Your audience knows things. They might have heard that Entergy’s Palisades Nuclear Energy plant located on the Lake Michigan shore will be shut down in about five years or, maybe, they thought it was supposed to be shut down next year. They might have heard something about nuclear power being pervasive in France. Your audience may have seen wind turbines all over the Midwestern United States or heard that Spain is using them heavily. Some members of your audience will know that dams have been generating power in the United States since 1882.  Maybe they will know that some are promoting solar power in Michigan. In short, you can assume that your audience has heard a lot of things, but that most likely your audience does not have all of the facts separated from the rumors and does not know the details of the circumstances that surround each of these alternatives.

Your esteemed group is charged with presenting a 20-minute Symposium on the Future of Energy that delves into the issues and opportunities surrounding four main technologies and a few more speculative or specialized technologies. The four main technologies you are to address are: Wind Power, Solar Power, Nuclear Power (Fission) and Hydroelectric Power. The more speculative technologies you should address include Tidal Power, Geothermal Power, BioFuel and any others that your group would like to add. 

Your goals are:

1. To make sure your audience fully understands the status of each of the four main technologies, addressing issues such as how each technology works, history, current uses and prevalence, applicability and potential ubiquity, cost effectiveness, availability of necessary resources, environmental impact, and other issues, such as political roadblocks or other obstacles.

2. To make sure that your audience has a broader, less detailed, but effective overview of the other more speculative technologies. Your audience should understand what they are, broadly how they work, how constrained they are in their applicability or availability for various applications, and what the key issues might be going forward.

3. To give your audience a “wrap up” discussion that draws some conclusions about what we should and shouldn’t expect from these technologies collectively in the future.

Finally, you should be aware that the other Symposium is addressing Fossil Fuels, including Coal, Natural Gas, and Oil. You may need to make comparisons to fossil fuels in your Symposium, but you do not need to try to be the primary source of information on those issues.

For each of the four main energy alternatives, your Symposium should answer the following questions:

• How much of world’s and USA’s energy is currently coming from this source?

• Is (are) there a country(ies) where this form of energy is used dominantly (e.g. France w/ Nuclear or Spain with wind)? If so, what is special about their situation? What about their situation suggests that their situation might or might not be emulated in other countries?

• How does the technology for this energy alternative work? How is the fuel or energy source converted to usable energy power? What byproducts or waste is produced?

• What are the main uses of this type of energy? Consider things like transportation, power generation, industry, and other uses.

• What are the main risks and environmental issues with this technology?  Consider not only the process of using the technology itself to generate usable energy, but, where appropriate, also any implications of the processes required to procure and transport fuel, as well as those needed to transport and dispose of waste.

• What are the main advantages of this technology?  Are there any other disadvantages not already covered?

• How well developed is this technology? Is it readily available at a reasonable cost? If not, when might it be? How certain is its development?

• Can this technology be deployed anywhere for any purpose? If not, what are the limitations?

For the more speculative technologies your Symposium is discussing, you can focus on a more restricted list of issues. For each, the key questions include:

• What is this technology and how does it work?

• How feasible is the technology or how close is it to being feasible?

• How constrained or limited is the technology? For example is it available only in specific locations or only for a limited set of purposes?

• Are there any other important issues we should know about this technology?

Since your Symposium is strictly limited to twenty minutes, which includes your question and answer session, you will need to focus on the questions that are most important for each technology. Once you have researched all of these questions, you should be able to discern which issues deserve the most emphasis in your presentations.

• Prof. River Strong, a leading expert on Hydroelectric Power from Great Falls University

• Dr. Jen Tullbrease, a specialist in Wind Power from the U.S. Department of Energy

• Sunny Cel-Pannell, CEO of a new start-up company focused on Solar Power

• Prof. A. Tom Splitt, Head of Nuclear Power Options Assessment at FairAnalysis Inc., a large consulting firm that prides itself on its ability analyze issues based on facts in an unbiased way.

• Dr. Hie Tyde, a researcher specializing in possible sources of power from natural earth processes, such as BioFuel, Tidal or Geothermal Power.

• Connie (or Connor) Kluzion, Symposium Coordinator and Chairperson