two and a half years ago I attended the
conference that changed my life it
actually changed your life as well even
if you don’t know it yet and it will
change the course of this planet in 2015
I attended the United Nations Climate
Change Conference in Paris and this is
what I’m here to talk to you about today
what was actually agreed in Paris what
do these goals mean for our economies
and for our states and how can
this historic meeting they become a
personal shift for me as well at the
time I was working as a reporter and I
was mainly writing about natural gas I
felt guilty writing about gas before I
attended and I felt even worse after I
left because obviously it’s a fossil
fuel and it was very moving to be
surrounded by indigenous people
activists and scientists people from
every country on earth working together
to come together and find a common
climate policy and they were pushing our
leaders to reach a meaningful agreement
with ambitious targets at the same time
I looked at this enormous challenge
ahead so we have to build a fossil free
world and Paris had become a big
awakening for me I told myself just
writing just isn’t enough anymore so I
decided to change my career and I think
each one of us will come to a similar
point in our lives where we have to
decide do we strive for money and
security of our job with more moral
impact so shortly after the Paris
agreement I joined a small start-up here
in Berlin and we build solar roads and
this is what I’m here to talk to you
about more specifically how can solar
roads help us to reach the climate
targets
essentially they allow us to build
large-scale power plants produce a lot
of clean electricity and therefore
reduce our dependence on fossil fuels so
what was actually agreed in Paris the
first target is limiting warming to 1.5
degrees the problem with this target is
that Earth is already one degree warmer
we can see her NASA data that shows the
temperature anomalies over the years and
these are increasingly happening 2016
was the hottest year ever recorded 2017
last year was the second hottest year
ever recorded and just a few weeks ago
in Pakistan temperatures reached over 50
degrees making it the hottest day on
earth ever in April the time is really
running out for us to still limit the
warming to 1.5 degrees the second target
is a consequence how do we limit the
warming we have to become Net Zero
emissions by mid-century
so our states have to get to a point
where we have no more new emissions that
means no more fossil fuels coal
definitely has to stay in the ground and
our economies have to be powered a
hundred percent by renewable energy if
we then still have any emissions left
from for example agriculture transport
or energy production we have to offset
these emissions by for example planting
trees China just started doing that they
deployed 60,000 soldiers just to plant
trees to fight the horrible air
pollution and fight climate change and
in Pakistan where I said it’s getting
really hot the government in a period of
two years planted 1 billion trees to
fight climate change and to bring back
the rain so this target that zero
emissions really had has wide reaching
consequences for our economies we have
to take decisive actions and restructure
our whole economic system and
this is just 30 years away if you look
at how long it takes just to build an
airport in Berlin I think we should
start now so these are the two targets
this is what we’re trying to achieve and
I just want to show you some important
examples that show that there is a
monumental shift away from fossil fuels
happening already there is an
unprecedented wave of litigation
happening scientists can now link
extreme weather events to climate change
on the other hand they’ve mapped out how
many emissions have fossil fuel
companies emitted over their lifetime
and they’re putting these pieces
together these pieces of this climate
change responsibility puzzle and they’re
building stronger cases than ever before
and this coincides with cities facing
really high costs for the damaged
climate change is causing to them right
now
there’s wildfires in California sea
levels are rising in Florida and New
York City is hit by super storms so I
thought this was great news this
happened in January New York City
launched a long lawsuit against fossil
fuel companies among them Exxon Mobil BP
Shell and others and they’re not the
only ones in San Francisco there’s a
similar important case going on right
now and there’s cases all over
California and the world now but New
York City didn’t stop there they said
there will also divest so they’re
pulling out five billion dollars of
investments in the fossil fuel industry
and New York City is not the only city
doing that there’s a large institution
that said they will also divest the
World Bank announced in December that
they will not find any more oil or gas
projects from 2019 onwards the time is
really running out for the fossil fuel
companies and this target I talked about
we have to become net zero emission
states so climate neutral States these
countries
already said they will become climate
neutral and you can see they’re pretty
small countries but the UK announced
that they’re working on this target now
as well there will be the first g7
country so a country with a really large
economy to take this specific Paris
target and turn it into national law and
fossil fuels are not just a bad look
they actually bad business prices are
falling as we speak wind and solar are
now the cheapest technology is available
prices for solar have dropped over 75%
in Germany in the last few years and we
can see here with this price learning
curve the more solar we deploy the
cheaper it becomes so they’re not the
only problem now is space for this grand
transition of our economy we need to and
to reach the Paris targets we need to
use every patch available on earth to
produce clean electricity and this is
what hunter you are from Sharon Hoover
