Fundamental scientific research lies at the heart of many
energy-related breakthroughs that ultimately disrupt established social
and economic systems. It can be overwhelming to look at the world’s
looming energy and climate challenges, but Dr. Franklin (Lynn) Orr,
Under Secretary for Science and Energy at the US Department of Energy
remains optimistic despite the complexity of these dilemmas.
Under Secretary Orr
looks after the main programs at 13 of the 17 US National Laboratories
and one of his key missions is to leverage energy technologies to
address climate change through emissions reductions commitments that
facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
A long-time academic,
Orr seems genuinely excited about the potential for positive energy
system changes that are emerging from the programs he currently
oversees. “For the longest time we had taken energy so completely
for granted that we didn’t recognize how fundamentally woven it is into
every aspect of modern life,” he told Breaking Energy in a recent
interview in New York City.
One of the things he did in his
freshman and sophomore classes was to make the students carry around a
pad for a day and write down every time they did something that involved
energy in some way. “And I did it myself. It’s eye opening,” Under
Secretary Orr said. Of the 13 National Labs over which Orr
presides, 10 are science labs and 3 are applied energy labs. “But the
boundaries amongst those labs are not hard ones. The science labs all do
some energy-related work and vice versa.”
Inventing Tools Future Energy Systems Need
Technology
moves so fast these days it can take time to figure out applications
for all the new things being invented. Just look at all the things
controlled via smart phones or new uses for drones that seem to pop up
on a daily basis. But innovation needs to maintain pace, if not
accelerate, if we hope to conquer some of the world’s most pressing
energy problems.
“For society as a whole, recognizing that we not
only need to supply the energy the world needs to be economically secure
– and all the national security aspects that go along with that – but
we also need to do it in a way that protects the planet,” said Orr.
“Those are big challenges and of course there is the part of the world
that we don’t adequately supply now. So this really requires
transforming the world’s energy system. And while I’m quite confident
that we can do that, it is the kind of challenge that requires all the
tools that we have available now plus some more we need to invent.”
And
this is where Orr’s DOE purview comes into play. It involves a few main
thrusts, he explained, with one of those being a strong fundamental
discovery science effort. On the surface, however, it may not be clear
how this relates to energy.
“But the truth is if you look around
there are energy applications for many things that flow through those
science programs. We didn’t necessarily go in saying ‘aha we’re going to
do this because,’ but once the work gets done [applications for it
become clear]. It ranges from material science to work on a new detector
for some giant particle accelerator. Some things come out that find
their way into the next batch of electronics that all of us have to
carry around in our pockets.”
He used advanced turbine blade technology
as an example of this phenomenon. “They are in all those jet engines
that haul us around the sky and in every power plant in some sort or
another. So we all have a pretty big vested interest in having those
turbine blades be as inexpensive as possible, as strong and durable as
possible. And so there are some new ways of using additive manufacturing
to make very complicated parts out of tough materials and assembling
them in ways that potentially reduce the cycling times and costs a lot,”
Orr said.
Heat exchangers are another example of where
nanostructures can improve the performance of energy-related systems we
use every day. “In principal you can think about making shapes that are
just too hard to do by machining or would be too expensive. Even
something as mundane as heat exchangers – used everywhere from your
automobile radiator to every kind of chemical plant and so on – but now
you can think about making interpenetrating networks of flow channels
that provide lots of surface area and better contact than traditional
shell and tube,” he explained.
“A few percentage points on improving heat exchange ripples through energy systems in ways that are hard to predict.”
And
while some of the research into future energy technology remains in an
early stage, Orr assured me that very smart people at DOE are working on
these things now. Electrofuels are an exciting concept in which
abundant wind and solar energy could be stored as liquid fuel, for
example. If that could be done in a way that eliminated carbon emissions
it would truly be a game changer for the power generation sector and
maybe even the transportation industry.
With regard to the US
power grid specifically, Dr. Orr sees a future that involves a much
larger fraction of renewable energy than we use today. The biggest
question is the pace at which these energy sources will increase because
many of the policy decisions that move the needle are made at the state
level with initiatives like renewable portfolio standards.
Of course we need to grapple more effectively with intermittency
issues, grid control, balancing, storage and demand response, while
figuring out how retail markets should work, he said. “All those play
interlocking roles that will determine how fast it [renewable energy
growth] happens.”
Most Exciting Possibilities?
That’s
clearly a hard question for someone overseeing so much cutting-edge
scientific research, but the Under Secretary was a good sport and played
along. “There’s a lot of fundamental science stuff that I think is
hugely exciting. The whole question of dark energy and dark matter and
what the early universe can tell us about the physics that underlie
everything else. That stuff is way exciting.”
Speaking about the power grid, which the National Academy of Engineering described as the greatest invention of the 20th
century – he sees “real opportunity in our ability to analyze and model
and understand and control very complex systems.” We need to make the
grid a 21st century convention that “provides a much more reliable and secure environmentally benign electricity system,” he said.
“On
the transportation side there is new and exciting work on advanced
battery chemistries. I like the idea of being able to design materials,
design catalysts, design nanostructures that use electrochemistry to do
all kinds of things that we are just now beginning to be able to do.
This can create whole new opportunity spaces for making fuels.”
History Repeats Itself
Under
Secretary Orr draws a comparison to the early US environmental movement
of the 1960’s and 70’s and today’s climate change discussions. In the
1960’s, improving air and water quality was a daunting proposition. Many
said industry would never get on board, it would be too expensive and
we’d go bankrupt in the process.
“But places like California said ‘well the heck with you feds, we’re choking to death and we’re going to do something about air quality.’ So California put some rules in place and other states started to go along and pretty soon industry and the congress realized that we would be better off with a national set of rules. The Clean Air Act passed and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act passed – in a republican administration – and here we are 45 years later and we haven’t solved every problem but it’s way, way better than it was. And guess what? We didn’t go bankrupt and the economy grew and we are all better off from a health standpoint. …And I kind of think that’s where we are now about this business of greenhouse gases and other aspects of clean energy. There will be plenty of ancillary benefits associated with being cleaner across the energy system.”
Orr remains cognizant of the challenges, but
he is also optimistic given humanity’s inventive nature. The key is to
properly frame the challenges and incentivize the pursuit of solutions.
“It’s quite clear to me that we can solve these problems we are facing.
We have to make up our minds to do it and we have to recognize the
external costs and pay for it all, but I’m fundamentally confident that
we will be able to do it. … We’ve left ourselves a lot of room to be
better on the efficiency side so we should keep plugging away at that.
We can do it all.”
http://theenergycollective.com/jared-anderson/2233411/how-dark-matter-and-nanotechnology-can-help-transform-global-energy-system