WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.720 --> 00:00:06.980 This session of the 2013 Adelaide Festival of Ideas was recorded by Radio Adelaide, 2 00:00:07.020 --> 00:00:10.500 through the support of the Bar Smith Library, University of Adelaide, 3 00:00:10.620 --> 00:00:14.480 the University of South Australia Library and Flinders University Library. 4 00:00:15.260 --> 00:00:17.900 Hi everyone, welcome to the Freemasons Hall. 5 00:00:18.080 --> 00:00:21.760 I hope everyone knows their secret handshake and have got their apron ready. 6 00:00:21.860 --> 00:00:28.520 It's great to be here. I'm Tim Harcourt and I'm your chair for the Electric Planet this afternoon. 7 00:00:28.520 --> 00:00:33.560 Now, I'm the airport economist and I also teach at the University of New South Wales, 8 00:00:33.640 --> 00:00:38.520 but most importantly I work for the Premier of South Australia as his advisor for international engagement, 9 00:00:38.700 --> 00:00:44.420 so it's great to be back in my hometown of Adelaide and it's good that they let me back in at the border. 10 00:00:44.500 --> 00:00:45.300 I'm really pleased about that. 11 00:00:45.980 --> 00:00:53.720 I've got the great honour to introduce a very distinguished Australian, Professor Alan Finkel AM. 12 00:00:54.120 --> 00:00:58.200 Now, I had a really good look at Alan's... 13 00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:03.520 CV this morning and I was going to hire a forklift truck to bring it over here 14 00:01:03.520 --> 00:01:09.300 because he's got an incredibly diverse career of great achievement and great accomplishment. 15 00:01:09.900 --> 00:01:11.440 He's had a very varied career. 16 00:01:11.880 --> 00:01:15.220 He started in life wanting to be a doctor. 17 00:01:15.860 --> 00:01:20.960 You know, in our family you're either a doctor or a lawyer and if you can't stand the sight of blood you become a lawyer. 18 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:27.780 And he was thinking about being a doctor and he actually found out that he loved engineering and maths and physics 19 00:01:27.780 --> 00:01:35.380 and he had a very varied academic career, graduating with a PhD at Monash University in 1981. 20 00:01:35.500 --> 00:01:40.220 Despite his young looks, he got a PhD in 1981 from Monash University. 21 00:01:40.380 --> 00:01:43.080 He followed his supervisor to the ANU. 22 00:01:43.140 --> 00:01:50.000 He moved from engineering into neuroscience and then ended up living in the United States with his wife Elizabeth. 23 00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:57.240 And not only did he make great breakthroughs in terms of science, but he also found out that he was an accidental entrepreneur. 24 00:01:57.780 --> 00:02:01.760 And started up, I was going to say Cosmo magazine, but it's actually Cosmos. 25 00:02:01.940 --> 00:02:07.360 It's a start-up magazine that's now restarted and is now going to be internationally launched. 26 00:02:07.560 --> 00:02:13.200 And also the Stoll Education Company that provides software technology. 27 00:02:13.540 --> 00:02:22.060 He's a very interesting guy and very interested in making sure that science and academic achievement 28 00:02:22.060 --> 00:02:25.520 actually comes up with practical solutions to save the planet. 29 00:02:25.580 --> 00:02:27.720 And also to, of course, engage us. 30 00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:29.600 And I think that's something that's going to be very important for the future of Australia with the rest of the world. 31 00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:34.500 So he's going to talk about the electron economy and I can bet you that sparks will fly. 32 00:02:34.720 --> 00:02:36.100 Please welcome Alan Finkel. 33 00:02:42.440 --> 00:02:44.200 Well, thank you, Tim. 34 00:02:44.620 --> 00:02:51.260 And it's true, I'm here to talk about what you could call the electron economy, but I call the electric planet. 35 00:02:51.660 --> 00:02:57.760 And I just want to take you on a journey to indicate how I feel that we should take it. 36 00:02:57.780 --> 00:02:58.960 And I think that's something that we should tackle strategically. 37 00:02:59.680 --> 00:03:05.600 What many will agree is the biggest problem that we face into the long-term future for our planet. 38 00:03:06.540 --> 00:03:10.180 So up there I've got a picture of a house, a nice house. 