Richard E. Smalley, who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry, is a Professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas and director of Rice University's Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory.

Professor Smalley believes the energy needs of the world demand a new, sustainable energy source ... Professor Smalley says "Energy is the single most important problem facing humanity today – not just the U.S., but also worldwide. The magnitude of this problem is incredible. Energy is the largest enterprise on Earth – by a large margin. In dollar terms, global energy outlays are $3 trillion annually, compared to $1.3 trillion for agriculture and $700 billion for defense. While conservation efforts will help the worldwide energy situation, the problem by mid-century will be inadequate supply." The solution, in his view, is a combination of solar energy and developing nanotechnology to harness energy from the sun.

Transcript of the Testimony of Richard E. Smalley to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; Hearing on sustainable, low emission, electricity generation, April 27, 2004.

"Energy is the single most important challenge facing humanity today.

As we peak in oil production and worry about how long natural gas will last, life must go on. Somehow we must find the basis for energy prosperity for ourselves and the rest of humanity for the 21st century. By the middle of this century we should assume we will need to at least double world energy production from its current level, with most of this coming from some clean, sustainable, CO2-free source.

For worldwide peace and prosperity it must be cheap.

We simply cannot do this with current technology. We will need revolutionary breakthroughs to even get close.

I am an American scientist brought up in the Midwest during the Sputnik era, and like so many of my colleagues in the US and worldwide, I am a technological optimist. I think we can do it. We can find “the New Oil”, the new technology that provides the massive clean, low cost energy necessary for advanced civilization of the 10 billion souls we expect to be living on this planet before this century is out.

Electricity will be the key.

Consider, for example, a vast interconnected electrical energy grid for the North American Continent from above the Artic Circle to below the Panama Canal. By 2050 this grid will interconnect several hundred million local sites. There are two key aspects of this future grid that will make a huge difference: (1) massive long distance electrical power transmission, and (2) local storage of electrical power with real time pricing.

Storage of electrical power is critical for stability and robustness of the electrical power grid, and it is absolutely essential if we are ever to use solar and wind as our dominant primary power source. The best place to provide this storage is locally, near the point of use. Imagine by 2050 that every house, every business, every building has its own local electrical energy storage device, an uninterruptible power supply capable of handling the entire needs of the owner for 24 hours. Since the devices are small, and relatively inexpensive, the owners can replace them with new models every 5 years or so as worldwide technological innovation and free enterprise continuously and rapidly develop improvements in this most critical of all aspects of the electrical energy grid.

Today using lead-acid storage batteries, such a unit for a typical house to store 100 kilowatt hours of electrical energy would take up a small room and cost over $10,000. Through revolutionary advances in nanotechnology, it may be possible to shrink an equivalent unit to the size of a washing machine, and drop the cost to less than $1,000. With intense research and entrepreneurial effort, many schemes are likely to be developed over the years to supply this local energy storage market that may expand to several billion units worldwide.

With these advances the electrical grid can become exceedingly robust, since local storage protects customers from power fluctuations and outages. With real-time pricing, the local customers have incentive to take power from the grid when it is cheapest. This in turn permits the primary electrical energy providers to deliver their power to the grid when it is most efficient for them to do so, and vastly reduce the requirements for reserve capacity to follow peaks in demand. Most importantly, it permits a large portion — or even all — of the primary electrical power on the grid to come from solar and wind.

The other critical innovation needed is massive electrical power transmission over continental distances, permitting, for example, hundreds of gigawatts of electrical power to be transported from solar farms in New Mexico to markets in New England. Then all primary power producers can compete with little concern for the actual distance to market. Clean coal plants in Wyoming, stranded gas in Alaska, wind farms in North Dakota, hydroelectric power from northern British Columbia, biomass energy from Mississippi, nuclear power from Hanford Washington, and solar power from the vast western deserts, etc., remote power plants from all over the continent contribute power to consumers thousands of miles away on the grid. Everybody plays. Nanotechnology in the form of single-walled carbon nanotubes (a.k.a. “buckytubes”) forming what we call the Armchair Quantum Wire may play a big role in this new electrical transmission system.

