WEBVTT

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Have you heard the news?

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We're in a clean energy revolution.

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And where I live in Berkeley, California,

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it seems like every day I see a new roof
with new solar panels going up,

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electric car in the driveway.

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Germany sometimes gets
half its power from solar,

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and India is now committed
to building 10 times more solar

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than we have in California,

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by the year 2022.

NOTE Paragraph

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Even nuclear seems to be
making a comeback.

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Bill Gates is in China
working with engineers,

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there's 40 different companies
that are working together

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to try to race to build the first
reactor that runs on waste,

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that can't melt down

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and is cheaper than coal.

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And so you might start to ask:

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Is this whole global warming problem

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going to be a lot easier to solve
than anybody imagined?

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That was the question we wanted to know,

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so my colleagues and I decided
to take a deep dive into the data.

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We were a little skeptical of some parts

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of the clean energy revolution story,

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but what we found really surprised us.

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The first thing is that clean
energy has been increasing.

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This is electricity from clean energy
sources over the last 20 years.

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But when you look at
the percentage of global electricity

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from clean energy sources,

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it's actually been in decline
from 36 percent to 31 percent.

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And if you care about climate change,

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you've got to go in the opposite direction

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to 100 percent of our electricity
from clean energy sources,

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as quickly as possible.

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Now, you might wonder,

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"Come on, how much could five percentage
points of global electricity be?"

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Well, it turns out to be quite a bit.

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It's the equivalent of 60 nuclear plants

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the size of Diablo Canyon,
California's last nuclear plant,

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or 900 solar farms the size of Topaz,

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which is one of the biggest
solar farms in the world,

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and certainly our biggest in California.

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A big part of this is simply
that fossil fuels are increasing

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faster than clean energy.

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And that's understandable.

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There's just a lot of poor countries

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that are still using wood
and dung and charcoal

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as their main source of energy,

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and they need modern fuels.

NOTE Paragraph

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But there's something else going on,

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which is that one of those clean energy
sources in particular

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has actually been on the decline
in absolute terms,

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not just relatively.

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And that's nuclear.

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You can see its generation
has declined seven percent

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over the last 10 years.

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Now, solar and wind have been
making huge strides,

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so you hear a lot of talk
about how it doesn't really matter,

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because solar and wind
is going to make up the difference.

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But the data says something different.

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When you combine all the electricity
from solar and wind,

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you see it actually barely makes up
half of the decline from nuclear.

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Let's take a closer look
in the United States.

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Over the last couple of years --
really 2013, 2014 --

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we prematurely retired
four nuclear power plants.

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They were almost entirely
replaced with fossil fuels,

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and so the consequence
was that we wiped out

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almost as much clean energy
electricity that we get from solar.

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And it's not unique to us.

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People think of California
as a clean energy and climate leader,

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but when we looked at the data,

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what we found is that, in fact,

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California reduced emissions more slowly
than the national average,

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between 2000 and 2015.

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What about Germany?

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They're doing a lot of clean energy.

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But when you look at the data,

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German emissions have actually
been going up since 2009,

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and there's really not anybody
who's going to tell you

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that they're going to meet
their climate commitments in 2020.

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The reason isn't hard to understand.

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Solar and wind provide power
about 10 to 20 percent of the time,

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which means that when
the sun's not shining,

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the wind's not blowing,

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you still need power for your hospitals,

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your homes, your cities, your factories.

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And while batteries have made
some really cool improvements lately,

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the truth is, they're just never
going to be as efficient

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as the electrical grid.

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Every time you put electricity
into a battery and take it out,

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you lose about 20 to 40
percent of the power.

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That's why when, in California,

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we try to deal with all the solar
we've brought online --

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we now get about 10 percent
of electricity from solar --

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when the sun goes down,
and people come home from work

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and turn on their air conditioners
and their TV sets,

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and every other appliance in the house,

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we need a lot of natural gas backup.

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So what we've been doing

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is stuffing a lot of natural gas
into the side of a mountain.

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And that worked pretty well for a while,

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but then late last year,
it sprung a leak.

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This is Aliso Canyon.

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So much methane gas was released,

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it was the equivalent of putting
half a million cars on the road.

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It basically blew through all
of our climate commitments for the year.

NOTE Paragraph

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Well, what about India?

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Sometimes you have to go places
to really get the right data,

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so we traveled to India a few months ago.

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We met with all the top officials --
solar, nuclear, the rest --

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and what they told us is,

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"We're actually having
more serious problems

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than both Germany and California.

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We don't have backup;
we don't have all the natural gas.

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And that's just the start of it.

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Say we want to get
to 100 gigawatts by 2022.

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But last year we did just five,

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and the year before that, we did five."

NOTE Paragraph

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So, let's just take
a closer look at nuclear.

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The United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change

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has looked at the carbon content
of all these different fuels,

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and nuclear comes out really low --
it's actually lower even than solar.