39 00:03:10.660 --> 00:03:16.480 Living in Australia, there's a good chance that many of the people in the audience here live in a house that they love 40 00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:19.660 and would be judged by many to be attractive. 41 00:03:21.440 --> 00:03:25.600 Similarly, we live on a planet that is attractive and a planet that we love. 42 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:31.120 We take care of our house, we take care of our planet, or at least we should take care of our planet. 43 00:03:31.820 --> 00:03:33.300 Sometimes things go wrong. 44 00:03:34.380 --> 00:03:37.260 Hopefully your house will never do anything quite as tragic as that, 45 00:03:37.380 --> 00:03:43.140 but if something goes wrong with something like a house or a car, maybe even a relationship, 46 00:03:43.300 --> 00:03:46.740 if you're lucky, you can often repair it and get it back to where it was. 47 00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:50.960 You can preserve your investment. 48 00:03:52.160 --> 00:03:54.280 We live on a beautiful planet, as I said. 49 00:03:54.420 --> 00:03:55.580 If something goes wrong with it, 50 00:03:55.580 --> 00:03:56.160 if something goes wrong with our planet, 51 00:03:56.300 --> 00:04:00.700 it's not as clear to me, and I don't think it would be clear to anybody, 52 00:04:01.060 --> 00:04:03.560 that it will necessarily be easy to correct. 53 00:04:03.980 --> 00:04:09.040 So the most important thing to do is to make sure that nothing goes wrong in the first place. 54 00:04:10.180 --> 00:04:11.200 Are we doing that? 55 00:04:11.720 --> 00:04:13.020 The answer is no. 56 00:04:13.600 --> 00:04:19.260 What you see there is a graph of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. 57 00:04:19.800 --> 00:04:22.920 And I'm not going to make this talk about climate change, 58 00:04:22.920 --> 00:04:27.420 but it is the reason why I'm going to be proposing the Electric Planet to you. 59 00:04:28.580 --> 00:04:30.600 It's fascinating what you can see. 60 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:37.680 If you go back 100 years, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million. 61 00:04:38.460 --> 00:04:42.940 And in the last 50 years, or really the last 100 years, 62 00:04:43.100 --> 00:04:45.320 it's just been increasing, increasing and increasing. 63 00:04:45.540 --> 00:04:50.260 In the last 50 years, it's been going faster than you could reasonably imagine. 64 00:04:51.760 --> 00:04:56.260 And you'll notice up the top there, it's not slowing down at all. 65 00:04:56.380 --> 00:04:58.540 There's just no hint of a slowdown. 66 00:04:58.600 --> 00:05:01.060 No matter what has been done with the Kyoto Protocol, 67 00:05:01.360 --> 00:05:06.660 with solar, with wind, with biofuels, with other investments, with good intentions, 68 00:05:07.060 --> 00:05:13.180 no matter what has been done, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to rise, 69 00:05:13.320 --> 00:05:16.920 and in fact is rising now faster than ever before. 70 00:05:17.180 --> 00:05:20.240 Every year, the concentration goes up by a third. 71 00:05:20.260 --> 00:05:23.840 By two parts per million. That axis is in parts per million. 72 00:05:24.120 --> 00:05:26.100 In percentage terms, it's very small. 73 00:05:27.340 --> 00:05:31.920 I actually find it almost offensive that people refer to carbon dioxide as a pollutant. 74 00:05:32.020 --> 00:05:34.840 It's not toxic. We breathe carbon dioxide all the time. 75 00:05:34.880 --> 00:05:39.480 If the carbon dioxide concentration was 10, 50 times higher than it is today, 76 00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:41.560 you wouldn't even notice. You'd be very happy. 77 00:05:42.080 --> 00:05:45.860 But it does have a physical effect on the planet, 78 00:05:45.940 --> 00:05:49.680 because it creates this greenhouse effect, which causes, ultimately, 79 00:05:50.260 --> 00:05:55.140 a complex process, heat to be retained, and therefore global warming. 