MIT centers, laboratories, departments and programs provide a multi-faceted approach to solving the world's energy challenge.
Hydrocarbon
products and processing
Fossil fuels — oil, natural gas and coal — make up roughly 85 percent of U.S. energy consumption, a pattern that is mirrored worldwide and forecasted to continue for at least the next two decades. Nearly two thirds of all electricity and virtually all transportation fuels come from hydrocarbons.
Each of these fossil fuels brings its own set of research and policy challenges. The largest proved reserves of conventional oil and gas are concentrated in regions of the world that are far from existing and growing demand centers and where political instability figures heavily into the geopolitical calculus. Industry analysts fear that conventional low-cost oil production is close to peaking or has peaked. There have been few large oil field discoveries in recent years and exploration opportunities are increasingly limited to deep offshore. Further, the balance of world oil reserves is heavier and more sour. This heavy oil poses greater refining as well as environmental challenges. Conventional natural gas is abundant worldwide but difficult to transport. Consequently, it is expensive and, like oil, represents a growing geopolitical challenge.
Coal reserves are similarly concentrated but are located in regions with large and growing energy demand. As a result, coal does not carry the same geopolitical risks as oil and gas, but it does present the greatest environmental challenge of the three fossil fuels. Conventional coal-burning power plants emit about twice as much carbon as comparable natural gas plants. Coal plants also emit a range of other air pollutants that are particularly problematic in the megacities of the developing world.
From both security and environmental perspectives, it is critical that we address these fossil fuel challenges while we transition to cleaner, more sustainable sources of energy. Research relating to oil and gas should primarily address the issues of conventional resource scarcity and the associated economic and security implications. Attention should focus on developing resources in hostile environments such as ultra-deepwater depths of 5,000 feet or more, on enhanced oil recovery, on unconventional resources such as heavy oil, bitumen and shale and on natural gas from coal beds, gas shales and tight sands. Advanced sensors, new ways to generate and interpret seismic data and new drilling technologies are needed to produce oil and gas economically from deep (25,000 feet or greater) geologic formations.
Research relating to coal must focus on mitigation of its environmental impacts with a specific focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Research topics include large-scale carbon capture, geologic sequestration of significant scale--along with enabling legal and regulatory structures--gasification and more-efficient power generation, for example, using ultra-supercritical technologies. Supercritical (SC) and ultra-supercritical (USC) power plants operate at temperatures and pressures above a certain temperature and pressure. This results in higher efficiencies--up to 46 percent for supercritical and 50 percent for ultra-supercritical--and lower emissions than traditional coal-fired plants.
