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Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions The Experience Economy: The High Life of Tomorrow

A Realistic Energy Strategy page 1

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Algae’s Powerful Future page 8

PLUS: Organic Solar Collection page 23 The Rise of Brain-Focused Teaching page 25 How to Live Beyond 100 page 24 Tapping the Power of DNA to Run Computers The Scent of the Future page 24

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A Realistic Energy Strategy

By Tsvi Bisk

Deployable solutions to the energy crisis are in hand. The obstacle is our inability to differentiate between ­i deological and strategic thinking.

Intelligent policy making requires that effective strategies prevail over ideological wishful thinking. “What can we do?” and “When can we do it?” must be our standards — not visions of a perfect world.

Policy criteria are concerned with time (when something can be done) and doability (what can be done).

Time refers to short term, intermediate term, long term, and deep long term. In other words, how we get from here to there and what the intermediate steps would be. Doability relates to practicality — a policy that reflects how real people actually live.

Anything else is irrational. Thus, a rational energy strategy must:

Energy policy must be realistic or it won’t work, says strategy analyst Tsvi Bisk. Fortunately, clean and sustainable energy is more realistic than you may think.

1. Presume the middle class will not change its lifestyle. Policy pro-

posals based on fundamental changes of lifestyle will fail and close minds to environmental arguments.

People are willing to change on the margins — replace present gas guzzlers with hybrids or electric cars, replace incandescent bulbs with fluorescent or LEDs, pay attention to the energy consumption of appliances, vacation closer to home, work closer to home (or from home), etc. They are not willing to give up hot water, air conditioning, or the flexibility of private transportation.

2. Mobilize multi-partisan political support. Policies that irritate large

segments of public opinion are not politically doable in postmodern democracies — a fact annoying to experts, but still a fact.

3. Conform to the laws of economics. Taxing big energy corporations WFS PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY C.G. WAGNER / IMAGES: PHOTOS.COM

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might be emotionally satisfying but will solve nothing, and, as with President Jimmy Carter’s tax regime in the 1970s, probably will exacerbate the problem. It is the equivalent of kicking your dog because you are angry it is raining outside.

4. Be equitable. A strategy cannot depend on long-term direct or in­ direct subsidies, nor have a privileged status before the law.

5. Include indirect costs and yields. Internalizing the $50 billion a

year the United States spent in policing the Persian Gulf between the two

Iraqi wars, as well as other costs of oil dependence, means that the real price of imported oil to the American economy would be about $10 a gallon at the pump. If the economic benefits of producing energy within the United States (jobs created, business activity generated, and tax revenues derived) are added in, tax breaks for alternative energy technologies become an investment that would produce a greater return for the economy and not only for the environment.

6. Be beneficial to the environment. More energy with less envi-

ronmental damage is the only policy that can mobilize the broad-based support mentioned in criterion two.

7. Be a combination of increased production (primarily from unconventional sources) and decreased consumption.

Impractical Solutions

• Building nuclear plants. How new nuclear plants are supposed to solve the problem of high liquid fuel prices is beyond comprehension.

Polls showing 60% of Americans in favor of nuclear power are irrelevant — try building a plant in their area. Inevitable local opposition will turn any new nuclear plant into a 10to 20-year project even if approved by national authorities.

Nuclear is not equitable. In the United States, the nuclear industry has been so legally advantaged in terms of liability that one wonders how it has withstood a real constitutional challenge. France’s protection of nuclear power is even more extreme. Nuclear plants also have the environmental problem of nuclear waste. Previously claimed economic advantages are now doubtful. Costs per kilowatt of nuclear power are twice to four times what estimates were only several years ago.

• Hydrogen, ethanol, and palm oil. Hydrogen is essentially a carrier of energy; it takes almost as much energy to produce it as it carries. It is a “killer application” straw man. Its advocates would be well advised to turn their efforts to more immediate, doable, and efficient energy alternatives. The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? highlights this.

Corn ethanol is similar to hydrogen in that it also takes almost as much energy to produce as it carries.

Sugarcane ethanol, on the other hand, produces nine units of energy for every energy unit invested, but it has several problems. Brazil, the world’s largest producer, consumes all the ethanol it produces and will likely continue to do so as its economy expands. Other potential developing-world producers will be small and likely use any product they generate domestically. The expansion of sugarcane growth is beginning to impact on rain forests, so its environmental benefits are becoming ever more doubtful.

Palm oil is an environmental catastrophe — its growth is destroying wide swaths of rain forest. Sugarcane ethanol and palm oil might be redeemed by genetic engineering that enables their growth in desert areas with high-salinity water. This would be a worthwhile research initiative, but not a doable solution in a reasonable amount of time.

• Drilling. Even Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens says drilling cannot solve the problem. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, if permission for drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge were given tomorrow, the first barrel of oil would be produced by 2018; production would peak in 2027 at 780,000 barrels a day (mean estimate) and then decline.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the United States was consuming 19.8 million barrels of oil a day in April 2008, down from the 20.6 million a day the previous April. That is a savings of 811,000 barrels a day. In other words, in one year, the United States had a net gain equal to the total production of ANWR in 2028. Yet, the price of oil doubled during the same period.

Peak Oil or Peak Availability The debate about “peak oil” is bogus unless one assumes “peak technology.” Given advancing technologies in deep-ocean drilling and extraction from oil sands and oil shale, known and recoverable oil reserves will probably sustain themselves in coming years. But recover-

able reserves and actual availability of oil are two different things.

Developing these reserves entails enormous capital outlays and long lead times. Brazil’s recent deepocean discovery, with an estimated 9 billion barrels of reserves (similar to ANWR in size), is a case in point. It will cost about $150 billion to develop and, like ANWR, will take more than a dec­ade before the first barrel of oil is extracted.

Both the Brazilian field and ANWR will be worth this tremendous investment only if the price of oil is high. In other words, drilling is not the solution to high fuel prices; it is contingent on continued high prices.

See how many major oil companies will stand in line for licenses to drill in ANWR if oil hovers around $50– $60 a barrel. My guess is not many, unless they feel their lobbyists can maneuver indirect governmental subsidies.

Energy maven Chris Nelder argues that the real systemic problem is “peak exports” or “peak availability” of oil. [See his article on page 6.]

By the time ANWR and new offshore resources in the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere get fully on line, their combined production will not equal the ongoing decline in exports from oil-producing countries, due to increased domestic consumption.

All 14 major oil exporters are moving up the value chain by developing petrochemical industries that use a growing percentage of their domestic oil production. Their citizens are also buying automobiles at a dizzying rate. All, except Norway, have had double-digit yearly increases in domestic oil consumption since 2005.

In 2020, Russia might still be pumping 10 million barrels a day, but most likely will be consuming 5 million barrels rather than the 3 million it consumes today; in 2028 it might still be pumping 10 million barrels a day but consuming 7 million barrels. We must remember that the United States was the world’s largest oil exporter in the 1930s but became a net importer soon after World War II. Exports from Africa will remain static as Nigeria’s exports decline.

Booming Brazil will consume all the energy it produces. The domestic enUrgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

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ergy consumption of the rest of Latin America will burgeon. Venezuela’s production has declined significantly under Chavez; more-competent governance will likely lead to increased production but also increased domestic consumption. The same is true of Iran. If the Islamic regime stays in power, production will continue to stagnate. A progressive regime change will likely lead to increased production but also improved development and increased domestic consumption.

Mexico’s constitution forbids foreign investments in the oil sector. Its major fields are rapidly declining.

Domestic consumption is increasing.

By 2020, Mexico’s exports to the United States could decline to a trickle. It might even be on the verge of becoming a net oil importer, like Indonesia this past year. It is already down to a little more than a million barrels a day, as production from its biggest field has dropped 34% in 2008. Projections for Canadian oil sands cannot make up this difference.

Persian Gulf countries are now investing huge sums in economic diversification, which, along with popu l a t i o n g ro w t h a n d i n c re a s e d standard of living, is pressuring exports downward.

What Can Be Done?

• Conservation and accumulation of greenhouse-emission credits.

Hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric cars should be advantaged for licensing and other taxes. All nonemergency vehicles purchased by governments (federal, state, and local in the United States) should be hybrids, plug-in hybrids, or electric by 2010. Purchasers, whether private or governmental, would earn greenhouse-emission credits they could sell to the coal-liquefaction program (see below), thus providing an additional economic incentive advantaging these technologies. It is reasonable to assume that this policy would result in a decline in the consumption of liquid fuels for transportation of 150,000 to 200,000 barrels a day every year from inception. By 2020, the United States could be consuming less than 18 million barrels of liq3

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uid fuel daily.

Incandescent bulbs should be banned by 2010. Replacing a single incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent light (CFL) will keep half a ton of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere over the life of the bulb. It is estimated that, if everyone in the United States used energy-efficient lighting, 50 average-size coal-powered plants could close. Similar savings could be achieved in the ­European Union, Japan, and South ­Korea. Homes, businesses, and governmental offices could sell the greenhouse-emission credits thus earned to a coal-liquefaction program.

Alternative-energy companies could sell their products and services to homes and businesses as “loss leaders” or “at cost” in order to accumulate greenhouse-emission credits that they could also sell to a coal-­ liquefaction program, making the price of alternative-energy technologies more attractive. Consequent increased volume of sales would generate economies of scale and further lower the cost of dispersed solar and wind power.

• Liquefaction of coal. The technologies for coal liquefaction have been available since before World War II and can produce a barrel of oil for about $30. Opposition derives from the fact that these technologies release more carbon dioxide in the conversion process than the extraction and refinement of liquid fuel from petroleum.

To assuage environmentalist opposition, liquefaction installations would be permitted to become operational on condition that they produce a half a ton of CO2 for every ton of greenhouse gases eliminated by other methods of producing energy.

Trading half a ton of CO2 for a ton of CO 2, the environment would get a two-for-one benefit. Trading half a ton of CO2 for a ton of methane, the environment would get a 20-for-one benefit. This would give the coal industry an economic incentive to get behind some of the green alternatives described below.

The United States has the largest recoverable reserves of coal in the world — equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves. An energy-andenvironment program that includes

coal would generate local jobs and augment local tax bases, garnering support among the working and middle classes. If we do not help coal become a friend of the environment, we are in trouble. It is the fastestgrowing fuel source in the world and the most ubiquitous, found on every continent and in almost every country. Millions of people depend on it for their livelihood. Banning coal is, for the time being, simply not doable. A rational environmental and energy strategy will have to make room for it.

Coal-liquefaction installations could be manufactured serially, much as Liberty ships were manufactured in World War II or F-16 fighter planes are manufactured today, using the underutilized manufacturing and human resources of America’s industrial heartland in the upper Midwest. Operating licenses would be contingent on the coal companies purchasing greenhouseemission credits to offset liquefaction emissions.

Within five years, the United States could be producing 1 million to 2 million barrels of liquefied coal daily; within 10 years, this could increase to 4 million barrels a day. The upper amount would be limited only by the availability of greenhouse-emission credits and new (cleaner) liquefaction technologies.

The Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act introduced in Congress in 2007 provides a partial legislative basis for this strategy — especially as it has as a major aim of making the U.S. armed forces energy-independent (by implication recognizing the national security aspects of energy ­crises).

Other countries with large coal deposits could follow America’s lead.

The aggregate impact on the world energy supply within a short period could be enormous.

• Capped wells. There are approximately 200,000 capped wells in the United States. With current technology, each well could produce five to 10 barrels of oil a day. Within one or two years, these wells could produce more oil per day than ANWR would after 20 years. What is needed are sufficient government guarantees in the form of long-term contracts and

low-interest loans as an incentive for small oil producers to bring these wells back into production. Given historical precedent, we can reasonably expect that new technologies that increase production rates and well life-span would quickly follow.

This policy would be environmentally beneficial in several ways. It would avert the use of bunker fuel for the tankers transporting imported oil. Bunker is the most polluting transportation fuel in use today.

The combined world merchant fleet spews as much noxious gas into the atmosphere as does the entire United States. Lower tanker traffic would also lessen the risk of tanker accidents and oil spills and eliminate the ballast detritus that oil tankers flush into the oceans before entering port.

Bringing these wells back into production would neutralize the fact that capped wells are poorly supervised and often leak into ground­ water.

Lastly, reactivating capped wells would generate local jobs and augment the local tax base. Tens of thousands of them are owned by thousands of small oilmen who have been begging the government to look at this option for a short-term bridging solution to the energy crisis.

• The T. Boone Pickens plan. This oilman turned wind-power guru has an interesting concept: Replace the 22% of domestically produced natural gas used for electrical generation with wind power. Turn the natural gas into liquefied natural gas to be used for transportation. The amount of natural gas obtained would be the equivalent of 38% of America’s current oil imports — more than 4 million barrels. Pickens claims that this could be achieved within 10 years and would cut hundreds of billions of dollars off of America’s trade ­deficit.

The obvious caveat to his proposal is that gas-fired plants less than 30 or 40 years old will not be decommissioned even if wind power is available. If he modified his plan to decommission aging gas and coal-fired plants over the next 10 years, with the coal thus saved becoming available for liquefaction, this concept could probably realize a replacement of several million barrels of oil a day

also. Another modification might be to convert the gas into methanol rather than liquefied natural gas.

This would advantage the concept of flex-fuel engines and freedom of choice in transportation ­fuels.

Wind replacing natural gas and liquefied natural gas or methanol replacing gasoline are both environmental pluses. Again, the sale of greenhouse-emission credits to the coal industry would be an additional incentive. If hybrids and plug-in hybrids were modified to use liquefied natural gas or methanol in their flexfuel internal-combustion components, there would be a tremendous multiplier effect in terms of reduced oil consumption and environmental benefit.

The above three steps could add between 5 million and 10 million barrels of domestic liquid fuel production by 2020. The conservative estimate of 5 million barrels would be a combination of 1.5 million to 2 million barrels for each of the above solutions. But let’s say that enough greenhouse-emission credits were accumulated to enable coal liquefaction to the tune of 4 million barrels and that T. Boone Pickens’s optimal vision of 4 million barrels is also realized. Let us further imagine that a new technology for extracting oil from capped wells comes on line, greatly increasing productivity.

Global Resource Corp. of New Jersey claims that its microwave technology can extract 100 barrels a day from abandoned wells. It is currently in negotiations with one of the largest oil service companies in the world to bring 10,000 of these wells back into production over the next seven years. It is also in advanced negotiations with Pennsylvania officials to bring the state’s 4,000 ancient wells back into production. Simple math shows that these two deals alone would add another 1.4 million barrels a day of production within a decade. One must assume that the initial success of these two projects would result in other deals, as well as the development of competitive technologies. Thus, the optimistic prediction of 10 million barrels a day in aggregate becomes not so farfetched.

But assuming the minimum and

further assuming conventional domestic oil production declining to 5 million barrels a day, while consumption has declined to 18 million barrels a day, the United States would be importing 8 million barrels a day, compared with 12 million today. If the optimal 10 million barrels is achieved, the United States would be importing only 3 million barrels a day, mostly from Canada. If consumption declines to 17 million barrels a day as a result of other savings in home heating and industrial use, NAFTA will have become a net fuel exporter.

Likely Developments within the Next Decade • Ethanol and biofuel from algae, sewage, manure, trash, and garbage. There are dozens of companies

around the world funded by tens of millions of dollars of venture capital working intensively on alternative fuels. The biomass is enormous, and breakthroughs could generate millions of barrels of additional liquid fuel by 2020. Algae alone could generate 2.5 million barrels on a surface area the size of Connecticut (the equal of several corn-growing counties in Iowa). Algae are the ultimate sequester of CO 2, which is its primary feedstock for growth.

Algae-growing installations could be constructed vertically (to gain maximum surface area while optimizing land use) adjacent to fossilfuel power plants and other CO 2emitting installations. One must wonder why the coal industry hasn’t become a champion of this energy strategy.

Landfills around the world create as much greenhouse gas in the form of methane as all the vehicles in the world. They leak toxic poisons into groundwater and pollute the soil as well as coastal areas. Economically, they are a stupid example of land use. Very few if any sewage-processing installations are hermetic and 100% efficient; they also pollute the groundwater and commercial fisheries. In essence, waste-to-fuel would be a recycling of hydrocarbons — civilization eating its own waste (the ultimate renewable) in order to endure.

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Ethanol and biodiesel from algae could become commercially viable within the next several years and provide us with another powerful weapon in the energy war. The challenge for algae advocates is to radically reduce the cost of the extraction and refining of biodiesel and ethanol from the raw algae. At present it is much too high and not economically competitive.

E10 (gas with a 10% ethanol additive) can be used without retrofitting infrastructure or automobiles. The equivalent of 9.1 million barrels of oil is consumed every day in the United States as gasoline. If it were possible to mandate the universal use of E10 today, it would replace the equivalent of 911,000 barrels of oil a day (more than ANWR in 2028).

An “Energy Peace Corps” of engineering and science students could help lower-income groups to convert cars past warranty into flex-fuel engines capable of burning gasoline with 85% ethanol. With modestly priced conversion kits, we could convert 50 million cars, about one-fifth of the American fleet, saving at a minimum an additional 1.5 million barrels a day.

Plug-in hybrids with flex-fuel engines using E85 could be getting 500 miles to the gallon of gasoline. The sale of greenhouse-emission credits to the coal industry would also enhance the economic benefits of these fuels. The creation of such a huge market would further drive investment and innovation, increasing production and lowering costs.

• Electric cars. Various technological and conceptual developments are beginning to interact with increasing consumer receptiveness to the electric car. Greatly improved batteries, quicker recharging mechanisms, and innovative infrastructure concepts are converging.

One intriguing model is Project Better Place, the brainchild of Israeli high-tech innovator Shai Agassi. It has formed a three-pronged alliance with the State of Israel, Nissan-­ Renault, and international venture capital.

The concept is an idea based on the mobile-phone model: You pay a monthly service fee for the battery and the electrical charge. They envi5

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© PARKER DEEN / ISTOCKPHOTO

ROLL CALL / NEWSCOM

Wind power is a great source of clean energy and a path to affordable fuel: If the United States were to invest in large-scale windmill deployment, the nation could save its coal and natural gas for fuel purposes, thus adding as much as 5 million–10 million new barrels of domestic liquid fuel production by 2020.

Liquid coal, a bottled sample of which U.S. Senator Jim Bunning presents to an audience, is a viable source of alternative fuel.

Bunning sponsored the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007, legislation that would create tax incentives for coal-to-liquids technology and infrastructure development.

Author Bisk singles out this legislation as an example of highly rational energy policy.

© MATT KUNZ / ISTOCKPHOTO PRNEWSFOTO / NEWSCOM

Windmills meet a portion of the Bahrain World Trade Center’s electricity needs.

Even oil nations know the value of clean and renewable energy.

Max Hoover of GoodMart displays some of the company’s energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs and lamps for residential markets.

CHINA IMAGING / NEWSCOM

© JEFF GYNANE / ISTOCKPHOTO

Taxi drivers in Jinan, China, wait their turns to fill up their car gas tanks with liquefied natural gas (LNG).

© KAREN KECZMERSKI / ISTOCKPHOTO

No gas nozzle needed. This electric car uses a power-cord extension to juice up.

Electric cars plug into outlets at this Florida charging station and “fill up” their power levels much like conventional automobiles at a gas station. Similar charging stations are opening for business in Denmark, Hawaii, Israel, Portugal, Japan, and South Korea.

VIKTOR LISITSIN / ITAR-TASS / NEWSCOM

Garbage is an energy source at the Getlini landfill near Riga, Latvia, where bulldozers consolidate it into hill formations so that work crews can trap the garbage’s gaseous emissions and generate electricity from it. Landfills are both terrible sources of pollution and terrific potential sources of alternative energy, according to the author Tsvi Bisk.

sion 150 battery-changing stations around Israel, where a driver could exchange a drained battery for a fully charged one in less time than it takes to fill up a tank of gas. Agassi’s inspiration came from NASCAR and Formula One racing pit-stop techniques. The battery-changing stations will be supplemented with tens of thousands of plug-in points in parking areas around the country.

The beauty of his concept is that it makes intermittent renewables such as solar and wind competitive without subsidies. In Israel, battery stations will be recharged by solar power; in Denmark, the second country to sign on, by wind. The idea is particularly attractive to geographic or geopolitical islands. Japan and Hawaii have signed on to the project. But so also have Australia and California. Mercedes-Benz, ­S ubaru, and a major Chinese car company are also in negotiations to join Nissan-Renault as the automotive partners.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank are enthusiastic about Agassi’s business model of selling electric-car services like mobile-phone service. They see it as a disruptive concept that could eventually transform the auto industry and neutralize petrodollar power.

Of course, Agassi’s model might be trumped by other developments, such as batteries with a 200-mile range that are capable of being fully charged in less than an hour. This in effect would give an electric car infinite range when taking into consideration how real human beings actually drive. Who does not have rest and refreshment stops over a 200mile trip? During a 10- to 15-minute pit stop, or a 30- to 40-minute food stop, drivers could top off their batteries at convenient recharging parking areas. Interstate-highway and state-turnpike rest stops could be required to set up recharging installations. Municipalities could require shopping malls to do the same. Fastfood chains would compete for customers by dedicating parts of their parking lots to recharging installations. In short, both by mandate and by competition such installations would quickly become ubiquitous.

The environmental benefits of electric cars are self-evident. Various Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

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studies show that driving on electricity, even from coal-fired grids, would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Using renewables, the environmental benefits would be multiplied.

The Deep Future The focus of this article has been on the United States, but energy, especially oil, is fungible. The European Union, Japan, and the rest of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) could do much to relieve the global pressure on energy supplies. Mandating and advantaging hybrids and electric cars, as well as compact fluorescent bulbs and LEDs, would be an obvious first step.

