All language subtitles for NOVA.S50E06.Chasing.Carbon.Zero.1080p.WEB.h264-BAE_track3_[eng]

♪ ♪

MILES O'BRIEN:
What would it take

to convert our technology

and reach a
once-unimaginable goal?

We are at a critical point
in our history right now.

O'BRIEN:
Zero-carbon by 2050.

So what do we need to do
to actually meet that goal?

O'BRIEN:
We'll need to move fast.

Shall we?
Yeah, let's go.

O'BRIEN:
And in some ways, we are.

Let's go fast.

♪ ♪

We need our electricity,
our power plants

to be zero-carbon.

O'BRIEN:
So we have to keep floating
new ideas.

HABIB DAGHER:
There's enough offshore
wind capacity

to power
the country four times over.

O'BRIEN:
And giant batteries
to keep everything still going.

YET-MING CHIANG:
This is something that

just a few years ago

was considered impossible.

O'BRIEN:
Running our homes
without lighting a flame.

DONNEL BAIRD:
We want to turn buildings
into Teslas.

We want to make them smart,

green, healthy, all-electric.

O'BRIEN:
No technological
breakthroughs required.

We just have to get down
to business right away.

O'BRIEN:
"Chasing Carbon Zero,"
right now on "NOVA."

♪ ♪

O'BRIEN:
We're departing late
on a long journey.

Our destination is 2050.

Scientists say that's the
deadline for putting the brakes

on greenhouse gas emissions.

It is arguably
the most important challenge

humanity has ever faced,

and that is why I want to
understand how we'll get there.

I'm Miles O'Brien,

and I've been a reporter on the
climate beat

for 30 years.

I've borne witness to it all:

dead coral reefs,
melting ice,

rising seas,
catastrophic storms.

The main evacuation
center in New Orleans

is the Superdome.

O'BRIEN:
Epic wildfires.

I've watched
this slow-motion train wreck.

And so have you.

And now the question is,
can we stop what we started

at the dawn of the industrial
age before it's too late?

♪ ♪

To do that, as much as we can,

we need to stop burning things.

♪ ♪

Stop emitting greenhouse gases
into our atmosphere.

Or we will have made our planet

a very
uncomfortable place to live.

But how to avoid that?

What is the road to
carbon-zero?

It's a long trip,

but it's not beyond our range.

♪ ♪

Let's start in Detroit.

The Motor City.

My hometown.

♪ ♪

A city built on the power,
utility,

and reliability of internal
combustion

is now embarking
on a new journey.

Welcome to
the Electric Motor City.

It's my first stop,
because on the road to zero,

I'm going to need a ride.

I want to test-drive with you.

This will be a special ride
in the Lightning.

All right?
Let's go!

With Lightning's mama,
so to speak, right?

(laughs):
Sounds good.

O'BRIEN:
I met Linda Zhang
at the Ford Rouge Center

west of downtown.

She is the chief engineer for
the all-electric Ford F-150.

Shall we?
Yeah, let's go.

O'BRIEN:
The truck they call
the Lightning.

ZHANG:
Let's go fast.

O'BRIEN:
I gotta tell you, you never get
tired of that, right?

That's always a fun and smooth
acceleration.
Yeah-- yeah.

What is the official
zero to 60 anyway?

It's just under
four seconds.

Really?
It's pretty exciting.

ZHANG:
That torque is really instant.

You step on it and you go.

O'BRIEN:
Electric motors don't just

cut out tailpipe emissions
from vehicles.

They're also much more efficient
than internal combustion engines

at converting energy
into motion-- 85% to 90%,

as opposed to about 40%.

And the acceleration is
lightning-fast.

ZHANG:
The propulsion's definitely
there.

So it's almost, like,
a shame if you don't use it.

O'BRIEN:
Demand is strong.

O'BRIEN:
So how often are you seeing
your vehicles

on the road these days?

It's still a small percentage,
right?

Um, yeah, there's definitely
more and more on the road.

And I always love
seeing them on the road.

I have to be honest with you,
it's like seeing, um,

seeing, you know,
one of my kids off.

(both laughing)

♪ ♪

O'BRIEN:
The F-150 is a Ford mainstay,

a vehicle favored by loyal
owners who use it for work.

Did you feel like

it was a risky thing to
electrify something as iconic

as an F-150?

Yeah, absolutely.

This was a big risk for us,
but at the same time,

it came with big rewards.

You know, being able to take
this product

that is already
America's favorite truck,

but electrifying it,
really helps

bring this into the light
for, for customers

that didn't
know much about electrification.

We're now taking this
electrification concept

and really making it
a mass adoption.

♪ ♪

O'BRIEN:
That's happening right now.

In the U.S., more than five
percent of new cars now sold

are all-electric.

That may not seem like much,

but it is a marketing milestone,

the line between
novelty and mass adoption.

But internal-combustion
cars

stay on the road for 14 years
on average.

Reaching zero tailpipe
emissions from cars and trucks

will take some time.

MELISSA LOTT:
So we're headed towards net
zero, but we're on

the local train--
need to hop over to the express.

O'BRIEN:
Melissa Lott is an engineer
focused on energy.

LOTT: So I take the energy used
in this train...

O'BRIEN: Really focused.

LOTT (echoing):
Metal, plastic, paper,
glass in the windows...

O'BRIEN:
Everywhere she looks,
she sees embedded carbon.

LOTT:
I can probably figure out the
carbon footprint of that...

