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TechTranscript
00:00We are in a race the race is against time we have to build cities we need them but we have to make
00:14them in a different way we need a wave of innovation not only for our way of life but
00:19also the planet the consequences would be enormous if we lose this battle
00:30I'm Thomas Getz executive editor at Wired magazine at Wired we look at the
00:54innovators and innovations that are changing our world in the next hour we'll
00:59see three stories from acclaimed filmmakers about the future of energy we'll
01:03explore cutting-edge innovations in how we drive how we live and in our first
01:08story how we fuel our cars they are all ideas that promise to shape the path to
01:13the world of 2050
01:17the world has right now close to a billion cars and we might double the
01:33number of cars on the planet by 2050 so if we double the number of vehicles we
01:37really increase the amount of fuel they consume and that's gonna have a big big
01:43footprint in terms of our demand for resources to move all those vehicles
01:46around we're pulling up carbon that's been stored underground and burning it in
01:50our automobiles and putting all that carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if we
01:55don't reduce that we could have changes in the climate that we could never recover
02:00from there's a number of forecasts for what type of transportation economy we
02:07could move into one vision is that we will use more and more liquid fuels another
02:12one is we'll use more and more electricity and right now more of the
02:15industrial activity is focused around liquid biofuels the thing about the fuel is
02:22it's really unparalleled on a weight basis how much energy is in a gallon of fuel
02:28and even if batteries develop as some of the advocates hope they develop we're
02:34not going to see batteries running large trucks and we're certainly not going to
02:38see an electrified air fleet we're going to need transportation fuels for those
02:43that will directly replace the petroleum-based fuels that we're using today this
02:49has kicked off people looking at the whole range of other alternatives to
02:52petroleum in your tank
02:58commercial production of ethanol as fuel started in Brazil in 1975 when we
03:04started the ethanol program nobody talking about reducing emissions this was
03:09not an issue at that time first and most important we didn't have money to buy
03:15oil anymore after the first oil shock we were importers of oil and today more
03:22than 50% of all cars use ethanol instead of gasoline Brazil made a very
03:28conscious choice to try to find a way to reduce their fossil fuel dependence and
03:32they didn't have to look very far because Brazil's climate is ideal for
03:36growing sugarcane when you have sugarcane plantation you have only two things to
03:45make sugar ethanol my family has been in sugarcane business since 1955 and about
03:5530 years ago I thought there is opportunity to make more ethanol now we are
04:02producing 120,000 cubic meters of ethanol Brazil today has very close to 400 sugar
04:12mills the overall sales is 30 billion US dollars and this number is increasing
04:23if you look at how they make ethanol and how efficient the process is it's really a
04:28model for all of us they grind the plant up extract the sugar from the cane the
04:34sugar goes into these large fermentation tanks which combines sugars together with
04:40yeast that naturally produces ethanol they use the rest of the plant to generate
04:45heat to distill the ethanol and turn it into fuel they also use that heat to
04:52generate electricity renewably not putting excess carbon dioxide in the
04:56atmosphere Brazil has gotten to a point today where they're using about 40% less
05:03petroleum than they would be otherwise but Brazil cannot supply the whole world
05:08with ethanol because they would have to cut very strongly into food production and
05:12into critical natural areas like the Amazon to make that happen and this really
05:18boils down to the fact that there's only so much arable land and growing fuel for our
05:23gas tanks is yet another demand on that landscape we cannot kill ourselves in thinking that we
05:30found a general solution for the world problem I think we will have to face the world in this way
05:36today we have no oil in very large quantities anymore we have no coal transformed in a clean way in
05:45the meantime we have to do the best we can the best at the moment is that we can do biofuels
05:52sugarcane to ethanol is an incredibly efficient process you get out about seven times the energy you
05:59put into growing the sugarcane in the US when we produce ethanol from corn for every unit of input of
06:08energy we get about the same amount of energy out so we're really not gaining anything we need a better
06:15process we don't have to take what nature has given us we can actually engineer plants and yeast to be
06:21more efficient and that's the basis for a lot of the work that we're doing now what we need to look at
