Global renewables: Pioneering the energy transition | DW Documentary

[Music] more than 50% of the world's population live in urban areas by 2050 it could be nearly 70% big cities have big needs when it comes to water food and energy this heavy Demand on resources poses daunting challenges to researchers in a World Grappling with climate change those cities and towns will need large amounts of energy revolutionizing the complex systems of our energy Supply is one of the biggest challenges for a global transition to Green energy and for people probably the most [Music] tangible so for us As Cities uh and responsible for the policy in the cities I think it's so important that we take a leading role because it is possible for cities to change so we are very conscious that we need to move into an economy that is renewable and circular and nature positive all those at the same time actually we don't have a choice I think that we have little time left to save the planet so we have to do whatever we can as fast as [Music] possible to see how a sustainable energy Supply can work in practice we head to the United States there a California city is aiming to become the first carbon neutral community in the country Lancaster is home to about 175,000 residents in 2009 officials started on a journey to go green fundamentally transforming the city's economy and infrastructure Not only was it a technological overhaul it was a shift in mentality it's the purpose of government to assist people not to lay people it used to take minimum of 6 months if this person wanted to put solar panels on their roof they have to get a permit somebody would always have a design change but it would take six months just for them to be allowed to do it and so when I found that out I sent out a memo it now takes 45 minutes and it better be 45 minutes in in the city of Lancaster the hardest part was changing the culture within the city staff that we look for reasons to say yes we don't look for reasons to say no you know when we started out down this path we were laughed at we were scorned we were you know Facebook and up every day uh but we set out to to develop a model for a city that once the world woke up it would be easier for them to do it as we went down this path we made more money than you can possibly imagine alternative energy is profitable and it's profitable in a huge way Lancaster's mayor Rex Paris began by having photovoltaic panels installed on all municipal buildings the generated electricity was used for public Lighting in the process Paris discovered it saved the city a lot of money the savings were put towards installing even more photo voltaic panels on the roofs of private residences these systems also became mandatory for new buildings bit by bit Lancaster created an alternative energy Network excess electricity started being used to generate hydrogen to fuel public transportation the lowcost electricity and cheap hydrogen attracted new large companies and Lancaster solidified its reputation as a green Boom Town in the United States I traveled a lot I went to the world economic Forum in tenen I went to Saudi Arabia I went to to the Middle East every energy conference and I learned a lot thanks to the sunny weather and the already existing solar and wind parks in the area green energy and hydrogen production continued to expand when Lancaster began the process of transforming its own Energy System in 2009 the unemployment rate was at 177% in 2023 it dropped to around 6% Lancaster became a self-sufficient green energy Powerhouse and highly profitable too once people start being Innovative and creative it doesn't stop with the immediate goal in front of you it extends everywhere this really is the most exciting city in the world I think for that reason we have a common purpose and it's a simple purpose it's that our children children survive you know that's that's not hard you know and when you have that as a common purpose you can put aside all the differences and you can make things happen you can build things that have never been built before you know this this project here is actually quite [Music] remarkable in recent years both the city of Lancaster and mayor Paris have been recognized with many awards for the achievement from the US state of California to vedel in the German state of Bavaria a rural region where the forest industry is key when Marco caser took the Helm of the regional energy supplier everything here changed what would an energy Supply look like if we could only use renewable energies and sustainable raw materials well we harness sunlight and wind energy and store them vle shifted to a circular system that effectively linked its regionally strong Timber industry with the local Energy System the idea was to reuse as much energy as possible multiple times and wherever excess energy accumulated say in the form of wood waste or waste heat from machines it shouldn't be lost but rather harnessed we have we have wood we have biomass we have sun and wind we may not have hydr power but we use everything locally that we need local Surplus energy generated from solar and wind power is used to press forestry waste into wood pellets the pellets can then be burned to generate heat or to power a turbine for electricity it forms a cascaded system which always consists of the same thing solar and wind battery storage and combined heat and power it's the perfect system which couples both sectors and industries the construction