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>>Female Presenter: Thanks for joining us for today's Green at Google Talk. My name
is Alice Mount and I work on data center environmental health and safety. It's with great pleasure
and excitement that I introduce our three speakers. Although each has a very different
background, they're here today with something in common. The desire to address climate change,
environmental pollution and energy security through the promise of renewable energy.
Going in alphabetical order, Mark Jacobson is the Director of Atmosphere/Energy Program
and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is also a Senior
Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment. And a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute
for Energy. He is on the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Environment committee for the
US Secretary of Energy. And he was my advisor at Stanford. [laughter]
Marco Krapels is the Executive Vice President of Rabobank North America, where he runs the
commercial banking product groups, including its capital markets and renewable energy finance
divisions. He co-chairs the bank's Corporate Social Responsibility committee where he's
initiated notable sustainability efforts including a Rabobank solar/Tesla electric car project
featured in the New York Times. Marco is co-founder and board member of Empowered by Light which
promotes renewable energy solutions for one point six billion people living without electricity.
And last, but certainly not least, Mark Ruffalo is an Oscar-nominated actor and renewable
energy advocate. In March 2011, Marco founded Water Defense to raise awareness about the
impact of energy extraction on water and public health. A regular contributor to the Guardian
and the Huffington Post, Mark is a recent recipient of the Global Green Millennium Award
for Environmental Leadership. Most recently, he played Dr. Banner and the Incredible Hulk
in the Avengers. I will hold back on making any green puns. I wouldn't wanna make him
angry.
[laughter]
Thanks for coming and welcome to Google. For those of you who would like to ask questions,
we have a Google moderator page set up at 'go wind water sun'. Thank you.
[applause]
>>Mark Ruffalo: Thank you for that introduction. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
[laughter]
Wow. Thank you Google for having us here. I'm more nervous about this than I am any
of that acting stuff I do. I wanna start by how I got here. I really don't wanna be here
today.
[laughter]
I'd rather be at home with my kids today. Running in the sprinkler. It's the first day
of summer. But three years ago I made the, I guess, fortunate or unfortunate decision
to move my family to upstate New York where they can live with trees and flowers and chirping
birds and clean water and fresh air. And shortly after moving there I found out that this incredible
thing called hydrofracking was going to happen in my community. And when I first heard about
it, I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It was gonna give us energy
independence. It was clean. It was cheap. All it was was injecting a little sand and
water into the ground and it was going to free us from war, pestilence, viruses, the
Plague, and Satan himself.
[laughter]
That sounded great to me. So I'm the type of person, I'm a very simple man and decided
that I would go online and check out what exactly hydrofracking was. And as I started
looking into it, I started seeing there was a lot of problems with it. Like people being
able to light their wells on fire. And coming down with brain lesions. And their well caps
blowing 50, 60 feet into the air. And their water becoming contaminated. And their children
developing asthma. And spills. And their pets and livestock dying or going bald or becoming
ill. And those things didn't sound like white bread to me.
And I realized that maybe hydrofracking was more relatable to asbestos, the greatest thing
since asbestos than white bread. If you remember when we had our beginning love affair with
asbestos, it was the greatest thing that could ever have happened to us. It was gonna change
our world. It was gonna make jobs for us. And it was just this incredible thing. And
in time we've come to find out that it isn't so incredible. So I began basically, I went
to Dimick, PA with Robert Kennedy, Junior and I saw a group of people, probably 40 people,
who had their wells contaminated with natural gas from hydrofracking. And there was no one
there to help them. And they literally looked at Robert Kennedy Junior as if he was Jesus
Christ himself and walked across the water to save them. Unfortunately at that time,
Robert Kennedy Junior had been toking off the natural gas pipe and was a big natural
gas advocate. It's taken us two years to turn him around. But, by God, we have. Us and science
and a lot of compelling anecdotal evidence that tell us that this is not the way to move
forward.
But when I was there, I had family after family come up to me and since I was the B-list celebrity
in the room, behind Robert Kennedy, Junior, I was the next savior. Something on par to
probably Houdini more than Jesus Christ. But I recognized an enormous need that they had
that wasn't being filled, neither by their legislative body in the state of Pennsylvania
nor by the EPA which had been exempt, this industry had been exempted from any federal
regulation. And they were asking for my help. And I decided that I would run as far away
from them as I possibly could.
But I couldn't run away from myself. And I realized that I wouldn't be the human being
that I say I am, if I turned my back on them. Essentially I'd be turning my back on my own
children and my own community just across the Delaware River. And so I began fighting
hydrofracking in New York State. And at some point that wasn't enough for me. I felt like
you can't really be effective at fighting something unless you can come up with an alternative
to that thing, that was viable, and that was credible. And so in my very, I like to model
myself after Percival the Fool, I went like the fool into the world saying "I don't know
what the hell I'm doing or what I'm talking about, but I'd like to go find some people
that do know what they're doing and what they're talking about. And I was invited to go to
the Global Green Awards, which I didn't wanna get an award for this work. I went kicking
and screaming. They wanted to honor me with an environmental award. I didn't feel like
I deserved it. But I didn't wanna be an ***, so I went. And while I was there, shortly
after I gave my speech on natural gas to a very large group of people who at that time
still believed that natural gas was the answer. And I was there to say "No." Well, after it,
this crazy Dutchman came up to me and he said "Hi, I'm Marcellus. And I'm here to help you
fight Marcellus." Now Marcellus Shale is where in New York where they wanna extract the gas
from. And Marco Krapels real name is Marcellus. And I kinda, he said "You know, we have to
talk about the solutions." Like I kinda had said well, I wanna do this crazy thing, I
wanna, why aren't we going to renewable, why are we gonna go to natural gas and then renewable.
