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      MIT researchers map the energy transition’s effects on jobs

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      A new analysis by MIT researchers shows the places in the U.S. where jobs are most linked to fossil fuels. The research could help policymakers better identify and support areas affected over time by a switch to renewable energy.

      While many of the places most potentially affected have intensive drilling and mining operations, the study also measures how areas reliant on other industries, such as heavy manufacturing, could experience changes. The research examines the entire U.S. on a county-by-county level.

      “Our result is that you see a higher carbon footprint for jobs in places that drill for oil, mine for coal, and drill for natural gas, which is evident in our maps,” says Christopher Knittel, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the findings. “But you also see high carbon footprints in areas where we do a lot of manufacturing, which is more likely to be missed by policymakers when examining how the transition to a zero-carbon economy will affect jobs.”

      So, while certain U.S. areas known for fossil-fuel production would certainly be affected — including west Texas, the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, parts of Appalachia, and more — a variety of industrial areas in the Great Plains and Midwest could see employment evolve as well.

      The paper, “Assessing the distribution of employment vulnerability to the energy transition using employment carbon footprints,” is published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors are Kailin Graham, a master’s student in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program and graduate research assistant at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; and Knittel, who is the George P. Shultz Professor at MIT Sloan.

      “Our results are unique in that we cover close to the entire U.S. economy and consider the impacts on places that produce fossil fuels but also on places that consume a lot of coal, oil, or natural gas for energy,” says Graham. “This approach gives us a much more complete picture of where communities might be affected and how support should be targeted.”

      Adjusting the targets

      The current study stems from prior research Knittel has conducted, measuring carbon footprints at the household level across the U.S. The new project takes a conceptually related approach, but for jobs in a given county. To conduct the study, the researchers used several data sources measuring energy consumption by businesses, as well as detailed employment data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

      The study takes advantage of changes in energy supply and demand over time to estimate how strongly a full range of jobs, not just those in energy production, are linked to use of fossil fuels. The sectors accounted for in the study comprise 86 percent of U.S. employment, and 94 percent of U.S. emissions apart from the transportation sector.

      The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in August 2022, is the first federal legislation seeking to provide an economic buffer for places affected by the transition away from fossil fuels. The act provides expanded tax credits for economic projects located in “energy community” areas — defined largely as places with high fossil-fuel industry employment or tax revenue and with high unemployment. Areas with recently closed or downsized coal mines or power plants also qualify.

      Graham and Knittel measured the “employment carbon footprint” (ECF) of each county in the U.S., producing new results. Out of more than 3,000 counties in the U.S., the researchers found that 124 are at the 90th percentile or above in ECF terms, while not qualifying for Inflation Reduction Act assistance. Another 79 counties are eligible for Inflation Reduction Act assistance, while being in the bottom 20 percent nationally in ECF terms.

      Those may not seem like colossal differences, but the findings identify real communities potentially being left out of federal policy, and highlight the need for new targeting of such programs. The research by Graham and Knittel offers a precise way to assess the industrial composition of U.S. counties, potentially helping to target economic assistance programs.

      “The impact on jobs of the energy transition is not just going to be where oil and natural gas are drilled, it’s going to be all the way up and down the value chain of things we make in the U.S.,” Knittel says. “That’s a more extensive, but still focused, problem.”

      Graham adds: “It’s important that policymakers understand these economy-wide employment impacts. Our aim in providing these data is to help policymakers incorporate these considerations into future policies like the Inflation Reduction Act.”

      Adapting policy

      Graham and Knittel are still evaluating what the best policy measures might be to help places in the U.S. adapt to a move away from fossil fuels.

      “What we haven’t necessarily closed the loop on is the right way to build a policy that takes account of these factors,” Knittel says. “The Inflation Reduction Act is the first policy to think about a [fair] energy transition because it has these subsidies for energy-dependent counties.” But given enough political backing, there may be room for additional policy measures in this area.

      One thing clearly showing through in the study’s data is that many U.S. counties are in a variety of situations, so there may be no one-size-fits-all approach to encouraging economic growth while making a switch to clean energy. What suits west Texas or Wyoming best may not work for more manufacturing-based local economies. And even among primary energy-production areas, there may be distinctions, among those drilling for oil or natural gas and those producing coal, based on the particular economics of those fuels. The study includes in-depth data about each county, characterizing its industrial portfolio, which may help tailor approaches to a range of economic situations.

      “The next step is using this data more specifically to design policies to protect these communities,” Knittel says. More

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      Faculty, staff, students to evaluate ways to decarbonize MIT’s campus

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      With a goal to decarbonize the MIT campus by 2050, the Institute must look at “new ideas, transformed into practical solutions, in record time,” as stated in “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade.” This charge calls on the MIT community to explore game-changing and evolving technologies with the potential to move campuses like MIT away from carbon emissions-based energy systems.

      To help meet this tremendous challenge, the Decarbonization Working Group — a new subset of the Climate Nucleus — recently launched. Comprised of appointed MIT faculty, researchers, and students, the working group is leveraging its members’ expertise to meet the charge of exploring and assessing existing and in-development solutions to decarbonize the MIT campus by 2050. The group is specifically charged with informing MIT’s efforts to decarbonize the campus’s district energy system.

