Academics warn of looming energy crisis

In the United States, it would take 3,717 nuclear power plans to produce and distribute the amount of energy required to meet the American need. There are currently only 104 such plants, making the concern for a global energy crisis a top priority for some Boston University professors.

“If we don’t find a cure for cancer, life doesn’t get worse,” panelist Uday Pal, a BU mechanical engineering division head, said. “If we don’t find a cure for the energy crisis? All of civilization will suffer.”

A panelist of two BU professors and a graduate fellow painted this grim picture of a global energy situation at the Pardee House yesterday for approximately 40 attendees.

The Frederick Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future hosted the panel, which discussed the future of energy and the international apprehension to finding a better energy policy for a world that consumes around six trillion watts of energy a day.

All three experts agreed that at the head of the energy crisis is the world’s continued dependence on fossil fuels, most notably coal, crude oil and natural gases.

Fossil fuels currently provide about 85 percent of all energy on an international scale, split equally between coal, oil and natural gas, Pal said. However, with technological advances the overall usage of fossil fuels has become more efficient.

“Without technological advances, we would be burning three times as much fossil fuels in 40 to 50 years as we do today,” he said. “With technological advances, in 40 years we will be burning two times as much fossil fuel.”

At the rate fuels are being consumed, however, fossil fuels will still more than double the levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere over the next 40 years unless action is taken, Pal said.

One alternative to burning fossil fuels — nuclear energy — has an uncertain future that has possibly stopped it from becoming the predominant energy source for the world, political science doctoral candidate Moeed Yusuf said.

“There have been no new nuclear power plants in the United States in the past 20 years,” he said, noting that one possible reason behind this has been, “investor uncertainty.”

“You need investments to prove this technology, but the investors need proof that their investments are safe,” he said. “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation,”

While there have been recent advances in nuclear technology, none have yet been incorporated into new power plants, Yusaf said.

Cutler Cleveland, a College of Arts and Sciences geography and environment professor, said he is optimistic that newer energy sources will become increasingly important and that people will stop using non-renewable resources as they become less readily available.

“We now live in a world with no fundamental surplus capacity in oil production,” he said. “There are no new geographical frontiers, and we must find new energies that not only feed our appetite for energy today, but for a growing appetite.

“The idea of energy independence is misguided and inappropriate: we need to stop painting oil-rich nations as bad guys, and make the issue consumption,” he said in an interview with the Daily Free Press. “We need to consume less oil, period.”