1	How Can We Zero Out America’s Need to Import Oil and Gas at the Soonest Possible Time? Why we need faster action. It is literally a matter of life and death – your life and mine! How we can do it in the real world of real technology www.ieeeusa.org/policy/energy_strategy.ppt (To see text, click on “Notes” under “View” or print with Notes option in print box). No one on earth is doing enough yet!
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3	Why It Is Life or Death 1. Gas $ pre-Katrina already $200b/year> methanol alternative 2. Katrina exposed extreme vulnerability. What if it hits Houston next?
4	Rough but Unbiased Guess at What we Pay Today For Fuel Rigidity in Cars What would we save if used methanol in cars, if US wholesale price of $220/tonne? (Strong 2004 price) 216 b. gallons/yr of gasolineº 418 b. gal. methanol EIA Primer on Gasoline Prices: $1.56 in ’03, 14% distribution, 15% refining&profits, 27% all tax To $220/tonne, add same distribution cost cost per physical gallon, same profit and tax per Btu At pre-Katrina $2.50/gallon-gasoline, using methanol would have cost $324b, versus $540b! New methanol costs well under $220/tonne! (Google on “Canaccord methanol”)
5	US Vulnerability: Lessons from Katrina Besides $3.50/gallon, a mere 10% shortfall in natural gas can raise its price (and electricity?) 75% for as long as it lasts. Watch your bills next month! 10% is like what we import now of natural gas, because of growing use to make peak-time electricity. A new dependency, growing very fast! We can/should stop this growing dependency fast, with new sources of electricity. See IEEE-USA slides. Efficiency/conservation for world natural gas is doable and urgent. Saving gasoline is urgent and necessary – but not enough by itself. But time today is limited.
6	Peak Oil: How bad is it? What do we really know? Cavallo projections assume USGS numbers of undiscovered oil. Such estimates are no longer so debatable, due to new geoinformatics. (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Jan. 2004, www.thebulletin.org). World imports ¹ total production. Can non-OPEC production really continue to grow when reserves are not being replaced? Gulf Institute for Strategic Studies projects 2/3 of world oil imports from Persian Gulf by 2025, and big political changes!
7	How will you cut your gasoline use by 50% or more? If output falls, free market raises prices enough to force you cut your use in half or more. The only question: how? Lower income? Small car? Or market-friendly new technology? Antimarket tricks like price caps, hi interest rates, pressures on Arab states only lead to worse outcomes (Nash)
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14	Can we Cut our Need to Use Oil and Gas by >50% in 20 years? How? How do we keep our cars running? The big problem: the car fleet takes 15 years to turn over. Thus new cars must be >50% gasoline independent in 5 years to make it possible. Giving up would be crazy – but where is there hope? (But: fuel has more time to catch up.) Where does the new fuel or electricity come from? Sources? Distribution? Rapid growth in imports of LNG Serious hope of avoiding a crisis of dependency in time but no guarantee
15	General Strategy: CO₂As Example of Hard Work But No Solution
16	How to Minimize <time> to Independence START by asking the right question! Many ask “What can we do with well-known certain technology with predictable results?” Answer – not enough to stay alive! Many ask “What does the ideal energy utopia look like?” Nice start but not soon enough! We need a middle way, rooted in technology reality, focused on big numbers, not distracted by red herrings or mind-numbing statistics or magnetic but self-centered vested interests There is hope but no guaranteed path or 10-year plan. New laws and R&D plans must be high flexible and design to be highly adaptive as news keeps coming.
17	3 PILLARS OF THE MIDDLE WAY
18	The chicken and egg problem: which comes first? H₂ fuel , H₂ car?
19	Long-Term Clean Alternatives to Carrying H₂ in Your Car Tank Hydrogen Carriers – proven tested fuels that easily release hydrogen for use on-board a car Methanol, our best hope (next slide) Ammonia & other carbon-free fuels (but chicken&egg problem again) Electric Cars – Cleanest, most efficient, but needs R&D; can’t yet beat C; new batteries in lab exciting, but not yet… PLUG-IN HYBRIDS COULD GET US THERE. Thermal Batteries (Long-term option if Stirling grows)
20	What is the Fastest and Cheapest Way Up Mount Fuel Cell?
21	Best Hope for Fuel Cell Cars Carry methanol in the gas tank Small “steam reformers” (proven known technology) to convert methanol to hydrogen in car Carbon-tolerant alkaline fuel cell Unlike PEM fuel cell, no peroxide loss of energy and erosion; can be made cheaper Realistic hope of twice the miles/Btu of hybrids Recent proof of carbon tolerance both at air and fuel electrodes (NSF funded) Can use carbon black electrodes and “Jiffy Lube” electrolyte refreshing See http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0504130 Also radical new hi-efficiency options, like truly solid electrolyte fuel cells that really conduct p not hydronium
22	3 Paths to Energy Independent Cars
23	What IS Methanol?
24	GEM Flexibly Fuel Vehicles (FFV) One Tank To Hold Them All Full Retooling Doable in 2 years
25	But How Much Benefit Can We Get From Alcohol Fuels Near-Term? The maximum conventional ethanol supply from US corn is only a tiny fraction of US needs, and only a tiny fraction of biofuel potential revenue Can we expand it by an order of magnitude? Can we find technologies that work off a much wider varieties of plants, more efficiently, at an acceptable price? Can we find technologies well enough proven that they could really scale up fast?
