Trends : Global Uncertainty : Energy Planning to Meet Demand Emerges as Symposium Theme

Global demand for energy over the next century is impossible to forecast. But it is great and growing and must be managed in a way that can provide for both worldwide economic growth and a safe environment.

That challenge was discussed and debated Wednesday by 160 engineers, academics and government officials attending a two-day symposium at the new Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine.

A common theme that emerged during the first day of the conference was the need for more energy planning.

“But somebody has to decide how to do that,” said Chauncey Starr, vice chairman of the Electric Power Research Institute and a former dean of UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. “Do you stimulate government? Do you stimulate the private sector?”

Energy policy must look further than “the next quarterly report for Wall Street,” Starr said.

William D. Ruckelshaus, who served as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Nixon and Reagan administrations, warned symposium participants that energy expenses could reach exorbitant levels in the next century.

“It seems clear that if some changes are not made in both the way we produce energy and the way we protect the environment, we are headed for a future that will range from unpleasant to awful for most of the people of the world,” Ruckelshaus said.

Citing a study completed in 1987, Ruckelshaus presented a worst-case energy scenario for the year 2025. With a projected population of 8.2 billion, the world would require 1.5 times more oil than in 1980, three times as much natural gas and five times as much coal.

The world’s ability to pay for this increased demand would be severely taxed, particularly in developing nations. Under Ruckelshaus’ worst-case scenario, the developing world would need to spend $130 billion a year on energy.

Alvin M. Weinberg, a member of the Institute for Energy Analysis and a former director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, made a plea for a reassessment of nuclear energy.

“I maintain that nuclear energy must be made acceptable to the public and to do that we must find techniques and technologies that are acceptable to the influential anti-nuclear elites like Jane Fonda,” Weinberg said. “We have discovered that the magical talisman of nuclear energy has neither been magical nor a talisman: It faltered because we nuclear optimists ignored social, political and economic realities.”

In contrast with the United States, countries such as France and Japan, with more centralized energy policies, “have gone merrily on their nuclear way,” Weinberg said. “Our fragmented, participatory political structure dooms government energy policies, like those of France and Japan, to failure here.”

John H. Gibbons, director of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, was more upbeat. Gibbons said major advances in conservation techniques have greatly reduced dependence on foreign oil and have led to “dramatic successes, usually exceeding the most optimistic forecasts” of the 1970s. He cited advances in auto fuel efficiency, housing insulation and reduced energy consumption by household products such as refrigerators.

“More than a decade later, we are still seeing the benefits of such investments as they continue to accumulate,” he said.

Starr warned that a significant increase in auto and industrial air pollution is inevitable and will cause a corresponding acceleration of a gradual warming of the earth’s atmosphere. Known as the greenhouse effect, the warming is caused when pollutants in the air allow sunlight to reach the earth’s surface, but prevent heat from escaping the Earth’s atmosphere.

On the other hand, Starr noted that new technologies on the horizon could have significant beneficial impacts on energy demand and air pollution.

For example, improved batteries should make electric cars with a range of 100 miles a commercial reality within a decade, Starr predicted. Since most auto use in the United States involves short urban trips, the advent of electric cars could cause a significant reduction in auto emissions. “Air pollution in Los Angeles would virtually disappear overnight,” Starr said.

The two-day symposium is sponsored by the National Academy of Engineering, which was established in 1962 to provide technical and scientific advice to the federal government.