06:29though is which of the pathways that come out of this are not only good financially but those that
06:34are also good in sustainability and this equation is really wide open right now we are in a race to
06:43develop fuels the race isn't with other countries the race is against time to meet the immediate and
06:59future demands we made the energy solution spring from the ground Brazil is the most efficient ethanol
07:11producing country in the world sugarcane alcohol from Brazil can reduce the total carbon footprint by
07:18up to 70 percent compared with the gasoline the biggest challenge for a few providers and car
07:31manufacturers is to reduce co2 emissions over the next 20 years demand for mobility will continue to grow
07:40grow we believe that biofuels are very important because they help in an immediate way all forms of
07:48fuel are going to be needed hydrocarbons natural gas biofuels all of them are going to be part of the energy
07:56for the future of transportation Brazil has been very successful at taking a resource they had and finding the process to make that into ethanol and people call those first-generation biofuels
08:13we have lots of lab work around the world that are looking at the second generation that's generally turning cellulosic material from for example weeds into biofuels and the United States is very much at the forefront of the innovation part of the equation
08:31For centuries we have been using yeast to consume glucose to consume glucose and produce wine and beer we're trying to do something very similar only we're engineering the yeast to consume that glucose and turn it into a
09:01fuel or a drug or chemical we call this synthetic biology and when I started in this area many of my colleagues said oh Jay this is great work but where's the application what are you going to do with these tools who cares
09:16malaria is an enormous problem in any one year a million or so people die of the disease and most of them are children under the age of five so we thought this was a great opportunity to engineer yeast to produce an anti-malarial drug called
09:31artemis. This drug is derived from plants right now but is too expensive for people in the developing world so my laboratory engineered yeast to produce small quantities of artemisinin now that process is being scaled up and we'll have this drug on the market shortly but at a substantially reduced cost
09:51It turns out that anti-malarial drug is a hydrocarbon, and it's very similar in many ways to diesel fuel.
10:00We thought, gosh, we could turn our attention now to fuels.
10:04We could make a few changes in that microbe to turn it into a fuel-producing microbe.
10:10If we imagine that glucose is going to be our new petroleum, we need a source for that glucose.
10:16So the crops that we're looking at are crops like switchgrass.
10:20This is a native grass that grows without a lot of water and on marginal lands.
10:25But we could turn it into energy farms.
10:28The challenge, though, is that unlike sugarcane, it's very difficult to get the sugar out of that biomass.
10:35So we use what we call a pretreatment process to extract the glucose from the plant,
10:40and then we feed that glucose to a yeast that we've engineered to produce hydrocarbons.
10:45And that yeast takes in the sugar, and it changes its composition and gives us this high-energy molecule.
10:55They float to the top. You skim them off. You put them in your tank.
10:58But it takes a lot of work to get from that small test tube all the way up into the million-gallon tank.
11:10So we have to give it time, but I think that some of the discoveries that are happening might be applied by the end of the decade.
11:16In terms of a sustainable equation for the planet, the role of biofuels is quite tricky.
11:28There are a variety of crops that do not compete directly with food,
11:32and finding ways to utilize those types of crops first, that's very attractive.
11:37So solving the science is part of the story, but then evaluating all of these new fuels in terms of the land-use impacts that they could have,
11:47that is an even harder story than doing the good science.
11:52Imagine that you could have one process that could take in sunlight and carbon dioxide and turn it into fuel.
11:59And imagine if that didn't involve growing anything at all.
12:06The synthetic biologists are trying to take plants and make them do things that they wouldn't normally do.
12:13On the other hand, materials chemists like myself want to do artificial photosynthesis
12:20to improve on the process that nature does in real photosynthesis.
12:29We should follow the blueprint of plants converting sunlight into fuel, but take the approach that it could be much simpler.
12:47All we really need is a light absorber that absorbs sunlight.
12:51We also need a catalyst like iron or nickel.
12:55So when you see the hydrogen coming off of the photoactive material, that's an example of a semiconductor breaking the chemical bonds of water to make hydrogen and oxygen.
13:07Ultimately, our pieces are going to be contained in something that is easy to roll out, like bubble wrap, or in would come sunlight and water.
