Explore the sustainability of fossil fuels, nuclear power, and renewable energy and how much space each of these power sources use.
—
No matter how we make electricity, it takes up space. Coal requires mines, and plants to convert it into electricity. Nuclear power takes uranium mines, facilities to refine it, a reactor, and a place to store the spent fuel safely. Renewable energy needs wind turbines or solar panels. So how much space would it take to power the whole world? Explore the sustainability of different power sources.
Directed by Lisa LaBracio.
Animation and art direction by Kevin Herrmann, AIM Creative Studios.
In partnership with Bill Gates, inspired by his book “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster”: http://bit.ly/PlanForZero
Support Our Non-Profit Mission
———————————————-
Support us on Patreon: http://bit.ly/TEDEdPatreon
Check out our merch: http://bit.ly/TEDEDShop
———————————————-
Connect With Us
———————————————-
Sign up for our newsletter: http://bit.ly/TEDEdNewsletter
Follow us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/TEDEdFacebook
Find us on Twitter: http://bit.ly/TEDEdTwitter
Peep us on Instagram: http://bit.ly/TEDEdInstagram
———————————————-
Keep Learning
———————————————-
View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-much-land-does-it-take-to-power-the-world
Dig deeper with additional resources:
Animator’s website: http://aimcreativestudios.com/
Music: https://soundcloud.com/aim-music
———————————————-
Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Marc Bilodeau, Karen Goepen-Wee, Filip Dabrowski, Barbara Smalley, Megan Douglas, Chris, Tim Leistikow, Renhe Ji, Ka-Hei Law, Leora Allen, Mark Morris, Misaki Sato, EdoKun , Boytsov Ilya, SookKwan Loong, Bev Millar, Lex Azevedo, Noa Shore, Kyle Nguyen, Michael Aquilina, MJ Tan Mingjie, Dawn Jordan, Prasanth Mathialagan, Samuel Doerle, David Rosario, Siamak H, Manav parmar, David Lucsanyi, Anthony Kudolo, Ryohky Araya, Eduardo Briceño, Christophe Dessalles, Heather Slater, Yuh Saito, Fabian Amels, Sandra Tersluisen, Zhexi Shan, Bárbara Nazaré, Josh Engel, Andrea Feliz, Victor E Karhel, Sydney Evans, Latora Slydell, Noel Situ, emily lam, Sid, Jordan Tang, Kent Logan, Alexandra Panzer and Declan Manning.
24 Comments
This is the fifth of a seven part series, so stay tuned for more! If you want to get a head start on learning more about this exciting and urgent topic, check out Bill Gates' new book "How To Avoid A Climate Disaster." In it, Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical, and accessible plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Check it out: http://bit.ly/PlanForZero
The cost of green energy is much high then this video makes it seem, First it will take a lot of mining to get the materials to make solar panels or wind turbines, Then there is the manufacturing of the parts which will generate more green house gases then coal power plants for the the amount of time those parts will work for. Then there is the fact that we will need to store that energy which means batteries so more mining and more green house gas. Then there is environmental damage windmills kill large numbers of bird while solar panels heat the air above them by reflecting sunlight if a solar farm is the size of a football field it is enough to light birds on fire as they try to fly over them. Windmills also require oil to keep all the parts moving lots of it.
though in the eyes of media nuclear power is very dangerous, nuclear power has saved milllions of lives from air pollution.
Come on! You need a lot of mining and resources for wind and solar. Also solar requires highly toxic metals.
Direct quote from US Department of Energy: "For energy production and development, geothermal power plants don't use much land compared to coal and nuclear power plants."
Its really sobering to realize that all the energy needed to power humans is the tiniest fraction of the energy that exists in our Earth core. It's be like a grain of sand lost in the ocean. We think our creations are impressive until you realize that if the planet was our size we would be smaller than a cell in it's body.
Why do we continue to create solar panel farms when we have acres and acres of parking lots and roof tops. Building codes could be changed to force use of this space.
Why cut out the space to sink carbon from the fossil fuel statistics in the first place? A biotope capable of capturing enough carbon from the atmosphere (and potentially over the long term store it back into the ground as coal) would be several times as large as our planet. This can be easily seen from the fact that we emit much more greenhouse gases – mostly from burning fossil fuels – than nature can take back to the ground.
Similarly, you completely cut out the costs for repairing the damages caused by burning fossil fuels, which make up a significant part of the global cost already today by excessive natural catastrophes, droughts, etc and will spiral completely out of control if we keep framing fossil fuels as a valid option of generating electricity.
The obliviousness of how these videos are made goes further. When you talk about the efficiency of wind turbines as power plants, you show that a lot of the land can be used for other purposes. Such as grasing livestock?! Beef is one of the most problematic foods regarding the use of space and water, and the emission of greenhouse gases, there is. I can only see this as sarcastic irony.
Please, TED, you can do better than that. We need a real paradigm shift, not a combination of corporate lies and science mixed in a dangerous cocktail that makes no sense as a whole.
Maybe we need more Earth days to minimize electricity usage. Bad habits lead to increased greenhouse gases.
Can't we use wind with solar ?
why can't we mount solar panels on wind turbine blades, and double down?
Nobody talks about how much non renewable are the components of wind and solar energy devices.
3:35 RBMK reactor
A good stuff, except the statement: "Others, like the U.S., have the natural resources to get most or all of their electricity from renewables.". According to the EIA, over 60% of the electricity was generated by fossil fuels, whereas only 20% was renewables.
You don’t have to go far on the internet, let alone YouTube, to find out about the impact thorium has had on nuclear energy. It’s much cheaper, cleaner, is more abundant, and etc.
Things like Chernobyl and Nine mile island aren’t nearly as likely as the tech has come very far, and incidents like Fukushima are incredibly rare and can be mitigated with through weather considerations and redundancy.
Also, one might add that any and all of these have to consider storage of excess energy.
Having the ability to efficiently store energy during low demand and send energy out during peak energy demand hours can greatly affect the energy demands and sources required to meet them.
you don't solve climate change by shutting down nuclear and using more renewables. you're only hurting the environment even more by doing so.
Nuclear power plants are still not safe because they can cause a nuclear meltdown and still run out of toxic uranium.. thats why id still stick with solar/wind or geothermal energy..
For me scientists need too see different regions and create products that create the most energy and little land and are net zero for that specific place and places like it as the video said not one solution is best for all
2:29 – the cow's doing some tractor tipping!
Great video, visualisation really helps in understanding the sheer volume of resources required
Really, how much space is solar power going to take if the whole world is getting electricity by solar panels and wind turbines?
How come we have not used a small computer to turn off and on a switch or coiled capacitor to run a generator?.
Don't you need more land when the non-renewable energy runs out? Solar & Wind would power the light bulb with the same amount of land forever.