Fri 6 Nov 2009
By Alan S. Brown
Special to the Stevens News Service
Fossil fuels will still account for 65 percent of energy output in 2050, but new technologies will evolve to control carbon emissions, experts tell audience at Stevens Institute of Technology [click player screen to view event video]
Energy is a hot button issue, and opinions often veer to extremes, Discover magazine editor-in-chief Corey Powell told the audience at “Fossil Fuels in the Year 2050,” an event held at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J., on October 14, 2009.
“You have one group of people who think everything is fine and we should not change anything. Then there’s a group that thinks we need to overthrow the system and change everything.
“But most people who have studied the issue believe we’re going to need a transition to the solar, wind, and other technologies of tomorrow,” Powell said.
How that transition might evolve was the focus of the event, co-sponsored Shell, produced by Discover and hosted by Stevens’ Office of University Communications.
Demand for fossil fuels has grown rapidly over the past decade. They now supply better than 80 percent of the world’s energy, noted panelist Richard Sears, a former Shell vice president for exploration and deepwater technology and now a visiting professor at MIT.
Every hour, he stated, the world extracts more than 3 million barrels of crude oil, 12 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and 850 million pounds of coal. He expects the world to add 3 billion more energy users by 2050. “That’s the scale of energy we must replace when we start talking about moving to new energy systems,” he said.
Hydrocarbons are hard to replace because they are so efficient. Oil and gas, in particular, are relatively easy to handle and move from place to place. They also pack a lot of energy into a small amount of space. “A gallon of gasoline has 100 times more energy than an equivalent volume of batteries,” said Sears.
Discover’s Powell, who acted as moderator, asked whether any of the panelists could envision a 2050 in which fossil fuels were not part of the energy mix. None could. Even with aggressive growth of alternate energy, Sears estimated that oil, gas, and coal would supply 65 percent of the world’s energy 40 years from now.
“If you look at any projections, there’s a significant role for fossil energy, at least through 2030,” said Anthony Cugini, who heads the Office of Research and Development at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Pittsburgh. “Fossil fuels have served us well, and they provide lots of stability. Whatever replaces them, we’ll need that stable supply,” he added.
If fossil fuels are destined to be with us for decades, how do we control their CO2 output? The panelists suggested several approaches.
The first is to remove carbon from combustion gases and capture it underground, a technology called carbon capture or sequestration. This is one of NETL’s top priorities. It is a work in progress. “With carbon capture, we have the technologies, but they are expensive,” said Cugini. NETL has a large-scale program to test more economical approaches.
Oil exploration can’t wait for carbon sequestration, added Turgay Ertekin, a Penn State professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering. “We have to run along a number of different tracks at the same time,” he said. New technologies, like the ability to search for oil beneath underground salt layers, have opened new avenues of exploration.
Sears expects fuels from renewable organics, such as grasses, algae, and municipal waste, to move into the mix. They burn cleaner and emit less CO2 than conventional gasoline. “It could be that we’ll burn more gasoline than today, but with less environmental impact,” he said.
Governments are already regulating carbon emissions through cap-and-trade regulations in Europe. Shell will adapt to those new rules, but Sears prefers global standards for carbon trading and capture rather than scores of different laws around the world.
Governments are also demanding greater efficiency, which reduces emissions by decreasing fuel consumption. The United States, for example, has raised targets for vehicle mileage.
In Europe, 80 percent of carbon emissions come from heating and electrical generation, said Paul Winstanley, Stevens’ new director of energy initiatives and former U.S.-based president/CEO of the British technology commercialization consortium, QinetiQ Inc.
“There are a number of ways to reduce that impact,” he explained. “The United Kingdom is phasing in mandatory energy audits of homes before they go on sale so buyers will know the energy cost of upkeep. Italy offers incentives to buy high efficiency appliances.
“We could achieve a 25 percent reduction in total energy demand through efficiency,” Winstanley said. “What’s important is to make those changes transparent, so we do not create visible changes that force people to change their lifestyles.
“Take smart energy grids, for example. I don’t want to keep reconnecting with the network to get anything done. The technology has to work for me. So when I turn on a microwave, it automatically reduces energy use in the refrigerator while I cook my sandwich.
“If we can do this, we can flatten out energy use peaks and valleys and greatly reduce demand. But the technology has to do it for me. It’s going to take mission-centric engineering to empower these changes,” Winstanley said.
In the end, all the panelists agreed that there is no one single solution. Global demand for energy and the lifestyle it creates will keep growing rapidly. The panelists agreed that we need to invest in new technologies, but we cannot count on new technology alone to save the day.
It will take a portfolio of energy sources to meet that demand. Fossil fuels will remain one of them for decades to come. It will take a portfolio of technologies to control carbon emissions so we do not poison our planet.
Monforto put his hands to his head in mock horror and quickly embraced his daughter in a big hug while the fans cheered them on.
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