Our nation faces a grand challenge: finding
alternatives to fossil fuels and improving energy efficiency
to meet our exponentially growing energy needs over the
next century and beyond.
The U.S. currently consumes
about 3.5 terawatts of energy on a continual basis — think
35 billion 100-watt light bulbs burning constantly, or the
output of 3,500 coal-burning power plants.
And U.S.
demand for energy will continue to increase, upwards
of 50 percent for electricity alone by the year 2030.
Science can meet this daunting challenge — not by making
incremental improvements in existing technologies, but
through fundamental, game-changing approaches fueled
by an investment in basic research.
Right now, we derive the bulk of the energy we use from
oil, gasoline, coal, and natural gas — non-renewable fossil
fuels that, when burned, add carbon to Earth’s atmosphere.
Levels of human activity-generated carbon dioxide (CO2)
going into the atmosphere are at an all-time high, and
CO2 is the main “greenhouse gas” associated with climate
change.
In addition, our current dependence on fossil fuels
means that we have no choice but to rely on imports, a
large fraction of which come from increasingly unstable
parts of the world.