industry is linked to the timber industry the timber industry is linked with agriculture or forestry this creates local circular energy economies that can be scaled up to all levels which in turn satisfy the energy demand in the form of electricity and heat and electricity in terms of Mobility too funel in Bavaria and Lancaster in California both have tapped into their locally available resources as best they can and both have created infrastructures in which green energy can be used as efficiently as possible in an ongoing cycle [Music] of course such systems are ideally integrated into construction projects from the very [Music] start in Copenhagen a newly built District called nordham served as the testing ground for the energy lab project a living laboratory for Research into Innovative and more efficient energy [Music] Cycles well the essence is that we that we test the Solutions in real life in energy Lan we've also been looking into business models uh uh because that's also part of the solution innovation in business models uh is part of the solution in this sector coupling context it's very important that we utilize the energy that is available and this is basically something that we are demonstrating here in the Noah home project we can say that the energy system has to develop we have to do it in a more smart way and that means that we need to see what sources are available and how can we in the best possible way actually utilize them the buildings here are well insulated and retain heat that's a money saer and is especially important at peak hours in the early mornings plus commercial businesses in the neighborhood can compress their waste heat and Supply it to the district heating system which provides heat to the surrounding buildings compressors for cooling down the goods they are running by electricity and by using a little bit more electricity in the compressors we get way more heat available so in situations where we have Surplus electricity from wind Turin or photo volc we can actually optimize the operation of the compressors and convert that in to a lot extra energy that can be used in the buildings and in that way is this system actually a smart component in the sector CET Energy System here again an ingenious cycle the energy put into the system is not single purpose rather it's used several times and the whole neighborhood benefits you can say it's about 37 tow houses so so that would be a if you go uh out here that would take a actually a quite big part of the the neighborhood here so so so that's actually this little store it is actually a little store but we can actually do for almost 40 houses in this store Al the goal of a modern circular economy is to save energy and increase efficiency these Cycles are optimized to make energy competitive in price while serving as an extension or even an alternative to the large centralized [Music] grids Norway and its capital Oslo are among the Pioneers in the green energy transition Oslo is aiming to reduce CO2 emissions to near Zero by 2030 mayor Mariana borgan helped to draft and pass a series of concrete measures we have all the way tried to to tell our inhabitants that this is not about the restrictions so it's not about uh restrictions it it's about opportunities when we are building new kindergartens and schools they are built with solar cell panel and uh they also produce more energy than they need to use themselves so we can put it over to other buildings thereby Oslo is considered the world capital of e-mobility it's also made significant Headway in making its construction sector carbon neutral with advancements in Heating and building materials we have said in Oslo that we want to be the first uh zero emission city in the world by 2030 which is is a very ambitious goal but it is possible I think that is so important both to try to reduce the consumption of course but also reduce the waste and also to reuse and also recycle I think that these are all important elements in the total policy to achieve this ambitious goal both residents and businesses must play an active part he skan DNA spent several years of her career working at a large Scandinavian construction company in Oslo the company has more than 8,000 employees and carries out projects worldwide as a board member she pushed the company to publicly commit to implementing the goals of the 20155 Paris agreement on climate change she also supported mayor boran's measures I think the biggest moment in my career was when the whole management team in V decided that we would work uh towards the Paris agreement we didn't know exactly how we should do it but we set a clear Direction and I think that was so crucial to set the Direction and then some people said but why if we can't make it and I said well I'm not so afraid about that I'm afraid that we don't dare to set the Direction with all her experience hega Guan DNA sat for years on the board of the Norwegian Green Building Council which is part of the world Green Building Council I think it will be very important how we build our cities the next 30 Years uh in 2022 we reached 8 billion people on Earth and by 2050 there will be 10 billions that means a city the size of Vienna will be built every week until 2050 that's a lot of aluminium and steel and glass and concrete and wood and plastic and Bricks so we have to go circular we have to build with less for longer Sonia Hoon manages a real estate company in Norway when constructing new