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The Best Thing That Could Happen to the Energy Industry | Matt Tilleard | TED

TED12:49Added Aug 30, 2026

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 b

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. 00:08Our modern world was built on fuel.
  2. 00:12History has been determined by who finds, who controls
  3. 00:17and who burns the dominant fuel of the age.
  4. 00:22So the past makes sense when you look at it
  5. 00:25wearing fuel-tinted glasses.
  6. 00:28And these are not just a really great fashion accessory
  7. 00:32for this year’s Fyre Festival.
  8. 00:34They are, in fact, essential safety equipment for our leaders,
  9. 00:38as they seek to shape history.
  10. 00:41In the 1970s, for example,
  11. 00:44the oil cartel OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia,
  12. 00:47tried to cut off the supply of oil to the United States.
  13. 00:50Caused an instant panic, a recession within months.
  14. 00:54Trump was 27 when those lines of cars snaked around the block.
  15. 01:00Putin was 21. Xi was 20.
  16. 01:04Our leaders understand, in their bones,
  17. 01:08their power comes from fuel.
  18. 01:11But now, we're in the midst of the next great energy transition.
  19. 01:15So who will control the future of clean energy?
  20. 01:20Who will be the Saudi Arabia of this transition?
  21. 01:24Well, through fuel-tinted glasses, the answer seems obvious.
  22. 01:29It's whoever controls the copper, the lithium, the graphite, the cobalt,
  23. 01:32the rare earths, the critical minerals that we need.
  24. 01:37But our fuel-tinted glasses are broken,
  25. 01:41because this is the first transition not to another dominant fuel,
  26. 01:46but to a technology, and that changes everything.
  27. 01:53Now I've spent a lot of time thinking about what this means.
  28. 01:57Our team is building
  29. 01:59one of the largest distributed renewable energy utilities for Africa.
  30. 02:03CrossBoundary Energy uses on-site solar batteries and wind to bring cheaper,
  31. 02:09cleaner and more reliable power to businesses,
  32. 02:12and CrossBoundary Access uses the same technologies to bring first-time power
  33. 02:18to some of the 600 million people living on this continent without it.
  34. 02:22And here is what I have learned at the silicon face of this transition.
  35. 02:29Unlike fuel, technology is less existential.
  36. 02:33It's more circular. It's more fungible, and it's more abundant.
  37. 02:40So I can use one of our projects to explain how this works.
  38. 02:43This is Tolagnaro in Madagascar.
  39. 02:46It's a remote town of 55,000 people, next to a major critical minerals mine.
  40. 02:52Power for the mine and the community,
  41. 02:55until recently, came from heavy fuel oil generators on the mine site.
  42. 02:59Now, CrossBoundary powers the mine
  43. 03:03with a renewable energy microgrid made up of solar, wind and batteries.
  44. 03:09Soon, we hope that we will be able to phase out the generators altogether.
  45. 03:15Now, let me tell you a story.
  46. 03:18Imagine two cartels.
  47. 03:20One is real, OPEC, which seeks to control the price of oil.
  48. 03:26The other is an imaginary alliance
  49. 03:28of the major miners of copper and lithium today.
  50. 03:32Chile, China and Australia.
  51. 03:36Now if you want to run a good cartel,
  52. 03:38everyone knows you need to have a great acronym.
  53. 03:42And so let’s call it the “pisco sour,
  54. 03:44Peking duck, Foster’s” cartel, or PPF for short.
  55. 03:50Now let's imagine that each cartel,
  56. 03:52OPEC and PPF, seeks to cut off the supply of their respective commodity
  57. 03:57to the rest of the world.
  58. 04:00In Tolagnaro, before our energy transition,
  59. 04:04this would have caused an instant crisis.
  60. 04:06Without oil, the lights in the community go out and the mine shuts down.
  61. 04:13But after the transition, nothing much changes in Tolagnaro.
  62. 04:19And that's because in a fuel-based world,
  63. 04:21constant supply of fuel is existential.
  64. 04:25But in a technology-based world without a constant supply of lithium,
  65. 04:30your old lithium batteries keep working.
  66. 04:32You don't need a constant supply of new copper for your copper wires
  67. 04:35to keep conducting electricity.
  68. 04:39You do not require a constant supply of new materials
  69. 04:45just to survive.
  70. 04:47But technology gets even better than that,
  71. 04:50because it is also more circular.
  72. 04:54Approximately zero percent of the energy from oil can be recycled.
  73. 05:00You burn it, it's gone.
  74. 05:02But we don't burn technology ...
  75. 05:05we use it.
  76. 05:07And so over 90 percent of renewable energy technologies can be recycled.
  77. 05:14That wind turbine I showed you earlier
  78. 05:16is actually a refurbished turbine shipped to Madagascar from Italy.
  79. 05:22And it works buono.
  80. 05:23Although it gesticulates
  81. 05:25more than our technical team initially expected.
  82. 05:28(Laughter)
  83. 05:29By 2050, there could be so much recycled supply
  84. 05:34that demand for new input materials could actually begin to decrease.
  85. 05:42But it gets better than that,
  86. 05:44because technology is also more fungible.
  87. 05:48Now, I'm not actually talking about mushrooms here,
  88. 05:51but the effect is magic,
  89. 05:54because almost every input into this energy transition
  90. 05:58can be substituted for another abundant material.
  91. 06:02Copper can be replaced by aluminium.
  92. 06:05Cobalt can be replaced, in batteries, by iron,
  93. 06:08and those substitutions have already happened when, temporarily, prices spiked.
  94. 06:15So even without access to a specific critical mineral,
  95. 06:18the power of fungibility means that you can continue to grow.