80 00:05:55.660 --> 00:05:58.500 And whilst there are a lot of people who dispute 81 00:05:59.360 --> 00:06:02.780 what the effect of this increase of carbon dioxide might be, 82 00:06:03.060 --> 00:06:07.600 no one disputes that we are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, 83 00:06:07.740 --> 00:06:08.880 and that's why it's going up. 84 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:13.040 And there's every good reason to think, if the carbon dioxide levels go up, 85 00:06:13.140 --> 00:06:15.360 the heat retention goes up, we have global warming, 86 00:06:15.460 --> 00:06:17.440 and global warming leads to climate change. 87 00:06:17.440 --> 00:06:20.480 Exactly what that climate change will be, 88 00:06:20.700 --> 00:06:23.140 and how it will unfold and manifest itself, 89 00:06:23.340 --> 00:06:28.220 is open to a fair amount of rigorous and reasonable question, 90 00:06:29.320 --> 00:06:31.060 but there will be change. 91 00:06:31.440 --> 00:06:35.800 You can't do this at that level and not expect that you'll have an impact. 92 00:06:37.620 --> 00:06:42.140 So we've got this beautiful world, and there aren't many others like it. 93 00:06:42.340 --> 00:06:46.640 If you look at our neighbours closer to the sun and further, 94 00:06:46.780 --> 00:06:47.420 if you look at the sun and further, if you look at the sun and further, 95 00:06:47.420 --> 00:06:51.420 Mars and Venus, they're completely inhospitable. 96 00:06:51.900 --> 00:06:55.320 For all we know, there is no hospitable planet 97 00:06:55.320 --> 00:06:58.880 in the Milky Way galaxy, or possibly anywhere in the universe. 98 00:06:59.340 --> 00:07:01.120 There's certainly no... there are lots of planets, 99 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:05.800 but there's no indication that there's anything that is just so finely balanced, 100 00:07:05.820 --> 00:07:10.640 like our planet, for the emergence of life and all the wonders that come with that. 101 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:16.460 Finely balanced. If you tip the balance, things will go wrong. 102 00:07:16.620 --> 00:07:17.400 We won't have a perfect galaxy. 103 00:07:17.400 --> 00:07:20.380 have the same planet to live on in the future. 104 00:07:22.420 --> 00:07:23.680 So who's the bad guy? 105 00:07:23.840 --> 00:07:25.220 Well, you could argue it's humans, 106 00:07:25.300 --> 00:07:27.920 because we're talking about an anthropogenic effect. 107 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:31.940 But I don't want to tackle population and getting rid of the humans. 108 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:35.520 It's probably beyond my brief. 109 00:07:36.440 --> 00:07:40.020 The real bad guy that we can tackle is coal. 110 00:07:41.860 --> 00:07:46.760 Coal is the fuel that we burn for 30% of our energy needs. 111 00:07:47.800 --> 00:07:50.420 30% of the total planet's energy needs. 112 00:07:50.620 --> 00:07:52.600 But because when you burn coal, 113 00:07:53.340 --> 00:07:55.380 per unit of work that it does, 114 00:07:55.440 --> 00:07:57.360 or per unit of electricity that you produce, 115 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:01.780 it emits more carbon dioxide than any other fossil fuel, 116 00:08:02.580 --> 00:08:05.960 it's actually the largest contributor, by far, 117 00:08:06.140 --> 00:08:07.320 to carbon dioxide emissions. 118 00:08:07.880 --> 00:08:10.760 So coal is the bad guy. He's the evil one in the room. 119 00:08:10.980 --> 00:08:12.760 It's our job to get rid of him. 120 00:08:14.040 --> 00:08:15.780 The next is oil. 121 00:08:16.480 --> 00:08:17.040 Oil. 122 00:08:17.400 --> 00:08:21.100 Oil is burnt to provide 33% of the world's energy. 123 00:08:21.580 --> 00:08:23.320 But it's a little cleaner. 124 00:08:23.400 --> 00:08:25.940 It's still pretty dirty, but it's a little cleaner than coal. 125 00:08:26.780 --> 00:08:28.260 And therefore it comes in second 126 00:08:28.260 --> 00:08:31.520 in terms of emissions of carbon dioxide. 127 00:08:31.940 --> 00:08:33.860 But we have to get rid of that as well. 128 00:08:36.680 --> 00:08:42.060 So coal and oil between them are 66% of the world's energy use 129 00:08:42.060 --> 00:08:46.380 and the largest contributors by far to carbon dioxide emissions. 130 00:08:48.740 --> 00:08:49.620 So we have to get rid of that. 131 00:08:49.620 --> 00:08:52.840 Now, we don't want to do something that gets rid of them, 132 00:08:52.960 --> 00:08:56.000 but leaves us with a difficult situation, 133 00:08:56.280 --> 00:08:58.700 a dire economy, people out of work, 134 00:08:58.780 --> 00:09:01.080 or even a reduction in our lifestyles. 