Remarks from Basic Research: Fueling America's Future Event - Steven Chu, Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Nobel Laureate

The energy problem has many dimensions: our vulnerability and addiction to imported oil, concerns over the cost of gasoline, concerns over climate change and how much we should invest to prevent disastrous consequences. 

Climate scientists have come along way towards understanding what could potentially happen, but skeptics do not believe there is a real chance of catastrophic climate change. The most recent observations tell us the risk is very real. The Stern Review Report states:

Under a BAU [Business as Usual] scenario, the stock of greenhouse gases could more than treble by the end of the century, giving at least a 50% risk of exceeding 5°C global average temperature change during the following decades. This would take humans into unknown territory … we are now only around 5°C warmer than in the last ice age.

A world average temperature change of 5°C does not sound like much, but a 5 degree warmer world will be a very different world. In the last ice age, roughly one third of the United States was covered year-round in a glacier. In this rapidly changing world, “adaptation” of a substantial fraction of the inhabitants of the Earth is not possible.

How do we balance dealing with today’s “clear and present” problems from the problems that we will bequeath to our children and grand children?
Is a 50% probability of disastrous social, economic and political risks a high enough threshold to act with urgency?

Suppose you had a small electrical fire and, as a precaution, you asked a structural engineer to look at your home’s wiring. She reports that the wiring is “shot” and there is a 50% chance that your house would burn down in the next few years unless you replace all the wiring. The job will cost $20,000.

$20,000 is a lot of money, so you get an independent assessment. The next engineer agrees with the first warning. You can either continue to shop for additional evaluations until you find the one engineer in 1,000 that is willing to give you the answer you want, “Your family is not in danger”… or you can change the wiring. It is unlikely that you will respond by only making sure your fire insurance payments are up to date. 

Our country needs to act quickly with fiscal and regulatory policies to insure widespread deployment of effective technologies that maximize energy efficiency and minimize carbon emission.

Some people claim we have all the technologies needed to cure our addiction to oil and decrease the world carbon emissions in an expanding global economy. I disagree, and so does Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy. He says

“It is a myth that we have the technologies to do the job. We don’t. New technologies are crucial as is further development of existing technology. As CEO of one of the world’s largest energy suppliers, I am committed to finding the solutions”. 

I applaud the investments being made by companies such as DuPont and Duke Energy. However, most companies are reluctant to invest in research into transformational technologies that may not see commercialization for 10 years, even though such technologies could dramatically change the entire energy landscape.
What is an example of a transformational technology? In the 1920’s and 1930’s, AT&T Bell Laboratories was focused on extending the life of vacuum tubes, which made transcontinental and transatlantic communications possible. The lifetime was extended first to two, then four, then six years. Another, much smaller research program was started to invent a completely new device based on recent scientific breakthroughs in quantum physics. The result was the transistor, which transformed communications and changed the world forever.
While the birth of the transistor is just one example of transformative research, it must be stressed that the birth of virtually all transformative technologies in electronics, medicine, and biotechnology in the 20th century were led by people trained, nurtured and imbedded in institutions steeped in a culture of fundamental research.

The great industrial research institutes such as Bell Labs are now mere shadows of their former glory. Government support of research at universities and national labs is our only hope to supply the science required to create transformative energy solutions.

At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science laboratory, and home to 11 Nobel Laureates, many of our very best scientists are turning their attention to the energy problem. In our Joint Bio-Energy Institute (JBEI), a team of scientists have dramatically altered yeast and bacteria into organisms that produce gasoline and diesel, and soon, jet-like fuels. Another group has already discovered an improved way to convert switch grass into the sugars needed to produce transportation fuel.

At Berkeley Lab, our researchers are developing nanotechnology based polymer photovoltaic cells with the goal of reducing the cost of electricity generation by more than a factor of five. If this goal is achieved, rapid deployment will occur without government subsidies. In collaboration with scientists from MIT and Cal Tech, another research program has begun in “artificial photosynthesis”, where electricity, and ultimately sunlight, is used to produce economically competitive transportation fuels from water and carbon dioxide.

I believe that aggressive support of energy science and technology, coupled with incentives that accelerate the development and deployment of innovative solutions, can transform the entire landscape of energy demand and supply. It is especially important that we invest in those ideas that industry has not yet been willing to explore.
 
What America and the world does in the coming decade will have enormous consequences that will last for centuries. The good news is that some of the country’s best scientific talent and new corps of idealistic students see the energy problem as an international crisis, and want to help solve it.

In closing, I quote William Faulkner, the 1950 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who spoke these words at the Nobel Banquet:

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

With these virtues, the world can and will prevail over our great energy challenge.