History has been written by whoever controls the dominant fuel of the era — until now, says renewables entrepreneur Matt Tilleard. He explains why, as the clean energy transition ramps up, we’re moving from a world where energy comes from burning fuels to one where it will come from using technology. Learn why this could change everything about global power dynamics — and why the future belongs not to those who control resources, but to those who build and share technology.TED Talks Daily is nominated for the Signal Award for Best Conversation Starter Podcast. Vote here!Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of the clean energy transition?
Tiesitkö, että joka neljäs yli 40-vuotias mies kokee virtsan karkailua? Se on todella yleistä, mutta siitä ei silti juuri puhuta. Tenamen suojat on suunniteltu erityisesti miehille. Huomaamattomat, varmat ja luotettavat. Ota tilanne haltuun Tenamenin avulla.
Olet kuuntelussa TED Talks Daily, jossa saamme teille uusia ideoita, jotka voivat ilmoittaa itsesi joka päivä. Olen sinun järjestelmäsi Elise Hume. Ilmainen energia-era on täällä ja se tulee olemaan elokuva radikaalista suurta, sanoo uudistuva työntekijä Matt Tillyard. Hänen puheessansa hän kertoo, miksi on aika pysyä uudistuva energia-eraan.
näyttämällä, miten tuotantorevoluuttaminen vaihtaa voimaa niistä, jotka hyödyttävät tuotantoa, ja niistä, jotka innovaatioita ja teploittavat teknologiaa. Kuulemme, miksi hän ajattelee, että se on paras asia, joka voisi tapahtua energia-yhteisölle. Meidän nykyinen maailma oli rakennettu
Hyödyntämällä on tarkoitus siitä, kuka löytää, kuka kontrolloi ja kuka kääntää ajan suurimman hyödyntäminen. Joten elämä on tärkeää, kun katsotaan sitä hyödyntämällä. Nämä eivät ole vain erittäin hyödyntäminen keskusteluja vuodesta. Ne ovat todennäköisesti tärkeässä turvallisuusohjelmassa meidän johtajillemme, koska he halutaan muodostaa historiaa.
In the 1970s, for example, the oil cartel OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, tried to cut off the supply of oil to the United States. It caused an instant panic, a recession within months. Trump was 27 when those lines of cars snaked around the block. Putin was 21. Xi was 20. Our leaders understand in their bones that power comes from fuel.
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Chapter 2: How does technology change the power dynamics in energy?
But now we're in the midst of the next great energy transition. So who will control the future of clean energy? Who will be the Saudi Arabia of this transition? Well, through fuel-tinted glasses, the answer seems obvious. It's whoever controls the copper, the lithium, the graphite, the cobalt, the rare earths, the critical minerals that we need.
But our fuel-tinted glasses are broken. Because this is the first transition not to another dominant fuel, but to a technology. And that changes everything.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about what this means. Our team is building one of the largest distributed renewable energy utilities for Africa. Crossboundary Energy uses on-site solar, batteries and wind to bring cheaper, cleaner and more reliable power to businesses.
Cross-boundary access uses the same technologies to bring first-time power to some of the 600 million people living on this continent without it. And here is what I have learned at the silicon face of this transition. Unlike fuel, technology is less as extensional. It's more circular. It's more fungible. And it's more abundant.
So I can use one of our projects to explain how this works. This is Tolagnaro in Madagascar. It's a remote town of 55,000 people next to a major critical minerals mine. Power for the mine and the community until recently came from heavy fuel oil generators on the mine site. Now Crossboundary powers the mine with a renewable energy microgrid made up of solar, wind and batteries.
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Chapter 3: What role do critical minerals play in the future of energy?
Soon we hope that we will be able to phase out the generators altogether. Now let me tell you a story. Imagine two cartels. One is real, OPEC, which seeks to control the price of oil. The other is an imaginary alliance of the major miners of copper and lithium today. Chile, China and Australia.
If you want to run a good cartel, everyone knows you need to have a great acronym. Let's call it the Pisco Sour Peking Duck Fosters Cartel, or PPF for short. Let's imagine that each cartel, OPEC and PPF, seeks to cut off the supply of their respective commodity to the rest of the world.
In Tolognaro, before our energy transition, this would have caused an instant crisis. Without oil, the lights in the community go out and the mine shuts down. But after the transition, nothing much changes in Tolognaro. And that's because in a fuel-based world, constant supply of fuel is existential.
But in a technology-based world, without a constant supply of lithium, your old lithium batteries keep working. You don't need a constant supply of new copper for your copper wires to keep conducting electricity. You do not require a constant supply of new materials just to survive. But technology gets even better than that, because it is also more circular.
