Will couriers have a future if drones start delivering packages? Is mining lithium worth the environmental cost? Will oil eventually run out and what would that mean? And perovskite, a promising material to boost solar cells.
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00:00Do you sometimes get mountains of packages at home?
00:05From stressed out delivery people who only seem to stop at every second address?
00:11Or, worse yet, ever waited for a package that never arrives because the driver is stuck in traffic for hours, polluting the environment with exhaust?
00:21Good news, there's a solution in the air, though it will require new rules.
00:31Also on today's show, Lithium from Serbia, a new mine, sparks protests.
00:39Are we running out of oil? How long will reserves last?
00:44And a miracle material that's a booster for solar cells.
00:50LITHIUM
00:58Drones have long been seen as the future of delivery services.
01:03From parcels to food and even medical supplies.
01:07Less traffic, fewer emissions, delivering even to remote areas.
01:14Sounds perfect, right?
01:17Well, not quite.
01:19The skies above us are crowded with more and more aircraft.
01:22If thousands of drones are added to the mix, how can they all share the same airspace?
01:28Especially in densely populated urban areas.
01:31The idea of sharing the sky is simple.
01:34The lower airspace belongs to drones, while higher altitudes are reserved for airplanes.
01:40Just like roads on the ground, highways for drones will be essential.
01:44Drone corridors are currently being tested and developed around the world.
01:50Britain is working on a pretty big one.
01:53A 265 km route connecting several towns and cities.
01:59Drones can enter the corridor at any point.
02:06A monitoring system will detect potential collisions and redirect the unmanned aircraft.
02:12It's still a work in progress.
02:14But once completed, it promises to be a significant step forward in drone delivery.
02:20The system is set to be available for commercial use by early 2025.
02:25I think that's one of the best ways we could organize a lot of drones flying in one airspace at the same time.
02:31Because we do the same thing with manned aviation.
02:33And most manned aircraft, they don't fly wherever they want.
02:37They follow corridors in the sky.
02:39The drone corridors are just one piece of the infrastructure puzzle.
02:44A major challenge would be integrating drones with the manned airspace system.
02:49Because that's where the main safety aspect comes into place.
02:53Heavier drones require a remote ID.
02:56Basically a license plate for drones.
03:01They can be tracked and assigned to an owner.
03:03Crucial in the case of accidents, for example.
03:07The drones are also controlled by a detect and avoid system to prevent collisions.
03:13After a hopefully safe journey, they need somewhere to touch down.
03:17At the moment, drones are still not allowed anywhere near airports.
03:21But in the future, landing areas could be added to them.
03:25There would also be arrival pads in city centers.
03:29But even if you live in the city, you probably won't get your delivery at your doorstep.
03:34You still need to go somewhere to pick it up.
03:38If the landing spot is close by, you might be notified by this telltale sound.
03:50Most people, when they think of a drone, they think of a small DJI quadcopter that doesn't make a lot of noise.
03:56But if you're doing something for drone package delivery, it needs to be a much larger UAV.
04:02They sound like almost lawnmowers running next to your heads.
04:05When Amazon tested drone delivery in College Station, Texas, residents complained about the noise,
04:11prompting the mayor to write a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration.
04:16Amazon insists that the new drones are quieter.
04:20Let's assume everything works out.
04:22Drones aren't too loud, flying happily in their drone corridors, monitored by safe systems and kept away from airplanes.
04:30That solves lots of issues, except for one major legal one.
04:35In countries such as the U.S. and India, the airspace above homes belongs to landowners.
04:41We are still in a phase where there is a decision making to be done as to what might be the threshold
04:49at which or above which the drones can freely operate.
04:54In the U.S., the idea of a marketplace has been introduced to offer landowners a monetary incentive.
05:01They can rent or sell their airspace to be used by drones.
05:06Besides the challenges of integration, the global market for drone services is forecast to grow significantly in the years to come.
05:14One country that wants to be part of that is India.
05:17With liberalized regulations and incentive schemes,
05:20the country wants to become a drone hub by 2030.
05:26We can say approximately around 2030 we might have a basic infrastructure
05:31where we see an integration of drones with manned airspace in a limited manner.
05:38So when will your pizza be delivered by a drone?
