Renewable energy

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Energy

      Students research pathways for MIT to reach decarbonization goals

      by

      A number of emerging technologies hold promise for helping organizations move away from fossil fuels and achieve deep decarbonization. The challenge is deciding which technologies to adopt, and when.MIT, which has a goal of eliminating direct campus emissions by 2050, must make such decisions sooner than most to achieve its mission. That was the challenge at the heart of the recently concluded class 4.s42 (Building Technology — Carbon Reduction Pathways for the MIT Campus).The class brought together undergraduate and graduate students from across the Institute to learn about different technologies and decide on the best path forward. It concluded with a final report as well as student presentations to members of MIT’s Climate Nucleus on May 9.“The mission of the class is to put together a cohesive document outlining how MIT can reach its goal of decarbonization by 2050,” says Morgan Johnson Quamina, an undergraduate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We’re evaluating how MIT can reach these goals on time, what sorts of technologies can help, and how quickly and aggressively we’ll have to move. The final report details a ton of scenarios for partial and full implementation of different technologies, outlines timelines for everything, and features recommendations.”The class was taught by professor of architecture Christoph Reinhart but included presentations by other faculty about low- and zero-carbon technology areas in their fields, including advanced nuclear reactors, deep geothermal energy, carbon capture, and more.The students’ work served as an extension of MIT’s Campus Decarbonization Working Group, which Reinhart co-chairs with Director of Sustainability Julie Newman. The group is charged with developing a technology roadmap for the campus to reach its goal of decarbonizing its energy systems.Reinhart says the class was a way to leverage the energy and creativity of students to accelerate his group’s work.“It’s very much focused on establishing a vision for what could happen at MIT,” Reinhart says. “We are trying to bring these technologies together so that we see how this [decarbonization process] would actually look on our campus.”A class with impactThroughout the semester, every Thursday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., around 20 students gathered to explore different decarbonization technology pathways. They also discussed energy policies, methods for evaluating risk, and future electric grid supply changes in New England.“I love that this work can have a real-world impact,” says Emile Germonpre, a master’s student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. “You can tell people aren’t thinking about grades or workload — I think people would’ve loved it even if the workload was doubled. Everyone is just intrinsically motivated to help solve this problem.”The classes typically began with an introduction to one of 10 different technologies. The introductions covered technical maturity, ease of implementation, costs, and how to model the technology’s impact on campus emissions. Students were then split into teams to evaluate each technology’s feasibility.“I’ve learned a lot about decarbonization and climate change,” says Johnson Quamina. “As an undergrad, I haven’t had many focused classes like this. But it was really beneficial to learn about some of these technologies I hadn’t even heard of before. It’s awesome to be contributing to the community like this.”As part of the class, students also developed a model that visualizes each intervention’s effect on emissions, allowing users to select interventions or combinations of interventions to see how they shape emissions trajectories.“We have a physics-based model that takes into account every building,” says Reinhart. “You can look at variants where we retrofit buildings, where we add rooftop photovoltaics, nuclear, carbon capture, and adopting different types of district underground heating systems. The point is you can start to see how fast we could do something like this and what the real game-changers are.”The class also designed and conducted a preliminary survey, to be expanded in the fall, that captures the MIT community’s attitudes towards the different technologies. Preliminary results were shared with the Climate Nucleus during students’ May 9 presentations.“I think it’s this unique and wonderful intersection of the forward-looking and innovative nature of academia with real world impact and specificity that you’d typically only find in industry,” Germonpre says. “It lets you work on a tangible project, the MIT campus, while exploring technologies that companies today find too risky to be the first mover on.”From MIT’s campus to the worldThe students recommended MIT form a building energy team to audit and retrofit all campus buildings. They also suggested MIT order a comprehensive geological feasibility survey to support planning regarding shallow and deep borehole fields for harvesting underground heat. A third recommendation was to communicate with the MIT community as well as with regulators and policymakers in the area about the deployment of nuclear batteries and deep geothermal boreholes on campus.The students’ modeling tool can also help members of the working group explore various decarbonization pathways. For instance, installing rooftop photovoltaics now would effectively reduce emissions, but installing them in a few decades, when the regional electricity grid is expected to be reducing its reliance on fossil fuels anyways, would have a much smaller impact.“When you have students working together, the recommendations are a little less filtered, which I think is a good thing,” Reinhart says. “I think there’s a real sense of urgency in the class. For certain choices, we have to basically act now.”Reinhart plans to do more activities related to the Working Group and the class’ recommendations in the fall, and he says he’s currently engaged with the Massachusetts Governor’s Office to explore doing something similar for the state.Students say they plan to keep working on the survey this summer and continue studying their technology areas. In the longer term, they believe the experience will help them in their careers.“Decarbonization is really important, and understanding how we can implement new technologies on campuses or in buildings provides me with a more well-rounded vision for what I could design in my career,” says Johnson Quamina, who wants to work as a structural or environmental engineer but says the class has also inspired her to consider careers in energy.The students’ findings also have implications beyond MIT campus. In accordance with MIT’s 2015 climate plan that committed to using the campus community as a “test bed for change,” the students’ recommendations also hold value for organizations around the world.“The mission is definitely broader than just MIT,” Germonpre says. “We don’t just want to solve MIT’s problem. We’ve dismissed technologies that were too specific to MIT. The goal is for MIT to lead by example and help certain technologies mature so that we can accelerate their impact.” More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Energy

