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\chapter{11}{Future Energy Requirements---A Position Paper}

By way of self-introduction, I should say that my interest in
future  energy  requirements  is  part  of  a  general  interest   in
technology  and  society about which I am writing a book.  My general
point of view is that humanity will benefit from the  development  of
much more technology of kinds that will be discussed in the book.  In
order to discuss future technology, it is necessary  to  see  whether
the  resources will exist for an even more technological society.  My
tentative conclusion is that the resources do exist to bring  several
times  the  world's  present  population to several times the present
U.S. standard of living and keep them there  indefinitely,  but  that
this requires new technology based on present science.

With  regard to the subject of the present conference, future
needs for electricity, it seems to me that the studies  I  have  been
read  have  been inadequate.  Most thinking so far is based on simple
extrapolation of the average growth rate over the last  few  decades.
If  such  an  extrapolation  had  been done with U.S. per capita beef
production for the decades just before 1890, we  might  have  reached
the  conclusion that by 1972, each American would eat a cow a week. A
more detailed approach is necessary.

The use of electricity  is  traditionally  divided  into  the
industrial,  commercial,  and residential sectors.  All of these have
been growing,  but  the  residential  sector  has  been  growing  the
fastest.   I  have not tried to figure out how to forecast industrial
and commercial demand, but the residential  demand  lends  itself  to
some  simple techniques for estimating when saturation will occur and
what the saturation per capita demand will be for the present uses of
electricity.    A   preliminary  look  shows  a  surprisingly  simple
situation, namely, the main possibilities for large future  increases
in  demand  come  from  increases  in  the  use  of  electricity  for
air conditioning and space heating.  A very rough guess based on  TVA
figures indicates that if all housing were air conditioned and heated
electrically, the per capita residential use of electricity would  be
between  four  and  five times what it is at present.  It seems to me
that the universal use of  home  air conditioning  except  in  a  few
climatically  favored  areas  like Northern California is inevitable,
barring a severe power shortage which seems  to  me  unnecessary  and
unlikely.   Heating  will  convert to electricity more slowly, but if
coal, oil, and natural gas become more expensive than nuclear  power,
as  I  think  they  will in a few decades, the conversion to electric
heat is also quite  likely.  Since  my  position  on  overcoming  the
hazards   of  and  the  objections  to  nuclear  power  is  like  the
conventional wisdom of the  nuclear  power  advocates,  I  shall  not
elaborate it further.

Whether  the  demand  for  electricity  will  grow beyond the
saturation  of  present  appplications   depends   on   whether   new
applications  will  appear.  This  is  a  question  which  should  be
discussed concretely and not just by drawing lines on semi-log paper.
A  major  application  will come from the exhaustion of oil resources
which we can expect in the 1990's at  least  for  Japan  and  Western
Europe  which  have  fewer  internal  resources  than  the  U.S.A.  A
solution to this problem is to make motor fuel using nuclear  energy.
One  proposal  is to use liquid hydrogen (Lawrence W. Jones, Science,
22 October 1971).  Another is to take CO2 from the air and water  and
energy  and  make  gasoline  from  it.   At  five mills per kwh, this
corresponds to a 15 cents per gallon cost for gasoline for the energy
alone.  Since Americans would still drive their cars if gasoline cost
\$1.00 per gallon, there is quite a margin to work with.  When one  of
these  conversions  is made, and I see no worthwhile alternative, the
demand for electricity for this purpose may be one to two  times  the
present per capita use for all purposes.

While a position of sorts, it is not well enough  worked  out
to justify crossing the country to express it.  My main motivation is
to   observe   the   interaction   of   the   various   flavors    of
environmentalist,  industrialist, academic, and politician and to try
to form a personal estimate  of  the  amount  of  intelligence  being
applied to the problem of electrical power compared to the problem of
getting political power.
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