said I met him a few times at the UN
meetings and other events and his triage
area is most renowned climate scientist
so another example is this this is Tesla
be establishing the power supply in
Puerto Rico the island was hit by a
really devastating hurricane and it’s
great they’re decreasing their
dependence on fossil fuels but at the
same time is it really smart to put
solar panels on the parking lot where
cars actually meant to drive over so you
might see where I’m going with this
would it be great to have a technology
that we can deploy right here and this
is what Solar streets allow us to do
Solar streets are taking standard solar
technology one step further they just
packaged it in a different way so that
you can walk on it and that you can
drive on it and we can deploy them in
areas like I just showed you on that
parking lot and this is what we’ve been
working on this is a piece of our solar
streets
and we can see it’s very thin it adapts
to the ground that we lay it on and the
surface is so stable that a truck can
drive over it and it can stop on it and
it’s also slip resistant which is really
important
thanks to special minerals that I worked
into the top layer and then underneath
this solid glass surface lay highly
efficient wanna crystalline solar cells
so standard solar cells and they produce
clean electricity so we expect a net
energy output of around hundred kilowatt
hours per square meter per year and we
can see here a close-up of the profile
of this solar Street of this module
these grooves capture the sunlight as it
moves throughout the day and that direct
it effectively onto the solar cells
underneath and it’s designed in a way so
that rain water can drain well and it’s
self-cleaning thanks to nano coating and
we’re focusing on electricity production
right now but we already working on
including additional features like
lighting and heating and we can see here
prototype that is using LED lighting so
if we install this technology here in
Berlin on a bike lane we can heat it up
on a cold winter morning and D is the
area and then we can light it up at
night to increase the safety for the
cyclists and we’ve done a study where do
we put all these solar streets and this
is a city in Germany and we found that
25% of a city is suitable for the
installation of solar streets so here’s
the city center marked in red that’s not
a good area they’re shading there’s too
many cars the buildings are too high too
many trees but the further outside we go
marked here in yellow and then in green
these are areas that are well suited
so around 25% and Sylla streets already
being built across the world the
Netherlands introduced the technology to
the world
in 2014 when I built the first bike lane
trans followed shortly after and they
built one kilometer of highway in the
Normandy and then China followed this
year and built large highway made of
solar well some kind of French inspired
design I don’t know if you can see
similarities and then meanwhile here in
Germany we’re still focusing on coal
where I’m from in West Germany rwe
is cutting down a twelve thousand year
old forest to produce more coal they
already cut down ninety percent of it
and they don’t want to stop and this is
at a time when we are not reaching our
national climate targets and we’re not
meeting meeting the EU climate targets
we should really given these ambitious
targets to restructure our economies put
more money into clean energy and clean
innovation but we’re not so investments
in energy clean energy have really
dropped dramatically in Germany we can
see high as in 2010 and 2011 women
invested almost 12 billion dollars into
clean energy and they’ve dropped all the
way here it’s not the right direction to
be going in the situation we’re in right
now and the same is true for the
installation of solar here this is how
much we installed last year how many
kilowatts of solar was installed in
Germany this is how much we should have
installed according to our own national
energy law and this is how much we need
to install to reach the Paris climate
targets so as a small start-up in Berlin
how do we move from talking to action
and how can we cross this belly of death
between having a prototype and reaching
a mass market arena Matsoukas who gave a
great TED talk about this issue
she’s an economist and she advises
governments all around the world about
the role they play in creating and
shaping markets like Germany has
previously done with renewable energy
but we have to continue to do so
States really need a direction for their
technological change and then a
direction for their growth strategy we
want growth at any cost or do we rather
want clean and green growth and fair
enough that every investor is profit
driven but do we have to be maximum
profit seeking or can we be happy with
less profit and more environmental
impact so where does this leave us
climate targets have been set but they
have not been yet met and somebody has
to go out there and build this new world
now I personally want to look back on my
life and know that I’ve contributed to
making things better that given
everything that we know about polluting
industries and climate change I was on
the right side of things I wasn’t just
driven by profits but by helping to
build a more sustainable world and
there’s certainly a right and a wrong
side to be on here it’s destroying our
ecosystems and our life-support system
is not the right side to be on
and I think this increasing and more
intensifying climate and environmental
crisis is really the fight of our
generation all of us here and it comes
with great responsibility but it also
comes with great opportunity because
this century long grip that the oil
industry has is slowly loosening up as I
showed and it’s creating an opening for
all of us to participate and help to
build a more sustainable world
so I’m in it to change the game the only question is are you thank you
