One of the main issues covered in John and Teresa Heinz Kerry’s book, This Moment on Earth, is energy. The Kerrys highlight what companies and cities are already doing in America to reduce energy use. Texas Instruments hired people do design a manufacturing plant with energy efficiency as the primary concern…and would up saving gobs of money. Portland, Oregon, has carefully redesigned itself to cut back its carbon emissions…and has done so WHILE experiencing a period of economic growth. This Moment on Earth shows that not only CAN it be done, but it is BEING done and done at a profit. Any excuse to ignore global warming and continue on our old, destructive way is obsolete. The entirety of chapter 7 and Appendix A are dedicated to energy policy and are worth reading.

Two cornerstones of what can be done, should be done, and increasingly IS done, are increasing energy efficiency (as Texas Instruments learned) and use of renewable energy sources (currently primarily wind and small hydroelectric and, on a smaller scale, geothermal). John and Teresa Heinz Kerry cover this very well in their book. But about a month and a half before their book came out, the February 9th issue of Science (subscription only...go to your nearest university science library to find it) came out covering some of the same ground: the future of energy. In fact, this particular issue of America’s foremost scientific journal was titled: “Sustainability and Energy.”

Back in 1995 I remember reading an issue of Scientific American discussing energy in America. Two things were highlighted above all else: increased efficiency and wind power. The potentials of these two things were powerful even in 1995. All other ways of dealing with global warming (and remember, much of the scientific community had already accepted global warming back then!) were still fairly speculative in 1995. But energy efficiency was a HUGE open opportunity to save both energy and money, while the wind potential of the Great Plains states alone could have even back then gone a long way to making us energy independent. That was 1995. One can only assume that we have advanced since then, Bush Administration denials to the contrary.

The Feb. 9th 2007 issue of science largely starts from the exact same place Scientific American left off in 1995: energy efficiency and wind power are here and now with other technologies being more speculative. Both push nuclear energy a little, but with caveats that seem even stronger in 2007 than in 2005. The main differences between then and now are a.) the weight of scientific consensus about the need to cut carbon emissions is greater, and b.) the focus on solar energy and biomass is greater now than it was then. And nuclear, though still mentioned, seems to be considered less of an option now than then.

Here is a summary of the issue of Science in the issue’s introduction:

Lewis (p. 798) points out that the direct conversion of sunlight with solar cells, either into electricity or hydrogen, faces cost hurdles independent of their intrinsic efficiency. Ways must be found to lower production costs and design better conversion and storage systems. In the short term, utilization of biomass relies mainly on sugar fermentation; Goldemberg (p. 808) discusses how Brazil's use of ethanol from sugarcane has greatly reduced its need for imported oil. Many long-term goals have been set for biomass utilization; for example, the European Union (EU) hopes to produce a quarter of its transportation fuels from biomass by 2030, as discussed by Himmel et al. (p. 804). Better ways are also needed for processing the available sugars, and conversion to higher alcohols or even alkanes is desirable. Stephanopoulos (p. 801) explores the options afforded by reengineering biosynthetic pathways in microbes.

How we tackle energy problems will turn on a number of policy issues. Potocbrevenik (p. 810) discusses how the EU is setting targets and allocating funding for alternative energy. Finally, Schrag (p. 812) explores the feasibility of sequestering carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel use and our technological readiness and willingness to implement such schemes.

The News section profiles national lab directors, computer modelers, captains of industry, and bench scientists who are writing the early chapters of the next book on energy research. Some of them are developing better plants to grow as fuel or ways to convert them into ethanol. Others are developing catalysts to extract hydrogen from water or generate electricity from hydrogen. What they all share is a desire to find new ways to power the future.

One reason why we have accomplished relatively little since 2005 is because funding for energy-related research has been low worldwide, as shown here:

There has also been little political will to push for alternatives. Wind energy, a way the Great Plains states could be energy exporters and American farms can make extra money, has only recently started picking up in the US. By contrast, Germany has been expanding its wind energy since the early 1990’s. And little old Denmark has paced the US in expansion of wind energy until only very recently. Had we started then, the influence of Saudi Arabia could have been greatly reduced, American farmers would be in a better financial situation, and the economy of the Great Plains states might be booming. This has been a huge missed opportunity.