O'BRIEN:
It's a superpower.

LOTT:
Like 20 people average per
car...

O'BRIEN:
Or is it an obsession?

LOTT:
I see energy in everything
I'm looking at.

I actually enjoy it and I don't
even notice it that much.

I really, it's just something
that I'm running

kind of in the background
all the time.

So, as it turns out,
this obsession

actually comes in handy
in my line of work.

Good to see you!

LOTT:
I'm the director of research at
the Center

on Global Energy Policy
here at Columbia University.

O'BRIEN:
And that's where I met her--
I figured she can help me

understand where we are
in the chase to carbon-zero.

So when we look at where
our emissions come from today,

we see a couple of
big wedges on this pie.

O'BRIEN:
There are three big,
nearly equal pieces of the pie.

The first one is transportation.

O'BRIEN:
Transportation:
planes, trains, automobiles,

trucks, and ships.

The next wedge on this pie is
going to be our electric power,

our power plants.

O'BRIEN:
Electric power:
about 60% is still generated

with fossil fuels.

After that,
we're looking at industry,

so how we create all the things

that we use day to day.

O'BRIEN:
Industry:
manufacturing and construction.

And two smaller pieces remain.

LOTT:
The rest of this pie

is actually our buildings,
so the homes we live in

and the offices we work in.

And then also
our agricultural system.

So how we produce food.

O'BRIEN:
These wedges represent

total greenhouse gas emissions

the U.S. is releasing
into the atmosphere,

more than six billion
metric tons a year.

What would be better?

The idea is called "Net Zero,"

meaning first, we reduce our
carbon output as far as we can.

Then, for
the most stubborn sources,

develop techniques to
capture and store the carbon,

netting zero.

Most experts agree
it's really the only way

to avoid
a worsening climate disaster.

The U.S. goal is to get halfway
to Net Zero by 2030.

And here's a surprise--

as of 2023, we are further down
the road than I thought.

LOTT:
Compared to 2005,
which is our baseline,

we've already reduced
emissions by about 18%.

And thanks to cheap solar,
cheap wind,

cheap natural gas replacing
coal, and cheap storage,

we're working our way
towards 25% reduction.

♪ ♪

O'BRIEN:
Getting the rest of
the way to zero won't be easy.

The pie gives us an idea
of how we can make some headway.

But where do we start?

Close to home: buildings.

LOTT:
Buildings represent

13% of total emissions
in this country.

When we look at buildings
overall,

there's a couple
of things we can do.

We can move ahead with
electrifying our buildings,

with taking natural gas out
of our buildings

for cooking,
for heating and cooling our air,

for heating our water.

O'BRIEN:
So what's the best alternative?

All-electric homes.

MAN:
Here you go.

O'BRIEN:
On rooftops all over
New York City,

there is evidence that
electricity is gaining currency.

In 2022,

Americans bought more heat pumps
than gas furnaces.

Landlord Lincoln Eccles was
thinking about his son Ace

when he made the decision.

We've built an infrastructure
based on oil and gas.

But it doesn't
have to be that way.

O'BRIEN:
It's the third iteration for the
early-20th-century building

he owns in
Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

When it was built, they burned
coal in a boiler to stay warm.

Now there's a heat pump
for each of the 14 units.

Heat pumps work
not by creating heat,

but by moving
it from one place to another.

Inside, there's a fluid
called refrigerant

that boils at 40 degrees
below zero Fahrenheit.

As long as it is
warmer than minus 40 outside,

the refrigerant picks up heat
from air as it becomes a gas.

It flows into an electric
compressor,

where it is put under pressure,
adding more warmth to the gas.

The warm gas
flows into the room unit.

As it heats the space,
the gas itself condenses

back into a liquid.

Now the liquid travels back out,
flowing through a valve

that lowers the pressure
and thus the temperature.

And the cycle
starts all over again.

So in the winter,
it can pump heat inside.

And in the summer?

The process is reversed

to pump heat outside,
cooling the room.

In Lincoln's building, each unit
has its own wireless thermostat.

Set the temperature, boop.

O'BRIEN:
Easy enough for his son
to operate.

Lincoln hopes Ace will
be the landlord here someday.

O'BRIEN:
So you think when Ace is your
age, everything around us here

will be electric?
ECCLES:
Definitely.

These two behind us are green.

These developments over here,
they're green.

If they could do my building,

they could do every building
on the block.

O'BRIEN:
But heat pumps are not cheap.

And for us to reach net zero,

nearly every building will need
to make the transition.

So how can this technology
become accessible to everyone?

That is precisely
the goal for Donnel Baird.

BAIRD:
If we can do one building,

we can do
a whole block of buildings.

And if we do
a block of buildings,

we can do a whole city.

O'BRIEN:
He is the C.E.O.

of a startup called BlocPower.

BlocPower wants to turn
buildings into Teslas.

We want to make them smart,
green, healthy, all-electric.

O'BRIEN:
Founded in 2014,

BlocPower is making it more
affordable

for landlords
to make the switch.

Lincoln Eccles' old building

is one of about 2,000
conversions the company says

it has spearheaded so far.

BAIRD:
We have everything that we need
to green all the buildings now.

That's why it's so important
that we focus on buildings,

because we don't
need any more innovation.

You know,
when there is some data...

O'BRIEN:
Donnel was able to mix
the pressing needs of a landlord

with a bad boiler--
and a planet boiling over--

into something attractive
to Wall Street investors.

