How we’ll actually ditch fossil fuels — by the numbers | Michael Liebreich

0:00Michael Liebreich: So when people talk about primary energy, one of two things is happening. Either they don't know what they're talking about, or they do know what they're talking about, but they hope that you don't.

0:17You are listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. These days, you'll hear plenty of people argue that the shift to clean energy has stalled. Some say we should simply accept our dependence on fossil fuels. Michael Lybrick has spent more than two decades tracking energy data, and he thinks those critics are looking at the wrong numbers. Take wind and solar.

0:45Michael Liebreich: They now account for 20 % of all global electricity, and that is despite the fact that demand has doubled over that period. So you've got solar doubling every three years. You've got wind doubling every five years. In his talk, Michael, who founded the research team that became Bloomberg NEF, explains what the usual measures of progress leave out. He even builds a model of the entire global energy system that fits on four lines of a spreadsheet. And he says history offers a clue about how this shift will actually happen. So when we went from horses to cars, we didn't do it by banning horses. We did it by building and selling cars.

1:34Michael Liebreich: Building. When we went from landlines to mobile digital telephony, we didn't do it by banning landlines. We did it by building and selling mobile phones. Michael also explains why electrifying everything from trucks to home heating could be the next big leap and what AI might have to do with it. That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:05And now, our TED Talk of the day.

4:08Michael Liebreich: So, you may have heard that the clean energy transition has failed, and that we should be pragmatic, which means accepting our almost complete and permanent dependence on fossil fuels. And I'm here to tell you that is wrong. Now, I'm also here to tell you, if you think that the transition is going to be heralded by this dramatic reduction in fossil fuel use and in emissions, then I'm afraid that model has failed. So let's look at how it might play out. And let's start with some data. Hey, y 'all. Elise here. a slide reads global share power generation by source 1985 through 2026. On the graph, you'll see lines for fossil fuel usage like coal, gas, and nuclear mostly going down over time, and a green line of non-hydrogen renewables curving steadily up, especially starting around 2015.

5:10Michael Liebreich: So this is electricity generation by source, the percentage over the last 25 years. And what you can see most dramatic is that green line. It's called non-hydro renewables. It's basically wind and solar. And that now generates those two sources of power, which were less than 1 % 20 years ago. They now account for 20 % of all global electricity. And that is despite the fact that demand has doubled over that period. So you've got solar doubling every three years. You've got wind doubling every five years. If you add those two together, they're about to overtake gas in the electricity mix. If you add hydro to those two, then they have already overtaken coal.

6:12Michael Liebreich: So this is our first clean energy miracle. I want to talk about nuclear. I have a nuclear engineering background, and I think it's fantastic that we are now building new nuclear, and we've stopped shutting big nuclear plants. But we also have to be realistic. Wind and solar, each of them have already overtaken the output of all the nuclear plants in the world. So I think we should go ahead and build nuclear, but we need to do it in a clear-eyed way. Small modular reactors, if you want them to catch up with that green line that we've seen, you have to build not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands.

7:04Michael Liebreich: So now at this point, there's usually some smart aleck who asks me, do I know that the sun doesn't shine at night? And the polite version of my answer is yes. But if you think that that means that that green line is going to stop curving upwards, Well, here comes batteries. This is a forecast produced by the team that I recruited and built, which is now Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And this was their forecast from 2019. In this slide Michael's referring to, which is titled Global Battery Demand by Sector 2019 Forecast, you see a projected demand for batteries, storage, EVs and more going steadily upwards beyond 2030 with no signs of stopping.

7:50Michael Liebreich: And it was for 25 % compound growth in battery sales from then on. What happened? 45 % compound growth. A doubling every two years. And that is our second clean energy miracle. Now, the naysayers will say all of this is irrelevant. They don't care about growth. and they will say things like, the share of hydrocarbons in the global primary energy mix has hardly budged from 85 % in 1990 to 80 % today. Now, what they don't tell you is that that period spans Asia's incredible coal-fired growth. And what they won't talk about is the six oil price crises that have damaged the economy so dramatically along the way.

8:48Michael Liebreich: And the other thing they won't tell you is what is primary energy?

