CAUSE 2000

Energy Choices for the Next Millennium: Costs and Consequences

Derek Elsworth and Semih Eser

Department of Energy and Geo-Environmental Engineering, PSU

Welcome to the CAUSE 2000 Homepage. This page is available to you as a primer on energy choices, their political and economic ramifications, and the potential costs and consequences of their adverse environmental effects.

Media Reports

Research|PennState [February 2001]

Course Overview and Resources

Overview [PowerPoint link; open in MS Explorer]

CAUSE Travel

Digital Image Archive

Field Study Reports

Travel Video [need Quicktime]

ICEEIT Website

Group Reports

Mid-Atlantic States Overview

North-Western States Energy Overview and Energy Policy [use MS Explorer]

Seattle Region

Ancilliary Reports on Dam Removal on the Snake River and RP Standards for Idaho, Washington and Wyoming.

What is CAUSE?

The acronym stands for the "Center for Advanced Undergraduate Study and Experience." CAUSE 2000 follows the format of its predecessors as a problem-based collaborative learning course. This CAUSE examines the economic, political, environmental and technological factors that govern our energy choices in the coming years. Details of CAUSE 2000 are included on the syllabus.

What is the problem with energy supply?

There is growing concern that rising levels of atmospheric CO₂, resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, are changing the Earth's climate. Although this is a controversial issue, it is widely accepted that increased CO₂ levels are a direct result of industrialization. However, the linkage between rising CO₂ levels and current and projected changes in climate is more tenuous, more intensely debated, and the object of much focused research.

To make informed selections on potential energy sources for the future we must understand the role of current fuel and energy usage on global environmental quality. However, the primary focus of this study is on technological solutions.

What are the project goals?

We seek to examine the following:

What is the form and severity of climatic effects that are likely to result from current and increased levels of atmospheric CO₂? What data are available?

What are acceptable climatic consequences, and to what levels of atmospheric CO₂ do they conform? What level of uncertainty is associated with these estimates?

What are acceptable levels of emissions for industrialized and developing countries that do not exceed these acceptable atmospheric CO₂ concentrations?

What mix of energy supply components is appropriate for a region to reduce emissions to this quota, and how should this compliance be encouraged or prescribed?

We shall assume that there is an undesirable effect on global environmental quality that results from the sustained emissions of CO₂ from the burning of fossil fuels.

What are the complex "energy supply" interactions we need to understand?

We need to understand the complex interactions between the quality of life and of economic productivity and prosperity. Between the costs and perils of both protecting the environment, and of not protecting the environment. We need to be apprised of real and apparent costs of different energy sources, and to be able to qualify these comparisons with hard data.

· Political and Societal Constraints

· Industrialized West

· Developing nations

· Economic and Moral Imperatives

· Industrialized West

· Developing nations

What are the relative merits and demerits of current energy supply methods?

If levels of anthropogenic CO2 must be reduced, there are three basic courses of action: reduction, fuel switching, and the substitution of alternate or “renewable” fuels.

· Fossil f uels – Overview, Genesis, Utilization, Environment, Future trends

· Coal

· Petroleum

· Natural Gas

· CO₂ Capture Technology and sequestration

· Alternative fuels and energy sources

· Nuclear power

· Fission

· Fusion

· Fuel Cells

· Geothermal

· Hydro-Electric