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Language: en
foreign
what would it take to convert our
technology
and reach a once unimaginable goal we
are at a critical point in our history
right now zero carbon by 2050. so what
do we need to do to actually meet that
goal we'll need to move fast shall we
yeah let's go and in some ways we are
let's go fast we need our electricity
our power plants to be zero carbon so we
have to keep floating new ideas
there's enough offshore wind capacity to
power the country four times over and
giant batteries to keep everything still
going this is something that just a few
years ago was considered impossible
running our homes without lighting a
flame we want to turn buildings into
Teslas we want to make them smart green
healthy all-electric no technological
breakthroughs required we just have to
get down to business right away chasing
carbon zero right now on Nova
[Music]
thank you
we're departing late on a long journey
our destination is 2050.
scientists say that's the deadline for
putting the brakes on greenhouse gas
emissions
it is arguably the most important
challenge Humanity has ever faced
and that is why I want to understand how
we'll get there
the Brian and I've been a reporter on
the climate beat for 30 years a born
witness to it all
dead coral reefs melting ice
Rising Seas catastrophic storms the main
evacuation Center in New Orleans is the
Superdome epic wildfires I've watched
this slow motion train wreck and so have
you
and now the question is can we stop what
we started at the dawn of the Industrial
Age before it's too late
do that as much as we can we need to
stop burning things stop emitting
greenhouse gases into our atmosphere or
we will have made our planet a very
uncomfortable place to live
but how to avoid that
what is the road to carbon zero
it's a long trip
but it's not beyond our range
let's start in Detroit
the Motor City
my hometown
a City built on the power utility and
reliability of internal combustion is
now embarking on a New Journey
welcome to the Electric Motor City it's
my first stop because on the road to
zero I'm gonna need a ride I want to
test drive with you this will be a
special ride in the lightning let's go
with Lightning's mama so to speak right
sounds good
I met Linda Zhang at the Ford Rouge
Center West of downtown she is the chief
engineer for the all-electric Ford F-150
shall we yeah let's go
the truck they call the lightning let's
go fast I gotta tell you never get tired
of that right that's always a fun and
smooth acceleration what is the official
zero to 60 anyway it's just under four
seconds it's pretty exciting that torque
is really instant you step on it and you
go electric motors don't just cut out
tailpipe emissions from Vehicles they're
also much more efficient than internal
combustion engines at converting energy
into motion 85 to 90 percent as opposed
to about 40 percent and the acceleration
is lightning fast the propulsion is
definitely there so it's almost like a
shame if you don't use it demand is
strong
so how often are you seeing your
vehicles on the road these days it's
still a small percentage right
um yeah there's definitely
um more and more on the road and I
always love seeing them on the road I
have to be honest with you it's like
seeing
um
seeing you know one of my kids off
the F-150 is a Ford Mainstay a vehicle
favored by loyal owners who use it for
work
did you feel like it was a risky thing
to Electrify something as iconic as an
F-150 yeah yeah absolutely this was a
big risk for us but at the same time it
came with big rewards you know being
able to take this product that is
already America's favorite truck but
electrifying it really helps bring this
into the light for for customers that
didn't know much about electrification
we're now taking this electrification
concept and really making it a mass
adoption
that's happening right now
in the U.S more than five percent of new
cars now sold are all electric
that may not seem like much but it is a
marketing Milestone the line between
novelty and mass adoption
but internal combustion cars stay on the
road for 14 years on average
teaching zero tailpipe emissions from
Cars and Trucks will take some time
[Music]
so we're headed towards net zero but we
are on the local train need to hop over
to the express
Melissa Lott is an engineer focused on
energy so I take the energy used in this
train let's just really focus little
plastic paper glass in the windows
everywhere she looks she sees embedded
carbon so I could probably figure out
the carbon footprint it's a superpower
20 people average per car or is it an
obsession I see energy and everything
I'm looking at
I actually enjoy it and I don't even
notice it that much I really it's just
something that I'm running kind of in
the background all the time
since it turns out this Obsession
actually comes in handy in my line of
work good to see you I'm the director of
research at the center on global energy
policy here at Columbia University
and that's where I met her I figured she
can help me understand where we are in
the chase to carbon zero
so when we look at where our emissions
come from today we see a couple of big
wedges on this pie
there are three big nearly equal pieces