05:41Not for a while yet.
05:44Although the technology is advanced, various uncertainties remain regarding regulations, safety and disruptions to everyday life.
05:53And honestly, we'd better take it slow because drones dropping out of the sky could cause serious injuries or material damage.
06:01Drones could revolutionize delivery services,
06:04though whether they will actually deliver to your doorstep isn't clear yet
06:08and who knows whether it's really safe to have countless drones buzzing around in the air.
06:17Drones need powerful batteries to fly too, and these usually contain lithium.
06:22But known lithium supplies are limited.
06:25China has had a monopoly on most of the world's reserves for years.
06:29To decrease reliance on China, lithium will soon also be mined in Europe too.
06:34But at what price?
06:36In Serbia, residents fear it could harm the environment and cost them their livelihoods.
06:47Zlatko Kukanovic is a seventh-generation farmer.
06:50He tends to his two dozen cows every day and loves village life here in Gornja Nedeljica.
06:58We're cattle farmers, and every year we sell about 100,000 litres of milk.
07:04My family, my five children, we live from that, and we don't plan to change a thing.
07:13Just like many other farmers on the western edge of Serbia,
07:16but a global mining giant does have plans for the Jara Valley due to its large deposits of lithium,
07:22a key component in electric vehicle batteries.
07:26Rio Tinto has bought up land and farms across the valley.
07:30It plans to mine 58,000 tonnes of the metal annually,
07:34enough to supply batteries for over a million vehicles.
07:39We're aware of Serbia's rich resources and the enormous potential,
07:43with confirmed reserves of 158 million tonnes of lithium borate.
07:49The government insists mining operations will meet the EU's strict environmental standards,
07:55while Serbia isn't a member, it's seeking to join the bloc.
07:59Only state institutions can control this.
08:03The investor will say, I'll give you the documentation, that's the basis of our work,
08:09and then it's up to the government of the Republic of Serbia to monitor this.
08:17Many in the opposition don't believe these words.
08:20Member of Parliament Aleksandar Jovanovic takes part in mass protests against the lithium mine.
08:28Everywhere Rio Tinto has been around the world, it has left behind devastation and misery in its wake,
08:33including civil wars and the destruction of nature and cultural monuments.
08:39His scepticism is shared. This expert has seen studies on the potential environmental impact.
08:49The ore is mined with the help of intensive subterranean explosions,
08:53and the lithium processing will involve 1,100 tonnes of concentrated sulfuric acid daily.
09:00It will leave behind a mountain of waste that will pollute the environment for centuries.
09:09Rio Tinto says it's willing to talk.
09:11It's invested 600 million euros so far, with plans for a further 2 billion.
09:16The company claims the mining will be done using precise planning and environmentally friendly methods,
09:22and create thousands of new jobs.
09:25Well, I want to assure everybody this project is 100% safe.
09:29It's been designed to the highest standards in the world.
09:32We will not be a big hole in the ground.
09:35In contrast, we're an underground mine.
09:38Agriculture coexists on the surface with the mine together,
09:42and in terms of water, we will not impact any agricultural water, any drinking water.
09:47We will not be poisoning any water sources.
09:50But Zlatko Kokanovic and his neighbours don't trust any of the parties involved,
09:55the corporation, the government, the courts or the state-controlled media.
10:01There's always this fear about whether the mine is coming or not.
10:06Of course I'm against the mine. It's not good for us.
10:09There should be in the desert, where nobody lives. We'll be left with no water.
10:15The mood in the Yadar valley is tense.
10:18This farmer is determined to keep his land and his livelihood.
10:26You mustn't dig up these graves, and I'm prepared to sacrifice my life to prevent that.
10:35Compromise on the lithium mine is a long way off.
10:39Mistrust in Serbia's institutions and Rio Tinto is too great.
10:43The government has announced that it will approve the mine in two years at the earliest.
10:53The future may be electric, but there's still a long road ahead.
10:57EVs have yet to become widespread, and most of our economy is still based on fossil fuels.
11:04So we'll be reliant on oil for a while to come.
11:08Though based on various studies over the years, shouldn't we have run out of oil long ago?
11:13Let's check it out.
11:19In 1956, a geoscientist for Shell and professor at Stanford projected that global oil production would peak around the year 2000.