13:17You would vent the oxygen into the air, but the bottom would wick out your liquid or gaseous fuel that then you could collect and use for our cars and planes and storage.
13:29Our goal is within two years to have the first artificial photosynthesis solar fuels generator that we can hold in our hands, and then get to scale beyond that time.
13:51We're certainly not good at predicting the future, but to me, electric vehicles look like a sustainable option.
13:59We've heard proposals about things as far-fetched as nuclear power planes, and even some proposals to move freight around with lighter than air vehicles.
14:07And so, if the future in 2050 does include a fair amount of oil, what it means would be that we haven't deployed as many of these clean technologies as we already know are possible.
14:20If you think about how long it's taken for us to build up the petroleum industry, we can't hope to reverse that overnight.
14:28It's a huge change in our infrastructure.
14:31Yes, we should have been working on it 30 years ago.
14:34We didn't.
14:35We're trying to make up for that, and that means basic research needs to be done now and by as many people as possible.
14:41We have a long way to go, but I'm confident that we'll get there.
14:50In the future, 3D maps are going to help people get places more efficiently.
15:06As we just saw, the race to produce cleaner energy is charging ahead.
15:10In the meantime, demand for cars continues to climb.
15:13By 2050, it's predicted there will be two billion cars on the planet, and fuel consumption will have tripled.
15:19To keep pace, we'll have to radically change the way we drive.
15:22Here's our next story, Driven by Design.
15:31The automobile came around.
15:33In many ways, it was the future.
15:34We thought of it as one of the more positive changes that had happened to society.
15:39Suddenly, our ability to get a job changed.
15:42We can live farther away with bigger plots of land, with better quality of living.
15:46It all looked quite good, but there are limitations to swearing by the car.
15:53If it gets congested, your quality of life drops immediately.
15:56To spend so long in the car, it's very inefficient.
16:00Use of fuel consumption, things start making sense all of a sudden.
16:04It doesn't bring you closer to where you want to get.
16:06It actually sometimes brings you farther.
16:09The average American spends nearly 300 hours a year in their car.
16:13Thirty-eight of them stuck in traffic.
16:16Annually, congestion consumes over one billion dollars in gasoline in the United States alone.
16:23The inefficiency caused by traffic, both financial and personal, is enormous.
16:29Dirk Sheehan and Carmen White's story is not that unusual today.
16:38Dirk works an hour and a half away in Warrenville, Illinois.
16:43Generally, he wouldn't leave work until 6 or 6.30,
16:46and I would say the usual time for him to get home is around 8.
16:49Well done.
16:50Well done?
16:52Usually when I wake up, I'm the only one up.
16:55Sometimes the kids wake up with my routine.
16:58More often than not, I don't see them in the morning.
17:02I think about my commute when I wake up.
17:05I check the traffic report, see if there's any delays.
17:08The worst-case scenario, it takes me two hours to get to work.
17:11We are already so limited in the amount of time he can spend with the kids.
17:17And our expenses are crazy high.
17:20We are spending 400 bucks a month on gas.
17:23It takes away from our food budget, and we never paid for gas like that before, ever.
17:29There's technology that would allow me to spend less time in the car, spend less money on gas, and spend more time at home.
17:36I'd be all for that.
17:38The cost of traffic is people's time.
17:43It's fuel wasted.
17:45It's an emotional toll.
17:46It's a frustration.
17:48Utilizing the roads more intelligently is a much more efficient approach to the inability to have supply keep up with traffic demand.
17:57If you took a satellite picture of the highway, you can see that there's actually a lot of open space.
18:04And if we had the technology for cars to drive more closely, but safely, then you could increase the utilization of the road network.
18:12What this means is that to be more efficient, to use less fuel, we need to see the road differently.
18:19We need cars that can navigate through the urban landscape in a radically different way.
18:26Maps in the future are going to be able to help people get places either more safely or more efficiently.
18:36Today just helps you get from point A to point B.
18:40But what if I want to get someplace and use the least amount of fuel possible?
18:45Or if I've got a hybrid vehicle, I want to make sure I've got plenty of charge to not only get there, but to get back home.