Countries could focus their foreign-aid efforts on making the developing world energy self-sufficient.

On the principle of one-half ton of greenhouse-gas emissions for every ton saved, they could build coal-­ liquefaction plants in many developing countries. When waste-to-fuel technologies become commercialized, they could be put into operation in every developing country.

Not only would this have economic benefit, since developing countries suffer the most from energy volatility, but it would also create jobs and promote public health, since smoldering landfills and running sewage are one of the greatest threats to public health in these countries.

In short, if the free world resolves that humankind be liberated from its addiction to oil by 2020, and by doing so greatly lessen greenhouse emissions, it will be done.

The above is essentially a bridging strategy designed to get human civilization to 2050 safely. The liquefied natural gas/methanol, coal, and capped-well gambits, being finite, will also run out of steam within 30 to 40 years from inception.

The future beyond 2050 will depend on continued progress in algae growth and waste-to-fuel technologies. Human civilization must start planning to become a closed system by 2100 — i.e., 100% recycling of all human waste and zero externalization into the commons. Sewage and waste-disposal systems would become the major source of fuel, and 7

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the environment would gradually cleanse itself back into a relatively pristine state. Algae growth would top off any fuel shortfalls.

But energy productivity must become the dominant theme in policy strategies. New lighting technologies, smart materials, and super-light composites (along with 100% recycling of organic waste into energy) will enable humanity to maintain a rich consumerist civilization at declining cost to both the economy and the environment. The theoretical underpinnings for such a vision already exist in the Cradle to Cradle philosophy of Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart. They are already commercializing their theory through the for-profit design firm they cofounded, McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry LLC. By the end of the century, lighting technologies will have transcended CFLs and even LEDs. Buildings will be built from smart materials that heat when it is cold and cool when it is hot, as well as turn sunlight into electricity. They will also have minidepolymerization units that turn domestic sewage and garbage into fuel.

Buildings will have become completely independent, self-sustaining energy units.

Airplanes, motor vehicles, and trains will be built from super-light composites (the proper use of hydrocarbons) that at present are prohibitively expensive but which industrial engineers will eventually learn how to produce cheaply. Imagine the fuel savings if a jumbo jet weighed only 50 tons rather than 400 tons. The same principle applies to cars, trucks, trains, elevators, ships, construction m a c h i n e r y, a n d p o r t i n s t a l l a tions — in short, anything that consumes energy in order to move. And if the fuel is an algae or waste derivative (infinitely renewable), you will, in effect, have solved the problem.

The possibilities of space might also have become a reality by 2100.

All mineral extraction could come from the asteroid belt or the Moon, and we would enable our precious planet to heal its scars. Space elevators would lift up toxic waste to be disposed of in that great incinerator in the sky called the Sun and bring down raw materials and finished

products. Energy for the solar economy would be provided by spacesolar energy generators capable of operating 24/7.

Our home, this Earth, will have become a bedroom community.

Final Note: The Optical Illusion of Plummeting Oil Prices With the price of oil dropping over $100 a barrel within a six-month span, the shortsighted temptation will be to dismiss the above. But since futurists think about the future, consider the following.

The International Energy Agency has just published a report that the world’s 450 biggest oil fields are depleting at a rate of 9.1% a year! This means that, barring major new oil discoveries, world production could fall 38% to 52 million barrels a day by 2013.

Even if oil consumption held at the present 85 million barrels a day, there is no way that new oil discoveries could make up for a 38% drop in production from existing fields. All the oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would supply the world for only six months (using the most optimistic estimate of reserves). The world would need four to five new Saudi Arabias by 2030 just to stay at 85 million barrels a day. Alaska, deep-ocean drilling, new offshore drilling, drilling in national parks — i.e., raping the land for every last drop of oil — could not even begin to offset these declines. Add in the fact that, with our present energy paradigm, consumption is predicted to grow to 130 million barrels a day over the next 30 years or so, and we must conclude that this energy paradigm is unsustainable.

“Enjoy” present oil prices while you can. As the world’s economy recovers, we will be approaching $150 a barrel for oil in the next four to five years. ❑ About the Author Tsvi Bisk is the director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking and the author of The Optimistic Jew: A Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century (Maxanna Press, 2007).

E-mail bisk@futurist-thinking.co.il.

SHARPCHARGE / ISTOCKPHOTO / NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENEGY LABORATORY

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irst, the bad news. A 2006 report by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) predicts that cars and trucks powered by batteries or hydrogen fuel cells will total only one-tenth of one percent of new vehicle sales in the year 2030, mainly because of the limited driving range, high vehicle costs, and lack of infrastructure for refueling.

With fuel cells, there’s also the problem of developing a cheap, abundant source of hydrogen to power them.

Under current policies, the DOE now predicts that relatively cleanburning ethanol and biodiesel won’t supply more than 11% of the fuel for America’s motor vehicles in the year 2030. Conventional crops can’t produce enough of these biofuels per acre to meet the enormous demand, which is expected to grow 40% by then.

The numbers are daunting, but one solution to our growing hunger for transportation fuels may be very simple: algae.

Lowly, single-celled microalgae may eventually be used to make large quantities of biodiesel, ethanol, and even hydrogen. At a small DOE plant in New Mexico, researchers produced up to 50 grams of algae per square meter per day, using native algae species that naturally took over the ponds. This might be enough to yield 6,800 gallons of oil per acre if sustained for a year. That’s 11 times more than any other biodiesel crop, including palm oil. The potential of algae-based biofuels has been covered by CNN, MSNBC, New Scientist, Technology Review, and dozens of other sources. But the unique challenges — and opportunities — of algae power are often left out of the discussion.

Today, the capital costs of establishing an acre of algae ponds (mixed by motorized paddle wheels) are still much higher than those for conventional oil crops producing biodiesel or for corn crops producing ethanol.

But algae ponds require only a fraction of the land area. That’s a critical advantage at a time when widespread biofuel production bears part of the blame for tropical deforestation and food shortages in develop9

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ing countries.

Biodiesel from algae is lead-free, almost sulfur-free, biodegradable, and can run any modern diesel engine. Biodiesel also lessens global warming because it’s made from plants that absorb carbon dioxide while they’re growing, thus compensating for the carbon dioxide released when the fuel is burned. According to the DOE, unblended (B100) biodiesel fuel emits an average of two-thirds less CO2 and five other air pollutants than does petroleum diesel. However, biodiesel is more likely to cause engine problems in cold winter weather unless it’s blended with petroleum diesel. And burning biodiesel produces slightly more nitrogen oxide, although the amount of this air pollutant is much less when using bio­diesel blends or the emission-control systems in new diesel vehicles.

The market generally points to a bright future for diesel. Market analysts expect the price of petroleum diesel to be closer to that of gasoline in a few years. Then, Americans will start purchasing more low-polluting diesel and diesel-electric hybrid vehicles. Sales will grow as potential buyers realize that the new “clean diesel” cars get about 25%–35% better fuel economy than comparable gasoline-powered vehicles, and that they’re much quicker, quieter, and cleaner than in the past. In Europe, diesel fuel already powers about half of the new cars sold.

Agriculture, Algae, and International Development Algae ponds can use the waste byproducts from agriculture, the very sector that’s the bedrock of modern developing economies. A study prepared in 2006 for the International Energy Agency (IEA) notes that mixed algae ponds require relatively low technology, especially suited for developing countries. That’s also where most of the global increase in CO 2 emissions will occur over the next two decades.

Assuming that the future price of crude oil ranges from about $50 to $90 a barrel, the authors of the study conclude that the most likely nearterm (5–10 years) use of microalgae

for producing biofuels (biodiesel, ethanol, biogas, and hydrogen) is in conjunction with municipal and agricultural wastewater treatment.

Wastewater from about 1,200 dairy cows, 5,000 pigs, or 30,000 people would supply nutrients for 25 acres of algae ponds (the minimum economic scale).

Mixed algae ponds may also be an affordable alternative for the world’s fastest growing and potentially most carbon-intensive economies, China and India. The IEA study includes maps of the global distribution of the three nutrient sources, as well as maps of appropriate climates, flat lands (required for algae ponds), affordable lands, and lands with the required infrastructure. A composite map of these resources shows that the greatest production potential for this technology is in China, Southeast Asia, India, western Africa, and southeastern United States. Fortunately, China and India already have a thriving industry using shallow ponds (often mixed by paddle wheels) to produce algae for nutritional supplements.

Unwanted microorganisms often invade open ponds, so a series of bioreactors would also be required to inoculate the ponds with a desired strain of oil-rich algae. A bioreactor is an apparatus that allows the algae to grow within a closed system. According to the Handbook of Microalgal Culture, producing algae by means of these patented devices has several advantages, but costs up to ten times more than ponds.

The authors of the IEA study caution that combining wastewater treatment with biofuels production will require the development of better techniques to harvest these tiny algae. And researchers must double current productivity through the use of improved local algae strains fertilized with carbon dioxide.

In some locations, algae could extract the needed CO 2 from smokestack emissions piped from a nearby coal-fired power plant. Central and southern India, for example, have many existing and planned coalburning power plants on or near clay soil that may be suited for building relatively inexpensive unlined ponds. Smaller areas of clay soil and

TOP: An NREL researcher analyzes algae samples for oil content.

MIDDLE: Hydrogen is the simplest and most abundant element in the world and can be produced from a wide variety of domestic resources using a number of different technologies. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, are working on a way to use green algae to produce hydrogen directly from water and sunlight, which, when recombined with oxygen in a fuel cell, produces clean energy without pollutants.

PAT CORKERY / NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY

WARREN GRETZ / NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY

BOTTOM: NREL researcher Maria Ghirardi studies a novel system for algal hydrogen production. Algae expel hydrogen naturally.

Specially grown algae could, theoretically, produce more hydrogen, which in turn could be used for fuel.

JACK DEMPSEY / NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

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subsurface coal deposits are also found in booming southeast China.

Data Box: Algae by the Numbers

Capturing Coal Carbon for Algae Food The United Nations predicts that much of the energy used by India and China in the next two decades will come from coal-fired power plants, prime sources of the carbon dioxide that produces climate change. The favored method for reducing this pollution is a new technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves pumping the emissions to underground layers of rock or saline water. IEA estimates that CCS will significantly reduce CO 2 emissions by the year 2050, but could add $250–$500 million (in today’s dollars) to the cost of a major power plant. The high cost of CCS has spurred research on the use of algae to clean power plant emissions. At the DOE facility in New Mexico, algae in mixed ponds consumed more than 90% of injected CO2. And more recent studies show that algae can also remove most of the nitrogen oxide, plus some of the heavy metals and sulfur dioxide. A commercial microalgae farm in Hawaii is already using the exhaust from a small power plant as a source for CO 2 to feed the algae in its ponds.

