Energy Challenges, Nanotech Solutions?

NISE Network product
This forum places participants in the role of a governmental funding agency and asks them to consider how nanotechnology should fit into the timeline and scope of future national energy policy. A scientific expert begins the forum by providing a brief intro to nanotechnology and describing some of its potential benefits and possible uncertainties. A short video follows with three expert perspectives who discuss three possible energy funding strategies: Nanotechnology-dependent energy technologies. Existing alternative energy technologies. Conservation and energy efficiency. The participants are then asked to consider how they would allocate $100 million of hypothetical research and implementation funding between the strategies. Discussion cards describing various hypothetical scenarios are then presented to the groups, and the groups are asked to consider whether and how these scenarios might change their funding allocations.
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Big Idea

Given the potential energy benefits as well as the unknown environmental and health risks and the uncertainties associated with nanotechnology, how should nanotechnology research fit into domestic energy policies in the near future?

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