      Reducing carbon emissions from long-haul trucks

      by

      People around the world rely on trucks to deliver the goods they need, and so-called long-haul trucks play a critical role in those supply chains. In the United States, long-haul trucks moved 71 percent of all freight in 2022. But those long-haul trucks are heavy polluters, especially of the carbon emissions that threaten the global climate. According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates, in 2022 more than 3 percent of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions came from long-haul trucks.The problem is that long-haul trucks run almost exclusively on diesel fuel, and burning diesel releases high levels of CO2 and other carbon emissions. Global demand for freight transport is projected to as much as double by 2050, so it’s critical to find another source of energy that will meet the needs of long-haul trucks while also reducing their carbon emissions. And conversion to the new fuel must not be costly. “Trucks are an indispensable part of the modern supply chain, and any increase in the cost of trucking will be felt universally,” notes William H. Green, the Hoyt Hottel Professor in Chemical Engineering and director of the MIT Energy Initiative.For the past year, Green and his research team have been seeking a low-cost, cleaner alternative to diesel. Finding a replacement is difficult because diesel meets the needs of the trucking industry so well. For one thing, diesel has a high energy density — that is, energy content per pound of fuel. There’s a legal limit on the total weight of a truck and its contents, so using an energy source with a lower weight allows the truck to carry more payload — an important consideration, given the low profit margin of the freight industry. In addition, diesel fuel is readily available at retail refueling stations across the country — a critical resource for drivers, who may travel 600 miles in a day and sleep in their truck rather than returning to their home depot. Finally, diesel fuel is a liquid, so it’s easy to distribute to refueling stations and then pump into trucks.Past studies have examined numerous alternative technology options for powering long-haul trucks, but no clear winner has emerged. Now, Green and his team have evaluated the available options based on consistent and realistic assumptions about the technologies involved and the typical operation of a long-haul truck, and assuming no subsidies to tip the cost balance. Their in-depth analysis of converting long-haul trucks to battery electric — summarized below — found a high cost and negligible emissions gains in the near term. Studies of methanol and other liquid fuels from biomass are ongoing, but already a major concern is whether the world can plant and harvest enough biomass for biofuels without destroying the ecosystem. An analysis of hydrogen — also summarized below — highlights specific challenges with using that clean-burning fuel, which is a gas at normal temperatures.Finally, the team identified an approach that could make hydrogen a promising, low-cost option for long-haul trucks. And, says Green, “it’s an option that most people are probably unaware of.” It involves a novel way of using materials that can pick up hydrogen, store it, and then release it when and where it’s needed to serve as a clean-burning fuel.Defining the challenge: A realistic drive cycle, plus diesel values to beatThe MIT researchers believe that the lack of consensus on the best way to clean up long-haul trucking may have a simple explanation: Different analyses are based on different assumptions about the driving behavior of long-haul trucks. Indeed, some of them don’t accurately represent actual long-haul operations. So the first task for the MIT team was to define a representative — and realistic — “drive cycle” for actual long-haul truck operations in the United States. Then the MIT researchers — and researchers elsewhere — can assess potential replacement fuels and engines based on a consistent set of assumptions in modeling and simulation analyses.To define the drive cycle for long-haul operations, the MIT team used a systematic approach to analyze many hours of real-world driving data covering 58,000 miles. They examined 10 features and identified three — daily range, vehicle speed, and road grade — that have the greatest impact on energy demand and thus on fuel consumption and carbon emissions. The representative drive cycle that emerged covers a distance of 600 miles, an average vehicle speed of 55 miles per hour, and a road grade ranging from negative 6 percent to positive 6 percent.The next step was to generate key values for the performance of the conventional diesel “powertrain,” that is, all the components involved in creating power in the engine and delivering it to the wheels on the ground. Based on their defined drive cycle, the researchers simulated the performance of a conventional diesel truck, generating “benchmarks” for fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, cost, and other performance parameters.Now they could perform parallel simulations — based on the same drive-cycle assumptions — of possible replacement fuels and powertrains to see how the cost, carbon emissions, and other performance parameters would compare to the diesel benchmarks.The battery electric optionWhen considering how to decarbonize long-haul trucks, a natural first thought is battery power. After all, battery electric cars and pickup trucks are proving highly successful. Why not switch to battery electric long-haul trucks? “Again, the literature is very divided, with some studies saying that this is the best idea ever, and other studies saying that this makes no sense,” says Sayandeep Biswas, a graduate student in chemical engineering.To assess the battery electric option, the MIT researchers used a physics-based vehicle model plus well-documented estimates for the efficiencies of key components such as the battery pack, generators, motor, and so on. Assuming the previously described drive cycle, they determined operating parameters, including how much power the battery-electric system needs. From there they could calculate the size and weight of the battery required to satisfy the power needs of the battery electric truck.The outcome was disheartening. Providing enough energy to travel 600 miles without recharging would require a 2 megawatt-hour battery. “That’s a lot,” notes Kariana Moreno Sader, a graduate student in chemical engineering. “It’s the same as what two U.S. households consume per month on average.” And the weight of such a battery would significantly reduce the amount of payload that could be carried. An empty diesel truck typically weighs 20,000 pounds. With a legal limit of 80,000 pounds, there’s room for 60,000 pounds of payload. The 2 MWh battery would weigh roughly 27,000 pounds — significantly reducing the allowable capacity for carrying payload.Accounting for that “payload penalty,” the researchers calculated that roughly four electric trucks would be required to replace every three of today’s diesel-powered trucks. Furthermore, each added truck would require an additional driver. The impact on operating expenses would be significant.Analyzing the emissions reductions that might result from shifting to battery electric long-haul trucks also brought disappointing results. One might assume that using electricity would eliminate CO2 emissions. But when the researchers included emissions associated with making that electricity, that wasn’t true.“Battery electric trucks are only as clean as the electricity used to charge them,” notes Moreno Sader. Most of the time, drivers of long-haul trucks will be charging from national grids rather than dedicated renewable energy plants. According to Energy Information Agency statistics, fossil fuels make up more than 60 percent of the current U.S. power grid, so electric trucks would still be responsible for significant levels of carbon emissions. Manufacturing batteries for the trucks would generate additional CO2 emissions.Building the charging infrastructure would require massive upfront capital investment, as would upgrading the existing grid to reliably meet additional energy demand from the long-haul sector. Accomplishing those changes would be costly and time-consuming, which raises further concern about electrification as a means of decarbonizing long-haul freight.In short, switching today’s long-haul diesel trucks to battery electric power would bring major increases in costs for the freight industry and negligible carbon emissions benefits in the near term. Analyses assuming various types of batteries as well as other drive cycles produced comparable results.However, the researchers are optimistic about where the grid is going in the future. “In the long term, say by around 2050, emissions from the grid are projected to be less than half what they are now,” says Moreno Sader. “When we do our calculations based on that prediction, we find that emissions from battery electric trucks would be around 40 percent lower than our calculated emissions based on today’s grid.”For Moreno Sader, the goal of the MIT research is to help “guide the sector on what would be the best option.” With that goal in mind, she and her colleagues are now examining the battery electric option under different scenarios — for example, assuming battery swapping (a depleted battery isn’t recharged but replaced by a fully charged one), short-haul trucking, and other applications that might produce a more cost-competitive outcome, even for the near term.A promising option: hydrogenAs the world looks to get off reliance on fossil fuels for all uses, much attention is focusing on hydrogen. Could hydrogen be a good alternative for today’s diesel-burning long-haul trucks?To find out, the MIT team performed a detailed analysis of the hydrogen option. “We thought that hydrogen would solve a lot of the problems we had with battery electric,” says Biswas. It doesn’t have associated CO2 emissions. Its energy density is far higher, so it doesn’t create the weight problem posed by heavy batteries. In addition, existing compression technology can get enough hydrogen fuel into a regular-sized tank to cover the needed distance and range. “You can actually give drivers the range they want,” he says. “There’s no issue with ‘range anxiety.’”But while using hydrogen for long-haul trucking would reduce carbon emissions, it would cost far more than diesel. Based on their detailed analysis of hydrogen, the researchers concluded that the main source of incurred cost is in