Bjarke Ingels Quotes

This idea of a power plant so clean that we can turn it into a mountain meadow is part of an idea that we call hedonistic sustainability... that clean technology is not only better for the environment, it also is much more enjoyable for the poeple living there... [W]e discovered this idea more than two decades ago when we completed our first project. ...We designed the , extending the life of the city into the water around it... [W]e also designed the harbour bath in ... [T]here was something special happening... that a clean port is not only nice for the fish, it's also amazing for the citizens... they don't have to drive... for hours to get to the beach... They can... jump into the port in the middle of the city.

[W]hat we're trying to do... is try to apply the kind of tangible, practical thinking. We almost took the... way we would normally approach an architectural project and a master plan. So this is the kind of index... for the master plan of the planet, and going through it with this kind of pragmatic utopian approach, hoping that we can develop insights, and ideally a master plan for the planet that could be... handed... to corporations and governments with a much more tangible and... promising concrete plan of action than the reports or sort of political agendas that... exist today.

Every hour we produce a pile of 38 meters. This is and this is the cone of plastic bottles, every day, and every month we can bury the tallest tower on planet earth in a cone of plastic bottles... [W]hen you look at the flow of plastic, the vast majority is discarded after a single use. A good part of it is still in use in different components. The stuff that gets recycled, quickly gets discarded again, and then a small fraction becomes put to... more constant use or incinerated for the energy value. If you look at the sources of energy, the vast majority of mismanaged plastic is in Asia Pacific. The global river plastic input to the oceans, massively Asia... and massively packaging. So these are the sort of mismanaged pollution hub spots, and these are the outlets into the global oceans creating this kind of distribution because of the currents of plastics, where the biggest... is the .

[W]e are getting increasingly dry zones and... it's expensive, energy-wise, to desalinate. ...[I]f we would have to desalinate the increase of water consumption to reach 10 billion people, it would be 20% of our current electricity supply.

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.

[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.

[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...

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

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

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.

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].

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.

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].

[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...

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...