Bjarke Ingels

"Historically the field of architecture has been dominated by two opposing extremes. ...[A]n avant-garde of wild ideas, often so detached from reality that they fail to become... other than eccentric curiosities. On the other side... well-organized corporate consultants that build... boring boxes of high standard. Architecture seems entrenched between two... unfertile fronts: either naively utopian or petrifyingly pragmatic. ...BIG operates in the fertile overlap between ...opposites. A pragmatic utopian architecture... creation of socially, economically and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective."

"Architecture is never triggered by a single event... conceived by a single mind... shaped by a single hand."

"Ideas migrate, structures grow and concepts develop in a form of architectural evolution."

"It is through improvisation and adaptation to unanticipated obstacles that we make our biggest breakthroughs."

"Sustainable ideas crystallize through an immensity of wasted efforts. ...Good ideas are sometimes resurrected from fossils of past evolutions."

"The work an architect gets to realize... is the result of random opportunities and chance. ...We have to respond to accidental challenges, through opportunistic , and migration of ideas. ...Often the story we tell is ...post-rationalization or hindsight."

"What if we could focus on examples where sustainability... increases the quality of life? Where a sustainable life isn't pain—but pleasure!"

"What if we didn't have to adapt our lifestyle to sustainability, but adjusted our sustainable designs to the way we want to live? Instead of trying to change people, we could change the world."

"We need a new for hedonistic sustainability!"

"Architecture is most appealing with simple lines and clear ideas. A city... becomes alive when it is rich with experiences and surprises. So the paradoxical challenge is to... create simplicity and variety, difference and coherence... a city in the building."

"We are preparing to start phase one of our most significant project... the first carbon neutral island in Central Asia. ...BIG has become a sort of urban laboratory where we develop prototypes, breed species and evolve ideas that will... add to the topography of Zira... [and] the ecosystem of Azerbaijan."

"Starting with the smallest project that we have created... but maybe also one of the most complex. This is ... he pioneered the... regionalistic cuisine with his restaurant Noma... in Copenhagen...Noma is short for Nordic food, "Nordic smell" in Danish. He... rediscovered the Nordic landscapes, the flora and fauna of Nordic nature... to see how those plants and... animals could... be seen as ... a cuisine that's been dominated by French and Asian cuisine. ...[W]here we ...aligned with him was ...this idea that healthy could also be incredibly delicious. We have this notion... hedonistic sustainability, that sustainable can... be more enjoyable. Sustainable cities, sustainable buildings can be more enjoyable, not just good for the environment, but also great for the people living there. He's... done that to food."

"He came to us because he wanted to move his restaurant... to... Christiania, this kind of hippie commune in Copenhagen. It's part of the old fortification... a historical landmark... The hippies invaded in 1969 and never left. You can buy mild drugs openly... The main part of the building is an old... mine storage. ...We thought the city was going to give us a medal for trying to make it nice, but the city had this attitude that as long as it was only deteriorating organically, everything was fine... [A]s soon as we started trying to repair it, everything was incredibly restricted."

"René... was not only going to be regionalistic. It was also going to be seasonal, so... New Year to April, everything from the sea, because everything else is dead... so... seaweed and seafood and anything that can be fermented or pickled. May to September, vegetable season... the October to January, game and forest, so... venison, berries and roots. ...His idea is ...rediscovering traditional Nordic elements. ...[T]he context ...this ...self-built hippie commune in the old Navy yards. This is... what... traditional Nordic villages look like... Even though Scandinavians like to dress in black they like to paint their houses in bright colors... [W]here the southern Europeans push them together to create urbanity, in the Arctics, in the Nordics, they're... spread apart... [O]ur... inspiration came from this... typical Nordic farm... an accumulation of individual houses, each... built for its own purpose... for the main family, for the children as the family and the generations grow... for the potatoes, for the animals, for the workshop..."

"[W]e could only place buildings in the footprints of where there had been buildings in the past... a very limited repertoire."

"Pine can't be outside untreated so René and his chefs, we were so behind on opening day... the chefs with their torches treating the outside against the elements... [T]he torched wood makes it capable of being outdoors."