      Co-chaired by Director of Sustainability Julie Newman and Department of Architecture Professor Christoph Reinhart, the working group includes members with deep knowledge of low- and zero-carbon technologies and grid-level strategies. In convening the group, Newman and Reinhart sought out members researching these technologies as well as exploring their practical use. “In my work on multiple projects on campus, I have seen how cutting-edge research often relies on energy-intensive equipment,” shares PhD student and group member Ippolyti Dellatolas. “It’s clear how new energy-efficiency strategies and technologies could use campus as a living lab and then broadly deploy these solutions across campus for scalable emissions reductions.” This approach is one of MIT’s strong suits and a recurring theme in its climate action plans — using the MIT campus as a test bed for learning and application. “We seek to study and analyze solutions for our campus, with the understanding that our findings have implications far beyond our campus boundaries,” says Newman.

      The efforts of the working group represent just one part of the multipronged approach to identify ways to decarbonize the MIT campus. The group will work in parallel and at times collaboratively with the team from the Office of the Vice President for Campus Services and Stewardship that is managing the development plan for potential zero-carbon pathways for campus buildings and the district energy system. In May 2023, MIT engaged Affiliated Engineers, Inc. (AEI), to support the Institute’s efforts to identify, evaluate, and model various carbon-reduction strategies and technologies to provide MIT with a series of potential decarbonization pathways. Each of the pathways must demonstrate how to manage the generation of energy and its distribution and use on campus. As MIT explores electrification, a significant challenge will be the availability of resilient clean power from the grid to help generate heat for our campus without reliance on natural gas.

      When the Decarbonization Working Group began work this fall, members took the time to learn more about current systems and baseline information. Beginning this month, members will organize analysis around each of their individual areas of expertise and interest and begin to evaluate existing and emerging carbon reduction technologies. “We are fortunate that there are constantly new ideas and technologies being tested in this space and that we have a committed group of faculty working together to evaluate them,” Newman says. “We are aware that not every technology is the right fit for our unique dense urban campus, and nor are we solving for a zero-carbon campus as an island, but rather in the context of an evolving regional power grid.”

      Supported by funding from the Climate Nucleus, evaluating technologies will include site visits to locations where priority technologies are currently deployed or being tested. These site visits may range from university campuses implementing district geothermal and heat pumps to test sites of deep geothermal or microgrid infrastructure manufacturers. “This is a unique moment for MIT to demonstrate leadership by combining best decarbonization practices, such as retrofitting building systems to achieve deep energy reductions and converting to low-temperature district heating systems with ‘nearly there’ technologies such as deep geothermal, micronuclear, energy storage, and ubiquitous occupancy-driven temperature control,” says Reinhart. “As first adopters, we can find out what works, allowing other campuses to follow us at reduced risks.”

      The findings and recommendations of the working group will be delivered in a report to the community at the end of 2024. There will be opportunities for the MIT community to learn more about MIT’s decarbonization efforts at community events on Jan. 24 and March 14, as well as MIT’s Sustainability Connect forum on Feb. 8. More

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      Meeting the clean energy needs of tomorrow

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      Yuri Sebregts, chief technology officer at Shell, succinctly laid out the energy dilemma facing the world over the rest of this century. On one hand, demand for energy is quickly growing as countries in the developing world modernize and the global population grows, with 100 gigajoules of energy per person needed annually to enable quality-of-life benefits and industrialization around the globe. On the other, traditional energy sources are quickly warming the planet, with the world already seeing the devastating effects of increasingly frequent extreme weather events. 

      While the goals of energy security and energy sustainability are seemingly at odds with one another, the two must be pursued in tandem, Sebregts said during his address at the MIT Energy Initiative Fall Colloquium.

      “An environmentally sustainable energy system that isn’t also a secure energy system is not sustainable,” Sebregts said. “And conversely, a secure energy system that is not environmentally sustainable will do little to ensure long-term energy access and affordability. Therefore, security and sustainability must go hand-in-hand. You can’t trade off one for the other.”

      Sebregts noted that there are several potential pathways to help strike this balance, including investments in renewable energy sources, the use of carbon offsets, and the creation of more efficient tools, products, and processes. However, he acknowledged that meeting growing energy demands while minimizing environmental impacts is a global challenge requiring an unprecedented level of cooperation among countries and corporations across the world. 

      “At Shell, we recognize that this will require a lot of collaboration between governments, businesses, and civil society,” Sebregts said. “That’s not always easy.”

      Global conflict and global warming

      In 2021, Sebregts noted, world leaders gathered in Glasgow, Scotland and collectively promised to deliver on the “stretch goal” of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which would limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — a level that scientists believe will help avoid the worst potential impacts of climate change. But, just a few months later, Russia invaded Ukraine, resulting in chaos in global energy markets and illustrating the massive impact that geopolitical friction can have on efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

      “Even though global volatility has been a near constant of this century, the situation in Ukraine is proving to be a turning point,” Sebregts said. “The stress it placed on the global supply of energy, food, and other critical materials was enormous.”

      In Europe, Sebregts noted, countries affected by the loss of Russia’s natural gas supply began importing from the Middle East and the United States. This, in turn, drove up prices. While this did result in some efforts to limit energy use, such as Europeans lowering their thermostats in the winter, it also caused some energy buyers to turn to coal. For instance, the German government approved additional coal mining to boost its energy security — temporarily reversing a decades-long transition away from the fuel. To put this into wider perspective, in a single quarter, China increased its coal generation capacity by as much as Germany had reduced its own over the previous 20 years.

      The promise of electrification

      Sebregts noted the strides being made toward electrification, which is expected to have a significant impact on global carbon emissions. To meet net-zero emissions (the point at which humans are adding no more carbon to the atmosphere than they are removing) by 2050, the share of electricity as a portion of total worldwide energy consumption must reach 37 percent by 2030, up from 20 percent in 2020, Sebregts said.