I mean why not go directly to renewables. Like why do we have to bridge to it? Like
why don't we hang-glide over it? And he said "Come to California, I'm gonna put together
some meetings. We're doing this here and I think you can do it in New York." And he brought
me to a dinner and at that dinner was Professor Mark Jacobson. And a lot of other really influential
people in the renewable space. And what I started to hear was what I believed in my
heart. Was that we actually could make this transition. Without introducing an entire
new fossil fuel infrastructure to our nation that would cost us 700 billion dollars to
build out. And we actually could hang glide over natural gas and move directly to renewable
energy. And we could do it in my lifetime. And that was the beginning of this journey.
And along this journey I only knew that the only thing that I could offer to these brilliant
people was that I was a conduit of information to my culture. To the culture. And we're in
an information war. Really is what this is about. It's about education. Because the truth
is that we can do this. We're technologically poised to do it. But there's an enormous political
lobbying structure in place in this country that is telling us that we can't do it. And
that we are bound to be a fossil fuel nation for another 50, 60, 100 years. And that just
isn't the truth.
And so I started to try and make myself knowledged in what the truth was. By going to scientists.
Going to business leaders, going to bankers, and asking "Is this possible? And how do we
do it?" And that was basically how I came to be sitting here with these two extraordinary
gentlemen. There's another gentleman here named Jon *** from Skadaddle who is basically
our media genius. And we figure that if you can handle the science and the culture and
the banking and the economics and then have a platform to get the message out, we actually
have a chance of making this thing happen. And so the idea of solutions was born.
And none of us are on the payroll of anybody. We all flew ourselves here today. We are only
compelled to move forward with this mission because we have children. And we believe that
it's the right and responsible thing for each of us to do. And that gives us an enormous
amount of credibility in the face of who our opponent is and the enormous amount of political
and economic power that they wield against us. And so, at this moment, I would gladly
like to shut up.
[laughter]
And turn over this podium to the great Professor Mark Jacobson from Stanford.
[applause]
>>Mark Jacobson: This really came to fruition in 2009 when Dr. Mark Delucchi of UC Davis
and I published a paper in Scientific American on how to power the world with renewable energy.
Really the question was, was it technically feasible to do this? And did we have enough
materials? Were there enough resources available? What were the costs like? Was it really possible
to power the entire world? And by extension of course the United States and individual
states. And it was by fortune that I met Mark Ruffalo and Marco Krapels, and some others,
Jon *** and others in our group. It was very fortunate because, and it's actually been
very exciting, because I, we, kind of working as a scientist you're often working on your
own and in a small group. And nobody really wants to listen to the scientists who put
out reports. And then there are people who put out things to try to discredit you. Or
to try to minimize whatever you do. And so this is actually an opportunity I think to
bring the information out. I mean, my job, I feel, is to bring, to study a subject and
then bring that information out to the public and to students and to the world, to clarify
it. And so that's what I want to do here today. So really what I wanna talk about in the next
few minutes and it might take a little more than a few minutes. But it's how to power
the world and the United States with renewable energy. Is it really feasible? So first of
all, why do we wanna do that? And I'm gonna try to [pause]. There we go. Oops. I think
we just went to the end. [laughs]
[laughter]
There we go. I think we're even, one more back. There. OK. Well, anyway.
So what is the problem? Why do we need to do this first of all? From my point of view,
it's from an air pollution and climate point of view. Two and a half to three million people
die every year from air pollution, from cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, complications
from asthma, disease, pneumonia, in fact, about 15 to 20 percent of these are children
under five years of age in developing countries. And this number is growing. And global warming
is a significant problem whether or not you believe it, it's true. It's happening. The
temperature changes today are faster. The rate of change of temperature today is faster
than any time since the deglaciation from the last ice age. And this is a significant
issue because half of global warming is actually being hidden or masked by what are called
cooling pollutant aerosol particles. The particles that you actually see in the air from pollution
are hiding half of global warming. So if we actually clean up all of the air pollution
particles in the world which we want to do because these are the ones that cause the
two and a half to three million deaths, most of them, then we would actually double global
warming instantaneously. That's a scary problem.
The Arctic sea ice is disappearing rapidly as I'll show you. And this is also scary because
within 20 years, if it disappears, then there will be possibly a rapid tipping point where
there'll be more rapid acceleration of warming. And populations are increasingly quickly and
as a result, and there's rising energy demand. And our current fossil fuel infrastructure,
the fuels themselves are short-lived. They're not gonna be here even if we used them all
for the next 100, 150 years, they're eventually gonna disappear. We're subject to significant
price fluctuations. If we go to clean renewable energy there are no price fluctuations because
the fuel is free.
Now, let's, I just wanna show you an example. I mean, we look outside here in the Bay Area,
especially near the Bay and it's extremely clean looking most days. But you go most places
in the world, and it looks like this. And here's Norilsk, Russia. Sukinda, India. Linfen,
China. It's like living here is like smoking three packs of cigarettes every day. This
is the real problem in the world. And this pollution, it's not only creates health problems,
but the darkness of the pollution means that it's absorbing sunlight and heating the air
and this is why these pollutant particles, the dark ones, are the second leading cause
of global warming after carbon dioxide. The black carbon and brown carbon in these particles.
And they also cause health impacts. And they're also very short lived. So if you control them,
they're actually a very fast method of slowing global warming. In fact if, they're the only
method, by controlling those particles is probably the only method of saving the arctic
sea ice, because they're short lived. Along with methane which is number three in terms
of the leading causes of global warming. And by the way methane, the main source of methane,
well one of the main sources, is from natural gas mining. And this is a big issue because
the short lived impact of that methane over the 20 year time frame is 80 times more significant
per unit mass than carbon dioxide. 80 to 100 times.
Now this is the lungs of a teenager who died in the Los Angeles in the 1970s and this is
what the lungs of most teenagers in polluted cities of our world look like. So in the united
states there are 50,000 to 100,000 die every year prematurely from air pollution. In California,
it's about 20,000 to 23,000. And this is a problem that still needs to be solved. And
that doesn't count all the illnesses and lost work days and school days. The higher taxes
we pay. And the higher insurance costs that result.
