Name: The Powerful Promise of Earth’s Harshest Places | Lei Zhang | TED
Uploaded: 2025-09-11T02:50:36.000Z
Duration: 13 min 44 s
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This is Inner Mongolia Gobi Desert, my favorite place.

It's most Mars-like in the planet, barren and empty, wind blows all year round, sandstorms often.

Sentences with advanced comparative

In the winter, temperature is as low as minus 40 degrees.

I believe this could be the new space for our civilization.

When people see useless, barrenness, emptiness, I see abundance.

If you look at the barren desert, it is filled up with abundant renewable energy, the strong wind and the shining sun.

I found out the important equation between energy and our prosperities. 2,000 years before the Industrial Revolution, our global GDP only grew five times.

Because we are only able to use five times energy.

Natural energy, agriculture, then transferred to muscle power.

Since the Industrial Revolution, our global GDP expanded 100 times because we are using 100 times more energy.

So abundant fossil fuel energy has been turned and created forces to drive the machines, create materials like steel, create fertilizer to improve the food production.

Today, it's even creating tremendous intelligence for humanity.

So, how can we unlock such a big potential from desert to push humanity to the next level of prosperity?

Because one hour solar radiation is able to meet our entire annual demand of energy.

In front of Gobi, we have to solve three challenges.

The first one, how can we capture the rough and the raw wind energy?

Just as steam engine is able to turn coal energy into motion, we end up with wind turbine to capture wind energy to turn into electricity.

Most importantly is to really design the wind turbine is able to survive in extreme wind conditions in the desert.

Secondly, how can we build avoiding to build a long distance or thousands of miles transmission lines, which is costly and extremely expensive?

We end up with the largest off-grid renewable system by integrating wind turbine solar panel storage with AI orchestrations.

Okay, then the last remaining challenge, how can we utilize such abundant locally made electricity?

We end up with a solution to build net zero industrial park, which is going to produce energy intensive products like batteries and the green hydrogen and ammonia, those green molecules.

One ton of green ammonia is able to hold 10,000 kilowatt hour electricity.

Most importantly, the green molecule is so important for us to decarbonize our economic system.

It's the most difficult, hard to obey segment.

The green hydrogen is going to be used to making green steel, to make natural chemicals, to make green aviation and shipping.

Just right in the heart of Gobi Desert, the first net zero industrial park has been built.

It is totally off-grid, 100% by renewable energy.

But most importantly, it is the lowest cost of battery among all in region production base.

Because there's tremendous free abundant renewable energy.

And we are also building in the desert the largest green hydrogen project in the world, 1.5 million ton green hydrogen and green ammonia.

The first phase, 300,000 ton, as you see, is commissioning now.

Our goal is to cheapest, to make green hydrogen as cheap as green.

Because history told us this 100 times energy growth is a result of cost reductions.

In order to unlock these tremendous renewables, we have to make renewable energy much lower than fossil fuel.

Today, renewable has already won the battle against electricity.

So renewable energy is much lower on making electricity.

But there's still another battle is green molecule is about two or three times expensive than green molecule from coal and gas.

We have to make as cheap as possible, have this cost parity to the gray.

So we should have redesigned the entire energy system and redesign the equipment, then reduce the cost significantly.

So first, we designed AI-regulated wind turbine, which is able to capture more energy while reduce cost significantly.

We are also designing the world's first hybrid energy storage system by combining lithium battery with supercapacitor.

It's able to support innovating membranes and electrode significantly.

In order to make the construction work in the desert much easier, much cheaper, we designed modular prefabricated hydrogen plant, which is made construction work in the desert is as easy as stacking Legos.

And we are also developing AI physical model, starting from predicting weather, wind, and the solar to manage grid automatically.

So today, we already achieving the lowest cost of green hydrogen and green ammonia in the world.

I believe within three years, by 2028, we are able to make such cost parity to gray.

Why I'm so convinced, if you look at last 20 years, the cost of wind and solar have been reduced 90%.

For the last five years, the cost of energy storage has been reduced 90%.

End of the day, the green electricity still be majority cost of green hydrogen.

So by combining the significant improvement on the electrolyzer and the hydrogen factory, we are for sure to achieve such a cost parity.

By the time we achieving cost parity to gray for molecules, it is going to be a milestone for our humanity, because we're going to remove the last bottleneck, which preventing us to unlock tremendous renewable energy.

It is going to open the gate to tremendous new possibilities.

Just imagine, as we repeated in the history, within next 100 years, if we are able to use 100 times more energy, how the world will look like?

We are going to harvest the superintelligence with AI data center everywhere.

We are going to desalinate seawater and turn the desert into green oasis.

We are going to remove poverty even by producing our food and protein in the basement.

We are going for sure to reverse climate crisis by taking carbon from the air and turning to building materials.

And we are even able to make interstellar traveling as a daily routine.

The answer is just right in the heart of the desert.

From Sahara in Africa to Middle East, from Australia to Gobi, there are 100 times energy than what we need.

So, ladies and gentlemen, this natural transition is not a costly burden for us.

It is indeed the one and only pathway for us, for our humanity, to achieve a new great prosperity.

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The Powerful Promise of Earth’s Harshest Places | Lei Zhang | TED

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