America prospers on the new and the innovative. Energy production has given us both.

Spectacular advances in the recovery of oil and natural gas have led to a dramatic expansion in domestic energy supplies. And recent improvements in coal and nuclear technology are also changing the U.S. energy outlook.

This is good news because we’re going to need fossil fuels and nuclear power well into the future. Solar and wind energy, though helpful, cannot meet our energy needs. They are unpredictable and intermittent. We’re going to have to develop and deploy new technologies in order to exploit our most reliable domestic resources if we hope to meet growing energy demand in our digital economy and achieve energy independence, while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to acceptable levels.

Some of the technological breakthroughs are at hand. Steady improvements in remote sensing and horizontal drilling, combined with hydraulic fracturing, have given us sophisticated tools for recovering natural gas from deposits locked in shale.

The prospect of abundant natural gas, both in the United States and abroad, is now part of the calculus on climate change. Natural gas has less than half the carbon content of coal. As more natural gas becomes available, electric utilities will be able to phase out old, inefficient coal plants and make greater use of natural gas power plants and gas turbines. That’s going to be necessary if the United States has any hope of achieving the goal in climate-change legislation that the House of Representatives approved of reducing carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2050.

Surely it would be a mistake to count coal out. Researchers are on the cusp of a breakthrough in developing a technique to convert carbon emissions from coal plants into a rock-hard material similar to coral. The coral-like rock, which is made from mixing carbon with seawater, could be used in highway construction and other infrastructure improvements.

What larger role nuclear power can play in the United States and worldwide will depend not only expanding the use of conventional reactors but also developing advanced designs that are simpler and more efficient.

C.T. Carley

Professor Emeritus

Mechanical Engineering

Mississippi State University