New RAEL-UC Merced-UCSD-UNC Publication on the future of energy storage
For the publication, click here.
For Cleaner, Greener Power, Expand the Definition of “Batteries”
Search Results for 'energy storage'
January 27, 2021 RAEL Lunch: “Charting innovation in energy storage”
Dan Kammen will lead the RAEL lunch this week where we will focus on both materials science and operational innovations in energy storage, both focused on l0ng-term energy storage (a project we are doing with Prof. Sarah Kurtz at UC Merced, Prof. Noah Kittner at U. of North Carolina, and Prof. Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez of UC San Diego). We will also focus on the interactions of storage technology designs and markets, as highlighted in the reading for this session, the report we just issues with Accenture: You can read the report summary and download it here: click here. and for references the link is: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/utilities/energy-storage-net-zero-path
RAEL Lunch (9/30/2020), Alan Lamont, “Innovations in energy storage for a carbon-neutral economy”
Topic:
In looking ahead to entirely decarbonizing the electric generation system, there is a debate about the use of nuclear generation. One school of thought argues that nuclear will be essential to successful decarbonization, while the other feels that this can be done entirely using renewable technologies, essentially wind and solar. This research investigates the role and value of using nuclear generation in decarbonizing the electric generation system. Along with generation, however, storage technologies will be needed. This study also compares the value of using batteries (expensive but efficient) to the use of ammonia (quite inefficient, but very cheap per unit of energy). Based on the Capacity Expansion Model, the study develops an analytical function to evaluate the marginal cost of carbon reduction under various scenarios of primary generation (with and without nuclear) and storage technologies (with batteries or with ammonia). The behaviors of the generators and storage determine the different components of this equation. Illustrating these behaviors gives us insight as to the role of nuclear and different types of storage in decarbonizing the system.
Biography:
Alan graduated from Stanford University in 1970 with a Master’s degree in geotechnical engineering. As a civil engineer he worked in heavy construction in Alaska and Vietnam, Peace Corps in Venezuela in dam design, and in the Bay Area in earthquake analysis. He returned to Stanford and completed a PhD in Engineering Economic systems in 1983. He joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1987, working energy system economics, developing and applying modeling platforms to evaluate policies and technologies for energy generation and storage. He was also active in risk analyses for nuclear materials production and waste disposal. He is currently retired, but continues to work in energy systems economics to better understand strategies for reducing carbon emissions from the energy system.
RAEL Lunch — November 14, Sara Mulhauser, “Do utility ownership structures impact energy storage diffusion rates?”
Sara is an architect who delved into distributed generation while developing fuel cell projects for Bloom Energy. She became interested in the energy industry in general, and specifically the regulatory and finance conditions that make markets more open to uptake of innovative technologies. While her focus is in energy, she is also interested in how other major infrastructure areas are similar and different with respect to technology uptake. Sara has a BA in Architecture from Berkeley.
Data for Nature Energy energy storage and innovation paper
This file is the Li+ energy storage data set in excel mode -- for open access use with attribution.
Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition
Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition
This publication website supports the new paper, in press at Nature Energy, titled: Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition as a site where users can download the Excel versions of the data sets used i that paper, whose authors Noah Kittnera,b, Felix Lillb,c and Daniel M. Kammen*a,b,d a Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA b Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA c Center for Digital Technology and Management, TU Munich, Munich, Germany d Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA give permission for open (but cited) use of these materials.