I talked about the sea ice. This shows from 1900 to 2010, or 2011, the Arctic sea ice
in different seasons. The green which is on the bottom which is the most rapidly decreasing
in the summer. But you can see that the sea ice is decreasing in all seasons. But it's
expected to entirely disappear within 20 to 30 years unless we do something.
And as I mentioned the temperature of the earth is increasing rapidly. It's the rate
of change of temperature that's so high today. And it just hasn't been this high. We've had
higher temperatures on average. 100 million years ago the earth was ice free. But nobody
lived back then. So we didn't have 7 billion people on the earth. If we melt all the ice
that's stored in the Antarctic mostly but the Arctic and all the glaciers, we would
increase the sea levels, by, on the order of 65 to 70 meters and we'd flood seven percent
of all the world's land, along the coast. And that's where most people live. So this
is an issue.
So what's the solution?
So the solution, we think, is based on scientific analysis that was done in 2009 before the
Scientific American article, was what we call "wind, water, and sun." So what was recommended,
based on just ignoring the costs at first, we looked at a bunch of different technologies
and found that the best ones in terms of their environmental benefits, in terms of health
and climate. In terms of catastrophic risk. In terms of creating a reliable energy supply
as well, simultaneously reducing water pollution, were wind, and concentrated solar power, geothermal
power, tidal power, wave power, solar photovoltaics, hydroelectric power. And that's for electric
power. For transportation it's using these electricity sources to power battery electric
vehicles. And in some cases hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. And the reason battery electrics
are so good is that they're four to five times more efficient than internal combustion. So
in other words, for every gallon of gas you put into your tank, only about 17 to 20 percent
of the energy in that gas goes to move your care. The rest is waste heat. Of every unit
of electricity you plug into your car, about 80 to 86 percent actually goes to moving your
car. The rest is waste heat. As a result, electricity is so much more, it's four to
five times more efficient than gasoline.
So the best way to reduce your energy consumption is to use an electric vehicle. By far. Converting
from a combustion vehicle to an electric vehicle. In fact, as a result, the cost of the electricity
to run your car is equivalent to about 80 cents to a dollar a gallon, compared to four
dollars plus or whatever the price of gas is right now.
Now, I'll get back to that later. But what's not recommended in our list, not because they're
not in some cases better than what we have currently, in other cases it is not so good,
are nuclear, coal with carbon capture, any kind of natural gas or biomass. Corn or cellulosic,
or sugarcane ethanol, soy or algae biodiesel. Or compressed natural gas. These are not recommended
options. And again I'm not trying to criticize them, although some of these you can really
criticize a lot. But I'm just saying they're not so good as what we call the wind, water,
and sun options. Which I'll show you why.
So for example, why not nuclear power? Everyone thinks "Oh, it's clean power." Well, in fact,
because of the, you need to mind the uranium, and refine it, continuously over the life
of the power plant, and then use it and then you have to store the waste, it's, and that's
half of the emissions are associated. There are two coal fire power plants in the US whose
sole purpose is to refine uranium for nuclear power plus weapons. But there's also the fact
it takes like 11 to 19 years to put up a nuclear reactor. And due to, not only due to the construction
time but due to the permitting time and planning time, it compared to like two to five years
for a wind or solar farm, generally. So in the meantime you're running the current electric
power grid which is 55 to 60 percent coal. So there's an opportunity cost by going to
say nuclear versus wind due to this time lag between planning and operation. That's huge.
So between the two of those additional emissions sources, you have nine to 25 times more carbon
equivalent emissions and air pollution per kilowatt hour generated from nuclear than
you do from wind power. But that's not even the major problem. There's the risk of meltdown.
One and a half percent of all nuclear reactors ever built, and there have been about 440,
have melted down to some degree. And there's nuclear weapons proliferation. There are five
countries that have secretly developed nuclear weapons capability under the guise of nuclear
energy facilities, that were supposed to be used for civilian purposes.
And there are unresolved waste issues. Why not, what's called "clean coal?" Well, what
clean coal is, is you dump, you take the CO2 exhaust from the exhaust of the coal plant
and you pump it underground. And that reduced about 85 to 90 percent of the CO2 from the
exhaust. However there is all this CO2 from the mining and the transport of the coal,
which is about a third of the emissions. And plus you need 25 percent more coal because
it requires 25 percent more energy to run the carbon capture equipment. So as a result,
and the CO2 carbon capture does not reduce any other pollutant aside from CO2. So you
actually increase all the other pollutants like “socks” SO2, ammonia, knocks”,
oxides of nitrogen, hydrocarbons, particulate matter by 25 percent increase in the air pollution
from the coal. So it's nothing close to clean. In fact, it's about 50 times more CO2 per
unit energy than wind and 150 times more pollution per unit energy.
Why not ethanol? Well, they, you still have to burn the ethanol like a combustion fuel.
And so you produce a similar amount of air pollution. In fact, we found in the US about
four percent higher mortality due to converting to ethanol. Compared with gasoline. Due to
the, because you have a lot of aldehydes coming out of the tank instead of aromatics. But
the aldehydes are more reactive at producing ozone which causes health, significant health
problems.
So there's on the order of the same air pollution. But in terms of the CO2, which everybody has
pushed ethanol for. For corn ethanol it's only 90, to, the best you can get 90 percent
of the gasoline CO2 emissions. But you can get even higher, 200 percent, you can double
the CO2 emissions, if, due to land use change, that result from price changes from corn.
Cellulosic ethanol is a little bit better but it's still 50 to 150 percent so you really
don't know if you're actually getting any carbon benefit.
Compared to wind energy, power and battery electric vehicles. It's 99 percent CO2 reductions
and air pollution reductions. More than 99 percent. And I'll show you the land use required
for the ethanol. And then you'll really see why it's not so useful.
