Renewable Energy: Generation, Transmission and Storage

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00:00:08.00 Hi, I'm Steve Chu, and I am back at
00:00:11.15 Stanford University having spent four
00:00:14.22 and a quarter year's sabbatical as
00:00:16.25 US Secretary of Energy.
00:00:19.07 I'm here to talk about some renewable technologies that
00:00:23.10 can actually give us clean
00:00:25.12 sustainable energy and it's going to mitigate
00:00:27.23 the changes in climate change.
00:00:31.06 Where are we today? Well, wind has made
00:00:34.03 dramatic progress in the last 30-plus
00:00:35.03 years from 1980 till today.
00:00:38.24 We see the cost of wind plummeting.
00:00:41.13 And now long-term contracts are being signed
00:00:44.11 today which are agreeing to sell wind
00:00:47.05 electrical energy at two-and-a-half to
00:00:49.03 three cents a kilowatt hour to two
00:00:51.07 leading companies. If you compare that to
00:00:52.07 new natural gas or coal,
00:00:56.17 if you build a new natural gas plant today and assume
00:00:58.29 that natural gas over the lifetime of
00:01:00.00 the plant is four dollars million btu,
00:01:03.07 which is historically very very low,
00:01:04.12 you'll find that natural gas without
00:01:07.28 wind subsidy is comparable.
00:01:10.01 Wind is already cheaper than a new coal plant
00:01:15.08 What about solar energy?
00:01:17.20 This is what's called a learning curve as you go and
00:01:20.03 you ship more and more solar modules out,
00:01:21.17 the price gets lower and lower due to a
00:01:26.06 series of ten technological innovations.
00:01:28.00 This slide was made 2008 where they
00:01:30.14 showed where the price of solar modules
00:01:34.07 was at that time. With a prediction by
00:01:35.10 2015, it's beginning to approach
00:01:39.01 wholesale cost of electricity,
00:01:41.13 estimated perhaps to be fifteen ten cents a
00:01:45.07 kilowatt hour; that projection was
00:01:46.13 incorrect.
00:01:47.15 What we see is that we have already by
00:01:50.18 2015 actually reached grid parity?
00:01:54.02 How do I know this?
00:01:56.19 Look again at the contracts being signed.
00:01:59.09 In 2008, the contracts being
00:02:01.24 signed were pricing solar at eighteen
00:02:02.27 twenty cents a kilowatt hour; four years later,
00:02:05.15 2014, contracts being signed in
00:02:09.23 Texas pricing solar at five cents and
00:02:13.24 4.8 cents kilowatt-hour - grid parity, amazing.
00:02:16.12 And so solar energy is going to become
00:02:18.22 lower and lower as well as wind. So as I
00:02:25.03 came into the apartment energy, we said
00:02:27.07 those are technologies they're well on their path,
00:02:28.07 we will continue to fund
00:02:29.20 research in them because they're going
00:02:32.01 to get better, but we are also seeking
00:02:33.15 other disruptive technologies, and by that,
00:02:36.12 let me tell you about, first, existing
00:02:38.20 technology going into the 20th century.
00:02:42.02 That existing technology was a
00:02:44.01 horse-and-buggy; there were innovations
00:02:48.04 a steam-powered car actually introduced
00:02:50.10 before in the seventeen hundreds -
00:02:52.02 didn't work. That, well, never took on.
00:02:55.13 By the mid late eighteen hundreds,
00:02:56.29 the Benz Motorwagen, using a diesel internal
00:03:00.14 combustion engine,
00:03:03.00 it was a great car, but it wasn't disruptive
00:03:03.01 because it costs too much.
00:03:07.22 The disruptive technology was
00:03:10.00 technologically good and it met the price,
00:03:10.06 and it was the actual Ford model T
00:03:14.19 affordable by a large fraction of
00:03:17.27 Americans that actually began to replace
00:03:19.16 the horse and buggy is another example.
00:03:21.09 We call this a transformational
00:03:23.10 technology and so the Tesla is a
00:03:27.23 wonderful great car; it costs a hundred
00:03:30.09 thousand dollars. It will not be a mass marketed car.
00:03:32.05 We need something like a
00:03:36.01 Tesla that costs 20 - 25 thousand dollars
00:03:38.18 And that's what we're looking for,
00:03:41.21 and to that end we're doing research on batteries.
00:03:43.28 For example, the Tesla battery
00:03:45.24 has about 250 watt hours per kilogram.
