Watt It Takes: From Self-Replicating Machines to Decarbonization
Energy Gang
Wood Mackenzie
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2020
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Watt It Takes: Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Saul Griffith, the founder and chief scientist at Other Lab.
Saul Griffith has a PhD in materials science and information theory. He’s co-founded over a dozen companies. And now he’s determined to prove that we already have what it takes to decarbonize the economy.
“The reality is I think it's still possible to completely decarbonize by 2030 and save everyone money. And we just got to start thinking about it correctly,” says Saul.
Other Lab is an R&D incubator and accelerator that helps pair startups in robotics and renewable energy with government labs and corporate investors. It has partnered with NASA, the Navy, the Department of Energy, Google, Facebook, GE and Ford to help build and fund projects in energy, automation, and robotics “in service of 100% decarbonization.”
Saul co-founded Makani Wind, the high-altitude wind company acquired by Google, and the tracker company Sunfolding. He brings the grit of an entrepreneur, the rigor of a scientist, the dirty mouth of a sailor to his passionate work on climate change.
A word of warning: there is some swearing in this interview. It might not be appropriate for some young ears.
In this episode, Emily talks with Saul about the many companies he’s helped build, and how he’s taken on a new mission to convince people that we have most of what we need — right now — to decarbonize large swaths of the economy.
This conversation was recorded at the Powerhouse headquarters in Oakland, California, before the pandemic. Our next episode will be recorded remotely for an online audience. You find more details here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by Sea Power, the definitive book for organizations that use energy is back for 2020. |
| 0:07.0 | And guess what? That means like every organization because they all use energy and they all need to manage their energy spend. |
| 0:14.0 | Last year, thousands of organizations and companies nationwide downloaded the book. |
| 0:18.0 | It's called the State of Demandside Energy Management in North America. |
| 0:21.0 | It's written by Seapowers Energy Experts. It's written by Sea Powers Energy |
| 0:22.8 | experts. It's a market by market analysis of the issues, |
| 0:25.8 | trends, and regulations that organizations like |
| 0:28.2 | yours should understand in 2020 and beyond to make better decisions |
| 0:32.0 | about your energy use and spend and this year is |
| 0:34.5 | turning out to be one of the most tumultuous in modern history so it's more |
| 0:40.0 | important than ever to get your handle on how to manage your energy use, you can get your |
| 0:44.7 | copy today at the Seepower Way.com slash future. This week on what it takes, Saul Griffith has a PhD in materials science and |
| 1:00.1 | information theory. He's co-founded over a dozen companies and now he's determined to prove that we already have what it takes to |
| 1:06.8 | decarbonize the economy. You can do everything in the American economy with |
| 1:10.2 | about 40% of the energy that we use today without shrinking anything |
| 1:15.0 | and without doing anything that you would traditionally call an |
| 1:17.6 | efficiency measure you could then get extra winds on top of that and that's |
| 1:21.2 | we electrify everything. Electrify, don't shrink the cars, just |
| 1:25.0 | make them electric, keep all of our creature comforts, you don't shrink them and you can |
| 1:28.6 | do it all electrically on about 40% of the energy we use today. |
| 1:36.0 | Welcome to What It Takes, an interview series produced by Powerhouse and Green Tech Media. |
| 1:40.0 | I'm Stephen Lacy. |
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