of the pie
first one is transportation
Transportation Planes Trains automobiles
trucks and ships the next wedge on this
pie is going to be our electric power
our power plants electric power about 60
percent is still generated with fossil
fuels after that we're looking at
industry so how we create all the things
that we use day to day
industry manufacturing and construction
and two smaller pieces remain
the rest of this pie is actually our
building so the homes we live in and the
offices we work in and then also our
agricultural system so how we produce
food
these wedges represent total greenhouse
gas emissions the U.S is releasing into
the atmosphere more than 6 billion
metric tons a year what would be better
the idea is called Net Zero meaning
first we reduce our carbon output as far
as we can
then for the most stubborn sources
develop techniques to capture and store
the carbon netting zero
most experts agree it's really the only
way to avoid a worsening climate
disaster the U.S goal is to get halfway
to Net Zero by 2030 and here's a
surprise as of 2023 we are further down
the road than I thought
compared to 2005 which is our Baseline
we've already reduced emissions by about
18 percent and thanks to cheap solar
cheap wind cheap natural gas replacing
coal and cheap storage we're working our
way towards 25 reduction
getting the rest of the way to zero
won't be easy the pie gives us an idea
of how we can make some Headway but
where do we start close to home
buildings
buildings represent 13 of total
emissions in this country we look at
buildings overall there's a couple
things we can do we can move ahead with
electrifying our buildings with taking
natural gas out of our buildings and
replacing it with other Technologies we
have for cooking for heating and cooling
our air for heating our water
so what's the best alternative
all electric homes
on rooftops all over New York City there
is evidence that electricity is gaining
currency
in 2022 Americans bought more heat pumps
than gas furnaces
landlord Lincoln Echols was thinking
about his son Ace when he made the
decision
we've built an infrastructure based on
oil gas burning things that's what we're
used to but it doesn't have to be that
way
it's the third iteration for the early
20th century building he owns in Crown
Heights Brooklyn
when it was built they burned coal in a
boiler to stay warm now there's a heat
pump for each of the 14 units
heat pumps work not by creating heat but
by moving it from one place to another
inside there's a fluid called
refrigerant that boils at 40 degrees
below zero fahrenheit
as long as it is warmer than -40 outside
the refrigerant picks up heat from Air
as it becomes a gas
it flows into an electric compressor
where it is put under pressure adding
more warmth to the gas
the warm gas flows into the room unit
as it heats the space the gas itself
condenses back into a liquid now the
liquid travels back out flowing through
a valve that lowers the pressure and
thus the temperature
and the cycle starts all over again
so in the winter it can pump heat inside
and in the summer the process is
reversed to pump heat outside cooling
the room
in Lincoln's building each unit has its
own wireless thermostat
easy enough for his son to operate
Lincoln hopes Ace will be the landlord
here someday
so you think when Ace is your age
everything around us here will be
electric definitely these two behind us
are green these developments over here
they're green if they could do my
building they could do every building on
the Block
but heat pumps are not cheap and for us
to reach Net Zero nearly every building
will need to make the transition
so how can this technology become
accessible to everyone
that is precisely the goal for Donnell
Baird if we can do one building we can
do a whole block of buildings and if we
can do a block of buildings we can do a
whole city he is the CEO of a startup
called block power block bar wants to
turn buildings into Teslas we want to
make them smart green healthy all
electric
founded in 2014 block power is making it
more affordable for landlords to make
the switch
Lincoln Echols old building is one of
about 2 000 conversions the company says
it has spearheaded so far
we have everything that we need to Green
all the buildings now that's why it's so
important that we focus on buildings
because we don't need any more
Innovation yeah when there is some data
Danelle was able to mix the pressing
needs of a landlord with a bad boiler
and a planet boiling over into something
attractive to Wall Street investors
it's a company committed to executing
the conversion at scale bundling a lot
of projects together to lower the cost
and lower the risk we show up and we say
look we've got capital from Goldman
Sachs and Microsoft to finance moving
you to a functioning better system and
it costs you nothing as a matter of fact
you're going to save money because the
payment that you make to us over 15
years is going to be less than what you
would pay to the oil company or to the
gas company as an alternative the
arithmetic relies on incentives from the
government and assumptions that the cost
of heat pump manufacturing and
installation will decline
for block power the goal and the risks
are big
