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