"The lounge... fireplace... is... traditional Danish red brick, and to make it bright on the inside... a white clay brick..."

"The grill, the barbecue is... a cross-ventilated chimney so... chefs can stand... as cold as possible with the fire..."

"[T]rying to... take the entire sensibility and... philosophy of René and noma and trying to create a portraiture or capture the essence... the architectural equivalent of what René has created, and a powerful manifestation of this... urban ecology... in the middle of , but the honey is made there, most of the ingredients..."

"A radically different example of hedonistic sustainability and urban ecology... that we spent the last nine years making... [T]his is the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world."

"Denmark has become a... pioneer in... that only 4% of our waste goes into a landfill, 42% is recycled and 54% is transformed into district heating and electricity. As a power source, 6 pounds of garbage from your kitchens turns into 4 hours of electricity and 5 hours of domestic heating."

"[W]hat was mesmerizing... was this... marvel of modern engineering... was going to be the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world. No toxins coming out of the chimney. So we thought maybe a mountain of trash could become an actual mountain. Our nearest ski slope... is 6 hours away in Isaberg... Sweden... We could put 2/3 of Isaberg's main slope on the roof of the power plant, and so we did. ...The kind of cliff face of the mountain is made out of these gigantic folded raw aluminum bricks that are... planters. ...Raw aluminum so they... reflect the surroundings, so... the building changes color over the course of the day. ...The entire power plant is ...daylit. 50% of the facade is transparent. ...This spring it's going to open the tallest in the world, 300 feet. ...[T]he roof is maybe the most exciting facade. ...[T]he skiing is ...free. It's a public park. If you want to use the lift system, you have to buy a lift pass. It's... designed to... help spread vegetation to the surrounding... post-industrial area. You have hiking paths, different... activity zones. You have... vegetation that changes over the... season. There's more than 400 different trees. ...It's purely indigenous species. If Denmark had mountains this is probably what they would look like. ...[T]he entire roof park has been made for a budget of... $13 million dollars... absurdly inexpensive so everything has... been done with... the least... maintenance and... acquisition cost. ...Maybe the most important material, because Denmark doesn't have enough snow so... we found this Italian company that makes this... mat that has the same friction as a groomed slope. The only problem was that it was... ugly. Also because of the and contraction it had to be split in... 7x7 foot squares. So we sat down... with the company and... managed to develop a... new product... by joining every two circles [holes in the material] in two... directions... This... simple geometric invention... now the standard product of the company, meant that we could have a continuous surface on the... roof... We color-coded it so that the brighter the slope... the less likely... to crash... [E]ventually the grass grows through... [T]he grass... holds the mat to the roof, so eventually it's going to be like skiing on an alpine meadow. ...What is amazing ...it ...shows this ...world-changing power of architecture ...[M]y son is ...never going to remember that there was a time when you couldn't ski on the power plant in Copenhagen ...[F]or him and his entire generation, that's going to be their normal ...the starting point from where they start having crazy ideas about their future. ...A landmark for this ...idea of hedonistic sustainability, that a sustainable city can also be, not just better for the environment, but better for the people living there."

"[T]his... relationship between the pragmatic and the utopian, or... the utilitarian and the . One such example... This is where the Granville bridge touches downtown Vancouver. We got invited to look at turning it into a mostly residential and also educational development. So we just started mapping the constraints. There are setbacks from the streets... from the bridges. The city has a rule that you cannot build residences closer than 30 meters, or a hundred feet to the traffic on the bridge. There's a park where we're not supposed to cast any shadows, and finally we were left with this tiny triangular footprint, almost too small to build. So... we started thinking... If the purpose of the 100 ft setback is a minimum distance, once we get a hundred feet up in the air we can grow the building back, so... the triangular footprint... turns into a rectangle. ...[W]hen you drive over Granville bridge it's... as if someone is pulling a curtain aside, welcoming you to Vancouver."