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And nuclear obviously
provides a lot of power --

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24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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During a year, a single plant can provide
power 92 percent of the time.

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What's interesting is that
when you look at countries

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that have deployed different
kinds of clean energies,

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there's only a few that have done so

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at a pace consistent with dealing
with the climate crisis.

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So nuclear seems like
a pretty good option,

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but there's this big problem with it,

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which all of you, I'm sure, are aware of,

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which is that people really don't like it.

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There was a study, a survey done
of people around the world,

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not just in the United States or Europe,

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about a year and a half ago.

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And what they found

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is that nuclear is actually one
of the least popular forms of energy.

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Even oil is more popular than nuclear.

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And while nuclear kind of
edges out coal, the thing is,

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people don't really fear coal
in the same way they fear nuclear,

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which really operates on our unconscious.

NOTE Paragraph

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So what is it that we fear?

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There's really three things.

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There's the safety
of the plants themselves --

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the fears that they're going
to melt down and cause damage;

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there's the waste from them;

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and there's the association with weapons.

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And I think, understandably,

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engineers look at those concerns
and look for technological fixes.

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That's why Bill Gates is in China
developing advanced reactors.

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That's why 40 different entrepreneurs
are working on this problem.

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And I, myself, have been
very excited about it.

NOTE Paragraph

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We did a report:
"How to Make Nuclear Cheap."

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In particular, the thorium reactor
shows a lot of promise.

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So when the climate
scientist, James Hansen,

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asked if I wanted to go to China with him

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and look at the Chinese
advanced nuclear program,

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I jumped at the chance.

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We were there with MIT
and UC Berkeley engineers.

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And I had in my mind

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that the Chinese would be able
to do with nuclear

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what they did with so many other things --

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start to crank out small nuclear
reactors on assembly lines,

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ship them up like iPhones or MacBooks
and send them around the world.

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I would get one at home in Berkeley.

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But what I found was somewhat different.

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The presentations were all
very exciting and very promising;

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they have multiple reactors
that they're working on.

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The time came for the thorium reactor,
and a bunch of us were excited.

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They went through the whole presentation,
they got to the timeline

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and they said,

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"We're going to have
a thorium molten salt reactor

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ready for sale to the world

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by 2040."

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And I was like, "What?"

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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I looked at my colleagues and I was like,

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"Excuse me --

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can you guys speed that up a little bit?

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Because we're in a little bit
of a climate crisis right now.

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And your cities are really
polluted, by the way."

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And they responded back, they were like,

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"I'm not sure what you've heard
about our thorium program,

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but we don't have a third of our budget,

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and your department of energy
hasn't been particularly forthcoming

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with all that data you guys
have on testing reactors."

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And I said, "Well, I've got an idea.

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You know how you've got 10 years
where you're demonstrating that reactor?

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Let's just skip that part,

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and let's just go right
to commercializing it.

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That will save money and time."

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And the engineer just
looked at me and said,

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"Let me ask you a question:

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Would you buy a car that had never
been demonstrated before?"

NOTE Paragraph

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So what about the other reactors?

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There's a reactor that's coming online
now, they're starting to sell it.

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It's a high-temperature gas reactor.

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It can't melt down.

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But it's really big and bulky,
that's part of the safety,

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and nobody thinks
it's going to ever get cheaper

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than the reactors that we have.

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The ones that use waste as fuel
are really cool ideas, but the truth is,

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we don't actually know how to do that yet.

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There's some risk that you'll
actually make more waste,

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and most people think
that if you're including

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that waste part of the process,

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it's just going to make the whole
machine a lot more expensive,

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it's just adding another complicated step.

NOTE Paragraph

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The truth is,

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there's real questions about how much
of that we're going to do.

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I mean, we went to India and asked
about the nuclear program.

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The government said
before the Paris climate talks

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that they were going to do something
like 30 new nuclear plants.

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But when we got there
and interviewed people

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and even looked at the internal documents,

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they're now saying
they're going to do about five.

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And in most of the world,
especially the rich world,

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they're not talking
about building new reactors.

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We're actually talking
about taking reactors down

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before their lifetimes are over.

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Germany's actually pressuring
its neighbors to do that.

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I mentioned the United States --

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we could lose half of our reactors
over the next 15 years,

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which would wipe out 40 percent
of the emissions reductions

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we're supposed to get
under the Clean Power Plan.

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Of course, in Japan, they took
all their nuclear plants offline,

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replaced them with coal,
natural gas, oil burning,

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and they're only expected to bring
online about a third to two-thirds.

NOTE Paragraph

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So when we went through the numbers,

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and just added that up --

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how much nuclear do we see
China and India bringing online

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over the next 15 years,

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how much do we see at risk
of being taken offline --

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this was the most startling finding.

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What we found is that
the world is actually at risk

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of losing four times more clean energy
than we lost over the last 10 years.

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In other words: we're not
in a clean energy revolution;

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we're in a clean energy crisis.