buildings the company aims to reuse as many elements as possible from old office buildings that are being torn down when building a modern office complex in Oslo the company fused old with new it was a pilot project meaning success was not guaranteed but almost immediately startups and tenants started moving in precisely because they were drawn to the sustainable concept he SKU and DNA also had an office there for some time it's reused these reflector panels and also the fence here used to be uh on the floor in the swimming pool in the technical room and it's been used all the way up as a rail uh railing uh in the Atri so those are some of the more interior aspects of reuse where you also refer to as upcycling so it goes from one one thing to be upcycled to something else we've been working systematically uh on uh finding out how we can make U buildings uh part of the solution I mean buildings um uh accounts for around 40% of carbon emissions globally 40% of energy use so a huge part of the problem meaning that we also have the opportunity to be a huge part of the solution in 2019 an office building commissioned by Sonia Hun's company was inaugurated in the Norwegian city of tonim it was named Powerhouse the roof is covered with solar panels angled optimally to capture the sun's rays in northern Europe as a result the Powerhouse with its 3,000 square m of panels produces an annual average of 500,000 kwatt hours of electricity that's more than double the amount it consumes itself the Surplus electricity is used on a local micro grid to supply neighboring buildings and electric buses and cars and this is a Pioneer project uh it's uh one in of a Kind it's the first of its kind so uh it's attractive for young people to sit and work here and uh and it it it feels good whatever we build new uh we have focused mainly on three aspects uh one is to use less resources and materials so whatever you can reuse is excellent uh if you can't reuse maybe you can use recycled materials before you start sourcing new materials more and more of the construction sites that we have in Oslo are now Z emission construction site because the technology is on place we need to uh challenge uh the establishments the industry and also show the way employers and the employees uh in business are now largely as a general Trend very much on board that cutting emissions is not only the right thing to do for the world's climate and the future of our kids but it's actually also Smart in the economy like Oslo the rest of Norway is aiming to be be carbon neutral by 2030 the country has a large oil and gas sector but it also has a wealth of hydr power Norwegian Minister Espen Bart Ida is confident that the necessary transition to a carbon neutral economy comes with more opportunities than risks for domestic Industries we're also seeing that the service industry that was developed because of 50 years of petroleum is now very eager to themselves go into these new areas because if you can run uh oil or gas Platforms in the North Sea in 10 m high waves and extreme conditions you can also do floating wind if you're good at building fossile ships with advanced technology you're also good at building hydrogen or ammonia driven ships with advanced technology this circular energy economy relies as much on technological innovation from major industries as it does on a stable grid that can provide constant and reli iable green power in northern Europe that can best be achieved with wind power from offshore parks and with Hydro power if the countries bordering the North Sea can help balance one another's demand for green power it could result in an international grid which could become a model worldwide the longest of these subc links to date was constructed in 2021 to connect Norway with England's eastern coast at some hydroelectric power stations in Norway water drops hundreds of meters to propel turbines that generate gwatt of electricity at caval hydr power is converted for onward transmission and transmitted to blly in England where gwatt of electricity are generated from offshore wind what was studying here at the moment which is a converter station that physically does the conversion of the current so a converts direct current down alter current or vice versa ultimately we have interconnectors to La where we can take in you know Green energy from likes of Norway Hydro energy into the country itself so it's enabling that transition of green energy not just for the UK but our neighboring countries whether that's Norway whether that's France whether that's Denmark or a somewhere else Britain has become a leader in Europe in developing offshore wind power in the North Sea it's now become an exporter of green power it's a super fast green Highway that allows the the transfer of energy um from either country we connect into it also brings security supply once a prosperous mining town blly suffered a sharp economic Blow from the decline of coal mining Port manager Martin Lawler hopes the power link will help return the town to its former glory so the port of blind is already a major offshore energy hub for the UK and that's actually helping to attract further in investment so companies want to be part of this cluster they want to feed off some of the special Hydraulics and electrics some of the vessel operators those building cable factories and that'll help to drive further inid investment all around the uh EST are the first signs of an economic upswing due to the