It's a company committed

to executing the conversion
at scale,

bundling a lot of projects
together

to lower the cost
and lower the risk.

BAIRD:
We show up and we say, "Look,

"we've got capital from
Goldman Sachs and Microsoft

"to finance moving you
to a functioning, better system.

"And it costs you nothing.

"As a matter of fact,
you're going to save money

"because the payment that
you make to us over 15 years

"is going to be less
than what you would pay

"to the oil company
or to the gas company

as an alternative."

O'BRIEN:
The arithmetic relies

on incentives from the
government

and assumptions that the cost
of heat pump

manufacturing
and installation will decline.

For BlocPower, the goal
and the risks are big.

He's in favor!

O'BRIEN:
Lincoln Eccles
says it's working for him.

ECCLES:
They just made it work
at the end of the day.

It was a lot of back and forth,
but it can be done.

It's not an impossible task.

O'BRIEN:
BlocPower's mission
is altruistic,

but it is also a startup
hoping to make a profit.

It makes
a percentage on financing,

charges fees to manage
electrification projects,

and eventually hopes
to market

the very heat pumps it installs
as producers

of carbon credits.

BAIRD:
This is capitalism

deciding that there are
trillion-dollar companies

to be made addressing the
climate crisis,

that entrepreneurs who figure
it out

are going to make money.

And there's going to be so much
money to be made

by bringing those solutions into
the economy

that we are going to make our
venture capital returns.

And you can choose to do
business and make profits

in a sector and in a way
that helps people.

O'BRIEN:
Spoken like the Columbia
Business School grad that he is.

That, combined with
his roots in Bedford-Stuyvesant,

are what gave him
the inspiration for BlocPower.

The furnace in
his building never worked.

Ultimately,
when it got really cold,

we'd have to heat
our apartment with our oven.

We would turn on the gas oven,

turn on the burner on top
of the oven,

open up the oven door to let the
heat into the apartment.

I really empathize
with a lot of our customers,

because I know how uncomfortable
it is to be cold,

and how difficult it is to,
like,

sleep through the night
when you're freezing.

O'BRIEN:
The road to zero, by definition,

must pass through
neighborhoods like this.

BAIRD:
There isn't going to be

a green revolution in America

without working-class
and poor people.

So there must be a financial
solution that includes them.

O'BRIEN:
In New York City,
buildings account for around 70%

of greenhouse gas emissions
if you include electricity.

The city is aiming
for carbon neutrality by 2050.

And there are several laws
designed to make that happen.

One eliminates
the burning of fossil fuels

in all new buildings by 2027.

But there is an important
asterisk:

the city's commercial kitchens
are exempt.

Here, gas stoves
and ovens dominate.

So the biggest polluter in these
buildings are the kitchens.

So why would you exempt
the biggest polluters?

O'BRIEN:
Chef Chris Galarza
has years of experience

working in kitchens at popular
high-end restaurants.

You're dripping sweat!

O'BRIEN:
In this case,
art has found a recipe

for imitating life.

Whether it's "Hell's Kitchen"
or "The Bear,"

Hollywood has made it clear
to all of us,

if you can't take the heat,

you really should get out
of the kitchen.

What you notice is as soon as
you open the door

going from, say, the dining room
to the kitchen,

is this wall of heat.

I have looked down at my
thermometer in my chef coat

and it would read 135 degrees
Fahrenheit.

So I can't tell you how
many times that, after a rush,

we would be rushing
to the bathroom to throw up.

O'BRIEN:
The main ingredient
of natural gas is methane,

and research shows
burning it in a kitchen

can be harmful to human health,

because it triggers a reaction
between nitrogen and oxygen

which creates nitric oxide
and nitrogen dioxide,

pollutants collectively known
as NOx gases.

They can cause all
sorts of cardiovascular

and respiratory illnesses,
including asthma.

It's lunchtime
at Chatham University's

Eden Hall campus near
Pittsburgh.

What I need is the cook's tour--
literally.
Okay.

O'BRIEN:
The kitchen here is quiet,
cool, and all-electric.

This is our four-burner range,
like, there's two of them.

This is the workhorse
of the kitchen.

This is now the tilt skillet,
also induction.

Two steamers,
two electric convection oven,

triple-deck oven
with two built-in proofers

for breads, pizzas, pastries,

and things like that.

O'BRIEN:
Chris was the executive chef
here in 2016

when the school opened this
dining hall.

The university
built the Eden Hall campus

as a showcase for
sustainable solutions.

So there's not a single

lit flame in this kitchen.

Not a single one.

O'BRIEN:
The cooktops here use a
technology

called induction.

I had my own bias, as well,
and it wasn't until

I experienced induction cooking
that I became a fan.

O'BRIEN:
Traditional electric stoves
create heat

by simply resisting
the electric current.

But newer induction
cooktops use electricity

to create a magnetic field.

The electrons inside pots
and pans that contain iron

try to align with the magnet,

vibrating tens of thousands
of times per second,

creating friction and heat.

The result is better energy
efficiency, faster cooking,

and no combustion fumes.

They have caught on in
commercial kitchens

in Europe and Asia,
but in the U.S.,

chefs are skeptical.

GALARZA:
The rest of the world is

looking at us going, "What are
you complaining about?"

Because effectively,
we're arguing about

how to get a piece
of metal hot so we can cook.

