Science for Energy Scenarios Seminar

In early February I was invited to participate in a week-long seminar looking at science-based future scenarios.  There were about 50 participants, and about 30 experts from Europe and one from America and myself gave presentations on what our modelling shows about the future of energy. This was no IPCC with political filters. None of the scientists was trying to sell a technology or get funding. This is probably as close as you will get to good, honest thinking about the future. The brilliant thing is, the organisers, The Energy Shift Project, have made the presentations available on line. http://science-and-energy.org/

My presentation was near the end of the seminar.  I discussed the idea of Energy Return on Energy Invested, and gave results of a scenario using biophysical modelling done by my PhD student, now a Post-Doc at Stanford University, Dr. Mik Dale. I also wrapped up the consensus, or "what we have learned" from all of the scenarios put together: There is no business as usual future.  The funny thing is, none of the delegates had actually come right out and said as much, even though their models were more than clear that the probability is zero of the future energy use being predicted by continuing an upward growth trend.

My presentation is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ5Lb_ySIEg