The Green Trap

by Ben Bova

  To slow the buildup of those gases, people will have to replace most, if not all, of those 13 TW with carbon-free energy sources. And that’s the easy part. Thanks to global population growth and economic development, most energy experts predict we will need somewhere around an additional 30 TW by 2050. Coming up with that power in a way that doesn’t trigger catastrophic changes in earth’s climate, Lewis says, “is unarguably the greatest technological challenge this country will face in the next fifty years.”

  Clearly, there are no easy answers. But one question Lewis and plenty of other high-profile scientists are asking is whether it’s time to launch a major research initiative on solar energy. In April, Lewis and physicist George Crabtree of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois cochaired a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) workshop designed to explore the emerging potential for basic research in solar energy, from novel photovoltaics to systems for using sunlight to generate chemical fuels. Last week, the pair released their report.

  The report outlines research priorities for improving solar power. It doesn’t say how much money is needed to reach those goals, but DOE officials have floated funding numbers of about $50 million a year. That’s up from the $10 million to $15 million a year now being spent on basic solar energy research. But given the scale of the challenge in transforming the energy landscape, other researchers and politicians are calling for more money.

  It’s too early to say whether the money or the political support will fall in line. But it is clear that support for a renewed push for solar energy research is building among scientists. Last month, Lewis previewed his upcoming report for members of DOE’s Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC). Despite a painfully lean budget outlook at DOE, support for a solar research program “is nearly unanimous,” says Samuel Stupp, BESAC member and chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

  Why? Terawatts. Even if a cheap, abundant, carbon-free energy source were to appear overnight, Lewis and others point out, it would still be a Herculean task to install the new systems fast enough just to keep up with rising energy demand—let alone to replace oil, natural gas and coal. Generating 10 TW of energy—about one-third of the projected new demand by 2050—would require 10,000 nuclear power plants, each capable of churning out a gigawatt of power, enough to light a small city. “That means opening one nuclear reactor every other day for the next fifty years,” Lewis says. Mind you, there hasn’t been a new nuclear plant built in the United States since 1973, and concerns about high up-front capital costs, waste disposal, corporate liability, nuclear proliferation and terrorism make it unlikely that will change in any meaningful way soon.

  So what is the world to do? Right now the solution is clear. The United States is currently opening natural gas plants at the rate of one every 3.5 days. A stroll through Beijing makes it clear that China is pursuing coal just as fast. Fossil fuel use shows no signs of slowing.

  Hand-wringing geologists have been warning for years that worldwide oil production is likely to peak sometime between now and 2040, driving oil prices through the roof. The critical issue for climate, however, is not when production of fossil fuel peaks, but its global capacity. At the 1998 level of energy use, there is still at least an estimated half century’s worth of oil available, two centuries of natural gas, and a whopping two millennia worth of coal. The upshot is that we will run into serious climate problems long before we run out of fossil fuels.

  What’s left? Solar. Photovoltaic panels currently turn sunlight into three gigawatts of electricity. The business is growing at 40 percent a year and is already a $7.5 billion industry. But impressive as that is, that’s still a drop in the bucket of humanity’s total energy use. “You have to use a logarithmic scale to see it” graphed next to fossil fuels, Lewis says.

  What solar does have going for it is, well, the sun. Our star puts out 3.8 × 1023 kilowatt-hours of energy every hour. Of that, 170,000 TW strike earth every moment, nearly one-third of which are reflected back into space. The bottom line is that every hour, earth’s surface receives more energy from the sun than humans use in a year.

  Collecting even a tiny fraction of that energy won’t be easy. To harvest 20 TW with solar panels that are 10 percent efficient at turning sunlight into electricity—a number well within the range of current technology—would require covering about 0.16% of earth’s land surface with solar panels. Covering all 70 million detached homes in the U.S. with solar panels would produce only 0.25 TW of electricity, just one-tenth of the electricity consumed in the country in the year 2000. This means land will need to be dedicated for solar farms, setting up land use battles that will likely raise environmental concerns, such as destroying habitat for species where the farms are sited.

  Solar energy advocates acknowledge that a global solar energy grid would face plenty of other challenges as well. Chief among them: transporting and storing the energy. If massive solar farms are plunked down in the middle of deserts and other sparsely populated areas, governments will have to build an electrical infrastructure to transport the power to urban centers. This is certainly doable, but expensive.

  A tougher knot is storing energy from the sun. Because electricity cannot be stored directly, it must be converted into some other form of potential energy for storage, such as the electrochemical energy of a battery, or the kinetic energy of a flywheel. The massive scale of global electric use makes both of these forms of energy storage very unlikely. Another possibility is using electricity to pump water uphill to reservoirs, where it can later be released to regenerate electricity. Electricity can also be used to generate hydrogen gas or other chemical fuels, which can then be delivered via pipelines to where they are needed or used directly as transportation fuels. But that, too, requires building a new expensive infrastructure that isn’t incorporated in solar energy’s already high cost.

