1. 10X Engineering San Jose State Engineering Ron Swenson February 19, 2008

2. Each Generation’s Challenges
My grandparents and parents faced the Great Depression and World War II.
My generation struggled with Civil Rights, Vietnam, the Cold War and Prosperity at the Third World’s Expense.
What will challenge your generation?

3. Your Generation’s Challenges
Your generation will encounter the 21st century’s twin challenges of:
Global Warming (becoming well-known but perceived to be out in the future sometime)
Peak Oil (still known only by a few but imminent).

4. Global Warming
Fires in Congo & Angola

5. Peak Oil
Oil price has risen 10X, responses are 1.5X -- or less!

6. Two Ways to Respond… Germany, Japan [lost WWII]
Solar Energy
Hybrid Vehicles
USA [losing a self-made war against Nature]
Attack Iraq
Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR oil)
25 x ‘25 … the rape of Soil and Ancient Water cloaked with environmental rhetoric

7. Which way will prevail?
“The American way of life is not negotiable.” [G H W Bush, 1992]
Check with the people of New Orleans for more more details ….
Can we change course in time to avoid catastrophe?

8. Swenson´s Law www.OilCrisis.com/Swenson
To avoid deprivation resulting from the exhaustion of non-renewable resources, humanity must employ conservation and renewable resource substitutes sufficient to match depletion.

9. Bucky Fuller
“More with Less”
1966 at SJS

10. “Solar technologies are … potentially the most economic solution.”
Hermann Scheer
“Solar technologies are … potentially the most economic solution.”
2004

11. Richard Smalley “Think TeraWatts” 2004
Smalley.Rice.edu → Our Energy Challenge

12. We’ve gotta lotta work to do…
Are you up for it?
You will learn to observe natural phenomena and model systems’ performance before systems are built.
But will you learn about the global challenges and how to deal with them in class? Your environment is much too comfortable to abandon old habits. So how will you get ready for the coming changes?

13. So you’re gonna be an engineer?
What’s the point?
What to do in school?
What will you have that others won’t?
Can you predict the future?

14. What to do?
Get busy and build yourself a good crap detector. There’s plenty of it out there. You will need to see it for what it is.
Learn to track down the facts, analyze the problem and defend your conclusions.
Team up with others. Venture capital is team sport. So is engineering.

15. Clean Coal?
Pathological
Disconnect

16. We must stop carbon build-up

17. What do the “experts” say?
“Active solar power ... works, though not nearly as well as fossil fuel…
“Alternative energy sources ... are … implausible … without the subsidy of oil. The only remaining alternative is nuclear energy.”
James Howard Kunstler

18. Total Area Required for a PV Power Plant to Produce the Total US Electrical Demand
Source: J. A. Turner, “A Realizable Renewable Energy Future”, Science, 285, p 5428 (1999). “We will first address the question ‘Can we really supply all our energy needs from renewable energy?’ The power of renewable energy can easily be shown using the United States as an example. The US is the world largest energy consumer, total US annual electrical demand for 1997 was about 3.2 x 1012 kWh (representing 25% of the World’s consumption). If we assume flat fixed-plate collectors covering only half of the available land area with a system efficiency of 10% (current commercial technology), a PV array 104 miles (166 km) on a side (~10,900 sq. miles, km2), placed in southwest Nevada, would over one year supply all this energy. This area represent less than 0.4% of the available land area of the United States. A system efficiency of 15%, which should be available in the next 3-5 years, would drop the area to 7200 sq. miles. If we add wind to the energy mix, this area for PV grows smaller, if we add geothermal, smaller still, if we add hydro smaller still, …the point is clear, we can gather more than enough renewable energy to power our society and yet have an abundance of renewable resources available for future growth. Also one should note that wind alone or solar thermal alone could also provide all our electrical energy needs. The area of the Nevada test site is approximately 5000 sq mi.” [J A Turner, Solar World Congress, Orlando, FL, 2005 August]

19. Global Solar Energy Balance
Solar Energy Input (TeraWatts)
178,000
Reflected to Space Immediately
53,000
Absorbed and Then Reflected as Heat
82,000
Used to Evaporate Water (Weather)
40,000
Captured by Plant Photosynthesis
100
Total Energy Used by Human Society 13
Total Energy Used by US Society
2.5
Total Human Food Energy
0.6

20. Getting down to cases
Each of us must find our place in the scheme of things. It’s not what’s important. It’s what’s important to you.
For me, the challenge is kicking the oil habit.
The solution comes up every morning.
So that’s what I’m going to talk about.

21. How to Predict the Future?
The best way to predict the future is to design it. [Alan Kayes]
Point of view is worth 80 IQ points. It’s how you look at the problem.
You got to stick to one thing and then drive it hard. [Carl N. Swenson]

22. Thermodynamics vs. Economics
Policy can´t defeat Mother Nature.
… in the long run …
Thermo-dynamics wins!

23. Public Outreach: Television, Radio, Community Presentations, Reports Presentation to International and National Stakeholders
Consumer Audits
• Refrigerators • Televisions
• Water Pumps • Lighting • Radios
• Kitchen Appliances • Hot Water Heaters

24. ElectroRoof

25. Sustainable Transportation
Not cars
Not airplanes
Walking, Horses, Bikes, Sailboats … and Podcars

26. Kiteship
From Guinness: "A 420 sq meter (4,521 sq ft) traction kite manufactured by KiteShip (USA) was used to propel an 8.5 tonne (18,740 lb) yacht near Sydney in 6 December, 2004, the largest kite ever used to pull a vehicle of any kind."

27. Beating oil addiction with fraud
New Generation Vehicle (Clinton)
Hydrogen Highway (Schwarzenegger)
Cellulosic Ethanol (G W Bush)

28. How we use energy
white

29. Am I missing something?! So what about Hydrogen?
Energy Return on Energy Invested < ½

30. Pathological Disconnect
CLEAN COAL? TVA’s Bull Run clean coal-fired power plant in East Tennessee.

31. So what about Corn Cars & Bean Buses?

32. So what are we going to do?
Basky

33. The All-New DonCar!

34. Compare PV to Biofuels

35. Global Solar Energy Balance
Solar Energy Input (TeraWatts)
178,000
Reflected to Space Immediately
53,000
Absorbed and Then Reflected as Heat
82,000
Used to Evaporate Water (Weather)
40,000
Captured by Plant Photosynthesis
100
Total Energy Used by Human Society 13
Total Energy Used by US Society
2.5
Total Human Food Energy
0.6
Sunlight is sufficient

36. Tonatiuh

37. Freeway at Capacity

38. Vehicles Removed

39. PRT Passengers

40. PRT System

41. SolarEvolution SolarEvolution www.SolarEvolution.com/PRT
Source: SkyTran

42. 10X Engineering

43. Remember: 120,000 TW of solar energy is being received by the Earth right now.
Source: Chu, Steve, Solutions to the energy problem, Asia Pacific Partnership Conference, Claremont Hotel, Berkeley,

44. Thermodynamics of PV
EROI: 5 years
Life: 50 years

45. Three Kinds of People
Those who make it happen!
Those who watch it happen.
Those who wonder what happened?

46. Are engineers human? …
all you need is love!

47. Observe (get a clue). Invent your future. Summary: OBI
follow your Bliss.
Invent your future.