"[U]nderneath the bridge we worked with a series of local artists. You have... a university in these two triangular buildings... wedged between the legs of the bridge... proposed to... turn one of his video art works into a giant urban art work with this gigantic chandelier that... twice a day it... drops and spins dramatically... above the main street... [O]nce open the entire underside is going to turn into... the "Sistine Chapel of Street Art"... trying to turn the otherwise negative impact of the bridge into a positive. So that what ends up looking like this... surreal silhouette is... like a... precise analysis in response to a very difficult... urban situation. It is... one of the most striking places in Vancouver. ...[T]his is an example of... social infrastructure, the idea that infrastructure can have positive social and environmental side effects."

"Almost the opposite, if a bridge can turn into an art museum upside-down the opposite could also be true. A project we did in the same space of time... is a project for a small art museum and sculpture park in Norway... [W]e could... place the sculptures on either side of the river. There's an old historical mill, and we could place the museum anywhere we wanted... [O]ur proposal was to turn it into the bridge that turns the entire complex of parks on either side into one single loop. The museum has two galleries. One [is] daylit galleries with views over the water and one... more vertical... enclosed gallery. The transition from one to the other becomes this... distortion, a 90° rotation... [W]e had this idea that the museum could be seen as one of the biggest sculptures in the sculpture park. ...[O]nce we started getting more intimate with how to make it span its 250 ft... column-free span... The cross sections are incredibly rational, like a series of rotated rectangles... The raw structure had... this... aesthetic that wasn't... what we were looking for. It looked more... muscular than the... effortlessness that we had fantasized... So we tried to imagine how could we finish the building... [T]he idea became... taking a lot of... standard elements, standard aluminum profiles on the outside, standard wooden sticks on the inside, and... shift them... slightly so it's... traditional, conventional... structure. In the joinery of the wood we... resolve all of the... technical installations. ...[L]ike very classic ...Norwegian wood carpentry ...creating this ...precise, complex geometry... a hyperbolic paraboloid. As the floor turns into the wall it reveals a gap that... becomes the ventilation, the sprinklings, the light installations, the security. Everything that makes it a contemporary art museum is also integrated in this... rectilinear logic. So even though you see curves and arches everywhere, every... element... is completely straight. ...Somehow ...trying to hack the ...conventional, traditional building techniques ...to create something ...extraordinary, out of the ordinary... [T]he skylight zips and turns the more vertical part of the building into ...completely introverted ...[O]n the outside this... extruded aluminum facade that you put on... warehouses, so... the most conventional, traditional... barn... put together in a way that it describes this... acrobatic geometry. ...[T]he irony is that we spent the same amount of time on this building as we did on the power plant, and it ...shows how undiscriminating you are as an architect with... your time... trying to make a building, a small art gallery over a river, or trying to turn a power plant into a ski slope. ...[F]rom the other side it has this ...even more abstract ...sculptural quality that ...makes it like one of the sculptures in the sculpture park. ...Another example of... this idea of social infrastructure that one thing can also be the other, that something cultural can also be infrastructural and vice virsa."

"Event though we come to each project with a... consistent attitude... so much is discovered in the process... conditions are always so different... What you have to respond to is so different that it ends up creating... different vocabularies."

"An almost invisible building is... a bunker museum on the west coast of Denmark. It's... a giant nature reserve... The only exception is this old German bunker... from the Second World War, a , a gun was delivered from in Germany and was supposed to be installed on September 9, 1945... and next to it inside the dunes, we were asked to make a museum telling the story... {B]ecause it's an entirely listed landscape, our proposal became to make these... precise incisions and almost imagine the opposite of the bunker. If the bunker is a heavy artifact in the dunes, the museum this... light absence as you slice through the sand, the sand becomes concrete and you have this square, entirely transparent, bringing daylight deep into this... underground museum. You descend into this narrative of the Second World War, the occupation of Denmark, using only materials that are already found in the bunker, so the concrete, the raw iron, the raw wood solving all of the... technical installations for the museography in the tectonics of the concrete work so that all technique: all sprinkling, all lighting, all hanging is done within the tectonics of the formwork. Daylight being sucked in so that even though you are underground it feels... light and airy, almost the opposite of the bunker... [F]rom here an umbilical cord takes you deep into a bunker where you can... explore what's left as this... giant artifact from the Second World War. So you can say, almost like a disappearing act, and the discretion becomes... the most characteristic of what makes the building stand out and... also makes it disappear."

