Title: Steven E. Koonin
1Innovating clean technologies at BP
- Steven E. Koonin
- Chief Scientist, BP plc
- Clean Tech Investor Summit, Palm Springs
- February 6-7, 2008
2US energy supply since 1850
Source EIA
3distinguishing aspects of energy technologies
- Scale
- Large infrastructure, amounts of material,
numbers of units - Requires large capital, leverage of existing
infrastructure - Longevity
- Lifetimes of large equipment and/or
interoperability imply slow changes - Ubiquity
- There are many players with sometimes divergent
interests - Consumers, suppliers, governments, NGOs,
- Incumbency
- New energy technologies must compete on cost
- May not provide any qualitatively new service to
the end-user
4evaluating energy technology options
- Materiality
- Current technology status and plausible technical
headroom - Budgets for the three Es
- Economic (cost relative to other options)
- Energy (output how many times greater than input)
- Emissions (pollution and CO2 operations and
capital) - Other costs - reliability, intermittency etc.
- Social and political acceptability
- Two BP examples
- 1) Hydrogen Power
- 2) Energy Biosciences
5electricity generation shares by fuel - 2004
Source IEA WEO 2006
6Hydrogen Power Project California
7Rationale for Hydrogen Power
- Power demand will grow strongly (and
disproportionately) - Absent emissions controls, coal will continue to
be the dominant source of power for some time - Abundant reserves, cheap, easy to use, co-located
with demand - Coal is the most emissions-laden of the fossil
fuels - GHG emissions will be priced in the future
- We can reconcile these two through hydrogen power
- Nuclear a competitor on cost and scale
- BP has established a Hydrogen Energy business
8The challenges of Hydrogen Power
- Integration and demonstration of above-ground kit
at scale - Integrity of underground storage on a millenial
scale - Depleted reservoirs (with EOR)
- Saline aquifers
- Cost reduction through optimization, scale
- Membranes
- Legal issues
- Monitoring criteria, liability
- Public acceptance
- Storage
- Pipelines
9Its really hard to beat liquid hydrocarbons
Density 1 gm/cm3
10optimizing biofuels requires fusing the petroleum
and agricultural value chains
- Cellulose (bugs/ enzymes/ chems)
- Microbial engineering
- Plant integration / optimization
- Co-products
- Role of gasification
- Tillage
- Planting
- Fertilizer
- Water
- Pest control
- Crop rotation
- Sustainability
- Blends
- Additives
- Distribution
- Engine mods
- Species
- Yield / Morphology / Development
- Chemistry
- Unnatural products
- Stress tolerance
- / Bio-overhead
- Safety
- Optimal catchment
- In-field processing (e.g., pelletizing)
- Transport energetics
- Storage
- Waste utilization
11the rationale for Energy Biosciences is simple
and compelling
- Biology is the most rapidly developing of the
sciences - Novel technologies emerge from rapidly developing
science - Biology will generate disruptive technologies
- 90 of the worlds primary energy is based upon
carbon - All of life is based upon carbon (and 3.5 billion
years of evolution) - There are likely to be great synergies
- Major funding and applications of biotech are
biomedical - There have been far smaller investments in
agriculture, materials, chemicals - Energy bioscience is largely open territory
- Biofuels, enhanced oil recovery, conversion,
sequestration
12BP Energy Biosciences Institute to pursue these
opportunities
- Dedicated research organization to explore
application of biology and biotechnology to
energy issues - Sited at a University of California Berkeley,
University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne, and
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Open basic and proprietary applied research
- Initial focus on the entire biofuels production
chain - Smaller programmes in Oil Recovery, hydrocarbon
conversion, carbon sequestration - Involvement of BP, academia, biotechnology firms,
government - 500M, 10-year commitment operations began
November, 2007
13Questions/Comments/Discussion
Energy Trends and Technologies Video at
http//clients.mediaondemand.net/BP/