O'BRIEN:
The fossil fuel industry
has done a good job

at inducing resistance.

♪ Cooking with gas,
cooking with gas ♪

We all remember the rap
in the '80s.

♪ We all cook better
when we're cooking with gas ♪

It's cringeworthy.

♪ Cooking with gas ♪

♪ We all cook better ♪

♪ When we're cooking with gas ♪

There's a lot to unpack there.

♪ I cook with gas
'cause it costs us

GALARZA:
But you know what?

That was effective.

What was said in there
still gets said today.

Cooking with gas is cheaper,
it's more precise.

All these things, which are,
which are just not true.

♪ We're cooking with gas ♪

O'BRIEN:
Today, Chris is
an independent consultant

who travels the country
promoting induction

in commercial kitchens.

He gave me
a quick demonstration.

O'BRIEN:
Okay, so this has

been in the freezer?
Correct.

So this is just to show how
quickly these come up to temp.

So we're going to dump this.

Oh, yeah, it's cold.

So just getting the water off,
you can tell,

things are hot.
I see, oh.

How hot?

(sizzling)

All right, that was
in the matter of, what?

Seconds?
Yeah.

Right? So there's
no more preheating.

It's just straight hot.

And it doesn't take long.

Now your shrimp.

Got some good color on it.

Add our sauce.

(pan sizzling)

And there you go.

That was dinner in about
two minutes.

In a fraction of the time,
and here's the beautiful thing.

We just did all of that.

Not a sweat on you.

Nothing gets hot
except for the pan itself.

So it's time for us to evolve,
to get together,

and say,
"What's better for our world?"

And cooking with a flame is not.

O'BRIEN:
Dousing the home fires
will take a lot longer

than that stir fry, for sure.

LOTT:
When we look at

the buildings that will be here
in 2050,

most of
them are already built today.

Retrofitting this building
is not going to be cheap

and it's going to take
a lot of work

and it's going
to be disruptive.

But what we can do

in the next seven years
is set up

our building codes
and our regulations

so that we can retrofit
and build buildings

in a way that is
net-zero-compliant from day one.

O'BRIEN:
When it is burned,
the methane in natural gas

is converted to carbon dioxide.

That's problem enough.

But unburned methane
is an even greater concern.

It doesn't last as long in the
atmosphere as carbon dioxide,

but over 20 years,

methane traps about 80 times
more heat than CO2.

So methane is currently
responsible for nearly a third

of human-caused global warming.

LOTT:
So when we look at overall
greenhouse gas emissions,

methane is a big player.

And it's also something
that we can address right away.

It's one of these gases
where

the more and more we look at it,
we realize that a ton of it

is just being wasted,
thrown into the air.

♪ ♪

O'BRIEN:
On a rooftop observatory
in West Harlem,

Róisín Commane,

an assistant professor in Earth
and environmental sciences

at Columbia, is using
a suite of sensors

to measure air quality.

O'BRIEN:
This is like the Mauna Kea

of New York, huh? Right?
(laughs):
Yes, it is.

The observatory!

O'BRIEN:
We are at the Advanced Science
Research Center

of the City University
of New York.

O'BRIEN:
Do you try to make excuses
to come here on nice days

to check the gear?

It's usually on
bad pollution days

when we get dragged here,

but yes, it's lovely
to be here.

O'BRIEN:
It's early,

and chimneys in Harlem
are billowing.

Puffs of proof
the city that never sleeps

is, in fact, waking up.

As you look out over the city,
what are you looking for?

On a day like today,

you can kind
of see a lot of, of chimneys.

Mm-hmm.
Or you can see
the smoke

coming from chimneys.
Yeah, we did.

And what we've been trying to
figure out is,

where is all the methane
coming from,

and is it
from these chimneys?

O'BRIEN:
It's not just gas appliances.

Methane leaks from wastewater
treatment facilities,

power plants, and landfills.

What are the challenges
you face?

Why is it so difficult?

There's so much of it.

It could be a mixture of,

there's a wastewater
treatment plant

that has a power plant
with natural gas as part of it.

And then between there and here
are a whole bunch of boilers.

So everything is just
mashed together so much

that that's what we

spend our time trying
to figure out,

is how to pull all that apart.

COMMANE:
Well, how does it look today?

O'BRIEN:
Scientists are measuring more
than

twice as much methane as the
E.P.A. can account for.

Well, they've got a pretty good
throughput.

They're about
a liter a minute each.

COMMANE:
So we're either missing a
sector

or we're getting the wrong
numbers for certain things.

And that's what
I've been working on,

is to try and make sure,
do we have the right number?

O'BRIEN:
The sensor technology
has dramatically improved

in the past few years,

making the devices she uses

much more sensitive
and more portable.

COMMANE:
Now we can just put this thing
in a backpack

and walk around and get really,
really sensitive measurements.

O'BRIEN:
And so she and her team
carry sensors,

chasing zero on foot.

♪ ♪

About 2,000 miles away,
in Texas,

there is another kind of methane
hunt underway.

This is the Permian Basin,

the largest oil field in
America,

about 86,000 square miles
spanning Texas and New Mexico.

There are tens of
thousands of oil wells here.

And there is no mystery where
the methane is coming from.

This is happening because
they developed the technology

to frack oil and gas from shale.

If they hadn't done that,

we would have converted
to clean energy a long time ago.

O'BRIEN:
Sharon Wilson is an
environmental advocate

who is bearing witness to an
ongoing greenhouse gas disaster

in the Permian Basin.

