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This presentation provides an update on the activities of the Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy (NICE) Future initiative to the nuclear energy agency. This update includes recent activities related to the initiative and related to the Flexible Nuclear Campaign.
Development of Advanced Nb 3 Sn Superconductors for Future Energy-Frontier Colliders: • Present record of particle collision energy: 13 TeV, by the LHC. • Further push of the energy frontier requires higher magnetic field in circular accelerators: E (in TeV) = 0.3R (in km)•B (in T). • The proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC) plans to increase B from 8 T (in LHC) to 16 T. • Nb3Sn wires will be the workhorse conductor for building dipole and quadrupole magnets for FCC.
Energy-economy interactions are often studied using top-down integrated assessment or economy models that have broad scope but lack the resolution and process detail to consider complex emerging trends across the energy sector. This presentation describes an approach to maintain both detail and scope by linking NREL's highly resolved models of the electricity, transportation, and buildings sectors with a MIT's USREP computable general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy. We will discuss strategies for linking across disparate models along with preliminary results describing the economy-wide impacts of future energy technology innovation.
Driven by dramatic declines in up-front cost, the U.S. solar photovoltaics (PV) industry has taken off over the past decade, growing from 1 gigawatt of installed capacity in 2009 to 89 gigawatts in 2020—or enough capacity to power roughly 19 million homes. The industry is expected to double in size over just the next 5 years.1 Much of the growth has been driven by large, utility-scale projects that can produce 5 mega- watts or more of power—enough to power at least 1,000 homes. The cost of electricity produced by these projects has decreased by more than 70 percent since 2010. As of Q3 2020, development costs of large, util- ity-scale solar PV power plants were under $1 per watt, down by more than 70 percent from 2010.2 A robust array of investors has come forward to efficiently deliver capital to these kinds of utility-scale projects including large banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and others. But low- and moderate-income communities, including communities of color, are at risk of being left behind in the transition to clean energy. Mission- driven solar project developers and financial institu- tions have been working alongside energy justice advocates to open up solar access for these communi- ties, using strategies ranging from community solar, to solar installations on affordable multifamily housing, to distributed solar and storage programs, and more. Their goals go beyond simply generating more green energy to advancing social equity by: • empowering communities to control their energy future • stabilizing energy prices, saving money, and build- ing wealth for low-income families • creating quality jobs • improving health by reducing pollution • providing energy resilience for vulnerable communities Mission-driven actors are successfully deploying a wide variety of strategies to meet these goals, from helping low-income homeowners get solar—and some- times battery storage, to developing solar projects serv- ing affordable rental housing and community facilities, to building larger “shared solar” projects to which households from across the community can subscribe. However, the financing ecosystem does not work nearly as well for these “mission driven” solar proj- ects as it does for utility-scale projects. For home rooftop solar, even if low-income consumers have a home and suitable roof, they may fail to qualify for federal tax incentives, lack adequate credit to qualify for a loan—or the mission-driven lenders seeking to serve them may not be adequately capitalized to make long-term loans. For mission-driven commercial or community-scale projects, assembling nearly every component of the project capital stack—whether bridging early-stage costs, attracting tax credit equity investors, securing long-term debt, or coming up with sponsor equity and filling gaps—can present challenges. A variety of obstacles contribute to the scarcity of financing for low-income solar, including small project sizes, lack of developer balance sheet capacity, both real and perceived issues with credit risk, elevated technical assistance needs, and greater subsidy requirements to pursue goals such as deep energy affordability, climate resilience, or job creation. Still other obstacles are regulatory: for example, not all states allow community solar projects or Power Purchase Agreements, common strategies used for providing low-income solar—and the potential for regulations to shift over time creates risks that mission-driven projects can ill afford. This report synthesizes information garnered from 47 key informant interviews, four focus group discus- sions involving 60 stakeholders, and a review of the substantial existing literature on low-income solar finance to assess the current landscape of mission- driven solar development in the United States, examine the roles that community-based financial institutions could play, and recommend public invest- ments and policy changes that could help to scale the provision of equitable solar finance. Key recommen- dations for policymakers and funders in the renew- able energy and community development fields that emerge from this process include the following: • Help to capitalize and support community-based lenders to provide flexible, low-cost, and long- term financing to mission-driven solar projects— including providing guarantees or other forms of credit enhancement. • Provide federal support for equitable solar, including a grant-in-lieu-of-credits option for the Investment Tax Credit to improve access to this critical government subsidy. • Develop pools of government and philanthropic support that can complement financing from community-based lenders to complete the capi- tal stack for mission-driven projects, as well as to support education and technical assistance to both consumers and potential project sponsors. • Create a national Renewable Energy Credits pro- gram that includes social equity targets to provide a baseline of support for clean energy generation. • Change utility regulations to remove barriers to low-income solar projects; lower permitting costs; provide greater certainty for developers, consumers and owners; and measure progress toward equity in renewable energy policy implementation.