Lincoln Echols says it's working for him
they just made it work at the end of the
day it was a lot of back and forth but
it can be done it's not an impossible
task we're
Powers mission is altruistic but it is
also a startup hoping to make a profit
it makes a percentage on financing
charges fees to manage electrification
projects and eventually hopes to market
the very heat pumps it installs as
producers of carbon credits
this is capitalism deciding that there
are trillion dollar companies to be made
addressing the climate crisis that
entrepreneurs who figure it out are
going to make money and there's going to
be so much money to be made by bringing
those Solutions into the economy that we
are going to make our Venture Capital
returns and you can choose to do
business and make profits in a sector
and in a way that helps people
spoken like the Columbia business school
grad that he is that combined with his
roots in Bedford Stuyvesant are what
gave him the inspiration for black power
the furnace in his building never worked
ultimately when got really cold we'd
have to heat our apartment with our oven
we would turn on the gas oven turn on
the the burner on top of the oven open
up the oven door to let the heat into
the apartment I really empathize with a
lot of our customers because I I know
how uncomfortable it is to be cold and
how difficult it is to like sleep
through the night when you're freezing
the road to Zero by definition must pass
through neighborhoods like this
there isn't going to be a Green
Revolution in America without working
class and poor people so there must be a
financial solution that includes them
in New York City buildings account for
around 70 percent of greenhouse gas
emissions if you include electricity
the city is aiming for carbon neutrality
by 2050 and there are several laws
designed to make that happen
one eliminates the burning of fossil
fuels in all new buildings by 2027. but
there is an important asterisk the
city's commercial kitchens are exempt
here gas stoves and ovens dominate
so the biggest polluter in these
buildings are the kitchens
so why would you exempt the biggest
polluters
Chef Chris Galarza has years of
experience working in kitchens at
popular high-end restaurants
in this case art has found a recipe for
imitating life
whether it's Hell's Kitchen or the bear
Hollywood has made it clear to all of us
if you can't take the heat you really
should get out of the kitchen
what you notice is as soon as you open
the door going from say the dining room
to the kitchen is this wall of heat
I've looked down on my thermometer in my
chef coat and it would reach 135 degrees
Fahrenheit so I can't tell you how many
times that after a rush we would be
rushing to the bathroom to throw up
the main ingredient of natural gas is
methane and research shows burning it in
a kitchen can be harmful to human health
because it triggers a reaction between
nitrogen and oxygen which creates nitric
oxide and nitrogen dioxide pollutants
collectively known as Knox gases
they can cause all sorts of
cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses
including asthma
the no gas alternative looks and feels
very different it's lunchtime at Chatham
University's Eden Hall campus near
Pittsburgh what I need is the cooks tour
literally okay the kitchen here is quiet
cool and all electric this is our four
burner range like there's two of them
this is the Workhorse of the kitchen
this is now the Tilt Skillet also
induction two Steamers two electric
convection oven triple deck oven with
two built-in proofers for breads pizzas
pastries and things like that Chris was
the executive chef here in 2016 when the
school opened this dining hall
the university built the Eden Hall
campus as a showcase for Sustainable
Solutions so there's not a single
single the cooktops here use a
technology called induction
I had my own vices as well and it wasn't
until I experienced induction cooking
that I became a fan
traditional electric stoves create Heat
by simply resisting the electric current
but newer induction cooktops use
electricity to create a magnetic field
the electrons inside pots and pans that
contain iron try to align with the
magnet vibrating tens of thousands of
times per second creating friction and
heat
the result is better Energy Efficiency
faster cooking and no combustion fumes
they have caught on in commercial
kitchens in Europe and Asia but in the
U.S chefs are skeptical it's the rest of
the world is looking at us going what
are you complaining about because
effectively we're arguing about how to
get a piece of metal hot so we can cook
the fossil fuel industry has done a good
job at inducing resistance cooking with
gas cooking with gas we all remember the
rap in the 80s we all cook better when
cooking with gas it's cringe-worthy
cooking with gas cooking with gas we all
cook better when we're cooking with gas
there's a lot to unpack there I cook
with gas because the cost is much less
than electricity but you know what that
was effective what was said in there
still gets said today cooking with gas
is cheaper it's more precise all these
things which are just not true
today Chris is an independent consultant
who travels the country promoting
induction in commercial kitchens he gave