      He pointed out that Shell has become one of the world’s largest electric vehicle charging companies, with more than 30,000 public charge points. By 2025, that number will increase to 70,000, and it is expected to soar to 200,000 by 2030. While demand and infrastructure for electric vehicles are growing, Sebregts said that the “real needle-mover” will be industrial electrification, especially in so-called “hard-to-abate” sectors.

      This progress will depend heavily on global cooperation — Sebregts pointed out that China dominates the international market for many rare elements that are key components of electrification infrastructure. “It shouldn’t be a surprise that the political instability, shifting geopolitical tensions, and environmental and social governance issues are significant risks for the energy transition,” he said. “It is imperative that we reduce, control, and mitigate these risks as much as possible.”

      Two possible paths

      For decades, Sebregts said, Shell has created scenarios to help senior managers think through the long-term challenges facing the company. While Sebregts stressed that these scenarios are not predictions, they do take into account real-world conditions, and they are meant to give leaders the opportunity to grapple with plausible situations.

      With this in mind, Sebregts outlined Shell’s most recent Energy Security Scenarios, describing the potential future consequences of attempts to balance growing energy demand with sustainability — scenarios that envision vastly different levels of global cooperation, with huge differences in projected results. 

      The first scenario, dubbed “Archipelagos,” imagines countries pursuing energy security through self-interest — a fragmented, competitive process that would result in a global temperature increase of 2.2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. The second scenario, “Sky 2050,” envisions countries around the world collaborating to change the energy system for their mutual benefit. This more optimistic scenario would see a much lower global temperature increase of 1.2 C by 2100.

      “The good news is that in both scenarios, the world is heading for net-zero emissions at some point,” Sebregts said. “The difference is a question of when it gets there. In Sky 2050, it is the middle of the century. In Archipelagos, it is early in the next century.”

      On the other hand, Sebregts added, the average global temperature will increase by more than 1.5 C for some period of time in either scenario. But, in the Archipelagos scenario, this overshoot will be much larger, and will take much longer to come down. “So, two very different futures,” Sebregts said. “Two very different worlds.”

      The work ahead

      Questioned about the costs of transitioning to a net-zero energy ecosystem, Sebregts said that it is “very hard” to provide an accurate answer. “If you impose an additional constraint … you’re going to have to add some level of cost,” he said. “But then, of course, there’s 30 years of technology development pathway that might counteract some of that.”

      In some cases, such as air travel, Sebregts said, it will likely remain impractical to either rely on electrification or sequester carbon at the source of emission. Direct air capture (DAC) methods, which mechanically pull carbon directly from the atmosphere, will have a role to play in offsetting these emissions, he said. Sebregts predicted that the price of DAC could come down significantly by the middle of this century. “I would venture that a price of $200 to $250 a ton of CO2 by 2050 is something that the world would be willing to spend, at least in developed economies, to offset those very hard-to-abate instances.”

      Sebregts noted that Shell is working on demonstrating DAC technologies in Houston, Texas, constructing what will become Europe’s largest hydrogen plant in the Netherlands, and taking other steps to profitably transition to a net-zero emissions energy company by 2050. “We need to understand what can help our customers transition quicker and how we can continue to satisfy their needs,” he said. “We must ensure that energy is affordable, accessible, and sustainable, as soon as possible.” More

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      Soaring high, in the Army and the lab

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      Starting off as a junior helicopter pilot, Lt. Col. Jill Rahon deployed to Afghanistan three times. During the last one, she was an air mission commander, the  pilot who is designated to interface with the ground troops throughout the mission.

      Today, Rahon is a fourth-year doctoral student studying applied physics at the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). Under the supervision of Areg Danagoulian, she is working on engineering solutions for enforcement of nuclear nonproliferation treaties. Rahon and her husband have 2-year-old twins: “They have the same warm relationship with my advisor that I had with my dad’s (PhD) advisor,” she says.

      Jill Rahon: Engineering solutions for enforcement of nuclear nonproliferation treaties

      A path to the armed forces

      The daughter of a health physicist father and a food chemist mother, Rahon grew up in the Hudson Valley, very close to New York City. Nine-eleven was a life-altering event: “Many of my friends’ fathers and uncles were policemen and firefighters [who] died responding to the attacks,” Rahon says. A hurt and angry teenager, Rahon was determined to do her part to help: She joined the Army and decided to pursue science, becoming part of the first class to enter West Point after 9/11.

      Rahon started by studying strategic history, a field that covers treaties and geopolitical relationships. It would prove useful later. Inspired by her father, who works in the nuclear field, Rahon added on a nuclear science and engineering track.

      After graduating from West Point, Rahon wanted to join active combat and chose aviation. At flight school in Fort Novosel, Alabama, she discovered that she loved flying. It was there that Rahon learned to fly the legendary Chinook helicopter. In short order, Rahon was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and deployed to Afghanistan quickly thereafter.

      As expected, flying in Afghanistan, especially on night missions, was adrenaline-charged. “You’re thinking on the fly, you’re talking on five different radios, you’re making decisions for all the helicopters that are part of the mission,” Rahon remembers. Very often Rahon and her cohorts did not have the luxury of time. “We would get information that would need to be acted on quickly,” she says. During the planning meetings, she would be delighted to see a classmate from West Point function as the ground forces commander. “It would be surprising to see somebody you knew from a different setting halfway around the world, working toward common goals,” Rahon says.