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This presentation details the current project status and approach for the VTO funded project "Holistic Modeling of Future Transportation Energy Use and Emissions" using the TEMPO model.
This presentation details the current project status and approach for the VTO funded project "Holistic Modeling of Future Transportation Energy Use and Emissions" using the TEMPO model.
Energy and power requirements and capabilities for electric automobile propulsion emphasizing fuel cell systems
This presentation, part of the JISEA 10th Annual (Virtual) Meeting, is part of a panel discussion on energy for the future food systems.
Global jet fuel demand is projected to grow to 165 billion gallons by 2050 and there is growing interest in the aviation industry to understand the capabilities of alternative energy carriers. This report considers several potential energy carriers, reviewing their production potential, operational considerations, and economic implications to inform potential next steps in aeronautics research. The following energy carriers (i.e., fuels) were evaluated in this study for future use in aviation: sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) - both biomass-based and power-to-liquids (PtL) - based SAF - cryogenic hydrogen (LH 2 ) - also known as liquid hydrogen - liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied ethane (LE), and Jet X. The barriers and opportunities for the evaluated energy carriers vary. SAF is a commercially available drop-in fuel compatible with existing aircraft and infrastructure. SAF is limited by both higher prices and slow commercialization of multiple pathways using different feedstocks necessary to significantly grow supply. Cryogenic fuels, in contrast, have very different thermal, physical, and chemical properties than SAF and Jet A, requiring the construction of new airport storage and dispensing infrastructure and the design of new aircraft energy systems capable of mitigating heat transfer and boil-off. Cryogenic fuels offer an opportunity to diversify aviation fuel carriers from domestic energy relevant for both energy security and resilience. This means cryogenic fuels are more of a longer-term solution for aircraft but are worth exploring for potential future cost savings and emissions benefits. Jet X refers to non-drop-in liquid hydrocarbon fuels in the early stages of investigation seeking favorable properties. There are substantial barriers to non-drop-in liquid aviation fuels that are not compatible with existing aircraft and fuel infrastructure.
Offshore wind is an emerging industry in the with rapidly changing technology advancements and an accelerating global deployment. Policy demands and interest in the United States has grown, but the long-term future for offshore wind remains uncertain. This study is designed to evaluate offshore wind's potential role in the future U.S. energy system. The analysis uses long-term power system models to assess a wide-range of power system possibilities. Specific objectives of the analysis are to: (1) identify the determinants of offshore wind deployment under different scenarios and (2) understand the impacts of substantial levels of offshore wind deployment on the power system. We also highlight future research needs for more robust understanding the opportunities and challenges to U.S. offshore wind development.
An unprecedented positron average current is required to fit the luminosity demands of future $e^+e^-$ high energy physics colliders. In addition, in order to access precision-frontier physics, these machines require positron polarization to enable exploring the polarization dependence in many HEP processes cross sections, reducing backgrounds and extending the reach of chiral physics studies beyond the standard model. The ILC has a mature plan for the polarized positron source based on conversion in a thin target of circularly polarized gammas generated by passing the main high energy e-beam in a long superconducting helical undulator. Compact colliders (CLIC, C3 and advanced accelerator-based concepts) adopt a simplified approach and currently do not plan to use polarized positrons in their baseline design, but could greatly benefit from the development of compact alternative solutions to polarized positron production. Increasing the positron current, the polarization purity and simplifying the engineering design are all opportunities where advances in accelerator technology have the potential to make a significant impact. This white-paper describes the current status of the field and provides R&D short-term and long-term pathways for polarized positron sources.
As a national laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) seeks to be on the leading edge of public interest research and deliver innovation, a core value of the institution. Through the support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office, PNNL has convened a workshop entitled Advancing Energy Futures through Art in Seattle, Washington, on August 19th and 20th, 2024. An explicit focus on Artist in Residence (AiR) programs initiates the discussion, as this is one of the few clear places where public interest research, artistic engagement, and energy futures have aligned. The workshop proposes to hear from program managers of successful AiR programs, scientists, and artists who work in the energy futures space, to discuss AiR program models and successful modalities for art and storytelling. This paper is provided as background context for workshop participants.
