Top 10 Energy Sources of the Future

 It’s a really exciting time to be alive.We have a front row seat to the only known transformation of a world powered by dirtyfossil fuels, to a planet that gets its energy from renewable, clean sources. It’s goingto happen just once, right now. These are the top 10 potential energy sources of tomorrow. Every hour, more energy from the sun reachesus than we earthlings use in an entire year. To try and save a lot more of it, one ideais to build giant solar farms in space that will collect some of the higher intensity,uninterrupted solar radiation. Giant mirrors would reflect huge amounts of solar rays ontosmaller solar collectors. This energy would then be wirelessly beamed to Earth as eithera microwave or laser beam. One of the main reasons this amazing idea is still just anidea is because it’s, big surprise, very expensive. But it could become a reality inthe not so distant future as our solar technology develops, and the cost of launching cargointo space comes way down, thanks to the work of companies like Space X. We already have human-powered devices [I’menvisioning wind-up flashlights or the like], but scientists are working on harvesting powergenerated from normal human movement. We’re talking about tiny electronics here, but thepotential when multiplied by billions of people is big. And with developers making electronicsthat use less and less power, one day your phone may charge when it rustles around inyour bag, pocket or moves in your hand, or your fingers move on the screen. At LawrenceBerkeley National Laboratory, scientists have even demonstrated a device that uses virusesto translate pressure into electricity. Yes, it’s amazing as it sounds and no, there’sno way I’m going to try and explain how it works--of course it’s linked below ifyou want more info. There are even small body-worn systems that passively produce electricitywhen you move. Human power isn’t going to solve global warming, but every little bithelps. Harnessing all the energy in the motion ofthe ocean could power the world several times over, which is why over 100 companies aretrying to figure out how. Because of the focus on wind and solar, the tidal energy industrykind of got elbowed out of the early mix. But these systems are quickly becoming moreefficient. For one, meet Oyster, a 2.4 megawatt producing, hinged flap that attaches to theocean floor and - as it opens and closes - pumps high-pressure water onshore, where it drivesa conventional hydroelectric turbine. So, one of those could power a whole housing developmentor a couple massive residential towers--roughly 2,500 homes. An engineer with the air forceacademy has created the terminator wing-shaped turbine that employs lift instead of drag,allowing it to theoretically harness 99% of a wave’s energy instead of the 50% thatcurrent tidal projects can get. And Perth, Australia just got the world’s first-everwave-powered desalination plant that provides the city with enough drinking water for 500,000residents. The element hydrogen - by far the most abundantin the universe - is very high in energy, but an engine that burns pure hydrogen producesalmost no pollution. This is why NASA ‘s powered its space shuttles and parts of theInternational Space Station with the stuff for years. The only reason we’re not poweringthe entire world with hydrogen is because it only exists on our planet in combinationwith other elements like oxygen. You know, good old H20. Russia even converted a passengerjet to run on hydrogen in the late 80’s and Boeing recently tested small planes thatfly on hydrogen. Once the hydrogen is separated it can be pumped into mobile fuel cells invehicles that are able to directly convert it into electricity. These cars are now beingmanufactured on a fairly large scale. Honda’s planning on demonstrating the versatilityof its new hydrogen fuel cell car by plugging it into a model home in Japan to power thehouse--instead of the car sucking electricity from the building like its electric-poweredcompetitors have to do. Honda says one of these fully-fuelled cars could power an entirehouse for a whole week, or drive 300 miles without refuelling.The main obstacle right now is the relatively high cost of these vehicles and the lack ofhydrogen stations to refuel them, although California now has plans for 70 of these stationsacross the state, South Korea’s expected to have a total of 43 soon and Germany’saiming for 100 by 2017. The method of converting the heat rising fromthe depths of the molten core of the earth into energy - also known as geothermal - powersmillions of homes around the world, including the electricity usage for 27% of the Philippinesand 30% in Iceland. But an Icelandic deep drilling project may have recently discoveredthe holy grail when it hit a pocket of magma, which had only happened once before in Hawaii.The team pumped water down into the hole, which the scorching magma instantly vaporizedto a record-setting 842 degrees fahrenheit. This highly pressurized steam increased thepower output of the system tenfold, an amazing success that should lead to a giant leap inthe energy generating capabilities of geothermal projects around the world. Nuclear fission power plants are the traditionalreactors that have been in use around the world for decades and provide the US withabout 20% of our electricity. They use something called light-water technology to surroundthe fuel rods with water, which slows the neutrons and allow for a sustained nuclearreaction. Buuuut, the system is really inefficient--only 5 percent of the uranium atoms in the rodget used up by the time it has to be removed. All that unused, highly radioactive uraniumjust gets added to our growing stockpile of nuclear waste. But now, finally, there appearsto be another, more efficient way, called a fast reactor, where the rods are submergedin liquid sodium instead of water. This allows 95 percent of the uranium to be used, insteadof the unacceptably inefficient 5 percent. Adopting this method would solve the hugeproblem of getting rid of our 77,000 tons of radioactive waste because these new reactorscan reuse it. GE Hitachi has already designed a fast reactor called PRISM and is shoppingit to power companies, but the biggest obstacle is the high cost of building new nuclear powerplants. Plus, you have to overcome the political stigma that nuclear is a dangerous energysource. Still, the benefits are huge---Its a proven technology that emits pretty muchno greenhouse gases. The big success story is France, which has 75% of its electricityneeds met by its 59 nuclear power reactors. With production and installation costs gettingcheaper by the day, solar power is taking off around the world. Europe is the best inphotovoltaics and is driven by its leader, Germany. On an average sunny day in 2012,Deutschland got as much electricity from the sun as 20 nuclear power stations, enough topower 50% of the country. Spain is now generating more than 50% of its power from renewableresources like solar. A California desert is home to the largest solar power stationin the entire world, and the United States increased its solar capacity by nearly 500%from 2010 to 2014. And if you think that that’s as fast as solar can possibly grow, listento this. Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico just made a significantbreakthrough in quantum dot solar cell technology that will allow highly efficient solar panelsto double as transparent windows. When this technology becomes cheap enough to hit themass market in the next couple of years, every sun-exposed window in the world will havethe potential to be converted into a mini power station. From 2002 to 2013, biofuels grew more than500% in the U.S. as production of crop-derived ethanol and biodiesel became a mainstreamsubstitute or supplement to gasoline in our cars. In fact, back in the day when HenryFord first developed his Model T, he thought it would run on ethanol. The discovery ofvast amounts of cheap oil all over the world unfortunately made it the go-to energy source.But renewable biofuels are making a strong comeback now. The only problem is that thecurrently dominant first generation of biofuels use the same land and resources that havetraditionally been used to grow food, which is driving up the cost of food and causingbig problems in a lot of the developing world, so something has to change if biofuels aregoing to give us a chance at replacing oil with something clean burning. That’s wherea plant like switchgrass comes in. It’s hearty, it grows like a weed just about anywhere,and it isn’t food. But, if we wanted to run all the world’s cars on it, we’d needto plant it on an amount of land equivalent to the entire countries of Russia and theU.S., combined. So that’s not gonna work. This brings us to the 3rd generation of biofuels,algae, which has all the right ingredients to replace oil once and for all. Algae’snatural oil content is greater than 50%, which means it can be easily extracted and processed.We can convert the remaining part of the plant into electricity, natural gas and even fertilizerto grow even more algae without chemicals. Algae grows quickly and doesn’t need farmlandor freshwater. Just last month, Alabama became the world’s first algae biofuel system thatcan also effectively treat human wastewater, this actually resulted in a carbon-negativeoutcome. The 40,000 a day demonstration plant basically floated giant bags on a bay, pumpedwastewater water into them, added a little algae, and then let the sunlight do its thing.Before long, algae had grown everywhere and cleaned the wastewater so well it could eitherbe released back into the bay or reused by people as drinking water. We’re already getting a lot of energy fromthe wind, but with the Buoyant Air Turbine - or BAT - that floats 1-2,000 feet abovethe ground where winds are stronger and more consistent, we could soon be getting thatenergy much more efficiently. The system is simple: a ringed blimp with a wind turbinein the middle is tethered securely to the ground. It’ll produce twice as much poweras similar sized tower-mounted turbines. It can even handle winds of more than 100 mphand can be fitted with additional devices like a wifi unit, which would help bring theInternet to parts of the world that don’t have it yet. The buoyant air turbine was designedfor bringing renewable wind energy to rural parts of the world where building a traditionalwind turbine was impossible and will first be deployed in Alaska. It can even automaticallydetect and adjust its floating height to where the best wind speed is. When the wind speedis dangerously high, the thing will dock itself, eliminating the need for manual labor. Flyingwind turbines like this should soon replace all the less efficient tower-based systemsand could allow for the construction of offshore wind farms that have until now been reallyexpensive to build. Unlike fission, nuclear fusion doesn’t createany deadly nuclear waste because it fuses atoms together instead of splitting them apart,so there’s no threat of a runaway reaction that could lead to a meltdown event. But,this is easier said than done. One Nobel Prize-winning physicist described fusion as trying to put“the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don't know how to makethe box." The technical issue is that fusion reactions will produce material that’s sovolatile and hot, it will damage the reactor that created it. This isn’t stopping privatecompanies and governments from spending billions to research the technology and solve theseproblems. And if the immense challenges can be overcome, fusion will provide virtuallylimitless energy and power the world. That’s why the world’s wealthiest governments arecollaborating on the controversial International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France,known as ITER. When was the last time Russia, China, Europe and the United States collaboratedon anything? That’s how important for humanity this project is. And because of its revolutionarypotential several powerful companies like Lockheed Martin are quietly working on theirown fusion reactors. Lockheed has a very optimistic timeline for their system, projecting thatthey will meet global energy demand by 2050. Their optimism may be fairly justified. InOctober, 2013, in separate research, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratoryin the United States achieved a huge milestone in fusion when, for the first time, a fuelcapsule gave off more energy than was applied to it. Thank for watching. Let us know if we missedanything or if you disagreed with our rankings. If you liked this video, help the conversationspread by sharing it. You can see a collection of our favorite videos from across the Internetback on our website, TDCvideo.com. For The Daily Conversation, I’m Bryce Plank.