  If all this has a familiar ring to it, that’s because many of the same arguments have been used before. In the wake of the oil shocks of the 1970s, the Carter Administration directed billions of dollars to alternative energy research. The big differences now are the threat of climate change and the current huge budget deficits of the U.S. Some of the cost numbers have changed, but the gap between solar energy’s potential and what is needed for it to be practical on a massive scale remains wide. The April DOE meeting explored many ideas to bridge that gap, including creating plastic solar cells and making use of advances in nanotechnology.

  But Richard Smalley, a chemist at Rice University in Houston, Texas, who advocates renewed support for alternative-energy research, notes that unless research progresses far more rapidly to solve the current energy conundrum by 2020, there is essentially no way to have large amounts of clean energy technology in place by 2050. “That means the basic enabling breakthroughs have to be made now,” Smalley says.

  Of course, a major sticking point is money. At the April meeting, DOE officials started talking about funding a new solar energy research initiative at about $50 million per year, according to Mary Gress, who manages DOE’s photochemistry and radiation research. Lewis is reluctant to say how much money is needed, but asks rhetorically whether $50 million a year is enough to transform the biggest industry in the world. Clearly, others don’t think so. “I don’t see an answer that will change it short of an Apollo-level program,” Smalley says.

  With Congress close to passing an energy bill that focuses on tax breaks for oil exploration and hybrid cars, it doesn’t look as if a big push on solar energy will be one of those “new things” anytime soon.

  At least compared with DOE’s earlier push for progress in hydrogen technology, many researchers expect that a push on solar energy research will be a far easier sell. “With hydrogen it was a lot more controversial,” Stupp says. “There are scientific issues that are really serious [in getting hydrogen technology to work]. With solar, it’s an idea that makes sense in a practical way and is a great source of discovery.” If that research and discovery doesn’t hap
pen, Lewis says he’s worried about what the alternative will bring. “Is this something at which we can afford to fail?”

  —Robert F. Service

  SCIENCE

  July 22, 2005

  ARLINGTON:

  CAMBRIDGE SAVINGS BANK

  Harold Wilcox looked exactly the way Cochrane expected a bank manager to look: gray-haired, gray-suited, a little overweight, plastic-rimmed eyeglasses, a strained smile on his doughy-white face.

  “This is a little unusual,” Wilcox said, looking at the key Cochrane had laid on his desk. “The box is registered in Michael Cochrane’s name.”

  “Mike died last week,” Cochrane said evenly. “I’m his brother.”

  “Do you have a death certificate or any other evidence of Mr. Cochrane’s demise?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “A power of attorney? A last will and testament?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  Wilcox looked pained. “I’m sorry, but without proper documentation—”

  “But Mike gave me the key.”

  “Yes, I can see.”

  Sandoval spoke up. “Perhaps Mr. Cochrane put his brother’s name on the list of those approved to open the box.”

  Wilcox focused his gaze on her. Sandoval was wearing a pastel green pantsuit over a pale yellow blouse. He smiled at her.

  “Let me check.” The bank manager turned to his desktop computer screen and flicked his fingers across the keyboard. He squinted, leaned toward the screen, jabbed at the keys again.

  “Why, yes,” he said, smiling at Sandoval. “There is a Paul Cochrane on the approved list. No one else, though.”

  “I’m Paul Cochrane.”

  Wilcox asked for identification. Cochrane pulled out his wallet and showed his Arizona driver’s license, his university ID, and a Costco credit card, all bearing his photo.

  The banker peered at the cards, then nodded, satisfied. “You understand the reason to be cautious about these things,” he said apologetically. “It’s for your own protection.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Cochrane.

  Wilcox led Cochrane and Sandoval out of his office in the nearly empty bank, past an open massive steel vault hatch, and into a metal-walled chamber lined with rows of safe-deposit boxes. Using the key that Cochrane had given him, plus a second he had attached to a keychain from his pocket, the bank manager opened one of the little oblong doors and slid out a long metal box.

  “You can open the box in the privacy of one of our booths,” he said as he handed the box to Cochrane. It felt lighter than Cochrane had expected it to be.

  The booth was tiny and felt crowded with Sandoval in with him. Wilcox closed the slatted door so quietly that Cochrane tried the knob to make certain it was shut. There was only one chair, and Sandoval sat in it. But she looked up at Cochrane expectantly, waiting for him to open the box.

  He lifted the hinged lid and swung it back. Inside the steel box were a half dozen CDs.

  “Probably like the ones Arashi hacked out of Tulius’s files,” said Cochrane.

  “But there are twice as many,” Sandoval replied.

  “These must be Mike’s files.”

  “Copies of what was missing in his laptop.”

  Cochrane started to stuff the slim jewel cases into his jacket pockets. “Let’s get back to Tucson, where I can dig into these.”

  “We could rent a computer here,” she suggested.

  Cochrane shook his head as he closed the safe-deposit box. “No. My own machine is better. I know what’s in it, how to run it. No learning curve.”

  She was silent as he carried the box back to Wilcox, in his office, and put it down on his desk. Cochrane thanked the bank manager and they left.

  It was a sunny morning, cool, with an east wind blowing soft white cumulus clouds across a deeply blue sky. Cochrane took a deep, invigorating breath of Massachusetts air and started for their wagon, in the parking lot behind the bank.