One problem for scientists is that the ability of algae to consume CO2 declines in winter and ceases at night. Unless the ponds can be lighted after dark, they’ll only extract about one-third of the CO 2 in flue gas from a power plant.

Even so, the possibility of using this relatively simple technology near power plants in developing countries is encouraging. The estimated area of algae ponds needed to capture the CO 2 from a large (500 megawatt) power plant varies widely, from about 1,200 to 50,000 acres. IEA’s 2006 study estimates the capital cost of mixed algae ponds (excluding land costs but including harvesting and processing equipment) to be approximately $48,000 per acre on flat clay soil, plus median operating costs of about $3,900 per acre per year. If a large algae biofuel farm costs $48 million and has 1,000 11

Maximum number of grams of dry algae per square meter per day produced by the U.S. Department of Energy at a pilot plant in Roswell, New Mexico = 50 Assuming this yield could be sustained for a year, combined total gallons of biodiesel and ethanol (made from the sludge remaining after oil is extracted) that an acre of algae pond may produce annually = 13,600 Using the IEA’s estimate of $48,000 per acre of mixed algae ponds, cost of 22,000 square miles of algae at 2006 prices = $673 billion Amount of money the United States was spending on imported oil per year (excluding national defense costs related to oil imports) as of mid-2008 = $511 billion Source: Robert McIntyre

acres of ponds, that may be enough to remove as much as a third of the CO 2 released by a 500-megawatt power plant. The owner of the plant might even finance the algae farm, which, in ­theory, could save millions of dollars on pollution-control equipment and eventually create new revenue from the sale of up to 14 million gallons of algae biofuels per year.

New Towns and the Algae Economy If the IEA study correctly predicts that algae biofuels will initially be produced in conjunction with wastewater treatment, where in the world will this occur? A likely location is in the new towns being built on mass transit lines near Asian cities. China alone is planning several hundred new towns (some with a million residents) over the next decade, to ­handle a staggering 200 million migrants from rural villages. India has plans for 60 new towns.

To incorporate the production of algae biofuels (especially biogas) into these projects, I proposed a novel type of land development called an autonomous new town (ANT). It’s intended to yield a suitable profit for land developers in developed countries, but also reduce global warming and the rapid growth of illegal squatter settlements in cities of the developing world. In most cases, local ur-

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

ban planners would design these ANTs. Think of an ANT as a self-reliant new town with a population of 30,000 to 1 million. It consists of a number of neighborhoods that I call new villages (each with thousands of residents), connected to form an easily expandable town or city. As I discussed in the January-February 2006 issue of THE FUTURIST, new villages are designed to produce at least half of the community’s jobs, food, water, and energy within the village itself. My 2006 article focused on North America, but the new village or ANT concept may also help the many developing countries whose cities are overwhelmed by an influx of agricultural workers from rural villages.

For example, I drew a concept plan for an imaginary ANT in southeast China, designed for mostly poor residents making $2 a day or less. This town would treat its wastewater using the same kind of mixed algae ponds that are used to achieve a high (tertiary) level of municipal sewage treatment in two dozen developing and developed countries. Paddle wheels would mix the water in the ponds, largely eliminating odors.

Fertilized with wastewater and carbon dioxide from surrounding land uses, the ponds (about 12 inches deep) could later be converted to grow a single strain of algae. These

Algae: A Panacea Crop?

By Dennis Bushnell

A chief NASA scientist argues that the future is green ... and salty.

Algae and bacteria are the two most important biofuel technologies of the twenty-first century. As a replacement for oil, algae is extremely practical, utilizes mostly cheap and abundant resources like saltwater and wasteland, and has the potential to reduce global carbon-dioxide output tremendously.

Unlike corn or even sugar ethanol, halophyte algae (algae that grow in saltwater) do not compete with food stocks for freshwater. Agriculturalists are told to think of salt as bad, but people living on the shores of India have had a saline-based agricultural system for hundreds of years. For halophyte algae, salt is good.

A number of countries already have seawater agriculture projects under way. The Chinese are producing genetically modified corn and rice in saltwater marshes. There’s no reason similar techniques couldn’t be used to raise algae in the energy-hungry United States. The Great Salt Lake could conceivably be turned into an algae pond to produce something on the order of $250 billion a year in biofuels. People are looking at turning parts of the Pacific Ocean off of South America into algae ponds.

Many deserts are near coasts, and these underutilized areas naturally lend themselves to algae cultivation. Irrigating desert terrain with salt­water would constitute an enormous and — many would argue — expensive public works project for whatever nation or nations took it on. But such a project need not be exorbitantly expensive. Indeed, when the cost of pumping ocean water into so-called “wasteland” regions such as the Sahara is factored in, the cost of halophytic algae biofuel is less than the cost of petroleum trading at $70 per barrel or higher. Because desert areas receive a lot of sunlight, halophyte algae farmers could use solar-powered pumps to move water up from sea level or even up from underground aquifers such as the Nubian sandstone aquifer system that sits beneath desolate regions of Libya, Chad, and Sudan. Suddenly, “wastelands” in western Australia, the Middle East, eastern Africa, the American southwest, and west Texas become valuable, productive real ­estate.

Algae require a lot of nitrogen, a mineral that is missing in most seawater. But genetic mapping of halophyte algae — a task already occupying geneticists around the globe — could lead to entirely new

algae species that would derive their nitrogen from the atmosphere.

Biofuel from algae could be a direct petroleum replacement and is an extremely practical fuel source from a production standpoint. The refining process for algae is much simpler and less expensive than the current process for refining oil. Algae are lipids, comprising 30%–60% oil. With a mere olive press you can get a burnable fuel. Can we use biofuels in aircraft? In space? At NASA, we have looked into the question. The answer, emphatically, is yes. A global transition from oil to algae wouldn’t require the construction of an expensive, complicated new infrastructure, as a transition to a hydrogen economy would.

Halophytic algae, cultivated correctly, could lessen the world’s food and water shortages as well. Some 68% of the freshwater that is now tied up in conventional agriculture could instead go to thirsty populations rather than irrigating freshwaterdependent crops. There exist more than 10,000 natural halophyte plant species, and some 250 of those are usable as staple food crops. You can get a great deal more fuel per acre with algae than you can with ethanol crops like corn, and you can use halophytes as a petrochemical to make plastic or as a feedstock for animals.

Most importantly, algae are a renewable and CO2-neutral power source.

Halophytes and algae are only part of the overall solution space. We’ll use many approaches to combat global warming. However, the potential of this fuel can’t be stated forcefully enough. If humanity were to plow a portion of the Sahara Desert, irrigate it with saltwater from the Mediterranean, and then grow biomass such as algae, we could replace all the fossil carbon fuel that our species uses currently and provide food for a growing global population at low cost. ❑ About the Author Dennis Bushnell is the chief scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia 23681-2199. Web site www.nasa.gov/centers/ langley/home/index.html.

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

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Texas Green Just as the discovery of California gold and Texas oil prompted opportunists and prospectors to move west in previous decades, ­algae-based biofuel may create an entirely new type of commodity rush.

My research indicates that most of the 21,000 square miles of undeveloped clay soils in Texas are in counties having an abundance of surface water, seawater, or saline groundwater. The latter two are unfit for most uses, but may be well suited for growing a single strain of algae in salty ponds where many competing microorganisms can’t survive. In addition, groundwater below the clay soils in Texas is often geothermally heated to 90°F–160°F, so it may keep algae cozy on the coldest winter nights. For example, the ten-county metropolitan area that includes Houston offers ample seawater, geothermal groundwater, surface water, and flat clay soil, plus many power plants, sewage plants, and other sources of carbon dioxide and nutrients to feed the algae. Houston also has the nation’s largest biodiesel refinery.

Texas A&M University reports that the state has more than 31,000 injection wells used each year to dispose of brine from producing oil wells. Instead of being discarded at great expense, some of this salty water might be used in mixed algae ponds. If those ponds become dry and obsolete decades from now, salt-tolerant crops may be used to remove salts from the soil.

Many rural algae farms could obtain nutrients and CO2 from either dry or liquid manure produced on large feedlots. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now prohibits these facilities from discharging pollutants into U.S. waters, thus encouraging feedlots to treat their wastewater with mixed algae ponds that may yield valuable biofuels in the future.

Here again is an opportunity to put agricultural waste to good use. Texas produces far more dry

ponds may yield enough biodiesel and ethanol each year to run all the motor vehicles in the town. My prediction assumes that the number of cars per capita in China’s cities will double in 20 years, but also that the ­Chinese will continue their current practice of using other forms of transportation for most trips.

The American Algae Bloom Is there anything algae can’t do?

13

manure than any other state, and it has a growing number of large dairy and hog feedlots generating liquid manure. These facilities may produce algae biofuels in the future, if located on flat clay soil that’s also near markets, water sources, feed, labor, services, and other feedlot requirements.

Besides manure, another possible source of nutrients is the Mississippi River. Nutrient pollution in the Mississippi is so excessive that it can produce an annual algae bloom the size of New Hampshire where the river spews into the Gulf of Mexico. And some 400 other coastal “dead zones” exist around the world (including many in the United States and Asia), which suggests that scores of other rivers could supply some of the nutrients for algae farms.

The potential yield of algae biofuels from mixed ponds is unknown, as genetic engineering may significantly boost production. However, if the oneday yield attained in experimental ponds (using unmodified native algae) can be duplicated and sustained for a year, then the United States might replace the imported oil that the Department of Energy estimates the country will use in the year 2030. To do so, Americans would have to build algae ponds with a combined area of roughly 22,000 square miles. That’s about the size of the state of West Virginia, or 15% of the acreage that American farmers planted in corn during 2007.

Instead of replacing all imported oil, a less costly alternative is to use algae to meet Barack Obama’s goal of ending the country’s current dependence on oil from the Middle East. That would require about 3,800 square miles of algae ponds, with a capital cost of approximately $117 billion. Some 3,800 square miles is an area slightly larger than Webb County (near the southern tip of Texas), one of many possible locations for future algae farms.

— Robert McIntyre

Here’s the bad news. Algae biofuels will probably not replace the immense volume of petroleum that America imports each year. There’s a shortage of inexpensive nutrients required to feed the algae in thousands of square miles of mixed ponds.

Even if you were to harvest the wastewater from every city and large feedlot in the country, it wouldn’t nourish enough algae to wean the United States from imported crude oil. Nevertheless, this emerging tech-

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

nology could have a significant role in America’s future and boost the economies of several states along the U.S. Gulf coast.

If algae biofuel production becomes cost-effective in the United States, a majority of the ponds would likely be in areas I’ve mapped in Louisiana and the eastern half of Texas. In addition to the favorable climate, most of the nation’s crude oil pipelines and its flat clay soils (for building unlined algae ponds) are

found there. The two states also contain about 28% of the existing petroleum refineries in the United States.

These facilities are already processing oils from biomass, and so may profit by converting the algal oil to biodiesel fuel that is then economically transported through petroleum pipelines to the rest of the country.

We don’t know, however, if deposits on the inside of existing pipelines and storage tanks will contaminate this fuel.

