Our Energy Challenge Lecture Review

by Susan Brockus

Nobel laureate Richard E. Smalley said the planet’s future energy needs will have to be met by “miracles” coming from the areas of science and engineering.

Smalley, the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry at Rice University in Houston and 1996 winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, addressed the topic of “Our Energy Challenge” to a packed house last September in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall.

Smalley’s presentation was the result of a “personal odyssey of discovery” that began shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. It was then that Smalley said he began talking to audiences about things other than science.

Smalley said he came up with a participation exercise in which the audience helped him create a list of the top 10 issues affecting humanity 50 years from now – when the population of the earth is anticipated to reach some 10 billion people. He did this at 14 different speaking engagements with a diverse mix of school, university, church, science, and business groups.

“It was sort of a group revelation to go through this list,” he said. “There was a tremendous amount of uniformity”

Smalley said the top concerns almost always were the same: shortages of energy, water and food; pollution of the environment; poverty; terrorism and war; disease; education; democracy; and overpopulation. He began to reason that if one of those concerns, energy, was moved to the top and solved with an abundant, low-cost supply, then at least five of the remaining problems could be solved.

“Energy is something we can go do something about,” he said. “We can fix this problem.”

Smalley noted that of the 6.5 billion in the world today only about 1.5 billion are living “a fulfilled lifestyle.” He said that the energy needs of previously under-developed countries like China and India are growing at rates that are faster than expected, which also signals an increasing demand for adequate supplies of food and water.

“The good news is we have plenty of water on this planet – but it has salt in it,” he said, noting that more energy would have to be expended to meet the need for water to drink and for irrigation of the crops needed to feed 10 billion people. “If you’ve got energy, you can solve this problem; we can make the deserts bloom.”

While the need for wide access to low-cost, clean energy seems obvious, Smalley said “we have a long way to go,” both in terms of changing current mindset and developing breakthrough technology.

Part of the problem is that the current reliance on oil and coal is very profitable for many people and companies. In dollar terms, global energy outlays are $3 trillion annually, compared to $1.3 trillion for agriculture and $700 billion for defense.

“Almost everyone has a vested interest in the current energy situation continuing – and that’s not going to make for a happy planet,” he said.

But depletion of oil as a future resource is very close: within the next 10 years, if not within the next two, Smalley said.

“We’re at the time when we walk into the wall,” he said. “Some of us are going to have to get our arms around this and solve the problem and not wait for God to do it.”

There is some hope that natural gas will be a viable substitute for oil, but Smalley noted that there is no way natural gas will be able to meet the needs of the planet by 2050. Instead, he said, it will take a revolution from oil/coal/gas carbon forms to some combination of other sources, including much greater reliance on solar, wind, and geothermal energy.

Smalley did not discount the potential of nuclear power, but said that problems relating to the radioactive waste it currently leaves behind must be solved.

“Purdue is one of the last places with a decent-sized nuclear engineering department – you ought to increase it,” he said, and was rewarded with a short round of applause.

Smalley, who is director of Rice University’s Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory, said that it is likely that nanotechnology research will have a role in solving the energy problems of the future. This is another area of strength for Purdue, which will have one of the largest, most progressive nanotechnology research centers in the nation upon completion of the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Discovery Park in 2006.

Perhaps the greatest source of untapped energy is from the “nuclear reactor up in they sky,” Smalley said, noting that the sun “is where the energy is.” The sun’s value as an energy source points to the importance of a space exploration program, which marks another area of research that has a long tradition at Purdue.

Smalley presented no preference for solutions to the energy crisis, only that the problem be acknowledged and a workable research plan set in motion.

“I don’t particularly care what the answer is – we just need to look for the answer,” he said.

Smalley said the challenge for the next few decades will be to set the target and get support for it. He pointed to the need to get children interested in science and to get the best students into the best universities. He said they need to understand that being a scientist or engineer in the future will be a job that helps save the world.

“We need miracles to happen,” he said. “Chances are the big miracles that really get us out of this are going to come from young brains.”

Smalley said he would like to see a $10 billion program initiated that would kick-start the efforts of science and technology toward a long-term energy solution. He said solution to the energy problem lies not with private enterprise, but is under study in universities, “to the extent it exists at all,” he said.

During a lengthy question-and-answer period, Smalley was asked what researchers could do to redirect the attention of the government toward the energy crisis. Smalley responded that one problem is that the scientific community has not done a very good job of articulating itself to governmental agencies, which hold the purse strings for a great deal of research funding.

“When a scientist gets up and says ‘I’ve got an idea, give me some money,’ it attracts a certain amount of skepticism,” he said. “The science and technology establishment is only slowly working up to these issues.”

Smalley’s presentation was sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the physics and chemistry departments, Schools of Science, Nuclear Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Liberal Arts, the College of Engineering, Discovery Park and the Sigma Xi Pioneers in Energy Lecture Series.

Richard E. Smalley’s research homepage: http://smalley.rice.edu/.

Story by Susan Brockus.