energy transition on the horizon we are seeing this growth accelerating around the BL estri so the port of BL is very much part of the town of blly and the community is very much with the port uh in what we're doing here they see the jobs coming in they see the uh benefits to the economy um and looking to the Future we're going to hope that the majority of those jobs will go to local people so they are very much with us the world's largest Network to reliably generate energy has been under construction in the North Sea since 2020 in order for a new energy economy to succeed it's crucial to build large green power grids that are stable by becoming Partners in a new North Sea grid through direct Coast to Coast lines border countries are inching closer to the goal of attaining energy security Europe has to be able to collaborate even better I think every European State leader and the European union leaders it has dawned to them that we need to collaborate much stronger than we ever thought we were that was possible this North Sea grid will deploy the latest technology to exchange generated energy back and forth on [Music] demand large industrial centers will be built at the hubs like this planned energy island off the coast of jetland more should follow and be interconnected in the future they could form a kind of inner Network on the high seas essentially it's an artificial Island that can be expanded over time but what is really great about an energy island is that can it can actually power different countries around the North Sea at the same time the first of these energy islands is to be built about 80 km off the coast of Jutland and according to the latest estimates cost more than 30 billion EUR it is the first of several hubs for the new energy sector the island loan should one day provide electricity for up to 10 million households this will require large substations where alternating current can be converted to direct current and back again that's vital to transmit electricity over long distances it started very much as a uh technology that would help integrating uh large uh uh bulk power and transmitting long distances with a much better efficiency because of much lower losses the more systems we integrate the more complex the entire uh Energy System becomes if I need to integrate uh uh the next 20 30% of electrical Vehicles into the electricity system if I need to integrate 40 50 60 gaw worth of offshore wind there is a need to uh anticipate uh the uh planning and investments in order to deploy the grid technology on time 60 gaw is roughly equivalent to the capacity of 40 nuclear power plants on the eastern coast of Britain construction on a new power cable was recently completed it connects the grids of Britain and Denmark and will supply them with electricity from both country's offshore wind Parks the new interconnector between the two countries is called the Viking link with a length of 765 km it's the longest subc power cable in the world to meet an Ever growing need for energy in the future large storage facilities will be required in addition to transmission infrastructure hydrogen has immense potential as a storage medium for green electricity at a seaman Energy site in Berlin a simul shows the total demand for energy in a complex industrial society hydrogen could become the new optimal energy carrier which means the technology to produce hydrogen already holds great strategic significance even if the industrial infrastructure is only just being built now one way to make hydrogen is via electrolysis a process that uses an electric current to split water into hydrogen and oxygen the electricity to carry out this process must come from renewable sources so that its production is sustainable and they integrate into existing economic Cycles relatively easily onl Des shama is a member of the Executive Board of seaman energy the whole idea is to have a modular system where you can actually add them uh to each other so it's the same building block but you can add them to each other to be able to reach the right scale the gigawatt scale that is needed and and really um and and and and be very able to adjust to the demand of our customers depending on if it's a small industrial site or a very large utility scale hydrogen production in the future an industrial site could use electrolysis to secure its electricity Supply with hydrogen storage how much is needed during daily peak hours how much hydrogen would it take to replace a conventional power plant for example these estimates can be used to determine the best energy Alternatives hydrogen is available in virtually unlimited quantities and could become the key to Future Supply I would say there's maybe three levers for the energy transition the Energy Efficiency part which is reducing the energy consumption by really going there and and finding everywhere where we can have have a recycling of the energy that is produced um then electrification everywhere where it possible because this is going to be the cheapest way to decarbonize and then hydrogen and green molecules where this electrification would not be enough and where we need to capture that to be able to store it and reuse it elsewhere or in processes but hydrogen can do more than that it can be further refined with CO2 into new fuels until now these fuels have been supplied primarily by fossil fuels and heavy industry the hope is that hydrogen can be the basis for a whole range of fuels in the