18:52So information that is going to help people achieve the more efficient or the safer route is more detailed information about the road than a lot of people realize is possible to collect today.
19:04Here in Chicago, Nokia's location and commerce unit is developing the next generation of mapping.
19:11LiDAR, sonar, 360 degree video, all are components of what Nokia calls digital mapping.
19:20We use 64 lasers that rotate and they collect data in a 3D way about the world.
19:27It creates what we call a point cloud of information.
19:30That point cloud allows us to measure distances then between the points that we collect.
19:36That system combined with the cameras, with higher precision location detection through inertial measurement units,
19:44that whole data system allows us to collect them.
19:461.3 million points of data per second.
19:49Probably within two to three years, you're going to see 3D maps that are going to integrate the traffic information into your routing to help you understand.
19:57If I've got five different routes to take, which one is the most efficient today given the way the stoplights are running, given the way traffic is running?
20:03All of those factors are going to be taken into consideration to make sure I've got the best route.
20:09But better mapping that can integrate topography, infrastructure and density is only part of the answer.
20:16Another key to improving transport efficiency is building cars that drive themselves.
20:23Autonomous vehicle technology has a tremendous potential to improve efficiency of a road infrastructure.
20:32By removing humans from the equation, we eliminate all the things we do wrong behind the wheel.
20:39Speeding, changing lanes too often, merging haphazardly.
20:43And by marrying autonomous vehicles with sophisticated 3D maps, we can make driving safer and more energy efficient.
20:51That next generation vehicle is being built right now by the Swedish trucking company, Scania.
21:04The solution as you see it is that the vehicles can utilize intelligent maps, 3D maps with traffic information.
21:13The vehicles will be intelligent and communicate with each other.
21:17They will talk to each other, they will talk to the infrastructure.
21:23And we will see completely autonomous driven vehicles.
21:27The goal was to have multiple robots and see if they could go 60 miles fully autonomously.
21:49My name is Helen Taylor.
21:51My husband John and I were very passionate about fuel economy.
21:57Yeah, it's great to break world records, but that's not the be all and end all now.
22:02It's more important to educate people.
22:04Together we're showing drivers around the world simple techniques to improve their fuel efficiency.
22:10We run these education programs, get people on the road with us, and we finally tweak their driving techniques.
22:18Things like just checking your tyre pressures before you even get into your car.
22:21For every 1 psi your tyres are under inflated, you're wasting 3% of your fuel efficiency.
22:26And the difference between 65 and 75 miles per hour is a saving of 23%.
22:31When you talk to the general public, they're very surprised that an energy company like Shell
22:36is trying to educate people how to save money, how to reduce CO2 emissions.
22:41And here we have Shell sending us around the world to do that.
22:44You always hope when you're on this planet that you can make a real difference in people's lives.
22:49When you get emails from people saying, I've saved this amount of money this year, now I can put food on the table.
22:54Then you know you are really making a difference.
22:56By displaying traffic density in the urban infrastructure in a revolutionary way,
23:113D digital maps will help create a more fuel-efficient future.
23:15But these technologies are limited by the drivers who sit behind the wheel.
23:21Some believe that for cars and trucks to be truly energy efficient, they will need to drive themselves.
23:28The technology is coming into play through sensors and capabilities for cars to drive autonomously.
23:36In 2007, the United States Department of Defense held a competition to see if a completely autonomous self-driving vehicle was possible.
23:48DARPA stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
23:52They held a competition to develop self-driving robots that could drive themselves in traffic.
23:57The goal was to have multiple robots, turn them loose on a course,
24:02and see if they could go 60 miles in 6 hours fully autonomously.
24:07Driving may be one of the most complex things we do every day.
24:13Drivers make dozens of decisions at any given moment.
24:17One study found that drivers were exposed to over 1,300 items of information per minute.
24:24We make so many decisions when we're driving without even thinking about it.
24:29So, in creating our vehicle, a great component of the enterprise was developing software to handle lots of sensors,
24:38feeding lots of data, and generating a bunch of potential paths that the vehicle might follow.
