Building the Illinois Innovation Economy Summary of a Symposium (2013) / Chapter Skim
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Keynote: Innovation and the Clean Energy Challenges
Keynote: Innovation and the Clean Energy Challenges
Pages 57-65
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From page 57... ...
With no artificial light, the farmer's day began at dawn and ended at dusk. The household heat came from wood, and transportation was provided by animals.
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From page 58... ...
But none of these techniques was viable until 1879, when Thomas Edison illuminated devices by passing current through a carbon filament that was isolated in a vacuum. At that point, electric light became a practical reality and kerosene prices plunged.
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From page 59... ...
Energy use and prosperity continued to rise in lock step throughout the century, and access to cheap, abundant energy increased real per capita GDP by five-fold in a single century. While those trends brought unimaginable opportunities, problems lurked just beyond the horizon.
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From page 60... ...
That report, which recommended the creation of a new energy agency modeled broadly after the DARPA, was delivered to the Congress in 2006. The new agency was created under the Bush Administration in 2007, and received its first funding in spring 2009 under the Obama administration, a bolus of $400 million in Recovery Act funding.
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From page 61... ...
Less obvious CURRENT ARPA-E RESEARCH PROGRAMS Transportation BEEST -- Batteries for Electrical Energy Storage in Transportation Electrofuels -- Creating transportation fuels from microorganisms PETRO -- Plants Engineered to Replace Oil End-Use Efficiency BEETIT -- Building Energy Efficiency Through Innovative Thermodevices HEATS -- High Energy Advanced Thermal Storage Stationary Power ADEPT -- Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology GENI -- Green Electricity Network Integration GRIDS -- Grid-Scale Rampable Intermittent Dispatchable Storage IMPACCT -- Innovative Materials and Processes for Advanced Carbon Capture Technologies REACT -- Rare Earth Alternatives in Critical Technologies Solar ADEPT -- Solar Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology
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From page 62... ...
This diversity of strategies is so great, he said, that the "surface has not even been scratched." For example, a still-unknown number of organisms occupy ecological niches where they do not have access to reduced carbon or sunlight.26 Many of them make use of hydrogen, ammonia, reduced metallides -- or even grow directly on electric current as "electrofuels," using pathways other than the 26 Most autotrophs, or "primary producers," transform the energy of sunlight into protein, carbohydrates, fats, and other complex molecules that provide food for it, and for many animals that feed on them. Many others, however, make use of the energy in inorganic compounds of the Earth's crust, such as hydrogen sulfide, ferrous iron, and ammonium, as reducing agents for biosynthesis or chemical energy storage.
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From page 63... ...
One of the companies in the current BEEST program, PolyPlus, is currently developing, in collaboration with Corning, just such an electrode "with tremendous promise for the development of metal-air batteries." In the area of stationary power generation, he said, which accounts for about 65 percent of the energy used in our society, an urgent challenge is to 27 |
From page 64... ...
If renewables generate more than the grid requires at these times, or more than about 20 percent of the total demand of a service region, the excess energy must be stored efficiently for when it is needed. These new forms of energy also have to be generated on a vast scale in a country that "now uses about 600 Hoover dams of electricity a day." The GRIDS program, he said, has the goal of providing stored renewable energy from any point on the energy grid at an investment cost of less than $100 per kilowatt hour.
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From page 65... ...
He said that one project would develop novel approaches in storing natural gas for personal rather than fleet vehicles. Although natural gas is rapidly penetrating the long-haul trucking sector, he said, its use in personal vehicles is "much more problematic." Also, the AMPED program would be trying to develop battery control technologies that allow extraction of much more energy from existing batteries.
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