Permitting myself to speak about our company: we emphasize integration of theoretical and experimental work. My first point is related to the integration between fundamental, theoretical work and experimental work. This integration is getting ever more important, because both for experimental and theoretical work we have a number of new tools. The theoretical work we focus on is called Density Functional Theory which was started by a few international groups - with due respect I think the most important was the Danish group where we participated. This tool has allowed one to consider the energy relations between catalytic surfaces and the feeds and products in ever greater detail. We have a group studying these relations for the very complex zeolite molecules. We also use these tools to study nanoscale surface structures.

The experimental tools we have used for decades go back to tools for studying the surface of crystals or amorphous materials, ascribing the surfaces to catalytic activities, selectivity and of course kinetics. Also here, recent years have brought great progress. We have emphasized in-situ studies, meaning studies of catalysts and their surfaces when exposed to the conditions under which they work in industry.

Of particular interest is the progress made in electron microscopy. Until a few years ago one was unable to make in-situ pictures. We have with friends inter alia at Phillips some 5 years ago developed the first electron microscope capable of taking in-situ pictures, meaning pictures under about a millibar, permitting the presence of realistic feeds and products instead of being forced to take pictures under extreme vacuum, making in-situ work impossible. We continued our work after installing this first in-situ electron microscope and again with our friends in Holland developed the first in-situ microscope permitting our company to take pictures at one atmosphere’s pressure. This microscope is now working at our research laboratories since early summer. We have already benefitted from these two unique microscopes and gained much new insight - a good deal of it surprising.

Our company emphasizes that everything we bring to industry, whether catalysts or processes, must be anchored in solid fundamental science and accepts that this policy necessitates a lot of stubbornness - it often takes more than a decade to come from “science to industry”. We also emphasize the opposite route: to come from “industry to science” through ongoing relations, monitoring etc. with industrial units where we have supplied process and catalyst and learned from their long-term behavior under industrial conditions what the industry would desire in new developments.

The second part will deal with the energy situation.

Some data concerning the global energy situation today and some guesstimates about how the situation will look in a hundred years are shown. These guesstimates are only indicative of what the situation will be, based on assumptions which may be very wrong if you go into details of the different sectors of production or use of primary energy, but the overall tendency I believe to be reasonably realistic. I will go though the main sources of primary energy whether fossil, renewable or nuclear etc. and show that it is certain that we will use considerably more energy in the future and that this is necessary if we shall not face unacceptable economic and social problems, endanger a reasonable standard of living and make the development of the third world countries difficult or even impossible.

There are many ways to save and many ways to increase efficiency, also in the renewables, and this has been included in the guesstimates, but you cannot avoid dependence on fossil fuels like oil, natural gas, coal, lignite, tar sand etc., and therefore you simply cannot avoid increase in CO2 emission. So here my point is, we all have to live with it, and I do no not think that it will be nearly as difficult as some quarters say.

But how do we handle the situation when fossil fuel will begin to run out - or to put it clearly, when the few oil and gas countries may hold the rest of the world as hostage? Can we handle that situation? Surely the many international, political problems we have today, alienating nations from each other, have to be overcome and this should be easy. Should be! - but still one thing is to handle these present problems, another thing is to come up with a positive solution to solve the energy problems when resources start running out, find new resources or technologies - extremely difficult – and work together, realizing that we are all of us in the same boat.