Randy J. Ellingson
Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Faculty Member, Wright Center for Photovoltaic Innovation and Commercialization
The University of Toledo
http://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~relling2/index.html

Abstract:  Humanity now faces a sustained energy crisis, unlike any other in the past, that will play out over the coming decades and remainder of the century. Our current energy production and consumption patterns result in environmental stress and damage on local, regional, and global scales – in ways that clearly affect people’s “quality of life” but which are excluded from the methods used by economists and governments to describe progress (e.g., “standard of living”). As we recognize the implications of both the supply and utilization aspects of fossil energy sources, we are gradually focusing on the technology necessary to ramp up the supply of carbon-free "alternative" energy sources – to eventually replace the carbon-based (fossil) fuels that have dominated our supply for the past 100 years and today make up 87% of global energy consumption. Extrapolating the average growth rate (2.0%) in global energy consumption for the period 1998-2010 to the year 2050, we will need 35 TW of power in 2050 -- or almost three times as much as we used in 1998 (and 2.2 times what we used in 2010). This talk will discuss the status of our atmospheric CO2 level, fossil energy sources, non-fossil energy sources including hydroelectric, nuclear, geothermal, wind, and solar, environmental benefits and detriments of various sources, and the implications of externalizing supply and utilization costs for competing sources of energy.

Sponsored by the Department of Chemistry and cSEND.