00:03:47.19 It weighs 1,200 pounds and
00:03:51.04 costs thirty thousand dollars.
00:03:54.21 That's a lot of money, but there's a lot of weight.
00:03:55.12 And we need a battery that has
00:03:58.00 five times higher energy density so
00:04:01.24 it weighs two or three hundred pounds,
00:04:04.00 and then it has 10 times faster charging rate,
00:04:08.27 and my motto was we need a battery that could
00:04:10.27 be charged faster and could last longer
00:04:13.16 than the bladder.
00:04:14.21 That means no one really drives 400
00:04:17.19 miles in one sitting, or very few people do.
00:04:18.28 They will stop after 200 miles if they
00:04:22.22 can charge their car to go another 200
00:04:23.22 miles in five minutes,
00:04:25.22 that's good enough. What we have today
00:04:28.07 are batteries with this energy density
00:04:30.03 that weighs 1,200 pounds.
00:04:34.26 The next generation batteries being investigated
00:04:35.08 by a number of companies are with a
00:04:38.18 silicon anode; they could maybe double
00:04:40.16 the capacity, and the third generation
00:04:43.14 would combine lithium with sulfur,
00:04:47.00 which could again double it,
00:04:48.19 so then we could have a battery instead
00:04:50.22 of weighing 1,200 pounds could weigh a
00:04:53.00 couple hundred pounds 200 pounds -
00:04:55.07 same weight as an internal combustion engine
00:04:58.26 and transmission, and it could charge -
00:05:00.16 we need a battery that can charge 10 times faster,
00:05:02.26 so that would be very exciting.
00:05:07.11 Another thing we began to think about at
00:05:08.26 the Department of Energy is as you see
00:05:13.26 the technology developing,
00:05:14.08 are you prepared for the next thing, that is,
00:05:20.04 for inexpensive renewable energy,
00:05:21.09 and instead of being passive about this,
00:05:23.11 we began to actively examine what happens as the
00:05:27.06 technology gets better and better.
00:05:29.09 Would it be self-limiting? And let me give you an example.
00:05:31.23 As we transition from
00:05:33.28 ten or fifteen percent renewable energy,
00:05:35.19 which is where we are today,
00:05:40.00 ten percent to fifty percent, you actually need a much
00:05:41.02 more flexible transmission and
00:05:44.24 distribution model. I should also point
00:05:47.07 out when you're fifty percent
00:05:47.26 intermittent renewable energy,
00:05:51.15 you need backup power so the cost of renewable
00:05:53.17 energy actually has to include that back up power,
00:05:56.18 which is standby just in case
00:05:57.29 the wind doesn't blow, the Sun doesn't shine.
00:06:00.24 Therefore, renewable energy has to
00:06:03.10 get actually significantly less
00:06:05.00 expensive than new natural gas;
00:06:08.18 it is already significantly less expensive than coal,
00:06:11.04 but it's going to happen.
00:06:13.17 10 and certainly 20 years from today,
00:06:15.14 it will happen, so what else do we need.
00:06:17.02 We need long distance transmission.
00:06:20.16 We begin to need energy storage but the good news
00:06:24.11 is
00:06:26.24 when we have fifty percent intermittent
00:06:27.00 energy, there are days where you'll have
00:06:30.01 lots of surplus energy and indeed at
00:06:34.02 night you can buy electricity for
00:06:35.20 example in California at one-quarter of
00:06:38.03 the usual rate by electricity.
00:06:40.28 Each sells from somewhere between a half a
00:06:42.19 cent two cents a kilowatt hour, and two
00:06:46.28 decades from today, I am confident
00:06:49.09 that we will be generating renewable
00:06:51.06 energy at two cents a kilowatt hour or less,
00:06:54.10 so we have very inexpensive electricity,
00:06:59.04 we can power and replace a
00:07:01.01 lot of fossil fuel, but what else do we need.
00:07:03.16 We need, and this is a challenge,
00:07:08.01 we need a new technology.
00:07:10.25 We need to be able to take water and split it into
00:07:14.04 hydrogen and oxygen, and then we need to
00:07:16.20 capture carbon dioxide very inexpensively.
00:07:17.23 Again, we don't have the
00:07:20.21 technology today but there are a number
00:07:22.01 of laboratories and number of companies
00:07:23.17 that are developing trying to develop
