Jason Bordoff
One of the most exciting areas of advanced manufacturing is 3-D printing. While it has been around for many years to produce crude prototypes, 3-D printing is now being used to make everything from jet engines and complex machine parts to bridges and buildings, artificial limbs and biomedical tissue. One company is even producing 3-D printing machines for use by NASA in space to avoid costly space flights to supply the International Space Station. It is still too early to determine the full potential of 3-D printing, but the technology is advancing quickly.
The industrial sector accounts for a fifth of global carbon emissions, and thus the hype around 3-D printing has also focused on its potential sustainability benefits. 3-D printing has the potential to make a meaningful dent in global oil demand and related emissions, for example. Policy efforts to reduce oil use tend to focus on passenger cars, but the freight transport sector—by rail, marine or truck—is one of the largest and fastest growing sources of oil demand, accounting for about a quarter of world oil use. Imagine a world where rather than making consumer and industrial goods at large manufacturing hubs in countries like China and then transporting those goods around the world, businesses could make the parts they need on site or consumers could “print” at home or at a local shop the merchandise they might otherwise order from Amazon.
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