"They bought a Porsche electric car and drove it to save the planet. It's not true. It takes a lot of energy to make an electric car. It uses a lot of energy and emits a lot of carbon dioxide."

Andre Geim

On November 3, the pilot forum of the 5th World Top Scientists Forum - the 2nd World Top Scientists Carbon Conference was held in Shanghai Science Hall.

In the speech of the third part of the agenda of the conference - "'Green Energy' Future - Green Energy Revolution and Low-Carbon Sustainable Development", Nobel Laureate in Physics, Professor of the University of Manchester, UK, and foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Andre When it comes to future energy, "we need to differentiate between what is hype and what is science," said Andre Geim, a senior executive at the company.

"The thing that annoys me the most is the myth that people think that having an electric car means you have clean energy, and that's a misconception that people have," he said. "They bought an electric Porsche and drove Going to the 'save the planet' conference, it's not true. It takes a lot of energy to make an electric car, it uses a lot of energy and emits a lot of carbon dioxide."

Andre Geim said, there is a basic message, there is no real 100%, sustainable, green energy. Maybe you will be surprised to hear this, there are some people who have heard of solar energy, how beautiful and how beautiful it is. This is a very good source of energy. But to meet our energy needs, many, many solar panels are needed. A million square kilometers of solar panels would take 7 years to compensate for the carbon dioxide footprint of manufacturing those panels, and those panels would also need to be refurbished and recycled every 50 years.

Andre Geim said that for mankind, there is a glimmer of hope that the solution to the energy crisis and global warming is nuclear fusion. Fusion, which is cleaner and safer than fission, works like the sun and can help us solve our last energy challenge. If nuclear fusion can be well controlled, everything can be achieved, carbon can be sequestered, and it can be recycled many times. Many carbon sequestration technologies are not feasible now, they actually consume more energy and have a larger carbon footprint.

Andre Geim said that he is not against other technologies, other technologies are also needed, such as solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, wave energy, tidal energy, hydrothermal energy and so on. But we need more new nuclear energy to offset our current carbon footprint. A lot of air pollution caused by thermal power generation has killed many people. "Ultimately we are going to develop nuclear fusion." "We are going to buy time to develop nuclear fusion, we need technology that can really sustain human existence, we need to go further and make the public understand this reality. Only when we public We only have a real tomorrow when we know these technologies and support the government's choices."