To my knowledge, no economist has estimated the economic benefits

of using algae ponds to replace all the oil that the United States imports from the Middle East. However, a 2006 report prepared for the National Biodiesel Board projects that by 2015 the industry will add 714 million gallons of new biodiesel production from conventional crops, resulting in 39,100 new jobs in all sectors of the U.S. economy.

If the algae biofuel industry creates the same number of jobs per million gallons of new production, then 3,800 square miles of mixed ponds might result in more than 1.6 million

new jobs.

Upshot: Cause for Algae Optimism Reducing petroleum dependence is a worthy objective, but other transportation fuels or engine technologies might be better suited for the task than algae biofuels. The authors of a recent Rand Corporation working paper evaluated 12 alternatives to conventional gasoline-powered internal combustion engines, finally narrowing the choices to three that

Autonomous New Towns for Developed Countries Rapid urbanization is expected in the Third World over the next two decades, but not in the developed world. For example, in the United States, more people moved to than from rural areas between 1990 and 2006 (the last year for which data are available). And this trend is likely to continue, fed by a swelling tide of home-based teleworkers and retired baby boomers. In a national survey of boomers likely to relocate after retirement, 61% said they want to live in mixed-age rural communities.

To meet the growing demand for rural housing, the United States will probably depend on existing small towns and new residential subdivisions. But the public’s known disenchantment with conventional subdivisions may result in the creation of new types of rural communities, including new villages and autonomous new towns that don’t require most residents to make long commutes by automobile.

The developers, however, will use various strategies to reduce the financial risk of these long-term projects. Autonomous new towns (ANTs), for example, will likely be small compared with past American new towns, and they’ll be designed for completion within a mere five years. Also, an ANT developer may further reduce risks by forming a joint venture with the landowner, or obtaining a rolling option to buy the property one piece at a time over a period of years.

ANTs using mixed algae ponds may or may not be profitable for land developers in the United States or elsewhere. Fortunately, the lots in “green” land developments frequently sell quicker and at a higher price than those in conventional subdivisions.

Capital costs are often lower because of the smaller lots and narrower streets using a natural drainage

system. Plus, the developer may receive an agricultural tax exemption and a percentage of the profits from the community farm. In the future, the developer of an ANT for 30,000 people may even use the town’s sewage treatment plant to produce a combined total of up to 400,000 gallons of biodiesel and ethanol fuel each year. If the profit potential from biofuels isn’t high enough at that time, the developer might instead use the algae ponds to produce bioplastics, high-value animal feeds, or other products.

To illustrate this type of development, I built a fourfoot by five-foot study model of a new village. At little additional cost to the developer, the community could use passive solar heating and cooling to reduce utility bills by up to half the costs in typical subdivisions. The village is also designed for future expansion, to form an autonomous new town with mixed algae ponds for sewage treatment and biofuels production.

I selected an imaginary 60-acre site for the ANT’s first village, located on the abundant clay soil found northeast and southeast of Austin, Texas. The largest cities in Texas (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston) are all on or adjacent to large areas of clay soil that, after compaction, is nearly impermeable to water.

If the ANT is built on clay soil northeast of Austin, one of several proposed coal-fired power plants could pipe some of its smokestack emissions directly to the algae ponds. This would supply carbon dioxide to the ponds—and perhaps enable the power plant owner to save thousands or millions of dollars on pollution control equipment that will help Dallas, Austin, and other nearby cities avoid a decline in air quality.

— Robert McIntyre

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

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Green Gold: A Look at Algae’s Investment Potential

By Nick Hodge Significant production of algae biofuels could provide a substantial portion of transportation fuel needs. That’s because algae have a much higher productivity potential than crop-based biofuels.

These high yields can be attributed to algae’s high growth rate, which is often monitored in hours instead of days, and to requiring inputs of only land, sunlight, water, carbon dioxide (potential for carbon credits), and nutrients. While deriving fuel oil from algae might have been cost prohibitive in the past, the cost of a barrel of algal oil, once commercialized, has been forecast as low as $20.

Growing algae is also very water efficient.

Producing enough to make 60 billion gallons a year of biodiesel could require as little as 16 trillion gallons of water. To put that in perspective, we use 48 trillion gallons of water per year to grow corn in the United States.

Its productivity per acre compared to other sources of biofuels is astounding, between 1,200 and 10,000 gallons per square meter per day, depending on the triglyceride content of the particular alga species.

The other benefits of algae biofuel: • No one country (or host of hostile countries) has a monopoly on algae production or the algae production equipment.

• Algae can grow in temperatures ranging from below freezing to 158°F.

can have a significant share of the U.S. market by about 2015. The study compares the costs and benefits of those three alternatives: advanced diesel technology, gasoline-electric hybrid technology, and vehicles running on 85% ethanol (E85 fuel) made from corn. The three are compared from a consumer perspective (technology cost, fuel savings, performance, and mobility) and a societal perspective (pollution, climate change, and energy security costs) during the period from 2010 to 2020.

To my surprise, the authors conclude that advanced diesel vehicles (already widely available in Europe) are the most promising alternative from both a consumer and a societal perspective.

If these vehicles become common in the United States and other countries, 15

• It is not in direct competition with food crops.

• There is a multitude of algae biofuel value-added byproducts, such as syn-gas, high-protein animal feeds, agricultural fertilizers, biopolymers (plastic), glycerin, and even ethanol and jet fuel.

Look for the efficient extraction and refining of algae into biofuels within the next five years.

Some of the companies that are already working in algae growth, harvesting, and biofuel production ­i nclude GreenShift Corporation, Nanoforce Inc., Valcent Products Inc., Green Star Products, OriginOil Inc., and PetroSun Inc. This is a technology also being pursued by energy giants like Royal Dutch Shell. It’s still a nascent industry but is attracting a great deal of venture capital. The companies that find winning solutions will become major players in the energy markets of the future. ❑ About the Author Nick Hodge is the managing editor of Alternative Energy Speculator, an investment advisory service that focuses primarily on clean ­energy and emission-­reduction technologies. He is also an editor at Green Chip Stocks, www.greenchipstocks .com.

He may be contacted at nick.hodge@ greenchipstocks.com. A more extensive treatment of this subject may be seen at www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/investingalgae-biofuel/253.

will mixed algae ponds produce some of the biodiesel fuel to power them?

No one knows, because the algae technology is still being developed. The thousands of large ponds needed to make this fuel may not be economical for another five to ten years, depending on the level of funding for research, the future price of petroleum, and other factors. What’s more, the volume of biofuels produced is currently limited by the amount and location of human and animal wastes needed to feed the ­algae.

Nevertheless, countries with the greatest production potential may invest in this technology because of its versatility. Not only do mixed algae ponds have the potential to yield biodiesel, ethanol, biogas, and perhaps hydrogen (to power fuel cells in cars), but they can also produce

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

valuable co-products, treat wastewater, and clean smokestack emissions.

Petroleum deposits were formed through millions of years of heat and pressure applied to organic matter, much of which was algae. A great irony of the world’s current dependence on oil is that one of several remedies may eventually come from the same amazing organism from which petroleum was made. The way forward may, indeed, be a smart return to simplicity. ❑ About the Author Robert McIntyre is an urban and regional planner with degrees and work experience in both landscape architecture and community and regional planning. He lives in rural central Texas.

E-mail: r-mcintyre@att.net.

BURJ AL ARAB / JUMEIRAH BURJ AL ARAB / JUMEIRAH

The Al Mahara restaurant at the Burj Al Arab, the world’s only seven-star hotel.

The

Experience Economy: The High Life of Tomorrow

In a world saturated by “luxury goods,” what is the future of luxury?

A consulting futurist explores new trends in living very well.

T

he Burj Al Arab, the world’s tallest and only seven-star hotel, is located in Dubai, the Las Vegas of the Persian Gulf.

Built on an artificial island 919 feet from Jumeirah Beach to encourage its sense of exclusivity, privacy, and opulence, it is a seemingly gossamer structure that symbolizes both Arab urbanization and unmatched luxury. And the interior is no less impressive, with each exquisitely decorated room possessing its own 42" plasma television; electronically controlled windows, curtains, and air conditioning; Hermès beauty

products; Jacuzzi tub; and a “menu” of pillows and quilts to match your tastes. Rooms start at around $2,000 per night, so long as you book well in advance.

Naturally, guest amenities match the décor, with helicopter transfer to the airport at your disposal and Rolls-Royce limousine service.

Should you feel like a snack, you can always saunter down to Al Mahara restaurant, where, after a threeminute simulated submarine ride, you’ll be treated to the finest seafood while seated next to a seawater aquarium. Dinner for four usually

runs $1,500, but don’t fret—they can charge it to your room.

Who can afford that type of service? A surprisingly large number of individuals. There exist more wealthy people than ever before, and more wealth. The number of (dollar) millionaires jumped 9.4% in 2005 to reach 9.5 million in 2006, according to the World Wealth Report compiled yearly by Merrill Lynch and the Capgemini Group consulting firm. But the real growth, both monetarily and numerically, has been in the number of individuals who can be considered superwealthy.

By Eric Garland

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

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The Al Mahara restaurant at the Burj Al Arab, where guests are treated to seafood next to an enormous seawater aquarium.

BURJ AL ARAB / JUMEIRAH

A brief look at Forbes magazine’s “billionaire list” over the past couple of decades shows that super wealth is on the upswing. In 1982, Forbes counted 13 billionaires inhabiting the globe. The number doubled by 1986 and quadrupled by 1987. How many billionaires were jet-setting around the planet in 2006? An incredible 793 bejeweled individuals who, together, control $2.6 trillion in assets, about one-fifth of total U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away from the Burj Al Arab, consum-

ers in hundreds of shopping centers across the United States are lining up for goods that used to be the exclusive domain of the very wealthy.

Middle-class folks are splurging on Louis Vuitton bags. Kids at the mall sport $100 jeans from Armani Exchange, a brand that used to be more associated with Milan and Paris than the American suburbs. Godiva chocolates, once an exclusive chocolatier in Belgium, now sells $4 mochas in malls around the world. The American automaker Ford bought Jaguar.

While the brand is historically seen as a symbol of British exclusivity, you now can own one for not much more than a well-appointed Honda.

The very nature of luxury is changing. Somewhere between iPods and plasma TVs, between opulent handbags and the proliferation of European fashions for everyone, it seems that the exclusive has become commonplace. From the ancient days of artisans until perhaps the 1990s, there were two classes of goods— functional items for the masses and handcrafted works of art for the wealthy. Today, the finest brands in the world can be yours at reasonable prices through e-commerce: Waterford Crystal is on sale at www .bestcrystal.com. You can save up to 70% on authentic Persian rugs at www.rugsdirect.com. As more and more consumers buy these luxury baubles, we are faced with significant questions for society and the economy. How many iPods can you

listen to at once? How many pairs of fancy shoes can one own as a member of the middle class?