24:43And even though the robot doesn't have the ability to predict the future,
24:48by using this fast random path generation, the robot could anticipate a potential accident
24:54and choose a path to avoid it because it's always thinking about what things could the car do next.
25:04No one expects millions of cars driving themselves anytime soon.
25:09But there is a place where self-navigating technologies are being optimized to create the vehicle of the future.
25:16We're on the Scania test track outside Stockholm, where we have basically what it looks like in highway,
25:22but it's a separate test track where we conduct our own experiments.
25:26Scania, the Swedish trucking company, has recently begun testing its next generation of long-haul truck.
25:33Utilizing radar, sonar, and intelligent mapping, they've been able to drastically reduce fuel consumption.
25:40We have this example with platooning, where we make use of the reduction in air resistance or air drag
25:50that you get from driving close to each other with heavy-duty vehicles.
25:55And in order to control this, you need to know where the other vehicles are,
25:59where their position, their velocity, their actions in the near future.
26:03And to be very close to the vehicle ahead of you requires that you have very accurate control.
26:10If you look at robotics broadly, there's a wonderful set of research on people looking at schooling of fish
26:15and trying to develop the ability for robots to work together like that.
26:19So there are wonderful examples from nature of how cooperation can lead to more efficient resource utilization.
26:25You can see it when people are competing in Tour de France.
26:29They platoon to reduce air drag.
26:33They are not bicycling behind each other that close because it's fun or because they are racing.
26:41It is because they are reducing air drag sitting behind the man who is leading.
26:47A truck traveling 55 miles per hour expends half its energy just to move the air around it.
26:54At 65 miles per hour, that number jumps to almost two-thirds.
27:00Even if platooning can reduce the energy used by 10 percent, the savings would be substantial.
27:08If a vehicle in front of another vehicle wants to brake,
27:12it immediately sends out the brake message to the other vehicles.
27:17So they actually brake at the same time.
27:20The way we do this is by we have an automatic system.
27:26So now, for instance, if I take my feet off the acceleration pedal and turn the system on,
27:30the velocity is automatically governed by getting information from the vehicle ahead through its wireless system.
27:36We want these vehicles to maintain a short relative distance.
27:40So through this system, we can reduce the fuel consumption by utilizing the air drag reduction by 10 percent.
27:48And 10 percent would mean you will be able to save approximately 8,000 euros per single heavy-duty vehicle per year.
27:55It may be some time before autonomous vehicles make up the majority of cars on America's highways.
28:10Nevertheless, some of these technologies are already making their way into our lives.
28:16Now this polar baby wants to sleep.
28:19Do you get to pick out books every day or is it just something that...
28:22I get to pick out books sometimes.
28:24Okay.
28:25When we look toward the future, the systems will absolutely make it safer and more efficient and less costly for you
28:32and also make your life easier because you're spending less time on the roads.
28:36The city begins to talk, begins to tell you where is there congestion, what's going on in different areas of town.
28:42Suddenly, the car becomes a part of a much bigger ecosystem.
28:47We can look at how cars interact with other cars, how car interacts with infrastructure,
28:51and us, the drivers, can start to make smart decisions about how to move around.
28:56Suddenly, mobility becomes a whole other thing.
28:59No matter how much money they have, no matter how much oil they have, everybody has to go in a different direction.
29:16We've seen that changing the way we drive can improve transportation efficiencies.
29:20But what if we change the way we build and live in our cities?
29:23That's the subject of our next story, Searching for Utopia.
29:27We'll travel to the United Arab Emirates and discover a city rising out of the desert.
29:31Let's take a look.
29:36From the beginning, we've dreamed of Utopia.
29:39A place where we could live in harmony with each other and in balance with nature.
29:48Many have imagined it, tried to design it, but the dream always slipped away.
29:57Many have imagined it.
29:58Many have imagined it.
29:59Many have imagined it.
30:04Then, I heard they were building a new city called Mazdar, near Abu Dhabi, in the Arabian desert.
30:13It sounded like an unlikely place for Utopia, and I wanted to see it.
30:18The last half century has been a pretty bad time for the making of cities, mostly.