      Also awesome: helping launch the first training program for female pilots to be recruited in the Afghan National Air Force. “I got to meet [and mentor] these strong young women who maybe didn’t have the same encouragement that I had growing up and they were out there hanging tough,” Rahon says.

      Exploring physics and nuclear engineering

      After serving in the combat forces, Rahon decided she wanted to teach physics at West Point. She applied to become a part of the Functional Area (FA52) as a nuclear and countering weapons of mass destruction officer.

      FA52 officers provide nuclear technical advice to maneuver commanders about nuclear weapons, effects, and operating in a nuclear environment or battlefield. Rahon’s specialty is radiation detection and operations in a nuclear environment, which poses unique threats and challenges to forces.

      Knowing she wanted to teach at West Point, she “brushed up extensively on math and physics” and applied to MIT NSE to pursue a master’s degree. “My fellow students were such an inspiration. They might not have had the same life experiences that I had but were still so mature and driven and knowledgeable not only about nuclear engineering but how that fits in the energy sector and in politics,” Rahon says.

      Resonance analysis to verify treaties

      Rahon returned to NSE to pursue her doctorate, where she does a “lot of detection and treaty verification work.”

      When looking at nuclear fuels to verify safeguards for treaties, experts search for the presence and quantities of heavy elements such as uranium, plutonium, thorium, and any of their decay products. To do so nondestructively is of high importance so they don’t destroy a piece of the material or fuel to identify it.

      Rahon’s research is built on resonance analysis, the fact that most midrange to heavy isotopes have unique resonance signatures that are accessed by neutrons of epithermal energy, which is relatively low on the scale of possible neutron energies. This means they travel slowly — crossing a distance of 2 meters in tens of microseconds, permitting their detection time to be used to calculate their energy.

      Studying how neutrons of a particular energy interact with a sample to identify worrisome nuclear materials is much like studying fingerprints to solve crimes. Isotopes that have a spike in likelihood of interaction occurring over a small neutron energy are said to have resonances, and these resonance patterns are isotopically unique. Experts can use this technique to nondestructively assess an item, identifying the constituent isotopes and their concentrations.

      Resonance analysis can be used to verify that the fuels are what the nuclear plant owner says they are. “There are a lot of safeguards activities and verification protocols that are managed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure that a state is not misusing nuclear power for ulterior motives,” Rahon points out. And her method helps.

      “Our technique that leverages resonance analysis is nothing new,” Rahon says, “It’s been applied practically since the ’70s at very large beam facilities, hundreds of meters long with a very large accelerator that pulses neutrons, and then you’re able to correlate a neutron time of flight with a resonance profile. What we’ve done that is novel is we’ve shrunk it down to a 3-meter system with a portable neutron residence generator and a 2-meter beam path,” she says.

      Mobility confers many significant advantages: “This is something that could be conceivably put on the back of a truck and moved to a fuel facility, then driven to the next one for inspections or put at a treaty verification site. It could be taken out to a silo field where they are dismantling nuclear weapons,” Rahon says. However, the miniaturization does come with significant challenges, such as the neutron generator’s impacts on the signal to noise ratio.

      Rahon is delighted her research can ensure that a necessary fuel source will not be misused. “We need nuclear power. We need low-carbon solutions for energy and we need safe ones. We need to ensure that this powerful technology is not being misused. And that’s why these engineering solutions are needed for these safeguards,” she says.

      Rahon sees parallels between her time in active duty and her doctoral research. Teamwork and communication are key in both, she says. Her dad is her role model and Rahon is a firm believer in mentorship, something she nurtured both in the armed forces and at MIT. “My advisor is genuinely a wonderful person who has always given me so much support from not only being a student, but also being a parent,” Rahon adds.

      In turn, Danagoulian has been impressed by Rahon’s remarkable abilities: “Raising twins, doing research in applied nuclear physics, and flying coalition forces into Taliban territory while evading ground fire … [Jill] developed her own research project with minimal help from me and defended it brilliantly during the first part of the exam,” he says. 

      It seems that Rahon flies high no matter which mission she takes on. More

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      Study reveals a reaction at the heart of many renewable energy technologies

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      A key chemical reaction — in which the movement of protons between the surface of an electrode and an electrolyte drives an electric current — is a critical step in many energy technologies, including fuel cells and the electrolyzers used to produce hydrogen gas.

      For the first time, MIT chemists have mapped out in detail how these proton-coupled electron transfers happen at an electrode surface. Their results could help researchers design more efficient fuel cells, batteries, or other energy technologies.

      “Our advance in this paper was studying and understanding the nature of how these electrons and protons couple at a surface site, which is relevant for catalytic reactions that are important in the context of energy conversion devices or catalytic reactions,” says Yogesh Surendranath, a professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study.

      Among their findings, the researchers were able to trace exactly how changes in the pH of the electrolyte solution surrounding an electrode affect the rate of proton motion and electron flow within the electrode.

      MIT graduate student Noah Lewis is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Chemistry. Ryan Bisbey, a former MIT postdoc; Karl Westendorff, an MIT graduate student; and Alexander Soudackov, a research scientist at Yale University, are also authors of the paper.

      Passing protons

      Proton-coupled electron transfer occurs when a molecule, often water or an acid, transfers a proton to another molecule or to an electrode surface, which stimulates the proton acceptor to also take up an electron. This kind of reaction has been harnessed for many energy applications.