11:26This came as a huge shock at a time when oil was driving more and more of the economy.
11:31Some people thought it would mean a global financial crisis, and others, a full-on apocalypse.
11:36Since then, predictions about peak oil have popped up again and again.
11:40Supply problems were supposed to start in 2011, with effects noticeable by 2015.
11:45There was talk of high prices for food and fuel, supposed to impact agriculture and electricity.
11:51But none of this ever happened.
11:53The supply problems that everyone freaked out about never came.
11:57So what did happen? And should we be worried about running out of oil?
12:02First, looking at this question now is completely different from decades ago, because there have been huge changes in our lives.
12:09In the early 2000s, we weren't really thinking about life without fossil fuels.
12:13Electric vehicles were nearly unheard of.
12:16So an end of our oil supplies seemed like an existential crisis for the planet.
12:20With growing awareness of climate change, renewables have taken off, and the amount of them in the mix has grown hugely.
12:26It's now cheaper to generate electricity from solar and wind than from fossil fuels.
12:31There's also way more attention on electric vehicles.
12:3414% of new vehicles sold globally in 2022 were electric, compared to just 5% in 2020.
12:41Even the United States and China, two huge polluters, are making hefty investments into green technology.
12:47And something pretty special happened in 2023.
12:51When we're looking at renewables investment, which clearly has been growing rapidly,
12:54and in 2022 met that from fossil fuels, and 2023 far exceeded it,
12:59clearly that gap is only set to widen.
13:01While not much would move without fossil fuels, and oil in particular,
13:05the future of renewables is looking brighter and brighter.
13:07And that has made the end of oil take on a whole new meaning.
13:10If you go back to, say, about 15 to 20 years back,
13:14there was a concern that oil supply is going to peak, we're going to run out of oil.
13:18Now the concern is somewhat different, which is that we're going to hit a peak or a plateau in demand.
13:24This is a really huge shift.
13:26In October 2023, the International Energy Agency published a report predicting the end of oil and other fossil fuels.
13:32Only this time, the end is a peak in demand, not supply.
13:36And it's predicted to come in 2030.
13:38High demand and low supply means a high price.
13:42Low demand and high supply means a low price.
13:45Oil executives around the world were up in arms over the report.
13:49Because less demand with the same amount of supply would mean falling prices for fossil fuels,
13:54and less profit for the industry.
13:56This is a big deal since demand for oil has been growing every year except 2020 when COVID hit.
14:01This wouldn't mean that we wouldn't use fossil fuels anymore,
14:04but that it would become much harder to justify new fossil fuel projects.
14:08Because our supply of fossil fuels is doing great.
14:12We're not running out of oil and probably not going to run out of oil.
14:15Based on the current reserves, we have about 40 years of oil.
14:19And that doesn't even count all the new planned projects.
14:22This is mostly thanks to a newish technology called hydraulic fracturing or fracking.
14:26Fracking is a process that involves injecting a slushy of water and chemicals into rock, creating tons of tiny cracks.
14:32This allows oil and gas to escape and be collected at the surface.
14:36The wastewater is then often injected deep underground,
14:39which can contaminate the local environment and cause earthquakes.
14:42Fracking took off in the United States in the early 2000s,
14:45and the country now produces more oil per year than any other nation in the world.
14:49So much that it's affecting other countries.
14:51Like Saudi Arabia or UAE or Kuwait.
14:55And actually right now, because of so much oversupply in the market,
15:00they are producing a lot less than what they can produce.
15:04So on the one hand, we might have an oversupply of oil.
15:07And on the other, plateauing demand.
15:09Also, investors turning away from fossil fuels.
15:11But oil companies are used to expanding.
15:14And major oil producers like Shell, Exxon and Total Energies are all still betting on rising demand.
15:19Data suggested that all companies, I think except maybe BP, were increasing their oil production.
15:25Total Energies stated it was forecast to spend 25% of its capex for 2022 in renewables and electricity.
15:36But when you look at what that includes, it also includes some kind of gas-fired power.
15:40They may seem like they're shifting towards renewables,
15:43but they're actually still banking on a fossil fuel future.
15:47The business operations aren't changing particularly or at the pace needed.
