2008 ND Forum -- Part 2

As promised, we'll try to summarize some of the more interesting parts of the Notre Dame Forum on renewable energy. The full video is located on the University's website. It is fascinating and you should view it if you can spare some time.


The speakers were Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization dedicated to developing green jobs for some of the poorer neighborhoods of New York; Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric; Ernest Moniz, a professor at MIT and the former Undersecretary of Energy; and Bill Ritter, Governor of Colorado. The forum was moderated by Anne Thompson, the chief environmental affairs correspondent for NBC News and a graduate of Notre Dame.

Majora Carter's main focus was on how poorer neighborhoods have felt the brunt of environmentally unfriendly energy usage. She described how to solve two problems -- poverty and pollution -- by creating green jobs, which she defined as any job that has a net benefit to the environment. She emphasized that the people of America want to give of themselves and contribute to the greater good, and the environment is the greater good for today. "Environmental justice for all is the civil rights of the twenty-first century."



Jeff Immelt said that he tries to view energy and environmental issues without emotion. He cited studies that have convinced him and his company that global warming caused by human beings is a scientific fact. He believes that the quest for renewable energy is a solvable problem -- and not just 20 to 30 years from now. He stressed the need for an energy policy in this country: "Right now, there is no energy policy." At the same time, he warned against pursuing any one source of renewable energy, such as corn-based ethanol. "We need to pursue dozens of new technologies so that we don't put our eggs all in one basket." Among those dozens would be clean coal (and cleaner than any of the technologies being discussed today), solar, wind, hydroelectric, nuclear, natural gas, sugar-based ethanol, and other sources. In Immelt's view, a policy would require no caveats; it would have to establish clear goals with no exceptions. Otherwise, nothing would get done as the exceptions would swallow the rule. He believes that the rest of the world is waiting for America to lead the way, and the companies of America, for financial and other reasons, are waiting on leadership from the U.S. government. The time to act is now because high gas prices are permitting the development of alternative fuels to be economical. (And Immelt believes that high gas prices have nothing to do with America's usage of oil and everything to do with China's and India's ever-increasing usage of oil.)


Ernest Moniz warned that, at the rate we're going, the atmosphere will have too much carbon dioxide in it to sustain healthy human life by the middle of this century. He talked about the need to develop zero-carbon and low-carbon fuels such as nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal energy. Fossil fuels have been so successful because there is no better way to store hydrogen atoms than by attaching them to carbon atoms. He described the need to capture carbon dioxide before it reaches the atmosphere and to find a way to store it underground. China is working on this type of technology for coal plants, but the United States is not. Right now, American business is not set up to develop new energy technologies. Smaller companies are more entrepreneurial in developing the new technologies, but they lack the resources to do it. Larger energy companies lack the incentives to work on new technologies rather than to promote the types of energy they are trying to sell. Moniz views renewable energy as a matter affecting our nation's security, environmental, foreign relations, fiscal, industrial, and agricultural concerns, but the current structure of our government separates the management of energy issues rather than integrates them into a strategic energy policy. New energy sources will require new transmission lines, which will be expensive to build.


Bill Ritter talked about the ways Colorado is a leader in energy and conservation within the United States. Among other things, Colorado has established goals for renewable energy, provided economic incentives for energy companies to develop renewable energy technologies, and is working to better sequester carbon in farming operations. A new wind farm statute provides $500 to farmers for each windmill they allow on their property, and a windmill manufacturer has opened its U.S. operations in Colorado. One of Colorado's utilities has developed a "smart grid," which is essentially a computer that tells users whether they are using energy at peak or non-peak times and allows users to adjust their usage accordingly. The smart grid will shut down appliances when they are not in use and will adjust usage to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Ritter felt that the biggest hurdles we face are raising awareness among the greater public. For example, nuclear power is not practicle any time soon because the public will not allow plants to be built near its part of the country. He views corn ethanol to be valuable not because it is a good energy substitute. Actually, it is a poor one, looking at it from the point of view of energy alone; it requires a large amount of energy to produce, and it raises food prices. But it was successful in raising the public's awareness of alternative sources of fuel for their vehicles. Now, the path is open to develop alternative fuels such as fuels made from algae. One of the problems with solar and wind energy is that there is insufficient means for storing it. Ritter pointed to new technologies that are being developed for storing solar energy, and described ways in which regions that produce wind, solar, geothermal, or coal energy could all work together to supply continuous power to the grid.


We hope this summary is useful. While long, it is much shorter than the full two-hour video. But if you get the chance to view the video, you should as it is good enough to shape your views of this subject for years to come.