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CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, US, May 10, 2006
(Refocus Weekly)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology says
there is need for a broad initiative that provides basic science
that may underpin a major transformation of the global energy system
in several decades to solar, biofuel, wind, geothermal and wave
energy.
The Energy Research Council was charged last June to explore how
MIT could help meet the global energy challenge, and 16 faculty
members from all five MIT schools spent a year preparing a 50-page
report which calls for an energy-focused laboratory or centre with
its own research space to be established within five years. An
independent steering organization would carry out MIT's new energy
initiatives and the report recommends a “multifaceted approach to
increasingly urgent energy issues.”
“The need for new global supplies of affordable, sustainable energy
is perhaps the single greatest challenge of the 21st century,” it
report states. “Increasing tension between supply and demand is
exacerbated by rapidly escalating energy use in developing
countries, security issues facing current energy systems and global
climate change. These converging factors create an unprecedented
scenario requiring a multifaceted approach to increasingly urgent
energy issues.”
“Today, many argue that conventional oil and gas supplies will be
unable to meet anticipated demand, and concomitantly will be much
more expensive, within decades,” it explains in the section on
renewables. “This lies at the core of major security concerns; the
contribution of large scale coal use without major environmental
consequences is uncertain.”
“Renewables hold the promise of addressing these security and
environmental concerns; this has been characterized as moving from
hunting and gathering fossil resources to farming renewable
resources,” it adds. “However, many challenges must be met
successfully if a renewables transition is to be accelerated
appreciably.”
The scale-up required for an appreciable contribution from non-hydro
renewables is “two to three orders of magnitude” and cost reduction
is essential, it adds. “The diffuse nature of renewable resources
means that, with current technology, very large land areas would be
required for the scale-up; environmental impact must be understood.”
“Intermittent renewables will need solutions to the energy storage
challenge for large scale deployment and, finally, policy
considerations are important for managing an infrastructure
transition to renewables,” it continues. “While this is a complex
and difficult set of issues, it is a crucial one for long-term
development of a global energy infrastructure that can address
simultaneously supply, security and environmental concerns. It is an
appropriate challenge for MIT and other research universities, and
several faculty groups are engaged in various facets of renewable
energy development.”
Wind energy faces challenges for large-scale deployment, including
intermittency and public acceptance in visible locations. A group at
MIT is pursuing floating wind platforms to accommodate offshore
windfarms, while another group is examining geothermal reservoir
characterization, reservoir design and stimulation.
“The solar opportunity represents a high payoff research direction
with significant reward (potentially hundreds of terawatts), but
substantial breakthroughs are needed,” it adds. “Today, there are
many options but no obvious silver bullet for dramatically reducing
the cost-to-efficiency ratio” and a number of MIT faculty are
working on a comprehensive program that can have impact at various
time scales. “An aggressive program is needed to develop nascent
technologies based on inorganic, organic, and photobiological
photovoltaics” while another direction will be solar photochemical
methods for fuel storage.
“Wave energy technologies have reached the demonstration stage at
some sites, but still face considerable challenges for widespread
large scale deployment,” including large daily to seasonal
variations, the need to go beyond linear concepts of resonance, and
the ability to operate safely in hostile weather.
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