Natural gas, in terms of air pollution and CO2, it's at least 50 to 70 times more CO2
per kilowatt hour than wind energy. And hydrofracking, as Mark mentioned, causes lots of water issues.
Ground water contamination. And potential leakage of methane into the atmosphere, which
is dangerous especially for the Arctic sea ice.
And so now I wanna just focus then for a few minutes on, so what are these options that
are wind, water and sun options? You're all familiar with most of them. Wind turbines,
these are wave devices, there are actually a lot of different types of wave devices,
and it's still pretty much in its infancy. But there are several different types of wave
devices that have been tested and work. And they take advantage of the up and down motions
of the wave. There's hydroelectric power which could be from dams. Which nobody likes too
many dams. And we don't envision many more dams. 70 percent are already in place that
we need. In fact, if we can minimize them, that's great. But we might have a few more.
And there's also what's called "run of the river" electricity where you don’t actually
build a dam, you just extract the energy from flowing water. Tidal power basically a wind
turbine under the water in tides. And the presence of tides. Geothermal power. You're
extracting heat from the rocks under the earth and converting that into electricity. Then
there's concentrated solar on the top left. Which you focus light from mirrors onto a
central tower receiver to heat a fluid that then heats water and from the steam from the
water you can generate electricity through a steam generator. Or you can store the hot
fluid overnight and generate electricity at night which is a nice thing about concentrated
solar, it's a nighttime source of electricity. In fact, a plant in Spain ran their concentrated
solar plant for 24 hours last summer. And then there's also photovoltaics that can either
be power plants or on rooftops and of course at Google you know all about that.
And of course there's the electric cars, which are all existing and I don't have to say too
much about them. But I do wanna point out, there are also hydrogen fuel cell buses. There
are electric trucks that are existing, these are existing technologies. A hybrid in fact,
there's a hydrogen fuel cell electric hybrid bus. So these are all clean. Hydrogen is less
efficient than electricity straight for vehicles, but it's still more efficient than gasoline.
And it's much cleaner. I mean it's still 99 percent clean in terms of carbon emissions
and air pollution but it's not quite so efficient as electricity.
Now in terms of boats, this is the wrong title, but in terms of ships, this is a existing
hydrogen fuel cell ship. Tractors, this is a hydrogen fuel cell tractor that's an electric
ship. These are existing technologies for the most part. Of course they can be improved.
And on the right is a cryogenic hydrogen aircraft, which is run on liquefied hydrogen. The space
shuttle runs on, or ran on, liquefied hydrogen. And the Russians built the Tupolov in the
1980s that ran on this. But it's more mass, more volumous. You need more volume to store
the hydrogen. But it weighs less. Because of the lightness of hydrogen.
For heating and cooling, there's air source, and ground source heat pumps. And also solar
hot water preheaters. OK. So let's jump then to some statistics.
The end-use power demand today is about 12 and a half terawatts. That's for all purposes.
The whole, all of the world, society uses 12 and a half terawatts of end use power to
run devices, to drive cars, to heat and cool. Everything. Now in 2030 with current fuels
we expect to go up to 17 terawatts. If we convert to wind, water, and sun because of
the efficiency of electricity and hydrogen to some extent, you go down by about 32 percent.
So you reduce energy demand, power demand, worldwide by 32 percent by converting to wind,
water, and sun. In the US it's 37 percent because we're so heavily dependent on combustion
for vehicles that you get a even greater efficiency there.
So we really need to shoot for 11 and a half terawatts by 2030. So how do we do that? Well,
one way is this plan. It's not by no means is it the only way. But 50 percent wind, 40
percent solar, and 10 percent everything else. And why those proportions? Well, wind and
solar are the only technology, or the only resources that you can power the entire world
on their own by many times. And I'll show you that in a minute. But, and wind is a little
less expensive, or it's less expensive right now than solar. Although the cost of solar
prices has gone down significantly. So it's becoming rapidly very competitive.
But 50 percent wind. That's four million of those five megawatt wind turbines. Now in
World War II, the US produced 330,000 airplanes in four years. And to power the entire world
with, or half the world with wind, you need only four million wind turbines. It's really
nothing. And the space, the actual land required for that physically on the ground to, for
the poles in the ground and a little concrete around it is the size of Manhattan. Which
is 38 square kilometers. And to, but I'll show you a map of this in a little bit.
For solar it would be divided between concentrated solar, solar PV, and rooftop PV. So 20 percent
concentrated solar, 14 percent PV, power plants, and 6 percent rooftops. And that's assuming
huge amounts of rooftop solar. If we can do more that's great.
Then hydroelectric, four percent. But 70 percent of this is already in place. And then four
percent geothermal and one percent each tidal and wave.
Now, the area to power, this is just for the US onroad vehicles. Now if we did this with
cellulosic ethanol, we'd require on average about 18 percent of the entire US, including
Alaska. Now there's a range here. It's between five and 35 percent. Five percent is the ethanol
industry estimate. And 35 percent is the scientific estimate.
[laughter]
So this is being fair. Just cut it in half and that's what this represents. There's less
certainty in corn ethanol but it's still on the order of 14 percent of the entire US,
to power the US vehicle fleet. Now nuclear, that's not one of its main problems. It doesn't
take up much space, unless you live in Rhode Island. It's about the size of Rhode Island,
you need to power the US vehicle fleet. We can sacrifice Rhode Island for nuclear.
But you'd need about 16,000 850 megawatt nuclear power plants to power the world with nuclear.
We have 440 today. So even if you had 5 percent of the world power by nuclear, you'd double
the number of plants today. And there'd be more countries where that can develop weapons
capabilities like they are right now.
