The greatest potential prize on the Moon is energy. “If the world’s 9 billion in 2050 used energy at the rate that Americans to today… the world would have to generate 102.2 terawatts,” writes MIT Professor Daniel Nocera in the Fall, 2006 issue of the quarterly Daedalus. Considering that the world only generates 13.5 terawatts today, the future needs of humanity may be impossible to meet from purely terrestrial sources.
It’s unlikely we’ll need that 102 terawatts because Americans are something like 7% of the world’s population but are responsible for 33% of it’s economic output.
The odds of the rest of the world industrializing enough to catch up to our rate of consumption are slim to none.
I’d also like to see what was omitted by the ellipsis in the middle of that sentence. Thanks to Google I can:
However, Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes a sobering analysis of the challenge of supplying adequate energy to the world in 2050. In his article, “On the Future of Global Energy” in the current issue of Daedalus (unfortunately not online), Nocera begins with the amount of energy currently being used on a per capita basis in various countries and then extrapolates what that usage implies for a world of 9 billion people in 2050. For example, in 2002 the United States used 3.3 terawatts (TW), China 1.5 TW, India 0.46 TW, Africa 0.45 TW and so forth. Totaling it all up, Nocera finds, “the global population burned energy at a rate of 13.5 TW.” A terawatt equals one trillion watts.
Nocera calculates that if 9 billion people in 2050 used energy at the rate that Americans do today that the world would have to generate 102.2 TW of power-more than seven times current production. If people adopted the energy lifestyle of Western Europe, power production would need to rise to 45.5 terawatts. On the other hand if the world’s 9 billion in 2050 adopted India’s current living standards, the world would need to produce only 4 TW of power. Nocera suggests, assuming heroic conservation measures that would enable affluent American lifestyles, that “conservative estimates of energy use place our global energy need at 28-35 TW in 2050.” This means that the world will need an additional 15-22 TW of energy over the current base of 13.5 TW.
Amazing, his more realistic view is 2-3 times current energy needs, instead of 7.
PS: PJ media, it’s 2007, lets make the comment entry field a little bit wider. 45 characters is just silly.
