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Without substantial change, getting the greenhouse gas emissions down,
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we are on a path to large increases in the planet's temperature.
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You hear a lot about the progress in reducing the cost of renewable energy to make electricity.
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But generating electricity isn't the only contributor to climate change.
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It accounts for only about 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
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With greenhouse gases you have the electricity sector.
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But you also have manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, buildings,
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as well as about 10% from other sources.
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We need innovation
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going out there and finding inventors across all these different areas and understanding their energy R&D activities
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to make sure that they have a path from their laboratory to scaling up into very large numbers.
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For electricity,
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wind energy and solar energy prices are coming down.
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So the electricity sector has to either be able to store that energy
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or have other zero-emission sources to maintain the reliability that we all depend on.
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Manufacturing
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Here we're talking about all the stuff we buy:
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furniture, beds, the cars themselves, all of those things.
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Just the very process of making cement is CO2 emitting.
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There's a lot of embedded energy.
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We'll have to change the way that we do that manufacturing.
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Transportation
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Immediately people think about passenger cars.
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And they are a big part of that. But transportation is quite broad.
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We've got railroads. We've got ships.
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We've got planes. And so every one of those has to get to zero emission.
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Agriculture.
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This is a category that often people forget about.
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Cows actually emit quite a bit of methane which is one of the more powerful greenhouse gases.
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And so, inventions like artificial meat may have to play a role here.
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Buildings.
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We need to invent different processes in order to get the energy used in running all these buildings down, way down, to zero.
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The path to success is going to require innovation across every one of these sectors.
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So it is quite daunting.
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During this century we not only need to invent all of these things,
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we actually need to deploy them at massive, massive scale.
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But in my experience innovation can do magical things.