  96. 06:24Now, hopefully, you're beginning to feel somewhat convinced
  97. 06:27that demand for new material will be fundamentally different in this transition
  98. 06:33because it is less existential, more circular, more fungible,
  99. 06:37and those things together mean that it is more flexible.
  100. 06:41It is more elastic.
  101. 06:45But we do still have a lot of energy transitioning left to do.
  102. 06:52So we do need new supply.
  103. 06:54And so here is my final piece of good news.
  104. 06:59The materials that we need for this energy transition are abundant.
  105. 07:04First, we need less stuff.
  106. 07:08From now until 2050, we need to extract, every year, around 230 million tonnes
  107. 07:14of end-use materials.
  108. 07:16So it sounds like a lot.
  109. 07:19But every year, currently, we extract over eight billion tonnes of coal.
  110. 07:26Every year, we extract five billion tonnes of oil
  111. 07:30and three billion tonnes of natural gas, every single year,
  112. 07:33just to fuel our existing energy system.
  113. 07:38So that 230 million looks manageable.
  114. 07:42Now we are going to need more of material like copper,
  115. 07:44lithium, graphite, cobalt.
  116. 07:47But this is the second point of relative abundance.
  117. 07:50We've got plenty of this stuff.
  118. 07:53When geologists estimate the likely resource,
  119. 07:56they show that it easily exceeds our projected demand.
  120. 08:01Even rare earths are not rare.
  121. 08:05They were called rare because they were rarely found in their pure form.
  122. 08:09They were always found with another material.
  123. 08:13So sure, they're rare,
  124. 08:15but they're rare in the same way that Bert is rare without Ernie.
  125. 08:20But is oil very different?
  126. 08:24Our identified resource of oil
  127. 08:26is actually pretty abundant relative to demand as well.
  128. 08:31And our identified reserves of oil are held, similarly to critical minerals,
  129. 08:37in a very concentrated set of hands.
  130. 08:40So what is different?
  131. 08:42Well, two things.
  132. 08:43One, the resource that we have identified of oil
  133. 08:48is the result of searching for it intensively for over 100 years.
  134. 08:53And we know that oil in general is quite rare in the Earth's crust.
  135. 08:58We know that most critical minerals are actually geologically abundant
  136. 09:02in the Earth's crust,
  137. 09:03and we've really only just begun exploring for many of them at scale.
  138. 09:08So it's extremely likely that if we try, we can diversify.
  139. 09:14But second, if we're confronted with the behavior of a PPF-style cartel,
  140. 09:20that angry kangaroo who I think maybe was a little bit drunk ...
  141. 09:24the elasticity of demand gives us the time
  142. 09:29and the leverage that we need to break the cartel or diversify our supply.
  143. 09:37Now, there will be short-term mismatches between supply and demand,
  144. 09:42but control really matters
  145. 09:46when supply is scarce and demand is inelastic.
  146. 09:50When supply is abundant and demand is elastic,
  147. 09:55control will always be temporary.
  148. 10:00Here's one final piece of evidence that can tie all of this together.
  149. 10:04Can you name me a successful cartel for an energy-transition mineral?
  150. 10:10Have you, for instance, heard of these famous copper cartels,
  151. 10:13the Secrétan Copper Syndicate, the Amalgamated Copper Company,
  152. 10:17the Copper Exporters Association, the Copper Exporters Incorporated
  153. 10:21and the not particularly creatively named International Copper Cartel.
  154. 10:25(Laughter)
  155. 10:26These are all real cartels,
  156. 10:28and they all failed,
  157. 10:32because when supply is abundant and demand is elastic,
  158. 10:37a cartel has the lifespan
  159. 10:40of your average "Game of Thrones" character.
  160. 10:42(Laughter)
  161. 10:43There will not be an OPEC for renewables.
  162. 10:48OK, fine.
  163. 10:49But won't there be a Saudi Arabia of manufacturing in this transition?
  164. 10:53Well, no, at least not for the same reasons.
  165. 10:55Because manufacturing is effectively abundant,
  166. 10:59your ability to manufacture does not constrain my ability to manufacture.
  167. 11:04It's not zero-sum.
  168. 11:06Nobody can stop you from making solar panels.
  169. 11:11Now building, being good at building and making things creates wealth,
  170. 11:16and wealth can lead to power.
  171. 11:19But in this transition,
  172. 11:20it matters so much less what you have
  173. 11:25and so much more what you do.
  174. 11:29The great nations of tomorrow
  175. 11:31will not be those that focus on controlling materials
  176. 11:34and constraining the growth of others.
  177. 11:36The great nations of tomorrow will be those that focus
  178. 11:39on their comparative advantage.
  179. 11:41Identify and unlock the resources that we'll all need.
  180. 11:46Invent, build and manufacture the technology that we'll all need,
  181. 11:51and then sell it at great prices, terrific prices --
  182. 11:55(Laughter)
  183. 11:57to the rest of the world.
  184. 11:58That's what policymakers should focus on,
  185. 12:02not annexing another source of not particularly rare earths.
  186. 12:07The leaders we need now are explorers ...
  187. 12:11not exploiters.
  188. 12:13They are builders, not worriers.
  189. 12:15And they are innovators, not conquerors.
  190. 12:18So let's take off those fuel-tinted glasses together.
  191. 12:23Who will control the future of clean energy?
  192. 12:27Well, the answer is nobody.
  193. 12:31And the answer can be everybody.
  194. 12:35Because the future of energy is not controlled.
  195. 12:38It's shared.
  196. 12:39It's not extracted, it's built,
  197. 12:41and it can belong to all of us.
  198. 12:44Thank you.
  199. 12:45(Cheers and applause)