Hello everyone. Well, I must say I'm very impressed with this meeting.
Room is amazing. I feel like I'm in a waterfall. It's really lovely
here, and that was an incredible, incredible performance. So I must say
I'm quite delighted to be here this morning talking to you and to experience this
wonderful event and everything that Indonesia has to offer. It's amazing being here in
Bali in Indonesia. Hopefully everyone saw the mangrove forests, because those are very
impressive. It's several one hundred thousand acres of mangroves that I think have been
replanted. I recall correctly. There are a lot of great things happening in
Indonesia and the rest of the world, and overall, I would say I'm
quite sort of optimistic for the future. I think we should never be complacent
or entitled, but I do think that if we're not in complacent entitled that
the future will actually be great for the world. And I think we're headed
to a bright future overall. So, and with respect to to water,
I've always thought we should we call it, but actually Earth is seventy percent
water by surface area, so we've technically think if alien came here, and
a lot of people think aliens have come here because they're always asking me.
They're always asking me about aliens, they would name us water because we are
seventy percent water and only thirty percent land. So what that means is the
potential for solving any given water issue is extremely good because there is so much
water. There's obviously desalination required at times, and the transport of water,
but desalination, as I think most people know, has become very inexpensive and
is and so really the availability of fresh water is simply about energy and transport.
So when I talk to even very well read, very smart people in
the United States, they will often think, well, the water crisis is
unsolvable, But in fact it is very solvable. We are continuing breakthroughs in
the efficiency of desalination, and I think we've got we've got a great water
future ahead of us, and I think a great sustainable energy future ahead of
us. Basically, I'm kicking things off on a positive note, but I
think with good basis for doing so. The next section is really just some
questions or Q and A. Anyone would like to ask me anything about anything?
I suppose we should generally stick to the topic of water, given that
it's the Water Conference, but I'm happy to answer other questions as well.
Not quite sure how the logistics of question posing works, but just say a
question. Sure, if I heard correctly, what is the most important thing
for solving the water crisis? Okay, Well, the exact solution will vary
depending upon country and even region within a country. But the as I mentioned,
because the cost of desalination has dropped so much, if you're just talking
about water for individual consumption, or water in say a hydroponics facility, some
kind of you know, where you're not simply putting it on the ground for
crops, but actually have some sort of contained facility that minimizes the amount of
evaporation. I think you can basically turn in any part of the world's green,
including the entire world. So it just bangs the question of where does
the energy come from? And here's where I think solar energy is very much
underestimated in terms of its capability. So if you think about what would the
Earth be without the Sun, the Earth would be a frozen, dark ice
bowl at roughly three degrees above absolute zero. It quite unpleasant. So you
know, we're cold and dark. But because of the sun where we are,
we're at a quite a nice temperature, quite pleasant, roughly three three
hundred degrees above absolute zero, and the sun powers almost the entire ecosystem is
solar powered. When you say, like, well how much electricity, how
much land would it take to generate electricity, there's a gigawatt perst square kilometer
of solar radiation that reaches the surface. So for every square kilometer there's a
peak power of roughly a gigawatt, which is comparable to a power station.
Now, the sun doesn't shine all the time, obviously, so when you
net all of that out and say, well, how much energy per day
does one square kilometer yield, it's roughly one giga what hour per square kilometer
per day? There's just still a lot. So and if you do the
rough math to power the United States, which is a heavy user of electricity,
it would only take would take less than a two hundred kilometer by two
hundred kilometer solar array power of the entire United States. And if you drive
through the United States through there's plenty of sections of the United States where there
is basically no people or another way to think of it, as a small
section of the Sahara could power all of Europe or the world. Now,
not saying you would be so concentrated in the placement solar power, because it's
better to be more distributed. But the sheer magnitude of solar power that is
available is often not quite understood, but the math of it is very clear.
So I'd really would strongly recommend sort of a solar plus battery combination or
wind plus solar can solve all of the world's energy needs by a lot needs.
Also R and D to reduce the price of desalination or desalinated cuban met
for WORTERM by ninety percent. Like what happened? Would that be? Be?
Who is going to support the R and D in this era? Not
that invariable countess of course, how we are going to support the serchio.
Yeah. So something that I would encourage everyone in the room to look at
is and you touched on that briefly, is that the cost of solar power
has dropped dramatically over the years. So if you were to say, look
at the cost of solar power five years ago, or ten years ago or
twenty years ago, it would have seemed cost prohibitive, but the cost of
solar power today is extremely low, and the cost of batteries to store the
energy has also dropped dramatically. The cost of battery a storage of electricity has
dropped by a factor of ten in the past five years. So many of
the studies that were done in times past when batteries were very expensive and solar
power is very expensive, and I would just encourage everyone to basically take another
look at the cost of solar and the cost of batteries, and I think
you'll find that you're pleasantly surprised. So all right, yes, okay,
thank you. Well, it's an honor to be here, and thank you
very much for listening to my words. And I hope you have a fantastic conference.