"[T]here's the thing about architects... part of the pleasure of the profession and... often we talk so much about the social... or the environmental agenda, or whatever, and then there's also just... the pure thrill of making something... as nice as you can possibly get away with..."

"This is a site not too dissimilar from the other... not depicting the story of the Second World War but... the cradle of watchmaking in Switzerland. It's where Audemars and Piguet started making watches 150 years ago... I never had much of an interest... until I went to visit their workshop, invited to make this proposal for a small... competition, and I met this... master watchmaker... [H]e made me aware... that today we're so used to the divorce between hardware and software. Between... form and content, that the hardware is... this neutral, always identical and it's the software that gives... attribute... character and use. But in watchmaking and... architecture the hardware is... the software. It's the geometry and the interlocking of gears... materials, and... spaces that makes the clockwork... and the building work. ...[T]hey had this idea of a linear chronological exhibition, but that you should be able to... dig through and make shortcuts, so we... coiled the chronology into this... double spiral that leads to a central gallery in the middle, and then unwinds again. The roof follows the slope of the landscape bringing daylight and views deep into the floor plate. ...This resource spirál, which is the element inside the watch, that makes it store kinetic energy and... tick. There's not a single column in the entire building. It's as if a spiral is floating above you. The glass is... load-bearing. ...[O]ne of the elements of watchmaking is to provide the maximum impact with a minimum of material, skeletonization, minimization... is all about reducing the amount of material... [Y]ou can...look over the shoulders of some of the expert watchmakers, and ask them questions while they're trying to put very small things together... [A]t any time you can jump from one part of the chronology to the other. So you have this... surreal experience where the entire roof seems to be hovering over your head. You enter from the existing historical building and enter into the spiral. It's this... , environmentally high performing building, so we needed to provide passive sun shading and develop... undulating ribbons of brass, but have the effect that from the angle of the sun, they're opaque, but when you look at them straight from the inside they're entirely transparent, almost to the point where they... disappear... [F]or any architect who dreams about potentially doing something that is close to a perfectly built building, working in Switzerland where practically everybody is a watchmaker at heart, for watchmakers, is as good as it gets. ...[W]e've never seen concrete... metalwork or glasswork like this. ...[A] building for the pure thrill of celebrating the craftsmanship of watchmaking, and of architecture."

"[A] last smaller building before we escalate is a cultural institution which just opened in ... bringing three different cultural institutions together in a new building: a library, a media tech, a performance space, and a contemporary art center. The art gallery's on the top to... access skylights, and connected by a shared lobby on the waterfront of the ... and... the library and the theater creating the two pillars. The art museum [is] the bridge to enclose a big public [outdoor] room. The... building finished in prefabricated concrete. You can... see that the French invented steel because they are so incredibly good at it. Also the sand in the south of France is so insanely beautiful. That's why in is maybe the only truly beautiful of the unités that Le Corbusier did, because of the quality of the sand. ...[T]he three institutions enclosing this giant outdoor urban room, where the... institutions, but also the city itself can invade. On the inside it's... 150,000 sq ft building with a $40 million dollar budget... so we had this... positive side-effect that all the finishes inside are... insanely raw. It's... concrete in different shades. ...The most important part of the building is what's not there. ...Even the furniture is cast out of concrete, some of it tiled. ...The ballerinas can look out at the square and vice versa. ...The theater ...this mosaic of tarred wood, hot-rolled steel and black concrete to create the perfect... acoustic mix, and finally this... art barn at the top and a sculptural park... [I]n this very... simple building... the main gesture... providing this... new shaded and covered outdoor space for the cultural life of the city."