15:50They're also lobbying against policies that would force that change or bring it about quicker.
15:55But at the same time, promoting this very public narrative that they are doing all they can.
15:59State-owned oil companies like Russian Rosneft and Saudi Aramco are also betting on future money from fossil fuels,
16:05even though projects approved now may never be profitable.
16:08New sites take years to build up infrastructure and to get ready for drilling.
16:12In financial terms, they might become stranded assets, something that was invested in but became obsolete.
16:18For some countries, 30 to 40% of the entire fiscal budget could be at risk as the transition unfolds or when oil prices fall.
16:25That's going to have a massive impact on the economies of these countries,
16:28and crucially on living standards for those in these countries.
16:30And that impact could also hit individual citizens directly.
16:34Many pension funds around the world are invested in oil and gas.
16:37If these companies fail spectacularly, millions of people could be plunged into financial insecurity in their old age.
16:44So faced with the end of oil, it seems like investing in renewables is the smart financial decision.
16:49They're cheaper, and there's less risk of new projects becoming stranded and unprofitable in the future.
16:56So all of that is going to help us move away from oil, but it's not going to be overnight.
17:02Because according to all predictions, we're going to continue to need fossil fuels for a while.
17:07They're used as a backup power when wind and solar aren't running,
17:10and widespread nuclear isn't likely to come online in time.
17:13Transport and energy storage also need to improve for us to be able to equip them entirely.
17:18But the more investment goes in, the more renewables improve.
17:21And we desperately need that to keep existing on this planet.
17:29It's critical for our future that we keep making breakthroughs in renewable energies.
17:34While quantity, or the potential for mass adoption, is important, quality is too.
17:40For instance, finding ways to get more energy out of solar cells than before,
17:45and using materials whose extraction doesn't harm the environment.
17:49Like perovskite, for example. But what is that?
17:54This tiny solar cell might be about to revolutionize solar energy as we know it.
18:00It's way more efficient than your standard silicon solar cell.
18:03It can be easily synthesized and doesn't need to be mined like silicon.
18:08And it can work on thin film to power your smart home speaker, but it also can go on your roof.
18:14Say hi to this crystal structure called perovskite.
18:17It promises improvements to solar cells that are almost too good to be true.
18:24To understand why they are so superior to your standard silicon cell,
18:28I went here, the Helmholtz Institute in Berlin.
18:31They've been researching perovskites as a sun-absorbing material for more than a decade.
18:36Hey Steve, how are you doing?
18:37I'm good, nice to meet you.
18:38Nice to meet you too.
18:40And this is the guy in charge of the research, Steve Albrecht.
18:43He even set world records for the most efficient perovskite solar cells.
18:48So on a very basic level, what does perovskite look like?
18:53The term perovskite is a very generic term for a specific crystal structure, right?
18:59You can see that here, over there.
19:01So the crystal structure has the ABX3 formula,
19:04and each component is a certain either element or molecule.
19:10One of the most common combinations in this structure is methyl ammonium as the A on the corners,
19:16the metal lead for B in the center,
19:18and chloride or iodide as the X, which form around the metal.
19:23But there is a vast range of materials that can be used and combined,
19:28and it's quite wild how easily these can be put together.
19:32Oh, this is a lab environment.
19:34But before we do that, security first as we are going to work with toxic lead
19:39with one of Steve Albrecht's colleagues.
19:41Okay, looks good. I think you're good to go.
19:43You look a bit like a veterinary.
19:45Yeah, they're the veterinary gloves.
19:48Okay, time to get in our base materials.
19:50Matthew mixes methyl ammonium chloride and lead iodide to later create our ABX3 crystal structure.
20:00So what is now the advantage of these materials compared to silicon?
20:05So I believe that one of the main advantages of perovskite over silicon as a material is the ease of processing.
20:11So silicon is something that is relatively energy intensive to fabricate,
20:16but this is something that can be done at close to room temperature,
20:20so it doesn't require much energy, so it's easy to do.
20:23Everything is relatively abundant, and so it shouldn't be a bottleneck for production.
20:31Now that we have the base materials, we need to produce sun-absorbing perovskite out of it.
20:36Matthew does this by using a technique called spin coating.