      “These proton-coupled electron transfer reactions are ubiquitous. They are often key steps in catalytic mechanisms, and are particularly important for energy conversion processes such as hydrogen generation or fuel cell catalysis,” Surendranath says.

      In a hydrogen-generating electrolyzer, this approach is used to remove protons from water and add electrons to the protons to form hydrogen gas. In a fuel cell, electricity is generated when protons and electrons are removed from hydrogen gas and added to oxygen to form water.

      Proton-coupled electron transfer is common in many other types of chemical reactions, for example, carbon dioxide reduction (the conversion of carbon dioxide into chemical fuels by adding electrons and protons). Scientists have learned a great deal about how these reactions occur when the proton acceptors are molecules, because they can precisely control the structure of each molecule and observe how electrons and protons pass between them. However, when proton-coupled electron transfer occurs at the surface of an electrode, the process is much more difficult to study because electrode surfaces are usually very heterogenous, with many different sites that a proton could potentially bind to.

      To overcome that obstacle, the MIT team developed a way to design electrode surfaces that gives them much more precise control over the composition of the electrode surface. Their electrodes consist of sheets of graphene with organic, ring-containing compounds attached to the surface. At the end of each of these organic molecules is a negatively charged oxygen ion that can accept protons from the surrounding solution, which causes an electron to flow from the circuit into the graphitic surface.

      “We can create an electrode that doesn’t consist of a wide diversity of sites but is a uniform array of a single type of very well-defined sites that can each bind a proton with the same affinity,” Surendranath says. “Since we have these very well-defined sites, what this allowed us to do was really unravel the kinetics of these processes.”

      Using this system, the researchers were able to measure the flow of electrical current to the electrodes, which allowed them to calculate the rate of proton transfer to the oxygen ion at the surface at equilibrium — the state when the rates of proton donation to the surface and proton transfer back to solution from the surface are equal. They found that the pH of the surrounding solution has a significant effect on this rate: The highest rates occurred at the extreme ends of the pH scale — pH 0, the most acidic, and pH 14, the most basic.

      To explain these results, researchers developed a model based on two possible reactions that can occur at the electrode. In the first, hydronium ions (H3O+), which are in high concentration in strongly acidic solutions, deliver protons to the surface oxygen ions, generating water. In the second, water delivers protons to the surface oxygen ions, generating hydroxide ions (OH-), which are in high concentration in strongly basic solutions.

      However, the rate at pH 0 is about four times faster than the rate at pH 14, in part because hydronium gives up protons at a faster rate than water.

      A reaction to reconsider

      The researchers also discovered, to their surprise, that the two reactions have equal rates not at neutral pH 7, where hydronium and hydroxide concentrations are equal, but at pH 10, where the concentration of hydroxide ions is 1 million times that of hydronium. The model suggests this is because the forward reaction involving proton donation from hydronium or water contributes more to the overall rate than the backward reaction involving proton removal by water or hydroxide.

      Existing models of how these reactions occur at electrode surfaces assume that the forward and backward reactions contribute equally to the overall rate, so the new findings suggest that those models may need to be reconsidered, the researchers say.

      “That’s the default assumption, that the forward and reverse reactions contribute equally to the reaction rate,” Surendranath says. “Our finding is really eye-opening because it means that the assumption that people are using to analyze everything from fuel cell catalysis to hydrogen evolution may be something we need to revisit.”

      The researchers are now using their experimental setup to study how adding different types of ions to the electrolyte solution surrounding the electrode may speed up or slow down the rate of proton-coupled electron flow.

      “With our system, we know that our sites are constant and not affecting each other, so we can read out what the change in the solution is doing to the reaction at the surface,” Lewis says.

      The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences. More

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      The future of motorcycles could be hydrogen

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      MIT’s Electric Vehicle Team, which has a long record of building and racing innovative electric vehicles, including cars and motorcycles, in international professional-level competitions, is trying something very different this year: The team is building a hydrogen-powered electric motorcycle, using a fuel cell system, as a testbed for new hydrogen-based transportation.

      The motorcycle successfully underwent its first full test-track demonstration in October. It is designed as an open-source platform that should make it possible to swap out and test a variety of different components, and for others to try their own versions based on plans the team is making freely available online.

      Aditya Mehrotra, who is spearheading the project, is a graduate student working with mechanical engineering professor Alex Slocum, the Walter M. May  and A. Hazel May Chair in Emerging Technologies. Mehrotra was studying energy systems and happened to also really like motorcycles, he says, “so we came up with the idea of a hydrogen-powered bike. We did an evaluation study, and we thought that this could actually work. We [decided to] try to build it.”

      Team members say that while battery-powered cars are a boon for the environment, they still face limitations in range and have issues associated with the mining of lithium and resulting emissions. So, the team was interested in exploring hydrogen-powered vehicles as a clean alternative, allowing for vehicles that could be quickly refilled just like gasoline-powered vehicles.

      Unlike past projects by the team, which has been part of MIT since 2005, this vehicle will not be entering races or competitions but will be presented at a variety of conferences. The team, consisting of about a dozen students, has been working on building the prototype since January 2023. In October they presented the bike at the Hydrogen Americas Summit, and in May they will travel to the Netherlands to present it at the World Hydrogen Summit. In addition to the two hydrogen summits, the team plans to show its bike at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month.

      “We’re hoping to use this project as a chance to start conversations around ‘small hydrogen’ systems that could increase demand, which could lead to the development of more infrastructure,” Mehrotra says. “We hope the project can help find new and creative applications for hydrogen.” In addition to these demonstrations and the online information the team will provide, he adds, they are also working toward publishing papers in academic journals describing their project and lessons learned from it, in hopes of making “an impact on the energy industry.”