"[E]scalating in scale and impact, one project is... for a new baseball stadium for the Oakland A's. ...[S]tadia ...these ...massive venues in a giant sea of parking that are only active a few days a year, baseball more than any other sport, roughly a hundred in a year... {W]e thought what if this new stadium could... be... the cultural foundation for the city? What if we could bring the ball park back into the park? ...[B]aseball started in parks and... at some point a guy got the idea to build a fence around the park and charge [for] tickets. So we thought, what if we could... bring the park back, so instead of this... enclosed stadium, what if the main concourse was... Main Street? ...[B]ecause baseball is an asymmetrical sport with the outfield, what if the entire stadium could open up to the city and the water and the views? ...[I]magine as the roof dips down it... becomes... Oakland equivalent of the , a public park that is part of the experience of the game, but 250 days of the year it's... a park for the citizens... [I]magine that 365 days a year this is part of the enjoyable space of this new neighborhood. ...[N]ormally the seats that are the furthest away from the game would be the lousiest. Her they have this amazing experience of... being a part of the park... so... that a hundred days a year they shut down access to the park, like if you have a concert in Central Park, and it becomes part of the spectator experience. All the restaurants and cafes open up to the park. ...[T]he other days they open up to the park so you can... have a coffee... So you have this... connection from the inside to the out. Above... the running track on game day is part of the circulation, and on a non-game day it's part of the experience of living in Oakland. The same for the pinic lawn... [T[he stadium doesn't become this... massive... empty white elephant, a kind of void in the city, it... becomes a... bringer of life and energy into a new neighborhood... [B]ecause of the... asymmetry in extreme you have this... incredible view out over the port towards San Francisco... For the facade we wanted to spend as little money for the enclosure as possible... [W]e need to provide some shelter from the wind, so we came up with this idea of this... louvered structure... facing the predominant direction of the wind... {W]here we have the concessions... the circulation, we need to provide wind protection so it... becomes this series of scarfs wrapped around the building... providing only the necessary protection... [E]ven if you were only trying to make this... skeletal non-building it ends up having... elegant expression. ...[W]hen you arrive, you... walk over the edge of the stadium and onto the arms of the field. To provide access and... minimize... parking, because it's part of an urban neighborhood, we can share the parking. But also we have the BART... only... a mile away, but you have to cross a 12 lane highway, and a freight train, so the simplest way of connecting is by putting a single mast... We can put a gondola that takes you straight from the BART, across both highway and train tracks, lands you on , and... you walk... across the perimeter park and into the game."

"[I]n many ways... this idea of social infrastructure and the utilitarian and the social, and bringing it together into a... new hybrid... [F]or the poster... [T]en years ago I was so keen on getting some buildings built, that I didn't care about master plans because they took forever and they resulted in nothing, at least in the horizon that I could overview. Now that I an older and more patient, and I realize that two decades go quickly, I have more appetite for master plans... [T]here's a lot of things that can only be dealt with... on a... wholistic level at a certain scale... [W]e had an unfortunate encounter with ... and he had this idea of turning the site of two former factories at the base of into an experimental city, where we would look at studying the potential impact on cities, from advances in personal mobility, mobility as a service, autonomy, robotics, smart homes, ...creativity through AI, multi-generational, assisted living, hydrogen powered infrastructure, academic research and incubation... [W]e... started... to look at the typical city of today. ...[T]oday the street has... everything: bikes, cars, pedestrians. We thought, maybe... to tailor different... experiences: one street-only autonomous vehicles and pedestrians, one for mixed personal mobility... more like a promenade, and finally a park, only for pedestrians... [E]every third street varies, and leaves in both directions. You can... walk through the entire city moving only through a park, or only along a promenade. ...[T]he roofs are powering the city with building-integrated photovoltaics... [A]ll these different intersections between the three different kinds of streets allows Toyota and collaborating companies to test the Toyota connected city traffic management system. There's a matternet for the delivery of goods."

