Carbon Chemist

Tag: clean energy

  • A High-Profile Geneticist Is Launching a Fusion-Power Moonshot

    A High-Profile Geneticist Is Launching a Fusion-Power Moonshot

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    Eric Lander is a Big Science heavyweight. A geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician, he led the International Human Genome Project and is founding director of the powerful Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His countless accolades include a MacArthur “genius” grant and 14 honorary doctorates. When Joe Biden became president, he tapped Lander to be his science adviser and the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lander lost the job because of charges that he bullied subordinates, but he went on to head a nonprofit organization called Science for America.

    So what is he doing running a Silicon Valley startup that aims to solve the climate crisis by realizing the long-held dream of clean fusion energy? Lander is the founding CEO of newly announced Pacific Fusion, heading a team that includes top scientists from the national nuclear labs—Lawrence Livermore and Sandia—as well as experts in simulation and operations. It joins several dozen companies chasing a fusion dream that always seems to be 10 or 20 years out. And it still is—Pacific Fusion says it won’t deliver a working commercial fusion plant until well into the 2030s. But this time there’s a clear path to success. Or so says its famous CEO.

    In May 2023, Science for America issued a report that flagged progress in fusion, citing recent breakthroughs. The year before, a Livermore group achieved what is known as “target gain,” producing significantly more energy than the amount required to perform the experiment. Soon after publishing the paper, Lander quietly formed a company with some scientists in the field, including some who worked at the labs and others from places like Alphabet’s X division and Tesla.

    Sitting in a conference room at Pacific Fusion’s headquarters in Fremont, California, Lander explains to me why commercial fusion is finally within reach—and why Pacific Fusion may have the best chance to make it happen. He starts by giving me a primer on fusion, which happens when hydrogen is, in his word, “squished” into helium, releasing massive amounts of energy. It occurs naturally on the sun and other stars, but humans have yet to figure out how to do it efficiently here on Earth. But the potential payoff—unlimited clean power—has prompted around 50 startups to chase this dragon. Billionaires including Sam Altman and Bill Gates have backed one or another of these startups. Every few months, it seems, one of those contenders announces some breakthrough.

    Why does Pacific Fusion say it’s different? The method it’s pursuing is called pulsed magnetic fusion, which involves inserting tiny containers of deuterium-tritium fuel into a chamber and blasting large electrical pulses through them to magnetically squeeze the fuel containers and achieve fusion. (It’s all explained here in a paper.) “It’s a very attractive approach that’s sort of been known for decades as an idea but has only just become feasible in the last two years because of this work in the national labs,” says Lander. His contention, which I will hear repeatedly as I meet with his team, is that we’ve now made all the scientific breakthroughs we need to understand how to use this technique to generate way more energy that it takes to build and run this system. The remaining challenges—hard ones to be sure— lie in engineering.

    Another challenge is getting the money to build the prototypes for the hundreds of commercial plants that will theoretically solve the world’s energy woes. (And maybe cause global disruption when the current suppliers are upended, but that’s another story.) How do you fund a moonshot? Even when an investor accepts the risk, the prospect for payoff is distant: The Pacific Fusion timeline is to have a full-scale demonstration system sometime in the early 2030s, and commercial systems later in the decade.

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  • Hydrogen bikes are struggling to gain traction in China

    Hydrogen bikes are struggling to gain traction in China

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    It’s a strategy that’s worked: These bikes have been more readily accepted by local governments. In 2022, Youon sold 2,000 of its hydrogen bikes to Lingang, a new high-tech district in Shanghai; in 2023, the company sold 500 hydrogen bikes to the Daxing district of Beijing. Today, its hydrogen bikes can be found in over six Chinese cities. 

    Youon has since doubled down on its investment in hydrogen. The company has launched a product that lets users generate hydrogen at home with solar power and water. It also worked with the local government of Jiangsu, where its headquarters are, to publish a set of industry standards covering safety requirements, hydrogen tanks, and more. “Hydrogen energy is also an essential pathway to achieving carbon neutrality,” said Sun Jisheng, the CEO of Youon, at an industry conference in June.

