w. com and on our social media channels that are available at the handle at dw needs, you can check out a pages on facebook, instagram and x quotes if you still have access to it, i may have already signed, so i'm watching the sometimes it's hard to find what you're looking for but we've got something for you. one of mankind's oldest ambitions could be within reach. what do you see? it really is possible to reverse the researchers and scientists all over the world. for you know, race against time. they are peers and rivals.

with one daring goals to help smart nature, the more likes watching it. on youtube dw documentary in 2018. as training entrepreneur david griffin started a company based on a crazy idea of what you could generate a lot of solar power in northern australia, which has some of the strongest sunshine in the world. and so it's a single point which consumes pates of energy per person, per se from fossil fuels. and it's pretty much no space to renewables if it's our make sense, right? and it turns out he's not the 1st person to have this type of idea. there are a lot of places around the world with a few people, lots of sun and wind, that we need to start using to power cities and countries. far away is even the idea to create a kind of global, super, allowing us to shift loads of renewable energy from where it's abundant to where it's needed. and all you really need is a lot of very,

very long tables. but we've all read the title of the video. something went wrong with girlfriends idea. so let's look into what it was, what it means for this ambitious vision of a well, the sharing is clean electricity. this map shows the potential solar power available around the world. and this one shows the same thing for wind. it's pretty clear that some areas get a lot more of one or boats than others. so rather than only consuming that clean energy within the borders of the country producing it, it might make a lot more sense to spread it around. to share this energy, it needs to go through something cold and into connect up, which is a high voltage cable that can transfer power one way, or in some cases back and forth between the 2 locations. if you have an interconnect, uh you can have cleaner and cheap apollo coming from a neighboring system, which the neighboring system was, have benefits from this was, that's elizabeth promoted, an energy and climate data analyst. she says, europe already has a pretty established system of interconnect which allows some countries to buy and

sell clean energy based on supply and demand. and there's always room for mole. we look at the region as a whole, you have clear areas with huge resource potential. so in the politics, the voltage, so you have huge off showing potential, same in the block c as well. and the countries the border on these areas, if you drink potential, are not necessarily the ones that, that actually exist. if you look at them, poland, i'm sensing they bring jammed news was huge, huge the monsanto is which hardly all can see me in huge amounts of code. if you have to increase that region and connectivity, you essentially tap into these big, big sources of wind and take it towards actually needed that there's just no way possible without interconnection. this is a really big deal at this stage of the energy transition. advocates for the shift away from fossil fuels like the international energy agency, say we're getting pretty good at bringing renewable energy sources online fast. but if we cut and move the electricity to where it needs to be, all the new clean energy becomes less useful. there are some groups trying to figure out how we could connect the grids of every country on us. the idea would be

to increase regional connections, enough to eventually create a super great, a global network of interconnect is that would let us send electricity to wherever it needs to govern these ideas for super crew to still just the ideas the on the clear plans on how to actually make that happen on a vast scale for the disabled future. it's individual projects connecting countries and regions that are starting to shake this vision of a global grid and making renewable energy more profitable along the way. you are encouraging that for this kind of renew, but investment in other countries because of the invest, the knows i can so to my neighboring country is a big demand through this interconnect. as you create this business case full renew both in the best of places, and there's very few better places going astray when it comes to solar. there is a very polishing strong layer on your responsibility, frustrating it to provide power to the my niece is out. that's judge,

escape up. remember david griffin, the guy from the beginning until last year, she says on the executive leadership team of his company, son, k. so i'm okay, was this fairly encompassing? that was phones with the purpose of taking a fairly is a bonded, we've done so already. so i scale. so i'm not sure if it version and the scale of his company's plan was almost beyond belief. the idea was to build a 20 gigawatt solar farm on a massive stretch of land and australia is northern territory. that's almost 6 times more capacity than the current biggest solar farm and the world according to right. it's. and then that solar farm would fade into a battery system that's holding 13 times bigger than today's biggest. to send the energy from the solar farm and batteries abroad, the company would lay 3 submarine cables along the full 1300 kilometers out from top one through engineers, motors to single, meaning they would need more than 12000 kilometers of high voltage cables. today's longest existing route is around 750 kilometers and well making oldest solar panels and all those batteries would be hard getting all that cable turned out to be even

hot on. and that's because many of these cable manufacturers, which are mostly based in europe, already too busy supplying major pain market. so to get this thousands of kilometers of cable, some cable decided to just make it themselves, they announced plans to build their own manufacturing side. it has maintenance by making these cables is not easy. doors manufacturing pounds for a while. really, you can see that operational capability. they're very high, high technology times faster. and so it takes many gains to build a test pattern facility. and once they get all that cable, so i have to actually figure out where to put it somewhere in cable routes, have to avoid any odyssey volcanoes or areas more prone to submarine. those quakes . they go to avoid shipping routes with bankers or fishing equipment, could damage the cables and big trenches that would leave the cable. floating goal of that not being manufacturing and signing takes a lot of money. these trying to get agent power links estimated to cost the

equivalent of $23000000000.00 us dollars. and people familiar with projects like be say, the final cost will likely be a lot more. but despite the scale of these problems, some people who are starting to make progress in 2019 the company secured the backing of 2 of us trailer is biggest building and their investors, michael kevin, and brooks. and andrew, far by the end of 2020 to the company, finished all the marine serving industry awards. and more than 2 thirds of the indonesian section of the route had been mapped. and it had already begun to wilkes with the big cable manufacturers like prison in lennox to help build its new factory. the plan was to start turning out cables by 2023, and eventually to live a power to sing full by 2027. but in january of 2023 old, that progress started to crumble. according to media reports, one of those big investors forest decided he wasn't happy with the direction of the project and clashed with the other investor of what the company should be doing instead. and soon, this argument calls into question one of the most fundamental tots fund cable,