When oil rises to the surface
under pressure,

it comes with a witches' brew
of hydrocarbon gases,

including methane.

In the U.S., oil and natural
gas production and distribution

is the largest industrial
source of methane emissions.

And the Permian
may be the largest

methane-emitting oil and
gas basin in the country.

WILSON:
And we call this a climate bomb.

The industry cannot stop
this pollution.

Methane is a volatile gas.

It will not stay inside
a closed, unpressurized system.

And so you have to release it,

or it will blow the equipment
up.

O'BRIEN:
Methane is invisible
and odorless.

Working with the nonprofit
Earthworks,

Sharon is using
a $100,000 camera

that gives her
superpower vision.

I'm going to get one more video.

O'BRIEN:
The camera records
the spectral signature

of hydrocarbons
and volatile organic compounds.

So what looks like this
in visible light

becomes this
in Sharon's viewfinder.

WILSON:
I am seeing a lot of methane
blasting out

from that flare that is
barely lit.

Unfortunately,
this is not unusual.

There's just way too much
methane.

O'BRIEN:
Even though methane
is the primary ingredient

of natural gas,
here in the Permian Basin,

it's mostly considered waste.

To reduce methane emissions,

operators are supposed to burn
it in flare stacks like this.

This converts methane-- CH4--
into CO2,

reducing its impact
on the climate crisis.

But frequently the flare stacks
flicker, falter, or fail.

Cracking down on unlit flares

and enabling innovative, cost-
effective leak detection systems

are the cornerstones
of a new E.P.A. rule

aimed at curbing
methane emissions.

What, in your view,
is the solution?

The best available
control technology for methane

is to keep it in the ground.

Never, never drill that hole
in the first place,

because once you drill
that hole,

that's where it all starts.

O'BRIEN:
But is it practical
to hit the brakes

on oil and gas production?

If we're out of gas,
can we reach the finish line?

LOTT:
Even in a net-zero world,

we will probably use
some amount of oil and gas.

It will certainly be
less than today,

but we can't go
from one to zero

and all of a sudden
just shut it all off.

♪ ♪

O'BRIEN:
While we need
gas and oil for now,

eventually we must eliminate
burning as much as possible.

And the easiest way to do that

is to take fossil fuels
out of power plants

and off the grid.

LOTT:
The question is,
how are we going to get

those emissions off the board?

So today, we produce
a little over a third

of our electricity
using zero-carbon resources.

We want to get that number up
by 2030 to 75%.

What we're going to see
is explosive growth

in both wind and solar.

Those are the big ones
that are driving down emissions.

O'BRIEN:
There are now more than 70,000

utility-size wind turbines
on U.S. soil--

enough to power
about 39 million homes.

But the best places to put
the wind farms are often far

from the population centers
that use the electricity.

This is helping drive
wind power offshore,

beyond the horizon,
the turbines connected

to the power grid with
submerged cables.

The federal government
is auctioning leases

for 30 gigawatts
of offshore wind energy by 2030

and 15 gigawatts of
floating offshore wind by 2035.

The promised electricity
should be enough to power

roughly 15 million homes.

Floating wind is
a relatively new idea

that opens up waters
deeper than about 200 feet,

which is the limit for turbines
fixed to the bottom.

This technology appears ripe
for rapid growth.

DAGHER:
It's really
a big physics experiment.

What you try to do is
try to get as much valuable data

as you can at a small scale.

Is it 500-year?

It's gonna be 50-year.

O'BRIEN:
Habib Dagher
is executive director

of the University of Maine's

Advanced Structures
and Composites Center.

He and his team
are deploying a unique

wind and wave simulator
to test a scale model

of a floating hull for
wind turbines called VolturnUS.

DAGHER:
We have load cells

on the very top and bottom
of the tower

that tell us how much stress

the tower is really seeing
at that time.

O'BRIEN:
The base of the full-size
version

will be made of concrete,

and inside some of
the hulls are counterweights

attached to
springs and actuators.

They are designed to negate
the motion of the rolling sea.

DAGHER:
You want to make sure
it doesn't move too much.

So we're trying to minimize
the motions

at the turbine level
and we're trying to reduce

the pitch of the hull so
it doesn't pitch too much over.

O'BRIEN:
In 2013, they moored
a floating 20-kilowatt

one-eighth-scale model offshore
for more than a year.

It got hammered during
the long Maine winter,

but never tilted
more than five degrees.

Habib hopes to have a bigger,
11-megawatt turbine

floating in the next few years.

DAGHER:
So you want to make it lighter.

You want to
make it easier to build.

So it's not just
about designing something

and making sure it works.

You got to figure out
how to build it.

We built the lab to try
to answer those questions.

O'BRIEN:
The allure of offshore
floating wind is multifaceted.

The turbines are built onshore,

reducing construction cost
and environmental impact.

They can be towed to wherever
the wind is more consistent,

but the water too deep
for fixed-bottom installations.

You can go 20 or 30, 40
miles offshore.

You can't do that
with fixed-bottom ones.

You can put them in places
where people can't see them

and you can design them
to put them in places

where you minimize
the impact on the environment--

the birds, the bats, and
the fisheries and the mammals.

It gives you a lot
more places to work with.

O'BRIEN:
Floating offshore turbines
also make it possible

to develop wind energy on
the west coast of the U.S.,

where the waters
are precipitously deeper.