Innovation in Energy Storage
Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition Noah Kittnera,b, Felix Lillb,c and Daniel M. Kammen*a,b,d a Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA b Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA c Center for Digital Technology and Management, TU Munich, Munich, Germany d Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Forbes: China: Electric Vehicle-To-Grid Technology Could Solve Renewable Energy Storage Problem
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2015/04/21/china-electric-vehicle-to-grid-tech-could-solve-renewable-energy-storage-problem/ China could use an expected boom in electric vehicles to stabilize a grid that depends heavily on wind and solar energy, officials from an influential Chinese government planning agency said Monday in Washington D.C. “In the future we think the electricity vehicle could be the big contribution for power systems’ stability, reliability,” said Wang Zhongying, director of the China National Renewable Energy Center and deputy director general of the Energy Research Institute at China’s National Development and Reform Commission. The Chinese do not see the cost of renewable energy as a significant obstacle to its widespread adoption, Wang told a lunchtime gathering at Resources for the Future, a non-partisan environmental research organization in the Capitol. “The biggest challenge for renewable energy development is not economic issues, it is technical issues. Variability. Variability is the biggest issue for us,” said Wang, who explained variability like so: “When we have wind we have electricity; when we have sun we have electricity. No wind and no sun, no electricity.” But if the Chinese deploy enough electric vehicles—which could mean up to five million new electric vehicles in Beijing alone—the array of distributed batteries could collect energy when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing and feed it back to the grid when the skies are dark and the air is still. Wang directed a study released this week, the “China 2050 High Renewable Energy Penetration Scenario and Roadmap Study,” which plots a route for China to drastically reduce reliance on coal, derive 85 percent of electricity from renewables, and cut greenhouse gas emissions 60 percent by mid-century . The study gets there by relying on what has become known as Vehicle-to-Grid technology, which has emerged as almost a surprise side effect of inexpensive solar panels and clean-energy policies in places like California and Germany. The Chinese have been watching the same developments, the report reveals, as clean energy experts in the West like Daniel Kammen, who described unexpected effects of the solar-energy boom last week in an appearance at the University of Chicago.
“Now in places with the greenest energy policies, there is a huge peak in afternoon power on the grid, exactly where power used to be the most expensive and the dirtiest,” he said. “We actually want people to charge up now in the late afternoon. It sounds very chaotic, it’s not what we thought at all, but in fact it represents what low-cost solar is now bringing to many parts of the world.” Electricity consumers can store this abundant afternoon energy until supply goes down and demand goes up and then sell it back to the grid. And if they own electric vehicles, they needn’t buy extra equipment to do so. “You can put a big battery in the basement of your home or business, but you can also have your electric vehicle, with its mobile storage system that you drive around and use as your car. They’re called Nissan Leafs, they’re called Chevy Volts, they’re called Teslas, they’re called Priuses, they have a variety of names. And now you can sell power back to the grid.” An electric car with a range of 250 km can store 40 kWh of electricity, Wang said. Five million of those cars could stabilize Beijing’s grid to counteract variations in wind and sun, he said, and the number of automobiles in Beijing is expected to blossom from six million now to 10 million by 2030. If the range of electric cars doubles to 500 km, he added, they will store enough electricity that only two million will be needed. The cost of electric vehicles—about $40,000 in China, according to Wang—remains a hurdle, but China may slash the price by subsidizing vehicle batteries. China’s High Renewable Energy Roadmap resembles several U.S. Dept. of Energy studies that have plotted the route for the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than 80 percent by 2050. The U.S. studies anticipate that solar and wind will provide half of U.S. power needs by 2050, using pumped hydro and compressed-air storage systems to offset variability. Bulk battery systems were deemed too expensive to be viable, said Samuel Baldwin, chief science officer in DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, but the U.S. studies did not anticipate the “distributed storage” option offered by electric vehicles. “I expect that battery storage like the Chinese study, with electric vehicles or stationary storage, is going to play a more important role,” Baldwin said.It remains uncertain, however, how important a role it will play in China. The country’s first priority is economic development, said Li Junfeng, director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, also an arm of the National Development and Reform Commission.
By 2049, the centennial year of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese want to achieve a standard of living comparable to the most developed countries.
“China wants to be among the developed countries by 2050,” Li said. “That’s the first priority.”
China’s High Renewable Energy Roadmap is a “visionary scenario,” according to Joanna Lewis, an associate professor of science, technology and international affairs at Georgetown University. But it remains to be seen whether China’s Politburu shares the vision of its National Development and Reform Commission.
“We hope our study can influence the government’s 13th five-year plan and 2050 energy strategy,” said Wang. “That’s very important.”
Trump’s Choice to Run Energy Says Fossil Fuels Are Virtuous
Trump’s Choice to Run Energy Says Fossil Fuels Are Virtuous
Chris Wright, Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary, says oil, gas and coal are key to solving global poverty. Some call that misleading.