me a quick demonstration
okay so this has been in the freezer
correct so this is just to show how
quickly things come up to Temp so we're
going to dump this
oh yeah it's cold
so just getting the water off you can
tell things are hot oh
how hot
all right that was in a matter of what
seconds yeah right and so there's no
more preheating it's just straight hot
and it doesn't take long right shrimp
got some good color on it add our sauce
and then you go
that was dinner in about two minutes in
a fraction of the time and here's the
beautiful thing we just did all of that
not a sweat on you nothing gets hot
except for the pan itself
so it's time for us to evolve to get
together and say what's better for our
world and cooking with a flame is not
dousing the Home Fires will take a lot
longer than that stir fry for sure
when we look at the buildings that will
be here in 2050 most of them are already
built today retrofitting this building
is not going to be cheap and it's going
to take a lot of work and it's going to
be disruptive but what we can do in the
next seven years is set up our building
codes and our regulations that we can
retrofit and build buildings in a way
that is net zero compliant from day one
when it is burned the methane in natural
gas is converted to carbon dioxide
that's problem enough but unburned
methane is an even greater concern
it doesn't last as long in the
atmosphere as carbon dioxide but over 20
years methane traps about 80 times more
heat than CO2
so methane is currently responsible for
nearly a third of human-caused global
warming
so when we look at overall greenhouse
gas emissions methane is a big player
and it's also something that we can
address right away it's one of these
gases where the more and more we look at
it we realize that a ton of it is just
being wasted thrown into the air
on a rooftop observatory in West Harlem
roshin command an assistant professor in
Earth and environmental Sciences at
Columbia is using a suite of sensors to
measure air quality
the Mauna Kea of New York right The
Observatory we are at the advanced
science research center of the city
University of New York
do you try to make excuses to come here
on nice days to check the gear it's
usually on bad pollution days when we
get dragged here but yes it's lovely to
be here
it's early and chimneys in Harlem are
billowing puffs of proof the city that
never sleeps is in fact waking up
as you look out over the city what are
you looking for on a day like today you
can kind of see a lot of chimneys or you
can see the smoke coming from chimneys
we did and what we've been trying to
figure out is where is all the methane
coming from and is it from these
chimneys it's not just Gas Appliances
methane leaks from wastewater treatment
facilities power plants and landfills
one of the challenges you face why is it
so difficult there's so much of it it
could be a mixture of there's a
wastewater treatment plant that has a
power plant with natural gas as part of
it and then between there and here are a
whole bunch of boilers so everything is
just mashed together so much that that's
what we spend our time trying to figure
out is how to pull all that apart how
does it look today scientists are
measuring more than twice as much
methane as the EPA can account for
they've got a pretty good throughput
they're about a liter a minute each so
we're either missing a sector or we're
getting the wrong numbers for certain
things and that's what I've been working
on is to try and make sure do we have
the right number
the sensor technology has dramatically
improved in the past few years making
the devices she uses much more sensitive
and more portable now we can just put
this thing in
K around and get really really
easy and her team carry sensors chasing
zero on foot
[Music]
about 2 000 miles away in Texas there is
another kind of methane hunt underway
this is the Permian Basin the largest
oil field in America about 86 000 square
miles spanning Texas and New Mexico
there are tens of thousands of oil wells
here and there is no mystery where the
methane is coming from
this is happening because they developed
the
technology to Frack oil and gas from
shale
if they hadn't done that
we would have converted to clean energy
a long time ago
Sharon Wilson is an environmental
Advocate who is bearing witness to an
ongoing greenhouse gas disaster in the
Permian Basin
pressure it
ches Brew of hydrocarbon gases including
methane
in the U.S oil and natural gas
production and distribution is the
largest industrial source of methane
emissions and the Permian may be the
largest methane emitting oil and gas
Basin in the country
and we call this a climate bomb the
industry cannot stop this pollution
methane is a volatile gas
it will not stay inside a closed
unpressurized system and so you have to
release it or it will blow the equipment
up
methane is invisible and odorless
working with the non-profit Earthworks
Sharon is using a hundred thousand
dollar camera that gives her superpower
Vision I'm going to get one more video
the camera records the spectral
signature of hydrocarbons and volatile
organic compounds
so what looks like this invisible light
becomes this in Sharon's viewfinder
I am seeing a a lot of methane blasting