135 00:09:01.400 --> 00:09:04.120 You could argue that the solution to all our problems 136 00:09:04.120 --> 00:09:06.300 are to go back to primitive lifestyles, 137 00:09:06.320 --> 00:09:07.540 stop using energy. 138 00:09:08.180 --> 00:09:09.320 People aren't going to do it. 139 00:09:09.340 --> 00:09:12.320 It's been talked about for decades, maybe for centuries. 140 00:09:12.640 --> 00:09:13.800 They're just not going to do it. 141 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:16.840 What we need is a solution that can be delivered. 142 00:09:17.400 --> 00:09:19.660 A solution that will be acceptable to people 143 00:09:19.660 --> 00:09:22.320 because it won't lead to dull queues. 144 00:09:22.760 --> 00:09:27.480 We need a solution that preserves the economy and our lifestyles. 145 00:09:28.500 --> 00:09:31.280 So the obvious question, is there something better that we can do 146 00:09:31.280 --> 00:09:34.440 because to preserve the economy and our lifestyles, we need energy? 147 00:09:35.320 --> 00:09:37.340 Is there something better that we can do 148 00:09:37.340 --> 00:09:43.540 than to continue using massive quantities of coal and oil? 149 00:09:44.860 --> 00:09:46.780 Well, a lot of people have looked at this 150 00:09:46.780 --> 00:09:47.380 and proposed a solution that would be acceptable to people. 151 00:09:47.400 --> 00:09:48.340 And that is the hydrogen economy. 152 00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:52.740 And I'm going to take you through the hydrogen economy fairly quickly 153 00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:55.360 and show you why, even though it sounds good, 154 00:09:55.540 --> 00:09:57.140 it's not a practical solution. 155 00:09:58.060 --> 00:10:01.180 Now, hydrogen is an abundant element. 156 00:10:02.460 --> 00:10:05.220 There's more hydrogen in the universe than anything else. 157 00:10:05.320 --> 00:10:08.360 There's massive quantities of hydrogen on planet Earth. 158 00:10:08.660 --> 00:10:10.460 But it's not there as free hydrogen. 159 00:10:10.680 --> 00:10:13.480 The good thing about hydrogen is if you do have pure hydrogen, 160 00:10:13.540 --> 00:10:17.100 you can burn it with oxygen to release energy. 161 00:10:17.400 --> 00:10:18.920 And the byproduct is water. 162 00:10:19.540 --> 00:10:22.140 But you need to start with having lots and lots of hydrogen. 163 00:10:22.420 --> 00:10:24.080 So the question is, where does it come from? 164 00:10:24.120 --> 00:10:26.140 It's all in the oceans bound to water 165 00:10:26.660 --> 00:10:30.100 or it's in the ground bound to various minerals. 166 00:10:31.680 --> 00:10:35.320 So there I'm just showing you a picture of hydrogen atoms floating around. 167 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:38.980 It's a little double atom molecule. 168 00:10:39.300 --> 00:10:42.700 If the hydrogen finds an oxygen molecule 169 00:10:42.700 --> 00:10:44.420 and there's a spark or a little bit of heat, 170 00:10:44.540 --> 00:10:47.380 the oxygen and the hydrogen bind together. 171 00:10:47.400 --> 00:10:48.480 And create water. 172 00:10:48.800 --> 00:10:51.020 You can't actually think of a better system, can you? 173 00:10:51.080 --> 00:10:54.940 Hydrogen, oxygen, the only byproduct is water. 174 00:10:55.080 --> 00:10:56.860 But the question is where do you get the hydrogen from? 175 00:10:59.560 --> 00:11:01.420 There's two places you can get hydrogen. 176 00:11:01.920 --> 00:11:03.640 You might not have thought of this, 177 00:11:03.800 --> 00:11:06.000 but the cheapest way to get hydrogen, 178 00:11:06.200 --> 00:11:07.460 and it's actually reasonably cheap, 179 00:11:07.660 --> 00:11:09.900 is to start with gas, natural gas. 180 00:11:10.140 --> 00:11:12.260 The same gas that you burn in at home. 181 00:11:12.980 --> 00:11:17.320 Natural gas is just a molecule called methyl. 182 00:11:17.400 --> 00:11:20.800 It's a methane which consists purely of carbon and hydrogen. 183 00:11:21.100 --> 00:11:23.080 So if you could strip out the hydrogen, 184 00:11:24.300 --> 00:11:26.120 you'd have tonnes and tonnes of it 185 00:11:26.120 --> 00:11:27.800 because there's a lot of natural gas around. 186 00:11:28.580 --> 00:11:30.760 The trouble is, when you do that, 187 00:11:31.620 --> 00:11:34.180 your byproduct is the carbon that was left over, 188 00:11:34.360 --> 00:11:36.400 which ultimately binds with oxygen 189 00:11:36.400 --> 00:11:38.940 and goes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. 