Addressing Climate Change with Clean Energy Technology modeling of the flow physics from atmospheric winds; building higher towers to capture higher wind speeds and longer blades to enable greater energy production; and advanced generation technologies (e.g., minimizing the use of rare earth materials), power electronics, and other key aspects of wind turbine systems. Solar Photovoltaics (PV). A new record was set in 2015 for U.S. PV markets, with the EIA (US Energy Information Administration, http://www.eia.gov/) identifying 5.1 GW of nameplate capacity installed, accounting for 26% of all new U.S. generating capacity. Cost reductions for PV modules have advanced faster than DOE goals, with costs already at the target for 2020. “Soft costs” for the rest of the systemsuch as marketing, permits, transaction costs, supplier costs, and installation laborhave also come down, but more slowly. If the full DOE 2020 target is achieved, PV electricity costs would be roughly $0.06/kWh unsubsidized for utility-scale systems. Further advances are possible and desirable. R&D is needed to develop higher efficiency PV modules that use earth-abundant materials and to reduce soft costs. Fossil Power. If fossil fuels are to be used in a climateconstrained world, technologies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) must be used. Key R&D issues include identifying materials that have a high affinity for the CO2 but require little energy to then release it to the disposal system. Advanced membranes that preferentially separate CO2 are another approach. All of these and other CCS systems face challenges of reducing their cost and operational energy requirements, among other things. R&D is also needed to better understand geological conditions and processes and the resulting impacts of injecting billions of tons of CO2 deep into depleted oil and gas reservoirs, saline aquifers, or other geological structures. Nuclear Power. Four new nuclear power plants are currently under construction in the U.S., the first new starts in some 30 years. Under advanced development are Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), including NuScale Power’s SMR technology, which has been supported by DOE and has a goal of 2023 deployment. The strategy for SMRs is to simplify designs and to capture economies of scale and learning in factory production of models to lower costs. Grid Systems and Operations. The U.S. electricity grid has entered a period of fundamental change due to the increased use of natural gas-fired generators and renewables for supply and end use with electronic converters in building and industrial equipment. These are changing fundamental characteristics of the grid, such as the way that the power system responds to power plant outages and transmission line failures. These changes require a system with more sensors,
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n March, I had the privilege of attending the ACS National Meeting and Exposition in San Diego to participate in a session entitled “Research Opportunities for Future Energy Technologies”. While there, I spoke about the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) recent Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR, http://energy.gov/qtr) and its assessment of our nation’s science and energy technology capabilities, and how they can help us meet the challenge of climate change. In short, we need to transform the world’s energy systems in order to combat climate change. The Paris Agreement marked historic progress when 195 countries agreed to set aggressive goals to reduce their carbon emissions. In order to meet those goals, the United States and 19 other world leaders also announced an ambitious initiative to accelerate innovation in clean energy technologies. The initiative, called Mission Innovation, seeks to double public investments in clean energy research, development, and deployment over the next 5 years. These investments are critical to spurring the kind of innovation we need to move toward a low-carbon future and will also grow our economy, create well-paying jobs, and ensure energy security. As we move toward implementation of both the Paris agreement and Mission Innovation, the 2016 QTR identifies hundreds of clean energy research opportunities for our homes, businesses, transportation, and power sector. It finds that emerging advanced energy technologies provide a rich set of options to address our energy challenges, but their large-scale deployment requires continued improvements in cost and performance. It also acknowledges that remarkable progress has been made, in large part made possible by technological advancement. For example, wind energy, solar photovoltaics (PV), vehicle batteries, and LED lighting have had cost reductions of 40, 50−60, 70, and 90%, respectively, just from 2008 to 2014 (Figure 1). Cumulative sales of LED lights have gone from about 400 000 in 2008 to nearly 80 million in 2014, and their sales have continued to accelerate. In energy efficiency, measures taken since just 2009 are enabling reductions of CO2 emissions that will total 2.3 billion tons by 2030 with consumer cost savings projected to be more than $500 billion. The QTR provides the Department of Energy, the private sector, and research institutions a foundation to inform thinking about the portfolio of R&D investments to explore in the years to come. Its key findings regarding energy resources and technologies include the following: Wind Energy. Wind energy is currently the lowest cost source of new renewable power, with costsincluding incentivesin the range of 2−3 cents/kWh in the U.S. today. Our goal is to achieve unsubsidized power from land-based systems of 3.3− 5.5 cents/kWh by 2030 with further R&D and economies of scale and learning. R&D efforts needed to drive costs lower include using supercomputers for advanced computational © XXXX American Chemical Society
Received: May 11, 2016 Accepted: May 11, 2016
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DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.6b00136 ACS Energy Lett. 2016, 1, 113−114
Energy Focus
http://pubs.acs.org/journal/aelccp
Energy Focus
ACS Energy Letters
Figure 1. Comparison of cost reduction in renewable energy technologies. (Source: http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/11/f27/ Revolution-Now-11132015.pdf).