out from that flare that is barely lit
unfortunately this is not unusual
there's just way too much methane
even though methane is the primary
ingredient of natural gas here in the
Permian Basin it's mostly considered
waste
to reduce methane emissions operators
are supposed to burn it in flare Stacks
like this this converts methane CH4 into
CO2 reducing its impact on the climate
crisis
but frequently the flare Stacks flicker
falter or fail
cracking down on unlit flares and
enabling Innovative cost-effective leak
detection systems are the cornerstones
of a new EPA rule aimed at curbing
methane emissions
what in your view is the solution the
best available control technology for
methane is to keep it in the ground
never never drill that hole in the first
place because once you drill that hole
that's where it all starts
but is it practical to hit the brakes on
oil and gas production
if we're out of gas can we reach the
finish line
even in a net zero world we will
probably use some amount of oil and gas
it will certainly be less than today but
we can't go from one to zero and all of
a sudden to shut it all off
while we need gas and oil for now
eventually we must eliminate burning as
much as possible and the easiest way to
do that is to take fossil fuels out of
power plants and off the grid
the question is how are we going to get
those emissions off the board so today
we produce a little over a third of our
electricity using zero carbon resources
we want to get that number up by 2030 to
75 what we're going to see is explosive
growth in both wind and solar
those are the big ones that are driving
down emissions
there are now more than 70 thousand
utility size wind turbines on U.S soil
enough to power about 39 million homes
but the best places to put the wind
farms are often far from the population
centers that use the electricity
this is helping Drive wind power
offshore Beyond the Horizon the turbines
connected to the power grid with
submerged cables
the federal government is auctioning
leases for 30 gigawatts of offshore wind
energy by 2030 and 15 gigawatts of
floating offshore Wind by 2035.
the promised electricity should be
enough to power roughly 15 million homes
floating wind is a relatively new idea
that opens up Waters deeper than about
200 feet which is the limit for turbines
fixed to the bottom
this technology appears ripe for rapid
growth
it's really a big physics experiment
what you try to do is try to get as much
valuable data as you can at a small
scale is it 500 here it's maybe 50 year
Habib dogger is executive director of
the University of Maine's Advanced
structures and composite Center
he and his team are deploying a unique
wind and wave simulator to test a scale
model of a floating Hull for wind
turbines called volternis
we have load cells on the very top and
bottom of the tower that tell us how
much stress the tower is really seeing
at that time
the base of the full-size version will
be made of concrete
and inside some of the hulls are
counterweights attached to Springs and
actuators they are designed to negate
the motion of the Rolling sea you want
to make sure it doesn't move too much so
we're trying to minimize the Motions at
the turbine level and we're trying to
reduce the pitch of the hole so it
doesn't pitch too much over
in 2013 they moored a floating 20
kilowatt 1 8 scale model offshore for
more than a year it got hammered during
the long main winter but never tilted
more than five degrees
Habib hopes to have a bigger 11 megawatt
turbine floating in the next few years
so you want to make it lighter you want
to make it easier to build so it's not
just about designing something and
making sure it works you got to figure
out how to build it how to build it in
an automated fashion we built the lab to
try to answer those questions
[Music]
the offshore floating wind is
multi-faceted the turbines are built on
Shore reducing construction cost and
environmental impact they can be towed
to wherever the wind is more consistent
but the water too deep for fixed bottom
installations
you can go 20 or 30 or 40 miles offshore
you can't do that with fixed bottom
winds you can put them in places where
people can't see them and you can design
them to put them in places where you
minimize the impact on the environment
the birds the bats and the fisheries and
the mammals it gives you a lot more
places to work with
floating offshore turbines also make it
possible to develop wind energy on the
west coast of the us where the waters
are precipitously deeper within 50 miles
of the U.S coasts both east and west
coast there's enough offshore wind
capacity theoretically to power the
country four times over
but even if there is in fact enough wind
it alone won't be enough
[Music]
so when I think about a zero carbon grid
and how we get to zero carbon
electricity I think of it as a team
sport you need a lot of different types
of Technologies all playing together if
you want to win the game so you're going
to have variable Renewables you're going
to have wind and solar so when they're
around they're cheap that's great but
they fade sometimes the wind goes away
the sun sets so you complement them with
other team members like energy storage
so how best to give electricity some
shelf life
batteries