conference that changed my life it
actually changed your life as well even
if you don’t know it yet and it will
change the course of this planet in 2015
I attended the United Nations Climate
Change Conference in Paris and this is
what I’m here to talk to you about today
what was actually agreed in Paris what
do these goals mean for our economies
and for our states and how can
this historic meeting they become a
personal shift for me as well at the
time I was working as a reporter and I
was mainly writing about natural gas I
felt guilty writing about gas before I
attended and I felt even worse after I
left because obviously it’s a fossil
fuel and it was very moving to be
surrounded by indigenous people
activists and scientists people from
every country on earth working together
to come together and find a common
climate policy and they were pushing our
leaders to reach a meaningful agreement
with ambitious targets at the same time
I looked at this enormous challenge
ahead so we have to build a fossil free
world and Paris had become a big
awakening for me I told myself just
writing just isn’t enough anymore so I
decided to change my career and I think
each one of us will come to a similar
point in our lives where we have to
decide do we strive for money and
security of our job with more moral
impact so shortly after the Paris
agreement I joined a small start-up here
in Berlin and we build solar roads and
this is what I’m here to talk to you
about more specifically how can solar
roads help us to reach the climate
targets
essentially they allow us to build
large-scale power plants produce a lot
of clean electricity and therefore
reduce our dependence on fossil fuels so
what was actually agreed in Paris the
first target is limiting warming to 1.5
degrees the problem with this target is
that Earth is already one degree warmer
we can see her NASA data that shows the
temperature anomalies over the years and
these are increasingly happening 2016
was the hottest year ever recorded 2017
last year was the second hottest year
ever recorded and just a few weeks ago
in Pakistan temperatures reached over 50
degrees making it the hottest day on
earth ever in April the time is really
running out for us to still limit the
warming to 1.5 degrees the second target
is a consequence how do we limit the
warming we have to become Net Zero
emissions by mid-century
so our states have to get to a point
where we have no more new emissions that
means no more fossil fuels coal
definitely has to stay in the ground and
our economies have to be powered a
hundred percent by renewable energy if
we then still have any emissions left
from for example agriculture transport
or energy production we have to offset
these emissions by for example planting
trees China just started doing that they
deployed 60,000 soldiers just to plant
trees to fight the horrible air
pollution and fight climate change and
in Pakistan where I said it’s getting
really hot the government in a period of
two years planted 1 billion trees to
fight climate change and to bring back
the rain so this target that zero
emissions really had has wide reaching
consequences for our economies we have
to take decisive actions and restructure
our whole economic system and
this is just 30 years away if you look
at how long it takes just to build an
airport in Berlin I think we should
start now so these are the two targets
this is what we’re trying to achieve and
I just want to show you some important
examples that show that there is a
monumental shift away from fossil fuels
happening already there is an
unprecedented wave of litigation
happening scientists can now link
extreme weather events to climate change
on the other hand they’ve mapped out how
many emissions have fossil fuel
companies emitted over their lifetime
and they’re putting these pieces
together these pieces of this climate
change responsibility puzzle and they’re
building stronger cases than ever before
and this coincides with cities facing
really high costs for the damaged
climate change is causing to them right
now
there’s wildfires in California sea
levels are rising in Florida and New
York City is hit by super storms so I
thought this was great news this
happened in January New York City
launched a long lawsuit against fossil
fuel companies among them Exxon Mobil BP
Shell and others and they’re not the
only ones in San Francisco there’s a
similar important case going on right
now and there’s cases all over
California and the world now but New
York City didn’t stop there they said
there will also divest so they’re
pulling out five billion dollars of
investments in the fossil fuel industry
and New York City is not the only city
doing that there’s a large institution
that said they will also divest the
World Bank announced in December that
they will not find any more oil or gas
projects from 2019 onwards the time is
really running out for the fossil fuel
companies and this target I talked about
we have to become net zero emission
states so climate neutral States these
countries
already said they will become climate
neutral and you can see they’re pretty
small countries but the UK announced
that they’re working on this target now
as well there will be the first g7
country so a country with a really large
economy to take this specific Paris
target and turn it into national law and
fossil fuels are not just a bad look
they actually bad business prices are
falling as we speak wind and solar are
now the cheapest technology is available
prices for solar have dropped over 75%
in Germany in the last few years and we
can see here with this price learning
curve the more solar we deploy the
cheaper it becomes so they’re not the
only problem now is space for this grand
transition of our economy we need to and
to reach the Paris targets we need to
use every patch available on earth to
produce clean electricity and this is
what hunter you are from Sharon Hoover
said I met him a few times at the UN