The Wealthy Have a Real Problem Those with the money to stay at the Burj Al Arab have a problem, though not one most people would recognize or sympathize with—namely, just what do you do with all that money?

If any guy with an Internet connection and a Visa card can surround himself with Corinthian leather, ­Waterford Crystal, and beluga caviar, what can you do to demonstrate your wealth and position?

Future trends seem to indicate that this “problem” will continue to develop. High-quality goods are ­p roliferating at an unprecedented pace. Consider that Costco is actually America’s number-one distributor of Dom Perignon champagne.

What’s more, the quality of goods is increasing all over the world, thanks to the economic development of new industrial powerhouses such as Korea and China. As Western manufacturers have outsourced facilities to the East, not surprisingly, people in Asia have been learning their crafts, making either luxury handbags or plasma screen televisions. There are more suppliers of well-made goods than ever before, ensuring that tomorrow’s consumers are likely to be equally spoiled.

More people will also be able to

TESLA MOTORS

The new Tesla Roadster is a 100% electric automobile that gets the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon. It can travel 250 miles per charge and accelerates from zero to 60 mph in about four seconds.

17

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

about 100,000 millionaires in India and 340,000 in China, according to Robert Frank of the Robb Report.

While the United States still leads the world in sheer number of millionaires, the breakneck 20% growth in the Chinese economy indicates that there will likely be many more private jets flying out of Shanghai airport in the future.

Nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing may be years away, but they already hint at precipitous drops in price for finely made goods.

Laboratory-grown diamonds offered by companies such as Florida’s Gemesis and Boston’s Apollo Diamond are molecularly identical to natural diamonds and much cheaper. Add the bottom-up manufacturing of nanotechnology, making precision materials virtually free, and the very notion of bling will be altered forever.

At least theoretically, finely manufactured goods of all sorts will continue to drop in price, perhaps to zero one day. If exclusive goods are no longer exclusive, then what is the future of luxury?

I argue that the future of wealth will be more about human experiences and exquisite moments. Real wealth will be to increase our standard of living while reducing our environmental footprint.

So where can you go from the Burj Al Arab? What’s the best experience money can buy?

Scenario: Backstage Tom has been preparing for this day since he was 17 years old.

But backstage, as he goes through the final motions of tuning his Fender Stratocaster guitar, his hands are shaking so badly he can barely hold the strings.

“Hey Tom? You ready to tear this place up?” asks Roger Daltrey from The Who, Tom’s camp counselor for the last ten days.

“I don’t think I can do it, Roger. I mean, there are actual people out there!”

ROCK AND ROLL FANTASY CAMP Roger just smiles like he’s heard all this before.

No doubt he has. “What did I tell you, Tom? You’re a star on this thing.”

“I’m a hedge fund manager.” “ N o t t o d a y, ” s a y s Roger. “Today, you’re lead guitar in my band.

You’re going to hit that opening chord, and it will all come flooding back to you. You’re going to get these people on their feet and then you’re going to knock ’em down. When it’s over, you’re going to sign autographs. We’ll hang out with the roadies The Who singer Roger Daltrey (right) backstage, listen to your with actor Joaquin Phoenix at Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. album, and you’ll know that you really did it.”

In an encouraging sort of way, Roger shoves Tom toward the stage. The newly minted “rock star” stumbles at first. The lights are far brighter—and the House of Blues crowd is far larger—than Tom anticipated. But the audience is on its feet, cheering for him. Guitar pick in hand, he launches into the first chord of “My Generation.”

The sound of a hundred cheering fans hits the stage like a ten-foot wave as he moves effortlessly into the second chord.

Roger was right! It really does come back! His blood pumping as furiously as the 40-Watt amplifier behind him, his knees shaking, Tom realizes that he really does know this song, not because he’s spent a little more than a week rehearsing it with Roger Daltrey, but because he’s been playing it on air guitar—preparing for this moment—his whole life.

—PMT

afford “consumer luxury.” The rapidly expanding economies of Asia alone will considerably increase the market for such goods, as India and China grow into trillion-dollar economic behemoths. Not only has

Luxury Experience: Rock Camp

once-agrarian communist China decided it is glorious to become rich, but it is also creating unprecedented wealth in cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou—and new consumers for the luxury lifestyle. There are

Before embarking on lucrative-butconventional careers such as sales managers, accountants or whatever, many people started down the seductive path of playing in a rock ’n’ roll band. Maybe you ended up a millionaire by selling drywall for office buildings, but you feel like you missed your calling of worldwide rock stardom. Not a problem— for the low price of $9,500, you can simulate your life as a rock star with Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp (www .rockandrollfantasycamp.com).

In Hollywood, London, or New York, three world capitals of rock ’n’ roll, “campers” fly out to work oneon-one with some of the world’s big-

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Luxury itself has a tremendous future.

Opulence has been around for a while, and spending buckets of money is unlikely to go out of fashion anytime soon. But these trends indicate that the nature of luxury is changing.

BURJ AL ARAB / JUMEIRAH

gest stars. Over five days or so, participants have the chance to actually join an ad hoc “band” with members of KISS, the Beach Boys, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Journey, and others. Roger Daltrey of The Who could, indeed, end up as the singer in your band, and as part of the experience, he might rehearse and perform songs you have written, perhaps helping you write new numbers. During the week, you get the opportunity to record with these professional musicians. The experience culminates with a fully produced rock concert at the House of Blues in front of screaming fans.

you best, collecting letters and photos, and then condenses everything into a compelling narrative of your life, replete with full-color glossy pages. Pictures may lose their value in a world of digital imagery, but the ability to tell a tale will always have value.

luxuRy exPeRience: sPace camP Another experience option for the luxury consumer is to get closer to the real stars. Bored with a yacht and a house in the Hamptons, the

luxuRy exPeRience: cusTom biogRaPhies It’s luxurious to have experiences that are available only to a select few, but true opulence is to have an experience that is unique to you alone.

Consider the rise of custom media.

Back in the day, the wealthy would sit for portraits, a form of custom media that showed your superior financial means. After all, decent portrait painters, those who would not only represent you well but might even improve a couple things in your face (in the days before Photoshop), were rare and pricey. Portraiture was a real status item. Then photography came around. Now, every highschool senior in America gets a portrait done—hardly a luxury good.

How about a full hardcover book about your life? For several thousand dollars, a service called My Special Book will write the story of your life, illustrate it, typeset it, and present you with a book in any style you would like. The company conducts interviews with people who know 19

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

discerning adventurer is headed for Space Camp. Now that the Russians maintain the capability to enter space but don’t have the economy to support a space program as large as NASA’s, there is a great market for exclusive space vacations. Thanks to a partnership among Russia’s RSC Energia, the Russian Space Agency (RosoviaKosmos), and Space Adventures (a company based in Arlington, Virginia), customers can go on manned space missions for just $20 million per trip.

Even this luxury is perhaps headed for more proletarian markets. Virgin

Scenario:

neW addiTion To The libRaRy “I’ve always been a collector,” Laurence Vestin tells his guest, a reporter from Prosperity Magazine, as they stroll the 1,400 squarefoot library of his Sagaponack estate. “I’ve dabbled in Renaissance art, classic cars, and Paleolithic artifacts over the years. Now, I collect only things of real value.” He runs his finger over the gilded spines of the books on his shelf, including first editions of Moby Dick and Mol Flanders. He stops at what seems an anachronistically new addition to an otherwise classic library.

“Ah, here it is.”

Beaming, he pulls the hardbound text from the shelf and holds it up like a proud parent displaying his infant son. My Way: The Life and Times of Laurence Vestin III. “It’s surprisingly good,” he says. “They found a fellow who won a Pulitzer to write it for me. Originally, you know, all books were privately commissioned by wealthy patrons. Most were intended for an audience of one—or perhaps two—noblemen. This privately commissioned work pays homage not only to myself but to that very venerable tradition. Though, of course, we don’t have lords or aristocrats anymore.”

“No, of course not,” his guest answers in a tone that strikes Laurence as just slightly insolent.

—PMT

The Zvezda, a portion of the International Space Station.

NASA

Scenario:

The vieW fRom heRe “It’s time to wake up, Mr. Lovenwitz,” Saul hears. Wearily, he unzips himself from his sleeping bag and drifts out into the main portion of Zvezda space module. Ivan, the flight captain, steadies him. “Good morning.

We have some juice for you, if you would like.”

“Any coffee?” Saul asks. Ivan flashes red with indignation and floats over to a nearby laptop, grumbling in Russian.

Saul has begun to suspect that he has made a terrible, $20 million mistake. So far, his space trip has not been what he expected.

He remembers nothing about his ride aboard the Soyuz rocket except that he blacked out right after lift off. Upon his arrival at the International Space Station, he was so disoriented that the flight crew immediately strapped him into bed. Now awake, he feels as though all the fluids in his stomach have migrated to his head, and vice versa. “Space sniffles,” he knows, is the popular name for the effects of microgravity on the human system, a coy term that he now understands to be a ridiculous understatement.

He casts his eye over the Zvezda module, seeing only can-

isters, levers, and tubes. It feels very small, dark, and cluttered.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“The solid fuel oxygen generator,” says Ivan. “Do not touch it.”

“And this?” asks Saul.

“The Electron Oxygen Compartment.” Ivan answers. “Also, do not touch, please.”

“What about that thing?” Saul asks, floating toward what he believes is an image on a monitor—it seems almost to glow.

The blue, curved horizon of the Earth looms in the small port window. Saul is suddenly overcome with a medley of powerful emotions. Awe, fear, and humility are underscored by a rush of what he can only interpret to be gratitude. The smallness of his life, as well as the grandness of this newly revealed universe, overwhelms him.

“The sun is rising,” he says to Ivan, unsure whether he has truly said these words or merely whispered them.

“Keep watching, Mr. Lovenwitz,” the Russian shuttle captain answers. “It will do that fourteen more times today.”

—PMT

Galactic promises to “end the exclusivity attached to manned space flight,” and aims to give you “the most incredible experience of your life” by taking you up into suborbital space. Having transformed record stores, mobile phones, and regular air travel, Virgin Group head Richard Branson has contracted for the creation of commercial suborbital “spaceliners” that will let people experience space flight for a couple of hours while cruising at a height of 68 miles.

This luxury experience is becoming more and more accessible, costing a mere $200,000 per flight—only 1% of the Russians’ asking price (though it doesn’t go nearly as far into space). Branson himself says he wants to bring this experience to more people, and Dick Rutan, designer of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, says the thrill for him is that, in 15 years, every kid will dream about going into space—and have a chance at making it happen.

luxuRy exPeRience: ecological WealTh For millennia, we have associated disproportionate use of resources with wealth. What’s the difference between you and the king? When he dies, his subjects will spend thousands of man-hours constructing a 300-foot-high edifice of stone to show his manifest greatness. The moral of the story? The more resources we use on you, the more important you are.

