(364g) Sustainable Energy Production: The Great 21st Century Challenge in Chemical Engineering

Massive scale integrated chemical transformations will always be central to producing fuels and chemicals to sustain a prosperous society and this is what chemical engineers do. Whether or not the earth's climate is being adversely affected by humankind's reliance on fossil fuels ? they are a finite and their use unsustainable economically, if not environmentally much beyond the present generation. Predicting precisely how and when new energy and chemical production technologies will evolve is an amusing exercise where most everyone will be partially correct and partially wrong. There is little doubt that a combination of nuclear, wind, and solar (biomass, thermal, photovoltaics) will play an increasing role in providing large scale energy supplies for fuels and chemicals; however, the unpredictable mixture of short and long term economic considerations with politics, social psychology, and risk perception will determine society's and industry's response to the challenge of fueling our future. History has shown that bulk energy costs much higher than $10/GJ are associated with disastrous economic consequences. Innovation is predictably unpredictable and bringing to bear the world's technical talent on developing improved conversion technology will undoubtedly lead to unexpected advances which we can hope, but not count on, to bring down costs and maximize the utility of all potential energy sources. Today, the only logical approach is to move forward with multiple options in parallel and adjust our strategy as new innovation and social conditions change. Chemical engineering is the only professional discipline with educational background in the fundamentals of most all the critical elements of any future energy conversion and storage technology and it is the responsibility of chemical engineers to assume leadership roles in developing and executing strategies to evolve our fuel and chemical industries to sustainability so as to minimize the societal disruption and to insure that future generations have the opportunities for greater prosperity than the generations before them. It is also our responsibility to provide society with accurate information and to correct misinformation regarding the benefits and risks of energy conversion technologies. Historical aspects of energy supplies and economics will be coupled to present technologies and specific challenges and opportunity for chemical engineers will be highlighted.