important in terms of being able to move to more wind power, more efficient offshore wind, and with every one of these turbines that goes out, you re saving about 52,000 metric tons of c02, which is like taking 11,000 vehicles off the road. wow, that is pretty, pretty impressive. henry, look, i want to turn back to solar for a second. perovskite is the material you ve been working on. what is it, how does it work, and why is it such an improvement and such a possibility for the revolution of solar power? perovskite is a crystal structure. one of the unique aspects of them is because they re composed of three different ions, we can actually change the composition of these ions and that changes the optical properties and electronic properties of this material. this means instead of using a single material to absorb the sunlight, we can actually tune the perovskite to absorb in different regions and stack these materials on top of each other. now, this stacking of solar
engineering of low cost photovoltaics, henry discovered a thin film of solar cells made of perovskite. it could be a hugely significant discovery, as henry hopes it will eventually double the efficiency of solar power and halve the cost. danielle merfeld is an electrical engineer who is chief technology officer and vice president of ge renewables. ge is the biggest creator of wind turbines worldwide, and she and her team currently have over 40,000 wind turbines out in the field. she sjoining us by video link from north carolina, usa. kristian eikeland holmefjord is here from norway after braving 10 days quarantine on arrival in the uk. kristian is at the forefront of efforts to develop battery powered ships as project director of fuel cells at corvus energy. wind, solar batteries, ships please welcome our panel.
and henry, i have to briefly dive out to you because i know you used to formerly well, you still identify as a physicist, albeit recently you ve seen the light and come over to engineering. what do you think about nuclear? why did you go for solar physics rather than nuclear physics? well, on a personal note, i considered nuclear fusion, i considered working in fusion rather than solar at the outset, but itjust seemed too much of a long term challenge, still too far off really mainstream use, and it remains today. nuclear fission works, works well. the big challenge is actually one of economics. it doesn t compete on cost. they have to be massive national projects firstly have to be done at scale, you can t do a small nuclear plant, it s gotta be a large one, what do you think about nuclear? why did you go for solar physics rather than nuclear physics? well, on a personal note, i considered nuclear fusion, i considered working in fusion rather than solar at the outset, but itjust s
my only reservation would be that there are so many people in the world who either think this is purely a technology issue, which is separate from their life, or something that they don t need to think too much about or be a part of, and as i mentioned before, the biggest challenge is how the public accepts how we manage to lobby our governments and we think about the priorities that we want to make in our society. and that s it from the engineers: clean energy here at the victoria and albert museum in london. on behalf of the bbc world service, our partners, the royal commission for the exhibition of 1851 and all of us here, a huge thank you to our brilliant engineers, kristian eikeland holmefjord, danielle merfeld and henry snaith.
employed and deployed, then it s not going to work. thank you. kristian? yeah, i think accepting - what is happening on that side, as henry mentions, is crucial. and then an aspect that. i would emphasise as well is that we have to look at wasting energy - as unacceptable. we can t waste energy in any form of action. i so when the energy is. going to be challenging to harvest at large scale, we re solving parts - of harvesting as much energy as we can in good ways, - and then we have - to use that energy as efficiently as possible. and before we open it up to questions, danielle, when it comes to the threat that climate change presents to us, who is going to do the heavy lifting? is it going to be the engineering or is it going to be the individuals? i think the biggest changes will happen at the country level. there s going to be a need for us, in terms of our public policy, to support these kind of technologies at scale. it will certainly develop and deliver lower cost