    The problem

    However, that’s about where the advantage of hydrogen bikes ends.

    David Fishman, a China-based senior manager of the Lantou Group, an energy consultancy, says he struggles to see the advantage. “Maybe the safety angle is a relevant factor for someone who doesn’t like carrying around lithium-ion batteries and storing them in their house,” he says. Other than that, hydrogen bikes are less energy-efficient than battery-powered bikes, and it costs more to produce hydrogen in the first place.

    The main advantage of hydrogen as an energy source is that it has much higher energy density, meaning a hydrogen tank with the same weight as a lithium battery would produce more energy and power the vehicles to go farther. However, that advantage only kicks in for trips over 800 kilometers, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

    That means hydrogen is a more economical choice for long-distance transportation like ships, planes, and trucks. Bikes, however, are almost on the exact opposite end of the transportation spectrum. Few people would bike for long distances, let alone those who are only renting a public bike for a short time. For anything shorter than 800 km, battery-powered vehicles are more energy efficient, says Jacobson. He estimates that a battery-powered bike consumes only 40% of the energy of a hydrogen-powered equivalent and also takes up less space.

    On top of that, the company’s hydrogen bikes have failed to impress many of the early adopters. 

    a row of blue Yuoun hydrogen bikes for rent in the city

    VIA YOUONBIKESHARE.COM

    Gu, a resident of Lingang who only wishes to use his last name for this story, tells MIT Technology Review that he tried the bikes several times and they never felt effort-saving to him. Instead, the bike, along with the hydrogen tank and fuel-cell-powered motors, felt heavy and hard to maneuver. As a user, he has no idea whether the bike was running as expected or if the difficulty he encountered was due to its running out of hydrogen, although the company is supposed to block any bike with low hydrogen reserves from being unlocked.

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  • Roundtables: Why Thermal Batteries are So Hot Right Now

    Roundtables: Why Thermal Batteries are So Hot Right Now

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    Recorded on May 16, 2024

    Why Thermal Batteries are So Hot Right Now

    Speakers: Casey Crownhart, climate reporter and Amy Nordrum, executive editor

    Thermal batteries could be a key part of cleaning up heavy industry, and our readers chose them as the 11th breakthrough on MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2024. Learn what thermal batteries are, how they could help cut emissions, and what we can expect next from this emerging technology.

    Related Coverage

    • How thermal batteries are heating up energy storage
    • The hottest new climate technology is bricks
    • Heat-storing batteries are scaling up to solve one of climate’s dirtiest problems

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  • It Takes Guts to Fix Wind Turbines for a Living

    It Takes Guts to Fix Wind Turbines for a Living

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    Maybe you think they’re majestic. Maybe you think they’re an eyesore. No matter how you feel about wind turbines, there’ll be a lot more of them in coming years. And someone will have to keep each one of them spinning. In fact, wind turbine repair technician is estimated to be one of the fastest-growing jobs in the US this decade, with at least 5,000 new roles by 2032. One onshore wind veteran who’s been doing the work for 13 years spills to WIRED about what it’s like.

    First things first: If you hate heights, being a wind turbine technician is probably not the career for you. Sure, we’ve had people who aren’t comfortable with heights be successful in the job. But I can safely say you’re climbing up 300 feet a day. (Sometimes literally: Older wind farms have turbines that you get up using ladders, although most places now use an elevator or trolley system.)

    A mechanical background or an electrical background is helpful. I got a job with a builder right out of high school and worked my way up until the housing market fell off around 2008. That’s when I decided to enroll in a one-year vocational program to train in power generation, with a big focus on wind energy. I was hired immediately after school and basically traveled the United States as a wind technician. Around that time, there was a big push for wind generation. And really, that push hasn’t stopped. We’re in a world right now where we’re just trying to keep up. I really want to cement renewables as the primary means of power generation moving forward. Some of my best days at work have been when I get to be the first boots on the ground touching some new technology, figuring it out, and coming up with answers before anybody else does.

