ICTP Director explores ways in which the Centre can contribute to the global energy challenge.

Centre of Energy

Nearly everything that is worth saying---and much that is not---has already been said about sources of energy and the rising thirst for it. Yet, for all the clutter of conversation, a few pragmatic points may be worth some consideration.
And, within ICTP, it is worth considering what contributions the Centre can make to a more secure energy future for both the South and North.
It is useful to keep in mind a time horizon; the end of the 21st century may be a useful target. I would like to separate the century into its two halves because we can be fairly certain about the first 50 years---and what happens in the next 50 years will depend on how we deal with the first 50.
The world's energy needs will be growing much more steeply in this century than at any time since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Two factors will contribute to this trend. The percentage of people who use little energy today is likely to use more tomorrow. At present, about 4.5 billion people use less than the world's average and 1.6 billion of them don't have access to electricity. If they all catch up to the present average, the new average use of energy will rise by 60 percent. And if the world's population increases---as it certainly will---by some 50 percent, say, by 2050, we will be using twice the energy we do now. Moreover, additional energy needs are likely to emerge---for example, in seeking to meet future water needs via, say, desalination.
Better energy conservation practices will no doubt play some role. The improvement in energy efficiency achieved over the last 50 years is impressive, and it will be possible to push it further. However, no one thinks that conservation will be the answer to the world's increasing energy needs.
What then are the options?
Oil wells will dry up. The recent doubling of oil prices has already damaged the economy of developing countries (and the economy of industrialised countries too, but the fundamentals of their economies are in better shape). Yet, it is only a harbinger of tougher times to come---both economically and politically. The world economy is so strongly conditioned on oil that it cannot switch rapidly to anything else. As long as the last well remains in operation, oil will be the preferred source of energy. Thus it will have to remain in the mix of our energy portfolio in the foreseeable future.
Complete reversion to coal (leaving aside the issue of its abundance) will not be possible because of greenhouse effects. Carbon sequestration may be a solution, but it is a long way on the horizon and its consequences are unclear.
As for fusion, a commercial power plant is at least 50 years away, even if everything with ITER, the international fusion project headquartered in Cadarache, France, works according to plan and additional up-scaling occurs as expected. ITER will take 20 or so years to work fully and at least one intermediate generation of fusion plants will be needed before commercial success becomes a reality. Fusion will play no role in the next 50 years---though it may play an important role in the subsequent 50. Thus fusion research should be supported.
Some people think that hydrogen is the future, while others do not. According to experts, there are basic problems with hydrogen as an energy source at the thermodynamic, conceptual and practical levels. One should not forget the principal point that hydrogen, though an excellent carrier of energy, is not an energy source. Hydrogen may play some role, but not the dominant one that fossil fuels now do.
Nuclear fission today supplies about 16 percent of the world's energy needs (but the distribution is geographically lopsided). To bring it to 80 percent or so---roughly as in France now---one will have to increase the number of reactors five-fold. Let's forget for the moment about the lack of technological know-how in many countries (despite valiant efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA), the limited sources of uranium, and difficult reprocessing and storage issues associated with spent fuel. Just consider, instead, what it would be like to dot the world's landscape with five times as many reactors as now. This step will likely increase the risk of accidents, magnify security issues many fold, and exacerbate the concern for proliferation of nuclear weapons. Yet, nuclear fission will have to play a moderately stronger role than now. Lately, its acceptability has increased because of the absence of greenhouse effects.
In summary, looking towards the horizon for the first 50 years, oil will become less available, the use of coal cannot increase dramatically without doing interminable damage to the environment, fusion will play no role, hydrogen will remain a marginal energy source, and nuclear fission can be expected to increase slightly. We have no choice but to add a significant fraction of renewable energies to the mix of oil and nuclear. Perhaps a roughly equal mix of the three is a viable scenario for the future.
But renewable energies face several formidable obstacles---the principal technical one being that it is too much in the form of a 'retail' commodity. Some energy consumption is indeed retail, and there is no reason why, especially in much of Asia, Australia, Africa, and the Mediterranean, some household energy cannot come from the sun, or why wind energy cannot be harnessed more effectively in countries like Morocco. Equally importantly, one needs to work, with the same level of seriousness as with fusion, on large-scale solar power plants. This is a high-tech and non-trivial challenge.
To repeat, it would seem that a reasonable goal for 2050 is a three-way mix of fossil fuels, renewable energy and nuclear fission, roughly in equal proportions, with others joining as minor partners. By 2050, we will surely know more about such things as fusion, hydrogen and the technology of renewable energy (in which category solar energy will figure dominantly), and we will have to readapt ourselves to a new equilibrium point for 2100.
Continual evaluation and adaptation are the keys to a more secure energy future. If today's developing countries follow the same technological path as industrialised countries followed during their ascension, there will not be adequate resources to meet the energy needs of the world. Developing countries, some of which have the 'luxury' of taking a fresh look at the energy crunch, should look for alternative approaches. This requires clear awareness of the issues involved, deep understanding of potential technologies and, as a precondition, much research and knowledge of science. I cannot argue in favour of science any more strongly than by stating that it is a matter of survival: an increasing number of problems will depend on science for their solutions.
ICTP was created under the umbrella of IAEA and has been concerned with energy from the very beginning. The Centre's first long-term programme in 1964, in fact, focussed on fusion energy. Since then, ICTP has had a sustained interest in renewable energies. In total, the Centre has organised some 30 courses on this topic, many of them in cooperation with IAEA. Some 2000 scientists worldwide have taken part and are now involved directly in renewable energy projects in their own countries. Furthermore, through our Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL) programme, we have supported some 400 postdoctoral scientists to come to Italy and work on projects of renewable energy. This represents a substantial investment on ICTP's part, and strongly indicates that we recognise the seriousness of the scientific issues involved, and that we are committed to addressing them.
The ITER programme soon to be set up in Cadarache, France, is a one-of-its-kind effort, not to be replicated anytime soon anywhere in the world. If our goal is to provide a viable source of fusion energy to the world at large, it is important that people from needy countries be involved in the enterprise from the beginning. It is unrealistic to think that the fusion programme will be perfected by a few chosen countries, while others stay away until the technology is ready to be transferred, somehow, to those in need. Only a few countries can be principal partners, but some minimal access must be available, right from the start, to capable scientists from developing countries. We have to start building appropriate groups that can act, when needed, as the nuclei for fostering this new technology.
There is no better institution than ICTP to lead this effort. Because scientists from a large number of countries visit ICTP, they can in principle make connections to ITER through ICTP.
As one measure, ICTP could run, in cooperation with ITER and IAEA, courses on fusion-related issues in which scientists from developing countries participate. As a second measure, ICTP could develop a remote access and control facility for the ITER experiment, through which scientists from developing countries could participate in the enterprise without physically being at Cadarache. One can similarly imagine developing, through ICTP, a network of scientists to work on the analysis of data coming from ITER.
The world, I would think, would welcome such an initiative because if we do not face our energy challenges together, the prospects of meeting them successfully at all will dim considerably.

K.R. Sreenivasan
Director, ICTP

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