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Elon Musk's Speech on the 10th World Water Forum in Indonesia! · Elon Musk Thinking

• 0:00
  Hello everyone. Well, I must say I'm very impressed with this meeting.
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  Room is amazing. I feel like I'm in a waterfall. It's really lovely
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  here, and that was an incredible, incredible performance. So I must say
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  I'm quite delighted to be here this morning talking to you and to experience this
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  wonderful event and everything that Indonesia has to offer. It's amazing being here in
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  Bali in Indonesia. Hopefully everyone saw the mangrove forests, because those are very
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  impressive. It's several one hundred thousand acres of mangroves that I think have been
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  replanted. I recall correctly. There are a lot of great things happening in
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  Indonesia and the rest of the world, and overall, I would say I'm
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  quite sort of optimistic for the future. I think we should never be complacent
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  or entitled, but I do think that if we're not in complacent entitled that
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  the future will actually be great for the world. And I think we're headed
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  to a bright future overall. So, and with respect to to water,
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  I've always thought we should we call it, but actually Earth is seventy percent
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  water by surface area, so we've technically think if alien came here, and
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  a lot of people think aliens have come here because they're always asking me.
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  They're always asking me about aliens, they would name us water because we are
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  seventy percent water and only thirty percent land. So what that means is the
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  potential for solving any given water issue is extremely good because there is so much
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  water. There's obviously desalination required at times, and the transport of water,
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  but desalination, as I think most people know, has become very inexpensive and
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  is and so really the availability of fresh water is simply about energy and transport.
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  So when I talk to even very well read, very smart people in
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  the United States, they will often think, well, the water crisis is
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  unsolvable, But in fact it is very solvable. We are continuing breakthroughs in
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  the efficiency of desalination, and I think we've got we've got a great water
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  future ahead of us, and I think a great sustainable energy future ahead of
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  us. Basically, I'm kicking things off on a positive note, but I
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  think with good basis for doing so. The next section is really just some
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  questions or Q and A. Anyone would like to ask me anything about anything?
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  I suppose we should generally stick to the topic of water, given that
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  it's the Water Conference, but I'm happy to answer other questions as well.
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  Not quite sure how the logistics of question posing works, but just say a
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  question. Sure, if I heard correctly, what is the most important thing
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  for solving the water crisis? Okay, Well, the exact solution will vary
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  depending upon country and even region within a country. But the as I mentioned,
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  because the cost of desalination has dropped so much, if you're just talking
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  about water for individual consumption, or water in say a hydroponics facility, some
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  kind of you know, where you're not simply putting it on the ground for
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  crops, but actually have some sort of contained facility that minimizes the amount of
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  evaporation. I think you can basically turn in any part of the world's green,
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  including the entire world. So it just bangs the question of where does
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  the energy come from? And here's where I think solar energy is very much
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  underestimated in terms of its capability. So if you think about what would the
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  Earth be without the Sun, the Earth would be a frozen, dark ice
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  bowl at roughly three degrees above absolute zero. It quite unpleasant. So you
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  know, we're cold and dark. But because of the sun where we are,
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  we're at a quite a nice temperature, quite pleasant, roughly three three
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  hundred degrees above absolute zero, and the sun powers almost the entire ecosystem is
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  solar powered. When you say, like, well how much electricity, how
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  much land would it take to generate electricity, there's a gigawatt perst square kilometer
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  of solar radiation that reaches the surface. So for every square kilometer there's a
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  peak power of roughly a gigawatt, which is comparable to a power station.
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  Now, the sun doesn't shine all the time, obviously, so when you
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  net all of that out and say, well, how much energy per day
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  does one square kilometer yield, it's roughly one giga what hour per square kilometer
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  per day? There's just still a lot. So and if you do the
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  rough math to power the United States, which is a heavy user of electricity,
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  it would only take would take less than a two hundred kilometer by two
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  hundred kilometer solar array power of the entire United States. And if you drive
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  through the United States through there's plenty of sections of the United States where there
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  is basically no people or another way to think of it, as a small
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  section of the Sahara could power all of Europe or the world. Now,
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  not saying you would be so concentrated in the placement solar power, because it's
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  better to be more distributed. But the sheer magnitude of solar power that is
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  available is often not quite understood, but the math of it is very clear.
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  So I'd really would strongly recommend sort of a solar plus battery combination or
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  wind plus solar can solve all of the world's energy needs by a lot needs.
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  Also R and D to reduce the price of desalination or desalinated cuban met
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  for WORTERM by ninety percent. Like what happened? Would that be? Be?
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  Who is going to support the R and D in this era? Not
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  that invariable countess of course, how we are going to support the serchio.
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  Yeah. So something that I would encourage everyone in the room to look at
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  is and you touched on that briefly, is that the cost of solar power
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  has dropped dramatically over the years. So if you were to say, look
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  at the cost of solar power five years ago, or ten years ago or
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  twenty years ago, it would have seemed cost prohibitive, but the cost of
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  solar power today is extremely low, and the cost of batteries to store the
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  energy has also dropped dramatically. The cost of battery a storage of electricity has
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  dropped by a factor of ten in the past five years. So many of
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  the studies that were done in times past when batteries were very expensive and solar
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  power is very expensive, and I would just encourage everyone to basically take another
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  look at the cost of solar and the cost of batteries, and I think
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  you'll find that you're pleasantly surprised. So all right, yes, okay,
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  thank you. Well, it's an honor to be here, and thank you
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  very much for listening to my words. And I hope you have a fantastic conference.