This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Steve Mursky.

Got a minute?

So in Beyond the Light Switch 1 and 2,

we kind of looked at the nation's energy mix, what our energy options are for producing electricity

going forward.

David Biello, he's the Energy and Environment editor at Scientific American and host of the Beyond the Light Switch series produced by Detroit Public Television and aired nationally on PBS.

The original episodes aired back in 2012.

Now in the new episode, Beyond the Light Switch 3, if you will,

we're looking at what it would mean

if the US went more electric.

One of the ideas for cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions

and air pollution and a lot of the other problems we have with

fossil fuels is to get rid of internal combustion engines and replace them with electric cars.

To have electric cars you you need better batteries, and we explore what the options are for

getting those better batteries. We also look at what better batteries might do for soldiers.

I spoke with soldiers who served in Iraq, basically guarding fuel

convoys, which was the most dangerous job. A significant chunk of our

casualties came from these fuel convoys which were like

really rolling bombs. So those are the kinds of things we're looking at in this

episode and what that might mean for the American home in the suburbs.

We visit this kind of innovative suburban experiment really in Texas outside of Austin.

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