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Improving Today's Energy Systems

William H. Green Jr. Mujid S. Kazimi SM '71, PhD '73 Ahmed F. Ghoniem Robert D. van der Hilst Paul L. Joskow Stephen Ansolabehere: May 3, 2006; Running Time: 1:27:31

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

William Green frames this round-up of near-term pressing issues in energy research with a sobering observation: global demand for energy will increase 50% by 2025, because “most of the world wants to live like us.” The panel reports on five different domains of research to meet this demand, ranging over science, engineering, economics, and politics.

Nuclear energy is making a comeback, as the fastest growing energy source during the past 15 years. That’s because existing plants are operating better, says Mujid Kazimi, and because the regulatory process has become more predictable. But plenty of challenges remain: enhancing safety, by making nuclear plants less dependent on their operators; improving efficiency; disposing of waste, without the kind of political firestorm sparked by Yucca Mountain; and improving security, i.e., not proliferating weapons-grade materials.

In contrast, Robert van der Hilst calls hydrocarbons – oil and gas – the “black sheep” of the present-day energy family. Research is concentrating on making it less expensive to extract oil from existing fields, and more feasible to drill in new ones, including under the ocean. Solving these subsurface problems will depend increasingly on remote sensing, coupled with modeling and simulation. MIT projects using GPS satellites, robotics, and nanotechnology illustrate the essential collaboration of scientists and engineers.

Modeling and simulation, along with computer graphics to visualize results, are also the keys to making bold advances in exploiting the energy sources we already have. We may not like using coal and other low-quality fuels, Ahmed Ghoniem warns, but they are cheap and plentiful, and advanced conversion technologies will make them even harder to resist. The research challenges here are much faster computer hardware, supported by parallel processing software and immersive virtual reality displays. These devices, linked with interdisciplinary simulation techniques, will make it possible, for example, to predict both the fluid dynamics and aerodynamics of a giant wind turbine floating offshore.

The biggest change on the energy landscape since the 1990s, though, may be deregulation. Today, Paul Joskow claims, anyone can build a plant to generate electricity, and anyone can sell electricity to consumers. What is the impact of this industry restructuring on the theoretical function and practical performance of electricity markets? Joskow studies this and related issues, such as how to make remaining regulation more performance-oriented, and how “cap and trade” systems might satisfy environmental regulations.

Political scientist Stephen Ansolabehere uses polling to find out what energy sources the American public wants to develop. Support for nuclear energy, which plummeted after the accident at Three Mile Island, is now rising. The dilemma, however, is that people do not want to pay for clean energy: gas and electricity taxes, for example, are always politically unpopular. Ansolabehere is now investigating whether income or payroll tax decreases would make increased energy taxes more acceptable to voters.

Lecture Details

Location: Kresge Auditorium

About the Speakers

William H. Green Jr.

Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering

Mujid S. Kazimi SM '71, PhD '73

TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Professor of Mechanical Engineering Director, Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering

Ahmed F. Ghoniem

Ronald C. Crane (1972) Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Ahmed Ghoniem's research interests include high performance computing in turbulent reactive flow, computational mathematics, combustion dynamics and active control, modeling and simulation of transport-chemistry interactions in thermochemical and electrochemical systems including high temperature fuel cells, gasification processes and fuel production. He also explores high-performance, zero-emission integrated energy systems with CO2 capture.

Ghoniem has a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cairo University, Egypt, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Robert D. van der Hilst

Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Director, Earth Resources Laboratory and Chair, Program in Geophysics, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

Paul L. Joskow

President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics and Management, Emeritus, MIT

Paul L. Joskow was previously director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. He joined the MIT faculty in 1972 and served as head of the MIT Department of Economics from 1994 to 1998. At MIT, he was engaged in teaching and research in the areas of industrial organization, energy and environmental economics, competition policy, and government regulation of industry. Joskow has published six books and more than 120 articles and papers in these areas.

Joskow is a director of Exelon Corporation, a director of TransCanada Corporation, and a trustee of the Putnam Mutual Funds. He previously served as a director of New England Electric System, State Farm Indemnity Company, and the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research. Joskow has served on the U.S. EPA's Acid Rain Advisory Committee and on the Environmental Economics Committee of the EPA's Science Advisory Board. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1968 and a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1972.

Stephen Ansolabehere

Professor of Political Science, MIT
Professor of Government, Harvard University

Stephen Ansolabehere studies elections, democracy, and the mass media. He is coauthor (with Shanto Iyengar) of The Media Game (Macmillan, 1993) and of Going Negative: How Political Advertising Alienates and Polarizes the American Electorate (The Free Press, 1996). Ansolabehere is also a member of the Cal Tech/MIT Voting Project. which was established in 2000 to prevent a recurrence of the problems that threatened the 2000 US Presidential election.

Ansolabehere received a B.S. in Economics and B.A. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

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