"[W]e seem to be... incapable of dealing with the climate crisis, and we were thinking why? Because humans have... shown to be... capable of taking... resource-demanding multi-generational efforts like building cathedrals. The great cathedral in Køln took 632 years to complete... We laugh at the Catalans because they're still building , but they've only been building for a 137 years, so they're not supposed to be done yet. ...[T]he Romans were capable of building the... Roman aqueduct system for more than 500 years bringing fresh water to all of their urban settlements. ...It's because there was a master plan ...[W]hen the first architect of the died, the next worked... on those same drawings, and the next... and you probably went through 20 different architects... or more. ...[O]ne of the problems of climate change and climate action is that it's the realm of... climate scientists that are mostly academics... [T]hey're very good at science and academic accuracy but not so much at entrepreneurship and action. ...[T]hen you have politicians... not so good at... a 50 or 100 year commitment because they have election cycles of 4 or 8 years... [E]ven a short architectural project takes longer than that. ...[W]e thought, what if we, because architects make master plans for buildings... city blocks... neighborhoods... for cities... regions... even for coutries. Why not make a master plan for the planet? ...[N]ormally we get hired to do things, but in this case there was no obvious client, except maybe Greta Thunberg. So we started it ourselves... [C]limate change has been going on catastrophically since the dawn of planet earth, from a... ball of lava to... heavy bombardment of meteors 4 billion years ago, to the snowball 2 1/2 billion years ago, the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago, much more like current... present day. When you look 500 million years back... there's always been... fluctuations in CO2 related to fluctuations in temperature.... If you look at the last 500,000 years... the ice ages are always valleys in the CO2 levels, separated by peaks that also correspond to rising temperatures, and vice versa... [I]f you look at the last 500 years you see relatively stable, and then... 150 years ago it really starts escalating. ...It's 407 particles per million, and we have to go back 20 to 30 million years before we find the same levels of CO2... Regardless of global warming, at 1,000 particles per million the... ventilation in any room kicks in, because it becomes unhealthy for humans to breathe... So we're... not just warming the planet, we're also making it less inhabitable..."

"[Y]ou have different kinds of es, 4 of them affected by human activity, and of the 4... carbon dioxide and methane... nirous oxide loop and... F-gases... [I]f you have 610 gigatons of carbon in our vegetation, you have a million times more in the sediments, and that's... what we're releasing by burning fossil fuels. So you have two carbon dioxide loops, one takes millions of years as volcanic activity, but then becomes sequestered in rocks and sand and it's then... sedimented on the ocean floors and it's pushed back through tectonic movement into magma... [T]hen you have a more annual loop, which is... living beings absorbing CO2 and then... releasing it through respiration, decomposition and... human emissions... [C]urrently we are releasing our CO2 emissions with 4 billion tons per year."

"In a similar loop, methane only stays in the atmosphere for 9 years, but because every year we're releasing another 10 million tons, primarily because of rice fields and animals, it's also adding to the equation..."

"75% of the greenhouse effect is attributed to CO2. This is the biggest problem, 14% to methane and the rest nitrous oxide and F-gases. ...F-gases are 3,000 times more impactful than CO2. There's just a lot less of it."

"[I]f you want to look at how much carbon we're releasing into the atmosphere every year, ...a 2 x 2 x 2 kilometer cube... of solid coal, or 35,000 oil tankers."

"There's another aspect, which is the shine effect. So , the Anish Kapoor patented black, the least reflective material on earth, had a shine effect of zero, and perfect white, of one... [A]n ocean or a parking lot has almost no shine effect so it absorbs a lot of heat. So the more open ocean... the more parking lots, the more heat is absorbed, whereas fresh snow has a... good shine effect... [T]o give you an idea of how impactful this is, if earth was all ocean we would have an average temperature of 27°C. Today it's 15°C... If 1/3 of the planet was glacial, it would be frozen. So 1% of change in the shine effect of earth is the equivalent of doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. So it's also an important factor that... now works against us."