00:07:26.12 technology that will be four times less expensive.
00:07:28.26 At their target price and the
00:07:30.06 splitting of water into hydrogen,
00:07:33.13 you then have the ingredients for a real
00:07:37.16 sustainable energy; that is to say you take water,
00:07:39.25 you recycle carbon dioxide,
00:07:42.00 and what do you do? You take the water,
00:07:44.11 you split it into hydrogen and oxygen,
00:07:48.09 you take the carbon capture carbon dioxide,
00:07:49.19 you have it undergo catalytic
00:07:52.19 transformation to build linear
00:07:55.26 hydrocarbon chains.
00:07:58.22 These hydrocarbon chains are the molecules we use in jet fuel
00:08:00.12 and diesel fuel and gasoline.
00:08:04.06 A long-distance transmission line is an oil tanker.
00:08:08.27 We know that oil ships around
00:08:09.21 the world for a couple bucks a barrel,
00:08:12.06 and so if we had this technology and
00:08:16.20 the very inexpensive electricity,
00:08:18.28 the energy problem would be well on the way to
00:08:20.23 getting to choose sustainability.
00:08:24.20 As I went to Washington, I confronted a
00:08:27.20 embedded established economy.
00:08:30.06 It's sort of like the horse and buggy whip lobby
00:08:34.05 really trying to tell Congress not to
00:08:38.18 support the development of water mobiles,
00:08:40.01 that they were dangerous,
00:08:42.26 and they would disrupt the American Way of life.
00:08:45.14 Similarly, there is this issue with the
00:08:48.29 embedded fossil fuel companies,
00:08:50.22 but as a scientist in Washington, it was my duty
00:08:54.26 my mission, to dispassionately and calmly
00:08:57.14 try to inform people in Congress as well
00:08:59.19 as others in government that this is necessary,
00:09:04.05 is going to take decades,
00:09:05.14 we've got to do this, but it will ultimately
00:09:07.09 be the low cost option,
00:09:11.00 so let me conclude of a picture, one of my favorites,
00:09:14.28 taken Christmas Eve 1968.
00:09:20.04 It was an Apollo 8, the first mission that
00:09:20.13 orbited the moon, and the last orbit the
00:09:23.07 astronauts turn the capsule earthward,
00:09:26.11 and they one of the astronauts took this picture,
00:09:28.20 which he called Earthrise,
00:09:32.22 and Bill Anders the astronaut who took the pictures
00:09:35.03 said we came all this way to explore the
00:09:38.06 moon, and the most important thing is we
00:09:39.26 discovered the earth. Now if you look at
00:09:42.00 that picture it doesn't take too much
00:09:44.27 imagination to realize the moon is not a
00:09:49.08 good place to live. From this vantage point,
00:09:50.05 Earth looks very inviting,
00:09:52.11 and guess what, there's nowhere else to go.
00:09:56.09 Since nineteen sixty-eight,
00:09:57.02 we've discovered that the climate is changing.
00:10:00.08 There is very compelling evidence that a
00:10:04.04 large part of it is due to humans,
00:10:05.07 and we have to get into a better position
00:10:08.00 because really we have to take care of
00:10:11.12 the Earth because of us and our people
00:10:12.26 and our grandchildren and there's
00:10:16.14 nowhere else to go, and so that's why I
00:10:19.24 went to Washington.
00:10:21.04 Thank you

This Talk

Speaker: Steven Chu

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: June 2016

Talk Overview

Steven Chu walks us through the advances we’ve made and the challenges we still face as we transition from a fossil fuel economy to one based on renewable energy, such as wind and solar. He speaks of the need to develop lighter, cheaper, rapidly charging batteries to speed the transition to affordable, functional, electric vehicles. He also stresses the need to support research into technologies such as carbon recycling that would make energy production truly sustainable. Chu ends his talk by reminding us that the Earth is our home and we need to commit to caring for it.

Speaker Bio

Steven Chu

Steven Chu is Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology and the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. From 2009 to 2013, he served as US Secretary of Energy. At the time of his appointment to the Cabinet, he was a Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cell… Continue Reading