There are substantial challenges (technical, political, and
economic) involved
with widespread adoption of renewable energy technologies. Prof
Nathan Lewis (Caltech) will present an overview of available fossil
fuel resources and estimate the remaining years of supply of oil,
gas, and coal for use in primary power production. These sources can
then be compared to renewable energy technologies (wind, solar
thermal, solar electric, biomass, hydroelectric, and geothermal) to
evaluate the degree to which supply and demand may stimulate a
transition to renewable energy technologies. A greenhouse gas
constraint on total carbon emissions, in conjunction with global
population growth, is projected to drive the demand for carbon-free
power well beyond that produced by conventional pricing tradeoffs.
This informs the R&D investments needed to produce the required
quantity of carbon-free power by the 2050 timeframe, triggering
evaluations of the energy potential of renewable energy resources
and revealing scientific challenges
to cost-effective production of carbon-free power by the 2050
timeframe.
Dr. Nathan Lewis, George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry, has
been on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology since 1988
and has served as Professor since 1991. He has also served as the
Principal Investigator of the Beckman Institute Molecular Materials
Resource Center at Caltech since 1992. From 1981 to 1986, he was on
the faculty at Stanford, as an assistant professor from 1981 to 1985
and as a tenured Associate Professor from 1986 to 1988. Dr. Lewis
received his Ph.D in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Dr. Lewis has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, a Camille and Henry
Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and a Presidential Young Investigator. He
received the Fresenius Award in 1990, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry
in 1991, the Orton Memorial Lecture award in 2003, and the Princeton
Environmental Award in 2003. He has published over 200 papers and has
supervised approximately 50 graduate students and postdoctoral
associates.
His research interests include light-induced electron transfer
reactions, both at surfaces and in transition metal complexes,
surface chemistry and photochemistry of semiconductor/liquid
interfaces, novel uses of conducting organic polymers and
polymer/conductor composites, and development of sensor arrays that
use pattern recognition algorithms to identify odorants, mimicking
the mammalian olfaction process.
Introduction by Lars Bildsten.
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