transporting it. Hydrogen can be made in a chemical facility, but then it needs to be distributed to refueling stations across the country. Conventionally, there have been two main ways of transporting hydrogen: as a compressed gas and as a cryogenic liquid. As Biswas notes, the former is “super high pressure,” and the latter is “super cold.” The researchers’ calculations show that as much as 80 percent of the cost of delivered hydrogen is due to transportation and refueling, plus there’s the need to build dedicated refueling stations that can meet new environmental and safety standards for handling hydrogen as a compressed gas or a cryogenic liquid.Having dismissed the conventional options for shipping hydrogen, they turned to a less-common approach: transporting hydrogen using “liquid organic hydrogen carriers” (LOHCs), special organic (carbon-containing) chemical compounds that can under certain conditions absorb hydrogen atoms and under other conditions release them.LOHCs are in use today to deliver small amounts of hydrogen for commercial use. Here’s how the process works: In a chemical plant, the carrier compound is brought into contact with hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst under elevated temperature and pressure, and the compound picks up the hydrogen. The “hydrogen-loaded” compound — still a liquid — is then transported under atmospheric conditions. When the hydrogen is needed, the compound is again exposed to a temperature increase and a different catalyst, and the hydrogen is released.LOHCs thus appear to be ideal hydrogen carriers for long-haul trucking. They’re liquid, so they can easily be delivered to existing refueling stations, where the hydrogen would be released; and they contain at least as much energy per gallon as hydrogen in a cryogenic liquid or compressed gas form. However, a detailed analysis of using hydrogen carriers showed that the approach would decrease emissions but at a considerable cost.The problem begins with the “dehydrogenation” step at the retail station. Releasing the hydrogen from the chemical carrier requires heat, which is generated by burning some of the hydrogen being carried by the LOHC. The researchers calculate that getting the needed heat takes 36 percent of that hydrogen. (In theory, the process would take only 27 percent — but in reality, that efficiency won’t be achieved.) So out of every 100 units of starting hydrogen, 36 units are now gone.But that’s not all. The hydrogen that comes out is at near-ambient pressure. So the facility dispensing the hydrogen will need to compress it — a process that the team calculates will use up 20-30 percent of the starting hydrogen.Because of the needed heat and compression, there’s now less than half of the starting hydrogen left to be delivered to the truck — and as a result, the hydrogen fuel becomes twice as expensive. The bottom line is that the technology works, but “when it comes to really beating diesel, the economics don’t work. It’s quite a bit more expensive,” says Biswas. In addition, the refueling stations would require expensive compressors and auxiliary units such as cooling systems. The capital investment and the operating and maintenance costs together imply that the market penetration of hydrogen refueling stations will be slow.A better strategy: onboard release of hydrogen from LOHCsGiven the potential benefits of using of LOHCs, the researchers focused on how to deal with both the heat needed to release the hydrogen and the energy needed to compress it. “That’s when we had the idea,” says Biswas. “Instead of doing the dehydrogenation [hydrogen release] at the refueling station and then loading the truck with hydrogen, why don’t we just take the LOHC and load that onto the truck?” Like diesel, LOHC is a liquid, so it’s easily transported and pumped into trucks at existing refueling stations. “We’ll then make hydrogen as it’s needed based on the power demands of the truck — and we can capture waste heat from the engine exhaust and use it to power the dehydrogenation process,” says Biswas.In their proposed plan, hydrogen-loaded LOHC is created at a chemical “hydrogenation” plant and then delivered to a retail refueling station, where it’s pumped into a long-haul truck. Onboard the truck, the loaded LOHC pours into the fuel-storage tank. From there it moves to the “dehydrogenation unit” — the reactor where heat and a catalyst together promote chemical reactions that separate the hydrogen from the LOHC. The hydrogen is sent to the powertrain, where it burns, producing energy that propels the truck forward.Hot exhaust from the powertrain goes to a “heat-integration unit,” where its waste heat energy is captured and returned to the reactor to help encourage the reaction that releases hydrogen from the loaded LOHC. The unloaded LOHC is pumped back into the fuel-storage tank, where it’s kept in a separate compartment to keep it from mixing with the loaded LOHC. From there, it’s pumped back into the retail refueling station and then transported back to the hydrogenation plant to be loaded with more hydrogen.Switching to onboard dehydrogenation brings down costs by eliminating the need for extra hydrogen compression and by using waste heat in the engine exhaust to drive the hydrogen-release process. So how does their proposed strategy look compared to diesel? Based on a detailed analysis, the researchers determined that using their strategy would be 18 percent more expensive than using diesel, and emissions would drop by 71 percent.But those results need some clarification. The 18 percent cost premium of using LOHC with onboard hydrogen release is based on the price of diesel fuel in 2020. In spring of 2023 the price was about 30 percent higher. Assuming the 2023 diesel price, the LOHC option is actually cheaper than using diesel.Both the cost and emissions outcomes are affected by another assumption: the use of “blue hydrogen,” which is hydrogen produced from natural gas with carbon capture and storage. Another option is to assume the use of “green hydrogen,” which is hydrogen produced using electricity generated from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. Green hydrogen is much more expensive than blue hydrogen, so then the costs would increase dramatically.If in the future the price of green hydrogen drops, the researchers’ proposed plan would shift to green hydrogen — and then the decline in emissions would no longer be 71 percent but rather close to 100 percent. There would be almost no emissions associated with the researchers’ proposed plan for using LHOCs with onboard hydrogen release.Comparing the options on cost and emissionsTo compare the options, Moreno Sader prepared bar charts showing the per-mile cost of shipping by truck in the United States and the CO2 emissions that result using each of the fuels and approaches discussed above: diesel fuel, battery electric, hydrogen as a cryogenic liquid or compressed gas, and LOHC with onboard hydrogen release. The LOHC strategy with onboard dehydrogenation looked promising on both the cost and the emissions charts. In addition to such quantitative measures, the researchers believe that their strategy addresses two other, less-obvious challenges in finding a less-polluting fuel for long-haul trucks.First, the introduction of the new fuel and trucks to use it must not disrupt the current freight-delivery setup. “You have to keep the old trucks running while you’re introducing the new ones,” notes Green. “You cannot have even a day when the trucks aren’t running because it’d be like the end of the economy. Your supermarket shelves would all be empty; your factories wouldn’t be able to run.” The researchers’ plan would be completely compatible with the existing diesel supply infrastructure and would require relatively minor retrofits to today’s long-haul trucks, so the current supply chains would continue to operate while the new fuel and retrofitted trucks are introduced.Second, the strategy has the potential to be adopted globally. Long-haul trucking is important in other parts of the world, and Moreno Sader thinks that “making this approach a reality is going to have a lot of impact, not only in the United States but also in other countries,” including her own country of origin, Colombia. “This is something I think about all the time.” The approach is compatible with the current diesel infrastructure, so the only requirement for adoption is to build the chemical hydrogenation plant. “And I think the capital expenditure related to that will be less than the cost of building a new fuel-supply infrastructure throughout the country,” says Moreno Sader.Testing in the lab“We’ve done a lot of simulations and calculations to show that this is a great idea,” notes Biswas. “But there’s only so far that math can go to convince people.” The next step is to demonstrate their concept in the lab.To that end, the researchers are now assembling all the core components of the onboard hydrogen-release reactor as well as the heat-integration unit that’s key to transferring heat from the engine exhaust to the hydrogen-release reactor. They estimate that this spring they’ll be ready to demonstrate their ability to release hydrogen and confirm the rate at which it’s formed. And — guided by their modeling work — they’ll be able to fine-tune critical components for maximum efficiency and best performance.The next step will be to add an appropriate engine, specially equipped with sensors to provide the critical readings they need to optimize the performance of all their core components together. By the end of 2024, the researchers hope to achieve their goal: the first experimental demonstration of a power-dense, robust onboard hydrogen-release system with highly efficient heat integration.In the meantime, they believe that results from their work to date should help spread the word, bringing their novel approach to the attention of other researchers and experts in the trucking industry who are now searching for ways to decarbonize long-haul trucking.Financial support for development of the representative drive cycle and the diesel benchmarks as well as the analysis of the battery electric option was provided by the MIT Mobility Systems Center of the MIT Energy Initiative. Analysis of LOHC-powered trucks with onboard dehydrogenation was supported by the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. Sayandeep Biswas is supported by a fellowship from the Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability, and Kariana Moreno Sader received fellowship funding from MathWorks through the MIT School of Science. More