future hydrogen per se will be used as hydrogen but a lot will also be transformed into what we call E fuels so where we we capture carbon that we mix with this hydrogen to then be able to do in a synthetic manner any of the fuels that you know today Professor b r is the scientific director at the helm hold Center in Berlin he oversees projects that use Bessie a particle accelerator Bessie is used to conduct targeted Research into energy conversion and storage mediums that includes making solar cells more efficient and refining hydrogen into new [Music] fuels since when have I been convinced that something about our Energy System and energy Supply needed to change it was simply the idea that the physical potential of renewable energy is great enough to supply our planet and humanity and that it's relatively easy to achieve that's what convinced me and has gripped me ever since so to translate that into modern materials and Technologies we can convert the energy of sunlight into electrical energy and that energy we can convert into green electricity and then we can for example use electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and through this process we have chemical energy carriers that we can use and if we think big picture we could be in the position to for example bind hydrogen to CO2 from the atmosphere and then generate synthetic fuels Sonia Kalan leads a research project at the helmholz center the goal is to use solar energy and hydrogen to produce cleaner cooking fuels these could be sold in places where there's no electricity available for cooking which is the case in many areas around the world the project is a collaboration between the team in Berlin and the University of Cape Town in South Africa I always start from the photo volax sales because right now since when I started right now they've become something common place and so I told them do you see those solar cells on the roof you can use them not only to make electricity but also to make hydrogen and other things even to clean water if you connect them to the right type of um chemical reactor and they provide the power and then you can almost do anything without needing a diesel generator for example in many poorer parts of the world wood and fossil fuel products such as propane are used for both cooking and heating converting hydrogen and CO2 into a clean fuel would be a sustainable alternative when you go to buy your cooking gas you go once once maybe every month instead of collecting firewood is quite bulky so if you collect some firewood for one day it's not enough then you have to go the next day and so the time spent going to collect the firewood all the time is kind of saved and then this this time can be used for other more developmental activities projects like these are still in the experimental stage but the hope is that they'll become building blocks in an ever expanding circular energy economy all around the world more and more research is being conducted into green technologies Singapore especially is considered a laboratory for the future Professor MAV vinason is tackling one of the main problems of the new energy economy along with hydrogen batteries are the most important storage medium but they're made of costly materials which are becoming more and more scarce AS Global demand grows MAV is researching how to recycle lithium ion batteries and other E-Waste so that they can be reintegrated into the production cycle there has to be a mind shift you know towards the circularity of economy uh uh otherwise uh we will fall into a uh we as in the world will fall into a trap of you know uh we might not have resources anymore nanyang Technological University alongside other prestigious institutions like Berkeley and Stanford is among the world's most well-regarded research hubs it focuses on developing Tech that could be rapidly deployed in future industry this build building on n's campus is called The Learning Hub and was designed specifically for Singapore's tropical climate its Atrium is naturally ventilated which saves energy I decided very early uh that batteries would be my field of research uh that was my my PhD topic I've been doing batteries my entire career energy storage circular economy my entire career from early on I always wanted to do something that would make change in people's life these are all shred to something like this you get a shredded batteries and the black stuff that you see that is sticking here is where all the elements are present lithium nickel Cobalt manganese how do we extract them we first physically separate the black powders that are there and get what is called as a black MK this black MK is what has all the elements inside it the way we recover today is by actually using orange peels uh we just add orange peel FS to the black powder or instead of that we add bacterial cultures to this black powder so bacterial culture plus this black mass uh we are able to extract all the elements about 99% mavi's research is aimed at making a closed loop where the use of entirely new materials can be reduced to an absolute minimum her Innovations have resulted in 30 patents to date and in 2019 she was recognized as one of Asia's top sustainability super women inreasing there's a lot of synergistic e uh effort uh between materials research and circular economy of materials today both of them are done in silos but I think there's a lot of linkages and my research is really trying to link back in Copenhagen