      Play video

      For the love of speed: Building a hydrogen-powered motorcycle

      The motorcycle took shape over the course of the year piece by piece. “We got a couple of industry sponsors to donate components like the fuel cell and a lot of the major components of the system,” he says. They also received support from the MIT Energy Initiative, the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the MIT Edgerton Center.

      Initial tests were conducted on a dynamometer, a kind of instrumented treadmill Mehrotra describes as “basically a mock road.” The vehicle used battery power during its development, until the fuel cell, provided by South Korean company Doosan, could be delivered and installed. The space the group has used to design and build the prototype, the home of the Electric Vehicle Team, is in MIT’s Building N51 and is well set up to do detailed testing of each of the bike’s components as it is developed and integrated.

      Elizabeth Brennan, a senior in mechanical engineering, says she joined the team in January 2023 because she wanted to gain more electrical engineering experience, “and I really fell in love with it.” She says group members “really care and are very excited to be here and work on this bike and believe in the project.”

      Brennan, who is the team’s safety lead, has been learning about the safe handling methods required for the bike’s hydrogen fuel, including the special tanks and connectors needed. The team initially used a commercially available electric motor for the prototype but is now working on an improved version, designed from scratch, she says, “which gives us a lot more flexibility.”

      As part of the project, team members are developing a kind of textbook describing what they did and how they carried out each step in the process of designing and fabricating this hydrogen electric fuel-cell bike. No such motorcycle yet exists as a commercial product, though a few prototypes have been built.

      That kind of guidebook to the process “just doesn’t exist,” Brennan says. She adds that “a lot of the technology development for hydrogen is either done in simulation or is still in the prototype stages, because developing it is expensive, and it’s difficult to test these kinds of systems.” One of the team’s goals for the project is to make everything available as an open-source design, and “we want to provide this bike as a platform for researchers and for education, where researchers can test ideas in both space- and funding-constrained environments.”

      Unlike a design built as a commercial product, Mehrotra says, “our vehicle is fully designed for research, so you can swap components in and out, and get real hardware data on how good your designs are.” That can help people work on implementing their new design ideas and help push the industry forward, he says.

      The few prototypes developed previously by some companies were inefficient and expensive, he says. “So far as we know, we are the first fully open-source, rigorously documented, tested and released-as-a-platform, [fuel cell] motorcycle in the world. No one else has made a motorcycle and tested it to the level that we have, and documented to the point that someone might actually be able to take this and scale it in the future, or use it in research.”

      He adds that “at the moment, this vehicle is affordable for research, but it’s not affordable yet for commercial production because the fuel cell is a very big, expensive component.” Doosan Fuel Cell, which provided the fuel cell for the prototype bike, produces relatively small and lightweight fuel cells mostly for use in drones. The company also produces hydrogen storage and delivery systems.

      The project will continue to evolve, says team member Annika Marschner, a sophomore in mechanical engineering. “It’s sort of an ongoing thing, and as we develop it and make changes, make it a stronger, better bike, it will just continue to grow over the years, hopefully,” she says.

      While the Electric Vehicle Team has until now focused on battery-powered vehicles, Marschner says, “Right now we’re looking at hydrogen because it seems like something that’s been less explored than other technologies for making sustainable transportation. So, it seemed like an exciting thing for us to offer our time and effort to.”

      Making it all work has been a long process. The team is using a frame from a 1999 motorcycle, with many custom-made parts added to support the electric motor, the hydrogen tank, the fuel cell, and the drive train. “Making everything fit in the frame of the bike is definitely something we’ve had to think about a lot because there’s such limited space there. So, it required trying to figure out how to mount things in clever ways so that there are not conflicts,” she says.

      Marschner says, “A lot of people don’t really imagine hydrogen energy being something that’s out there being used on the roads, but the technology does exist.” She points out that Toyota and Hyundai have hydrogen-fueled vehicles on the market, and that some hydrogen fuel stations exist, mostly in California, Japan, and some European countries. But getting access to hydrogen, “for your average consumer on the East Coast, is a huge, huge challenge. Infrastructure is definitely the biggest challenge right now to hydrogen vehicles,” she says.

      She sees a bright future for hydrogen as a clean fuel to replace fossil fuels over time. “I think it has a huge amount of potential,” she says. “I think one of the biggest challenges with moving hydrogen energy forward is getting these demonstration projects actually developed and showing that these things can work and that they can work well. So, we’re really excited to bring it along further.” More

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      MIT researchers outline a path for scaling clean hydrogen production

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      Hydrogen is an integral component for the manufacture of steel, fertilizer, and a number of chemicals. Producing hydrogen using renewable electricity offers a way to clean up these and many other hard-to-decarbonize industries.

      But supporting the nascent clean hydrogen industry while ensuring it grows into a true force for decarbonization is complicated, in large part because of the challenges of sourcing clean electricity. To assist regulators and to clarify disagreements in the field, MIT researchers published a paper today in Nature Energy that outlines a path to scale the clean hydrogen industry while limiting emissions.

      Right now, U.S. electric grids are mainly powered by fossil fuels, so if scaling hydrogen production translates to greater electricity use, it could result in a major emissions increase. There is also the risk that “low-carbon” hydrogen projects could end up siphoning renewable energy that would have been built anyway for the grid. It is therefore critical to ensure that low-carbon hydrogen procures electricity from “additional” renewables, especially when hydrogen production is supported by public subsidies. The challenge is allowing hydrogen producers to procure renewable electricity in a cost-effective way that helps the industry grow, while minimizing the risk of high emissions.

