Developing Sustainable and Resilient Energy Systems
As the largest global consumer of energy, there is a critical need for the United States to identify and develop sustainable sources of energy and materials. A critical aspect of building sustainable energy systems is to also to ensure that they are resilient. Resilient energy systems are those that are designed to withstand perturbations, including those related to climatic, economic, technological, and social causes. As the number of worldwide natural disasters has increased dramatically in the past several decades, the need to develop such resilient energy systems has never been more evident. For example, the vulnerability of the energy infrastructure has been evidenced by the impact of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami on the energy supplies for those communities. Developing resilient and sustainable energy systems will be a critical issue for the next decade. In December 2012 the Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability convened a meeting of technical experts in private industry and representatives from government and academia to discuss sustainable and resilient energy systems. This meeting summary discusses some of themes that emerged from the speakers’ presentations and discussion at the meeting.