00100	            FUTURE ENERGY REQUIREMENTS - A POSITION PAPER
00200	
00300	                          by John McCarthy
00400	                    Professor of Computer Science
00500	                        Stanford, University
00600	
00700	
00800		By way of self-introduction, I should say that my interest in
00900	future  energy  requirements  is  part  of  a  general  interest   in
01000	technology  and  society about which I am writing a book.  My general
01100	point of view is that humanity will benefit from the  development  of
01200	much more technology of kinds that will be discussed in the book.  In
01300	order to discuss future technology, it is necessary  to  see  whether
01400	the  resources will exist for an even more technological society.  My
01500	tentative conclusion is that the resources do exist to bring  several
01600	times  the  world's  present  population to several times the present
01700	U.S. standard of living and keep them there  indefinitely,  but  that
01800	this requires new technology based on present science.
01900	
02000		With  regard to the subject of the present conference, future
02100	needs for electricity, it seems to me that the studies  I  have  been
02200	read  have  been inadequate.  Most thinking so far is based on simple
02300	extrapolation of the average growth rate over the last  few  decades.
02400	If  such  an  extrapolation  had  been done with U.S. per capita beef
02500	production for the decades just before 1890, we  might  have  reached
02600	the  conclusion that by 1972, each American would eat a cow a week. A
02700	more detailed approach is necessary.
02800	
02900		The use of electricity  is  traditionally  divided  into  the
03000	industrial,  commercial,  and residential sectors.  All of these have
03100	been growing,  but  the  residential  sector  has  been  growing  the
03200	fastest.   I  have not tried to figure out how to forecast industrial
03300	and commercial demand, but the residential  demand  lends  itself  to
03400	some  simple techniques for estimating when saturation will occur and
03500	what the saturation per capita demand will be for the present uses of
03600	electricity.    A   preliminary  look  shows  a  surprisingly  simple
03700	situation, namely, the main possibilities for large future  increases
03800	in  demand  come  from  increases  in  the  use  of  electricity  for
03900	air-conditioning and space heating.  A very rough guess based on  TVA
04000	figures indicates that if all housing were air-conditioned and heated
04100	electrically, the per capita residential use of electricity would  be
04200	between  four  and  five times what it is at present.  It seems to me
04300	that the universal use of  home  air-conditioning  except  in  a  few
04400	climatically  favored  areas  like Northern California is inevitable,
04500	barring a severe power shortage which seems  to  me  unnecessary  and
04600	unlikely.   Heating  will  convert to electricity more slowly, but if
04700	coal, oil, and natural gas become more expensive than nuclear  power,
04800	as  I  think  they  will in a few decades, the conversion to electric
04900	heat is also quite  likely.  Since  my  position  on  overcoming  the
05000	hazards   of  and  the  objections  to  nuclear  power  is  like  the
05100	conventional wisdom of the  nuclear  power  advocates,  I  shall  not
05200	elaborate it further.
05300	
05400		Whether  the  demand  for  electricity  will  grow beyond the
05500	saturation  of  present  appplications   depends   on   whether   new
05600	applications  will  appear.  This  is  a  question  which  should  be
05700	discussed concretely and not just by drawing lines on semi-log paper.
05800	A  major  application  will come from the exhaustion of oil resources
05900	which we can expect in the 1990's at  least  for  Japan  and  Western
06000	Europe  which  have  fewer  internal  resources  than  the  U.S.A.  A
06100	solution to this problem is to make motor fuel using nuclear  energy.
06200	One  proposal  is to use liquid hydrogen (Lawrence W. Jones, Science,
06300	22 October 1971).  Another is to take CO2 from the air and water  and
06400	energy  and  make  gasoline  from  it.   At  five mills per kwh, this
06500	corresponds to a 15 cents per gallon cost for gasoline for the energy
06600	alone.  Since Americans would still drive their cars if gasoline cost
06700	$1.00 per gallon, there is quite a margin to work with.  When one  of
06800	these  conversions  is made, and I see no worthwhile alternative, the
06900	demand for electricity for this purpose may be one to two  times  the
07000	present per capita use for all purposes.
07100	
07200		While a position of sorts, it is not well enough  worked  out
07300	to justify crossing the country to express it.  My main motivation is
07400	to   observe   the   interaction   of   the   various   flavors    of
07500	environmentalist,  industrialist, academic, and politician and to try
07600	to form a personal estimate  of  the  amount  of  intelligence  being
07700	applied to the problem of electrical power compared to the problem of
07800	getting political power.