Nabeel Al-Shamma

Climate change is somewhat off-topic for this blog, but it is right on target as something we all need to be talking about. At the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT yesterday morning, there was a great panel discussion about climate change, global warming and energy solutions. I’ll share a few highlights. Any errors or misquotes are obviously my fault.

Innovation and the Energy Crisis
Moderator: Robert C. Armstrong, Professor of Chemical Engineering and co-director of the Energy Research Council, MIT
Panelists:
Joseph Romm, Founder and Executive Director, Center for Energy & Climate Solutions;
Nathan Lewis, Professor, California Institute of Technology;
Kelly R. Fletcher, Sustainable Energy Advanced Technology Leader, GE Global Research

Robert Armstrong shared some info on the energy industry. Per the MIT Energy Council Report of May 2006:
- Energy is a multi-trillion dollar industry
- We consume energy at the rate of 14 terawatts of energy of which the US uses about a quarter [a terawatt is too large an amount for me to fathom]
- Anticipate doubling total energy production by 2050
- Anticipate tripling electricity production by 2050

Joseph Romm, who has a book called Hell and High Water coming out in January, talked about the need for action now. When he talks to leading climate experts they are very alarmed. Solutions will require huge amounts of capital when the world gets serious. We have to start to deploy all possible solutions today, we can’t wait for technology to solve this in the future. Though, new technology research and development is also needed. Dr. Romm’s blog is at climateprogress.org.

Nate Williams said that things are worse than Dr. Romm indicated. The issue is not about science at this point, but about risk management. We have four options to pursue:
- clean coal – has lots of risks
- nuclear – again, lots of issues, need breeder reactors because not enough uranium…
- solar – that’s where the energy is; we need improved efficiencies/technologies; we need a way to store the energy (he likes chemical fuels)
- biofuels

Kelly Fletcher talked about the need for strong and stable government policies around CO2. Whether a tax or a trading systems, we need a clear policy.

They stated the big issue is still education – people need to be made aware of the severity of the problem and the need to take action now. There was a poll on how much more people would be willing to pay on their utility bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the answer was less than $10/month. That suggests there is still not a lot of public resolve to address climate change. Even with that, the public is ahead of government leadership.

There was lots more great information and I hope to be able to post a link to a video of the panel (by keeping an eye on http://www.technologyreview.com/events/tretc/media.aspx)