IEEE PACE: Energy Futures - air, water and land impacts March 18, 2008

Global population was 3 billion in 1960, estimated at 6.6 billion in September 2007 and is expected to be between 9 and 10 billion by 2050. Global energy consumption is projected to grow by 57% between 2004 and 2030. Energy use in emerging powers, in particular China and India, is growing at unprecedented rates. Green house gas emissions are growing faster than either population or energy use and the price of oil is fast approaching $100 per barrel. The USA has depended on cheap energy. The USA is just 5 percent of the global population and yet we use 25 percent of global energy. We face a time of change in an increasingly energy-hungry world.

This talk will briefly review the current global energy situation. It will then explores some of the complex inter-relationships between energy supply, its use and the resulting impacts on the finite air, water and land resources of the "pale blue dot." The talk will conclude with a discussion of "grand challenges" facing the global community in developing a shared vision that will transition the planet's energy system. This should be able to meet mankind's future energy needs, without major disruptions and wars, and be a sustainable system that delivers the earth to be a good home for our children and our grandchildren.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Leonard Bond has been engaged in energy-related research for more than 30 years. He holds a PhD in Physics from the City University London. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK) and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He is Director-elect for IEEE Region 6 ('07-'08).

He started his career with British Gas, and has subsequently worked as an academic, at University College London and University of Colorado at Boulder, with national laboratories, as a consultant and with various national and international organizations. He has performed research on aspects of gas, oil, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear energy systems. He has been at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory since 1998 where he is a Laboratory Fellow. In 2005-06 he was on secondment as Director of a new Center for Advanced Energy Studies, established in Idaho Falls. He returned to PNNL in January 2007.

He was the IEEE Richland Section, Engineer of the year 2002 and received a Battelle Key Contributor Award in 2003. He is a US delegate to the International Electrotechnical Commission. He recently gave an invited key note paper on Improved economics of nuclear plant life management at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Second International Symposium on Nuclear Power Plant Life Management, Shanghai, China, October, 2007. He has published more that than 250 papers and holds 9 patents.

Official Website: http://www.cpd.ogi.edu/coursespecific.asp?pam=2308