the cable itself. one of the biggest challenges facing projects like sun cables interconnect though, is winning the trust of all the countries involved. each step of this extremely complicated process needs a new set of time consuming approvals to move along. and if one part doesn't get a green kick from one side of the other, the whole thing could collapse in countries being extremely cautious about this type of infrastructure. it does make a lot of sense. this isn't the 1st time we should energy along foss distances and so the whole thing back fine does not stream ring a bell in 2021. the pipeline from russian to germany supplied around 17 percent of the use natural gas imports. when russia shut down the pipeline, which the kremlin says was due to a combination of western sanctions over the invasion if you crane and then attack which sabotage the pipeline itself. europe, a scrambling to find new gas supplies to get it through the following winter, importing a big chunk of your energy from one place rather than a producing it yourself makes you dependent on that source to better or worse. and so countries like single small islands nation surrounded by much bigger natives,

but scary, especially given what happened pretty recently. in october 2021, malaysia decided to done all the exports of renewable energy to singapore, through the country, the interconnect. saying they needed those renewable sources themselves. this was a big issue for single, which is planning to start phasing out of gas, the main energy source and use more renewables. so some cables, 10, which the company says would provide 15 percent single polls. electricity needs started to feel a lot riskier single. what if this trailer suddenly decided that it needed to turn off the top for whatever reason? or what is this huge cable going through another country's territorial waters was damaged, was sabotaged. how safe could single feel about switching everything over to a brand new source of energy if it had to rely on a potentially less reliable supply? when you consider that the sorts of things that happened really quickly without warning that for you to know was challenges for and she was secure, there could be top 5 projects that could be disruptions to energy provision. it's

not just as a result of a disruption from the supply side right results, but actually made a motion active and sorry, the sky was a problem with energy security. this is robin. this is robin law. according to media reports trying to get around all these concerns made 1st question, how viable the cable part of son cable would be. he decided it'd be better to use all that solar power in a completely different way by turning it into green hydrogen and ammonia. this is another way of moving renewable energy around. that's getting a lot of attention right now that you convert that clean electricity into fuel that you can ship anywhere in the world without the hassle of building a cable to connect those places. but while it has some things going for it, today's hydrogen isn't really living up to its promise because of how inefficient you just to make compared to using well, sending that clean energy directly. we made a video on that here, which is your take a look at off to this one. piece 2 competing visions of what to do with sun cables,

plants, all the phones came to a head in january 2023, according to media reports. when the company missed 2 of its big milestones, to get the approvals from single pool and in the nation needed to start laying these cables far as decided that the cable strategy wasn't going to work. if they wanted. he's money that have to switch everything over to green hydrogen and ammonia, something the other investor can and brooks didn't agree with. the future of the project was in doubt, and without the support of both investors, the company collapsed. but that wasn't the end of the story. eventually, kind of brooks out beat for us to take ownership of sun cables in 2023. an easterly age of housing project continues, but the drama did take its toll. a new plan is to start delivering power in the early 20 thirty's, but only to dollars the capital of a strategies northern territory. the connection to single port is supposed to come a few years after that. if that comes at all, because the company still has to solve the same problems. so convincing all the different players involved from governments to investors, to suppliers. but this idea which has never been done before at the scale work. and

besides, i'm very optimistic about the concept, what fundamentals trying to some of the eventually a friendship between the started sing for the bills. the question was tom and how the tax. so what does some cable story mean for the vision of a global super great is putting down a cable between 2 countries is such a struggle connecting the entire world seems pretty far off, but it's also not science fiction. there are other really vicious ideas to share and trade clean energy around the world from the ex thanks america, u. k. a power project, a full 1000 kilometer long cable. that according to media reports might even extend to germany to the north sea wind. how a plan to build wind farms and artificial islands and connect them to european countries around the north sea. so now a global net look does remain a distant dream. but if you think all the g political tensions and power games involved to make it impossible, just consider there's another global network that connects every country, you know,

excusing submarine cables. you're using it right now to watch this video. the incident, transporting electricity around the globe is a bit different than translating data. of course, internet cables are cheaper and the telecommunication systems they're rooted in have been around for much longer, but it can be done. and for electricity. europe is the best example that with political will, it might even be easier, but it seems. and the more of these connections we have, the more attractive it will become from other countries to join the super. great. so let us know what you're thinking. the comments where in the world do you want your green energy to come from and make sure to subscribe to a journal. we really see videos every friday of the air conditioning system that fight climate change. researchers and engineers are developing sustainable cooling models for private household in city district. the applies tend to is old wisdom about wind and weather,

and combine it with bold ideas to create something new. tomorrow today. next, on d, w. know, global trans without. but their carbon footprint is the fastest shipping transition on water. how far hasn't come here as maritime transport in 45 minutes on d, w. the version now understand can have

a think like the vine to present data used on instagram. to follow up the few are off full bands. what did they look like? how did our ancestors live? what did they eat? researches can now glean information from even tiny fragments it, boom. dna sequencing, an artificial intelligence of grown, is important to the discipline as shovels and brushes. the join us on a trip to an archaeological dig in southern front, which is especially rich and for historic sites that 9 more this time around on the dw science. so welcome to tomorrow. today the.