8:54Michael Liebreich: So when people talk about primary energy, one of two things is happening. Either they don't know what they're talking about, or they do know what they're talking about, but they hope that you don't. Because primary energy is just what we shovel into the front end of our energy system. And over two-thirds of it goes to waste. Now, it doesn't go to waste because machines are inefficient. It goes to waste because every time you convert from fuel to heat and from heat to either mobility or electricity, the laws of thermodynamics say there will be waste. What the economy uses is useful energy, energy at the point of use, delivering mobility and heating and lighting and air conditioning and so on.

9:50Michael Liebreich: So we need to understand what is delivering useful energy. Now, it turns out there's some new figures from the International Energy Agency that says 37 % of it is actually electric. and around 30 % of useful energy is already clean. So now, armed with this knowledge, let's have a look at how the transition might actually play out. And I built the world's smallest model of the entire global energy system to help us do that. It's four lines on a spreadsheet. Now, it starts with the 30 % clean energy, Useful energy, of course. The first line is the economy. It's been growing at 3 % per year, and we want it to continue.

10:41Michael Liebreich: Pulling people out of poverty, improving lives. The second line is demand for useful energy. That grows a little bit less fast because there's energy efficiency. We'll call it 2 % per year. Now, clean energy supply, line three. It's been growing over 5 % per year, but I want to keep this really, really simple. I'm just going to say 5 % out into the future, and let's see what happens. Now, the gap, what's left, is the bit we have to supply with fossil fuels until something better comes along. And what you'll see is, for the first couple of decades, it doesn't get crushed. But after that, the space available, as clean energy grows faster than demand, the space available for fossil fuels gets reduced and they get forced off the system.

11:41Michael Liebreich: Now, look, there's all sorts of terms and conditions here. This is an illustration and there'll be a long tail of difficult sectors and we may need to do some removal. and this is only the energy system. It doesn't include land use or cow burps. But the beauty of this model is that it matches the way the world works. So when we went from horses to cars, we didn't do it by banning horses. We did it by building and selling cars. Building. When we went from landlines to mobile digital telephony, We didn't do it by banning landlines. We did it by building and selling mobile phones. Interestingly enough, in both of those cases, the old technology kept growing for around 30 years after the arrival of the new before collapsing.

12:40Michael Liebreich: So how do we keep clean energy growing faster than demand for the long term? First of all, keep growing supply. obviously. And there I think we have a new superpower, superintelligence, or as the rest of us call it, AI. But also, we need to electrify much more of the economy. And that is happening today globally. One car in three being sold is already electric. It's two cars in three in China. Fossil-fueled cars, sales of, peaked in 2017 and already a third down. But it's not just cars. One heavy truck in China in three is already electric. Now, it's only one in 25 in Europe. But I'm trying to do something about that.

13:41Michael Liebreich: But it's not just transportation, we're going to need another clean energy miracle, a third one. Hydrogen is not it.

13:54Michael Liebreich: It's electrification of heating. Already one heating system in two is electric. It's cheaper, it's better, it's healthier, and it delivers air conditioning. And half of industrial heat. Is low temperature perfect for heat pumps? And even high-temperature industrial heat can be delivered electrically. We will also need further clean energy miracles, so we must keep going with deep tech, hard tech innovation, and that will help with the outer years of the model. But in summary, I am confident that we will get to a completely clean economy in due course. And we will do so for one simple reason. Burning stuff is stupid.

14:49Michael Liebreich: It's bad thermodynamics. It's bad economics. It's bad for people and planet. It's bad for security. So we will get there. There will be a transition. And by all means, let's be pragmatic. But does being pragmatic mean accepting defeat and giving up? Or does it mean leaning in and speeding up? Because that is the choice we face. Thank you.

15:30That was Michael Lybrick at TED Countdown, The Next 10 in Berkeley, California in 2026. If you are curious about TED's curation, please visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Aspen Fitzgerald Dorsey, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Shu Han Hu, Debbie Rolfe, Emma Tomner, Connor Titsworth, Tonsika Sungmar Nivong, and Hannah Yu. Additional support from Isabella Aslarona, Daniela Ballarezzo, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Cinnamon Horn, Lainey Lott, Matthew Polis, and Yadi Vasquez.

16:16Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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