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>> James C. Collins: By 2050 we're going to need three times the energy that we produce
today, to meet the needs of a growing population, to meet the needs of developing and rapidly
industrializing nations, and to meet the needs of a rising standard of living. So we need
some new tools to address this energy challenge. We need to reduce the amount of energy that
we use today. We need to improve the efficiency of the energy that we do use and then we need
to find new sources of energy to unlock the gifts that Mother Nature has given us.
Both science and innovation can play an important role in solving some of these challenges but
it's when we collaborate with others, we collaborate with the automotive industry and with governments,
those scientific solutions become innovations. They solve real issues, real problems. I think
one of the greatest examples of this collaboration in action has been in our bio fuels area and
it started with collaborating with the US government and working with the state of Tennessee
on the construction of a pilot plant, and the University of Tennessee on testing different
crops and residues that could be brought into this plant. You sort of then create a network
of collaborators and the real difference here has been DuPont isn't the center of that network,
it's this project or this idea.
How do we develop solutions that can be customized for geographies around the world? You think
about in Africa, for example, there may not be a lot of oil in some areas but they have
grasses, and these grasses can be harvested and fermented into new renewable fuels. I
think there are many countries around the world where we have science that could help
unlock their natural resources as well, and it's probably not oil or natural gas. It's
probably crop residues, or other things that nature has made available. We've just got
to figure out, in that geography, for that country, how to unlock that appropriately
to help them solve their energy needs.
We've made great progress in some of the renewable fuels areas. Things like wind and solar and
hydro and even bio fuels. The problem is these are still sort of on the fringe and we need
to get them into the mainstream, as a big part of our energy policy. And on the efficiency
side, I think as a society we probably haven't focused enough here, and there are tremendous
opportunities to do what we already do today much more efficiently and be a part of solving
this problem. So it is an overwhelming challenge but that's what I like about DuPont is we
take on these big challenges and we're bringing solutions that can really make a difference
today.
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