What should we be doing today
to enhance world energy security, in order to reach a sustainable global energy
system?
This web page begins
with recent journal-style papers and public talks which try to answer that
question, or part of that question. It then gives you links to primary sources
on specific technologies which provide some of the key opportunities, and one
of my earlier journal papers on econometric modeling for energy. I have also
posted some commentaries on energy discussions of the time, such as some
discussions in the offices of the US Congress. Just click on the titles to see
them. Among my activities have been talks in North and South America and
March 4,
2009: one-page outline of what I personally would propose
for an optimal cap-and trade law for the
February,
2009: Putting More Brain-Like Intelligence into the
Electric Power Grid: What We Need and How to Do It, in Proc. of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN09),
IEEE, 2009. (click here for slides
without text, 1 meg.)
October
28, 2008: Getting
to >500 Miles Per Gallon of Gasoline––How to Achieve Total
Independence from Gasoline At the Soonest Possible Time. (Updated 15-minute
talk – 3 pages worth of words, with the 17 slides I used in the 15
minutes, given at the Energy Summit in
(Comprehensive strategy -- complete text with citations and URLs. This link goes to a brief citeable file maintained by Nature magazine, giving you a choice of Word or pdf, only 228K.)
April 16,
2008: Click
here to see slides (200K, pdf) on “who will win the race to control
the new automobile industry,” with discussion of
August 5, 2007: History in the balance: a report on energy bills passed yesterday by the House, what they mean, and what comes next.
May 2007: 20 slide updated
strategy: immediate actions needed to slash
2004: Global Energy Sustainability, a comprehensive text paper, was written for the CD ROM of the State of the Future 2003, and slightly updated. It asked questions about the long-term goal of true sustainability, which remains important to this day. It includes discussion of how to achieve “win-win” balance between oil producers and oil consumers. It may be cited as “in Chapter 1 (Energy Challenge section) of the CD ROM of State of the Future 2008.”
The attached powerpoint
presentation is more detailed and up-to-date than the 2003 paper, from the
viewpoint of policy. (4 megabyte file,
last updated 2/23/06. Unfortunately, the powerpoint text shows up in Explorer
but not in Firefox.). It is an expanded and updated version of a talk I was
invited to give for Congressional staffers, at the
2006: a condensed two-page summary of what
actually needs to be done, most urgently, in the
Solar farms for electricity utilities are the only form of earth-based renewable energy
which definitely has the capacity to meet all the world’s needs for
daytime electricity. But the best-known and most popular
forms of solar power simply can’t compete in the utilities market today
because they cost too much, per kwh. Cost is everything, for a
“fungible” commodity. The one exception is solar thermal energy
based on
For material on the space solar power option, go to my space page.
One key point: if we work hard and immediately to increase
fuel flexibility in cars, not just to ethanol but also to the full range
I call “GEM,” we substantially increase the amount of fuel we can
get from biofuels (and other secure sources), and also increase the
sustainability, efficiency and profitability of biofuel production. Attached is
an initial email which the author at USDA gave me
permission to post in 2006. I would predict that strong incentives for a
properly defined version of GEM flexible cars would initially lead to huge
expansion in sales of ethanol and methanol both (methanol mainly from remote
natural gas); after a few years, all the ethanol that people can produce would
still be sold, but there would be a huge increase in the sales of “Fischer-Tropsch”
liquids from gasified coal and biomass; and then, with time, low or zero CO2
liquid fuels would start to penetrate the market, and reduce CO2 even more.
Dupont sells the stronger gaskets and hoses, which are the main (inexpensive) upgrade
needed to provide the full GEM flexibility, once G/E gasoline/ethanol
flexibility is achieved. (Most new cars sold in
Ford sold thousands of GEM-flexible cars in
Roberta Nichols, The Methanol Story: A Sustainable Fuel for the Future, Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research, Vol. 62, January-February 2003, p. 97-105. (Almost one meg, posted with permission of the journal JSIR.) Nichols, on behalf of Ford, estimated $300 per car as the real cost of the full GEM flexibility, but technology has improved substantially since then – and I plan to post more technical details on that soon.
I would also like to give special thanks to all those members of the Planning Committee for the global State of the Future effort, and IEEE members, who have arranged for me to give versions of this talk in other nations, and for me to learn about the diverse needs and viewpoints which exist on these matters all over the world. There are many others as well to whom I owe special thanks, but perhaps this is not the place for a long condensed list…
In the future, I also plan to post some of my papers on energy-economic models, which range from systems tools to substantive findings. Just for starters, I can now post one of my old papers on energy modeling and econometrics – explaining how some very sophisticated-looking formal models can turn out to be a case of “garbage in, garbage out,” and giving some simple-sounding rules to overcome the pitfalls:
P.Werbos,
Econometric Techniques: Theory Versus Practice,
Energy: The International Journal,
15 (3/4), 1990, p.213-236
May
24, pdf slides for IEEE IV,