  But Sandoval grabbed for his arm. “Is there a post office near here?” she asked.

  “Yeah, down on Mass Av.”

  “Let’s mail the CDs to your apartment. I don’t want to have them on us.”

  He looked at her sharply. “You worried about Kensington?”

  “Or someone else. There could be other players involved in this.”

  “Involved in what? What’s this all about, Elena?”

  She gave him a little smile. “That’s what we’re trying to find out, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “If Gould is willing to toss out numbers like ten million, whatever this is all about must be worth an incredible fortune.”

  He stood there on the sidewalk in front of the bank, his mind trying to work it all out. She’s right, he thought. She must be right.

  “Okay,” he said. “The post office is down this way.”

  They walked to the post office, where Cochrane mailed the CDs first class to his apartment in Tucson while Sandoval used her cell phone to make a flight reservation.

  “The earliest I could get is tomorrow morning,” she told him as they headed back for the bank.

  “Then we’ve got all day with nothing to do.”

  Nodding, she said, “This is where you grew up, isn’t it? Is your house near here?”

  “Five minutes’ walk.”

  “Let’s go see it.”

  He hung back. “It’s not much to see.”

  “But I’d like to see it. Can’t we? Please?”

  With a shrug, he headed for Pleasant Street again.

  Lakeview was a narrow street that sloped down to Spy Pond. A pair of yellow-brick condominiums flanked the intersection with Pleasant Street. The old Cochrane residence was a Dutch Colonial on the other side of one of the condo parking lots.

  “Used to be a big old maple tree here,” Cochrane said, pointing to the wire mesh fence that bounded the parking lot.

  The house hadn’t changed much, he saw. Paint flaking off here and there. The roof looked like it needed patching. Just like the old days, he thought. Dad was always working on the house, trying to hold it together while Mom yapped at him about the leaking cellar and the browning lawn and the busted steps on the front porch.

  “It’s a beautiful location,” Sandoval murmured as she looked over the house.

  Pointing down toward where the street dead-ended on the water, Cochrane said, “I guess it is. Mike and I used to sail Sunfishes on the pond.”

  “Isn’t that a big body of water to be called a pond?”

  He laughed. “Around here, any body of water that doesn’t have a stream feeding into it or coming out of it is called a pond. Doesn’t matter how big it is.”

  “But it must be several miles across.”

  “Yep, it is. They found tusks from an Ice Age mammoth buried on the shoreline. Dad used to tell us stories about mammoths marching down the street for a drink of water.”

  “You must have had a lovely childhood.”

  “Not really. My parents fought a lot. Or rather, my mother yelled at my dad and he ignored her. The other kids on the street were okay, I guess.” He started laughing, remembering.

  “What is it?” Sandoval asked.

  Walking slowly down to the end of the street, by the shore of Spy Pond, Cochrane recalled, “One day a Japanese family that lived in the condos across the street left and went back to Japan. They left a ten-year supply of condoms in the trash at the curb.”

  Sandoval smiled appreciatively.

  “Mike and I didn’t know what the damned things were. They looked like balloons to us.”

  “You went through their trash?”

  “Oh, sure. Everybody did in those days. Nosy neighbors, kids, everybody poked through peoples’ trash.”

  “And you found hundreds of balloons.”

  He laughed again. “We toted the boxes down to the pond and sailed the balloons across the water. A regular armada.”

  Sandoval laughed, too.

 
; “The cranky old widow who lived in there”—he pointed to a study brick house at the water’s edge—”got really sore at us. Phoned my mother and called us perverts. She whacked me with a wooden cooking spoon when I got home.”

  “Your brother, too?”

  Cochrane’s laughter faded. “Naw. I was the first one through the door, so she whacked me. Pretty damned hard, too. Mike was smart enough to wait until she got winded. He always got away with murder.”

  He could see from the sudden change of her expression that he’d picked the wrong word.

  REVERE:

  FOUR POINTS SHERATON HOTEL

  Kensington was furious enough to break somebody’s back.

  He’d flown to Boston on Gould’s executive jet and actually landed a good fifteen minutes before the Delta flight that Cochrane and Sandoval were on was scheduled to arrive. And the Delta flight was late, at that. But by the time the limo that Gould had laid on for him got him through the airport’s weaving roads to the Delta terminal, the goddamned flight had landed, its passengers disembarked, and neither Cochrane nor that hot-looking Sandoval were anywhere in sight.

  Using his private investigator’s credentials and a good deal of physical intimidation, he’d finally found that they’d rented a goddamned Subaru wagon from Dollar. But where the hell they’d gone to from there was a complete blank.

  Gould’s people had reserved him a room at a Sheraton near the airport, but that turned out to be another fiasco. “Near the airport,” according to Gould’s travel office, turned out to be all the way the hell out in some town called Revere, miles of jampacked, confusing roads from Logan. It had taken Kensington almost an hour to find the goddamned dump, even with a GPS system in the car he had to rent.

  He’d phoned Gould to report the bad news, got an assistant that he wouldn’t talk to. His deal with Gould was that he worked for him and nobody else; he reported to Gould and nobody else. Gould wanted it that way.