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Grand Challenge 1 How We Plug In
Grand Challenge 1 How We Plug In
Where does our electricity come from? How does electricity contribute to climate change? Discover what we can do to reduce carbon emissions when we generate power.
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
Why would some consider How We Plug In to be the most important Grand Challenge?
How much electricity is produced by fossil fuels globally?
What is intermittency? What is a potential Solution to overcome the challenges caused by intermittency?
What are two benefits of using nuclear power to generate electricity?
In what ways are renewable energy sources a promising Solution in this Grand Challenge?
What are two major obstacles to using renewables as an energy source?
What is one way to deal with the problem of intermittency without building coal-fired plants?
: Go turn on the light switch. What happened? Did a light turn on? How cool is that? If you live
: in a wealthy country like the United States, you take it for granted that you can illuminate any
: room with a simple hand motion. Not too long ago, that was a fantasy. Today, electricity
: is almost everywhere, and we use a lot of it. In 2019, humanity consumed 160,000 terawatt hours of
: electricity. And our usage is still climbing. If electricity still isn't sparking your curiosity,
: here is another shocking fact: electric power is incredibly cheap. That light switch you flipped—
: your whole room lit up using electricity generated hundreds or even thousands of miles away from you.
: How much do you imagine that must have cost? Did you guess about eight thousandth of a cent? That's
: all. And if you leave that light on for an hour it will end up costing you about... half a penny.
: None of this is necessarily a bad thing—we want people to have access to electricity and the
: clean water, education, refrigeration, internet and binge-worthy television that comes with it.
: But our reliance on electricity also comes at a high cost. The way we generate power accounts for
: 27 percent of the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases humans produce every year. That's why "How
: we plug In" is our first Grand Challenge. In fact, How We Plug In might be the most important Grand
: Challenge. You see, all the processes we describe in other Grand Challenges use electricity. We use
: it to build, to move around, to grow our food, and to run our air conditioning and heating. So, if
: we're going to decarbonize those human activities, we need to produce more clean electricity.
: How can we do this? Well, electricity can be generated in lots of different ways:
: for example, let's look at the city of Los Angeles, one of the largest cities in North
: America and where I live. Most of LA's power comes from coal-fired plants, many of them decades old.
: Some of the power comes from newer sources including solar projects, both massive solar
: facilities like this one, and smaller panels on the roofs of people's houses—like this. There
: are also a dozen wind plants, one geothermal plant, and a nuclear power generating station.
: A small amount comes from a landfill, where gases from rotting garbage are turned into fuels.
: And most of the rest comes from the Hoover Dam, a massive hydroelectric plant near Las Vegas.
: It's the coal plants that are the biggest problem in the case of Los Angeles.
: When you generate electricity by burning fossil fuels, like at these coal plants, you produce a
: lot of carbon emissions. Unfortunately, today fossil fuels account for about two-thirds
: of global electricity generation. If we're going to get to zero, this needs to change.
: At least some of this change will come in the form of renewable power sources like wind,
: wave, and solar. These energy technologies are already available and using them as much as we
: can will help us dramatically cut down the amount of carbon
: dioxide and other greenhouse gases we produce to generate electricity.
: In a moment, we're going to focus on renewables as one important solution. But first, you should
: know that renewables are just one of the pathways you can explore as you seek solutions to the Grand
: Challenge of How We Plug In. You see, renewable energy generation can't solve all of our problems;
: partly because of a complication called intermittency. That is, sometimes the sun
: doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. For those times when solar and wind aren't producing energy,
: we need to have stored energy available. So, in addition to generating renewable energy,
: we must also be able to store massive amounts of electricity for the calm or cloudy days.
: We're going to need better energy storage solutions, like batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.
: Now, not all carbon-free electricity has the intermittency problem: nuclear power is a
: carbon-free energy source that can deliver power anytime, almost anywhere. On top of that, nuclear
: plants generate energy using far less carbon producing construction materials like concrete,
: steel, and glass than other sources. And, despite common perceptions, nuclear is also a very safe
: power source, especially compared to fossil fuels like coal. Of course, nuclear energy has
: challenges of its own, but research in this area is another important innovation pathway to pursue.
: Our last pathway recognizes that it's very unlikely all nations can quickly abandon
: their addiction to fossil fuel power—it's just too cheap. So, one important area for research
: is finding ways to suck up and store all that carbon from fossil fuel power plants before
: it has a chance to enter the atmosphere. This process is called "carbon capture".
: So, we have plenty of options to get this Grand Challenge to zero. But for now,
: let's focus on renewables. Can we solve all of our energy problems by switching to renewables?
: Not really....Maybe... in some places... with enough innovation and the right conditions...?
: It's complicated. First, the good news: we've gotten a lot better at generating power with
: renewables, and as it becomes more efficient and more widely adopted, renewable energy is
: also getting cheaper. For example, the cost of solar power dropped 90 percent between 2009 and
: 2020. In some nations, like the United States, we could realistically power most of our lives
: with renewables; we have plenty of rivers to produce hydropower, we have areas like the
: Midwest that benefit from strong winds, and the Southwest has almost year-long sunlight.
: Renewables offer compelling solutions and they will be part of any plan that gets us to zero.
: But, renewables have two big problems:
: first, right now, they cost a little bit more than coal and gas.
: In the United States, they cost about 15 percent more. We call this extra cost the Green Premium.
: The Green Premium in the United States is actually pretty low.
: Renewable generated electricity in this country would add only about 18 dollars extra to the
: average monthly utility bill. Many European Union countries are in a similar situation.
: But in other countries, the Green Premium is a lot higher. Some countries don't have
: access to the same variety of natural energy sources as the United States does. And without
: financial resources, transitioning a country's infrastructure to renewables is out of reach.
: It's hard to escape the fact that fossil fuel electricity is just cheaper than renewable energy
: in most cases. As a result, many countries in Asia and Africa are following China's example: China
: pulled millions of its citizens out of poverty with cheap reliable electricity by building a lot
: of coal powered plants. Other countries also see fossil fuels as the path to prosperity.
: And fossil fuel plants are reliable too because they don't have the problem of intermittency.
: One way to deal with intermittency without building coal-fired plants, is to invest in
: our electric infrastructure. In the United States, we don't really have one power grid.
: Instead, we have several decentralized grids. There are a few reasons for this but one is
: that our electricity infrastructure was built with fossil fuels in mind. You can ship coal
: or pump gas long distances between grids with trains and pipelines, but if you have these
: disconnected electric grids, it's impossible to transfer the electricity produced by solar panels
: in sunny Arizona to cloudy Connecticut. So we need to invest money in building really large
: systems for sharing electricity. For example, Los Angeles's energy is generated as far away
: as Washington and Wyoming and travels across 3,700 miles of transmission lines.
: We need to expand and connect our power grids so this kind of range is possible on a larger scale.
: Admittedly, all of these are big challenges. But there are things we can do in each case,
: like writing to our congressperson to ask them to support public funding for nuclear fusion. Or,
: speaking at a city council meeting about policies to incentivize people to use solar.
: Or even studying to become an electrical engineer to help build better batteries.
: You'll need to consider which innovations are most needed and most possible in your community. Which
: will get the most support from your neighbors? Do you live in a place with a lot of sun? What about
: wind? What power grid is your hometown a part of? Is there a power plant near you? Your advocacy
: might be the spark that convinces your legislature to mandate carbon capture. We all have a role to