26	Yes we can, if we stop requiring so much purity in our ethanol/alcohol!
27	GEM Flexibility Is Well-Established
28	Plug-in Hybrids: A Large-Scale Opportunity Here and Now FFV hybrids cut liquid fuel use 50% already. Plug-ins cut 50% of that. “Researchers have shown that (batteries) offering.. electric range of 32 km will yield… 50% reduction..” (IEEE Spectrum, July/05). Shown in working Prius.
29	How To Zero Out Gasoline: Best Near-Term Hope for 100% Renewable Zero-Net-CO2 cars & Zero Energy Imports
30	AREAS FOR NEEDED LEGAL REFORMS Ethanol+Methanol Fuel flexibility (up to M85) should be MANDATORY in new gasoline-using cars from 2006/7/8. Hybrids or advanced Stirling can also use GEM fuel tanks easily. Plug-in with >30km range should be mandatory in new hybrids, and incentivized for national security reasons Incentives and research opportunities for bio-methanol should be the same as for bioethanol, biohydrogen or better Zoning rules discouraging Distributed Generation should be modified to simplify renewable or alcohol fuel use Grid regulation needs to be made to fit "intelligence“ Leak proof tanks in gas stations for ALL fuels. Tanks/pumps selling nonbiological M85 should be able to supply pure enough methanol for fuel cell cars.
31	Benefit of FFVs to Oil/Gas Industry Outside US, cost of new methanol is $98/ton from remote gas (Google “Canaccord methanol”), much of which is now wasted (vented and flared). For oil companies, new remote methanol plant will be equivalent to new proved reserves! Free market will supply methanol if FFVS, as they accumulate. Don’t burn CH4 to electricity! There are better new electricity sources! Near-Term R&D: CH4-to-Methanol: small $ to follow up Catalytica, could cut cost in half. Much better investment than new refineries when proved reserves are not growing! Reduce irrational political pressures to limit natural price growth of oil products and natural gas. New technology can create a “bigger pie,” and a bigger slice both for producers and consumers – win, win, Pareto optimum…
32	MAIN Sustainable Paths as Oil/Gas Run Out (i.e. Cost More)
33	Sources: Where Does the Electricity or Methanol Come From If Not Oil/Gas? Two scenarios: Base-Case-Present-Trends Versus Real-Hope-If-We-Act-More Base Case: Iran, China, eventually everyone builds fission as fast as they can. Bin Laden Construction Co. and its less savory competitors grow very rich, very fast. 4-8¢/kwh Little guys (wind, rooftop solar, Anwar, ethanol) make big $ but don’t plug half the supply-demand gap Supply-demand gap still widens. Old coal fills the gap, filling half the world with barely survivable air (worse than China’s cities today). Not so much methanol. “Santa Claus drowns” Arctic Ice Cap Double or Nothing
34	Real Hope If We Work/Think Hard THREE TEAM A TECHNOLOGIES We know that all three CAN WORK and CAN provide all the world’s energy needs cleanly “IGCC” (Cool Water/Texaco/Eastmann/GE) Clean Coal Technology, Good for carbon sequestration, efficiency, wants to produce electricity and methanol together “solar farms” on earth with mirror or lenses: but breakthru needed on cost, new workshops? Space solar power – new designs from NASA-NSF-EPRI Need better (agile, international?) funding vehicle for high risk breakthrough TEAM B hopes, like advanced large-scale biomethanol biotechnology.
35	Earth Solar: Unmet Opportunity for Cheap Renewable Daytime Electricity DOE 10-year targets: 14¢/kwh PV, intermittent power, can’t compete with coal 4¢ baseload. Cost of “balance of system” is stubborn with solar farms -- & worse for lo efficiency (now 3%) “nano-based” PVs this decade. World Bank (GEF): solar thermal “Luz” still 12¢/kwh. Recent breakthru: Business Week (9/12/5) reports SES unsubsidized sale of 500 megawatt Stirling/dish farm to SCE, “well under” today’s 11¢/kwh – probably near Sandia’s 6¢/kwh estimate. Mojave enough for all US. Inventor of that engine plus former GM DD for Advanced Products have credible plan to cut that cost in half – as yet unfunded. High-efficiency heat to torque or kwh also useful in space nucs, cars, etc. Scales to 50kwh: could provide cheap secure electricity to sunny DOD bases! Reduce EU dependence on Russia, Chile’s on Bolivia?
