Nobel Laureate Steven Chu sees a biofuels revolution
Late last year, Professor Steven Chu held a talk at the World Affairs Council of Northern California in which he explains his work on advanced generations of biofuels and how science and technology could make the green fuels part of an entirely new, sustainable energy paradigm. Some of the world's best scientists - amongst them 43 Nobel Laureates - are working in Chu's Lab on bioenergy, renewables and global warming because the energy and climate challenges we face require a Manhattan Project approach, he says.
Professor Chu, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997, says no one nation can effectively reverse the growing problems caused by our changing climate and growing energy consumption. Coordinated global efforts - between governments, international organisations, and civil society - can help us conserve and develop new energy resources, as well as ensure the continued growth of emerging and developed nations.
Biofuels might play an important role in this development. Rapid scientific advances in biotechnology and plant sciences make the efficient production of renewable energy from non-food biomass - that is, cellulose, the world's most abundant organic compound - possible. Increases in the photosynthetic efficiency of plants will soon emerge, but the ultimate challenge will be to develop 'synthetic plants' with very high conversion efficiencies. Such artificial photosynthetic machines, inspired by nature, will make hydrocarbons out of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.
But before we get there, emerging advanced biofuels are likely to be applied on a world changing scale. The Nobel Laureate questions many of the conventional neo-malthusian views on the availability of natural resources. Instead, he says, there is a large enough carrying capacity - land, water, sunshine, soil and seeds - and institutional capacity to generate highly efficient, genuinely sustainable biofuels, food and fiber products for the population. With enough political will and the right policy choices, a secure energy and climate future based on biofuels becomes possible.
Current biofuels come with their problems and the dependence on food crops is not sustainable nor desirable. Scientists like Chu are therefor working to develop new biomass conversion technologies that could end the food versus fuel dilemma, and serve communities in poor countries. The Nobel Laureate refers to an energy crop like Miscanthus, which yields 10 times more fuel than corn, requires no fertilizer or water, reduces erosion by a factor of 100 and requires no till. It grows its own nitrogen fixing bacteria and improves soil properties. These crops will become the feedstocks of the future. Chu is working on novel and efficient ways to breakdown the cellulose of these plants, which would make biofuels abdunant and cheap. Genomics and genetic engineering of microbes (such as those found in termite guts) will accomplish the task.
In his talk, Chu also referred to the most comprehensive report written so far about the future of energy this century, the panel for which he co-chaired. It is the report titled 'Lighting the Way: Toward A Sustainable Energy Future', published by 13 National Science Academies, written by the world's leading energy scientists and discussed here. In it, the scientists warn for a potential energy crisis of unprecedented proportions, and call for the immediate implementation of new technologies and fuel sources - like biofuels and carbon-negative bioenergy - that can avert it. They conclude that biofuels hold great promise for simultaneously addressing climate-change and energy-security concerns. In all these efforts, the interests and needs of the poor - some 2 billion people without access to modern energy - should be met first.
Steven Chu is a Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Video courtesy of Fora.tv: Steven Chu, A New Energy Paradigm. Fora.tv hosts transcripts, downloads and a discussion forum for this video.
ethanol :: biodiesel :: biobutanol :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: Africa ::
1 Comments:
When are you going to start telling the truth instead of pandering to the anti-car lobby?
Climate change is NATURAL. The weather changes all the time.
The CO2 is already here or are aliens in spaceships dumping it on Earth?
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