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Applied Mathematics Colloquium

Friday, November 30, 11:30 am
Cullimore Lecture Hall II
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Energy Options for the 21st Century

Klaus Lackner

Earth Engineering Center

Columbia University

New York, NY

Abstract

With today’s energy technology, the world faces a stark choice between economic growth and a healthy environment. The challenge is to stop the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere while improving energy services to a growing world population who strives for a high standard of living. New energy technologies must reduce CO2 emissions by more than an order of magnitude. The only energy resources large enough to satisfy growing world demands are solar energy, nuclear energy and fossil fuels. While solar energy is unlimited in time, nuclear energy and fossil fuels will eventually run out out, but both would last for centuries. Each of these options has to overcome its own obstacles. To retain access to the vast resource base of fossil carbon, requires the efficient implementation of carbon capture and storage technologies. Capture option for CO2 capture at concentrated sources like power plants, steel plants or cement plants already exist. A new generation of efficient and clean power plants could capture its CO2 and deliver it for underground injection or mineral carbonation. However, the remaining half of CO2 emissions from distributed and mobile sources are too large to be ignored. Either one must replace carbonaceous energy carriers with carbon free energy carriers like hydrogen or electricity, or one must compensate for their CO2 emissions by capturing an equivalent amount of carbon from the environment. Biomass growth offers one such option; direct capture of carbon dioxide from the air provides another more efficient option.