#8 - Is it possible to power our world by 100% clean energy? - TurtleTalks

Monica Laurence: What I'm hearing is that a 100% clean energy solution is possible on Turtle Island. If that's the case, I would presume it's possible for the world. What would that look like?

Dan Morrell: You go into an environment like an island, and then you can do a small country, and you say, "Okay. We'll do a feasibility study." And then you actually implement these fixes. So in some places it would be 20% wind and 70% solar, and in some places it would be 100% geothermal, in Iceland, etcetera, etcetera. So it's brilliant for entrepreneurs because what you need is innovative engineers who go out and do feasibility studies. Often times you find that the budget to do it is within the money that needs to be spent to retool and upgrade the systems anyway. It's actually not complicated to do.

Dawn Lippert: I think it's not complicated in some ways, but it's actually really difficult. What we have been doing in Hawaii we've been doing for years -- actually trying to transition islands, which should be much easier than the rest of the world, to a cleaner renewable energy future. And it is difficult. It requires everybody working together. A lot of vision. A lot of commitment. The underlying factor is having a broad based commitment to solving really touch challenges.

Rick Thompson: If you take 100%, you can equate that to mean perfection. And trying to design any system for perfection is usually setting yourself up for failure.

Leilani Munter: I don't think it's a question of whether or not we will get to 100%. We are definitely going to get there. The economy is what drives everything. So as soon as we get to the point where we're creating the energy at a level that's cheaper than coal and easier to get to then coal, or oil, I think the movement toward cleaner renewable energy is going to happen very, very quickly.

Dawn Lippert: This is a huge economic opportunity. Whoever moves first and fastest captures that opportunity.

Emilee Pierce: I think there will be a lot of different series of disruption, but it's going to be a longer process because it's not just one innovation. It's innovation on top of innovation. We will definitely get there and I think we are seeing the beginnings of it, but it's a process that involves the entire world and many, many different systems within it.

Rick Thompson: Along those lines, if you look at just the amount of solar that's been deployed in the last 2 and a half years, globally it's equal to the total amount deployed in the 50 years prior, and we're actually forecasting another doubling in the next two and a half years. So, I think, yeah, you're talking about a hockey stick type change, we're at the curve of the stick.

Dawn Lippert: I think understanding that it took some of the best minds in the world in science and technology actually applying themselves for decades to this technology and believing in it, and a whole lot of investment, and a whole lot of risk, and a whole lot of people saying we're going to make this bet because we think the stakes are so high that's it worth it. That kind of long term commitment to innovation is the reason that we are where we are today.

Dan Morrell: Innovation creates huge opportunity which actually creates new jobs, new structures, new ways of doing things. We're all talking about there's a long time lag with global warming kicking in and all that, but actually on a geological scale it's a nano second. If you look at generational morality, what will our grandchildren's grandchildren's world, what's it going to be like? Who gives us the right to actually mortgage their future through our inertia and lack of capacity to do the right thing? So not only will it create massive opportunities for us to do it, but we are morally and socially obligated to actually make this change right now.