    • 50 Shares149 Views

      in Energy

      Getting to systemic sustainability

      by

      Add up the commitments from the Paris Agreement, the Glasgow Climate Pact, and various commitments made by cities, countries, and businesses, and the world would be able to hold the global average temperature increase to 1.9 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, says Ani Dasgupta, the president and chief executive officer of the World Resources Institute (WRI).While that is well above the 1.5 C threshold that many scientists agree would limit the most severe impacts of climate change, it is below the 2.0 degree threshold that could lead to even more catastrophic impacts, such as the collapse of ice sheets and a 30-foot rise in sea levels.However, Dasgupta notes, actions have so far not matched up with commitments.“There’s a huge gap between commitment and outcomes,” Dasgupta said during his talk, “Energizing the global transition,” at the 2024 Earth Day Colloquium co-hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative and MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and sponsored by the Climate Nucleus.Dasgupta noted that oil companies did $6 trillion worth of business across the world last year — $1 trillion more than they were planning. About 7 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forests were destroyed during that same time, he added, and global inequality grew even worse than before.“None of these things were illegal, because the system we have today produces these outcomes,” he said. “My point is that it’s not one thing that needs to change. The whole system needs to change.”People, climate, and natureDasgupta, who previously held positions in nonprofits in India and at the World Bank, is a recognized leader in sustainable cities, poverty alleviation, and building cultures of inclusion. Under his leadership, WRI, a global research nonprofit that studies sustainable practices with the goal of fundamentally transforming the world’s food, land and water, energy, and cities, adopted a new five-year strategy called “Getting the Transition Right for People, Nature, and Climate 2023-2027.” It focuses on creating new economic opportunities to meet people’s essential needs, restore nature, and rapidly lower emissions, while building resilient communities. In fact, during his talk, Dasgupta said that his organization has moved away from talking about initiatives in terms of their impact on greenhouse gas emissions — instead taking a more holistic view of sustainability.“There is no net zero without nature,” Dasgupta said. He showed a slide with a graphic illustrating potential progress toward net-zero goals. “If nature gets diminished, that chart becomes even steeper. It’s very steep right now, but natural systems absorb carbon dioxide. So, if the natural systems keep getting destroyed, that curve becomes harder and harder.”A focus on people is necessary, Dasgupta said, in part because of the unequal climate impacts that the rich and the poor are likely to face in the coming years. “If you made it to this room, you will not be impacted by climate change,” he said. “You have resources to figure out what to do about it. The people who get impacted are people who don’t have resources. It is immensely unfair. Our belief is, if we don’t do climate policy that helps people directly, we won’t be able to make progress.”Where to start?Although Dasgupta stressed that systemic change is needed to bring carbon emissions in line with long-term climate goals, he made the case that it is unrealistic to implement this change around the globe all at once. “This transition will not happen in 196 countries at the same time,” he said. “The question is, how do we get to the tipping point so that it happens at scale? We’ve worked the past few years to ask the question, what is it you need to do to create this tipping point for change?”Analysts at WRI looked for countries that are large producers of carbon, those with substantial tropical forest cover, and those with large quantities of people living in poverty. “We basically tried to draw a map of, where are the biggest challenges for climate change?” Dasgupta said.That map features a relative handful of countries, including the United States, Mexico, China, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Indonesia. Dasgupta said, “Our argument is that, if we could figure out and focus all our efforts to help these countries transition, that will create a ripple effect — of understanding technology, understanding the market, understanding capacity, and understanding the politics of change that will unleash how the rest of these regions will bring change.”Spotlight on the subcontinentDasgupta used one of these countries, his native India, to illustrate the nuanced challenges and opportunities presented by various markets around the globe. In India, he noted, there are around 3 million projected jobs tied to the country’s transition to renewable energy. However, that number is dwarfed by the 10 to 12 million jobs per year the Indian economy needs to create simply to keep up with population growth.“Every developing country faces this question — how to keep growing in a way that reduces their carbon footprint,” Dasgupta said.Five states in India worked with WRI to pool their buying power and procure 5,000 electric buses, saving 60 percent of the cost as a result. Over the next two decades, Dasgupta said, the fleet of electric buses in those five states is expected to increase to 800,000.In the Indian state of Rajasthan, Dasgupta said, 59 percent of power already comes from solar energy. At times, Rajasthan produces more solar than it can use, and officials are exploring ways to either store the excess energy or sell it to other states. But in another state, Jharkhand, where much of the country’s coal is sourced, only 5 percent of power comes from solar. Officials in Jharkhand have reached out to WRI to discuss how to transition their energy economy, as they recognize that coal will fall out of favor in the future, Dasgupta said.“The complexities of the transition are enormous in a country this big,” Dasgupta said. “This is true in most large countries.”The road aheadDespite the challenges ahead, the colloquium was also marked by notes of optimism. In his opening remarks, Robert Stoner, the founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, pointed out how much progress has been made on environmental cleanup since the first Earth Day in 1970. “The world was a very different, much dirtier, place in many ways,” Stoner said. “Our air was a mess, our waterways were a mess, and it was beginning to be noticeable. Since then, Earth Day has become an important part of the fabric of American and global society.”While Dasgupta said that the world presently lacks the “orchestration” among various stakeholders needed to bring climate change under control, he expressed hope that collaboration in key countries could accelerate progress.“I strongly believe that what we need is a very different way of collaborating radically — across organizations like yours, organizations like ours, businesses, and governments,” Dasgupta said. “Otherwise, this transition will not happen at the scale and speed we need.” More