But wind is not featured much in this issue of Science. It is too much today’s technology, what we should have started pushing 10 years ago. Scientists are, of course, more interested in the future.

One of the most striking things mentioned in this issue of Science is shown in this figure from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, and the U.S. Department of Energy:

It shows the energy flow from production to use in the US…and it shows that half of all energy produced in the US is wasted (light grey portions). This shows one of the potentials for improvement: simple efficiency. Now NOTHING is ever 100% efficient, so energy efficiency cannot double our output even if half of our energy we produce is wasted. But clearly this is one place we can make some real, meaningful changes. And possibly save money in the process. The article that shows this graph mostly discusses the long-term, large scale challenges we face if we are going to mitigate global warming, but for me this diagram was the most dramatic part of the article.

Nuclear is only covered in two articles, one proposing a new, supposedly “safe” nuclear technology based on thorium. This is a proposal focused on Norway since Norway has one of the world's largest reserves of thorium. The idea seems to be considering developing an altogether new technology. This new technology would not use enough fuel to sustain a chain reaction, thus eliminating the worst dangers of nuclear power: the Chernobyls and TMIs we have faced in the past. Waste is “expected to be low,” but exactly how low and what could be done with it is not discussed.

Solar is covered in a few articles, including a new technology using a gallium arsenide-based solar cell developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado and being used in the Negev desert in Israel. It is estimated that this technology, if used on a large enough scale, can reach 40% efficiency at converting sunlight to electricity and can achieve what is considered the magic number of $1000 per kilowatt of electrical capacity that would be needed to make solar competitive. Another article suggests a technology that could cut the cost of producing solar cells by as much as 75% using a modification traditional silicon based technology.

Many articles cover biofuels. One article covers the intersection of agriculture and energy, how farmers can make money growing the fuel for biofuels. It is proposed that small farms could produce crops such as the grass Miscanthus for local biorefineries, which would produce local energy. I should note wind power already provides a way in which small farmers, but placing turbines on part of their farms, can make more money than if they grow only crops. This is partly because of the very unfair way in which crops are purchased by large agribusiness, providing farmers with almost no profit. But it also indicates that there really is a good market for locally-produced wind energy.

Other articles discuss the use of genetically engineered microbes and plants to produce biofuels more efficiently. “Genetic engineering” is a term that worries many, and there are dangers that require regulation. But genetic engineering is not inherently dangerous and if proper regulation is in place it is a powerful technology. Genetic engineering is part of what I have been doing for 20 years. But when it is done on a large scale, as in agriculture, safety measures must be in place to prevent environmental spread of the genetically engineered organism. If this is done, the potentials described for boosting biofuels could be enormous.

This is simply a brief overview of SOME of what is covered in this excellent issue. I recommend going to your local University science library and tracking it down. It is a rich source of information on the current scientific thinking regarding energy issues. I also recommend reading chapter 7 of This Moment on Earth, which also gives some good overview on energy issues. Simply put, this single issue will be the overarching issue of the next 10 years, because THAT is how long we probably have to mitigate global warming and we can’t do it without changes in energy production, distribution and usage.

As a final note, the single most practical though you can personally do to address global warming is to replace your light bulbs with compact fluorescent lights. The initial purchase price is high, but the savings more than make up for that, saving YOU money on each and every energy bill and reducing your carbon footprint. You can order them here. I also find them in my local supermarket and hardware stores.

And there is an even better light bulb technology that I have yet to try: LED bulbs. These really are expensive, but they last practically forever and use only a tiny fraction of the energy that a regular light bulb uses: they last 60,000 hours and use only 2 Watts of power to give a 31-lumen output or 3 watts for 60 lumens. If you want to take the plunge you can find them here.