Now, with wind, the footprint on the ground is that red dot in the middle of that black
space. And that's one to three square kilometers. You'd need one to three square kilometers
of land to power the entire US vehicle fleet with wind. Due to the footprint. Now spacing,
you need spacing between the turbines. And that's the black. That's about half a percent
of the United States. Still, it's they're one thirtieth of corn ethanol. To do this
same thing with corn ethanol, you have pollution and you have global warming. With wind you
have no pollution, no warming, hardly any space, doesn't take up water. And it turns,
a lot of it could go offshore. Like in the east coast, for example which is the greatest
offshore wind resource in the world, almost.
Now, for solar, you need 1/3 the spacing area as wind. But it takes more footprint. But
it still is not very much space. And geothermal is even smaller spacing area than solar, but
still more footprint than wind. So these are not large areas for the wind, geothermal and
solar. This is just to power the whole US vehicle fleet.
Now what about, how much wind is there? This is a map that our group developed which is
from modeling. But we also looked at data analysis. Got a similar number. Shows you
the wind resource of the world. The great plains is referred to as the Saudi Arabia
of wind. And the east coast and the west coast, we have a lot of wind. Although the west coast
we have very, it's deep, the water is very deep so it's harder to get to.
Now this wind you can power the world, this 11 and a half terawatts. We can power it six
to seven times over, with wind over land and high wind locations. High wind locations are
about 15 percent of the entire world,has high wind locations. And you have enough to power
six or seven times of the world power. There's even more solar than wind. There are 340 terawatts
that we can power the world about 30 times over for that 11 and a half terawatts that
we need.
Now, what about reliability? This is a study that we did, looking at, can you match the
power supply with the demand. People complain that the wind and the solar are intermittent.
The sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow. That's true. But the demand also
is variable as well. And it's not a question of just looking at wind or solar. It's looking
at, can you match the power demand with the supply? And by combining wind and solar, geothermal
and hydroelectric, you can actually match power demand in California 99 point 8 percent
of the hours of the year. And this is a study we did for 2005 and 2006 looking at increase,
with the constant geothermal load, which is the red on the bottom. Increasing the amount
of wind and solar. But keeping the hydro the same. The wind is the light blue. This is
two particular days. Every hour of two particular days. The yellow, the light yellow is solar
PV. The orange is concentrated solar. The dark blue is hydroelectric. Without increasing
the amount of hydroelectric in the state, using the existing amount.
So we were able, the black line is the power demand for those two days. And we were able
to match the power demand with supply over two years, every day for two years except
for zero point two percent of the hours over two years. So we think it is possible to do
this. It's just that each location you have to optimize your resources.
And what about materials? Take neodymium which is needed in permanent magnets and wind turbine
generators. We need about four teragrams of neodymium for three point eight million turbines.
But there are about 27, 28 teragrams available. And so we have about seven times more than
we need. So we don’t think this is a limitation.
What about lithium? Well, lithium, there's enough lithium we know of in resources for
three point three billion vehicles. And there are about eight hundred million vehicles right
now. So again, not all the resources have been uncovered.
What about costs? The costs of conventional fuels are about seven cents a kilowatt hour
today. And they're gonna go up to about eight to ten cents a kilowatt hour in, by 2020 to
2030. This is forecasted from EIA, Energy Information Administration. But there are
also externality costs which are a minimum of about five cents in kilowatt hours today.
These are health and environmental cost. And going up to at least six cents a kilowatt
hour in 2020 to 2030. So we're talking about the real cost of conventional energy, today
is about 12, over 12 cents a kilowatt hour. And 13 to 15 cents in 2020 to 2030. And these
are conservative estimates for the externality costs. Very conservative.
Now wind. Geothermal. Onshore wind, geothermal and hydroelectric are completely cost competitive
today. In fact, in the US wine has been the second largest new source of electric power
on average for the last five years. In Europe, wind and solar last year generated 68 percent
of all the new electricity. So they're very cost competitive. Both of them. Even solar,
although solar has been getting a lot more, getting some subsidies. Now the other costs
are coming down for the rest of the technologies. And we expect by 2020 to 2030 they'll all
be cost competitive especially when you account for the externality costs of the fossil fuels.
So just to summarize, we think that converting to wind, water and sun will reduce world power
demands by about 32 percent. In the US about 37 percent. So eliminate two and half to three
million air pollution deaths including 100,000 in the US every year. Eliminate global warming.
Provide energy stability. The cost of electricity will be similar to what we have, four to ten
cents a kilowatt hour for most technologies. Eight to 13 for some. And be similar to or
less than conventional fuels. And additional, long distance transmission to get, for example,
from the great plains to 2,000 kilometers is about one cent a kilowatt hour on average.
Although there is a big range between point two and three cents a kilowatt hour. For long
distance transmission. And finally, the total area required would be about point four percent
of the world's land. For the footprint. And point six percent for the spacing. So one
percent of the world for energy to power the whole world for all purposes forever. We'd
have to increase it a little bit over time. Compared to 40 percent of the world's land
is used right now for grazing, farmland, and agriculture.
There are many methods of addressing variability. And I already discussed one, but there are
others as well. Materials are not limits, but recycling may be needed. There are barriers
such as upfront cost, transmission need, lobbying and politics.
[laughter]
And with that, I want to turn it over to Marco, who's going to talk about the business and
more financial aspects of what we need to do to get to clean energy.
[applause]
>>Marco Krapels: So it's definitely downhill from here. [laughs] after your listening to
the Hulk and most renowned professor on this topic. You have to listen for five more minutes
to an evil banker.
[laughter]
But we're doing good things, too. Because we're financing a lot of renewable energy.
So you know, what I wanted to do is talk a little bit about your, how you turn all this
science really into relevancy for businesses. So what can they do now?
Before I do that I want to share with you some numbers and this is what bankers do.
And some quotes, things that I think are relevant to the discussion that I'm about to have.
Businesses need price stability. I mean, we have, I work for the largest agricultural
bank in the world. And we bank farmers. Lots of them. In 34 countries. And farmers are
worried enough about commodity prices and they understand that part. But in terms of
energy, which is a huge component of their cost structure. They're really worried about
it. It's volatile. Gas is up, gas is down. Oil is up, oil is down. And it's a concern.