190 00:11:39.740 --> 00:11:42.380 So getting the hydrogen from natural gas 191 00:11:42.380 --> 00:11:44.000 that you would need to run a full economy 192 00:11:45.020 --> 00:11:46.740 actually would lead to 193 00:11:46.740 --> 00:11:49.300 much, much, much worse carbon dioxide emissions 194 00:11:50.380 --> 00:11:53.000 than compared to us just burning the natural gas 195 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:54.740 to drive our cars or heat our houses. 196 00:11:55.180 --> 00:11:58.820 So using cheap hydrogen has no legs. 197 00:11:58.900 --> 00:12:00.740 It won't happen. It's gone. 198 00:12:01.860 --> 00:12:03.400 The other way you can get hydrogen 199 00:12:03.400 --> 00:12:08.500 is to use electricity to break the water molecule. 200 00:12:08.760 --> 00:12:10.280 A water molecule, I showed it to you before, 201 00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:11.760 is hydrogen bound with oxygen. 202 00:12:12.020 --> 00:12:14.240 You can use electricity to break that apart, 203 00:12:14.540 --> 00:12:16.660 to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen 204 00:12:17.780 --> 00:12:18.920 and that's great. 205 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:22.480 There's actually no byproducts like carbon dioxide. 206 00:12:22.760 --> 00:12:25.500 It's just electricity in, into the water. 207 00:12:25.560 --> 00:12:28.040 The only things that come out are hydrogen from one electrode, 208 00:12:28.300 --> 00:12:29.940 oxygen from the other electrode. 209 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.740 There's absolutely nothing wrong with oxygen going into the atmosphere. 210 00:12:33.020 --> 00:12:33.820 We love it. 211 00:12:34.340 --> 00:12:36.480 And the hydrogen is pure hydrogen 212 00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:39.700 that you can use to drive vehicles or to heat houses 213 00:12:39.700 --> 00:12:41.060 or to run industrial processes. 214 00:12:41.320 --> 00:12:44.600 You can use it to store intermittent electricity 215 00:12:44.600 --> 00:12:46.060 from wind and solar. 216 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:49.400 On the surface of it, it sounds fantastic. 217 00:12:50.300 --> 00:12:51.560 Well, is it reasonable? 218 00:12:51.820 --> 00:12:54.240 You have to start with electricity and water. 219 00:12:54.420 --> 00:12:55.400 Tons of water are available. 220 00:12:55.460 --> 00:12:57.520 We're not talking about the sorts of volumes 221 00:12:57.520 --> 00:12:58.420 that are used in agriculture. 222 00:12:58.860 --> 00:13:01.380 So availability of water is not an issue. 223 00:13:01.780 --> 00:13:03.600 But you've got to think about the electricity. 224 00:13:04.020 --> 00:13:06.720 So let's say we've got electricity coming from solar panels. 225 00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:10.280 And we start with a quantity of electricity. 226 00:13:11.240 --> 00:13:13.760 I'm just putting down a quantity called 100 kilowatt hours. 227 00:13:13.800 --> 00:13:16.500 A kilowatt hour is what you pay for on your bill. 228 00:13:16.500 --> 00:13:18.560 If you go home and look at your electricity bill tonight, 229 00:13:18.740 --> 00:13:22.520 you'll see that you're paying 20 or 25 cents per kilowatt hour. 230 00:13:22.720 --> 00:13:24.880 So let's say that you've been running the solar panels 231 00:13:25.500 --> 00:13:28.240 to produce 100 kilowatt hours of electricity. 232 00:13:28.760 --> 00:13:30.260 And we're going to do a comparison. 233 00:13:30.560 --> 00:13:32.680 Let's use that electricity in one case 234 00:13:33.340 --> 00:13:35.960 to take water, break it into hydrogen, 235 00:13:36.120 --> 00:13:37.640 and drive a hydrogen car. 236 00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:40.720 And there have been a few hundred hydrogen cars 237 00:13:41.500 --> 00:13:44.100 made as prototypes and demonstration vehicles 238 00:13:44.100 --> 00:13:45.600 by big companies like BMW 239 00:13:45.600 --> 00:13:48.000 and General Motors over the years. 