the challenge is making them big enough
and cheap enough to work at scale
yet Ming Chang is a professor in the
department of Material Science and
Engineering at MIT and co-founder of a
company called form energy he's aiming
to eliminate some of the gaps in energy
availability when the weather isn't
right for solar or wind
but you see are gaps of several days
we're now able to tackle those multi-day
intervals that's 100 hour intervals and
I want to point out that this is
something that just a few years ago was
considered impossible
for the past 30 years researchers have
focused on lithium-ion battery
technology the chemistry enables a high
energy density powerful for their size
and weight they are perfect for laptops
phones and cars but they're not well
suited for multi-day storage on the grid
to compete with a natural gas power
plant a hundred hour battery pack must
cost no more than twenty dollars per
kilowatt hour
but if we take a Lithium-Ion battery
pack the cost of that pack today is
about two hundred dollars per kilowatt
hour in order to do multi-day storage we
have to have batteries that cost about
one tenth or less than that of today's
lithium-ion battery packs
so they found a novel way to harness the
energy released when air interacts with
iron
it's the power of rust that's right rust
it's called an iron air battery
iron air batteries were you know first
studied back in the 60s at that time no
one saw a practical application for a
very cheap very heavy battery the grid
may be the problem this solution was
waiting for
you're ever still free
and iron is one of the most widely
produced lowest cost materials in the
world so the iron air battery is the
lowest cost rechargeable battery
chemistry that we know of today the
battery contains an iron metal anode and
an air breathing cathode they sit in an
electrolyte solution a permeable
separator between them when the iron is
exposed to the oxygen in air it triggers
a chemical process called oxidation
we call this rust that oxidation process
releases electrons that are separated
and sent to the Grid electricity when
the demand exceeds renewable production
when there is Excess power from wind or
solar the process is reversed electrons
flow in releasing the oxygen causing the
iron to unrust
we put in electricity we provide
electrons to that iron electrode and
turn it back into iron metal
that's why we refer to the you know Iron
air battery as the rusting and unrusting
of iron I carried out in a very
intestinal and deliberate way so these
are full-scale iron air batteries form
energy co-founder and chief technology
officer Billy Woodford there are oxygen
bubbles showed me what the batteries
look like and these have got four of
those iron anodes inside of them he says
their iron air batteries are working
just fine in the lab but they haven't
been tried on the grid yet we need to
scale up the manufacturing of this and
really build the next generation of
larger systems and deploy them and that
really brings us to utility scaled
systems they plan on building their rust
batteries in the Rust Belt where the
infrastructure and transportation
Network are already tailor-made for it
the first plant will be built beside the
Ohio river in Weirton West Virginia
750 good paying jobs promised in a place
of broken promises
and so this will you know create real
manufacturing jobs in parts of the
country that have seen a great loss of
jobs from you know traditional
Industries and may not have seen
themselves as part of the screening
Revolution
so the road to zero will pass through an
old steel town in the heart of coal
country now there's some irony
batteries are just one storage idea
there are many other Technologies in
development globally the point of energy
storage is saying you know what I can
produce electricity right now but I
don't need it well let me hold on to it
let me put it in a savings account and
cash it out later and then you
complement those Technologies with firm
dispatchable power which is a nerdy way
of saying something that's around 24 7
365. this is things like big Hydro power
plants and it's things like nuclear
power and geothermal power power plants
that are around when our wind and our
solar and our batteries aren't quite
enough to keep the lights on and prices
low
experts say that current nuclear and
hydroelectric power are important energy
sources to maintain but are impractical
to grow much in time to reach our 2030
goal
geothermal may be a different story
welcome to California's Salton Sea one
of the largest geothermal fields in the
world
it's renewable carbon free and it's
always on so exploring new ways to tap
into this resource is now a very hot
field
geothermal is the residual heat left
over from the formation of the planet
and from the decay of radioactive
particles deep below the Earth's surface
and a geothermal electric power plant
they drill down far enough to reach very
hot water a source of steam to generate
power
another Well injects the water back into
the ground
historically geothermal power has only
been practical in seismically active
places like this where fault lines allow
lots of hot water to rise relatively
close to the surface
elsewhere adequate heat is found at much
greater depth so that's going down ten