meetings and other events and his triage
area is most renowned climate scientist
so another example is this this is Tesla
be establishing the power supply in
Puerto Rico the island was hit by a
really devastating hurricane and it’s
great they’re decreasing their
dependence on fossil fuels but at the
same time is it really smart to put
solar panels on the parking lot where
cars actually meant to drive over so you
might see where I’m going with this
would it be great to have a technology
that we can deploy right here and this
is what Solar streets allow us to do
Solar streets are taking standard solar
technology one step further they just
packaged it in a different way so that
you can walk on it and that you can
drive on it and we can deploy them in
areas like I just showed you on that
parking lot and this is what we’ve been
working on this is a piece of our solar
streets
and we can see it’s very thin it adapts
to the ground that we lay it on and the
surface is so stable that a truck can
drive over it and it can stop on it and
it’s also slip resistant which is really
important
thanks to special minerals that I worked
into the top layer and then underneath
this solid glass surface lay highly
efficient wanna crystalline solar cells
so standard solar cells and they produce
clean electricity so we expect a net
energy output of around hundred kilowatt
hours per square meter per year and we
can see here a close-up of the profile
of this solar Street of this module
these grooves capture the sunlight as it
moves throughout the day and that direct
it effectively onto the solar cells
underneath and it’s designed in a way so
that rain water can drain well and it’s
self-cleaning thanks to nano coating and
we’re focusing on electricity production
right now but we already working on
including additional features like
lighting and heating and we can see here
prototype that is using LED lighting so
if we install this technology here in
Berlin on a bike lane we can heat it up
on a cold winter morning and D is the
area and then we can light it up at
night to increase the safety for the
cyclists and we’ve done a study where do
we put all these solar streets and this
is a city in Germany and we found that
25% of a city is suitable for the
installation of solar streets so here’s
the city center marked in red that’s not
a good area they’re shading there’s too
many cars the buildings are too high too
many trees but the further outside we go
marked here in yellow and then in green
these are areas that are well suited
so around 25% and Sylla streets already
being built across the world the
Netherlands introduced the technology to
the world
in 2014 when I built the first bike lane
trans followed shortly after and they
built one kilometer of highway in the
Normandy and then China followed this
year and built large highway made of
solar well some kind of French inspired
design I don’t know if you can see
similarities and then meanwhile here in
Germany we’re still focusing on coal
where I’m from in West Germany rwe
is cutting down a twelve thousand year
old forest to produce more coal they
already cut down ninety percent of it
and they don’t want to stop and this is
at a time when we are not reaching our
national climate targets and we’re not
meeting meeting the EU climate targets
we should really given these ambitious
targets to restructure our economies put
more money into clean energy and clean
innovation but we’re not so investments
in energy clean energy have really
dropped dramatically in Germany we can
see high as in 2010 and 2011 women
invested almost 12 billion dollars into
clean energy and they’ve dropped all the
way here it’s not the right direction to
be going in the situation we’re in right
now and the same is true for the
installation of solar here this is how
much we installed last year how many
kilowatts of solar was installed in
Germany this is how much we should have
installed according to our own national
energy law and this is how much we need
to install to reach the Paris climate
targets so as a small start-up in Berlin
how do we move from talking to action
and how can we cross this belly of death
between having a prototype and reaching
a mass market arena Matsoukas who gave a
great TED talk about this issue
she’s an economist and she advises
governments all around the world about
the role they play in creating and
shaping markets like Germany has
previously done with renewable energy
but we have to continue to do so
States really need a direction for their
technological change and then a
direction for their growth strategy we
want growth at any cost or do we rather
want clean and green growth and fair
enough that every investor is profit
driven but do we have to be maximum
profit seeking or can we be happy with
less profit and more environmental
impact so where does this leave us
climate targets have been set but they
have not been yet met and somebody has
to go out there and build this new world
now I personally want to look back on my
life and know that I’ve contributed to
making things better that given
everything that we know about polluting
industries and climate change I was on
the right side of things I wasn’t just
driven by profits but by helping to
build a more sustainable world and
there’s certainly a right and a wrong
side to be on here it’s destroying our
ecosystems and our life-support system
is not the right side to be on
and I think this increasing and more
intensifying climate and environmental
crisis is really the fight of our
generation all of us here and it comes
with great responsibility but it also
comes with great opportunity because
this century long grip that the oil
industry has is slowly loosening up as I
showed and it’s creating an opening for
all of us to participate and help to
build a more sustainable world
so I’m in it to change the game the only question is are you thank you
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