A few questions that we have received as we were developing our Energy Utilization Center proposal:  Why energy utilization? 

The world is changing and as third world countries become more industrialized, better developed, their thirst for energy becomes more.  There is only a finite amount of fuel in the world when we consider fossil fuels.  Trying to find an answer to this question depends on who are you going to trust or which side of the equation they are working for (50-70 years if we find no new deposits and if we continue to find deposits and improve efficiency and better ways to get the oil – 150-200 years…  This of course relies on usage staying the same as well).  The other main question becomes how much will the U.S. produce?   The second question doesn’t really matter – with a world market; any oil produced by the U.S. will be sold at world market prices.  Someone bids higher for our oil, and then there it goes.

Let’s look at part of the first question – if usage will stay the same.  Obviously, it won’t. 

Worldwide energy use is growing much faster than supply — certainly fossil-fuel supply — can match.  The U.S. Department of Energy projects that worldwide energy use will increase by ~40% from today to almost 700 quadrillion BTUs by 2030 (1).  This increased demand reflects many factors, including the growing prosperity in emerging nations.  For example, China is adding 50–80 GW of electricity-generating capacity every year — roughly the equivalent of the entire grid of England (Apte, Hatano, Greenagel, and Scalise).

Do you think that the fossil fuel supply will last?  One other thing that people need to realize – even if it lasts another 100 years or so and becomes someone else’s problem, it will affect all of us because of higher prices.  The Energy Utilization Center, even though a regional center, will help everyone with what is created.

Editor’s Note:  The next few weeks MATEC NetWorks will be examining the Energy Utilization Center – one of the fine documents that will be quoted extensively is the April 1, 2009 article, Energy Efficiency:  Semiconductors’ 21st Century Challenge.  It was written by Pushkar Apte, Daryl Hatano, John Greenagel, and George Scalise and published by Semiconductor International, 4/2009.

1.  Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2008, September 2008

Mark Viquesney