Commencement Address
Colorado School or Mines
December 16, 2005

Dr. Raymond L. Orbach
Director, Office of Science
U.S. Department of Energy

I am delighted to be here with you this morning to honor the 273 degree recipients of this distinguished institution. For more than 130 years, Mines has pioneered in the application of the most sophisticated science to outstanding energy and environmental problems facing this nation and the world. You are blessed with a proud heritage and international renown. It is your opportunity to continue the proud traditions of this very special institution.

I am here to honor you, the graduates, and to suggest ways you can fulfill your mission in:

a. the discovery and recovery of the Earth’s resources
b. their conversion to materials and energy
c. their utilization in advanced processes and products, and
d. the economic and social systems necessary to ensure their prudent and provident use in a sustainable global society.

The Colorado School of Mines is committed to serving the people of Colorado, the nation, and the global community by promoting stewardship of the Earth upon which all life and development depend.

What a wonderful mission, one which could not be timelier. And crucial.

Of course, I am speaking about energy, once thought to be cheap, unlimited, and freely available to our nation. Today, all three aspects are in trouble. And so is our globe. Availability of sufficient environmentally friendly energy sources to meet the needs of a rapidly growing and developing world population is the most pressing problem our civilization has ever faced.

The world’s energy appetite will at least double by the end of this century (some claim it will triple). The environmental consequences could be catastrophic. Greenhouse gases are accumulating in our atmosphere at an alarming rate. For CO2 alone, the atmospheric concentration is approaching 400 ppm, 40% higher than when fossil fuels began to be burned, and may exceed 1,000 ppm by the end of this century if no limiting measures are taken. To give you an idea of how difficult a problem this is, pick a value for an acceptable CO2 concentration: 550 ppm, 650 ppm, 750 ppm… It really doesn’t matter. To stabilize at even these very high (and alarming) concentrations, and not go higher, the amount of carbon neutral energy required at the end of this century will more or less equal the earth’s total energy consumption at the beginning of this century.

The world therefore has a two-fold problem: where will this new energy come from, and how can it be carbon-free? The most optimistic estimates of carbon-free renewable energy capability are a maximum of 17% of today’s energy consumption. Even with this very optimistic estimate, where will the remaining 83% come from?

A global search for massive amounts of carbon-free energy will require transformational changes and disruptive technologies in order to provide clean reliable economic solutions. We cannot fulfill the world’s energy appetite with current prospects or incremental improvement to existing technologies. Electricity was not discovered by perfecting the candle.

There are three points of departure:

1. Increase conservation, largely through increased efficiency.
2. Greatly diversify energy sources and create infrastructures for them.
3. Create and implement long-term (decades to century) energy visions and strategies.

More simply, increase conservation/efficiency and increase productions. We must use less energy and produce more of it. Let me expand on these points.

1. Increase conservation, largely through increased efficiency.

The United States is a prime example. Electricity production uses about 40% of primary energy, and of this amount, about 70% is waste or rejected energy. Overall, about 60% of United States primary energy is lost in waste or rejected heat. With less than 5% of the world’s population, the United States consumes about 25% of the world’s energy (but produces only about 18%). Even if the United States were to be 100% efficient in the use of energy, this would amount to but 15% of the world energy consumption, not negligible, but far less than the doubling to tripling of the world’s energy generation required by the end of this century. Nevertheless, when amplified globally, more efficient use of energy can play a major role.

2. Greatly diversifying energy sources and create infrastructures for them.

There are at least four transformational technologies that possess the potential for significant amounts of clean reliable economic energy: a) solar energy utilization; b) advanced proliferation-resistant nuclear energy systems; c) fusion power; and d) biologically derived fuels.

a. solar energy utilization: i. Solar-to-electric, ii. Solar-to-fuels, iii. Solar-to-thermal conversions. Sunlight provides by far the largest of all carbon-neutral energy sources. More energy from sunlight strikes the earth in one hour than all the energy consumed on our planet in a year. Yet solar electricity provides less than 0.1% of the total electricity supply, and renewable biomass (sustainably grown) provides less than 0.1% of all total energy consumed.

