The renowned Lawrence Livermore Labs, lately in the news for its contract to design a new generation of nuclear warheads, has a more life-seeking side to it also. Steve Chu, the head of the Labs, is not a climate change skeptic. He understands the enormity of what we are facing and wants to bring top-flight science and commensurate funding to bear.
The first challenge is finding zero-carbon energy sources on a mass scale. Climate change results mainly from there being too much carbon in the atmosphere. Compounding the problem, coal and oil are likely to remain relatively cheap and abundant sources of fuel, especially in the developing world, for decades to come.
Chu is building the lab’s capacity to develop zero-carbon energy sources in 10 to 20 years, especially biofuels and a new generation of solar cells.
He is particularly interested in solar technology. His colleagues at the lab are thinking of farms of photovoltaic cells concentrating sunlight with a coating of nanoparticles, called “solar paint.” And they’re working on converting solar to liquid fuel by mimicking plant photosynthesis.
The second challenge is consumption. The Lawrence Berkeley lab has been a world innovator on energy efficiency — work leading to the invention of the compact fluorescent light bulb was done there. Chu wants more inventions like that. He’s thinking about things like super-efficient commercial buildings and new designs for green cities.
“We spend more money in an hour buying gas at the pump than we spend funding solar energy research in our entire country for an entire year,” said Caltech’s Lewis.
The science establishment says what energy research needs is what weapons research has with the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, a funding pool for high-risk research done by universities, industry and the national labs. Chu and other top scientists are promoting the idea, which Congress is considering.
I don’t know if the article came as a PR counter offensive to the news about the nuclear warhead contract but even if it did the news is welcome. Read on.