Secretary for the environment of the State of São Paulo
Centro Nacional de Referência em Biomassa, Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 1289 – 05508-010 - São Paulo – Brazil
Email: goldemb@iee.usp.br
Prof. José Goldemberg graduated and did his PhD in Physics at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) in 1950 and 1954 respectively. He is a associate Professor at the Universidade de São Paulo and member of the BASIC Project at the University of Sussex, UK. He is currently the Secretary for the environment of the State of São Paulo.
A sustainable energy future: what can science do?
The way we produce and consume energy today is responsible for more than 50 percent of the GHG emissions that are leading to climate change. The reason for that is that coal, petroleum and natural gas together supply roughly 80 percent of global primary energy demand. All available forecasts point to continued growth in global demand for energy to fuel economic growth and meet the needs of a still-expanding world population. Thanks to science and technology progress has been made in many areas to avoid that but not enough to face daunting challenges we are encountering now. We will discuss the present “status” of technologies for energy production and use and point out some of the new promising areas where more scientific research is sorely needed such as
- efficiently extracting useful energy from the lignocellulosic part of biomass,
- increasing biomass yields by boosting photosynthetic water and nutrient efficiencies through genetic engineering,
- applying nanotechnology and/or using new materials to improve the energy conversion efficiency of photovoltaic devices,
- developing solid-state storage options for hydrogen and
- energy storage device.