G-CEP to seek ways to confront climate change

BY MARK SHWARTZ

Melting glaciers, rising seas, devastating storms and droughts -- these are just a few of the worst-case scenarios climate experts say might lie ahead unless something drastic is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

In an effort to find ways to avert climate change, Stanford researchers have joined forces with some of the world's biggest energy companies to create the Global Climate and Energy Project (G-CEP) -- an ambitious program to develop innovative technologies that meet the world's growing energy needs while protecting the planet. President John Hennessy announced the multimillion-dollar program to a packed auditorium at the Schwab Residential Center on Nov. 20.

"This is a very exciting day -- the beginning of what we believe is a revolutionary collaboration," he said, noting that G-CEP will address "one of the most pressing problems we face today: the generation and consumption of energy in an environmentally benign fashion."

Hennessy said that the project's sponsors -- ExxonMobil, General Electric (GE), Schlumberger Limited and E.ON -- "anticipate investing up to $225 million over the next 10 years." This amount equals all of the corporate-sponsored research at Stanford in the last decade, according to university officials.

ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded petroleum and petrochemical company, plans to contribute up to $100 million; General Electric, a world leader in power generation technology and services, $50 million; and Schlumberger Limited, a global energy services company, $25 million. E.ON, Europe's largest privately owned energy service provider, has signaled its intention to contribute $50 million, university officials said.

"There's an initial commitment of about $20 million over the first three years from ExxonMobil, GE, Schlumberger and E.ON," said G-CEP Director Franklin M. "Lynn" Orr Jr., who stepped down as dean of the School of Earth Sciences on Monday. "We're hoping that we can persuade another company or two to join us in what surely must be one of the grand challenges of this century."

Christopher F. Edwards, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, was named deputy director of G-CEP.

Greenhouse effect

In his Nov. 20 speech at the Schwab Center, Orr pointed out that, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by a third.

"The acidity of the surface ocean has increased as the pH has measurably changed, and there is a lively, ongoing debate about the timing, magnitude and impact of future responses like global warming," he said. "These changes indicate that we should investigate global energy systems that have very low greenhouse gas emissions."

Three industry representatives also spoke at the event: Frank Sprow, vice president of ExxonMobil; Sanjay Correa, GE's global technology leader; and Philippe Lacour-Gayet, vice president of Schlumberger.

"Today, the enormous publicity given to climate change makes it possible for critics to misrepresent the oil and gas industry as a sunset energy," Lacour-Gayet said. "But actually we know that the industry will play a crucial role in meeting most of the world's vast need for clean, affordable energy in the next 100 years."

He said that, because of the size and the complexity of the issue, Schlumberger decided the best approach was to team up with a leading university and a group of major energy companies.

"Somewhere between 1.5 and 2 billion [people] have no real access to energy services, services that we in the developed world take for granted: energy for heat, light, transportation and electric power for a multitude of other uses," Orr observed. "In 20 years, another 1.5 billion people will join us. They will want and deserve access to energy to live better lives."

Project goals

Orr said that among the primary goals for G-CEP will be identifying the most promising technologies for low-emission, high-efficiency energy supplies and overcoming legal, safety and cost barriers that would prevent their distribution and acceptance by consumers worldwide. Among the technologies to be considered by project researchers are hydrogen fuel, nuclear power, renewable energy sources (such as wind and solar), biomass fuels and electronic power generating systems that produce lower greenhouse emissions.

Several research efforts are already under way on campus, Orr noted: "There is the hydrogen area. Jim Swartz [professor of chemical engineering] and Alfred Spormann [associate professor of civil and environmental engineering] are looking at the idea of engineering microbes to make hydrogen directly. And there is fuel cell research that Fritz Prinz [professor of mechanical engineering] is doing as well."

A number of people in the Department of Mechanical Engineering are conducting research in advanced combustion. "We burn stuff all the time," Orr noted. "We burn something to run our automobiles, to make electricity or for heat. It turns out that in a standard flame there's only so much energy you can take out; it's limited by the thermodynamics of the situation. But if you do the combustion in a different way by taking some of the heat at the same time that you're running the reaction, then you can actually get higher efficiencies."

Another research area involves the integrated assessment of technology options, which is being spearheaded by Jim Sweeney and John Weyant in the Department of Management Science and Engineering. "It's an attempt to put together a set of tools that will allow us to look at how fast technologies can be brought into action, what the economic parameters associated with that would be and what kinds of impact they would have," Orr explained.

Several members of the Earth Sciences faculty -- including Orr, Mark Zoback and Jerry Harris -- have been investigating geological sequestration: capturing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories and storing them underground or underwater. Industrial smokestacks account for about a third of all human-generated carbon dioxide, so removing industrial emissions from the atmosphere could have a significant impact.

Intellectual freedom

In an interview, Orr noted that researchers involved in G-CEP will have the intellectual freedom to explore a wide array of energy technologies and solutions.

"We have a long history at Stanford of working with industry, and we understand the importance of having our researchers maintain an independent view," he said. "We know that, when you have companies of good will, we can make this work in a way that capitalizes on the strengths of the various institutions. I'm quite sure we can do this in a way that is good for everybody concerned."

Stanford will hold formal legal title to all technology and information derived from the project, as well as formal legal title to all patents sought.

"An important part of this effort will be the dissemination of the research results," Orr said. "Research conducted at Stanford must be openly available, and everything we do will be communicated to the public and the science and engineering community through workshops, presentations, reports and publication in technical journals. Our objective is to conduct research that will have significant positive impact and to make it available to the world."

Orr predicted that about half of all G-CEP research efforts will be conducted by Stanford faculty, students and staff. The rest will be done at other institutions around the world under the aegis of Stanford.

"There is no doubt that the problems we face are extraordinarily complex in scope and in scale," Hennessy added. "No one university, no single company, not even a single country can solve them all."