In the early twenty-first century, however, the rules have changed a bit. More and more people are aware of the collective ecological consequences of human activity, such as global warming, and there is a new trend in wealth—ecologically efficient wealth. Sports cars, a classic luxury purchase, offer an example: The old model of sports car featured fantastic performance and appallingly low gas mileage. But the gasoline bill has never been an issue for the wealthy consumers who buy the world’s best autos.

That’s why the Tesla Motors electric speeder is such a revolutionary Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

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concept. When most people think “electric car,” it’s a golf cart that likely leaps to mind or something similarly benign and sluggish. But when celebrities like George Clooney are lining up to spend over $100,000 for the 2007 Tesla Roadster, you know it’s got more juice than the golf course requires.

The Tesla is a 100% electric automobile that gets the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon and can travel 250 miles per charge. But the fun part has nothing to do with the environment—the car goes from zero to 60 mph in about four seconds, as good as or better than most boutique sports cars currently on the market.

This is a serious toy for people serious about global climate change.

Also in the works is a luxury zero-carbon beach resort. Architects in London are currently designing a world-class luxury property that will have no negative environmental impact. Each of its 35 villas will be totally self-sufficient, using only energy from the sun and wind and producing little waste or carbon emissions. Villa walls will be shaped to draw the sea breeze into the bedroom, after being cooled by passing over the pool. Cold-water pipes will run through the inside of the bed to cool it, and each villa’s water supply—from rainwater and desalinated seawater—will be stored in its own tank. Hot water comes from pipes that run beneath the solar panels on the roof. The only environmental drawback is that the resort is planned for Nungwi, Zanzibar. Unless you plan on hiking to Zanzibar (or are a Zanzibarian), it may take thousands of gallons of fuel to get there.

Consequences of an Expanded Luxury Model Luxury itself has a tremendous future. One look at the Pyramids tells you that opulence has been around for a while, and spending buckets of money is unlikely to go out of fashion anytime soon. But these trends indicate that the nature of luxury is changing as physical goods become more common.

The environmental consequences of these trends are likely the most 21

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

Five Future Things Money Might Buy Current trends suggest that money may buy surprising things in the future. Here is a semi­serious look at what might happen in the years ahead.

1. Happiness. People feel happier when they come into more money, surveys show, but the happiness effect soon wears off and they are no happier than before.

Except for the poorest people, having more money doesn’t seem to make people much happier.

But psychiatrists already are prescribing drugs that can relieve severe unhappiness (depression).

In the coming years, there may be really effective ways to keep people more or less permanently content—if they can afford the treatment.

2. Love. A fortune may help you find a partner for sex or marriage, but love may remain elusive. Even if there is love at the beginning, it may soon disappear.

But psychologists are making rapid progress in analyzing the emotional states we think of as love. In the future, matchmaking corporations using databases and the Web may really be able to find you someone whom you will love and who will love you—if you can afford the fee.

3. The White House. The American people were outraged when President Clinton wanted to let major campaign contributors sleep in the White House.

The idea of renting out Lincoln’s bedroom became a national scandal, so probably no one—not even Bill Gates—could buy the White House today.

But money talks louder and louder in American politics, so maybe the only problem is that today’s billionaires just don’t have enough money to persuade Congress to allow the sale of the White House.

More to the point, the rapidly climbing U.S. national debt plus the unfunded obligations to Social Security and Medicare recipients foretells a national crisis that will force Congress to take desperate measures.

At that point, the lawmakers may consent to selling the White House—and maybe the Smithsonian Institution as well.

4. Sainthood. The Roman Catholic Church does not now allow people to become saints before they are dead. And it’s not easy after death because the Church demands evidence that you have performed miracles. But money has always played a big role in religion, and the Church needs more of it than ever. So the rules might change to allow living saints. If Roman emperors could become gods while they were still alive, why shouldn’t exceptionally virtuous people be declared saints while they are still alive?

Once that happens, a well-spent billion dollars or so might bring you sainthood while you are still alive and can make your friends jealous.

5. A Place in Heaven. Scientists have searched zillions of light-years into the universe without finding heaven. Nor have they found hell, despite their ever more refined probes of the Earth.

But if heaven is not viewed as a physical place but as the psychological experience of being with God in heaven, then it may become increasingly purchasable. Already, more and more people are living in virtual worlds, and we may confidently anticipate a race among game makers to produce ever more heavenly virtual heavens.

There is one problem, however: Sinners may be able to buy their way into the best of virtual heavens, scandalizing the virtuous.

—Edward Cornish

Buying Privacy and Convenience

By Larry Bean

The Robb Report magazine covers the luxury market and lifestyle like no other.

According to the magazine’s editor-in-chief, even exquisite tastes can change.

If you want to predict where the luxury market might go, start by asking two questions.

First, what do most people value? Many of the people we poll say privacy and convenience.

Second, if you’re seeking those things and you have nearly boundless means, what’s possible? For instance, a supersonic private jet might get you from Paris to New York in a couple of hours. The private flight industry is

four times what it was a few years ago. What that offers is convenience.

In terms of privacy at the higher end market, what we’re now seeing is that certain places that had been inaccessible are now the destinations that many people with means want to see, in part because they’re so exclusive and new. Bhutan is an example. It’s remote, yet a luxury hotel chain recently opened a resort there, giving those who can afford it a comfortable yet private and unique experience.

The Burj Al Arab, Dubai.

This commentary is excerpted from an interview with FUTURIST Associate Editor Patrick Tucker, which may be read at www.wfs.org.

WWW.ROBBREPORT.COM

important. While new products such as the Tesla Roadster are impressive, most luxury products are unsustainable and polluting. Will this luxury trend improve the quality of living for some while stripping the natural resources required to make goods?

Consider the expansion of the global market for leather. Leather making is one of the most polluting processes there is, and its expansion undoubtedly will be toxic. The bottom line is that a globalized model of wealth that encourages massive resource consumption is unsustainable. If this isn’t clear today, wait

until 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians become more acclimated to the world capitalist economy—all of the those handbags and plasma screens will add up.

There is a new luxury on the horizon—one of experiences, and not necessarily of wanton resource consumption. Although speed boats, plasma TVs, and leather couches are pretty nice, too, this experiential future of wealth is arguably more compelling. ❑ About the Author Eric Garland is the principal of Competitive Futures Inc., www.competitivefutures .com, and the author of Future Inc: How Businesses Can Anticipate and Profit from What’s Next (AMACOM Books, 2007). Email egarland@ competitivefutures.com.

BURJ AL ARAB / JUMEIRAH

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World Trends & Forecasts

Organic Solar Collection Revisiting a largely abandoned concept from three decades ago, a research team at MIT has developed a new solar concentrator that is cost-­ effective as well as energy-efficient.

Advocated as a better way of utilizing the sun’s energy output, and practically doubling the performance of existing solar panels while greatly simplifying the process, this development could make photovoltaic systems much more commercially viable in the coming years.

Most large-scale solar power operations are set up as systems of rotating mirrors that follow the path of the sun over a wide region and channel its rays into solar cells — siliconbased semiconducting devices that collect and store the energy. Cooling systems are in constant use to keep the large solar panels containing the devices from overheating. This method is less effective, more expensive, and more cumbersome than it should be, critics have long complained. The result is that energy from fossil fuels is currently still much cheaper to produce on a large scale. However, that may change soon, thanks to the MIT researchers, led by assistant professor of electrical engineering Marc Baldo.

In the MIT project, luminescent solar concentrators resembling windows absorb the sun’s rays via thin films of organic color dyes that are applied in specific ratios to the surface of the glass panels. The light is then reemitted through the glass to small solar cells positioned around the edges of the panes. These solar cells take up less space, utilize less semiconducting material, and do not require extensive cooling systems or separate panels to house them. The “windows” themselves also occupy less space than the mirror system.

The glass panels can gather light while remaining stationary, they increase efficiency up to 50%, and the light can travel much farther. “We were able to substantially reduce 23

light transport losses, resulting in a tenfold increase in the amount of power converted by the solar cells,” says team member Jon Mapel.

Ultimately, the cost-effectiveness of the new system may be its greatest advantage. After all, if ordinary pieces of glass can be converted into high-tech solar concentrators, then the technology becomes that much more accessible. Current systems could even be retrofitted with the new concentrators at very little cost.

All of this will go a long way toward making the cost of solar electricity more competitive with that of the conventional grid energy.

According to the research team, if everything goes as planned, practical and affordable solar energy could be available on the market within the

next three years. Three of the inventors on the team (Michael Currie, Jon Mapel, and Shalom Goffri) have just launched a start-up, Covalent Solar, with the help of several entrepreneurial grants from MIT, to commercialize the technology. For now, ensuring that it will come with at least a 20-year guarantee is the next step (the color-dye process currently remains stable for about three months).

The team is already hard at work finding ways to increase the stability of these potentially revolutionary photon collectors. — Aaron M. Cohen Sources: MIT, News Office, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.

Web site web.mit.edu/newsoffice.

National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230. Web site www.nsf.gov.

NICOLLE RAGER FULLER / NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

An artist’s representation shows how a dye-based luminescent solar concentrator could help make existing solar panels more efficient. Dye molecules coated on glass absorb sunlight and reemit it at different wavelengths.

DONNA COVENEY, MIT / COURTESY OF NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

Solar cells can be attached to the edges of the organic solar concentrators. By collecting sunlight over their full surface and concentrating it at their edges, these devices reduce the required area of solar cells and, consequently, the cost of solar power.

Stacking multiple concentrators allows the optimization of solar cells at each wavelength, increasing the overall power output.

How to Live Beyond 100 Your odds of living to celebrate your one-hundredth birthday are higher than ever, says University of Georgia gerontologist Leonard Poon.

Adults aged 100 or more are a fastgrowing population group throughout the industrialized world, Poon notes. Most industrialized countries now average one centenarian per 10,000 residents, but the figure is moving toward one in 5,000.

“One can observe over the last century that the oldest of our population increased from a negligible number to an appreciable proportion,” Poon writes in Aging, Biotechnology, and the Future.

Poon gives the average 60-year-old a 1% chance and the average 80-yearold a 0.5% chance of becoming a centenarian.

Life-span is 30% determined by genes and 70% determined by environment, according to Poon. In 1992, he compared a group of centenarians with groups of adults in their 80s and 60s, finding a common thread of healthy living among most of the 100-or-older group: They had exercised regularly, eaten breakfast daily, consumed substantial amounts of carotenoids and Vitamin A, and refrained from smoking and abuse of alcohol.

“Human attitudes and choices

may underlie the secrets of longevity,” Poon suggests.

Many centenarians, however, reach their ripe old ages despite health choices that most doctors would not like. Jeanne Calment, whose 122 years won her the Guinness Book of World Records’ entry as the oldest human being, smoked until her 120th birthday.

“They are not all exemplary: Some people smoked, some drank heavily,” says L. Stephen Coles, cofounder of the Gerontology Research Group, which researches centenarian health. “There is no particular thing you could point to that you could say ‘If you do this, you will live to one hundred.”