Such innovations in power transmission, power storage, and the massive primary power generation technologies themselves, can only come from miraculous discoveries in science together with free enterprise in open competition for huge worldwide markets.

America, the land of technological optimists, the land of Thomas Edison, should take the lead. We should launch a bold New Energy Research Program. Just a nickel from every gallon of gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and jet fuel would generate $10 billion a year. That would be enough to transform the physical sciences and engineering in this country. Sustained year after year, this New Energy Research Program will inspire a new Sputnik Generation of American scientists and engineers. At minimum it will generate a cornucopia of new technologies that will drive wealth and job creation in our country. At best we will solve the energy problem within this next generation; solve it for ourselves and, by example, solve it for the rest of humanity as well.

Give a nickel. Save the world."

I answered a quiz some time ago, and the cost for this for my house would have been over $11,000. Not very cost effective right now and at my age.

Is anyone working on this particular advance in energy storage??? Solar and wind power are sound alternatives; I'd write a check in a heartbeat for the $1,000 option!!!!!

Things I wish people knew...
-Electric Motors give more torque, acceleration, and more power than a gasoline engine. The only draw back is the size of the power source needed. Increase the funding and technology, and the size of a fuel cell will shrink.
-The sun bombards each square meter of the Earth with 1380 Joules of energy per second, which is 23 Watts per hour. In other words, a football field has 115 kW/h of energy bombarding it during the day.
-The amount of energy that the sun bombards onto Ohio would be enough energy to power the United States. We just need to make solar panels 100% to accomplish that. Today a great solar panel would be 20% efficient.
-Oil research today gets more funding from the United States than all of the other fuel technologies receive combined.

Yes German Bayer concern (A humongus chemical corporation), several Japanese Zaibatsus (Large scale industry groups). Israel has also founded research into this area whit succes. if there is an interest for it i would gladly compile a list for use for anybody in here, that might find it interesting, on average the german and dutch/finns developments in this area whit lightweight energy storage is furthest along and many systems can be got for use in auto campers and the like for 600$+

I'm a proponent of zinc air fuel cells. ZAFCs as mentioned in a Lawrence Livermore National Lab article at

http://www.llnl.gov/PAO/Newsstand/articles...-26-97zinc.html

would be more powerful than hydrogen PEM fuel cells. However, hydrogen is getting all the attention.

"Behold the power of zinc" at http://www.evworld.com/archives/interviews2/colborn.html
will help you understand more about ZAFCs.

Metallic Power is going out of business: Friday, October 29, 2004 Metallic Power Shuts Doors. The San Diego Union Tribune is reporting that Carlsbad-based Metallic Power has shut its doors ...
http://www.socaltech.com/fullstory/0001124.html

The Zinc technology is interesting but failed in the 'free market'.

Dr. Smalley is saying that existing technology is not going to do it. The United States, as a nation, needs to make an all out effort in new research with the goal of discovery and developing new energy technology - from nanotechology and other science and physical engineering disciplines.

You can download a 40 minute video lecture by Dr. Smalley from the Our Energy Challenge web page.

Wow ! If Zinc Air Fuel Cells are 'uneconomic' in the free market just think what hydrogen PEM fuel cells will be like...zinc BTW costs fifty cents per pound while platinum (the PEM's catalyst) costs $850 an ounce.

Other companies, like eVionyx, will probably make ZAFCs work just fine overseas by OUTSOURCING the work...while US workers are left in the lurch.

I think we should start investing in wind power. The states of the northern plains are the best spot to start. But before this can happen, high power transmission lines need to be built to transfer this electricity from the turbines to the cities. Alternatively, we could use these turbines to produce hydrogen, but that would likely be much more expensive to transport unless an infrastructure was built.

