Energy is not just a critical national concern to the United States but also a global one. Among the most important technical challenges facing the world in the 21st century is providing clean, affordable energy, whose supply is sustainable and universally available. A solution to the global energy problem will require revolutionary new technology, as well as conservation and evolutionary improvements in existing technologies.

Advancement of nano-technology solutions can be an integral component to solving the energy problem. Breakthroughs in nano-technology open up the possibility of moving beyond our current alternatives for energy supply by introducing technologies that are more efficient, inexpensive, and environmentally sound. The benefits of such technology will not be confined to the United States or the developed world; indeed, its impact will be greatest for the 1.4 billion individuals around the globe, most desperately poor, who lack access to electricity and other vital energy services.

The primary goal of the Baker Institute “Energy and Nanotechnology” initiative is to help broaden public understanding of how scientific disciplines such as nano-science can appear esoteric with little bearing on people’s lives, but, in reality, technologies developed from these fields can have a direct impact, including the potential to help solve the challenge of developing cheaper, more efficient and environmentally sound energy supplies.

A series of Baker Institute “Energy and Nanotechnology” conferences are designed to educate leading nano-scientists about the great technical challenges facing the energy industry today. By bringing together business leaders, policy-makers, media and the scientific community, these conferences will share knowledge already gained from previous studies and gatherings. Rice University is taking the lead in creating a dialogue between nano-science and energy technology experts to share ideas about potential applications from their arena that could lead to resolving both national and international energy predicaments.

Close to one-third of the world’s population lives today without modern energy services, perpetuating poverty and human suffering that leads to desperation and regional instability and conflict.

Maintaining plentiful oil and gas supplies needed to meet rising world energy demand will become more challenging as time goes on, given the natural peak expected in fossil fuels in this century. Natural gas will provide a bridge, but North American sources are very limited, meaning America could become dependent on Middle Eastern natural gas imports as well as oil imports in the coming years. As the U.S. faces depleting affordable world supplies and greater reliance on Middle East resources by 2030 and beyond, it will be imperative to have prepared for new energy sources. Environmental problems predicted for the middle of the century also dictate that we develop new, cleaner sources of energy. However, to find an answer to this energy supply dilemma, we must prepare well in advance.

What is needed is a vast effort, capable of providing a new “non-traditional” source of energy, which is at least twice the size of all worldwide energy consumed today and have it readily available by the middle of the 21st century. This source must not rely on oil and natural gas as the initial component (as current plans for using hydrogen as an energy carrier assume). It must be clean, and, most importantly, it must be cheap. It must provide the basis for sustained economic prosperity for 10 billion people.

Current technology simply cannot do this. We need stunning new discoveries in underlying core science and engineering base to enable an answer.

Even once this enabling core work is done, it will take trillions of dollars of investment, and several decades to implement this new energy technology on an adequate scale. We must get started now, before our S&T workforce of American citizens declines much further. While the costs sound high, these same trillions of dollars of investment in traditional energy sources would be needed over the same time period to refurbish aging infrastructure and to meet new demand. The International Energy Agency projects that the total investment requirement for energy supply infrastructure will top $16 trillion between 2001- 2030.

A national research program is needed in America that will fund frontier research in the physical sciences and engineering, toward enabling breakthroughs that will permit a transformation in the energy industry worldwide. Perhaps equally importantly, this new Program will inspire a new generation of young American men and women to enter careers in the physical sciences and engineering, much like they did in the Sputnik era of the 1960s.

Research can be aimed at revolutionary advances in solar power, wind, clean coal, hydrogen, fusion, new generation fission reactors, fuel cells, batteries, hydrogen production, storage, and transport, and a new electrical energy grid, which can tie all these power sources together. It will enable new schemes for high efficiency, long distance power transmission, and offer local energy storage technologies that can give each home or business an uninterrupted power supply, by providing the ability to offer customers independence from the power grid for periods of 12-24 hours and reducing our need for expensive standby power to handle peak usage. This will ultimately reduce our vulnerability to terrorism.