ART CENTER SUMMIT 2009, KICK-OFF SESSION (IT’S ALL DESIGNED)

The first sign of the New Energy age dawning at Art Center Summit 2009: The first presentation of the day was on Peak Oil. Not oil painting, oil the fuel. Black gold. Texas tea. The stuff that made Saudi Arabia matter. Why does an Art Center Summit kick off with a presentation from a geologist on oil?

Professor Kenneth L. Verosub, a geologist from the University of California at Davis, couldn’t have been more explicit about the Peak: “That’s all there is, there ain’t no more.” Based on calculations Verosub presented in some detail, there are, he told a large audience of art and design students, about 7 years of oil reserves at present rates of consumption and, he predicted, oil and gas pump prices will soon once again be rising rapidly. Verosub told these students, who will be graduating between 2010 and 2014, that “crunch time” will come in 2016 plus or minus 2 years.

Verosub defined crunch time as when oil supplies get tight enough to fight over, “a recipe for civil unrest and war,” he said.

That got the students' attention.

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But the question remains: Aside from its shock value, why is a Peak Oil authority lecturing art and design students?

The answer: The Aptera and the battery electric vehicles that were sitting on the conference floor. Somebody designed the astonishingly game-changing 3-wheeled Aptera battery electric vehicle (BEV). It looks more like something that should be shuttling between interstellar cruisers than cruising local boulevards. It's a design that says, “I have seen the future and it runs on batteries, not oil.”

From rohanpinto via YouTube

Everything about the emerging New Energy age will be designed. These are the young people who will be doing the designing.

The next sign of the New Energy age dawning at Art Center Summit 2009: Professor Nate Lewis of the California Institute of Technology started his presentation with a design challenge. He dared the students to design a 2-kilowatt per person life.

Lewis went on to explain that moving people around without oil is not the real problem. The real problem, according to Lewis, is carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation. “We are already running out of air in which to put all that CO2 and that’s the real problem…the big gorilla in the closet.”

Professor Lewis might more precisely have said that the gorilla in the closet is global climate change and carbon dioxide emissions (the principle kind of greenhouse gas emissions) are the cause of global climate change.

He went on to say, in more scientifically accurate terms, that the gorilla won't stay in the closet.

The emissions problem is more important because it is governed by the laws of physics and they cannot be repealed. “Only the laws of politics can be repealed,” Lewis said.

“2050 isn’t 40 years from now, it’s 10 years from now, “ Lewis pointed out. When you design the future, you design for a long time out, Lewis said. “It's your job to design the energy infrastructure of the 21st century,” Lewis told them. “And you get one chance to do it right.”

Lewis wants the future designed for 2-kilowatt per person consumption. Why? Because the population of the world is going to grow to 9-to-11 billion people and world GDP will grow with it. Economic growth is directly related to energy consumption. A 2-kilowatt per person energy efficiency might – if somebody can design it – be a future that uses energy well enough to power the world without inducing the worst consequences of global climate change.

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“The real problem is we have to decide that we are going to be careful what we wish for because we might get it. What happens if we burn all that fossil energy? Well, we know according to the laws of chemistry that when we burn hydrocarbons we make carbon dioxide…”

Lewis’ long term solution to global climate change is solar energy-generated electricity captured at a scale that is 10 times greater than the capacity of every U.S. rooftop. He is working with his Cal Tech lab to do that by mimicking Mother Nature’s solution, photosynthesis.

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Lewis intends to invent a low-cost, solar energy-generating, paint-on material. It is a titillating, seductive hope. And it offers a rich design challenge. But the challenge Lewis kept coming back to in his presentation was efficiency.

“A challenge would be to actually design an energy system for the country that could be deployed practically that reaches [the 2-kilowatt per person efficiency]. I’ve never personally seen it done but I think with creative design it would be possible to think holistically about the energy budget not just in terms in transportation but in homes, in lighting, in buildings, in infrastructure, and to conceive of such a society…”

Demonstrating the extent to which these art and design students understand the message, the first morning session ended with the presentation of the award-winning Art Center student film Fossil Fools.

Fossil Fools, The award-winning Art Center student film. From ACCDFILM via YouTube.

The Art Center Summit 2009: Expanding the Vision of Sustainable Mobility
February 17, 2009 (Art Center College of Design)

WHO
Professor Kenneth L. Verosub of the University of California at Davis; Professor Nate Lewis of the California Institute of Technology

WHAT
The Art Center Summit 2009: Expanding the Vision of Sustainable Mobility. Presentations on the first morning on the conference began with the subject of peak oil and ended with the subject of battery electric vehicles.

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WHEN
- 1st morning session of the summit’s 1st day, March 17, 2009.
- The summit runs through March 19.
- Keynote Event: Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 7-9 p.m. "Urgency: A Vision for Energy Security (R. James Woolsey, former director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency) AND The Future of U.S. Energy and Transporation (Andy Karsner, former assistant secretary, Department of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy)
Concluding round table: Jack Hidary, Freedom Prize Foundation (Host) with Andy Karsner, James Woolsey and Mobility Legend Amory Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute.

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WHERE
Pasadena Convention Center (East Pavilion), 300 East Green Street, Pasadena, CA 911 (626-396-4308)

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WHY
- From Verosub: Oil forms under special conditions. It takes time to form. There’s only so much of it. It isn’t easy to find. All the “easy oil” has been found. Finding more oil won’t be easy or cheap. In about 7 years, demand for oil will exceed maximum total oil production.
- From Lewis: The quantity of energy needed to meet the demands of the future is not the problem. It is the quantity of emissions-free energy needed that presents the problem. Meanwhile, world population is likely to reach 10-to-11 billion by 2050 and GDP is expected to grow at 1.6% per year. The only way to meet world energy demand is to reduce the amount of energy consumed per unit of GDP. The 2-kilowatt per person level of U.S. energy efficiency needed is 5 times the efficiency presently used in the U.S. and twice the efficiency of the best world economies. The most abundant source of emissions-free energy big enough to meet the needs of 2050 is solar, if it can be deployed in an economically viable way.

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QUOTES
- Professor Verosub: “Are you ready to make the ‘ultimate sacrifice?’ And cut your oil consumption by half? We would still be using 3.5X as much oil.”
- Professor Lewis: “The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. And the fossil energy age is not going to run out anytime within the next 50 or 80 or 100 years because we’ve run out of cheap fossil energy in one form or another. That’s not the real problem.”