Q: What do you get when you gather roughly two dozen top researchers from academia, government, and industry to speak on interdisciplinary energy-related issues for a week?
A: A lot of informative but crowded slides, high-octane brain power, fact-based analysis of where we are and we’re headed globally, informed questions, and surprisingly practical answers.
The annual conference of the Center for Nonlinear Studies—housed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)—was held this year in mid-May in Santa Fe. “Energy for the 21st Century” included sessions on the global impacts of energy systems, the future of conventional and alternative fuels (for both power and transportation), plus biofuel and solar energy research approaches.
In particular, the speakers and attendees gathered to share their knowledge and ideas with an eye toward determining fruitful research directions—especially research that would appropriately be led by national labs.
The first day’s sessions dealt with several topics of interest to the power generation industry. A few highlights of that day follow. More insights about nuclear, solar, smart grid, and global energy database developments, will be forthcoming in future issues of POWER.
Energy Touches Everything
In his opening comments, Terry Wallace of LANL reminded participants that energy resources place a high demand on water resources. Where water is required for energy production, adequate water quality and quantity may be unavailable for other uses. Today we already have 5.5 billion people [correction 6/12: should be approximately 1.5 billion] who lack access to freshwater. Even those living in desert and drought-stricken regions of developed nations are being affected by water scarcity.
How we decide to develop energy sources for the future will also affect, and be shaped by, other resources and geopolitical forces. Take lithium, for example. Wallace, who worked in Bolivia for 10 years, noted that Bolivia has the world’s largest reserves of lithium—an essential element in the manufacture of advanced batteries. Several speakers commented on the pressing need for energy storage. But what risks might the world face if it relies upon one or a handful of nations for essential supplies for its energy technologies? We’ve already seen the consequences of relying upon a small number of nations for fossil fuels.
Then there’s iridium, used in photovoltaics. Wallace said the world will more than consume all the available iridium within five years.
Wallace, like those following him, acknowledged that decisions about resources need to be made, for better or worse, in “the political cauldron.” Though researchers have their own politics to contend with, and often compete for limited public and private funding, at least they are less likely to make research decisions with an eye toward reelection. That alone points to one reason such conferences are valuable to the rest of us. If scientists, economists, mathematicians, and other researchers of the sort who gathered in Santa Fe can share their best ideas and data among themselves—beyond media sound bites and political positioning before congressional committees—then they might just have half a chance of developing sound approaches to the hugely complex and multidisciplinary energy challenges that are staring us in the face.
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