    • 25 Shares99 Views

      in Energy

      H2 underground

      by

      In 1987 in a village in Mali, workers were digging a water well when they felt a rush of air. One of the workers was smoking a cigarette, and the air caught fire, burning a clear blue flame. The well was capped at the time, but in 2012, it was tapped to provide energy for the village, powering a generator for nine years.The fuel source: geologic hydrogen.For decades, hydrogen has been discussed as a potentially revolutionary fuel. But efforts to produce “green” hydrogen (splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity), “grey” hydrogen (making hydrogen from methane and releasing the biproduct carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere), “brown” hydrogen (produced through the gasification of coal), and “blue” hydrogen (making hydrogen from methane but capturing the CO2) have thus far proven either expensive and/or energy-intensive. Enter geologic hydrogen. Also known as “orange,” “gold,” “white,” “natural,” and even “clear” hydrogen, geologic hydrogen is generated by natural geochemical processes in the Earth’s crust. While there is still much to learn, a growing number of researchers and industry leaders are hopeful that it may turn out to be an abundant and affordable resource lying right beneath our feet.“There’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty about this,” noted Robert Stoner, the founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, in his opening remarks at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Spring Symposium. “But the prospect of readily producible clean hydrogen showing up all over the world is a potential near-term game changer.”A new hope for hydrogenThis April, MITEI gathered researchers, industry leaders, and academic experts from around MIT and the world to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by geologic hydrogen in a daylong symposium entitled “Geologic hydrogen: Are orange and gold the new green?” The field is so new that, until a year ago, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s website incorrectly claimed that hydrogen only occurs naturally on Earth in compound forms, chemically bonded to other elements.“There’s a common misconception that hydrogen doesn’t occur naturally on Earth,” said Geoffrey Ellis, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He noted that natural hydrogen production tends to occur in different locations from where oil and natural gas are likely to be discovered, which explains why geologic hydrogen discoveries have been relatively rare, at least until recently.“Petroleum exploration is not targeting hydrogen,” Ellis said. “Companies are simply not really looking for it, they’re not interested in it, and oftentimes they don’t measure for it. The energy industry spends billions of dollars every year on exploration with very sophisticated technology, and still they drill dry holes all the time. So I think it’s naive to think that we would suddenly be finding hydrogen all the time when we’re not looking for it.”In fact, the number of researchers and startup energy companies with targeted efforts to characterize geologic hydrogen has increased over the past several years — and these searches have uncovered new prospects, said Mary Haas, a venture partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “We’ve seen a dramatic uptick in exploratory activity, now that there is a focused effort by a small community worldwide. At Breakthrough Energy, we are excited about the potential of this space, as well as our role in accelerating its progress,” she said. Haas noted that if geologic hydrogen could be produced at $1 per kilogram, this would be consistent with the DOE’s targeted “liftoff” point for the energy source. “If that happens,” she said, “it would be transformative.”Haas noted that only a small portion of identified hydrogen sites are currently under commercial exploration, and she cautioned that it’s not yet clear how large a role the resource might play in the transition to green energy. But, she said, “It’s worthwhile and important to find out.”Inventing a new energy subsectorGeologic hydrogen is produced when water reacts with iron-rich minerals in rock. Researchers and industry are exploring how to stimulate this natural production by pumping water into promising deposits.In any new exploration area, teams must ask a series of questions to qualify the site, said Avon McIntyre, the executive director of HyTerra Ltd., an Australian company focused on the exploration and production of geologic hydrogen. These questions include: Is the geology favorable? Does local legislation allow for exploration and production? Does the site offer a clear path to value? And what are the carbon implications of producing hydrogen at the site?“We have to be humble,” McIntyre said. “We can’t be too prescriptive and think that we’ll leap straight into success. We have a unique opportunity to stop and think about what this industry will look like, how it will work, and how we can bring together various disciplines.” This was a theme that arose multiple times over the course of the symposium: the idea that many different stakeholders — including those from academia, industry, and government — will need to work together to explore the viability of geologic hydrogen and bring it to market at scale.In addition to the potential for hydrogen production to give rise to greenhouse gas emissions (in cases, for instance, where hydrogen deposits are contaminated with natural gas), researchers and industry must also consider landscape deformation and even potential seismic implications, said Bradford Hager, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Earth Sciences in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.The surface impacts of hydrogen exploration and production will likely be similar to those caused by the hydro-fracturing process (“fracking”) used in oil and natural gas extraction, Hager said.“There will be unavoidable surface deformation. In most places, you don’t want this if there’s infrastructure around,” Hager said. “Seismicity in the stimulated zone itself should not be a problem, because the areas are tested first. But we need to avoid stressing surrounding brittle rocks.”McIntyre noted that the commercial case for hydrogen remains a challenge to quantify, without even a “spot” price that companies can use to make economic calculations. Early on, he said, capturing helium at hydrogen exploration sites could be a path to early cash flow, but that may ultimately serve as a “distraction” as teams attempt to scale up to the primary goal of hydrogen production. He also noted that it is not even yet clear whether hard rock, soft rock, or underwater environments hold the most potential for geologic hydrogen, but all show promise.“If you stack all of these things together,” McIntyre said, “what we end up doing may look very different from what we think we’re going to do right now.”The path aheadWhile the long-term prospects for geologic hydrogen are shrouded in uncertainty, most speakers at the symposium struck a tone of optimism. Ellis noted that the DOE has dedicated $20 million in funding to a stimulated hydrogen program. Paris Smalls, the co-founder and CEO of Eden GeoPower Inc., said “we think there is a path” to producing geologic hydrogen below the $1 per kilogram threshold. And Iwnetim Abate, an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering, said that geologic hydrogen opens up the idea of Earth as a “factory to produce clean fuels,” utilizing the subsurface heat and pressure instead of relying on burning fossil fuels or natural gas for the same purpose.“Earth has had 4.6 billion years to do these experiments,” said Oliver Jagoutz, a professor of geology in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “So there is probably a very good solution out there.”Alexis Templeton, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, made the case for moving quickly. “Let’s go to pilot, faster than you might think,” she said. “Why? Because we do have some systems that we understand. We could test the engineering approaches and make sure that we are doing the right tool development, the right technology development, the right experiments in the lab. To do that, we desperately need data from the field.”“This is growing so fast,” Templeton added. “The momentum and the development of geologic hydrogen is really quite substantial. We need to start getting data at scale. And then, I think, more people will jump off the sidelines very quickly.”  More

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Energy

      Elaine Liu: Charging ahead

      by

      MIT senior Elaine Siyu Liu doesn’t own an electric car, or any car. But she sees the impact of electric vehicles (EVs) and renewables on the grid as two pieces of an energy puzzle she wants to solve.The U.S. Department of Energy reports that the number of public and private EV charging ports nearly doubled in the past three years, and many more are in the works. Users expect to plug in at their convenience, charge up, and drive away. But what if the grid can’t handle it?Electricity demand, long stagnant in the United States, has spiked due to EVs, data centers that drive artificial intelligence, and industry. Grid planners forecast an increase of 2.6 percent to 4.7 percent in electricity demand over the next five years, according to data reported to federal regulators. Everyone from EV charging-station operators to utility-system operators needs help navigating a system in flux.That’s where Liu’s work comes in.Liu, who is studying mathematics and electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), is interested in distribution — how to get electricity from a centralized location to consumers. “I see power systems as a good venue for theoretical research as an application tool,” she says. “I’m interested in it because I’m familiar with the optimization and probability techniques used to map this level of problem.”Liu grew up in Beijing, then after middle school moved with her parents to Canada and enrolled in a prep school in Oakville, Ontario, 30 miles outside Toronto.Liu stumbled upon an opportunity to take part in a regional math competition and eventually started a math club, but at the time, the school’s culture surrounding math surprised her. Being exposed to what seemed to be some students’ aversion to math, she says, “I don’t think my feelings about math changed. I think my feelings about how people feel about math changed.”Liu brought her passion for math to MIT. The summer after her sophomore year, she took on the first of the two Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program projects she completed with electric power system expert Marija Ilić, a joint adjunct professor in EECS and a senior research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.Predicting the gridSince 2022, with the help of funding from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Liu has been working with Ilić on identifying ways in which the grid is challenged.One factor is the addition of renewables to the energy pipeline. A gap in wind or sun might cause a lag in power generation. If this lag occurs during peak demand, it could mean trouble for a grid already taxed by extreme weather and other unforeseen events.If you think of the grid as a network of dozens of interconnected parts, once an element in the network fails — say, a tree downs a transmission line — the electricity that used to go through that line needs to be rerouted. This may overload other lines, creating what’s known as a cascade failure.“This all happens really quickly and has very large downstream effects,” Liu says. “Millions of people will have instant blackouts.”Even if the system can handle a single downed line, Liu notes that “the nuance is that there are now a lot of renewables, and renewables are less predictable. You can’t predict a gap in wind or sun. When such things happen, there’s suddenly not enough generation and too much demand. So the same kind of failure would happen, but on a larger and more uncontrollable scale.”Renewables’ varying output has the added complication of causing voltage fluctuations. “We plug in our devices expecting a voltage of 110, but because of oscillations, you will never get exactly 110,” Liu says. “So even when you can deliver enough electricity, if you can’t deliver it at the specific voltage level that is required, that’s a problem.”Liu and Ilić are building a model to predict how and when the grid might fail. Lacking access to privatized data, Liu runs her models with European industry data and test cases made available to universities. “I have a fake power grid that I run my experiments on,” she says. “You can take the same tool and run it on the real power grid.”Liu’s model predicts cascade failures as they evolve. Supply from a wind generator, for example, might drop precipitously over the course of an hour. The model analyzes which substations and which households will be affected. “After we know we need to do something, this prediction tool can enable system operators to strategically intervene ahead of time,” Liu says.Dictating price and powerLast year, Liu turned her attention to EVs, which provide a different kind of challenge than renewables.In 2022, S&P Global reported that lawmakers argued that the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) wholesale power rate structure was unfair for EV charging station operators.In addition to operators paying by the kilowatt-hour, some also pay more for electricity during peak demand hours. Only a few EVs charging up during those hours could result in higher costs for the operator even if their overall energy use is low.Anticipating how much power EVs will need is more complex than predicting energy needed for, say, heating and cooling. Unlike buildings, EVs move around, making it difficult to predict energy consumption at any given time. “If users don’t like the price at one charging station or how long the line is, they’ll go somewhere else,” Liu says. “Where to allocate EV chargers is a problem that a lot of people are dealing with right now.”One approach would be for FERC to dictate to EV users when and where to charge and what price they’ll pay. To Liu, this isn’t an attractive option. “No one likes to be told what to do,” she says.Liu is looking at optimizing a market-based solution that would be acceptable to top-level energy producers — wind and solar farms and nuclear plants — all the way down to the municipal aggregators that secure electricity at competitive rates and oversee distribution to the consumer.Analyzing the location, movement, and behavior patterns of all the EVs driven daily in Boston and other major energy hubs, she notes, could help demand aggregators determine where to place EV chargers and how much to charge consumers, akin to Walmart deciding how much to mark up wholesale eggs in different markets.Last year, Liu presented the work at MITEI’s annual research conference. This spring, Liu and Ilić are submitting a paper on the market optimization analysis to a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.Liu has come to terms with her early introduction to attitudes toward STEM that struck her as markedly different from those in China. She says, “I think the (prep) school had a very strong ‘math is for nerds’ vibe, especially for girls. There was a ‘why are you giving yourself more work?’ kind of mentality. But over time, I just learned to disregard that.”After graduation, Liu, the only undergraduate researcher in Ilić’s MIT Electric Energy Systems Group, plans to apply to fellowships and graduate programs in EECS, applied math, and operations research.Based on her analysis, Liu says that the market could effectively determine the price and availability of charging stations. Offering incentives for EV owners to charge during the day instead of at night when demand is high could help avoid grid overload and prevent extra costs to operators. “People would still retain the ability to go to a different charging station if they chose to,” she says. “I’m arguing that this works.” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Energy

