Be a scientist and save the world, says Smalley

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News Staff

The overwhelming need for new sources of clean energy in the next 50 years — energy that can come only from undiscovered technologies — means the fate of human civilization rests with the next generation of physical scientists and engineers.

Consequently, the United States needs a national program on par with the Apollo moon missions that will excite kids about science and encourage them to become researchers.

“The message is simple: Be a scientist, save the world,” Richard Smalley said at the Jan. 23 kickoff event for this spring’s University Professor Lecture Series.

Smalley’s 90-minute speech to an overflow audience in McMurtry Auditorium was sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the George R. Brown School of Engineering.

“Energy is the most important problem facing mankind today,” Smalley said. “It is a solvable problem, but solving it will require revolutionary breakthroughs in the physical sciences and engineering — breakthroughs that must be made by the next generation of scientists and engineers.”

Smalley called upon U.S. leaders to create a new program to create sources of clean energy. The nation should take the lead in funding research on alternative energy and in revolutionizing the world’s $3 trillion energy industry.

Smalley became interested in energy policy last summer when he was asked to testify before Congress regarding energy research priorities. In preparing his congressional testimony, he researched current energy use, population trends, the environmental and economic consequences of continued dependence on fossil fuels and the future energy requirements needed to sustain economic development worldwide.

What he found was startling.

World population will increase from about 6.3 billion today to some 10 billion in 2050. Today’s daily energy usage — about 14 terawatts from all sources — will double or quadruple in that time.

Most of today’s energy comes from oil, and global oil production will peak well before 2050, meaning less oil will be produced each year.

The reasons for this will be purely economic: despite the fact that more than half the world’s petroleum reserves will remain untapped, it will cost too much to recover them, in spite of spiraling prices that result from rising demand and falling supply.

And aside from recovery costs, the environmental costs of dependence on greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels are already becoming prohibitive.

Tomorrow’s energy picture must therefore be the inverse of today’s: Whereas clean sources of power like solar, wind and geothermal account for less than 1 percent of today’s total, they must account for 50 percent or more by 2050.

Smalley said it is a mistake to overlook the fact that almost a quarter of the world’s population still has no access to electricity. For the most part, these 1.5 billion people burn wood to cook and keep warm.

Conservative estimates of future energy use don’t take Third World development into account.

So the challenge for humanity is to provide about 60 terawatts of clean electric power to 10 billion people in both developed and underdeveloped nations by 2050. To give a sense of scale, that’s about 30,000 times the energy used each day in Houston.

This revolution in energy production and transport will be economically viable only if the per capita cost of delivering the energy is pennies per day. If that is to happen, Smalley said revolutionary, new technologies are needed, including:

photovoltaic solar collectors that are as cheap and easy to apply as paint
new methods and lightweight materials for hydrogen storage
a 10- to 100-fold decrease in the cost of fuel cells
methods to use sunlight to break down atmospheric carbon dioxide into liquid fuels like methanol
electric storage technology that’s 10 to 100 times more efficient than today’s
superconducting, high-current cables or quantum wires that will enable a worldwide power grid
low-cost, light-emitting diodes and other forms of power-stingy lighting
new methods of reacting gaseous carbon dioxide with solid minerals like basalt
deep-drilling technology needed for geothermal heat mining
new materials and robotic techniques for building orbital and lunar solar collectors

Smalley concluded with a set of slides that documented the startling decline in Ph.D.s awarded in the physical sciences in the United States. He said this trend must be addressed if America is to produce the scientists and engineers who will lead the energy revolution.

The University Professor Lecture series features Smalley and Ken Kennedy, who were recently promoted to the rank of University Professor. Smalley is also the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and professor of physics. Kennedy is the Ann and John Doerr Professor in Computational Engineering and Computer Science and professor in computer and electrical engineering.

A webcast of Smalley’s speech is available at <www.rice.edu/webcast/>
and his PowerPoint presentation is available at <www.ruf.rice.edu/~smalleyg>.

Be a scientist and save the world, says Smalley