TED Talks Daily
The economic opportunity hidden in the climate transition | Marielle Remillard
17 May 2025
The energy grid of the future demands a massive amount of materials: billions of solar panels, millions of wind turbines and more. Climate strategist Marielle Remillard reveals why there may be critical shortages ahead — and breaks down how this could also be the biggest business opportunity since the Industrial Revolution.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We are on a tight timeline as a planet to reach net zero emissions by 2050. And one aspect of the transition to renewables that doesn't get talked about enough... are the raw materials in the supply chain that the transition requires.
Climate strategist Marielle Remillard pushes for planning and business innovation in crucial areas in order to meet our climate goals.
Do we have what it takes to reach net zero? I don't mean this in a philosophical way. Does humanity have sufficient grit and creativity? Do we have the political will? I mean, quite literally, do we have enough stuff, cement, steel, glass, nuts, bolts, needed to achieve net zero? because this is no small undertaking.
Over the next 30 years, we're going to need to build 42 billion solar panels, 1.3 million wind turbines, 476 nuclear reactors, establish a hydrogen economy, overhaul our electrical grid and transform our transportation networks. This is a lot of money and a lot of labor, yes, but it's also just a lot of stuff.
So as governments set increasingly ambitious policy targets and businesses overhaul their operations, whether by carrots or sticks, we can't forget a fundamental question. Is it even feasible? I've been working on climate and sustainability topics my entire career.
I started as a policy advocate and activist, lobbying for stronger policy interventions, and later as a scientist and an engineer, only to come to the conclusion that those industries, while very important, move so slowly. I'm not a very patient person, and climate change demands urgent action.
So I made my switch to the business sector, where we have both the resources and the agility to affect climate change on the necessary timescales. Among the highlights of my career has been working at the BCG Henderson Institute, BCG's think tank. There, our research team studies how to increase the speed and scale of the energy transition by looking at the transition economy as a system.
Underpinning our research is this idea that it's not just one sector that's going to need to transform, but all of them. You know, it's not just wind or automotive industries. These sectors are transforming in parallel, and we need to look at this holistically. So let me give you an example. If we wanted to answer this question, can we achieve net zero?
Do we have enough stuff for just the wind sector? Classically, you might approach this question by looking at all the materials you need to make a wind turbine and then comparing supply and demand. And what you would see is that maybe through 2030, you'd see some scarcity in carbon fiber, possibly terbium, but it's really unclear once you get to the bottom of the list.
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