Lisa Friedman - Dec. 12, 2024
Original article citation, click here.http://Trump’s Choice to Run Energy Says Fossil Fuels Are Virtuous
Chris Wright, the fracking magnate and likely next U.S. energy secretary, makes a moral case for fossil fuels.
Chris Wright, the founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, in 2018.
Credit Andy Cross/The Denver Post, via Associated Press
His position, laid out in speeches and podcasts, is that the world’s poorest people need oil, gas and coal to realize the benefits of modern life that Americans and others in rich nations take for granted. Only fossil fuels, he says, can bring prosperity to millions who still burn wood, dung or charcoal for basic needs like cooking food and heating homes.
“It’s just, I think, naïve or evil, or some combination of the two, to believe they should never have washing machines, they should never have access to electricity, they should never have modern medicine,” Mr. Wright said on the “Mission Zero” podcast last year. “We don’t want that to happen. And we simply don’t have meaningful substitutes for oil, gas and coal today.”
The argument offered by Mr. Wright, who has been chosen by President-elect Donald J. Trump to run the Energy Department, ignores the fact that wind, solar and other renewable energy are cleaner and increasingly cheaper than fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency says clean energy is coming online globally at an “unprecedented rate” and will play a significant role in the future. In some places, renewable energy has been able to displace fossil fuels.
Mr. Wright also skates past the climate impacts from burning more fossil fuels. Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on poor nations, which are less able than rich countries to handle the rising seas, extreme weather, drought and other consequences of global warming.
“It’s pretty self-serving by the fossil fuel industry to assume the future is going to look exactly like the past,” said Joseph Curtin, a managing director on the power and climate team at the Rockefeller Foundation, which is working on expanding clean energy access in poor countries.
“That’s not based on any analytical rigor,” Mr. Curtin said. “It’s perhaps based in the need to sell fossil fuels and shroud it in a moral framework.”
Jody Freeman, the director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law, called Mr. Wright’s position “misleading, warped and selective.”
“It is not an intellectually serious argument,” she said. “It’s about creating a permission structure for not pursuing a more responsible energy policy.”
But by sheathing fossil fuels in humanitarian language as a solution to global poverty, Mr. Wright has emerged as one of the right’s most savvy salesmen for oil and gas. “His is the newest and freshest point of view I’ve seen,” Jeff Peeples, the host of “Mission Zero.” He said the oil and gas industry has been on the defensive when it comes to climate change.
“If a lot more executives in the oil and gas industry would make this argument, and make this intellectual case for the use of fossil fuels, I think the energy industry as a whole would have a lot better PR success,” Mr. Peeples said.
A self-described “nerd turned entrepreneur” and outdoor enthusiast who is often photographed in a fleece vest, Mr. Wright runs a fracking services company and frequently talks about his travels through Africa as informing his desire to tackle poverty.
“People that are burning wooden dung in their huts and want to have a propane stove, they want to get off their feet, ride on a bus or a motor scooter,” Mr. Wright said on the podcast “PetroNerds” last year.
The Trump transition team did not make Mr. Wright available for a telephone interview.
Mr. Wright’s views on developing nations are important; as energy secretary, he would not only oversee oil and gas exports from the United States but also partnerships with poor countries to create renewable energy.
The share of people gaining access to electricity has steadily grown globally, and fossil fuels are largely responsible. About 800 million people now lack access to electricity, down from more than 1.5 billion in 1998.
A new solar project in Gabon. A solar array can start producing electricity in months, while it can take years to build a gas-powered plant.Credit...Nao Mukadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But Ian Muir, head of insights at Catalyst Energy Advisors, a consulting firm, pointed out that renewables were now cheaper than fossil fuels in most countries where people lack electricity. Moreover, a solar array can start producing electricity in months, while it can take more than two years to build a gas-powered plant, he said.
The World Bank has found that solar mini grids could provide basic electricity to 380 million people in Africa by 2030 who do not currently have access to power. A Rockefeller Foundation study in 2021 found that investing in distributed renewable energy like rooftop solar panels, small-scale wind turbines and home battery storage systems could create 25 million jobs by the end of the decade in Asia and Africa. That is about 30 times the number of jobs that would be created by investments in oil, gas or coal in that period, the study found.
