Page 31 - Environmental Nanotechnology Applications and Impacts of Nanomaterials

Nanotechnology and Our Energy Challenge 17

agencies and national laboratories; enhanced partnerships among
national laboratories, universities, and industry; and increased inter-
national cooperation.
Looking at these looming challenges, Dr. Richard Smalley began a
campaign to promote the utilization of nanotechnology to find a solution
to the energy problem. Dr. Smalley noted in a speech at Rice University
in 2004.

We need to find an economic alternative to oil. We need a new basis for
energy prosperity. Ten billion people on the planet—that is our challenge. I
believe this challenge is vastly greater than we admit. Between where we
are right now and where we need to get to, we really have to find a new oil.
I do not mean a liquid; I mean a technology that makes us energy rich again
in an environmentally acceptable fashion for 10 billion people. Between here
and where we need to be, there is something like ten miracles. The good news
is that miracles do happen. I have been involved in physical sciences long
enough to see many of them happen: lasers, high temperature super con-
ductors, and so forth. But at the rate that they have been happening, over
my lifetime, I am beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the break-
throughs that need to happen. I am not by any means convinced that we will
get there soon enough. That is the reason I feel strongly that we ought to get
much more intense about this issue than we have in the past and launch a
major new energy research program to get this problem solved. [2]
Energy is a “quantitative business.” Worldwide energy use is at the
rate of 13–14 terawatts, the equivalent of 200–210 million barrels of oil
per day. Analysts project that we will need at least twice as much energy
in the next fifty years, but even doubling current resources and finding
a way to satisfy twice our current levels of consumption for the next half-
century would not be enough to give each individual on the planet a life
comparable to that of citizens in the developed world.
Nanotechnology is the art and science of building materials that act
at the nanometer scale. The ultimate nanotechnology builds at the ulti-
mate level of finesse, one atom at a time. The “wet side” of nanotech-
nology includes all the nanomachinery of cellular life and viruses and
manifests itself as biotechnology. The “dry side” of nanotechnology,
which relates to energy, includes electrical and thermal conduction and
provides great strength, toughness, and high temperature resistance,
properties not found in biotechnology. Applied nanotechnology holds
great promise in the energy area.
There are many ways nanotechnology may play a role in finding solu-
tions to the energy problem. Funding committed to nanoscience and
energy has great distributive benefits as it is a crosscutting research
area. Incremental discoveries, as well as disruptive discoveries, could
have implications for many fuel and energy sources as well as storage
and delivery systems.