I was in Germany for the summer, and in Germany there are tens of thousands of wind turbines scattered across the country. Germany gets somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of its electricity from the wind. These turbines are built in places where the wind blows quite consistently. While I was in Germany, of the thousands of turbines which I saw daily, I would estimate that I saw motion cease less than 10 times over the entire period I spent in Germany.

Nearly every state in America has the potential for wind power as a serious resource. (Potential for my state is shown in this link, with 5 being the most potential http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap3/3-17m.html )

As a demonstration for what kind of potential the Northern Plains have, I present North Dakota (Highest potential in country, 138,400 MW: http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps...ifs/map3-12.gif


Wind energy surely is not the only way to solve our energy problems, but it sure is a step in the right direction.


More info: American Wind Energy Association
http://www.awea.org/projects/index.html

The greatest problem ZAFC has is the chemical fact that zinc is poisonous, and a that it is a powerful allegen contrary to platinium.
Other wise the tech nedde to get use of them is about 10 years behind PEM, but it defininently has a future as seen by the investment that EU and ASEAN + China has investet in it.

local online 'greengate' here, 04/11/2004:

USA Princeton university scientists performed a test modelling a hypothetical giant wind power 'plant' in Great planes, Oklahoma. Research results published in „Journal of Geophysical Research” clearly state, that thousands of wind turbines working have influence on local weather.

10 000 wind turbines worked in this simulated plant. There is constant night wind in the area, separating cool and humid near-to-earth layer from the higher, drier and warmer air. Turbulence caused by turbines would destroy separating line.

Change of current air layers would lead to significant weather changes in the area, similar to ones occurring on huge landscapes where trees have been cut down. One of these wheather change symptoms would be increase in heavy rainfall.

The scientists agree that it is hard to relate a computer model to actual weather. But the need to plan for downsizing possible environmental hazards should be obvious.
Small 'wind parks', consisting of up to 100 turbines are so far not known to have influence upon weather.

based on New York Times
---------------------------------
(i apologize for any translation mistakes)

Alexander38

""Zinc appears to be rather non-poisonous, though in large quantities it is carcinogenic. It is used in several lotions applied topically. If zinc oxide is breathed, the strange nervous malady "oxide shakes" seems to result.""--from www.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/zinc.htm

With ZAFCs zinc oxide is immersed within potassium hydroxide catalyst liquid, not breathed. Platinum's cost is what is messing up the hydrogen "future" the auto industry has planned for us. Only a few years back the PEM required $10,000 worth of platinum...today it's still fairly high an amount per vehicle. The national labs walked away from ZAFCs to persue 'solid oxide fuel cells' and hydrogen fuel cells mainly because they are viewed as "Bridges" that is still using fossil fuels for the fuel cells. True alternatives, like ZAFCs have been shelved to allow the Big Oil companies and their dependents a last gasp of thirty or so years....Time is wasted on these bridges; I say burn them now and get on with true alternatives while there is still time !

We live out on some acreage and have slowly become less and less dependent upon others for our resources over the years. We have cisterns for potable water, so we don't have to rely on a company that sells treated lake water (yuk) and we have a backup up well which we only use when the cisterns are low (which is seldom). We would like to move to wind and solar for our power, but the energy companies here (Texas) struggle with that concept. Some have agreed to buy back the power that is generated by individual homeowners, but other companies try to put roadblocks in place. Wind and solar are viable sources of energy and have been used for some time now, very effectively. I would like to know more about companies listed on the stock market which are exploring alternative energy. I would like to invest in them and turn the money spigot completely OFF for oil and gas. Just knowing that my nickle would stay out of the pockets of Halliburton and the Bush family spurs me on!!!

Have you contacted Green Mountain Energy? They are retailing renewable energy here in Texas, and building new generation. I'm new to the state, came from Iowa, where the utility regulation is stricter and is just now opening up for small scale production.