      William Green named director of MIT Energy Initiative

      by

      MIT professor William H. Green has been named director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI).In appointing Green, then-MIT Vice President for Research Maria Zuber highlighted his expertise in chemical kinetics — the understanding of the rates of chemical reactions — and the work of his research team in reaction kinetics, quantum chemistry, numerical methods, and fuel chemistry, as well as his work performing techno-economic assessments of proposed fuel and vehicle changes and biofuel production options.“Bill has been an active participant in MITEI; his broad view of energy science and technology will be a major asset and will position him well to contribute to the success of MIT’s exciting new Climate Project,” Zuber wrote in a letter announcing the appointment, which went into effect April 1. Green is the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor of Chemical Engineering and previously served as the executive officer of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering from 2012 to 2015. He sees MITEI’s role today as bringing together the voices of engineering, science, industry, and policy to quickly drive the global energy transition.“MITEI has a very important role in fostering the energy and climate innovations happening at MIT and in building broader consensus, first in the engineering community and then ultimately to start the conversations that will lead to public acceptance and societal consensus,” says Green.Achieving consensus much more quickly is essential, says Green, who noted that it was during the 1992 Rio Summit that globally we recognized the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, yet almost a quarter-century passed before the Paris Agreement came into force. Eight years after the Paris Agreement, there is still disagreement over how to address this challenge in most sectors of the economy, and much work to be done to translate the Paris pledges into reality.“Many people feel we’re collectively too slow in dealing with the climate problem,” he says. “It’s very important to keep helping the research community be more effective and faster to provide the solutions that society needs, but we also need to work on being faster at reaching consensus around the good solutions we do have, and supporting them so they’ll actually be economically attractive so that investors can feel safe to invest in them, and to change regulations to make them feasible, when needed.”With experience in industry, policy, and academia, Green is well positioned to facilitate this acceleration. “I can see the situation from the point of view of a scientist, from the point of view of an engineer, from the point of view of the big companies, from the point of view of a startup company, and from the point of view of a parent concerned about the effects of climate change on the world my children are inheriting,” he says.Green also intends to extend MITEI’s engagement with a broader range of countries, industries, and economic sectors as MITEI focuses on decarbonization and accelerating the much-needed energy transition worldwide.Green received a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and a BA in chemistry from Swarthmore College. He joined MIT in 1997. He is the recipient of the AIChE’s R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering and is an inaugural Fellow of the Combustion Institute.He succeeds Robert Stoner, who served as interim director of MITEI beginning in July 2023, when longtime director Robert C. Armstrong retired after serving in the role for a decade. More