And rising energy costs, volatile energy costs, is something that is really worried a lot
of our clients. And if you're a dairy farmer in Hanford, Central Valley, California. Anyone
from Hanford? No. Didn't think so. But you know, you are using a lot of water. Dairies
use an enormous amount of water. They use an enormous amount of energy. As a matter
of fact, the movement of water is one of the single largest sources of electric use in
this state. So that's an issue. It's an issue for businesses. It's an issue for farmers.
So price stability is extremely important. And oil and gas we know for the last 50 years
have not provided that.
Let me. Forward. Here.
There is a lot of sun. an hour of sun can power the planet for an entire year. You've
seen those quotes. Mark and I had the fortunate opportunity to have a chat with Elon, not
too long ago. And he made the perfect quote there. He said, everything else already exists
because of the sun. what are we waiting for?
So I love of course the Google definition. You Google fossils. And of course what pops
up is an antiquated or stubbornly unchanging person or thing.
[laughter]
Well, there you have it. Thank you Google by the way.
[laughter] Because the truth rises to the top. Over the
last 100 years, trillions of dollars have been invested in sustaining a fossil fuel
infrastructure. Which 50 years ago was a great idea because we didn't have any other choices.
Today we probably should slow that down a little bit. More than, eventually we will
run out. This is, what we're talking about is an inevitability. Probably in our lifetime.
Most likely our children's. So in the history of mankind, we have like a second left.
[pause]
And of course, yeah, I had the opportunity actually to be in the White House last week.
And we discussed this topic and we sort of reminded everyone that this is in congressional
research that the last 50 years, about 400 billion dollars in subsidies and tax breaks
have been going to oil and gas. And still about four billion dollars a year. That's
a lot of money if you compare that to the minuscule portion that's being invested in
actually developing a renewable energy infrastructure.
This is very important to our clients. It's what our clients have faced in the last 30,
40 years. It's rising and volatile energy costs. Not good if you're trying to build
a sustainable business model.
So tell you a little client story here. I have two more stories and then we'll close
it. I think we're doing OK on time now. But a lot of our clients are agricultural. They
tend to be right-leaning. And a lot of them are in California, they're mostly located
in the valley. All the way from Oregon to the Mexican border. We have about 3,000 of
those clients.
And so two years ago, when I decided we needed to put a team on the ground, not just to invest
in utility scale solar projects, and multibillion dollar syndicated bank deals, but also wanted
to make renewable energy solutions relevant to our own client base. The people that have
been telling me "I'm worried about energy costs." So I started visiting, after I hired
some people, we started visiting the clients. And sit down. And this is Lakeside Dairy.
It's a dairy farm in Hanford, California. You'll see the size of the solar plant. It's
a one megawatt solar plant right next to the farm. Which is by the way on fallow land.
There's nothing else you could have done with that land.
And I sat down with them. And I started to talk renewable energy. And they looked at
me as if I'd literally just landed form a spaceship. And they said "Marco, Marco, Marco."
And his name is Manny and Mike Monteiro. Two brothers. Dairy farmers. And they said "Marco,
no, no, no, no, no, no. we know that you live in San Francisco and we know that you're all
green, and tree huggerish. But the green that we like, is this kinda green. This is the
green that we like." And I said "Fine. You can have both. You can have both." And I showed
them the charts. And I made them show me their energy bills. We spent an entire afternoon.
And they agreed. They said "Yeah, it's really frustrating the hell out of us. We need to
take control of these energy costs." And I said "Well, we bank a few big solar companies.
And why don't you talk to them? Because I think this can do something for you." Well,
this is what happened. They ended up investing. So creates jobs, spent capital, jobs that
needed desperately to be created. Because there's a lot of unemployment in the central
valley. And they invested in a four million dollar power plant. Solar power plant. And
they did a very simple math calculation. Which every one of our clients is doing right now.
They look at the acquisition costs of solar. You deduct the local incentives, tax rebates,
and whether that's an investment tax credit or what used to be the cash grant. And that
is a net cost for solar and you divide that by the expected amount of kilowatt hour of
output for the next 30 years 'cause these things last. And that resulting number is
your per kilowatt hour cost. And if that number compares favorably with the number that you
were paying last month, then it's an economically sensible decision.
And a lot of our clients are making this calculations and this is actually well above our expectations.
Is a constituency that you would expect natural resistance from, is adopting this at a very,
very fast rate. We have many other clients that have done the math, looked at it, and
said "Yeah, this gives us one, some energy independence" and not energy independence
being beholden by five big oil and gas companies or a utility telling you your rates are going
up. No, you're controlling your own power. It happens to be green. Clean. And they do
care about that. They have children. They don't want their children to have to suffer.
So they do care. And it helps them most importantly, it's fixed their energy costs. And this is
what this has done for our clients.
The other one is a really interesting example too. It's Castle Rock Vineyards. The owner
is Al Good. Al's a great guy. And he called us up and said "Listen, let's talk. I heard
from these other farmers that you've been doing this. What you've done." 'Cause farmers
talk. When you have a happy farmer, everyone will know. When you have an angry farmer,
they'll know sooner.
[laughter]
So we go to talk to Al. Al did the same thing. He's a table grape grower. And is storing
all of his table grapes in a very, very large cooling facility powered by a one megawatt
solar plant today. Now, when we did the numbers for him, it turned out that the per kilowatt
cost of solar actually wasn't as attractive compared to his traditional utility bill as
the other client example I gave you. Because this guy is on an ag meter, and if you're
on an ag meter you pay probably a little bit less than if you're on a regular commercial
meter. But he still did that. You know why? He's selling table grapes to very, very large
retailers. Retailers in UK, retailers in United States. And I, for, to respect the confidentiality,
I cannot disclose the names of those retailers. But what are those retailers doing? They are
ranking the sustainability of their supply chain. And according to the sustainability
of their supply chain, they're starting to rank and create a sort of preferred provider
list. And so this actually, he did this, because his clients wanted him to do it. And he's
selling more grapes today because of the decision that he made. Which was by the way a cost-neutral
decision.