DAGHER:
Within 50 miles

of the U.S. coasts--
both east and west coast--

there's enough offshore
wind capacity, theoretically,

to power the country
four times over.

O'BRIEN:
But even if there is,
in fact, enough wind,

it alone won't be enough.

LOTT:
So when I think about
a zero-carbon grid

and how we get to
zero-carbon electricity,

I think of it as a team sport.

You need a lot of
different types of technologies

all playing together
if you want to win the game.

you're going
to have wind and solar.

So when they're around,
they're cheap, that's great.

But they fade sometimes--

the wind goes away,
the sun sets.

So you complement them
with other team members,

like energy storage.

O'BRIEN:
So how best to give electricity
some shelf life?

Batteries.

The challenge is making them
big enough and cheap enough

to work at scale.

Yet-Ming Chiang is a professor

in the Department
of Materials Science

and Engineering at M.I.T.

and co-founder
of a company called Form Energy.

He's aiming to eliminate

some of the gaps
in energy availability

when the weather isn't right
for solar or wind.

CHIANG:
What you see are gaps
of several days.

We're now able to tackle those
multi-day intervals,

those 100-hour intervals.

And I want to point out that
this is something

that just a few years ago
was considered impossible.

O'BRIEN:
For the past 30 years,
researchers have focused on

lithium-ion battery technology.

The chemistry enables
a high energy density.

Powerful for their size
and weight,

they are perfect for laptops,
phones, and cars.

But they're not well suited for
multi-day storage on the grid.

To compete with
a natural gas power plant,

a 100-hour battery pack
must cost

no more than $20
per kilowatt-hour.

CHIANG:
But if we take
a lithium-ion battery pack,

the cost of that pack today
is about $200 per kilowatt-hour.

In order to do
multi-day storage,

we have to have batteries that
cost about one-tenth or less

than that of today's
lithium-ion battery packs.

O'BRIEN:
So they found a novel way

to harness the energy released
when air interacts with iron.

It's the power of rust.

That's right, rust.

It's called an iron-air battery.

Iron-air batteries were,
you know,

first studied
back in the '60s.

O'BRIEN:
At that time, no one saw
a practical application

for a very cheap,
very heavy battery.

The grid may be the problem
this solution was waiting for.

Air is still free.
(laughs)

And iron is one of the most
widely produced,

lowest-cost materials
in the world.

So the iron-air battery

is the lowest-cost
rechargeable battery chemistry

that we know of today.

O'BRIEN:
The battery contains an
iron metal anode

and an air-breathing cathode.

They sit in
an electrolyte solution,

a permeable
separator between them.

When the iron is exposed
to the oxygen in air,

it triggers a chemical process
called oxidation.

We call this rust.

That oxidation process
releases electrons

that are separated
and sent to the grid--

electricity when the demand
exceeds renewable production.

When there is excess power
from wind or solar,

the process is reversed--
electrons flow in,

releasing the oxygen,
causing the iron to "unrust."

CHIANG:
We put in electricity,

we provide electrons
to that iron electrode

and turn it back into
iron metal.

That's why we refer to the,
you know, iron-air battery

as the rusting
and unrusting of iron, you know,

carried out in a very
intentional and deliberate way.

So these are full-scale
iron-air batteries.

O'BRIEN:
Form Energy co-founder

and chief technology officer
Billy Woodford...

There are oxygen bubbles.

O'BRIEN:
...showed me what the batteries
look like.

And these have got four of those
iron anodes inside of them.

O'BRIEN:
He says their iron-air batteries
are working

just fine in the lab,

but they haven't been tried
on the grid yet.

WOODFORD:
We need to scale up
the manufacturing of this

and really build
the next generation

of larger systems
and deploy them.

And that really brings us
to utility-scaled systems.

O'BRIEN:
They plan on building their
rust batteries

in the Rust Belt,

where the infrastructure and
transportation network

are already tailor-made for it.

The first plant will
be built beside the Ohio River

in Weirton, West Virginia,

750 good-paying jobs promised
in a place of broken promises.

CHIANG:
And so this will, you know,

create real manufacturing jobs
in parts of the country

that have seen a great loss
of jobs from, you know,

traditional industries,

and may not have seen themselves

as part of this
green revolution.

O'BRIEN:
So the road to zero will pass
through an old steel town

in the heart of coal country.

Now there's some irony.

Batteries are
just one storage idea.

There are many other
technologies

in development globally.

LOTT:
The point of energy storage
is saying, "You know what?

"I can produce electricity right
now, but I don't need it.

"Well, let me hold on to it.

Let me put it in a savings
account and cash it out later."

And then you complement
those technologies

with firm dispatchable power,
which is a nerdy way of saying

something that's around 24/7,
365.

and it's things like
nuclear power

and geothermal power--

power plants that are around
when our wind and our solar

and our batteries
aren't quite enough

to keep the lights on
and prices low.

O'BRIEN:
Experts say that current
nuclear and hydroelectric power

are important energy sources
to maintain,

but are impractical to grow much
in time to reach our 2030 goal.

Geothermal
may be a different story.

♪ ♪

Welcome to California's
Salton Sea,

one of the largest
geothermal fields in the world.

It's renewable, carbon-free,
and it's always on.

So exploring new ways
to tap into this resource

is now a very hot field.

Geothermal is the residual heat
left over

from the formation of the planet

and from the decay
of radioactive particles

deep below the Earth's surface.