Noin 0 prosenttia kestävää energiaa voidaan kestävät. Kun se kestää, se on menossa. Mutta me emme kestä teknologiaa. Me käytämme sen. Ja joten yli 90 prosenttia kestävää energiaa voidaan kestävät. Vuoteen 2050 voisi olla niin paljon kestävää tuotetta,
demand for new input materials could actually begin to decrease. But it gets better than that, because technology is also more fungible.
I'm not actually talking about mushrooms here, but the effect is magic, because almost every input into this energy transition can be substituted for another abundant material. Copper can be replaced by aluminium. Cobalt can be replaced in batteries by iron. And those substitutions have already happened when temporarily prices spiked.
So even without access to a specific critical mineral, the power of fungibility means that you can continue to grow. Now, hopefully you're beginning to feel somewhat convinced that demand for new material will be fundamentally different in this transition, because it is less extantial, more circular, more fungible. And those things together mean that it is more flexible, it is more elastic.
But we do still have a lot of energy transitioning left to do. So we do need new supply. And so here is my final piece of good news. The materials that we need for this energy transition are abundant. First, we need less stuff.
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Chapter 4: How does the concept of fungibility impact energy resources?
Tämä 230 miljoonaa näyttää kestävällä. Meidän tulee tarvita enemmän materiaalia, kuten koppi, litiumi, grafiikki, koboltti. Mutta tämä on toinen näkökulma näkökulmasta. Meillä on paljon tällaista.
When geologists estimate the likely resource, they show that it easily exceeds our projected demand. Even rare earths are not rare. They were called rare because they were rarely found in their pure form. They were always found with another material. So sure, they're rare, but they're rare in the same way that Burt is rare without Ernie. But is oil very different?
Olemme tunnistaneet, että öljyä löytyy melko suurin osa vaikutuksen tarpeeseen. Olemme tunnistaneet, että öljyä löytyy samalla tavalla kritiikkoihin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin säännöllisiin
and we know that oil in general is quite rare in the Earth's crust. We know that most critical minerals are actually geologically abundant in the Earth's crust, and we've really only just begun exploring for many of them at scale. So it's extremely likely that if we try, we can diversify. But second, if we're confronted with the behavior
of a PPF-style cartel. The elasticity of demand gives us the time and the leverage that we need to break the cartel or diversify our supply. Now, there will be short-term mismatches between supply and demand,
Control really matters when supply is scarce and demand is inelastic. When supply is abundant and demand is elastic, control will always be temporary. Here's one final piece of evidence that can tie all of this together. Can you name me a successful cartel for an energy transition mineral?
Have you, for instance, heard of these famous copper cartels? The Secretan Copper Syndicate, the Amalgamated Copper Company, the Copper Exporters Association, the Copper Exporters Incorporated, and the not particularly creatively named International Copper Cartel? These are all real cartels, and they all failed.
Because when supply is abundant and demand is elastic, a cartel has the lifespan of your average Game of Thrones character.
There will not be an OPEC for renewables. Okay, fine, but won't there be a Saudi Arabia of manufacturing in this transition? Well, no, at least not for the same reasons, because manufacturing is effectively abundant. Your ability to manufacture does not constrain my ability to manufacture. It's not zero-sum. Nobody can stop you from making solar panels.
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Chapter 5: What does the future of energy look like without control over resources?
The great nations of tomorrow will not be those that focus on controlling materials and constraining the growth of others. The great nations of tomorrow will be those that focus on their comparative advantage. Identify and unlock the resources that we'll all need. Invent, build and manufacture the technology that we'll all need. And then sell it at great prices, terrific prices.
to the rest of the world. That's what policymakers should focus on. Not annexing another source of not particularly rare earths. The leaders we need now are explorers, not exploiters. They are builders, not warriors. And they are innovators, not conquerors. So let's take off those fuel-tinted glasses together.
Who will control the future of clean energy? Well, the answer is nobody. And the answer can be everybody. Because the future of energy is not controlled. It's shared. It's not extracted. It's built. And it can belong to all of us. Thank you.
That was Matt Tillyard at the TED Countdown Summit Nairobi in Kenya in 2025.
If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tansika Sangmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Lucy Little. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
Kiitos kun katsoit.
Tiesitkö, että joka neljäs yli 40-vuotias mies kokee virtsan karkailua? Se on todella yleistä, mutta siitä ei silti juuri puhuta. Tenamen suojat on suunniteltu erityisesti miehille. Huomaamattomat, varmat ja luotettavat. Ota tilanne haltuun Tenamenin avulla.
On the TED Radio Hour. Don't you hate it when leftover cilantro rots in your fridge? I have to tell you, cilantro is like my nemesis. Food waste expert Dana Gunders says that's just a hint of a massive global problem. Food waste has about five times the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire aviation industry. Ideas about wasting less food. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Listen and subscribe to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
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