UMass Magazine Online

Spring 2006

Departments

Features

Running on Empty

Fill'er Up

It's Electric!

Getting There from Here

Full Steam Ahead

Beyond the Bluster

Cashing in Her Chips

The Art & Science of Diversity

Twins Be Nimble

Feature

Running on Empty
Special Section: Energy

—Carol Cambo




	UMass Amherst's prescription for curbing America's oil addiction calls for equal parts conservation and innovation

AMERICA'S ENERGY CRISIS PLAYS OUT regularly in the headlines: 16 coal miners were killed; gas prices spiked after Hurricane Katrina knocks refineries off-line; Japan and China squared off over a natural gas field in disputed waters; Greenland’s glaciers are melting faster than predicted; and, maddeningly: Oil companies raked in record profits.

Economists tell us that the globe is shrinking. At the same time, the global appetite for energy is rising rapidly. According to the United States Department of Energy, global energy consumption will grow by more than 50 percent during the first quarter of this century. Not to mention our “oil addiction,” to use President Bush’s phrase, which has serious implications for global climate change. We must then ask the question, How will we meet energy demands in the coming decades, and at what cost?

Energy is a complex issue requiring complex solutions. Experts agree that potential answers lie in making the most of current technologies now to consume less energy and reduce emissions, and at the same time, pursuing sustainable technologies to meet energy needs in the future. The stories in this special section illustrate how UMass Amherst people are taking action on these fronts, from developing wind power technology and fueling cars with vegetable oil to constructing an efficient central heating plant for the campus.

But there is a troubling undercurrent to these stories, too. UMass Amherst’s quest for cleaner, smarter solutions will help spark the engine of change, but we are past the point of “cold fusion illusion,” of hoping for a technological silver bullet to cure our energy woes.
Professor Anna Nagurney’s work* on the Braess Paradox serves as a metaphor for the lesson that quick fixes can hinder more than help, that true solutions must consider the larger picture in order to succeed.

In 1968, professor Dietrich Braess of Germany demonstrated through a transportation network example that the addition of a new road could, paradoxically, lengthen travel times. Since then, other examples have confirmed this paradox, such as when 42nd Street in New York City was closed on Earth Day in 1990 and travel time improved.

We must be wise enough then not to build just one new road, to use Band-Aids for what is a chronic, complicated condition. To secure a safe, clean energy future we need the brainpower and creativity of our best scientists and scholars looking at the problem from every angle. And at the same time, each one of us must look in the mirror—and in our driveways, and at our thermostats, and in our wallets—and decide just what such a future is worth.

* (In her essay “Getting There from Here” (page 29), Professor Anna Nagurney looks at the impact of traffic congestion on energy consumption. Nagurney’s earlier work has shown how to add roads so the Braess Paradox never occurs. More recently, she translated the original Braess article, working with its author and Isenberg doctoral student Tina Wakolbinger, from Austria, for the November 2005 issue of Transportation Science.)

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