News and Reports

CEMRC director co-authors book

James Conca, director of the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center (CEMRC), has co-authored a book, “The GeoPolitics of Energy: Achieving a Just and Sustainable Energy Distribution by 2040.”

Written with colleague Judith Wright, the book offers solutions on how to conserve energy and shift international energy production to address global warming.

“We decided to write the book because we were so frustrated at hearing the energy debate in this country dance around trivial or completely erroneous issues while the planet passes tipping point after tipping point,” Conca said.

“Also, no one has ever provided the public or decision makers with the real numbers in their correct context. Stating that ‘wind energy production rose by eighty percent last year’ does not actually tell you anything. Eighty percent of almost nothing is almost nothing. How many kilowatt-hours are produced? How many do we need? And why?”

The book was written in five months and self-published through Amazon.com’s publishing company, BookSurge. Conca and Wright felt the book needed to be released quickly for the election year, “as there are few if any issues so important to the country and the world which have been so poorly discussed.”

The book is written for a general audience, and Conca describes it as a primer for the public and decision makers.

The premise of the book is that by 2040 we will need a worldwide energy distribution that is about one-third fossil fuel, one-third renewable and one-third nuclear, out of the total 30 trillion kwh per year we will be generating by that time, Conca said, assuming we will be smart about increasing efficiencies and cutting global demand.

“It requires renewables and nuclear to come up to levels no one is even dreaming of, ten trillion kwh per year apiece worldwide, but the alternative is dramatic expansion of coal, heavy oils and oil/tar sands that would be devastating economically and environmentally,” Conca said.

Those in the U.S. and other industrialized countries use about 15,000 kwh per person, per year, twice as much as needed to maintain a very nice lifestyle, while the average Nigerian uses about 200 kwh per year, Conca said. Worldwide use is presently at 15 trillion kwh per year and the number is growing towards 40 trillion kwh by 2040. An interesting corollary to the discussion is that to end global poverty and war requires everyone in the world to have about 3,000 kwh per year, thus the “Just” in “Just and Sustainable”.

Present discussions of energy fail to address these numbers, Conca said. Not only that, Americans don’t understand that because of the shift in global economics and demographics in the past six years, the country’s influence may only extend as far as a leadership role. Dramatically cutting America’s energy use will do little to address global warming or global carbon dioxide emissions.

Another reason the book was written was to get more information out to the public about the Waste Isolation Pilot Project. CEMRC has been monitoring the environment within a 100 mile radius of WIPP for 13 years, Conca said.

“We are always surprised that no one has heard of WIPP, which has been accepting nuclear waste since 1999, both low activity and high activity, just not commercial spent fuel,” Conca said. 

“As scientists and activists, we have a unique perspective on these issues and hope this book can stimulate discussion nationally.”

CEMRC is part of the Institute for Energy and the Environment in the College of Engineering at NMSU.