30:37The natural tendency has been to accommodate to the automobile more than anything else.
30:41Try walking around Abu Dhabi.
30:46It's impossible.
30:47You have to take a car everywhere.
30:50Dubai, the same thing.
30:53They are among the least pedestrian-friendly places in the world.
30:58They are not green by any other measure either.
31:01And these are not easy things to fix.
31:09Mazdar is still under construction, and it doesn't look like much from the highway.
31:14But they claim it's going to redefine the way cities are designed, built, and powered.
31:21Mazdar City in Abu Dhabi will be the city of the future and the role model for the world.
31:28Once you see what they've envisioned for this utopian city, it's very impressive.
31:34It's carbon-neutral, pedestrian-friendly, and powered by renewable energies.
31:38But I do notice we're going to have to change our relationship with cars.
31:44Welcome to Mazdar City.
31:48Welcome to Mazdar City.
31:50We are driving in the bowels of Mazdar City in an electric transportation system.
32:00Slightly unnerving to seeing this for the first time.
32:03Where are we going?
32:07The first big move the architects at Foster & Partners made was to put all transportation underneath the city,
32:14leaving the streets of Mazdar totally free of cars.
32:18The place reminded me of a medieval city.
32:22And actually, many design elements are adapted from ancient Arabic towns and villages.
32:28It's all about looking back into history to move forward.
32:32There's some very, very simple ideas that have a huge impact.
32:36This is the pedestrian zone. There's no cars here.
32:39This has enabled us to push our streets together to take the advantage of the shade,
32:43channel the cooling breezes through.
32:47The whole scale here is based on the human being. It's not based on the motor car.
32:52As soon as you lift up the pedestrian plane by seven metres,
32:57you've suddenly captured this breeze.
32:58What you can see here in the balconies, we've got a modern interpretation of an ancient Arabic screen.
33:07What we must avoid is direct sunlight hitting any piece of glass.
33:13As soon as the sun hits the glass, the heat's transferred into the building,
33:17and we have to use more energy to cool it down.
33:19Can this really make all that much of a difference?
33:22Yeah, absolutely.
33:23For example, downtown Abu Dhabi, 60 metre wide streets, black asphalt,
33:29mirrored, reflective buildings, no relief from the sun.
33:34On a day in September, the air temperature in both places was 39 degrees.
33:41In Abu Dhabi, the temperature measured at the asphalt was 57 degrees.
33:47In Mazda, the temperature measured on the ground 33 degrees,
33:55so we've actually lowered the air temperature.
33:59We're trying to do as much as possible with as little as possible.
34:03These simple design moves cut air conditioning needs by 60%.
34:08But this place is also technically very sophisticated.
34:12The roof panels not only provide shade, they also generate electricity.
34:17And the walls themselves are made of glass-reinforced concrete,
34:22literally sand taken from the desert.
34:25Everything here is geared towards maximizing energy efficiency.
34:28Mazda does represent a whole different value system.
34:33It represents an acknowledgement that eventually everybody has to go in a different kind of direction.
34:38No matter how much money they have, no matter how much oil they have, no matter how much oil they have, no matter anything else.
34:48All of the cities here in this part of the world have come out of nowhere.
34:52There was nothing here not so long ago except small settlements in the desert.
35:00And then all of this oil and all of this money and suddenly, you know, wham, these cities started popping up.
35:07But they sprung up in a false love of a Western model that was already out of date.
35:16The model of the late 20th century automobile-based energy-hogging city.
35:22For most of the world, energy is very expensive.
35:38But the United Arab Emirates is sitting on 10% of the world's oil.
35:44And energy is cheap.
35:48So cheap, you can run a ski slope in a shopping mall.
35:53And build the world's tallest skyscraper.
35:57But even here, cheap energy won't last forever.
36:02And the people behind Mazda are determined to find alternatives.
36:14One of the most crucial aspects of our energy modeling and scenario quantification is how much energy, in total, is the world going to use in 2050.
36:33The scenarios team is a bunch of people with rich imagination, I would say.
36:38We have political scientists, economists, geopolitical experts.