At a geothermal
electric power plant,

they drill down far enough
to reach very hot water,

a source of steam to
generate power.

Another well injects
the water back into the ground.

Historically, geothermal power
has only been practical

in seismically active places
like this,

where fault lines allow
lots of hot water to rise

relatively close to the surface.

Elsewhere, adequate heat
is found at much greater depth.

So that's going down
10,000 feet.

JEFF TESTER:
10,000 feet, right.

It's not just, we drill
a well and we're done.

We have to know what's
going on under the ground.

You want to listen
to the system,

you want to have it
talk to you.

O'BRIEN:
Cornell University engineer
Jeff Tester

is pushing new ways

to harness geothermal heat
to generate electricity.

TESTER:
If we could drop the costs
of drilling

to a very, very low value,

and if we could use our
knowledge of the subsurface

in a way where we can
engineer systems effectively,

I think we certainly
could do it.

We're not there yet, though.

O'BRIEN:
Jeff Tester has led the charge
developing something called

enhanced geothermal systems,
or E.G.S.

The idea: drill two
deep wells into hot rock.

If the rock
is not naturally permeable,

fracture it in between to create
an artificial reservoir,

and then pump water into
the cracks.

It returns to the surface hot
enough to generate electricity.

If the technique proves out,

it could make geothermal
power generation

possible almost anywhere.

But the cost of drilling
must drop dramatically.

And once again, an ironic twist:

the shale fracking boom--

responsible for producing
so much oil and gas--

may have put this zero-emissions
technology within reach.

CINDY TAFF:
If we can crack the nut

on this low-temperature
geothermal,

we can put it anywhere.

O'BRIEN:
Petroleum engineer Cindy Taff
is a 36-year veteran

of the oil business.

Now she is C.E.O. of
Houston-based Sage Geosystems.

Near McAllen, Texas,
they're drilling down

on a geothermal concept

that they hope will close
the business case on E.G.S.

TAFF:
That's the most important part,

is, we have to get it cost-
effective to wind and solar.

O'BRIEN:
Conventional geothermal
power plants must harvest

underground water between
300 and 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cindy says Sage's design
is targeting rock

that is 30% cooler.

A key feature:
this small, desk-sized turbine.

Instead of spinning the blades
with steam from water,

it uses carbon dioxide under
pressure inside a closed loop.

In a separate pipe,
water is pumped into

fractured cracks in the rock.

Now hot, the water flows
into a heat exchanger,

raising the temperature
of the CO2.

At around 88 degrees
Fahrenheit--

less than half the heat
required to boil water--

the CO2 can
become "supercritical,"

meaning it has properties
of both a gas and a liquid,

and it is able to spin
a high-RPM turbine.

TAFF:
What we're excited about

with this
supercritical CO2 turbine

is that it is double
the efficiency

of converting that heat
to electricity.

O'BRIEN:
Sage envisions an array
of about 18 wells

spaced roughly ten feet apart;

combined, able to produce
more than 50 megawatts.

If it works as they hope,

enough to power
more than 40,000 homes.

TAFF:
What we're trying to do

is turn geothermal from an art
into a science.

O'BRIEN:
One of Sage's partners
lives nearby.

JAMES MCALLEN:
Being a good steward
of the land

is, is making sure that
the land is sustainable.

O'BRIEN:
James McAllen is the manager
of land his family has owned

since 1791.

MCALLEN:
There's a lot of things
around me every day

built by my ancestors,
by my dad, by my grandfather.

Fences that were built by
my great-grandfather.

So there's little
reminders everywhere

of people
that have come before me.

O'BRIEN:
He may be steeped in
family history,

but James is a forward-thinking
steward of their land.

He has installed a solar array
to sell electricity

back to the grid,

and now Sage is poised
to drill wells on his property.

MCALLEN:
You have to look forward,

because if you
don't look forward,

you're not going to
have this for very long.

Yeah.

So, and that's what
this geothermal project's

I think it's exciting that
we're getting into something

that I think is now
the next level.
Mm-hmm.

I think it's a
game-changer.

LOTT:
So there's two things going on
with power

that we need to make sure
we understand.

The first is,
as we go to net zero,

we need our electricity,

our power plants, to be
zero-carbon.

The second is, we're
going to need more of them,

because in our homes,
our cars, a lot of the economy,

we're going to use
more electricity.

So we need more electricity
and we need it all

to be clean at the same time.

So if we have
all these technologies

on the field together,
we get affordable, reliable,

zero-carbon power.

If we take any one of these
different teammates

off the field,
we won't win the game.

We end up with unaffordable
or unreliable power.

♪ ♪

O'BRIEN:
Many of the technologies

to get us to net-zero emissions
by 2050

are already here,

and many more are well along
in their development.

But as I discovered on the road
with the Ford Lightning,

there are still some speed bumps
left to navigate.

The technology's existence

is only half the battle.

You have to strategize
when you're doing a long trip

with an electric vehicle.

It makes you think a little more
about your trip

than you would otherwise.

♪ ♪

Ford loaned me the truck
for a weeklong test drive.

Producer Will Toubman and I
decided to stress-test

the E.V. charging network,

so we drove the Lightning
from the Boston area

to Orono, Maine, to film that
floating wind turbine prototype.

Ford promotes the truck as
a backup power supply at home.

But on the road,
getting electricity

into the vehicle quickly
can be a challenge.