240 00:13:48.860 --> 00:13:51.900 And we'll compare that to taking the same quantity of electricity 241 00:13:52.600 --> 00:13:54.760 and transmitting it down the transmission lines 242 00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:57.680 into an electric car and driving an electric car. 243 00:13:58.120 --> 00:14:00.900 So to start off, we'll say that we've got a hydrogen vehicle. 244 00:14:01.040 --> 00:14:02.580 You can't tell that it's a hydrogen vehicle. 245 00:14:02.660 --> 00:14:04.480 On the side, it says it's a hydrogen vehicle. 246 00:14:04.980 --> 00:14:07.280 If we take that 100 kilowatt hours, 247 00:14:07.360 --> 00:14:09.980 and with a very optimised process, 248 00:14:10.260 --> 00:14:13.380 take the electricity, separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen, 249 00:14:13.540 --> 00:14:14.360 grab the hydrogen, 250 00:14:14.360 --> 00:14:16.080 take it to where you need it, 251 00:14:16.100 --> 00:14:18.020 compress it, put it into a car and drive the car. 252 00:14:18.420 --> 00:14:19.780 You'll drive that distance. 253 00:14:20.160 --> 00:14:22.860 You take the same 100 kilowatt hours of electricity, 254 00:14:23.240 --> 00:14:26.580 put it down the transmission line into a plug into your electric car. 255 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:29.720 The electric car will drive three times further. 256 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:35.060 The reason is that the efficiency of the processes of electrolysis 257 00:14:35.060 --> 00:14:38.140 to crack the water and transporting the hydrogen, 258 00:14:38.260 --> 00:14:40.860 compressing the hydrogen and using it in a fuel cell 259 00:14:40.860 --> 00:14:43.640 inside the hydrogen car to drive the car, 260 00:14:43.640 --> 00:14:45.400 means that at the end of the day, 261 00:14:45.480 --> 00:14:48.980 from the initial electrical energy of 100 kilowatt hours, 262 00:14:49.260 --> 00:14:53.140 you only get 22 kilowatt hours of mechanical energy 263 00:14:53.140 --> 00:14:55.320 to drive the car forward. 264 00:14:56.140 --> 00:14:58.160 Whereas if you take the simpler alternative 265 00:14:58.160 --> 00:15:01.680 of just going down the transmission line into the plug into the electric car, 266 00:15:01.900 --> 00:15:03.720 it is such an efficient process. 267 00:15:04.040 --> 00:15:05.680 Electric motors are very efficient. 268 00:15:05.900 --> 00:15:08.160 Electric batteries are very efficient. 269 00:15:08.340 --> 00:15:13.200 That you end up with 69 kilowatt hours of energy 270 00:15:13.640 --> 00:15:16.020 as mechanical energy to drive the car forward. 271 00:15:16.100 --> 00:15:19.040 So it's a touch over a factor of three. 272 00:15:20.500 --> 00:15:25.860 So for those reasons that either you've got too much carbon dioxide emission 273 00:15:25.860 --> 00:15:28.960 because you're using cheap natural gas to make hydrogen, 274 00:15:29.100 --> 00:15:31.360 or you're just frivolously wasting electricity, 275 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:33.960 the hydrogen economy will never make it. 276 00:15:33.980 --> 00:15:36.580 Because even though there's in the second route, 277 00:15:38.300 --> 00:15:39.380 actually in both routes, 278 00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:41.720 you're not getting any carbon dioxide emissions 279 00:15:41.720 --> 00:15:42.980 when you start with electricity, 280 00:15:44.940 --> 00:15:47.520 solar electricity is clean, but it's not free. 281 00:15:47.980 --> 00:15:49.400 As you've probably heard, 282 00:15:49.500 --> 00:15:52.100 it's the most expensive form of electricity that we have. 283 00:15:52.260 --> 00:15:54.740 So you can't be frivolous and say, 284 00:15:54.800 --> 00:15:56.800 well, there's no carbon dioxide emissions, so it doesn't matter. 285 00:15:57.020 --> 00:15:58.820 You've got to use it optimally. 286 00:15:58.920 --> 00:16:01.260 And electric cars are far superior 287 00:16:01.260 --> 00:16:04.120 at using that starting electricity supply. 288 00:16:04.540 --> 00:16:05.800 There are other problems. 289 00:16:05.920 --> 00:16:08.600 Carbon dioxide is hard to store. It's very explosive. 290 00:16:09.040 --> 00:16:11.560 So there are other reasons why you might not consider it. 291 00:16:11.800 --> 00:16:13.620 Every reason points to this. 292 00:16:13.640 --> 00:16:16.200 There are other reasons to not going down the route of a hydrogen economy. 293 00:16:16.400 --> 00:16:17.360 So what's the next alternative? 294 00:16:17.760 --> 00:16:19.100 Is there something better? 