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37	Some Outcomes 98 proposals, $21 million recommended after tough merit review, $3 million funded Previous NASA SERT program: first well-validated designs but 17¢/kwh even assuming $200/lb earth-to-LEO (Low Earth Orbit) Now 4 designs may achieve cost breakthrus, merit follow-up. One – hybrid light-to-light laser with D-D inertial fusion and microwave beaming might get well under 1¢/kwh for kwh at central point in space. Little of Texas A&M claims he can demo ability to avoid communications interference. Current designs cost about 4¢/kwh just to get power from space to earth grids, but many believe this could be cut a lot with new R&D. “Near-term vehicle” design 1^st wi real hope <$200/lb
38	Four ~New Lo-Cost SSP Designs Mankins’ new version of solar cells to electricity to microwave Fork/Werbos (TIM 2002) “spinal cord” laser, light lenses/mirrors to light-to-light laser to earth Werbos solar/fusion hybrid lenses, laser, D-D pellets Nonterrestrial materials (NTM) Idea not new; Gerard O’Neill & Criswell still vital Engineering needs major fleshing out, testing, multiple iterations etc. Lower TRL than the others, but high potential and relevance to President’s Program All designs require a flexible “decision theory” vision Need honesty and toughness about uncertainty to make it real
39	Key Needs for Space Solar Partnership with NASA New Big Laser (2/4 cheap ways) Affordable launch (follow-on to ECS-funded plasma hypersonics – requires US proprietary technology, $10-15 billion) Improved Robotics – REQUIRES MORE USE OF COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE!!! (NSF/DARPA??) Cheaper rectennas – PES/MTT partnership
40	Plasma Hypersonics: ANSER/Chase NSF$
41	Unexpected Outcome: Near-Term Design Has Passed Tough Peer Review, Scrutiny
42	Human mentors robot and then robot improves skill
43	Distribution and Grids: Upgrading the Middle is As Important As Cars And Sources!
44	Intelligent Grid: Many Words, Real Opportunity, Big Gap in R&D Action As Gas Prices Ý Imports Ý & Nuclear Tech in unstable areas Ý, human extinction is a serious risk. Need to move faster. Optimal time-shifting – big boost to rapid adjustment, $
45	Dynamic Stochastic Optimal Power Flow (DSOPF): How to Integrate the “Nervous System” of Electricity DSOPF02 workshop started from EPRI question: can we optimally manage&plan the whole grid as one system, with foresight, etc.? Closest past precedent: Momoh’s OPF integrates &optimizes many grid functions – but deterministic and without foresight. UPGRADE! Can be done using real math, but traditional R&D, fuzzy “complexity science” and big iron are not on course to do the job. See IEEE-USA slides
46	Beyond Bellman: Learning & Approximation for Optimal Management of Larger Complex Systems Basic thrust is scientific. Bellman gives exact optima for 1 or 2 continuous state vars. New work allows 50-100 (thousands sometimes). Goal is to scale up in space and time -- the math we need to know to know how brains do it. And unify the recent progress. Low lying fruit -- missile interception, vehicle/engine control, strategic games New book from ADP02 workshop in Mexico www.eas.asu.edu/~nsfadp (IEEE Press, 2004, Si et al eds)
47	Emerging Ways to Get Closer to Brain-Like Systems IEEE Computational Intelligence (CI) Society, new to 2004, about 2000 people in meetings. Central goal: “end-to-end learning” from sensors to actuators to maximize performance of plant over future, with general-purpose learning ability. This is DARPA’s “new cogno” in the new nano-info-bio-cogno convergence This is end-to-end cyberinfrastructure See hot link at bottom of www.eng.nsf.gov/ecs What’s new is a path to make it real
48	Intelligent Grid Requires Intelligence But Also Hardware Brain-like intelligence is embodied intelligence; sensors, actuators and feedback on performance are essential parts of the new designs. Reduce world CH4 to kwh: sell and upgrade Brazil’s superior transmission technology (Pilotto, Watanabe: could save California billions quickly, allow cheap electricity from underused Utah coal plants) EPRI plan to add more communications, sensors, intelligent appliances (e.g. car chargers to turn on at quiet times at night, to exploit times of strong wind) Interface of intelligent grid with human users, markets and regulations. (www.pserc.cornell.edu; “EPNES” at www.nsf.gov.)