The discussion about energy is too much concentrated on energy sources. Yes, we need sources - but the most important potential is to use energy more efficiently. If you look at the contemporary use of energy from a physical point of view, you will see: What we are doing is to spend energy to keep systems in an instable equilibrium. Example: We are heating (or cooling) buildings in order to have the temperature higher (or lower) than the temperature of the environment. But this can be done by other measures as well: e.g. by insulation and heat recovery. In Europe we succeeded to build homes which consume less than ONE TENTH of the heating energy normally used. These houses are called "passive houses". There are thousands of them already existing and you can find lots of sources about this on the world wide web. If you need only one tenth of the energy, it is far less difficult to have energy sources for the remaining demand.

The passive houses are just examples; the principle can be used for highly efficient cars, washing mashines, refridgerators and even for production processes.

The interesting thing with efficiency is, that it will be "produced" by almost all parts of the economy: Producing better windows, insulation materials, heat recovery units AND installing that equipment will produce a lot of added value and therefor be an incentive for economic growth.

Kind regards from Old Europe - and thank you very much for keeping the discussion going on.

A lot of discussion about wind...

Dr. Smalley, in "Our energy challenge" recognizes wind and solar, and sees solar as the ultimate renewable source with enough energy to provide ten billion modern consumers in the year 2050 and beyond.

However, he is pointing out that today's energy storage and transmission technology is inadequate. He sees our only hope to be found in new technology - yet to be discovered. He says nanotechnology holds the greatest promise to deliver the new energy of the future. If the American people would agree to pay only 5 cents with every gallon of gasoline (transportation fuel), to be used for energy research - we would have ten billion dollars every year to invest in new technology research.

Dr. Smalley says that a political leader must define the national mission, like JFK defined the race to the moon. Following JFK's call - AND FUNDING - for the Apollo program, thousands of young Americans committed their lives to the physical sciences and engineering. Out of that program came countless inventions and discoveries that we rely upon today. Dr Smalley is one of the young Americans who was inspired to commit to the program - Dr. Smalley became a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1996.

Dr. Smalley points to the statistics that show a decline in College enrollment in the physical sciences and engineering programs... in the USA, but a huge increase in Asian science and engineering student enrollment.

Dr. Smalley explains (watch his video lecture) that if this trend continues - the future will belong to China, Korea and Japan - the USA will fall.... behind....

See: http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/...ychallenge.html

dsmo:



My perception of this is that it is a wonderful concept. For too long proper opportunities have not been offered to the rural populace. The fuel is free. It is using the power of providence. The soil of America cannot be truly free when we are beholden to others for our energy needs.

I wish the Democratic Party had used that statement as the cornerstone of their campaign - instead of Bush bashing and anti-war whining.

Isn't it obvious that energy independence would eliminate the underlying cause of this war?

The Sudan is proof: The US Military will not go into the Sudan to "liberate" them, because they don't have anything the US needs.

The result of the election is proof that the majority of Americans don't agree with the direct "anti-war" rhetoric.

However, I find that most everyone agrees that energy independence is important and crucial to ending the conflict in the Middle East.

The WMD was a ruse – Democrats fell for it and took their eye off of the goal of energy independence.

I agree! I was sorely disappointed that energy independence was not a huge issue in the campaign. It was a golden opportunity. where was discussion of energy and environment in this campaign? MIA

[quote=Cyndi,Nov 5 2004, 03:19 AM]
<snip>
Transcript of the Testimony of Richard E. Smalley to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; Hearing on sustainable, low emission, electricity generation, April 27, 2004.
quote<snip>
Storage of electrical power is critical for stability and robustness of the electrical power grid, and it is absolutely essential if we are ever to use solar and wind as our dominant primary power source. The best place to provide this storage is locally, near the point of use.
<snip>
With these advances the electrical grid can become exceedingly robust, since local storage protects customers from power fluctuations and outages. With real-time pricing, the local customers have incentive to take power from the grid when it is cheapest.
<snip> end quote

It will be even more useful if the consumer is allowed to sell back to the utility. Here in New York, the retail cost of off-peak electricity is about 3 times the on-peak cost. A system with even a 50% round-trip efficiency AC to AC could make money on a daily basis, buying at 3AM and selling at 3 PM. With modern communications technology, the utilities could ever ask to buy "reactivity" (that is, the lag or lead of current vs voltage) from appropriately designed inverters.