295 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:20.980 And I put it to you that there is. 296 00:16:21.920 --> 00:16:23.480 I call it the electric planet. 297 00:16:23.860 --> 00:16:26.780 In the electric planet, in my concept of the electric planet, 298 00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:28.500 electricity is king. 299 00:16:29.680 --> 00:16:31.700 Electricity will be used for everything. 300 00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:34.940 And I'm going to take you through, over the next few slides, 301 00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:38.400 what I mean about electricity being used for everything 302 00:16:38.400 --> 00:16:40.640 and why it is that it's so special. 303 00:16:43.060 --> 00:16:46.340 So what you see up there is a pie chart 304 00:16:46.340 --> 00:16:52.660 that shows the sources of energy in the United States currently. 305 00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:54.940 I've chosen the United States because, 306 00:16:55.640 --> 00:16:57.920 A, the data is readily available, 307 00:16:58.640 --> 00:17:01.700 and, B, it's very representative of any developed economy. 308 00:17:02.060 --> 00:17:04.380 And you could say, well, what about China and what about India? 309 00:17:04.460 --> 00:17:06.440 The fact is, though, they are driving themselves 310 00:17:06.440 --> 00:17:10.620 towards the same kind of society as Europe and America. 311 00:17:10.620 --> 00:17:11.900 Or, for that matter, Australia. 312 00:17:13.220 --> 00:17:15.740 And I don't know that you can see it too easily from there, 313 00:17:15.800 --> 00:17:16.880 so I'll quickly go through this. 314 00:17:17.040 --> 00:17:20.740 Electricity generation, which itself today is quite dirty. 315 00:17:20.820 --> 00:17:22.240 We're burning coal to make electricity, 316 00:17:22.440 --> 00:17:23.960 and we're burning gas and oil to make electricity. 317 00:17:24.360 --> 00:17:27.180 But electricity generation provides 38% of the energy 318 00:17:27.180 --> 00:17:28.920 that we need for the various things that we do. 319 00:17:30.840 --> 00:17:33.300 Transportation, of course, primarily uses oil, 320 00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:36.420 whether it's converted into petrol or diesel. 321 00:17:36.600 --> 00:17:39.560 It's still an oil-based fossil... It's an oil fossil fuel. 322 00:17:39.560 --> 00:17:42.020 That's 31% of the energy that we use. 323 00:17:42.760 --> 00:17:46.260 Then heating of buildings using oil or gas. 324 00:17:47.400 --> 00:17:51.020 And industrial processes use up another 11% and 10%, respectively. 325 00:17:51.220 --> 00:17:53.520 Water heating and cooking, another 4%. 326 00:17:53.520 --> 00:17:56.600 So by the time I've done all that, I'm up to 94%. 327 00:17:56.600 --> 00:17:58.060 There's only 6% left over. 328 00:17:58.220 --> 00:18:01.980 And that's things where fossil fuels are used, 329 00:18:02.820 --> 00:18:05.220 or carbon dioxide is emitted in making concrete 330 00:18:05.220 --> 00:18:06.920 or in some of the agricultural processes. 331 00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:09.540 Can we do something about that? 332 00:18:09.560 --> 00:18:13.740 The electric planet concept requires 333 00:18:13.740 --> 00:18:16.080 that we convert our electricity supply 334 00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:19.420 from a fossil fuel generation system 335 00:18:19.420 --> 00:18:23.240 to a clean system and then make a lot more of it. 336 00:18:23.360 --> 00:18:25.380 So let me walk my way through that. 337 00:18:25.760 --> 00:18:28.540 We'll take the electricity generation slice of the pie 338 00:18:28.540 --> 00:18:30.520 and I'm going to turn it into green. 339 00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:34.300 How? With wind, with solar, maybe gas and nuclear 340 00:18:34.300 --> 00:18:35.460 and other things I'll talk about. 341 00:18:36.460 --> 00:18:37.820 Then we take the transportation, 342 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:39.540 which currently is pretty much the same. 343 00:18:39.560 --> 00:18:41.520 It's all driven from fossil fuels 344 00:18:41.520 --> 00:18:44.800 with just the very, very beginnings of electric cars 345 00:18:44.800 --> 00:18:46.000 starting to hit the market. 346 00:18:46.520 --> 00:18:47.980 And that's 31%. 