So those I think are two examples of how the science can be turned into an actual product,
with a financing product around it. Which has been very very beneficial. Now, in closing,
what do we need? We need to make sure that the tremendous amount of subsidies that are
still going into a fossil fuel based industry start to be rerouted to sustain what is still
very much a developing industry. You can't just say there's a tax credit one year for
solar. And we take it away the next year. Because you can't build a business on that.
You need sustainable policy to continue to grow this sector. Which by the way deserves
equally as much, if not more support, from our political leaders as these other industries
have. And that's something we feel very strongly about. Something that we'll continue to help
advocate, and that's about all I have to say. So. Thank you very much.
[applause]
>>Female Presenter: So we're gonna invite the speakers back up and take questions. We
have a Googler moderator page at 'go wind water sun'.
>>male #1: Hi gentlemen. Thank you. Really interesting talk and congratulations on doing
really important and amazing work for all of us.
>>Marco Krapels: Thank you.
>>male #1: A little disclaimer, I guess. I worked in the solar field for a while before
I started at Google. So. [chuckles] I guess my question is, what work and collaboration
is happening on the finance side in terms of educating banks and investment partners
and tax equity providers to expect a rate of return that is maybe not in line with other
investments? Because I, from personal experience, I found that that was something that would
hold up a lot of projects. And I think it's a balance because obviously everybody's in
there to make money. And it's a business and that's ultimately a good thing. But to say
"here's our standard on, in oil and gas investment where maybe we're making 20 percent IRR. That's
not really reasonable on a solar facility. Or on a CSP." So.
>>Marco: Krapels: That question is for you Mark. [laughing]
>>Mark Ruffalo: I got this one.
[laughter]
>>Mark Ruffalo: It's my strong suit.
>>Marco Krapels: Tax equity all the way.
>>Mark Ruffalo: Yeah.
>>Marco Krapels: You know, I, it's a good question. I think that, I mean you know there
are a few big players in the tax equity investment world. And there were very few a few years
ago. Because in order to be able to use tax equity you need taxable income. And the banks
were losing a lot of money. Couple of years ago. And so there wasn't that much available.
It's starting to come back. I think the few big players that are out there. You know who
they are. They continue to attract good solid investments. The, I think the emergence of
impact funds, I think could help. Where people could allocate certain amount of their mutual
funds into impact funds. Those funds maybe invest in some that may have a benefit for
society. And may still have a healthy 10, 15 percent return. It may not be the 20 percent
return. But at least you can go to sleep and feel good about what you've done. So I think
there's' a place for that. And I do, you know, but again, back to, let's use your tax equity
example. If the 1603 cash grant were reinstated, we wouldn't be worried about tax equity. And
so I think this is really, really important is that we need to do what we can to let our
leaders know, "Guys, you can't just give it and then take it away." So, I do hope at some
point it comes back. Probably have to wait until after November.
>>male #1: yeah.
>>Marco Krapels: But it's, I don't know. Look at yourself. Would you accept a lower yield
for something that you feel is the right thing to do? And so I think there's an, if you look
at portfolio occasions, I think there is a place for that. I think there is. There is.
And it's easier for private institutions like ourselves to do that. Than publicly listed
institutions. Although there are a few publicly listed institutions that are under quite a
bit of pressure right now to do something right. So this is definitely the right time
to have that dialogue. Thank you.
>>male #1: yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
>>male #2: For Mark Jacobson. You made several references to the windmills themselves versus
the land between them. Are there particular things that's done with the surrounding land.
Like pasture grazing or--
>>Mark Jacobson: Yeah. So wind. Well wind turbines if they're on agricultural land.
They can be used for, the land can be used for dual purposes such as either grazing or
farmland. I mean, in fact in the Great Plains, there are many farmers. I mean, could be hundreds
at this point that take leases of, put wind turbines on their land and get paid royalties
for that. So the multiple, so it even on Altima Pass, you can see the green, we've preserved
the green foothills. You can see the wind turbines there but the grass is green and
there's grazing on that land as well. And so. And over the ocean, there's no land over
the ocean when you put it offshore. So there's no land use taken up at all.
>>male #2: Also you made a reference to what was like a seventh. Like all the wind in the
world overland providing, what, about seven times the [inaudible]
>>Mark Jacobson: Right. So if you take all the locations where the wind speed at 100
meters height is seven meters per second or faster. Which is the speed you need for cost-competitive
wind energy. If you limited the land are for those speeds, there are around seven times
more wind available over land outside Antarctica, that we need for all purposes. And that wind
comprises, there's, that whole wind that sever percent. Sorry that seven times the whole
wind is about 15 percent of all world land has that speed.
>>male #2: I was wondering if you do wind turbines on a larger scale. Is there like
a non linearity where one wind turbine kind of like slows down the wind that the next
one receives?
>>Mark Jacobson: Yeah. Yeah.
>>male #2: And if you scale them up you get diminishing returns?
>>Mark Jacobson: Yeah. In fact we've studied that in detail. In fact we just finished a
global study that we just, put wind turbines over the entire world. Every single, over
land, over water. To see, what's the saturation wind potential of the world. And it was about,
it was about 270 terawatts. Which is compared to 11 and a half terawatts that we need. But
over land it was close to that 75 terawatts or so. So that's when you, that's totally
putting wind turbines over all the land in the world. You get 75 terawatts. And we don't
even need nearly that much.
>>male #2: Right.
>>Mark Jacobson: We only need half of 11 and a half. Five point seven five terawatts.
>>male #2: Thank you.
>>male #3: Hi. One of the key selling points that you mentioned for these renewable sources
was basically the economic stability. As opposed to the price fluctuations in oil and coal.