We are pretty close to the efficiency requirements, but the legal tariffs are not there.

-Gerhard

I'd like to see more discusson on the use of solar power.

I am building a new home, out in the country, in 2009 (yes, 5 years from now). Because the property doesn't have utilities running to it, the difference between running lines and setting up a solar system became less of an issue.

To set up a solar system that will run the entire house and barn, the set-up of the system, including fuel cells and panels, would run about $25K. I plan on housing it in the loft area of the barn, so space is not an issue.

However, at that point, the utility bills end. Period. Some minimal costs are involved in replacing fuel cells on occasion.

Take into account the fact that my current electric & gas bills combined run about $200 a month (house only), at today's rates.

So, in 10 years, you've saved in electrical bills what you paid for the entire system, plus you continue to save after that.

Add to that the income tax break you get for going with a wind or solar powered home, and here in Texas, there are property tax breaks as well.

I'd like to see more homebuilders build homes based on at least 50% solar energy. The prices would drive up on the homes, true, but the benefit to the buyer would be manyfold financially. Plus, by making the system part of the home cost, they could finance the system into the mortgage.

I suggest that you build an energy efficient home requiring minimum energy to heat and cool. Orient the home to use passive solar energy. Build it with thermal mass materials to absorb solar energy. Outer and inner walls of concrete/adobe seperated by expanded foam insulation. Use a roof overhang allowing sunshine to enter in winter and block it in summer. The solar mass and insulation keep heat out in summer and absorb it in the winter. Good luck!

That may be the most important aspect, especially as it does not depend upon climate (ours here in NH is not optimal for solar collection) and lot characteristics (we eventually settled on a slightly North-sloping location, though the house is tall enough to collect on the South-facing attic roof).

Building in the woods moderates temperatures both summer and winter by at least 5 degrees F, plus provides further benefits in cold weather by moderating the wind. Keeping the deciduous trees on the South side of the house provides shade in summer without blocking sunlight in winter.

We built both walls and roof to a nominal R value of 45 (13" of fiberglass: dual 2x4 walls with 6" of additional insulation between them), with careful attention to vapor barrier (and 'breathing space' below the roof plywood). A small 5,000 BTU/h room air conditioner is all we've needed to remain comfortable in summer (the outside temperature seldom exceeds 85 degrees F), and the smallest propane furnace we could find (38,000 BTH/h) can maintain 70 degrees F inside at -10 degrees F outside overnight in winter (we installed it last winter after I got fed up with heating with wood for the previous decade). The heated/cooled house area is about 3500 square feet not including heated attic and semi-heated cellar - and I've still got a ways to go in finishing insulating and sealing, especially regarding avoidable heat loss through the attic active-air-collection mechanism (which isn't functioning as well as it should any more).



As noted above, how effective steps like this will be depends rather significantly on the climate. Some areas have very reliable sunshine in quantities sufficient to dispense with other heating methods entirely, but ours does not.

What it boils down to is that passively-heated thermal mass won't do the job very well in many climates because there's not enough sun during the day to carry you through much of the night (unless you consider consider fully-glazed South walls with movable insulated shutters to be included in the definition of 'passive'). And longer-term heat storage in supplementary mass is neat in theory but not necessarily cost-effective.

For us here in NH, sunlight is not sufficiently reliable to provide good passive solar heating (i.e., it's not worth doing much more than biasing the total window area you want to keep from feeling like you're living in a cave toward the South sides of your rooms).

