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How to Power the World 24/7 — Without Oil | Cindy Taff | TED - Video học tiếng Anh
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How to Power the World 24/7 — Without Oil | Cindy Taff | TED
How to Power the World 24/7 — Without Oil | Cindy Taff | TED
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Phụ đề (166)
0:08
OK, so if you can't tell already,
0:10
I'm from Texas.
0:11
(Cheers and applause)
0:16
And I also spent my career in the oil and gas industry.
0:19
So do you hate me yet?
0:21
(Laughter)
0:23
Let's hope not.
0:24
So I went into oil and gas because energy is life.
0:29
And I wanted to be able to provide people with lights, air conditioning, heat,
0:35
and, of course, the ability to watch funny cat videos on their phone.
0:40
(Laughter)
0:41
But energy also evolves.
0:43
So humans used to burn wood for heat and light.
0:47
We then transitioned to whale oil and to coal, and then to oil and gas.
0:53
But we're now using renewables, like solar and wind.
0:58
And it's this exciting evolution
1:00
to clean, renewable energy
1:04
that inspired me to leave Shell
1:07
and start my own geothermal company with my partners.
1:11
And so we're now using that mud-on-your-boots know-how
1:14
from the oil and gas industry
1:16
to drill for heat instead of for hydrocarbons.
1:20
So most people don't know this,
1:21
but there's a lot of heat deep in the Earth.
1:24
And the deeper you drill, the hotter it gets.
1:28
And this heat, this energy,
1:31
it's always on, it's clean,
1:35
and it actually holds 50,000 times more energy
1:39
than all of the oil and gas reserves
1:42
on the planet.
1:44
So why am I still talking about oil and gas?
1:49
It's because we're going to take the technologies
1:52
that the oil and gas have developed over the last 100 years,
1:56
at a cost of trillions of dollars,
2:00
and we're going to start drilling for heat instead of hydrocarbons.
2:05
So let's talk a little bit about drilling, just to give you guys a basis on it.
2:09
Oil used to be found in puddles on the ground.
2:12
So people figured out that they could use it
2:15
to run machineries, cars, airplanes,
2:19
and the demand skyrocketed.
2:22
The oil line on the ground ran out because people were using it.
2:25
So we started to dig.
2:27
So we dug deeper and deeper.
2:30
And despite what you may have heard or think about,
2:34
you know, roughnecks and oil field work,
2:37
it's actually quite complex and technical.
2:40
The industry was able to advance the technologies even more
2:44
to unlock oil that was previously out of reach,
2:48
and at a cost the world could afford.
2:50
And so, using amazing innovation,
2:55
the industry learned how to basically turn the bit sideways in the subsurface,
3:01
be able to drill horizontally
3:03
within the layers that actually carried the oil and gas.
3:08
The industry also learned how to frack the rock
3:12
to release oil that would have otherwise been stuck in there.
3:17
And so I know,
3:19
not everybody's a fan of fracking,
3:21
but it really did bring in an era of lower cost energy.
3:27
And I'll tell you in a minute why fracking is important for geothermal energy.
3:33
So the oil and gas industry,
3:36
with all of this turning and steering underground,
3:40
was able to drill deeper, drill hotter
3:45
and actually drill with some pinpoint precision.
3:49
So, for example,
3:50
imagine hitting a target the size of a pizza
3:54
at a depth of five miles under the ground into the Earth,
3:58
and being able to do this over and over again.
4:02
The technology is pretty amazing.
4:05
And so we are now going to use that technology
4:10
for geothermal,
4:11
but we're not going to have to learn over those 100 years,
4:15
so we can apply it straight away.
4:18
So you guys may ask, why do we even need geothermal?
4:22
Because let's admit, wind and solar have done a great job greening the grid.
4:26
Well geothermal can do what wind and solar can’t,
4:30
and that is provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
4:35
regardless of what the weather is.