Wind power is a growing source of energy generation that relies on complex global atmospheric and earth system processes. There has been evidence of reductions in average wind speeds over land in North America since the 1980s, and several models project that average wind speeds will continue to decrease. Concurrently, the cost of wind energy systems in the United States has been decreasing since around 2010, a trend also projected to continue. There is considerable uncertainty in these future projections, with quantitative estimates of future wind resource and system costs varying widely. To study this, we run wind energy models with possible future system costs, turbine designs, and meteorological inputs from multiple downscaled earth system models over the contiguous United States. Changes in mean annual energy production from 2000-2019 to 2040-2059 can be as high as +10% in South Texas or as low as -20% in Iowa. Larger turbines and moderate reductions in system costs can offset the largest projected decreases in wind resource, but much uncertainty remains in the extent to which wind resources will change and to what extent system costs can be reduced. An analysis of variance shows, in several states in the Midwest, uncertainty in future wind resources can influence the cost of wind energy nearly as much as uncertainty in future system costs.
The cosmos withholds multiple mysteries such as dark forms of matter and energy that are yet beyond human comprehension. In the standard cosmological model, $\Lambda$CDM, the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ is thought to be responsible for the late accelerated expansion of the Universe. However, recent results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) suggest the possibility of evolving dark energy, which warrants further exploration. Future surveys such as the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will map the large-scale structure (LSS) with unprecedented precision, giving us valuable statistical information about the cosmos. The goal of this research is to investigate the potential impact of an evolving dark energy scenario on cosmological parameters constrained by LSS probes, as will be mapped by the LSST. For this, we examine the power spectra of lens galaxies, source galaxies, and cross-power spectra between lens galaxies and source galaxies. The combination of these statistics is commonly referred to as '3 $\times$ 2 points'. For this investigation, we created a set of simulations resembling LSST data and used them to perform cosmological parameter inference in two scenarios: one in which the simulated data is based on the fiducial model and another on evolving dark energy. We then examined the degeneracy between the cosmological parameters and checked for potential shifts in the parametric space when the data contains dynamical dark energy but the modeling assumes $\Lambda$CDM. Our findings indicate that mismodeling the dark energy equation of state can significantly impact parameter inference, particularly affecting the total matter density, $\Omega_m$, and the growth of structures, as represented by the $S_8$ parameter. These results highlight the importance of further exploring extensions of the $\Lambda$CDM model in future LSS studies.
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This dataset contains results estimating projections of change of annual capacity factors and levelized cost of energy for several turbine technologies in the 2024 Annual Technology Baseline (ATB). Projections of change are based on downscaled earth system model (ESM) data from Sup3rCC. There has been evidence of reductions in average wind speeds over land in North America since the 1980s, and several models project that average wind speeds will continue to decrease. Concurrently, the cost of wind energy systems in the United States has been decreasing since around 2010, a trend also projected to continue. There is considerable uncertainty in these future projections, with quantitative estimates of future wind resource and system costs varying widely. To study this, we run land-based wind energy models with a range of possible future system costs, turbine designs, and meteorological inputs from multiple downscaled earth system models over the contiguous United States to estimate critical system performance metrics such as annual energy production (AEP) and levelized cost of energy. Where multiple earth system models agree, changes in mean AEP from the time period 2000-2019 to 2040-2059 can be as high as +10% in South Texas or as low as -20% in Iowa. Several additional states in the Midwest that currently have considerable wind generation capacity show the possibility of substantial decreases in AEP by mid-century. Larger turbines and moderate reductions in system costs can offset even the largest projected decreases in wind resource, but much uncertainty remains in the extent to which wind resources will actually change into the future and to what extent wind energy systems can drive down future costs. An analysis of variance shows, in several states in the Midwest, the uncertainty in future wind resource can be almost as important for future changes in the cost of wind energy as the uncertainty in future system costs.
Developing secure, resilient, and adaptive energy infrastructure that fosters economic growth while reducing environmental impact is among the most pressing challenges—and greatest opportunities—of our time. It will require the next generation of thought leaders to capably and creatively guide this vital energy sector transition. Through a new interdisciplinary graduate program, Colorado School of Mines (Mines) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are cultivating the rich opportunity landscape needed to develop these future innovators. The Mines/NREL Advanced Energy Systems (AES) degree program prepares researchers at the doctoral level and energy professionals at the master’s level to address the full complexity of tomorrow's infrastructure, economic, and environmental challenges. The combination of a thriving cleantech market in Colorado, world-class resources and researchers at NREL, and rigorous educational and technical programs at Mines create a truly one-of-a-kind opportunity for advancing fields related to energy systems. These links can uniquely equip top-caliber students to become the scientists and engineers at the forefront of our global energy economy transformation.