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Hi, I am Graham Powell reporting for Shell
here at the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado.
This is a gathering of some of the brightest minds in the world,
and we're asking them to talk to you about the environment
and what's going to make a difference in the world’s energy future.
You posted some questions on the Atlantic.com
and now we’re going to get you the answers,
so if you’re ready, let’s go check it out.
Have you seen, yet, any green energy ideas
that have come up that to you are particularly exciting?
So, two things I’ve seen are, first of all,
its great to see that there are actually hybrid cars on the property,
so I feel like people are directly seeing the options that are in front of them.
But secondly, I just came from a panel on social entrepreneurship,
and the fact that the actual physical example that was put in front of the audience
was the handle from an electric car charging station.
I love the fact that that was the example that the people wanted to put forward and actually show us an artifact of.
Stewart Grand proposes Green Nukes, which is it sounds like an oxymoron;
to environmentalists to support nuclear energy is a huge leap.
But his rationale is very sound in the reduction of carbon-emitting power,
and going to nuclear energy, clean nuclear energy, and ideally of course, safe nuclear energy.
Well, I heard about the future potential fuel cells, which I have always been fascinated by.
We have one of the real entrepreneurs here who developed his Bloom Energy that I saw this piece on 60 Minutes,
which is the reason why I came to hear him directly.
It has an enormous potential over the next five to ten years
to change how we get our electricity less reliant on the grid system that is so risky now,
that is so faulty, or can break down so easily.
How do you get a corporation to be ethical? Put a price on carbon.
So, now you are forced to be ethical.
So, there is this interesting interplay between regulation and free market.
This gentleman at Bloom Energy believes a free market is going to get us there.
But arguably the market isn’t free,
because when I use electricity to run your camera or whatever,
were producing pollutants that no one pays the cost of.
So, the market isn’t free, it’s got these externalities we're not accounting for.