Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2006 73rd Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section of the APS
Thursday–Saturday, November 9–11, 2006; Williamsburg, Virginia
Session FA: Energy Challenges for the 21st Century |
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Chair: Thomas Clegg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Room: Williamsburg Hospitality House Empire A/B |
Thursday, November 9, 2006 8:00PM - 8:50PM |
FA.00001: Achieving cheap clean energy for all in the 21$^{st}$ Century? Invited Speaker: Energy is essential for modern life and is a critical resource that we take for granted.~ Unfortunately, we are increasingly confronted by many unsettling questions: Is there enough cheap oil and gas remaining and should we start changing our life styles towards energy efficiency?~ What will be the price of oil and gas next year and will we face shortages?~ Are rising prices reflective of greed and manipulation or geopolitics or of real constraints?~ Will renewable sources provide a significant fraction of our energy needs? Is global warming already happening and is it a result of our ``addiction to oil''?~ If the answer to these is ``yes'', then what can we, as individuals, do to help ourselves, the nation, and the world?~ This talk will attempt to answer these questions by examining the global oil, gas and other resources, emerging constraints and opportunities, and geopolitics. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, November 9, 2006 8:50PM - 9:40PM |
FA.00002: The Peaking of World Oil Production: The Problem and Its Mitigation Invited Speaker: The peaking of world conventional oil production will be unlike any energy problem yet faced by modern industrial society. Without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be dire and unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking, because the scale of liquid fuels mitigation is inherently extremely large. When world oil peaking will occur is not known with certainty. A fundamental problem in predicting oil peaking is the poor quality of, and political biases in, world oil reserves data. Some experts believe peaking may occur soon, while some think later, but not beyond the time required for effective mitigation. The problems associated with world oil production peaking will not be temporary, and past ``energy crisis'' experience will provide relatively little guidance. Oil peaking will create a severe liquid fuels problem primarily for the transportation sector, not an ``energy crisis'' in the usual sense that term has been used. While greater end-use efficiency is essential, increased efficiency alone will be neither sufficient nor timely enough to solve the problem. Production of large amounts of substitute liquid fuels will be required. A number of commercial or near-commercial substitute fuel production technologies are currently available for deployment, so the production of vast amounts of substitute liquid fuels is feasible with existing technology. Intervention by governments will be required, because the economic and social implications of oil peaking would otherwise be chaotic. The experiences of the 1970s and 1980s offer important guides as to government actions that are desirable and those that are undesirable, but the process will not be easy. [Preview Abstract] |
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