    • 50 Shares99 Views

      in Energy

      Seizing solar’s bright future

      by

      Consider the dizzying ascent of solar energy in the United States: In the past decade, solar capacity increased nearly 900 percent, with electricity production eight times greater in 2023 than in 2014. The jump from 2022 to 2023 alone was 51 percent, with a record 32 gigawatts (GW) of solar installations coming online. In the past four years, more solar has been added to the grid than any other form of generation. Installed solar now tops 179 GW, enough to power nearly 33 million homes. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is so bullish on the sun that its decarbonization plans envision solar satisfying 45 percent of the nation’s electricity demands by 2050.But the continued rapid expansion of solar requires advances in technology, notably to improve the efficiency and durability of solar photovoltaic (PV) materials and manufacturing. That’s where Optigon, a three-year-old MIT spinout company, comes in.“Our goal is to build tools for research and industry that can accelerate the energy transition,” says Dane deQuilettes, the company’s co-founder and chief science officer. “The technology we have developed for solar will enable measurements and analysis of materials as they are being made both in lab and on the manufacturing line, dramatically speeding up the optimization of PV.”With roots in MIT’s vibrant solar research community, Optigon is poised for a 2024 rollout of technology it believes will drastically pick up the pace of solar power and other clean energy projects.Beyond siliconSilicon, the material mainstay of most PV, is limited by the laws of physics in the efficiencies it can achieve converting photons from the sun into electrical energy. Silicon-based solar cells can theoretically reach power conversion levels of just 30 percent, and real-world efficiency levels hover in the low 20s. But beyond the physical limitations of silicon, there is another issue at play for many researchers and the solar industry in the United States and elsewhere: China dominates the silicon PV market, from supply chains to manufacturing.Scientists are eagerly pursuing alternative materials, either for enhancing silicon’s solar conversion capacity or for replacing silicon altogether.In the past decade, a family of crystal-structured semiconductors known as perovskites has risen to the fore as a next-generation PV material candidate. Perovskite devices lend themselves to a novel manufacturing process using printing technology that could circumvent the supply chain juggernaut China has built for silicon. Perovskite solar cells can be stacked on each other or layered atop silicon PV, to achieve higher conversion efficiencies. Because perovskite technology is flexible and lightweight, modules can be used on roofs and other structures that cannot support heavier silicon PV, lowering costs and enabling a wider range of building-integrated solar devices.But these new materials require testing, both during R&D and then on assembly lines, where missing or defective optical, electrical, or dimensional properties in the nano-sized crystal structures can negatively impact the end product.“The actual measurement and data analysis processes have been really, really slow, because you have to use a bunch of separate tools that are all very manual,” says Optigon co-founder and chief executive officer Anthony Troupe ’21. “We wanted to come up with tools for automating detection of a material’s properties, for determining whether it could make a good or bad solar cell, and then for optimizing it.”“Our approach packed several non-contact, optical measurements using different types of light sources and detectors into a single system, which together provide a holistic, cross-sectional view of the material,” says Brandon Motes ’21, ME ’22, co-founder and chief technical officer.“This breakthrough in achieving millisecond timescales for data collection and analysis means we can take research-quality tools and actually put them on a full production system, getting extremely detailed information about products being built at massive, gigawatt scale in real-time,” says Troupe.This streamlined system takes measurements “in the snap of the fingers, unlike the traditional tools,” says Joseph Berry, director of the US Manufacturing of Advanced Perovskites Consortium and a senior research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Optigon’s techniques are high precision and allow high throughput, which means they can be used in a lot of contexts where you want rapid feedback and the ability to develop materials very, very quickly.”According to Berry, Optigon’s technology may give the solar industry not just better materials, but the ability to pump out high-quality PV products at a brisker clip than is currently possible. “If Optigon is successful in deploying their technology, then we can more rapidly develop the materials that we need, manufacturing with the requisite precision again and again,” he says. “This could lead to the next generation of PV modules at a much, much lower cost.”Measuring makes the differenceWith Small Business Innovation Research funding from DOE to commercialize its products and a grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Optigon has settled into a space at the climate technology incubator Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts. Here, the team is preparing for this spring’s launch of its first commercial product, whose genesis lies in MIT’s GridEdge Solar Research Program.Led by Vladimir Bulović, a professor of electrical engineering and the director of MIT.nano, the GridEdge program was established with funding from the Tata Trusts to develop lightweight, flexible, and inexpensive solar cells for distribution to rural communities around the globe. When deQuilettes joined the group in 2017 as a postdoc, he was tasked with directing the program and building the infrastructure to study and make perovskite solar modules.“We were trying to understand once we made the material whether or not it was good,” he recalls. “There were no good commercial metrology [the science of measurements] tools for materials beyond silicon, so we started to build our own.” Recognizing the group’s need for greater expertise on the problem, especially in the areas of electrical, software, and mechanical engineering, deQuilettes put a call out for undergraduate researchers to help build metrology tools for new solar materials.“Forty people inquired, but when I met Brandon and Anthony, something clicked; it was clear we had a complementary skill set,” says deQuilettes. “We started working together, with Anthony coming up with beautiful designs to integrate multiple measurements, and Brandon creating boards to control all of the hardware, including different types of lasers. We started filing multiple patents and that was when we saw it all coming together.”“We knew from the start that metrology could vastly improve not just materials, but production yields,” says Troupe. Adds deQuilettes, “Our goal was getting to the highest performance orders of magnitude faster than it would ordinarily take, so we developed tools that would not just be useful for research labs but for manufacturing lines to give live feedback on quality.”The device Optigon designed for industry is the size of a football, “with sensor packages crammed into a tiny form factor, taking measurements as material flows directly underneath,” says Motes. “We have also thought carefully about ways to make interaction with this tool as seamless and, dare I say, as enjoyable as possible, streaming data to both a dashboard an operator can watch and to a custom database.”Photovoltaics is just the startThe company may have already found its market niche. “A research group paid us to use our in-house prototype because they have such a burning need to get these sorts of measurements,” says Troupe, and according to Motes, “Potential customers ask us if they can buy the system now.” deQuilettes says, “Our hope is that we become the de facto company for doing any sort of characterization metrology in the United States and beyond.”Challenges lie ahead for Optigon: product launches, full-scale manufacturing, technical assistance, and sales. Greentown Labs offers support, as does MIT’s own rich community of solar researchers and entrepreneurs. But the founders are already thinking about next phases.“We are not limiting ourselves to the photovoltaics area,” says deQuilettes. “We’re planning on working in other clean energy materials such as batteries and fuel cells.”That’s because the team wants to make the maximum impact on the climate challenge. “We’ve thought a lot about the potential our tools will have on reducing carbon emissions, and we’ve done a really in-depth analysis looking at how our system can increase production yields of solar panels and other energy technologies, reducing materials and energy wasted in conventional optimization,” deQuilettes says. “If we look across all these sectors, we can expect to offset about 1,000 million metric tons of CO2 [carbon dioxide] per year in the not-too-distant future.”The team has written scale into its business plan. “We want to be the key enabler for bringing these new energy technologies to market,” says Motes. “We envision being deployed on every manufacturing line making these types of materials. It’s our goal to walk around and know that if we see a solar panel deployed, there’s a pretty high likelihood that it will be one we measured at some point.” More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Environment