thousand feet ten thousand feet right
it's not just we drill the well and
we're done we have to know what's going
on under the ground you want to listen
to the system you want to have a talk to
you
Cornell University engineer Jeff tester
is pushing new ways to harness
geothermal heat to generate electricity
if we could drop the costs of drilling
to a very very low value and we could
use our knowledge of the subsurface in a
way where we can engineer systems
effectively I think we certainly could
do it we're not there yet though
Jeff tester has led the charge
developing something called enhanced
geothermal systems or EGS
the idea drill two deep Wells into hot
rock if the rock is not naturally
permeable fracture it in between to
create an artificial Reservoir and then
pump water into the cracks it returns to
the surface hot enough to generate
electricity
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if the technique proves out it could
make geothermal power generation
possible almost anywhere but the but the
cost of drilling must drop dramatically
and once again an ironic twist the Shale
fracking boom responsible for producing
so much oil and gas may have put this
zero emissions technology Within Reach
if we can crack the nut on this low
temperature geothermal we can put it
anywhere
petroleum engineer Cindy Taff is a
36-year veteran of the oil business
now she is CEO of houston-based sage Geo
systems
near McAllen Texas they're drilling down
on a geothermal concept that they hope
will close the business case on EGS
that's the most important part is we
have to get it cost effective to wind
and solar
conventional geothermal power plants
must Harvest underground water between
300 and 700 degrees Fahrenheit
Cindy says Sage's design is targeting
rock that is 30 percent cooler
feature this small desk size turbine
instead of spinning the blades with
steam from water it uses carbon dioxide
under pressure inside a closed loop
in a separate pipe water is pumped into
fractured cracks in the Rock now hot the
water flows into a heat exchanger
raising the temperature of the CO2 at
around 88 degrees Fahrenheit less than
half the heat required to boil water the
CO2 can become super critical meaning it
has properties of both a gas and a
liquid and it is able to spin a high RPM
turbine
what we're excited about with this
supercritical CO2 turbine is that it is
double the efficiency of converting that
heat to electricity
Sage envisions an array of about 18
Wells spaced roughly 10 feet apart
combined able to produce more than 50
megawatts
if it works as they hope enough to power
more than 40 000 homes
what we're trying to do is turn
geothermal from an art into a science
one of Sage's Partners lives nearby
being a good Steward of the land is uh
is making sure that the land is
sustainable
James McAllen is the manager of land his
family has owned since 1791.
there's a lot of things around me every
day built by my ancestors by my dad by
my grandfather fences that were built by
my great grandfather so there's little
reminders everywhere of people that have
come before me
he may be steeped in family history
but James is a forward-thinking steward
of their land
he has installed a solar array to sell
electricity back to the grid and now
Sage is poised to drill Wells on his
property
you have to look forward because if you
don't look forward you're not going to
have this for very long yeah
so that and that's what this geothermal
Project's all about is looking forward
I think it's exciting that we're getting
into something that I think is now the
next level
um I think it's a game changer
so there's two things going on with
power that we need to make sure we
understand the first is as we go to Net
Zero we need our electricity our power
plants to be zero carbon the second is
we're going to need more of them because
in our homes our cars a lot of the
economy we're going to use more
electricity so we need more electricity
and we need it all to be clean at the
same time so if we have all these
Technologies on the field together we
get affordable reliable zero carbon
power if we take any one of these
different teammates off the field we
won't win the game we end up with
unaffordable or unreliable power
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many of the Technologies to get us to
net zero emissions by 2050 are already
here
and many more are well along in their
development
but as I discovered on the road with the
Ford Lightning there are still some
speed bumps left to navigate
the Technology's existence is only half
the battle
you have to strategize when you're doing
a long trip with an electric vehicle it
makes you
um think a little more about your trip
than you would otherwise
Ford loaned me the truck for a week-long
test drive
producer will twoman and I decided to
stress test the EV charging Network so
we drove the lightning from the Boston
area to Oro domain to film that floating
wind turbine prototype Ford promotes the
truck as a backup power supply at home
but on the road getting electricity into
the vehicle quickly can be a challenge
we are headed for Portland
which will get us there right around 6
p.m good time to get a bite there's a
fast charger there
we slog through some traffic