Daniel M. Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, who has worked on energy access throughout Africa and Asia, said coal was responsible for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths around the world annually.
Moreover, he said, big fossil fuel plants in developing nations often tend to favor industries like mining rather than people who need electricity in their homes, so that their children can study at night or they can charge a cellphone.
Technologies like mini grids and rooftop solar can often move faster to provide the electricity access Mr. Wright talks about, he said.
While the coal industry for years presented its product as an antidote to poverty, Mr. Wright has become the new master of an old playbook.
His rhetoric echoes Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author who gained prominence in 2001 with the English publication of his book “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” in which he accepted the reality of climate change but said governments should focus on reducing poverty rather than greenhouse gases. Mr. Lomborg was accused of cherry-picking data and misrepresenting science, but Mr. Wright called the book “fantastic” and has referred to Mr. Lomborg a friend.
In 2014, Alex Epstein, who argues against climate science and is a favorite of Fox News, published “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,”which described coal, oil and gas as humanity’s best chance to thrive. (Mr. Wright has appeared on Mr. Epstein’s podcast, “Power Hour.”) That same year, Peabody Energy, then one of the world’s leading coal companies, began an ad campaign that extolled the virtues of coal for the world’s poor.
“Its déjà vu all over again,” said Robert J. Brulle, a sociologist at Brown University who studies fossil fuel misinformation campaigns. “They’re drawing on old tropes that have been around for 20, 30 years.”
Over the years, Mr. Wright built a reputation with gimmicks like drinking a shot of fracked water in a toast to environmental critics. In 2021, he commissioned billboards around Denver to heckle the outdoor clothing maker North Face after the company — whose products, like many other goods, contain petroleum — declined to brand a jacket with an oil company.
“That North Face puffer looks great on you. And it was made from fossil fuels,” read the signs.
Those who have worked with Mr. Wright described him as someone who sincerely wants to improve living standards.
“He’s a good person who wants to make the world better,” said Tisha Schuller, an energy consultant in Colorado and past president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association who has worked closely with Mr. Wright.
After receiving a diploma from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Wright did graduate work on solar energy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which created software that Mr. Wright called “super nerdy” to measure the motion of fluid beneath the earth. It helped bring about a commercial shale gas revolution. Mr. Wright started Liberty Energy in 2011, and the company has partnered with others on small modular nuclear reactors and geothermal energy.
Mr. Wright’s stake in Liberty Energy is worth $50 million, according to Forbes, and a recent SEC filing put his compensation last year at $5.6 million. He helped establish a charity, the Bettering Human Lives Foundation, to promote cookstoves using liquefied petroleum gas in Kenya and elsewhere. They are considered better for the environment and health than traditional cooking fuels of kerosene, biomass and coal. Records show the foundation started in 2023 with $11,450 in assets and spent all of it on administrative costs. The foundation did not respond to a request to discuss its work.
Some who work on energy poverty said Mr. Wright’s views had merit.
Todd Moss, executive director of the Energy for Growth Hub, a research organization, said tackling climate change was not the responsibility of the world’s poorest countries who have done little to cause the problem. In some countries, fossil fuels may still be needed to power factories and industries to spur economic prosperity, he said. Any effort that is too strict and “puts climate above development” would hurt poor countries, Mr. Moss said.
But scientists have maintained that Mr. Wright has selectively used data to downplay the impacts of climate change.
While he acknowledges that the planet is warming, Mr. Wright has inaccurately said that it is a modest and distant threat. He has denied the well-established connection between climate change and extreme weather, wrongly claiming that hurricanes, droughts and floods are not becoming more intense.
“We’re impoverishing people today, those least able to bear it and afford it, for what the economic work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows is a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now,” Mr. Wright said on the “WOW Factor” podcast last year. “That’s not a good trade-off.”
In fact, the I.P.C.C., the United Nations’ top scientific body, found last year with very high confidence that “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” It recommended nations make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from crossing a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade.
Mr. Wright “may not have read an I.P.C.C. report since 1990,” said Robert E. Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and a lead author of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published in 2021.