      HPI-MIT design research collaboration creates powerful teams

      by

      The recent ransomware attack on ChangeHealthcare, which severed the network connecting health care providers, pharmacies, and hospitals with health insurance companies, demonstrates just how disruptive supply chain attacks can be. In this case, it hindered the ability of those providing medical services to submit insurance claims and receive payments.This sort of attack and other forms of data theft are becoming increasingly common and often target large, multinational corporations through the small and mid-sized vendors in their corporate supply chains, enabling breaks in these enormous systems of interwoven companies.Cybersecurity researchers at MIT and the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany, are focused on the different organizational security cultures that exist within large corporations and their vendors because it’s that difference that creates vulnerabilities, often due to the lack of emphasis on cybersecurity by the senior leadership in these small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).Keri Pearlson, executive director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS); Jillian Kwong, a research scientist at CAMS; and Christian Doerr, a professor of cybersecurity and enterprise security at HPI, are co-principal investigators (PIs) on the research project, “Culture and the Supply Chain: Transmitting Shared Values, Attitudes and Beliefs across Cybersecurity Supply Chains.”Their project was selected in the 2023 inaugural round of grants from the HPI-MIT Designing for Sustainability program, a multiyear partnership funded by HPI and administered by the MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD). The program awards about 10 grants annually of up to $200,000 each to multidisciplinary teams with divergent backgrounds in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, engineering, design, architecture, the natural sciences, humanities, and business and management. The 2024 Call for Applications is open through June 3.Designing for Sustainability grants support scientific research that promotes the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on topics involving sustainable design, innovation, and digital technologies, with teams made up of PIs from both institutions. The PIs on these projects, who have common interests but different strengths, create more powerful teams by working together.Transmitting shared values, attitudes, and beliefs to improve cybersecurity across supply chainsThe MIT and HPI cybersecurity researchers say that most ransomware attacks aren’t reported. Smaller companies hit with ransomware attacks just shut down, because they can’t afford the payment to retrieve their data. This makes it difficult to know just how many attacks and data breaches occur. “As more data and processes move online and into the cloud, it becomes even more important to focus on securing supply chains,” Kwong says. “Investing in cybersecurity allows information to be exchanged freely while keeping data safe. Without it, any progress towards sustainability is stalled.”One of the first large data breaches in the United States to be widely publicized provides a clear example of how an SME cybersecurity can leave a multinational corporation vulnerable to attack. In 2013, hackers entered the Target Corporation’s own network by obtaining the credentials of a small vendor in its supply chain: a Pennsylvania HVAC company. Through that breach, thieves were able to install malware that stole the financial and personal information of 110 million Target customers, which they sold to card shops on the black market.To prevent such attacks, SME vendors in a large corporation’s supply chain are required to agree to follow certain security measures, but the SMEs usually don’t have the expertise or training to make good on these cybersecurity promises, leaving their own systems, and therefore any connected to them, vulnerable to attack.“Right now, organizations are connected economically, but not aligned in terms of organizational culture, values, beliefs, and practices around cybersecurity,” explains Kwong. “Basically, the big companies are realizing the smaller ones are not able to implement all the cybersecurity requirements. We have seen some larger companies address this by reducing requirements or making the process shorter. However, this doesn’t mean companies are more secure; it just lowers the bar for the smaller suppliers to clear it.”Pearlson emphasizes the importance of board members and senior management taking responsibility for cybersecurity in order to change the culture at SMEs, rather than pushing that down to a single department, IT office, or in some cases, one IT employee.The research team is using case studies based on interviews, field studies, focus groups, and direct observation of people in their natural work environments to learn how companies engage with vendors, and the specific ways cybersecurity is implemented, or not, in everyday operations. The goal is to create a shared culture around cybersecurity that can be adopted correctly by all vendors in a supply chain.This approach is in line with the goals of the Charter of Trust Initiative, a partnership of large, multinational corporations formed to establish a better means of implementing cybersecurity in the supply chain network. The HPI-MIT team worked with companies from the Charter of Trust and others last year to understand the impacts of cybersecurity regulation on SME participation in supply chains and develop a conceptual framework to implement changes for stabilizing supply chains.Cybersecurity is a prerequisite needed to achieve any of the United Nations’ SDGs, explains Kwong. Without secure supply chains, access to key resources and institutions can be abruptly cut off. This could include food, clean water and sanitation, renewable energy, financial systems, health care, education, and resilient infrastructure. Securing supply chains helps enable progress on all SDGs, and the HPI-MIT project specifically supports SMEs, which are a pillar of the U.S. and European economies.Personalizing product designs while minimizing material wasteIn a vastly different Designing for Sustainability joint research project that employs AI with engineering, “Personalizing Product Designs While Minimizing Material Waste” will use AI design software to lay out multiple parts of a pattern on a sheet of plywood, acrylic, or other material, so that they can be laser cut to create new products in real time without wasting material.Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Patrick Baudisch, a professor of computer science and chair of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at HPI, are co-PIs on the project. The two have worked together for years; Baudisch was Mueller’s PhD research advisor at HPI.Baudisch’s lab developed an online design teaching system called Kyub that lets students design 3D objects in pieces that are laser cut from sheets of wood and assembled to become chairs, speaker boxes, radio-controlled aircraft, or even functional musical instruments. For instance, each leg of a chair would consist of four identical vertical pieces attached at the edges to create a hollow-centered column, four of which will provide stability to the chair, even though the material is very lightweight.“By designing and constructing such furniture, students learn not only design, but also structural engineering,” Baudisch says. “Similarly, by designing and constructing musical instruments, they learn about structural engineering, as well as resonance, types of musical tuning, etc.”Mueller was at HPI when Baudisch developed the Kyub software, allowing her to observe “how they were developing and making all the design decisions,” she says. “They built a really neat piece for people to quickly design these types of 3D objects.” However, using Kyub for material-efficient design is not fast; in order to fabricate a model, the software has to break the 3D models down into 2D parts and lay these out on sheets of material. This takes time, and makes it difficult to see the impact of design decisions on material use in real-time.Mueller’s lab at MIT developed software based on a layout algorithm that uses AI to lay out pieces on sheets of material in real time. This allows AI to explore multiple potential layouts while the user is still editing, and thus provide ongoing feedback. “As the user develops their design, Fabricaide decides good placements of parts onto the user’s available materials, provides warnings if the user does not have enough material for a design, and makes suggestions for how the user can resolve insufficient material cases,” according to the project website.The joint MIT-HPI project integrates Mueller’s AI software with Baudisch’s Kyub software and adds machine learning to train the AI to offer better design suggestions that save material while adhering to the user’s design intent.“The project is all about minimizing the waste on these materials sheets,” Mueller says. She already envisions the next step in this AI design process: determining how to integrate the laws of physics into the AI’s knowledge base to ensure the structural integrity and stability of objects it designs.AI-powered startup design for the Anthropocene: Providing guidance for novel enterprisesThrough her work with the teams of MITdesignX and its international programs, Svafa Grönfeldt, faculty director of MITdesignX and professor of the practice in MIT MAD, has helped scores of people in startup companies use the tools and methods of design to ensure that the solution a startup proposes actually fits the problem it seeks to solve. This is often called the problem-solution fit.Grönfeldt and MIT postdoc Norhan Bayomi are now extending this work to incorporate AI into the process, in collaboration with MIT Professor John Fernández and graduate student Tyler Kim. The HPI team includes Professor Gerard de Melo; HPI School of Entrepreneurship Director Frank Pawlitschek; and doctoral student Michael Mansfeld.“The startup ecosystem is characterized by uncertainty and volatility compounded by growing uncertainties in climate and planetary systems,” Grönfeldt says. “Therefore, there is an urgent need for a robust model that can objectively predict startup success and guide design for the Anthropocene.”While startup-success forecasting is gaining popularity, it currently focuses on aiding venture capitalists in selecting companies to fund, rather than guiding the startups in the design of their products, services and business plans.“The coupling of climate and environmental priorities with startup agendas requires deeper analytics for effective enterprise design,” Grönfeldt says. The project aims to explore whether AI-augmented decision-support systems can enhance startup-success forecasting.“We’re trying to develop a machine learning approach that will give a forecasting of probability of success based on a number of parameters, including the type of business model proposed, how the team came together, the team members’ backgrounds and skill sets, the market and industry sector they’re working in and the problem-solution fit,” says Bayomi, who works with Fernández in the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. The two are co-founders of the startup Lamarr.AI, which employs robotics and AI to help reduce the carbon dioxide impact of the built environment.The team is studying “how company founders make decisions across four key areas, starting from the opportunity recognition, how they are selecting the team members, how they are selecting the business model, identifying the most automatic strategy, all the way through the product market fit to gain an understanding of the key governing parameters in each of these areas,” explains Bayomi.The team is “also developing a large language model that will guide the selection of the business model by using large datasets from different companies in Germany and the U.S. We train the model based on the specific industry sector, such as a technology solution or a data solution, to find what would be the most suitable business model that would increase the success probability of a company,” she says.The project falls under several of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including economic growth, innovation and infrastructure, sustainable cities and communities, and climate action.Furthering the goals of the HPI-MIT Joint Research ProgramThese three diverse projects all advance the mission of the HPI-MIT collaboration. MIT MAD aims to use design to transform learning, catalyze innovation, and empower society by inspiring people from all disciplines to interweave design into problem-solving. HPI uses digital engineering concentrated on the development and research of user-oriented innovations for all areas of life.Interdisciplinary teams with members from both institutions are encouraged to develop and submit proposals for ambitious, sustainable projects that use design strategically to generate measurable, impactful solutions to the world’s problems. More