i. For solar-to-electric conversion, novel approaches to exploiting new technologies (thin films, organic semiconductors, dye sensitization, and quantum dots) offer fascinating opportunities for cheaper, more efficient, longer lasting systems.

ii. With respect to solar-to-fuels, application of revolutionary advances in biotechnology to the design of plants and organisms can lead to more efficient energy conversion “machines”. Designs of highly efficient, artificial, molecular-level energy conversion machines, exploiting the principles of natural photosynthesis, promise substantial energy production opportunities.
iii. In the area of solar-to-thermal conversion, solar radiation as a source of heat, using high-efficiency thermoelectric and thermal photovoltaic converters coupled to solar concentrators, have the potential to generate electricity at converter efficiencies of 25% to 35%. Chemical conversion sequences can convert focused solar thermal energy into chemical fuel.

b. advanced proliferation-resistant nuclear energy systems. Current “once through” nuclear reactor policy leaves spent fuel rods with long-term heat loads and radioactive decay. Disposal of light water reactor waste must be included as a cost of energy generation from nuclear fission sources. Once-through spent fuel, subjected to chemical separation, offers many potential options for managing its constituent parts:

i. Transmutation of radionuclide in fast-spectrum reactors;
ii. Recycling plutonium in existing light-water reactors or advanced thermal reactors;
iii. Stabilizing of fission products in robust waste forms; and
iv. Transmutation of long-lived fission products.

These reductions sharply reduce repository requirements, allowing expansion of nuclear energy generation sufficient to meet a significant percentage of world energy requirements.

c. fusion power. As we speak, the seven parties to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Experimental Reactor (ITER) have nearly a completed international agreement that will guide fusion energy research for the next two decades. Fusion energy uses deuterium from water, and lithium to create tritium, fusing deuterium and tritium into helium and a fast (14 MeV) neutron. Deuterium and lithium are abundant and cheap, the helium will escape from the earth’s gravity, and the energy of the neutron will generate electricity or produce hydrogen.

The fusion process is the same as that which powers our sun, and promises unlimited safe clean energy for the world. In a conservative estimate, about a third of today’s global energy usage can be generated with fusion power reactors by the end of this century.

d. biologically derived fuels. Two examples are: i. Biofuels derived from plant cell walls, otherwise knows as cellulose ethanol; and ii. hydrogen produced from water using energy from the sun, known as biophotolytic hydrogen.

i. The long term goal of cellulose ethanol would integrate bioprocessing, now three steps (breakdown of raw biomass using heat and chemicals, use of enzymes to break down plant cell wall materials into simple sugars, and fermentations of the sugars into ethanol using microbes), into one. This requires the development of genetically modified, multidimensional microbes or a stable mixed culture of microbes capable of carrying out all biologically mediated transformation needed for complete conversion of biomass to ethanol.
ii. Under certain conditions, green algae and cyanobacteria can use energy from the sun to split water and generate hydrogen. Research to understand and develop predictive models of hydrogenase (the enzyme that cleaves water to produce hydrogen) structure and function, genetic regulatory and biochemical networks, and eventually entire microbes, can lead to an “ideal” microbe to use in hydrogen bioreactors, or the “ideal” enzyme-catalyst to use in bio-inspired nanostructures for hydrogen production.

These four examples of transformational change and disruptive technologies, if successful, will reduce the gap between energy demand and production, while at the same time stabilizing atmospheric CO2 at levels the earth can live with. The combination of conservation and clean reliable energy production can lead to a sustainable, abundant energy future for our world.

These are the opportunities for you to use your talents, learning, and commitment to literally save the world. Never before has the need been greater. You have been blessed with inquisitive and intelligent minds. Combined with the blessings bestowed upon you by this remarkable institution, you have been empowered to change the future of our world, for the better. The Department of Energy, your government, urges you to take the challenge. No better group of young scholars exists.

Thank you, and God speed.