We are headed for Portland,

which will get us there
right around 6:00 p.m.

Good time to get a bite.

There's a fast charger there.

We slogged through some traffic,

arrived at the fast charger,

plugged in, and went to dinner.

Returned 90 minutes later.

The fast charger

was set to turn off
after one hour.

We needed more than an hour.

As it turns out,

we currently have 123 miles
of range

and we have 133 miles to go.

We re-upped, plugged in,
and waited:

a watched pot of electrons.

We've been charging now
for 30 minutes.

We have increased our range
by 33 miles.

So about a mile a minute.

Nothing fast
about this fast charger.

A dozen unused Tesla
superchargers across the lot,

incompatible with the Lightning,

seemed to gloat in silence.

We resumed our journey with
a promise of 153 miles of range.

A few hours
and 133 miles later,

we arrived at the only fast
charger I could find in Bangor,

at a car dealership.

This could be it.

O'BRIEN:
It was about 11:00 p.m.,

we had only about 20 miles
of range remaining,

and we were in no mood for this.

Okay, so it says cash only.

It's the right
kind of charger.

Let's see if I put a card
in the mix here,

if it will do anything for me.

"Swipe error." Oh, boy.

So, uh...

I think we're seeing
the problem here, aren't we?

Plan B: a charger at
another car dealership nearby.

So, let's pull in,
see what this looks like.

♪ ♪

Oh, no.

"Not in service."

Come on.

Looks like it's
brand-new or something.

Supposedly there was
another one here.

Supposedly.

And it too is,
looks like it's brand-new

and still not online.

So we've got two chargers coming
to a dealership near you soon.

Again,
not much help to us now

with 18 miles of range
at 11:23 at night.

O'BRIEN:
Plan C: a slow charger
a few miles away

at a Maine Department of
Transportation maintenance yard.

Hopefully this thing works.

And let's make sure
we're charging.

Yes, we are.

We are charging.
(chuckles)

O'BRIEN:
We stopped to charge
eight times.

The nearly 500-mile
round trip took twice as long

as it would have in an
internal combustion vehicle.

And there were a lot of
mental gymnastics.

(echoing):
13 miles per hour...

Ten hours or so...

46 kilowatts...
It will be 90% full...

30 miles and change of range...

19 kilowatt-hours...

I feel like we've learned
about nine lessons

in the last 24 hours
about how not to do this.

Since 2010,
Americans have bought

about three-and-a-quarter
million

plug-in hybrid
and battery electric vehicles.

The government goal by 2030:
half of new cars sold

will be electric.

So, the charging infrastructure

will need to grow fast
to keep up.

Across the country right now,
there are more than 130,000

publicly available
E.V. chargers.

The 2030 goal:
a half-million public chargers,

a nearly fourfold increase.

Engineers and entrepreneurs
are seeing opportunities.

We found one company
that is installing chargers

on utility poles,

just one clean-tech innovation

amid thousands that are bubbling
up with possible solutions.

CHIANG:
These are all entirely new

industries that are
being created.

And, you know,
investors want to be part of

this new industrial revolution,
as it were--

the Green Industrial Revolution.

O'BRIEN:
A green industrial revolution:

it's a reminder that
this is how we evolve.

Humanity has made
big energy transitions before:

from wood

to coal

to oil.

And oil is
just what's familiar now.

Is it natural to, like,
dig up dead dinosaurs

and burn them in our kitchen
in 2022?

This isn't ancient Mesopotamia.

There's better ways to cook.

There's better ways to heat up
hot water

and provide heating and
air conditioning to our homes.

O'BRIEN:
The transition from
fossil fuels to renewables

is all but inevitable.

After all,
the wells will go dry one day

if we keep pumping.

And do we really have
that luxury?

GALARZA:
Climate change is not
a crisis for the planet,

it's a crisis for us
as human beings.

It's an existential crisis.

Because if
we don't do something,

the Earth is just going to shake
us off like fleas and move on.

O'BRIEN:
But change can be frightening

when you are
in the throes of it.

And fear can beget apathy
in the absence of good leaders.

WILSON:
If we stop the methane,

very quickly,

it can make a huge dent.

It's the low-hanging fruit
in solving the climate problem.

The only thing we lack
is the political will.

O'BRIEN:
And yet there are some signs
of a course correction.

The U.S. now has
climate and infrastructure laws

that set things in motion.

But do we need to go faster?

We don't have a sense of urgency
yet enough to do this.

When we had to fight
in World War II,

there was no question

things were going to
happen quickly.

I think we just have to
get down to business right away.

O'BRIEN:
A route to zero is
clearly marked.

First,
focus on energy efficiency,

and then plug as many things
as possible into the grid

while pulling fossil fuels
off the grid

and adding zero-carbon
power production

as fast as we can.

It'll get us close to 50%.

We hope it'll get us
all the way to 50% by 2030,

but it'll put us on
the pathway we need to be on

to get to net zero by 2050.

O'BRIEN:
No breakthroughs required
for that.

At the same time,
push for the innovations

that can tackle
the thorniest problems,

like industry,

aviation, shipping,
and agriculture, by 2050.

Do I know that we're going
to get to 50% reduction by 2030?

No.

I think it's going to be
close.

We could overshoot it
if a couple of things go right.

We might undershoot it.

But when I look back
at what we thought

we'd be doing by this time,

we're so much further along
the road.

This all gives me cause for
a lot of optimism.

♪ ♪

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