      U.S. regulators have been tasked with sorting out this complexity. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is offering generous production tax credits for low-carbon hydrogen. But the law didn’t specify exactly how hydrogen’s carbon footprint should be judged.

      To this end, the paper proposes a phased approach to qualify for the tax credits. In the first phase, hydrogen created from grid electricity can receive the credits under looser standards as the industry gets its footing. Once electricity demand for hydrogen production grows, the industry should be required to adhere to stricter standards for ensuring the electricity is coming from renewable sources. Finally, many years from now when the grid is mainly powered by renewable energy, the standards can loosen again.

      The researchers say the nuanced approach ensures the law supports the growth of clean hydrogen without coming at the expense of emissions.

      “If we can scale low-carbon hydrogen production, we can cut some significant sources of existing emissions and enable decarbonization of other critical industries,” says paper co-author Michael Giovanniello, a graduate student in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program. “At the same time, there’s a real risk of implementing the wrong requirements and wasting lots of money to subsidize carbon-intensive hydrogen production. So, you have to balance scaling the industry with reducing the risk of emissions. I hope there’s clarity and foresight in how this policy is implemented, and I hope our paper makes the argument clear for policymakers.”

      Giovanniello’s co-authors on the paper are MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Principal Research Scientist Dharik Mallapragada, MITEI Research Assistant Anna Cybulsky, and MIT Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer Tim Schittekatte.

      On definitions and disagreements

      When renewable electricity from a wind farm or solar array flows through the grid, it’s mixed with electricity from fossil fuels. The situation raises a question worth billions of dollars in federal tax credits: What are the carbon dioxide emissions of grid users who are also signing agreements to procure electricity from renewables?

      One way to answer this question is via energy system models that can simulate various scenarios related to technology configurations and qualifying requirements for receiving the credit.

      To date, many studies using such models have come up with very different emissions estimates for electrolytic hydrogen production. One source of disagreement is over “time matching,” which refers to how strictly to align the timing of electric hydrogen production with the generation of clean electricity. One proposed approach, known as hourly time matching, would require that electricity consumption to produce hydrogen is accounted for by procured clean electricity at every hour.

      A less stringent approach, called annual time matching, would offer more flexibility in hourly electricity consumption for hydrogen production, so long as the annual consumption matches the annual generation from the procured clean electricity generation. The added flexibility could reduce the cost of hydrogen production, which is critical for scaling its use, but could lead to greater emissions per unit of hydrogen produced.

      Another point of disagreement stems from how hydrogen producers purchase renewable electricity. If an electricity user procures energy from an existing solar farm, it’s simply increasing overall electricity demand and taking clean energy away from other users. But if the tax credits only go to electric hydrogen producers that sign power purchase agreements with new renewable suppliers, they’re supporting clean electricity that wouldn’t have otherwise been contributing to the grid. This concept is known as “additionality.”

      The researchers analyzed previous studies that reached conflicting conclusions, and identified different interpretations of additionality underlying their methodologies. One interpretation of additionality is that new electrolytic hydrogen projects do not compete with nonhydrogen demand for renewable energy resources. The other assumes that they do compete for all newly deployed renewables — and, because of low-carbon hydrogen subsidies, the electrolyzers take priority.

      Using DOLPHYN, an open-source energy systems model, the researchers tested how these two interpretations of additionality (the “compete” and “noncompete” scenarios) impact the cost and emissions of the alternative time-matching requirements (hourly and annual) associated with grid-interconnected hydrogen production. They modeled two regional U.S. grids — in Texas and Florida — which represent the high and low end of renewables deployment. They further tested the interaction of four critical policy factors with the hydrogen tax credits, including renewable portfolio standards, constraints of renewables and energy storage deployment, limits on hydrogen electrolyzer capacity factors, and competition with natural gas-based hydrogen with carbon capture.

      They show that the different modeling interpretations of additionality are the primary factor explaining the vastly different estimates of emissions from electrolyzer hydrogen under annual time-matching.

      Getting policy right

      The paper concludes that the right way to implement the production tax credit qualifying requirements depends on whether you believe we live in a “compete” or “noncompete” world. But reality is not so binary.

      “What framework is more appropriate is going to change with time as we deploy more hydrogen and the grid decarbonizes, so therefore the policy has to be adaptive to those changes,” Mallapragada says. “It’s an evolving story that’s tied to what’s happening in the rest of the energy system, and in particular the electric grid, both from the technological as policy perspective.”

      Today, renewables deployment is driven, in part, by binding factors, such as state renewable portfolio standards and corporate clean-energy commitments, as well as by purely market forces. Since the electrolyzer is so nascent, and today resembles a “noncompete” world, the researchers argue for starting with the less strict annual requirement. But as hydrogen demand for renewable electricity grows, and market competition drives an increasing quantity of renewables deployment, transitioning to hourly matching will be necessary to avoid high emissions.

      This phased approach necessitates deliberate, long-term planning from regulators. “If regulators make a decision and don’t outline when they’ll reassess that decision, they might never reassess that decision, so we might get locked into a bad policy,” Giovanniello explains. In particular, the paper highlights the risk of locking in an annual time-matching requirement that leads to significant emissions in future.

      The researchers hope their findings will contribute to upcoming policy decisions around the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits. They started looking into this question around a year ago, making it a quick turnaround by academic standards.