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So it's understandable that engineers
would look for a technical fix

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to the fears that people have of nuclear.

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But when you consider
that these are big challenges to do,

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that they're going to take
a long time to solve,

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there's this other issue, which is:

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Are those technical fixes
really going to solve people's fears?

NOTE Paragraph

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Let's take safety.

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You know, despite what people think,

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it's hard to figure out how
to make nuclear power much safer.

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I mean, every medical
journal that looks at it --

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this is the most recent study
from the British journal, "Lancet,"

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one of the most respected
journals in the world --

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nuclear is the safest way
to make reliable power.

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Everybody's scared of the accidents.

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So you go look at the accident data --

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Fukushima, Chernobyl --

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the World Health Organization
finds the same thing:

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the vast majority of harm
is caused by people panicking,

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and they're panicking
because they're afraid.

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In other words,

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the harm that's caused
isn't actually caused by the machines

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or the radiation.

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It's caused by our fears.

NOTE Paragraph

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And what about the waste?

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Everyone worries about the waste.

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Well, the interesting
thing about the waste

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is how little of it there is.

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This is just from one plant.

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If you take all the nuclear waste
we've ever made in the United States,

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put it on a football field, stacked it up,

00:11:40.333 --> 00:11:42.556
it would only reach 20 feet high.

00:11:42.580 --> 00:11:45.854
And people say it's poisoning
people or doing something --

00:11:45.878 --> 00:11:48.777
it's not, it's just sitting
there, it's just being monitored.

00:11:48.801 --> 00:11:50.188
There's not very much of it.

00:11:50.212 --> 00:11:54.035
By contrast, the waste that we don't
control from energy production --

00:11:54.059 --> 00:11:57.183
we call it "pollution," and it kills
seven million people a year,

00:11:57.207 --> 00:12:00.036
and it's threatening very serious
levels of global warming.

00:12:00.060 --> 00:12:04.012
And the truth is that even if we get
good at using that waste as fuel,

00:12:04.036 --> 00:12:06.311
there's always going to be
some fuel left over.

00:12:06.335 --> 00:12:10.206
That means there's always going to be
people that think it's a big problem

00:12:10.230 --> 00:12:13.534
for reasons that maybe don't have
as much to do with the actual waste

00:12:13.558 --> 00:12:14.827
as we think.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:14.851 --> 00:12:16.596
Well, what about the weapons?

00:12:17.052 --> 00:12:20.345
Maybe the most surprising thing
is that we can't find any examples

00:12:20.369 --> 00:12:22.322
of countries that have nuclear power

00:12:22.346 --> 00:12:24.774
and then, "Oh!" decide to go get a weapon.

00:12:24.798 --> 00:12:26.500
In fact, it works the opposite.

00:12:26.524 --> 00:12:28.690
What we find is, the only way we know

00:12:28.714 --> 00:12:31.166
how to get rid large numbers
of nuclear weapons

00:12:31.190 --> 00:12:33.990
is by using the plutonium in the warheads

00:12:34.014 --> 00:12:36.466
as fuel in our nuclear power plants.

00:12:36.490 --> 00:12:40.404
And so, if you are wanting to get
the world rid of nuclear weapons,

00:12:40.428 --> 00:12:43.090
then we're going to need
a lot more nuclear power.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:43.955 --> 00:12:46.828
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:49.515 --> 00:12:50.881
As I was leaving China,

00:12:50.905 --> 00:12:54.094
the engineer that brought Bill Gates there
kind of pulled me aside,

00:12:54.118 --> 00:12:56.899
and he said, "You know, Michael,
I appreciate you interest

00:12:56.923 --> 00:12:59.630
in all the different nuclear
supply technologies,

00:12:59.654 --> 00:13:02.576
but there's this more basic issue,

00:13:02.600 --> 00:13:05.139
which is that there's just not
enough global demand.

00:13:05.163 --> 00:13:08.088
I mean, we can crank out
these machines on assembly lines,

00:13:08.112 --> 00:13:09.856
we do know how to make things cheap,

00:13:09.880 --> 00:13:12.278
but there's just not enough
people that want them."

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:12.302 --> 00:13:17.244
And so, let's do solar and wind
and efficiency and conservation.

00:13:17.268 --> 00:13:19.552
Let's accelerate the advanced
nuclear programs.

00:13:19.576 --> 00:13:22.729
I think we should triple the amount
of money we're spending on it.

00:13:23.054 --> 00:13:25.443
But I just think the most important thing,

00:13:25.467 --> 00:13:27.623
if we're going to overcome
the climate crisis,

00:13:27.647 --> 00:13:32.260
is to keep in mind that the cause
of the clean energy crisis

00:13:32.922 --> 00:13:35.181
isn't from within our machines,

00:13:35.205 --> 00:13:37.013
it's from within ourselves.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:37.557 --> 00:13:38.808
Thank you very much.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:38.832 --> 00:13:42.426
(Applause)