arrived at the fast charger plugged in
and went to dinner
return 90 minutes later
the fast charger was set to turn off
after one hour we needed more than an
hour as it turns out
we currently have 123 miles of range and
we have 133 miles to go
we re-upped plugged in and waited a
watched pot of electrons we've been
charging now for 30 minutes we have
increased our range by uh 33 miles so
about a mile a minute nothing fast about
this fast charger
a dozen unused Tesla superchargers
across the lot incompatible with the
lightning seem to gloat in silence
we resumed our journey with a promise of
153 miles of range
few hours and 133 miles later
we arrived at the only fast charger I
could find in Bangor at a car dealership
it was about 11 pm we had only about 20
miles of range remaining and we were in
no mood for this
okay so it says cash only it's the right
kind of charger let's see if I
put a card in the mix here if it would
do anything for me
[Applause]
swipe error oh boy
so uh
I think we're seeing the problem here
aren't we
Plan B a charger at another car
dealership nearby so let's pull in see
what this looks like
oh no
not in service come on
looks like it's brand new something
supposedly there was another one here
supposedly
and it too is looks like it's brand new
and still not online so we've got two
Chargers coming
to a dealership near you soon
again
not much help to us now with 18 miles of
range
at 11 23 at night
plan C a slow charger a few miles away
at a main Department of Transportation
maintenance yard hopefully this thing
works let's pop this vehicle in
and let's make sure we're charging
yes we are we are charging
we stopped to charge eight times the
nearly 500 Mile round trip took twice as
long as it would have in an internal
combustion vehicle
and there were a lot of mental
gymnastics
kilowatts
30 miles and change
kilowatt hour I feel like we've learned
about nine lessons in the last 24 hours
about how not to do this
since 2010 Americans have bought about
three and a quarter million plug-in
hybrid and Battery electric vehicles the
government goal by 2030 half of new cars
sold will be electric so the charging
infrastructure will need to grow fast to
keep up across the country right now
there are more than a hundred and thirty
thousand publicly available EV Chargers
the 2030 goal a half million public
Chargers a nearly four-fold increase
engineers and entrepreneurs are seeing
opportunities
we found one company that is installing
Chargers on utility poles
just one clean tech Innovation amid
thousands that are bubbling up with
possible solutions these are all
entirely new industries that are being
created and you know investors want to
be part of this new Industrial
Revolution as it were the green
Industrial Revolution
a green Industrial Revolution it's a
reminder that this is how we evolve
Humanity has made big energy transitions
before from wood to Coal to oil
and oil is just what's familiar now
is it natural to like dig up dead
dinosaurs and burn them in our kitchen
in 2022 this is an ancient Mesopotamia
there's better ways to cook there's
better ways to heat up hot water and
provide heating and air conditioning to
our homes
the transition from fossil fuels to
Renewables is all but inevitable after
all the wells will go dry one day if we
keep pumping and do we really have that
luxury climate change is not a crisis
for the planet it's a crisis for us as
human beings it's an existential crisis
because if we don't do something with
the Earth's just going to shake us off
like fleas and move on
but change can be frightening when you
are in the throes of it and fear can
beget apathy in the absence of good
leaders if we stop the methane very
quickly it can make a huge dent it's the
low-hanging fruit in solving the climate
problem the only thing we lack is the
political will
and yet there are some signs of a course
correction
the U.S now has climate and
infrastructure laws that set things in
motion
but do we need to go faster
we don't have a sense of urgency yet
enough to do this when we had to fight
in World War II there was no question
things were going to happen quickly
I think we just have to get down to
business right away
a route to zero is clearly marked first
focus on Energy Efficiency and then plug
as many things as possible into the grid
while pulling fossil fuels Off the Grid
and adding zero carbon power production
as fast as we can it'll get us close to
50 percent we hope it'll get us all the
way to 50 by 2030 but it'll put us on
the pathway we need to be on to get to
Net Zero by 2050.
no breakthroughs required for that at
the same time push for the innovations
that can tackle the thorniest problems
like industry
Aviation shipping and agriculture by
2050. do I know that we're going to get
to 50 reduction by 2030 no I think it's
going to be close
we could go overshoot it if a couple
things go right
we might undershoot it but when I look
back at what we thought we'd be doing by
this time we're so much further along
the road this all gives me cause for a
lot of optimism
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thank you
foreign
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[Applause]
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