The powerful promise of Earth’s harshest places | Lei Zhang
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 11.9K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
Clean energy visionary Lei Zhang loves the Gobi Desert — the most Mars-like place on Earth. Why? Because of the promise it holds to provide the free, abundant solar and wind energy to fuel humanity’s next leap forward. Sharing the story behind one of the world’s largest green hydrogen projects, Zhang shows how Earth’s harshest landscapes could unlock more energy reserves than the world consumes today, and encourages us all to get a little more creative in how we think about the future.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm your host, Elise Hu. Clean energy visionary Lei Zhang says clean energy is bringing about an age of possibility. |
| 0:20.5 | In this talk, he brings us to the Gobi Desert, a massive desert that stretches across |
| 0:24.6 | northern China and southern Mongolia, where one of the world's largest green hydrogen projects |
| 0:29.7 | can be found. |
| 0:30.4 | He shares how this and other barren landscapes hold more energy reserves than the world consumes |
| 0:36.1 | today and reminds us all to get a little more creative. |
| 0:40.1 | Where others see emptiness, he sees abundance. |
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