Nanotechnology and Our Energy Future
9 May 2008, 14:37
Categories: energy
It wasn’t market forces that landed a man on the moon; and It wasn’t market forces that led France to build a nuclear energy infrastructure that now enables it to generate some 75% of its entire energy needs from nuclear power. But somehow, the leading political and industrial forces in the United States – together with China the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet – think that a task so fundamental and massive as fighting global warming and environmental pollution should mostly be left ‘to the market’. Unfortunately, it’s just a matter of economic reality that ‘the market’ will not invest in new energy technologies on a large scale until existing ways of producing energy become more expensive than producing alternative energies – which at the moment they aren’t.
Nanowerk is asking why we don’t have a nanotechnology program for clean energy that is equivalent to the Apollo Program. They recently reviewed new capabilities nanotechnology will offer energy production, transport and storage, and conservation.
Posted by: The Editors
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