20:41But perovskite solar cells can also be directly printed onto surfaces
20:45using similar processes to those needed for printing newspapers.
20:51Spin coating, however, can be tedious.
20:59Matthew accidentally dropped the glass.
21:01Not a big problem in a lab environment, but for commercial production, this is not viable.
21:05Matthew gives it a second try, and this time everything works.
21:10After the spin coating, it goes onto a heating plate,
21:13and the darkening shows us that the crystals are being formed.
21:16It works the same way as when saltwater evaporates and you start to see the salt.
21:22There are cells like this one here which are only made out of perovskite,
21:26but in many cases there is a silicon layer beneath them.
21:31These cells are called tandem cells and look like this.
21:34Right now they are the most promising candidates when it comes to increasing the efficiency of solar cells.
21:39But at some point, it might be also possible to abandon the silicon completely.
21:44To test their tandem cells efficiency, the researchers at Helmholtz Institute use a sun simulator.
21:50It determines exactly how much sunlight is converted into electricity.
21:55What kind of efficiency did we just measure?
21:58So here we measured almost 30 percent, a quite nice achievement.
22:02Why does a tandem solar cell reach that much more efficiency than single junction solar cells?
22:07So tandem solar cells make much more use of the incoming light.
22:13So we have our solar spectrum. The solar cells, they share the spectrum kind of.
22:19The perovskite solar cell in this case makes use of the visible wavelength.
22:24So everything which we can see by eye is then converted in the perovskite solar cell into electrical energy.
22:31Whereas the infrared light passes through the perovskite cell and is then converted in the silicon solar cell,
22:38which is quite efficient in converting infrared light.
22:41So they share the spectrum and each cell is very efficient in their region.
22:46It doesn't sound like that much, but Eicke tells me that this way roughly 50 percent more sunlight can be converted into electrical energy.
22:55So more overall sunlight can be absorbed, but you can't buy any of these tandem solar cells yet,
23:01because before they go into serial production, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed.
23:06A major issue is the stability of the perovskite structures used in tandem solar cells.
23:11Perovskite structures are easily put together at low temperatures as we saw earlier, but they also come apart easily.
23:19Even the charges that travel through the perovskite in the solar cell can create defects and destroy the perovskite structures.
23:26Also external factors like moisture, heat, oxygen and UV light can break it down further and quickly decrease its record-breaking efficiency.
23:36This whole process is called degradation, which researchers and companies are trying to fight with different forms of encapsulation.
23:44It seals off the solar modules from external influences and is an essential step for commercialization.
23:51Qcells, which is part of a European academia and industry partnership,
23:56plans to develop commercial-sized modules with an efficiency of 26 percent over a lifetime of 30 years.
24:04Oxford PV, a company founded by Oxford University graduates,
24:09has reached an efficiency of 28.6 percent and supposedly solved the degradation issue already.
24:16But neither company has published verifiable data yet.
24:20Nor is there a lot of published research on real-world outdoor tests.
24:25These are a lot of solar cells that you test here. Wow!
24:30This is Caroline Ulbricht. She oversees the degradation tests of tandem solar cells at the Helmholtz Institute.
24:36At what kind of stabilities are we currently looking at here?
24:41Sometimes they fail after a few days, but sometimes they last for years.
24:45Ulbricht's team measured a loss of 20 percent in efficiency in just half a year.
24:50It takes silicon solar cells roughly 20 years to reach that level of degradation.
24:56Some companies say they've already fixed this issue and are ready to go to market next year.
25:04Do you believe that's possible?
25:06We do sometimes hear rumors also at conferences, but they normally don't show the data. It's all very secret.
25:13Tandem solar cells would also need to price-match existing cells,
25:18a task that experts view as difficult to achieve as costs for electricity from solar have declined by 89 percent since 2010.
25:26It's now more expensive to install silicon solar panels than to produce them.
25:31Solar tandem cells have a great potential, but there are still a lot of things that need to fall into place for them to work.
25:37And I'm really, really curious if they're actually going to be on the market next year already.
25:46That's it for another edition of MADE, where we're flying high and freshly energized.
25:51Let's do away with the old and head into a sunnier, brighter future.
25:55See you next time.
26:01Transcription by ESO. Translation by —