4:38
You can also use geothermal as a giant battery
4:42
to store extra energy from wind and solar,
4:46
and to make those intermittent power resources baseload,
4:50
because we can then use that extra energy during the day
4:53
when the sun is not shining and the wind's not blowing.
4:56
And so where is the real prize for geothermal?
5:01
So I think a lot of us know about Iceland
5:05
or the geysers in California,
5:07
where they've done a great job of exploiting the shallow pools
5:12
of hot water that's just below the surface.
5:16
The challenge with those areas
5:18
is that it's kind of a unique, unicorn geology.
5:22
So the real prize in geothermal is in rock that’s deep, hot,
5:28
so you're going to have to drill deeper.
5:30
So we call this next-generation geothermal.
5:34
And that's where we're going.
5:36
And we're going there by drilling deeper, hotter and horizontal.
5:40
And I would say that there are several companies
5:43
that are racing toward this future.
5:45
Ours is one of them.
5:46
I'm proud to say that we are not just talking about it.
5:50
We’re actually in the field, drilling wells, building systems
5:54
and proving that geothermal technology can work
5:58
in unassuming places like Texas.
6:00
Who had ever heard of geothermal in Texas?
6:03
It's there.
6:04
OK, I said I’d come back to the f-word, fracking,
6:07
and why is it important to geothermal.
6:11
So in this deep, hot rock,
6:14
there's not a lot of cracks for water to flow through.
6:18
And the way we get geothermal to work
6:22
is to flow water through fracks
6:24
to absorb the heat,
6:26
and then we use that water to carry the heat to the surface.
6:30
And when you get that heat to the surface,
6:32
you can use it to drive turbines,
6:35
to power electricity,
6:37
or you can use the heat directly.
6:39
The reason why we use fracturing
6:42
is we can create those cracks in the rock,
6:46
or those pathways through which the water can flow through.
6:49
So here is a picture of a frack operation.
6:52
This was actually at our well.
6:55
So what we do during fracking operations is we are creating cracks in the rock
7:00
or we're widening cracks that are already there,
7:02
and we're using it with a liquid that is mainly water.
7:06
We do add crushed rock called barite in the water
7:11
to make it more dense.
7:13
The thing I want to note is that we're pumping at lower pressures
7:16
and lower rates than the oil and gas industry,
7:19
and we're actually wanting to avoid natural occurring faults.
7:23
And this allows us to make our risk of earthquakes low.
7:29
We're not talking about technology that's decades in the future.
7:33
This is footage from our energy storage facility,
7:37
which is actually built at a coal plant.
7:41
This coal plant is delivering people electricity 24 hours a day,
7:47
and they are making the bold move to solar.
7:51
And it was -- without our energy storage facility,
7:54
they're not able to make that move
7:56
because solar alone cannot replace that power 24 hours a day.
8:01
And then soon we're going to be powering a metadata center
8:05
with our next-generation geothermal technologies.
8:08
Imagine again, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp,
8:13
and, of course, funny cat videos
8:15
being powered by the Earth's heat.
8:18
So how big can this get and how fast?
8:21
If we're able to take next-generation geothermal,
8:24
get the cost comparable to other power sources,
8:28
we're going to be able to use the geologist,
8:31
the drillers, the service companies,
8:33
the engineers from the oil and gas industry
8:36
who are currently drilling 70,000 wells a year for oil and gas,
8:41
and instead have them drill for heat.
8:45
So the result -- by 2050,
8:48
we can deliver almost 80 percent of the electricity demand
8:53
that the world needs
8:55
and over 100 percent of the heat for all homes,
9:00
all businesses on the planet.
9:02
(Applause)
9:08
So energy solved,
9:11
climate change solved,
9:12
that better future that our kids deserve.
9:16
I'm hoping this leaves you guys energized.
9:19
There's people like me that are already working toward this end.
9:24
And the thing I want to leave you with
9:26
is that that energy is everywhere beneath our feet.
9:29
We just need to tap into it.
9:32
Thank you.
9:33
(Applause)