(All the above assumes that you're not interested in partially-underground housing, which is another promising avenue for exploration but definititely qualifies as an alternative lifestyle as well as raising some interesting construction challenges.)



We did this and it helps, even with our deciduous trees there. Of course, if you want a tennis court as your South yard it's even more important.

Good luck. If you do the job right, you'll derive a lot of satisfaction from minimizing your reliance on resources which we ought to be conserving (as well as the obvious financial benefits therefrom).

- bill

I assume that you have an outside air exchanger without it your modified Arkansas house could be a bit stuffy.

Texas an NH are 'slightly' different. I am familiar with what you have done. Using concrete or other massive building materials may not capture enough solar heat in NH but it will capture heat from a ceramic stove,Kachelofen http://mha-net.org/msb/index.htm. The Kachelofen is vastly superior to a cast iron stove and has been used in Germany and Scandanavia for many centuries.

Actually, not yet - as I noted, I've still got some sealing to finish, and air infiltration takes care of that problem while driving up the heating load beyond the level which I eventually hope to attain. The spaciousness of the house probably helps as well.



Of course - I must have missed the reference to location, if there was one.



That helps eliminate the annoyance of rising during the night to feed the stove (a wood furnace can do the same, though my impression is that they may be a bit behind the better stoves in technology - why, I have no idea, since they'd be a great option to have in this locale), but does not affect the total heating load. And while we did use a concrete foundation insulated externally to R20 (R10 well below ground level), the advantages of heat-retention did not seem to outweigh the awkwardness of using it for the main frame of the house (actually, the eventual heating load should make the thermal mass of the interior drywall sufficient to keep the overnight temperature from dropping more than a few degrees with no additional heat input).

I had originally planned to circulate warm air from the attic collectors to thermal mass (water containers) in the cellar for multi-day storage (I considered circulating it under the cellar slab, but decided that it made more sense to leave the slab uninsulated, since we don't care if the cellar temperature drops into the mid-50s, and store the energy somewhere easier to insulate where it could be extracted for use where we wanted it). But the overall heat load is low enough, and the collection marginal enough, that I'm not sure I'll ever implement that part (though avoiding virtually all need for a furnace would still be pleasing).

Had we used our original lot (on a South-facing hillside) I planned to use a ground-floor water storage wall with insulating night (or cloudy day) shutters: almost passive, and relatively easy to construct if properly designed.

- bill

The only way your going to encourage devlopment and use of alternative energy sources is via price. The price of energy in particular fossil derived must rise. The money raised would go towards cleaning up Co2 , development etc.

The price of the U.S. presence in the Middle Eeast for over 20 years has cost in the neighborhood of a Trillion dollars. The U.S.A could have avoided 2 idiotic oil wars if we had started to develop alternatives to oil after the first OPEC oil problem. All Brazilian gasoline has contained from 22 to 25% ethanol for the last 20 years. Now 40% of Brazilian vehicles are flex-fuel and can run on 100% ethanol.

The DOE and USDA have been trying to encourage this for some time. The U.S could have been producing 25 to 35 billion gallons of ethanol per year from feed corn for the last 20 years along with high-protein brewer's grain to completely replace the corn used as feed stock. The U.S. has had the technology to produce ethanol from switchgrass which is native to the dry Great Plains for some time. This could provide enough biomass cellulose to produce enough ethanol to replace all of the 120 billion gallons of oil we use for gasoline.

Alcohol fuel does not increase the amount of greenhouse gasses in the environment. The COX produced burning alcohol fuel is recycled by plants during photosynthesis to produce more biomass for fuel. Another big problem solved! Unfortunately our politicians are not well educated in alternative fuel technology.

Flex-fuel and Plug-in hybrid alcohol electric vehicles would have alloved the U.S. to achieve the 50% tougher CAFE standard that McCain and Kerry wanted ahead of the schedule in their bill.

You might spread the word to the people discussing the other topics controlled by the U.S. Energy Policy: Security, Foreign Policy, Economy, Middle East.