36:41Really, we try to simplify the complexity all around us.
36:46We, in the scenarios team, are currently putting a lot of attention into cities and city development.
36:57A lot of megacities are going to be built in the coming decades.
37:01We're talking about the equivalent of a new city of a million people every week.
37:08That is an incredible demand.
37:09Most of the world's resources are consumed by the cities.
37:14What if we could offer a blueprint for a better city?
37:18Public transportation, information, energy.
37:21We understand demand will rise.
37:23We understand that current supplies will struggle to keep pace.
37:27So we have to, of course, find ways of bridging the gap between the demand and the supply.
37:31Decisions that we take now are going to have a major impact on decades to come.
37:38There's enough oil under these sands to last 150 years.
37:52But fundamental to the Mazdar ideal is getting energy from renewable sources.
37:56From geothermal and wind.
38:00And most of all, from a source they have in abundance in the desert.
38:04The sun.
38:05This field of solar panels makes more than enough electricity to run Mazdar.
38:16And the excess power is sent to the Abu Dhabi grid.
38:19But silicon panels are expensive, and the price of solar power needs to drop if it's going to be competitive from Africa to Asia to Arizona.
38:32In the future, Mazdar hopes to get energy from this prototype called the solar beam down.
38:47Using highly reflective mirrors, the solar beam down may generate power more cheaply and ecologically than silicon panels.
38:54The mirrors bounce the sun's rays up to the tower, and then down to a point.
39:11Reaching a temperature of 600 degrees, steam can be generated to run turbines to make electricity.
39:17There's just one problem.
39:22Neither of these solar technologies work at night.
39:25So Mazdar needs to draw power from the grid when the sun goes down.
39:30And that power comes from natural gas.
39:33The reality is, it's just not yet possible to power Mazdar entirely without fossil fuels.
39:40The great challenge with Mazdar will be, how do you make it a place that will not be just this ideal city that no other place could actually aspire to because it doesn't seem real.
39:58What Mazdar has to be is a laboratory that develops things that then can be applied in existing cities all around the world, because that's where it will pay off.
40:17There's no payoff if it's just about itself.
40:20The payoff is how can everything it's trying to do matter in the rest of the world.
40:26Right now, there's only a store, two restaurants, a bank, and a few hundred students living here.
40:36It's too early to tell if Mazdar will work as a city when it's finished.
40:41But much has been achieved.
40:43They are carbon neutral, and largely powered by renewable energies.
40:47Solutions here won't work everywhere, though.
40:50Many cities are in cold climates, and cooling is not their energy problem.
40:53They need to let sunlight in, not keep it out.
40:58Cities like Los Angeles or Houston are built around cars.
41:03Can Mazdar's lessons be applied to them?
41:06Still, it's a step in the right direction, and it's impressive that this step is being taken by a country that doesn't need to take it.
41:13I met a guy who said, actually, they did need to take it.
41:20He took me to the desert to explain.
41:22God says,
41:28God talks about man's place in the universe.
41:34that this world is a trust, and God offered this trust to the mountains, to the heavens, to the land, to earth.
41:46And all refused it, refused to take this trust.
41:51But man, being adventurous, a bit vain, maybe too ambitious, being man, accepted it.
42:00Now, accepting it, there is a responsibility.
42:03Taking responsibility isn't always easy.
42:16Utopia may be unattainable, but we must reach for it.
42:23And Mazdar does give us a clue to what cities will be like in the future.
42:27They may not look quite like Mazdar, but they will be shaped by the same concerns, by energy, where it comes from, and how it's used.
42:42The way we've been building cities lately is unsustainable.
42:48We can't go on building them that way.
42:50But to say that we can't build cities the way we have been building them, doesn't mean we can't build cities in the future.
42:59In fact, we have to build cities.
43:01Cities are the essential statement of human civilization.
43:06So we will continue to make them.
43:09But we have to make them in a different way.
43:20What we've seen is that the world of 2050 won't look drastically different from the world today.
43:25But the challenges of a growing population and increased energy use demand real solutions.
43:30It's innovations like those we've just seen that will be critical in charting our path to the world of 2050.
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