many of these practical experiments are being organized in a database to examine the most most promising [Music] results ta Vega directs this Center at the Technical University of Denmark improbable approaches are often times followed by fresh and innovative ideas pinpointing them and sharing recommendations with Laboratories around the world is one core mission of The Institute I mean the models that we develop here are what we call physics aware but they're also uncertainty aware so they need to know when they don't know and sometimes the best way of gathering additional information is actually not from a robot it is from the expert it could be from the people that work daily with the production of uh new battery materials their specific insight to guide the development so it's a multinational it's a multif facility uh undertaking and it's also asynchronous so it's you can say continuously operating around the world 24/7 Gathering the data that's needed controlling experiments and equipment at other places it's it's really a global Challenge and a global solution it often takes two decades for basic research to reach industrial maturity but amid the climate crisis time is of the essence Solutions need to be employed faster it's an incredibly complex challenge so complex that applied research will need to adapt too I would actually argue that the main Challenge and the main potential solution lies in Reinventing the way we invent new materials for the green transition it's actually rethinking the way we do materials Discovery we do system development and we need to reinvent the process itself and integrating all parts of the discovery production and end use cycle to do [Music] so this is especially critical because the next Innovations are already on the horizon Professor Harry Atwater conducts research at the California Institute of Technology he's one of the world's leading experts in the field of solar energy conversion turning sunlight into electricity and heat a relatively new branch of research is working to imitate Nature's Most fundamental energy harvesting process photosynthesis Nature has this marvelous capacity for uh in the leaf of every plant uh of doing something that's nearly miraculous which is harvesting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere uh together with water in the presence of sunlight and transforming those chemical reactants into complex sugars uh and starches that sustain life in a plant uh those complex sugars and starches essentially are [Music] fuels so we have drawn a huge inspiration from nature to Envision a process we call artificial photosynthesis which uses engineered materials to perform the same kind of reduction and oxidation reactions that enable the formation of fuels directly from [Music] sunlight artificial photosynthesis mimics this process that happens in nature instead of sunlight shining on a leaf as it does in nature researchers use structures made of intricate manufactured semiconductors in other words an artificial leaf and with it solar energy can turn water into hydrogen and oxygen the efficiency of artificial photosynthesis is currently at 19.3% and was jointly achieved by Laboratories in Pasadena ilau and The frenhofer Institute if this process could be scaled up for industrial use hydrogen would become cheaper than any other fuel that's why Research into artificial photosynthesis is being conducted [Music] worldwide we're now talking about the application of such semiconductor structures in a so-called artificial Place meaning an integrated device that does not need any wiring to the outside similar to plants so that we can basically produce hydrogen and oxygen more or less from nothing just through sunlight and water [Music] now for the first time we're in a position where we can essentially provide free energy using photovoltaics the same way Nature has been doing for a very very very long time and this has never been possible before it's hard to overstate the significance of semiconductors they're small and inconspicuous but they are the basis of all Advanced Technologies and can be made of many different types of materials researchers at the Technical University of ilau work with so-called 35 semiconductors 3 five semiconductor compounds are the ones we can design perfectly using silicon as the base material that would of course be very profitable that's where high performance would meet cheap materials and low costs perance of course not every single part of these new Energy Systems is ready for action but rolling out Innovation to communities and Industry will be key there are still many scientific breakthroughs and technological innovations that have not yet been widely implemented for public use if we go through the learning as silos as we did in the past we will get there but we will not get there on time and we all know uh what it cost us not to be there on time from a uh climate uh perspective the hope for a circular system is the thing that propels us prosperity must be made more sustainably we didn't inherit this planet from our parents we're borrowing it from our children researchers have made tremendous strides in recent years technology has come a long way but successfully Transforming Our energy Supply to make it sustainable hinges on our ability to scale these solutions they must be integrated into large sectors of Society before it's too [Music] late

2023-12-07 18:20

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