    It’s a blue-collar job, right? It’s a 7-to-3, 7-to-5 day, five days a week. You’re required to take on-call and overtime assignments on the weekend. So you’re out in the field, you’re out in the elements. That’s the biggest challenge. In the Midwest, I go from one extreme to the other—the hot, humid summer months and then freezing cold months. You dress for the weather. Almost every company I’ve worked for gives you an allowance for gear like balaclavas, hand warmers, foot warmers, coverall bibs, heavy jackets.

    On a typical day, you get in and assess the health of the wind farm with your team. (You usually work in teams of two or three—and you spend more time with them than you do your own family.) If a turbine has a problem and isn’t running, you address that first. Most of the time, though, you’re out there just doing routine maintenance. You know how your car needs an oil change, tire rotation, air filter change? The same kind of thing applies to wind turbines. We have to grease the bearings. We torque all the bolts and make sure nothing got loose. We change the oil and clean the turbine. If a farm has 100 turbines, say, then you have 200 maintenance checks to do that year. One check typically takes a whole day, and you’re doing that four, five days in a row. The work can get monotonous. It’s labor-intensive, too. If something like a gearbox or generator fails, those are big, heavy components—those can be the hardest days.

    The job has gotten better over the years. Companies are starting to make the turbine fit the technician. So, you know, you don’t have to maneuver your body in a way that’s not natural. Or they make things easier to access from a ladder so you don’t put yourself in a compromising position. The job is not just about returning turbines to service. It’s about doing that and going home the same way you came to work.

    You can be at an owner-operator, where you report to the same site every day, or you can be a traveling wind tech. There are contract companies that have people who do anything from component repair to major overhaul projects.

    For an owner-operator in the US, you can expect anywhere from $25 all the way up to $50 an hour. If you’ve had more than five years in the industry, and you’re very competent in your trade, you can probably expect to make somewhere in that $35 to $40 range. If you’re in the union—I’m in the Utility Workers Union of America—it’s between $50 and $65 an hour. I’ve worked both union and nonunion jobs.

    I have 13 years in this field, my colleague has 10, and we’re kind of considered the veterans, which is not typical in most industries. There’s this sense of newness still, and there seems to be so much opportunity for somebody who wants to make a career for themselves. You know, the sky is really the limit.

    —As told to Caitlin Kelly

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  • How Do Heat Pumps Work?

    How Do Heat Pumps Work?

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    Now stretch it really hard and quickly hold it to your upper lip, which is sensitive to temperature. You will feel that it’s warmer than it was before. That’s because you’re adding energy to the rubber band, which increases its temperature.

    Are you ready for the awesome part? Keep it stretched for a little while until it returns to room temperature. Now let the rubber band relax and quickly touch it to your lip again. It’s now colder than room temperature! Seriously, try this for yourself.

    So if you had a big enough rubber band, could you use this to cool your house? Wait a minute, you’re gonna say: In the first stage, when we stretched the rubber band, it got hot, and then it cooled back to its original temperature—and in doing that it heated the air. You’re right. But what if we could vent that warmer air outside? Then you could keep just the cooling phase inside.

    Boom. You just re-invented the air conditioner! Instead of a rubber band, an AC has a fluid called a refrigerant that circulates in a closed loop from inside to outside. This fluid has a low specific heat, so it changes temperature quickly, and a very low boiling point—turning into a gas at something like –15 Fahrenheit.

    How’s it work? The gas is first compressed, causing it to heat up to like 150 degrees. The hot gas circulates in a set of copper coils outside, with a fan blowing over them, so the gas loses thermal energy to the atmosphere. (Copper also has a low specific heat.)

    Then it’s pumped back inside, where the pressure is quickly reduced, causing it to expand and instantly cool down to something like 40 degrees. As the now cold fluid circulates through indoor coils, a fan blows warm inside air over it, heating the fluid again and cooling the indoor air in the process. As the system circulates, it basically picks up thermal energy indoors and carries it outdoors.

