just clear as day , because the economics , the energy density , are so different than nuclear as we know it .
And so , to understand it right , this involves building deep into the ground almost like a vertical kind of column of nuclear fuel , of this sort of spent uranium , and then the process starts at the top and kind of works down ?
That 's right .
Today , you 're always refueling the reactor , so you have lots of people and lots of controls that can go wrong , that thing where you 're opening it up and moving things in and out .
That 's not good .
So , if you have very cheap fuel that you can put 60 years in -- just think of it as a log -- put it down and not have those same complexities .
And it just sits there and burns for the sixty years , and then it 's done .
It 's a nuclear power plant that is its own waste disposal solution .
Yeah .
Well , what happens with the waste , you can let it sit there -- there 's a lot less waste under this approach -- then you can actually take that , and put it into another one and burn that .
And we start off actually by taking the waste that exists today , that 's sitting in these cooling pools or dry casking by reactor .
That 's our fuel to begin with .
So , the thing that 's been a problem from those reactors is actually what gets fed into ours , and you 're reducing the volume of the waste quite dramatically as you 're going through this process .
But in your talking to different people around the world about the possibilities here , where is there most interest in actually doing something with this ?
Well , we haven 't picked a particular place , and there 's all these interesting disclosure rules about anything that 's called nuclear , so we 've got a lot of interest , that people from the company have been in Russia , India , China .
I 've been back seeing the secretary of energy here , talking about how this fits into the energy agenda .
So I 'm optimistic .
You know the French and Japanese have done some work .
This is a variant on something that has been done .
It 's an important advance , but it 's like a fast reactor , and a lot of countries have built them , so anybody who 's done a fast reactor , is a candidate to be where the first one gets built .
So , in your mind , timescale and likelihood of actually taking something like this live ?
Well , we need , for one of these high-scale , electro-generation things that 's very cheap , we have 20 years to invent and then 20 years to deploy .
That 's sort of the deadline that the environmental models have shown us that we have to meet .
And , you know , Terrapower , if things go well , which is wishing for a lot , could easily meet that .
And there are , fortunately now , dozens of companies , we need it to be hundreds , who , likewise , if their science goes well , if the funding for their pilot plants goes well , that they can compete for this .
And it 's best if multiple succeed , because then you could use a mix of these things .
We certainly need one to succeed .
In terms of big-scale possible game changes , is this the biggest that you 're aware of out there ?
An energy breakthrough is the most important thing .
It would have been , even without the environmental constraint , but the environmental constraint just makes it so much greater .
In the nuclear space , there are other innovators .
You know , we don 't know their work as well as we know this one , but the modular people , that 's a different approach .
There 's a liquid type reactor , which seems a little hard , but maybe they say that about us .
And so , there are different ones , but the beauty of this is a molecule of uranium has a million times as much energy as a molecule of , say , coal , and so , if you can deal with the negatives , which are essentially the radiation , the footprint and cost , the potential , in terms of effect on land and various things , is almost in a class of its own .
If this doesn 't work , then what ?
Do we have to start taking emergency measures to try and keep the temperature of the earth stable ?
If you get into that situation , it 's like if you 've been over-eating , and you 're about to have a heart-attack .
Then where do you go ?
You may need heart surgery or something .
There is a line of research on what 's called geoengineering , which are various techniques that would delay the heating to buy us 20 or 30 years to get our act together .
Now , that 's just an insurance policy .
You hope you don 't need to do that .
Some people say you shouldn 't even work on the insurance policy because it might make you lazy , that you 'll keep eating because you know heart surgery will be there to save you .
I 'm not sure that 's wise , given the importance of the problem , but there 's now the geoengineering discussion about , should that be in the back pocket in case things happen faster , or this innovation goes a lot slower than we expect .
Climate skeptics : if you had a sentence or two to say to them , how might you persuade them that they 're wrong ?
Well , unfortunately , the skeptics come in different camps .
The ones who make scientific arguments are very few .
Are they saying there 's negative feedback effects that have to do with clouds that offset things ?
There are very , very few things that they can even say there 's a chance in a million of those things .
The main problem we have here is kind of like AIDS .
You make the mistake now , and you pay for it a lot later .
And so , when you have all sorts of urgent problems , the idea of taking pain now that has to do with a gain later -- and a somewhat uncertain pain thing .
In fact , the IPCC report , that 's not necessarily the worst case , and there are people in the rich world who look at IPCC and say , okay , that isn 't that big of a deal .
The fact is it 's that uncertain part that should move us towards this .
But my dream here is that , if you can make it economic , and meet the CO2 constraints , then the skeptics say , okay , I don 't care that it doesn 't put out CO2 , I kind of wish it did put out CO2 , but I guess I 'll accept it because it 's cheaper than what 's come before .
And so , that would be your response to the Bjorn Lomborg argument , that basically if you spend all this energy trying to solve the CO2 problem , it 's going to take away all your other goals of trying to rid the world of poverty and malaria and so forth , it 's a stupid waste of the Earth 's resources to put money towards that when there are better things we can do .
Well , the actual spending on the R & D piece -- say the U.S. should spend 10 billion a year more than it is right now -- it 's not that dramatic .
It shouldn 't take away from other things .
The thing you get into big money on , and this , reasonable people can disagree , is when you have something that 's non-economic and you 're trying to fund that .
That , to me , mostly is a waste .
Unless you 're very close and you 're just funding the learning curve and it 's going to get very cheap .
I believe we should try more things that have a potential to be far less expensive .
If the trade-off you get into is , let 's make energy super expensive , then the rich can afford that .
I mean , all of us here could pay five times as much for our energy and not change our lifestyle .
The disaster is for that two billion .
And even Lomborg has changed .
His shtick now is , why isn 't the R & D getting discussed more .
He 's still , because of his earlier stuff , still associated with the skeptic camp , but he 's realized that 's a pretty lonely camp , and so , he 's making the R & D point .
And so there is a thread of something that I think is appropriate .
The R & D piece , it 's crazy how little it 's funded .
Well Bill , I suspect I speak on the behalf of most people here to say , I really hope your wish comes true .
Thank you so much .
Thank you .