And other fossil fuels. But I'm wondering, it seems like that stability once everything's
been built out. So what do you see, kind of the economic situation of that build out.
So it looks like for several of these sources we're going to have to ramp up production
by several orders of magnitude. And we're not gonna be the only ones who are trying
to get at these resources. I know a lot of them are overseas. So what's the risk. Kind
of, for disruption in prices or fluctuations in prices during this ramp up and build out
phase.
>>Marco Krapels: Can I give one answer from a business perspective? And then you should
probably talk about the larger scale. Is that OK? Yeah. So just, look at solar. Demand for
solar is increased substantially over the last few years. And the price of solar per
watt is dropped through the floor. So the increase in demand to ramp up is not necessarily
a negative for price. As long as, I mean, it's supply demand balances, right? And so,
I think as an example, solar from a business owner perspective who is seeking to acquire
this as a way to mitigate energy volatility, it's this increasing demand for solar has
caused a significant increase in supply. Which has actually driven the price down. But that's
just solar on a smaller scale. And on a sort of distributed basis, has done fairly well.
In meeting that ramped up demand.
>>Mark Jacobson: I'd say with the right policies in place that it doesn't have to be an issue.
Like in the US right now, the issue is that the wind energy production tax credit, like
it's expiring at the end of this year. So there's a lot of uncertainty in the wind markets
as a result. And so if there's more, if there were policies in place that could make these
more stable, even the solar credit is longer credit. That it's not an issue because especially
if there's also a mandate to go to large scale. Then we could plan things. It's critical to
plan these things ahead of time. If we just do it kind of randomly. Have a wind farm here,
solar farm here. Without any kind of real planning of this. Then you can run into supply
and demand issues. But if it's, really planned and everybody is on board and wants to do
this, then I think it's a lot easier and the policies can be put in place and they could
be all facilitated.
>>male #3: Right. I think one of the weak points I saw, one of the things I was wondering
about was batteries. You mentioned that there's, that we currently have what 800 million cars
in the world?
>>Mark Jacobson: Yeah.
>>male #3: And based on current battery technology there's something like three point three billion
cars worth of metals out there. But what happens when, you mentioned recycling, but what kind
of recycling program would we really need to have in order to be able to really use
all of that? And what kind of mining operations would we need to have in order to get at a
sufficient chunk?
>>Mark Jacobson: Well, a lot of the lithium is in Bolivian salt flats. So, there are these
huge. Well, I showed a picture of them. You can see it just goes on forever. These salt
flats. And they're only like a meter underground. They're not even under, they're under the
salt. They're just one meter down.
Like anything, well, the prices control the recycling rates. And so when you get shortages,
the prices go up. And then people start recycling to take advantage of that, and then hopefully
the prices stabilize. So it can be a market driven thing. In terms of the how much recycling
is done. But there are a lot more resources I'm sure out there as well. These are just
the known resources. And people only started recently looking. I mean just in the last
two years the USGS doubled their estimate of the reserve because they started looking.
And 'cause they weren't interested in it before. And so now, I think there are actually a lot
more than what I showed there.
>>male #4: You guys have a great story and American companies like this one are buying
into using wind and water to power our data centers, for example. I'm wondering what success
have you had in other countries that matter a lot,like India and China, in getting them
to adopt these technologies.
>>Mark Jacobson: Well, my experience. Certainly Germany is very far ahead in terms of adopting,
putting policies in place. Like the feed-in tariff. And really pushing for solar and wind.
They've decommissioned most of their nuclear. Japan just decommissioned 50 nuclear power
plants. China is pushing forward with lots of wind and solar. But they're also pushing
for lots of coal and they're, so they're kind of pushing everything forward. So I, you know
I think we have to set an example here. I mean we can't really control so much what
other countries are doing. Although there are a lot of people in other countries that
are trying to make a big difference, too. But I think if we set a good example here,
which we're capable of, I think they'll follow pretty quickly.
>>male #5: Hi guys. I know the focus of the presentation was on delivering enough energy
to meet our current needs. I was wondering if you could talk a little about where the
middle ground is between actually making technologies more efficient, changing the ways cities are
planned, and like people's habits on being more efficient.
>>Mark Jacobson: Yeah, I can say something on that. So I talked about one kind of efficiency
which is converting to electricity but there's the other kind, is energy efficiency in buildings.
Better city planning. It's definitely part of this, as well. I just didn't mention it
and I should have. But conservation. Of course. But there's also, there's a, we try to be
conservative in the study to assume that people weren't going to be conserving. That they
wanted to use their current amount of energy. And just to be conservative about it, 'cause
we don’t want our plan to rely on people conserving when it turns out they don't. And
also city planning. But if people do, and if things become more efficient, technologies
are more efficient,and cities are planned better, that would make it even easier. We'd
even hopefully need less energy than the 11 ½ terawatts. So that's definitely an important
component and I don't want to underestimate the benefit of it.
>>Marco Krapels: If I may provide a partial response as well. We need a wave of massive
energy awareness. On an individual level. 30 years ago people were told that smoking
was fine. Doctors were used in Marlboro and Camel advertising saying "I smoke, and so
should you." And so I bet you that most Californians don't know now that unless this is from your
own renewable source,that 41 percent of that light power is coming from gas powered fire
plants. Gas powered plants. Who are getting an increasing portion of that gas from the
fracking that's happening next to Mark's farm. And you know, I think you need an awareness.
And then you need the solutions. So I think when people realize that smoking is now bad
for them, is not good for them. They'll put the cigarettes down. They'll do something
else. I think we do need some,we need some awareness on an individual level. And engage
a much broader audience than I think the selective group of people who are taking a real interest
in this.
>>Female Presenter: So with that we're gonna bring it to a close. Thank you so much for
joining us today and we'll be posting this on YouTube soon. Thank you.
[applause]