[khebab]

I don't know if you guys watched 60 minutes last night about the X-prize winner Burt Rutan but it was very inspiring. As you probably know, the nonprofit X Prize Foundation was sponsoring the contest to promote the development of a low-cost, efficient craft for space tourism in the same way prize competitions stimulated commercial aviation in the early 20th century. This field, once viewed as the playground of big government programs only, is opening up to private business (http://www.scaled.com/).

Personnaly, I find the X prize not very useful for the humanity and it is basically aiming at offering a new kind of bungee jumbing for bored multi-millionnaires. However, I was wondering why not create a E-prize for the developpement of a new energy source! There are a lot of smart people out there that could be put together in order to offer to humanity something useful. If at first unsurmountable technical challenges can be overcomed for the X prize why not for a new efficient and afordable energy source!

First, we have to define what are the basics requirements for this new energy source (see http://www.xprize.org/about/what_is_the_xprize.php for the X prize requirements). Then, we have to put together a foundation that will gather the money for the winner (let's say 20 millions) and monitor the competition progress.

I'am expecting to get blast for this post because of its naivete but I find that there are too much negativity, finger pointing and doomsday sayers in this forum. We need also to adopt a more positive and constructive attitude!

Any ideas or comments are welcomed.


Khebab

[backstop]

Khebab - in principle such a prize is sorely needed, and I'd strongly support it.

In practice, its development requires careful consideration of what exactly is the goal, that is, just what are the criteria for a project to be eligible ?

Is it about an energy resource, or about the utilization of a resource via a novel technology, or via an old but un-utilized technology ?

Is it about a particular energy service, such as transport ?

Is it about serving wealthy nations' needs, poor nations' needs, or global needs ?

Is it about a sustainable energy that advances both social and ecological wellbeing ?

Is it simply about whatever will make a profit for the present corporations ?

Many choices here I think. If there's enough members interested, and the choices are made with grandchildren in mind, I'd say it's one area where we could make a real difference.

regards,

Backstop

[khebab]

backstop, I agree, as you said there are many choices possible. I don't know myself but it should be a pertinent objective and should contribute significantly in areas where humanity will face the most challenges. It could be for instance to design a new way of personal transporation which should have a minimal ecological footprint in term of materials used and energy source. One important point should be to propose a solution that is economically and commercialy viable and not some sort of exotic solar driven pancake that you can find in numerous solar car competition.

Do you have any suggestions to make yourself?

[rerere]

However, I was wondering why not create a E-prize for the developpement of a new energy source!

The 'problem' is that all the 'energy' sources we have on this planet are the results of the actions of solar bodies.

fission -> Old stars that collapsed years ago. Not exactly renewable. Time: hahahahaha yea.
Oil -> Sunlight grew plants/animals years ago. Tons of material converted into crude. Time: long ago.
Oil from plants -> with the exception of algae Time: 6 months +.
PV -> Direct conversion Time almost 0.
Wind -> heating in one location moves air to another location. Time:Unknown - 24 hours?
Hydro -> Water heated by sun evaporates and moves to another location where collected. Time:months? Weeks? Days? Years?

Your 'prize' idea would have to somehow address:
1) Renewablity. Given the sun is the only renewable driver I am aware of, the Sun would need to be a part of it.
2) Costs
a) Acqusition price
b) Displaced resource cost
c) placement cost (need seperate land or part of occupided land?)
d) disposal cost
3) 'damage' to the environement
a) manufacture
b) use
c) disposal
And a
4) What new benefit can it bring.

Under #4 you have things like Neodyne magnets, superconductors, high current/voltage silicon switching

So would a new 50-90% conversion efficent solar cell that costs $5 a sq meter to end consumers be more worthy than a superconductor which could operate at 150 degrees F?

In a sense, The Invisible Hand of Adam Smith should reward the makers of really good energy technologies will be rewarded. The problem today is The Hand has ignored the long term costs and long term lack of ability of the energy resources we are now using - thus making renewables seem expensive.

Rather than 'prize' money - try to get the sovereign to help "The common man/small business" and not the big corporation WRT rewarding energy handouts.

[khebab]

Well, I agree that my idea is quite ambitious and that no new source of energy will be find but rather a new way to exploit what's already available. I'm a newbie so my grasp of the issue is rather limited. But I think there are a lot of ingenuity available out there dealing with new materials to replace oil based plastic, nanotechnology to improve solar panel efficiency, and so on. The competition should focus on designing some technology that could viable 10 years from now when PO will be daily news. There are obviously a lot of very informed people in this forum so why not putting together a white paper that could be discussed among experts in order to come up with a feasible but interesting challenge for a E prze. It will be a more positive and proactive attitude than just discussing doomsday scenarios and survival skills.

[0mar]

The last source of energy discovered was nuclear fission. And that was over 50 years ago. Seeing as how we have basically used up all of earth's endowment, any new source of energy will have to be engineered rather than discovered. I doubt there is a form of energy sitting in a well or a field waiting to be discovered.

[Xsynergist]

I was wondering why not create a E-prize for the developpement of a new energy source! Khebab

Look what the X-Prize people are doing now.

http://www.xprizenews.org/index.php?p=590

I wonder if Balmer reads PeakOil.COM?