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US Energy Usage Topic of December 2006 (SC)² Meeting

The guest speaker at the December (SC)² meeting was Dr. Gerst Gibbon, who addressed "US Energy Sources and Consumption".

Dr. Gibbon remarked, "The world's economies are largely committed to petroleum and natural gas as their primary fuel sources. The world reserves of these fuels are being used at a rapid enough rate to suggest that reserves could be exhausted during the twenty-first century. At the same time, global demand is increasing rapidly enough to cause economic disruptions in most developed countries. The United States uses about 100 Quads (quadrillion BTUs) of energy per year. Of this amount, 22.3 Quads comes from coal, 19.6 Quads from natural gas, and 43 Quads from petroleum. Thirty-one Quads of the petroleum are imported."

Dr. Gibbon holds a B.A. degree from Albion College and earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University. In September 2003, he retired from the National Energy Technology Laboratory. At NETL, he served on the in-house research and development staff and in the Process Engineering Division where he worked primarily on programs that addressed emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Dr. Gibbon's slides are available in HTML and in PowerPoint format.