    By the way, this is exactly the same process that your fridge uses to keep your cheese and soda cold. In both cases, the process makes something inside cooler and something outside warmer. Put your hand behind the fridge and you’ll see what I mean. Oh, just for kicks, here’s a guy who actually built a refrigerator that runs on rubber bands.

    So Heat Pumps Aren’t New!

    You thought this was going to be an article about heat pumps, right? Well guess what. We’ve been talking about heat pumps this whole time, because they run on the same principles. A heat pump cools your home just like an air conditioner, by circulating a refrigerant and varying the pressure to change its temperature, so it takes thermal energy from one place and puts it in a different place.

    So back to the big mystery: How can a heat pump increase the temperature of indoor air on a cold day without actually generating any heat? Simple: Just run it in reverse! This time we let the hot compressed refrigerant cool off inside the house to raise the indoor air temperature. The low-pressure, cold gas then goes outside to warm up.

    Warm up outside? Yep. Even on a freezing day, the air still has thermal energy. So long as it’s above absolute zero—which, believe me, it is, since that’s around –460 Fahrenheit—the air molecules are in motion. And since we’re cooling the refrigerant to, say, –15 degrees, which is lower than winter temperatures in most places, it will wring thermal energy out of even frigid air.

    Of course, you can’t get energy for free. Heat pumps rely on electricity to drive the compressor and fans. But if you have solar panels at home, or if the electricity in your area is even partly from non-carbon sources, replacing a gas furnace with a heat pump can make a big difference in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And it’ll probably lower your utility bills in the process.

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  • These States Are Basically Begging You to Get a Heat Pump

    These States Are Basically Begging You to Get a Heat Pump

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    Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace—and its killer is the humble heat pump. They’re already outselling gas furnaces in the US, and now a coalition of states has signed an agreement to supercharge the gas-to-electric transition by making it as cheap and easy as possible for their residents to switch.

    Nine states have signed a memorandum of understanding that says that heat pumps should make up at least 65 percent of residential heating, air conditioning, and water-heating shipments by 2030. (“Shipments” here means systems manufactured, a proxy for how many are actually sold.) By 2040, these states—California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island—are aiming for 90 percent of those shipments to be heat pumps.

    “It’s a really strong signal from states that they’re committed to accelerating this transition to zero-emissions residential buildings,” says Emily Levin, senior policy adviser at the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), an association of air-quality agencies, which facilitated the agreement. The states will collaborate, for instance, in pursuing federal funding, developing standards for the rollout of heat pumps, and laying out an overarching plan “with priority actions to support widespread electrification of residential buildings.”

    Instead of burning planet-warming natural gas, a heat pump warms a building by transferring heat from the outdoor air into the interior space. Run it in the opposite direction, and it can cool the inside of a building—a heat pump is both a heater and AC unit. Because the system is electric, it can run off a grid increasingly powered by renewables like wind and solar. Even if you have to run a heat pump with electricity from fossil-fuel power plants, it’s much more efficient than a furnace, because it’s moving heat instead of creating it.

    A heat pump can save an average American household over $550 a year, according to one estimate. They’ve gotten so efficient that even when it’s freezing out, they can still extract warmth from the air to heat a home. You can even install a heat pump system that also warms your water. “We really need consumers to move away from dirty to clean heat, and we really want to get the message out that heat pumps are really the way to go,” says Serena McIlwain, Maryland’s secretary of the environment. “We have homeowners who are getting ready to replace their furnaces, and if they’re not aware, they are not going to replace it with a heat pump.”

    The coalition’s announcement comes just months after the federal government doubled down on its own commitment to heat pumps, announcing $169 million in funding for the domestic production of the systems. That money comes from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, which also provides an American household with thousands of dollars in rebates or tax credits to switch to a heat pump.

    These states are aiming to further collaborate with those heat pump manufacturers by tracking sales and overall progress, sending a signal to the industry to ramp up production to meet the ensuing demand. They’ll also collaborate with each other on research and generally share information, working toward the best strategies for realizing the transition from gas to electric. Basically, they’re pursuing a sort of standardization of the policies and regulations for getting more heat pumps built, bought, and installed, which other states outside of the coalition might eventually tap into.

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