"So what are our energy sources? We have 4... the sun, that provides photovoltaics, solar heating, fossil fuels, wind power is all... solar energy; Earth... thermal energy..; the moon, tidal turbine energy... because of gravity; and nuclear energy... So... all the different forms of energy are related... Gravity creates pressure, nuclear activity through fusion provides sunlight. Through sunlight is translating into chemical energy that can... be burned to provide heat, that with an engine can be translated into kinetic movement, that can then be turned into electricity... [O]ver the years we've been... mastering more... of these translations... [A]ny kind of energy source is translation... so a water mill or hydropower is gravity turned into kinetic movement and from there into electricity. Nuclear fission is nucler energy translated into heat and from there into mechanical and electrical. Batteries: from chemical to electrical... [I]f you look at the energy storage vs. batteries... It's not very efficient. 1/2 ton of batteries has the same stored energy as 5 kilos or 10 lbs. of hydrogen."

"Today we spend 153,000 terawatt-hours per year. ...1/3 ...from electricity, transportation and agriculture ...85% of our energy comes from non-renewable... but of the 15% of renewable 2/3 of it is... burning wood..."

"[W]e started looking at how efficient are the different sources... also... at whose the biggest culprit. Today this is China... But... historically, the last 200 years the US and the EU have... contributed..."

"It's not enough to provide 153,000 [TW-h] because we're going to be 10 billion people and everybody will eventually have the of Singapore... currently the highest living standard. ...[W]e need to have 750,000 [TW-h]. ...[A]t current technology for solar, we could provide ...that with [7.5 million km2 compared to 510 million km2 earth's total surface] or with... [20 million km2] of windmill parks or... [322,000 km2 expanded to 76 million km2] of real estate for nuclear... because of the plume exposure pathway emergency planning zone... hydroelectricity... [108 million km2] We don't have enough hydroelecticity, or biomass [224 million km2]."

"Also there's the idea of planting forests to sequester carbon, but we would have to plant the entire land mass of earth every third year... so it can only be part of a solution."

"If you look at the different renewables, they've all gone down [in cost], especially solar; massively over that last half decade, except hyro, which has gone up... Hydropower currently provides only 3% of our power. It's believed that there's a bigger potential, but... not enough to provide the entire earth, but 71 of the countries on earth could... be delivering European living standard with the amount of hydroelectricity they have available. ...The biggest [35 TW-h/yr] hydro-station in the world, Churchill Falls in Canada... You could provide the same amount of energy with solar, with a much smaller area [102 km2 vs. 7,000 km2]."

"Wind power: only 0.6% [of world energy production] and you have a very large untapped potential... Mostly the closer you get to the poles, the more wind power potential, especially offshore."

"[S]olar power... since the 70s the price has gone drastically down PV prices: $76 down to $0.30]."

"So of all the different sources wind and solar seems to be the best..."

"[T]he intermittence problem... 99% of the earth's populaton lives within this zone [10,000 km]. ...If each 24 hr zone could provide 1/6 of the power of the planet, the site that has light could... power the other side. ...With current high-voltage connections you lose 3% of the power per thousand km. This means that the maximum loss, you lose... 1/3 of the power if you're going all the way to the other side. ...You already have regional grids. ...[T]here's plans to connect ...northern Europe and north Africa and the Middle East. There's plans to connect the [US] east and the west coasts and Mexico. ...[Y]ou have all of these partial plans. ...[W]hat if you could ...create an entire worldwide grid. The sunny side could power the dark side, or the windy side could power the less windy side... This kind of grid could... unite us all energy-wise..."

"[W]e started looking... at water. This is how much water we have [1.4 billion km3 compared to earth's volume of 1,100 billion km3]... [V]ery little of it [2 1/2%] is freshwater... and of the fresh water, very little is surface freshwater, 30$ is groundwater and 2/3 is glaciers... [O]f the surface freshwater 3% is in the atmosphere, 1/4 of it is in all living things... 1/2% in rivers, 6% in soil moisture, and swamps, 20% in lakes, and... 2/3 in ground ice. So basically water is saltwater and freshwater is ice."

"In the last 100 years we six times doubled our consumption [0.7 trillion m3 in 1900, to 4 trillion m3 in 2018] of water. ...Most of it goes to agriculture, and of the agriculture, most goes into meat."