The True Energy Crisis

Published in 2012, Richard Muller’s Energy for Future Presidents aims to educate both the general public (reader and voter) and politicians about issues surrounding energy. The book is divided into five sections. Let me start at the end and work my way backwards.

In Section V, Muller gives his opinion on the matter addressing the president of a nation. He begins: “The role of a science advisor should not be to advise but rather to inform and educate so that the president knows and understands enough to be able to make the right decisions. When you are elected, you’ll have to balance many things, including diplomacy, economics, justice, and politics – things that scientists like me have not mastered.”

Muller then summarizes the crux. “The true energy crisis in the U.S., and in much of the world, derives predominantly from two issues: energy security and global warming. The security problem comes not from an energy shortage (we have plenty), but from an oil [petroleum] shortage… The global-warming problem derives from rapidly growing coal use in the developing world.” Muller then summarizes the technologies he thinks will be important for the future, those that have ‘breakout’ potential, and those that are less likely to solve the crisis. He makes the detailed arguments for and against these in Sections II and III of the book. Some of his recommendations are not surprising to scientists in the field, but others he deems faddish – ‘feel-good’ and short-term, but failing to address the longer-term issues.

Section IV “What is Energy?” is listed as an optional chapter. Muller states at the beginning: “Feel free to skip [this chapter]. Or even better, read through it casually, without feeling you have to learn it.” To whet the reader’s appetite, there is a fun table showing that (by mass) chocolate chip cookies deliver almost 8 times more energy than TNT. Here it is below (screenshot from Google Books).

There’s also a section titled “Is Energy a Thing?” that introduces the Carnot equation. In the past, I’ve had students read an annotated chapter in Feynman’s book that I think does a better job in conveying the strangeness of energy: We don’t know what it is but we can count it. I’ve been emphasizing this point throughout my class this semester (we’re still smack in the middle of thermodynamics). One thing I found fun about this section: Muller has subsections describing how energy is taught to college freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, each building on the other while introducing more abstract concepts. Emmy Noether deservedly gets mentioned for her contributions in expressing invariance mathemically.

Section III outlines everything we might call “Alternative Energy”. Muller goes into the pros and cons of different technologies from multiple perspectives: scientific, environmental, economical, and political-personal. He covers solar, wind, batteries, flywheels, nuclear, biofuels, fusion, synfuel, tidal, geothermal, etc. He also makes direct comparisons of electric automobiles, versus hybrids, natural gas autos, and fuel cells. The leader to beat is natural gas, and Muller makes a strong case as to why from multiple perspectives. I do tell my students about natural gas, and we discuss fuel efficiency from an energy perspective, but I did learn some new details that I will use in subsequent classes. It was good to update myself on many recent developments (i.e. 2011) since my knowledge in this area has been spotty over the years. Twenty years ago, I worked on fuel cell catalysis and early generation synfuel, but it has been a while since I delved into the literature on those topics.

Section II covers the current energy landscape including the issues of liquid energy (oil) security, shale gas and shale oil, smart grids, and how to think about energy productivity. Section I covers the Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon “Energy Catastrophes”, where Muller would argue that these aren’t really catastrophes when you look at the big picture. Global warming is also tackled here. Muller is likely to draw fire from both ends of the political spectrum for his views. His analysis is sobering, and it’s worth reading his book in full to understand his arguments. While one may quibble over some of the details and interpretations, I think his broad overall arguments make sense. It’s hard to predict the future, but it behooves future presidents to think carefully about the different arguments. Muller makes the issues clear and understandable without dumbing down the science. I will be cribbing some of these for my classes!