August Meeting
Join us on August 29th with Vikram Rao for a fascinating discussion on Strategies for Replacing Oil.
If you are interested in how current events and new technologies could change our world in the future this is the meeting for you. Oil currently has a monopoly on transportation fuels. Consequently, OPEC has in the past been able to manipulate prices to remain high. Until recently biofuels were seen as the means to breaking this stranglehold. They will still have a part to play, but the lead role has been handed to natural gas, and its derivatives, almost solely due to the shale gas phenomenon. Electric vehicles are inherently lower users of energy. They will play a key role, as will data analytics driven ride sharing. Oil will be reduced from a strategic commodity to a merely useful one. The overall implications of the shift away from oil loom large in terms of national security. This will be a thought provoking and interactive discussion.
About Vikram Rao:
Vikram Rao is Executive Director, Research Triangle Energy Consortium www.rtec-rtp.org , a non-profit in energy founded by Duke University, North Carolina State University, RTI International and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Its mission is to illuminate national energy priorities, and those of the world by extension, and to catalyze research to address these priorities. Dr. Rao advises the non-profit RTI International, venture capitalist Energy Ventures AS, and firms BioLargo Inc., Global Energy Talent Ltd., Biota Technology Inc., Melior Innovations Inc. and Eastman Chemicals Company. He retired as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Halliburton Company in 2008 and followed his wife to Chapel Hill, NC, where she is on the UNC faculty. Later that year he took his current position. He also is past Chairman of the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission.
Dr. Rao’s book Shale Gas: the Promise and the Peril was revised in 2015 and can be found at www.rti.org/shaleoilandgas . It is written for general audiences and is intended to inform the heated debate on fracturing for shale gas. His book with Dr. Rob Knight, Sustainable Shale Oil and Gas: Analytical Chemistry, Geochemistry and Biochemistry Methods, was released by Elsevier Press in October, 2016.
Dr. Rao holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India, along with a master’s degree and a doctorate in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University. He is the author of more than 40 publications and has been awarded 42 US patents and foreign analogs.
RSVP:
See Form Below
When:
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
5:30 (Social)
6:00 (Program)
Where:
Piedmont Service Group
1031 Nowell Road
Raleigh, NC 27607
Who:
NCAEE Members and Friends
Cost:
No cost for attendees
Directions:
Piedmont Service Group is located off Nowell Rd, close to Carter-Finley and the PNC Arena.
- From I-40 East, take exit 290 for Chapel Hill Road and turn left onto Chapel Hill Rd (toward Raleigh). From I-40 West, take exit 290 for Chapel Hill Road and turn right onto Chapel Hill Rd (towards Raleigh).
- Turn left onto Nowell Rd.
- Piedmont Service Group will be on the left hand side of the road.
- Follow signs and NCAEE volunteers to the training room.
Additional Information:
- If lost, call Phil Korest cell phone 919-627-5982 or Dale Cranford cell phone 336-553-7768