Energy is our most important science challenge.

We live in a truly magical time. Our homes are warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and lit at night, all with the flick of a finger. We have the technology and the economic possibility to elevate the living conditions of much of humanity to heights well beyond the dreams of Roman emperors. We never had it so good.

But there is a catch. The extraction of oil, our most precious energy source, is predicted to peak sometime in 10 to 30 years, and most of it will be gone by the end of this century. What took hundreds of millions of years for nature to make will have been consumed in 200 years. And most scientists believe that the Earth is warming due to greenhouse gases, making new investments in conventional coal-burning plants questionable.

There appear to be no magic bullets to solve the energy problem. While energy efficiency will buy us some time, we must also have a diversified portfolio of investments to develop sustainable sources of energy that will result in no net emission of carbon dioxide. What, then, should be our best investments for our nation's energy future?

At Berkeley Lab, the energy challenge has captured the imagination of some of our very best scientists. We are mounting a major, multidisciplinary initiative to create sustainable, carbon-neutral sources of energy. For example, The Helios Project is a facility model to create effective approaches for the exploitation of solar energy. Our hope is that some of the most rapidly advancing areas in science, such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology, will transform industries, enabled by world-class facilities like Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry and the new Berkeley West Biocenter, a partnership with the University of California at Berkeley. Government and industry investment -- as well as immense public support -- is needed to drive the nationwide quest to secure our energy future.

Next section: The challenge -->