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2. Topics
Energy’s Values?
 Overview of Energy
 Solution for Energy problems
 Renewable Energy
 Nanotechnology
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3. Why Energy is Important Today?
Energy is one of the Grand
Challenges of our time.
Energy is not a monolithic
issue:
supply, demand, conservation, application, scal
e, location, independence, environment, climat
e change, carbon
intensity, infrastructure, technology, policy, pub
lic acceptance…
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4. Energy
Water
Food
Population
Environment
Democracy
Poverty
Terrorism and
War
Education
Disease
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5. Why Energy is Important Today?
Water :without energy, it is unlikely that we can solve our water shortage
problems.
Food : without energy, we will be hard pressed to solve the starvation
problems on Earth.
Poverty: Without energy, moving out of poverty is nearly impossible.
Environment : problems today arise from the types of energy we use, and
increased burning of fossil fuels will accelerate climate change.
Terrorism & War : Certainly lack of energy and arguments over control of
conventional energy sources has contributed to wars in the past century.
Disease is accentuated by contaminated water sources, and poverty
prevents adequate medical care.
Population is more easily controlled in educated societies
Democracy :flourished in more advanced societies with adequate public
education.
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6. Overview of Energy
World Power Consumption for 2012
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7. Overview of Energy
Projected World Energy Consumption in Coming Century
1,286
• World population now is 6B; in 2050, 10B?
826
A quad is a unit of energy equal to 1015 BTU (British thermal unit)
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8. Overview of Energy
Worldwide energy demand is expected to continue to grow.
The industry has traditionally expected growth at about 2% per year.
Projections for 2050 and 2100 are based on a scenario from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization
jointly established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization
and the United Nations Environment Programme.
The IPCC provides comprehensive assessments of information
relevant to human-induced climate change. The scenario chosen is
based on “moderate” assumptions for population and economic
growth and, hence, is neither overly conservative nor overly
aggressive.
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9. Solution for Energy problem
The debate is no longer
about producing enough
energy to meet demand, but
about producing
hydrocarbons and energy in
a sustainable manner. At the
same time, it is also about
producing more
environmentally and friendly
power.
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10. Potential of Renewable Energy Resources
• Wind
- Has potential to cover a large fraction of electricity needs
- Reliability, storage, transmission (congestion).
• Solar
- Has potential to meet a significant fraction of electricity
needs
- Suitable for distributed generation
- Reliability, cost, easy to install.
• Biomass
- Has potential to replace petroleum Energy.
- Energy produced from biological material.
- Land and water issues, competition with food production
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11. Potential of Nanotech Energy
• Thermo-chemical Processes with catalysts to generate H2 from water
that work efficiently at temperatures lower than 900 C°.
• Nanotech Lighting to replace incandescent and fluorescent lights.
• Nano-materials/Coatings to enable vastly lower cost of deep drilling; to
enable HDR (hot dry rock) geothermal heat mining.
• Fuel Cells – drop the cost by 10-100x + low temp start.
• Batteries and Ultra-capacitors – improve by 10-100x for
automotive and distributed generation applications
• Power Cables (superconductors or quantum conductors) to rewire electrical transmission
grid and enable continental, even worldwide, electrical energy transport; to replace
aluminum and copper wires essentially everywhere
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12. There is no single energy source or
technology that will “solve” our
energy and environmental needs.
We need to develop a range of
technologies to full potential.
Efficiency/conservation is the best payback.
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