347 00:18:48.560 --> 00:18:51.280 It's not really practical to convert all of it to electric. 348 00:18:52.960 --> 00:18:55.520 Electricity is terrific for small vehicles, 349 00:18:55.620 --> 00:18:57.700 for regular vehicles, maybe even light trucks. 350 00:18:58.500 --> 00:19:01.120 I actually drive an electric car. I've got a Nissan Leaf. 351 00:19:01.320 --> 00:19:03.380 And it's a wonderful car to drive. 352 00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:04.480 It's a terrific experience. 353 00:19:05.080 --> 00:19:08.940 But it gets a little hard for, say, container ships. 354 00:19:10.140 --> 00:19:11.340 And jet planes. 355 00:19:12.020 --> 00:19:15.200 So let's assume that we can convert about two-thirds. 356 00:19:15.320 --> 00:19:17.200 And it's not a complete assumption. It's been worked out. 357 00:19:17.360 --> 00:19:20.560 Let's assume that we can convert about two-thirds of that 31% 358 00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:23.780 to work off electricity, 359 00:19:24.060 --> 00:19:26.240 so electric cars rather than petrol. 360 00:19:27.260 --> 00:19:29.780 If you look at the space heating, it's actually easy. 361 00:19:30.260 --> 00:19:31.300 If you've got the electricity, 362 00:19:31.600 --> 00:19:34.180 you can do all of your space heating with electricity. 363 00:19:34.440 --> 00:19:35.640 It's a complete conversion. 364 00:19:36.780 --> 00:19:38.560 Let's look at industrial processes there. 365 00:19:38.560 --> 00:19:39.240 It's more complicated. 366 00:19:39.420 --> 00:19:40.080 It's not just heat, 367 00:19:40.140 --> 00:19:45.400 but heat is one of the biggest consumers of energy in industrial processes. 368 00:19:45.860 --> 00:19:47.520 If you sort of look at what they're doing, 369 00:19:47.640 --> 00:19:51.440 you can convert probably half of the industrial processes to electricity. 370 00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:56.100 Water heating and cooking. Easy. 371 00:19:56.280 --> 00:19:58.120 Do all of that with electricity. It's a complete conversion. 372 00:19:59.540 --> 00:20:01.120 So now I've got my pie chart again. 373 00:20:01.540 --> 00:20:04.820 And you'll see that I've converted large pieces of it to green. 374 00:20:05.420 --> 00:20:08.540 But there are little pinkish pieces of it 375 00:20:08.540 --> 00:20:09.340 that are the pie left over. 376 00:20:09.540 --> 00:20:10.840 But let me collect them all together. 377 00:20:11.920 --> 00:20:14.740 So now I've taken all the bits of pie that were green 378 00:20:14.740 --> 00:20:15.500 and brought them together. 379 00:20:15.820 --> 00:20:18.860 And what I end up with is a 79% reduction 380 00:20:19.380 --> 00:20:20.860 in the carbon dioxide emissions 381 00:20:23.080 --> 00:20:24.220 compared to where we started 382 00:20:25.420 --> 00:20:28.000 by converting our electricity to a clean supply 383 00:20:28.940 --> 00:20:32.780 and then expanding it to use it for all these other purposes. 384 00:20:33.140 --> 00:20:35.480 That is a massive reduction. 385 00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:37.780 And it's actually achievable. 386 00:20:38.540 --> 00:20:42.460 It's not a policy waving of the wands from government. 387 00:20:42.480 --> 00:20:43.700 It's actually achievable. 388 00:20:46.500 --> 00:20:48.580 Magic. It sounds like magic, doesn't it? 389 00:20:49.560 --> 00:20:53.020 Why is it that electricity delivers such better value 390 00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:56.600 than fossil fuels, 391 00:20:58.060 --> 00:21:00.580 even if you might get some of your electricity 392 00:21:00.580 --> 00:21:02.500 from a fossil fuel like natural gas? 393 00:21:03.160 --> 00:21:04.160 So let's look at that. 394 00:21:04.580 --> 00:21:07.700 What I've got there is a picture with a bottle of CNG, 395 00:21:07.700 --> 00:21:08.840 compressed natural gas, 396 00:21:08.940 --> 00:21:11.440 and those little blobs around it are just molecules of methane, 397 00:21:11.600 --> 00:21:12.840 which is what natural gas is. 398 00:21:14.340 --> 00:21:16.940 And let's do the same exercise that we did for hydrogen. 399 00:21:18.340 --> 00:21:21.320 Let's assume that we just took the methane out of the ground. 400 00:21:21.400 --> 00:21:22.620 Sorry, I'll call it natural gas. 401 00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:24.680