Last week at work there was a very good talk about energy and the challenges ahead. It was in fact a shorter version of this talk by BP Chief Scientist Steve Koonin. It has a lot of good facts at the start to inform discussion and many interesting opinions at the end to spark discussion. The summary of the talk is that we might as well leave oil alone as the energy source for transportation, as that is a paltry 14% of energy use world wide and focus on reducing carbon emissions by traditional electric power generation, which holds the lions share of the energy use pie.
This is somewhat counter to the ideas heard daily in the news media, because those focus mostly on transportation energy, due to the high demand for stories about how to beat gas prices. Dr. Koonin focused very little on the price of gas, only showing what types and quantities of unconventional oil are available at what price points. That made me feel somewhat relaxed, in that if the world can handle stable $140 a barrel oil there are literally trillions of barrels of unconventional oil that are profitable. The thing that stood out in my mind was his enthusiasm for fusion power. Not because he was overly excited about it. He gave one branch a 50% shot of ever working (I think that’s how it was phrased). It stood out because I’ve never heard someone in such a position do anything but laugh at the prospect of fusion power.
Another surprising thing was the way he pretty completely dismissed solar power. At one point he showed the cost of photovoltaic solar power as well off the chart. He did say that, if someone can bring the cost down a lot then it’ll be considered. I guess the take away is that it won’t be BP who brings that cost down. The one big question I had after the talk, but not soon enough to ask it, was “What about non photovoltaic, thermal based solar power?” I’m actually not sure on the efficiencies of thermal verses photovoltaic solar power, but I at least assume thermal must be cheaper per joule. Otherwise no one would use it because it requires much larger scale construction than does photovoltaic. Anyways, if you’ve got an hour and a half and are interested its quite refreshing to hear an oil companies perspective on all this. Its also quite informative.