      “There was definitely a sense to be timely in our analysis so as to be responsive to the needs of policy,” Mallapragada says.

      The researchers say the paper can also help policymakers understand the emissions impacts of companies procuring renewable energy credits to meet net-zero targets and electricity suppliers attempting to sell “green” electricity.

      “This question is relevant in a lot of different domains,” Schittekatte says. “Other popular examples are the emission impacts of data centers that procure green power, or even the emission impacts of your own electric car sourcing power from your rooftop solar and the grid. There are obviously differences based on the technology in question, but the underlying research question we’ve answered is the same. This is an extremely important topic for the energy transition.” More

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      Making nuclear energy facilities easier to build and transport

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      For the United States to meet its net zero goals, nuclear energy needs to be on the smorgasbord of options. The problem: Its production still suffers from a lack of scale. To increase access rapidly, we need to stand up reactors quickly, says Isabel Naranjo De Candido, a third-year doctoral student advised by Professor Koroush Shirvan.

      One option is to work with microreactors, transportable units that can be wheeled to areas that need clean electricity. Naranjo De Candido’s master’s thesis at MIT, supervised by Professor Jacopo Buongiorno, focused on such reactors.

      Another way to improve access to nuclear energy is to develop reactors that are modular so their component units can be manufactured quickly while still maintaining quality. “The idea is that you apply the industrialization techniques of manufacturing so companies produce more [nuclear] vessels, with a more predictable supply chain,” she says. The assumption is that working with standardized recipes to manufacture just a few designed components over and over again improves speed and reliability and decreases cost.

      As part of her doctoral studies, Naranjo De Candido is working on optimizing the operations and management of these small, modular reactors so they can be efficient in all stages of their lifecycle: building; operations and maintenance; and decommissioning. The motivation for her research is simple: “We need nuclear for climate change because we need a reliable and stable source of energy to fight climate change,” she says.

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      A childhood in Italy

      Despite her passion for nuclear energy and engineering today, Naranjo De Candido was unsure what she wanted to pursue after high school in Padua, Italy. The daughter of a physician Italian mother and an architect Spanish father, she enrolled in a science-based high school shortly after middle school, as she knew that was the track she enjoyed best.

      Having earned very high marks in school, she won a full scholarship to study in Pisa, at the special Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies. Housed in a centuries-old convent, the school granted only masters and doctoral degrees. “I had to select what to study but I was unsure. I knew I was interested in engineering,” she recalls, “so I selected mechanical engineering because it’s more generic.”

      It turns out Sant’Anna was a perfect fit for Naranjo De Candido to explore her passions. An inspirational nuclear engineering course during her studies set her on the path toward studying the field as part of her master’s studies in Pisa. During her time there, she traveled around the world — to China as part of a student exchange program and to Switzerland and the United States for internships. “I formed a good background and curriculum and that allowed me to [gain admission] to MIT,” she says.

      At an internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, she met an MIT mechanical engineering student who encouraged her to apply to the school for doctoral studies. Yet another mentor in the Italian nuclear sector had also suggested she apply to MIT to pursue nuclear engineering, so she decided to take the leap.

      And she is glad she did.

      Improving access to nuclear energy

      At MIT, Naranjo De Candido is working on improving access to nuclear energy by scaling down reactor size and, in the case of microreactors, making them mobile enough to travel to places where they’re needed. “The idea with a microreactor is that when the fuel is exhausted, you replace the entire microreactor onsite with a freshly fueled unit and take the old one back to a central facility where it’s going to be refueled,” she says. One of the early use cases for such microreactors has been remote mining sites which need reliable power 24/7.

      Modular reactors, about 10 times the size of microreactors, ensure access differently: The components can be manufactured and installed at scale. These reactors don’t just deliver electricity but also cater to the market for industrial heat, she says. “You can locate them close to industrial facilities and use the heat directly to power ammonia or hydrogen production or water desalinization for example,” she adds.

      As more of these modular reactors are installed, the industry is expected to expand to include enterprises that choose to simply build them and hand off operations to other companies. Whereas traditional nuclear energy reactors might have a full suite of staff on board, smaller-scale reactors such as modular ones cannot afford to staff in large numbers, so talent needs to be optimized and staff shared among many units. “Many of these companies are very interested in knowing exactly how many people and how much money to allocate, and how to organize resources to serve more than one reactor at the same time,” she says.

      Naranjo De Candido is working on a complex software program that factors in a large range of variables — from raw materials cost and worker training, reactor size, megawatt output and more — and leans on historical data to predict what resources newer plants might need. The program also informs operators about the tradeoffs they need to accept. For example, she explains, “if you reduce people below the typical level assigned, how does that impact the reliability of the plant, that is, the number of hours that it is able to operate without malfunctions and failures?”

      And managing and operating a nuclear reactor is particularly complex because safety standards limit how much time workers can work in certain areas and how safe zones need to be handled.

      “There’s a shortage of [qualified talent] in the industry so this is not just about reducing costs but also about making it possible to have plants out there,” Naranjo De Candido says. Different types of talent are needed, from professionals who specialize in mechanical components to electronic controls. The model that she is working on considers the need for such specialized skillsets as well as making room for cross-training talent in multiple fields as needed.

      In keeping with her goal of making nuclear energy more accessible, the optimization software will be open-source, available for all to use. “We want this to be a common ground for utilities and vendors and other players to be able to communicate better,” Naranjo De Candido says, Doing so will accelerate the operation of nuclear energy plants at scale, she hopes — an achievement that will come not a moment too soon. More