Strategies for the Energy Crisis

Sept. 29, 2008— -- After nearly 30 years at Caltech as a professor of theoretical physics and, eventually, provost, Steven Koonin took a leave of absence in 2004 to become BP's chief scientist. After a year of study, he recommended a strategy for the company that has included investments in unconventional sources of oil as well as renewable energies such as solar. The company has also invested $500 million in research on biofuels.

Technology Review's energy editor, Kevin Bullis, sat down with Koonin after his talk at [last] week's EmTech conference to discuss BP's strategy and whether it will be possible to meet the world's energy challenges.

Technology Review: BP has invested a lot of money in research on biofuels. Yet biofuels have come under criticism lately--experts say they've contributed to rising food prices. How much can we rely on biofuels?

Steven Koonin: The Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture did a study a couple of years ago that said that with domestically produced biomass, you could probably satisfy 30 percent of current gasoline demand without significant environmental impacts or changes to food. That requires better use of agricultural waste, better management of the forests and use of forest products, and some fraction of energy crops. Most of the crops we grow now are for food, and they've been tuned to maximize food yield. We haven't started to maximize energy crops yet, to maximize biomass production per acre per year, as opposed to maximizing food production. There's tremendous technical headroom for doing that.

Brazil, right now, could probably [import] a million gallons of ethanol per year to the U.S. But there's a tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol. If you look at that, you say that the political system is not yet serious about dealing with energy security matters.

TR: When you look at public policy decisions, what are some other mistakes you've seen?

SK: One is confusing transportation with stationary sources of power and heat. What problems are we trying to solve? If it's carbon dioxide emissions, there are cheaper ways to do it than improving transportation. If you improve the efficiency of a vehicle to reduce fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions, for many vehicle technologies it will take several hundred dollars per ton of carbon dioxide. But transport is only 20 percent of energy-related emissions. Heat and power from stationary sources are most of it. At $50 a ton, there's a lot of carbon that can be wrung out of stationary sources. When you start cranking the price up to $100 to $200, that's when you start to affect transport, whereas we can shift to lower-emissions heat and power at $50 a ton.