For full information please visit the Royal Society of Chemistry:
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Webinar/Global_Energy_Perspectives.asp
This lecture is part of a special event taking place on Thursday 17th May 2012 at the Chemistry Centre in London to mark the launch of a new report from the Royal Society of Chemistry highlighting the potential of solar fuels and artificial photosynthesis. Experts from academic research, industry and policy will come together to celebrate recent progress towards technologies to produce fuels using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. They will also discuss the potential long term impacts of solar fuels for sustainable energy and for business.
In this lecture Nathan Lewis will describe and evaluate the technical, political, and economic challenges involved with widespread adoption of renewable energy technologies. His talk will begin with a quantitative discussion of available fossil fuels reserves and a comparison, on a price per unit energy basis, of these sources with renewable energy technologies. He will then describe projections for global energy supply and demand in light of factors including population growth, increased global GDP and constraints on carbon emissions.
Next he will evaluate the energy potential of various renewable energy resources and discuss the challenges to the chemical sciences to enable the cost-effective production of carbon-free power to match global energy demand by the 2050 timeframe. He will also evaluate the level and timescale of R&D investment needed to provide for the expected global energy demand for carbon-free power by the 2050 timeframe.