High-tech will relieve energy crisis--some day

High-tech will relieve energy crisis--some day

EE Times
(06/10/2008 6:53 PM EDT)

ANAHEIM, Calif. — A crack panel of electronics industry experts discussing election-year politics at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) here Tuesday (June 10) were nearly unanimous in agreeing that neither a technological nor policy solution can soon halt the skyrocketing price of gasoline for American business and consumers.

Clayton Parker, vice president of Magma Design Automation and formerly a U.S. deputy assistant trade representative in the Clinton administration, saw the current dilemma as inevitable prelude to solving the energy crisis in the long run. "Prices going up is the best way of dealing with it," he said. "Let the market do its work."

The crisis, added Russell Lefevre, president of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE), can't be solved by Congress. "I don't think any one bill you can conjure can actually fix it," he said, "There will be a really important energy bill next year, and I think what we will see is something to encourage innovation."

On the other hand, the panelists were broadly optimistic about the power of innovation to guide America away from its dependence on foreign oil. Among the measures certain to prod this wave of new ideas will be legislation forcing industries to limit carbon emissions and to do so through a cap-and-trade system similar to many now already in use in Europe.

Vicki Hadfield, president of the Washington-based SEMI North America, cited rapid growth in "clean energy" technologies in many U.S. industries, especially 40 percent growth last year in the solar energy sector. As oil prices rise, the "grid equity" gap between oil and alternative sources shrinks, she said. Hadfield added that solar-cell efficiency, aided by nanotechnology advances, will improve, further narrowing the gap.

"The U.S. should focus as much on opportunity as on threat and should really harness our resources to make the U.S. one of the strongest players" in solar and alternate energy development, she said.

"Let's be great people on energy production," added panelist Todd Cutler, senior worldwide marketing director at Agilent. "The government can help a bunch. Those billions go a long way."

Chris Rowen, founder and CEO of Tensilica Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.), endorsed this positive view, noting that the products made by high-tech companies consumer 6 percent of U.S. power but could reduce that drain by as much as 50 percent.

"We can and should position the industry as being a very big part of the solution," he said, "as a community."

The panel's concerns ranged from the hot topic of gas prices to the only slightly cooler issue of immigration, and to less touchy matters like government investment in research and development.

On immigration, much of the campaign rhetoric has focused on deporting undocumented workers and halting suspicious foreigners at the border. As one foreign-born member of the audience said, tongue-in-cheek, "How do we keep those damn foreigners out?" But the high-tech execs on the panel preferred to plot ways to get more foreign engineers and students into the United States. Magma's Parker referred to the situation as "an arms race for minds."

The IEEE's Lefevre pointed to a critical shortage of engineers, in which more than 50,000 jobs will go unfilled this year. The U.S. is not producing enough engineering graduates to fill the jobs, and post-9/11 visa restrictions on potential immigrant engineers are choking off the flow, as well as discouraging foreign graduates of U.S. engineering schools from staying here.

R&D "stimulus is important," he said, "but getting people here to do the jobs is critical."

However, said Rowen of Tensilica, "It's difficult in an election year to stand up and say we need to let more foreigners in."

Meanwhile, said Hadfield, government lip service in support of high-tech R&D isn't cutting it. Congress has passed the America Competes Act, but in the last round of budgeting, eliminated the roughly $5 billion in the act promised to the National Science Foundation and National Institute for Standards and Technology.

"The seed corn for the future," she said, "comes out of this basic research."

But Rowen neatly summarized the difficulty of getting money for basic and esoteric technology research in a campaign season when most voters have more pressing and personal concerns.

Said Rowne: "It's hard to make a stump speech about R&D tax credits when the other guy is talking about gas prices."