Imagining the future of the energy industry without science would be somewhat akin to imagining the US government without acronyms.
World-class scientific research, in fact, is one of the four Department of Energy missions, Energy Sec. Spencer Abraham told Congress earlier this year when he presented DOE's $24.3 billion budget for fiscal year 2005.
Defense and national security, energy security, and environmental stewardship were the other missions.
The DOE budget request included programs to ensure US energy security in light of projected skyrocketing US energy demand by 2020.
Abraham said that President George W. Bush has made a commitment to invest in new science and technology research and development in order to help transcend such problems far down the road.
Office of Science
DOE Director of the Office of Science Raymond L. Orbach, speaking to the House Committee on Science in February, said, "We are the nation's leading supporter of the physical sciences, investing in research at over 280 universities, 15 national laboratories, and many international research institutions."
According to Orbach, DOE's Office of Science leads the world in the conception, design, construction, and operation of large-scale devices that have enabled US researchers to make some of the most important scientific discoveries of the past 70 years, with spin-off technological advances leading to entirely new industries. More than 19,000 researchers and their students from universities, other government agencies, private industry, and those from abroad use DOE facilities each year.
Research programs in basic energy sciences include geosciences and biosciences as they relate to energy. Biological and environmental research (BER) advances energy-related biological and environmental research in genomics and complete biological systems, such as microbes that produce hydrogen. BER also researches climate-change issues, science-based methods for cleaning up environmental contaminants, radiation biology, and medical sciences.
DOE, through its genomics program, will attempt to use genetic techniques to harness microbes to consume pollution, create hydrogen, and absorb carbon dioxide (OGJ, Dec. 8, 2003, p. 15).
Because natural gas demand in the US is expected to increase by 50% by 2020, about $26 million of the energy budget will be allocated to natural gas research within Bush's Clear Skies antipollution initiative. Emphasis also will focus on research to improve access to onshore public lands such as the Rocky Mountains region, thought to contain large undiscovered gas volumes.
Hydrates potential
About $6 million will support a program to study gas hydrates, production of which has the potential to have "major energy security implications," Orbach said.
US Geological Survey estimates indicate US gas hydrate resources are larger by several orders of magnitude than previously thought and dwarf the estimated 1,400 tcf of conventional recovered gas resources and reserves in the US.
"Hydrate production, if it can be proved technically and economically feasible, has the potential to shift the world energy balance away from the Middle East," Orbach told Congress.
Focus on hydrogen
Bush's Clean Coal Research Initiative focuses on producing clean fuels from coal. Hydrogen is emerging as the fuel of choice for advanced power technologies such as fuel cells and for future transportation systems, Orbach said.
A partnership of government, energy industry, and automobile manufacturers also is researching the use of hydrogen for the FreedomCAR initiative, a hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle that participants hope to commercialize by 2015. Their commercial success would remove personal transportation as an environmental issue and substantially reduce US dependence on foreign oil, he added.
Another way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is through increased power plant efficiencies such as FutureGen, the administration's proposed zero-emissions hydrogen and electric power producing plant, the world's first. FutureGen research will focus on key technologies such as carbon sequestration, membrane technologies for oxygen and hydrogen separation, advanced turbines, fuel cells, coal-to-hydrogen conversion, and other technologies.
Security initiatives
Bush has directed DOE to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its 700 million bbl capacity, which is being accomplished at a rate of about 130,000 b/d of oil, Orbach said.
He said another 2005 priority would be the development of microhole drilling technology, which "may offer one of our best opportunities for keeping marginal fields active because the smaller-diameter wells can significantly reduce exploration costs and make infill drilling more affordable."
Using breakthrough technology like this to keep marginal fields in production, he added, enables advanced innovations that could recover even larger quantities of domestic crude that traditional oil recovery methods currently leave behind.