The deciding factor, Coles told THE FUTURIST, is genetics. He notes that many centenarians’ parents lived into their 90s.

“If your parents lived long, you will probably live long,” he says.

Robert Young, claims researcher for the Gerontology Research Group, adds that being a woman also helps.

In the research group’s database of 4,000 “supercentenarians” — people who live more than 110 years — 90% are women.

Young attributes the gender imbalance to basic physiological differences: Women’s bodies naturally last longer than men’s. He says that women are statistically more likely than men to survive gunshot wounds and heart attacks, and they live with

Predicting Supercentenarians Gerontologist Leonard Poon surveyed 137 supercentenarians in a 2000 study and observed five predictors of living long past age 100: 1. Gender. On average, women survived 1,020 days after reaching 100 years. Men averaged only 781.

2. Family longevity. The age of death of the centenarian’s fathers was positively associated with the days of survival of centenarians.

No effect was found for the mother’s age of death, though.

Source: Leonard Poon.

3. Income and social support.

The centenarians who talked on the phone often, had a caregiver, and had someone to help on a regular basis all tended to live longer than centenarians who did not.

4. Anthropometrics. Less body fat and higher waist-to-hip ratio correlated positively with survival after 100 years.

5. Cognition. The centenarians with higher cognitive abilities tended to live the longest.

Parkinson’s and Alzheimer ’s diseases for far greater lengths of time.

“Women are designed for endurance, whereas men are designed for peak strength,” Young says.

However, a healthy lifestyle does help, no matter what your gender or genome might be.

“As a doctor, I cannot tell you to go smoke just because Calment did,” says Coles. “She lived in spite of her bad habits, not because of her bad habits.”

Coles encourages individuals of all ages to extend their lives as long as they can by taking good care of their health.

“They have to lead an exemplary lifestyle. It’s important for people to live a long time so that they are around when aging intervention treatments become possible,” he says.

— Rick Docksai Sources: “What Can We Learn from Centenarians?” by Leonard Poon, in Aging, Biotechnology, and the Future edited by Catherine Y. Read et al. The Johns Hopkins University Press, www.press.jhu.edu. 2008. 266 pages. $45. Order online from the Futurist Bookshelf, www.wfs.org/bkshelf.htm.

L. Stephen Coles and Robert Young, Gerontology Research Group. Web site www.grg.org.

The Scent of the Future Consumers didn’t need to be told that Jazz Diet Pepsi was about to hit store shelves; they could smell it. The soft-drink company had placed an ad laced with scents of black cherry and French vanilla in the October 2006 edition of People magazine.

Four months later, British travel agency Thomson Holidays sprayed its store windows with a scratchand-sniff scent of coconut suntan lotion, in order to remind those passing by that they, via Thomson Holidays, could leave February’s icy chill for beaches in sunnier climes.

Since catchy jingles and flashy graphics are ubiquitous, many companies are hoping that nice smells will prove a new way to attract customers’ attention.

“Smell can trigger memory, nostalgia, and mental pictures before any left-brain analysis muddies the waters,” writes C. Russell Brumfield in his new book, Whiff! Brumfeld is

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founder of Whiff Solutions, a company that consults clients on the application of scent marketing and communication. He believes that we more easily remember what we smell than what we see or hear. A smell can instantly bring us back to longago times and places, like early childhood.

It is not surprising, then, that Midwest Airlines flight attendants calmed nervous passengers by popping cookie trays into the airplane ovens shortly before take off. With the homey scent of baked cookies drifting through the cabin, anxious travelers were set at ease.

“The memory of smell is a long one. What we see and hear slowly grows dim in memory, but what we smell lives on and can be easily recalled,” Brumfeld writes.

There is sound science behind these marketing ploys, says Alan Hirsch, director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation.

Unlike the other four senses, scent travels directly to the brain’s emotional centers and produces automatic feelings in the receiver, whereas the perceptions registered by the other senses travel through interpretive brain centers first and then arrive at emotional centers.

Smell’s uniquely fast track to feelings is why Hirsch says that “the quickest way to reach the emotions is through smell.”

Hirsch’s studies demonstrate that smell influences behavior in powerful ways. He found that, when one shoe store maintained a mixed floral aroma, customers were more likely to buy shoes. He also found that a casino’s slot machine revenues went up when a pleasant aroma pervaded the slot machine area.

A London nightclub underscored Hirsch’s findings. When it wafted the smell of coconut through its interior, sales of the rum drink Malibu more than doubled.

“Our relatively recent understanding of the prominence and influence of scent in our lives is rapidly changing the paradigm of how we market, sell, and deliver products and services to consumers,” writes Brumfield.

Smell might be a useful tool in years ahead for other groups besides 25

advertisers, according to Brumfeld.

Engineers might make buildings with labyrinthine hallways easier to navigate by giving unique aromas to individual hallways and wings.

The Scent of Terror The U.S. Department of Defense sees national-security applications of scent technology. The department’s Unique Signature Detection Project hopes to more easily capture terrorist suspects. DOD researcher Gary Beauchamp says that, “even after leaving the scene of a crime, a terrorist’s scent could spread over a large distance and linger for a considerable time.”

Police might compile a similar registry of children’s smells and more quickly locate missing children.

Can smell ever be overused? A law enforcement agency armed with such a registry need not only track missing children: It might track any one of us.

“We should be cautious about how we employ these new technologies, and do everything we can to insure that they are not used to shackle, control, or abuse us,” Brumfield says.

— Rick Docksai Sources: Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age by C. Russell Brumfield. Quimby Press. 2008. 304 pages. Paperback. $24.95. Order online from the Futurist Bookshelf, www.wfs.org/bkshelf .htm.

“Dale Air Hopes Thomson Campaign is Up to Scratch,” In-Store Marketing (March 12, 2007), Centaur Communications Ltd., www.mad.co.uk.

The Rise of Brain-Focused Teaching The development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the 1980s revolutionized medicine, particularly neuroscience, by giving doctors a unique window into the workings of the brain. Now, fMRI technology, and our advanced knowledge of how the brain operates, is revolutionizing ­education.

“Neuroimaging can transform a real brain hidden within a skull into a virtual brain observable on a computer. This transformation has finally allowed scientists to observe how

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

OXFORD CENTRE FOR FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING OF THE BRAIN

The fMRI scanning technique gives researchers a unique glimpse into the process of cognition. Increasingly, educators are using fMRI findings in the classroom.

various brain processing systems collaborate when they develop a decision and then activate the appropriate behavior,” writes education professor Robert Sylwester in the journal The School Administrator. He suggests that teachers acquaint themselves with the new neuroscience literature and the potential applications of brain science in the classroom.

“Teachers who continually ask students to sit still and be quiet seem more interested in teaching a grove of trees than a room full of students.

Educational leaders who eliminate recess and reduce arts and physical education programs seemingly don’t understand the purpose of the brain, and what it takes to develop and maintain one,” he says.

One research project that applied neuro­mapping technology to teaching was the 2003 Fast ForWord Language study. In the experiment, a group of dyslexic students underwent fMRI scans while participating in various reading tasks. Some of the tasks dealt with sounding out words, while other tasks were concerned with reading. The study allowed the researchers to observe how the children processed the letters visually and aurally and then compare the findings to similar fMRI scans of children without dyslexia. The scientists discovered that the brain of the dyslexic subjects, specifically the

portion of the brain associated with hearing and processing sound, was influencing the dyslexia. They used their findings to craft more visceral lesson plans. The result after eight weeks was significant improvement on standardized reading tests.

“This is the first study to use fMRI to document scientifically that the brain differences seen in dyslexics can be ‘normalized’ by neuroplasticity based training. Perhaps of greater relevance to educators, parents, and the children themselves are the accompanying significant increases in reading scores on standardized tests that were also documented as a result of this intervention,” write neuro­s cience experts Steve Miller and Paula Tallal. They report that, since the results of the study were published in 2003, similar findings have been made available for teachers in more than 4,000 schools across the United States.

“The goal of brain-compatible instruction is more than high test scores,” says Patricia Wolfe, author of Mind Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practice. “Our students need to develop an in-depth understanding of concepts to the point where they are able to use what they’ve learned in school in the world outside of school.”

Wolfe cautions that not all neuroscience studies will be applicable to the classroom. She suggests that teachers become more familiar with basic brain anatomy before attempting to write lesson plans around the neuroscience breakthrough-of-theday, and that educators not ignore important discoveries in psychology or educational research. However, she is optimistic that our rapidly ­a dvancing understanding of the brain will lead to more effective teaching in the near future.

“Granted, much more remains to be learned from neuroscience that will assist us in making our classrooms more compatible with how the brain functions, but it would be foolish to wait until all the research is completed to begin to incorporate the knowledge we now have,” she says.

—Patrick Tucker Source: The School Administrator (December 2006), www.aasa.org.

ROBERT HEALY / UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH

The microscopic nanoactuator consists of a DNA strand, a “magnetic bead,” and a molecule-sized dynamo.

Tapping the Power of DNA To Run Computers Researchers in the United Kingdom have found a way to tap the chemical-electrical properties in DNA to create a microscopic electronic switch. The development is being called a bio-nanotechnology first and heralds many future breakthroughs linking living organisms to computers.

The device, tentatively named the nanoactuator, consists of a strand of DNA, a microchip, a “bead magnet,” and a mechanical “dynamo” or lever less than one molecule in size. The DNA powers the nanoactuator through the substance adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the University of Portsmouth researchers explain.

ATP is a sugar-carbon nucleotide that exists in human cells. Its unique properties enable a number of cellular and larger biological functions such as metabolism, or the movement of fuel molecules across cellmembranes resulting in energy. In the nanoactuator, ATP runs the dynamo device, pulling the magnetic bead and creating an electric reaction. The chip reads the electricity and, in turn, sends signals to a computer.

“The possibilities are very exciting.

The nanoactuator we have developed can be used as a communicator between biological and silicon worlds,” says molecular biologist

Keith Firman. “I could see it providing an interface between muscle and external devices. But it has to be pointed out that such an application is still 20 to 30 years away.” Firman is leading the team of researchers from across Europe.

More immediately, researchers could apply the new knowledge to the problem of sensing and detecting airborne pathogens. Firman believes the experiments provide new and valuable insight into biology on the molecular level.

“The real breakthrough is that the nanoactuator can indicate events at the limits of chemical sensitivity by reporting events that occur between single molecules. This device could provide the spur that shows how biological machines can be used in nanotechnology and provide the start point for the revolution that bio-nanotechnology offers,” says ­Firman.

He reports that one of his most frustrating challenges was convincing potential financiers that the nanoactuator was possible. In view of the team’s success, the European Commission has awarded them a grant of €2 million (approximately $2.72 million) to conduct further research.

—Patrick Tucker Source: University of Portsmouth, University House, Winston Churchill Avenue, Portsmouth, Hampshire, United Kingodm PO1 2UP. Telephone +44 2392 842726. Web site www.port.ac.uk. Project Web site www.bionano-switch.info.

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

26

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