much greater flexibility, and the ability to optimize grid operations dynamically in time frames that are too fast for human operators. At the same time, communications and control are transitioning from analog to digital systems and from a handful of control points at central stations to systems with potentially millions of control points. Our goals include significantly improving grid performance, lowering costs, and transitioning more effectively to clean electricity supply technologies. To achieve this, R&D is needed on advanced computational modeling of the grid; new grid architectures; advanced power electronics to enable much better control of electricity flows on the grid; and improved electricity storage technologies. Electricity for Transportation. Electric vehicles can be clean and efficient and already have a substantial infrastructure in place. However, fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet provide high energy densities, easy handling and transport, and very high refueling rates. These advantages pose substantial challenges for alternatives such as batteries, which currently have energy storage capacities just 1/50 that of fossil fuels on a volume basis and recharge rates when using a “fast” charger of just 1/100 that of a gasoline station. Our current goals are to double battery energy densities from the 2012 level by 2022 and to reduce their costs, already reduced by 70% since 2008, by a further cut in half by 2022. Continued advances with lithium ion batteries are also being investigated, along with advanced battery chemistries, including lithium−air, lithium− sulfur, and others. Lightweighting for Vehicles. Lightweight materials reduce the energy required to move a vehicle. For a car, every 10% reduction in vehicle weight reduces energy demand by 6−8%. Further R&D is needed on such materials to achieve their potential weight reduction while maintaining strength requirements. Cooling. Air conditioning, refrigeration, and other cooling requirements account for about 10% of U.S. primary energy consumption. Development of advanced cooling systems that significantly increase efficiency and avoid the use of refrigerants with a GHG impact would have significant value. Solid-state cooling options are being examined that make use of advanced materials’ magnetic, electrostatic, or elastic properties. Computational Materials. Breakthroughs in next-generation high-tech tools such as X-ray light sources and supercomputers are helping scientists find new ways to accelerate the development of clean energy technologies. For example, conventional materials’ development can take 10−20 years between initial testing and final deployment. The ability to identify and design materials through advanced supercomputer simulations and test them in high-throughput experimental
systems could significantly reduce the time and cost to identify and develop a new material and integrate it in an energy technology. The multiagency Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), launched in 2011, has the goal of cutting the time in half to discover, develop, manufacture, and deploy a new material and to do so at a fraction of the cost of conventional approaches. The DOE launch of the Energy Materials Network in February, 2016, builds on the MGI with, the initial consortia focused on developing lightweight materials for vehicles, lowcost catalysts for fuel cells, and materials for cooling systems such as air conditioning and refrigeration. This very brief snapshot illustrates how the transition to clean energy is accelerating, with dramatic advances in cost, performance, and market penetration of advanced technologies over the past several years. While much remains to be done, a number of important research pathways forward have been identified. Because no challenge poses a greater threat to our future than climate change, we must work together to speed the development and deployment of these clean energy technologies to provide real-world solutions for reducing carbon emissions. There is no single solutionenergy impacts every aspect of modern lifebut the U.S. innovation enterprise is fully engaged and is working to develop the energy technologies that we and the world need to create a clean energy future for the U.S. and the world.
Franklin M. Orr, Jr., DOE Under Secretary for Science Energy U.S. Department of Energy
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
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