Energy Prophecies

Related somewhat to the previous post, Arnold Kling has some interesting thoughts on alternative energies. He essentially makes predictions on where energy technology will steer itself over the next several decades. The key micropoints are: (1)in the immediate-term conservation will play a bigger role than technology, (2)technology will make the climate change debate obsolete before it becomes a major concern (this is an opinion I enthusiastically share) and (3)energy will become incredibly more diversified in the future (i.e. there is not one “solution”).

This seems especially promising for those individuals invested in and geared toward a career in energy and considerably less so for those concentrating on environmentalism per se. Kling's forecast is encouraging on its own merits, but discouraging (and even a little scary) if viewed in the context of reactionary politics--there is plenty of opportunity to hinder progress and screw things up (queue ethanol policy).

Granted, of course, that this is all highly speculative.

Starting now: conservation measures; upgrades of the power grid to make it more efficient and more intelligent (Cue Lynne Kiesling); new coal and nuclear power plants.

Starting in five years: cars that run on batteries, re-charged from the grid (often called plug-in hybrids). But we'd better have construction underway by then of those new coal and nuclear power plants.

Starting in fifteen years: fuels produced by bio-engineered organisms.

Starting in fifteen to twenty-five years: large scale solar power.

My guess is that about a decade from now "wet" nanotechnology (bio-engineered organisms) will have taken a big lead over "dry" nanotechnology, which is what most of the solar folks are thinking about. In fact, my expectation would be that the scalable, efficient solar solution will involve bio-engineered thingies.

Never becoming economical: hydrogen delivered in a way that is analogous to gasoline (we might see hydrogen used as part of the solution for re-chargeable batteries, but I doubt it); conventional biofuels (instead, biofuels will require yet-to-be engineered organisms); wind; coal-with-carbon-sequestration (by the time we figure out how to make sequestration practical, we'll have figured out that CO₂ is not a big factor in climate)

This is just intuition. I am not a scientist. The only people less qualified than I am in this area are the politicians who will be directing our energy policy.