Energy: One of the Great Challenges for Engineering

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) created a list of the great engineering challenges for this century and released it in February of 2008. The first three items on their list of fourteen deal with energy production:

• Make solar energy economical
• Provide energy from fusion
• Develop carbon sequestration methods

The world's economy runs on fossil fuels. In general, you need to put in a unit of energy to get a unit of GDP. Some production is more energy efficient than others, but we will not be able to reduce fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions by conservation alone.

There are two problems with getting energy by burning fossil fuels:

1. They contribute to global warming.
2. They are non-renewable.

Since fossil fuels are non-renewable, at some point we will have to accept decreased global economic production or find something else with same energy density and a way to extract that energy easily. Although it would not be as bad as people imagine, accepting decreased production (i.e. a "lower standard of living") is antithetical to a world that feels the need to produce more-and-more each year. Therefore, some source of cheap energy must be found.

Nuclear fusion is a likely source. There must be an energy vehicle with high energy density like gasoline from unlimited nuclear energy. The challenge will be to find an energy vehicle with the energy density of gasoline but that does not emit greenhouse gases when the energy is used. This means we need to create a fuel cell technology that stores energy without burning or we need to find a way to contain the carbon produced by burning.

Solar energy is a piece of the energy puzzle over the next century. In the long-run, however, given how much energy we would like to use, it's hard to see solar being a major energy source.

This is a timely issue with oil prices at record levels. Those prices will encourage the search for more energy. We need to make sure most of that search takes the form of finding sustainable energy and not just exploring for more oil. Exploring for oil is important, but within this century what's now called alternative energy sources will just be energy.

Improving urban infrastructure, which also made the list, could turn out to be the most import energy issue. In new energy technologies don't work out, it would be to have cities designed to be energy efficient. If energy becomes a problem and affects GDP growth, it will be a pity to be using our scare resources to carry 1200kg of metal around with us wherever we go to accommodate cities design in the era of cheap energy.