Natasha Chen: Our Energy Portfolio: a Stanford University Panel Discussion on Fueling the Future

Within hours of Pres. Obama's inauguration, a panel of experts sat down in front of a few hundred students, faculty and alumni at Stanford to discuss issues of a new energy future. The lecture, entitled "Fueling the Future," was part of the A.J. Horn Lecture series on U.S. Energy Production and Consumption. The moderator, David G. Howell, is a consulting professor in the School of Earth Sciences. Howell seized on Obama's call to "dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America," by asking a series of questions that allowed the panel to go over the details of several energy sources that could help break U.S. dependency on fossil fuels. Eighty-five percent of the energy we consume in the U.S. is from fossil fuels (i.e. coal, oil and natural gas), more than 60 percent of which comes from overseas. Roland N. Horne, a professor in energy resources engineering, said, "Oil is like toilet paper. We all use it but we don't like to think about it." Horne said, "It doesn't matter how ... (link)