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1. 5 Young Scientists Searching for Energy Breakthroughs With Stimulus Funds
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2. Obama's State of the Union: Pass the Energy Bill
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3. Thursday in DC: DOE Chief to Deliver Green Car Loan Announcement
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4. Daily Sprout
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5. The Apple iPad's Green Grade: B
5 Young Scientists Searching for Energy Breakthroughs With Stimulus...
Justin Gerdes - Policy
Earlier this month, Chu announced that 69 young researchers will receive up to $85 million in funding from the stimulus bill under DOE's new Early Career Research Program. The five-year grants will cover salary and research expenses and this year's awardees were selected by a panel of outside experts from a pool of 1,750 applicants. Earth2Tech asked five of the awardees to describe how their research might lead to tomorrow's clean-energy breakthroughs:
David Erickson, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University:
Erickson specializes in taking techniques developed to shuttle light around in the telecommunications industry, and applying them to shuttle nanomaterials around on a microchip. The goal, he says, is to "create a special kind of tweezer that can pick up and assemble tiny elements of matter into new materials." Basically a "light-based nano-assembly line." He says the research could lead to highly efficient photothermal and photoelectric energy conversion devices.
Patrick Yin Chiang, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Oregon State University:
Chiang is working to improve the energy efficiency of interconnections between the thousands of processors used for super computing – the power-hungry data crunching needed for, say, DNA sequencing or climate modeling. "It turns out that the energy consumed to make a computation is 10x less than the energy used to move that computed result somewhere else. This is the case at every level – within a single integrated microprocessor, connecting multiple chips in a single server, and connecting multiple servers in a data center," says Chiang. The goal of his research, he says, "is to tackle innovative circuit techniques that leverage Moore's Law scaling to reduce the energy of these various interconnects."
Maria‐Victoria Fernandez-Serra, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Stony Brook University:
After modestly insisting that it is difficult to connect her research to the real world, Fernandez-Serra pointed to a decidedly concrete real-world application: extending the life and improving the efficiency of fuel cells, with the help of computer modeling. A critical hurdle to be surmounted, she says, is to design and synthesize the perfect electrode – "one that does not degrade and which is a very efficient catalyst for the chemical reaction that fuel cell is designed to operate with."
"Computational experiments can shed light there where experiments cannot give accurate enough information. What I’m proposing to do is not only modeling the quantum mechanical processes that are the source of the energy provided by fuel cells, but do this on cells designed to work with hydrogen and oxygen as fuels," she says.
She also takes the long view: "What we do will not be part of new technologies in one or two years, but in 10 or 20 years that hydrogen fuel cells will be a standard technology and our research will have contributed to it."
Delia Milliron, The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:
Milliron's research is aimed at understanding the basic mechanisms underlying the operation of nanostructured materials, specifically inorganic nanocomposites. "The unique properties that arise from combining materials on such a small scale can be useful for improving the performance of technologies crucial to our energy future," she says, including next-generation dynamic windows and rechargeable batteries.
Working on such a small scale promises not just to improve the performance of all manner of next-generation products, it should also reduce production costs. "Because our materials are assembled entirely by solution processing and with low thermal budgets, they offer the possibility of low-cost fabrication, even over large areas," Milliron says. "Our research may inspire new technologies capable of high performance at low cost."
Andrew Gaunt, Chemistry Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chemistry Division:
If nuclear power is to have a future in the U.S. energy mix, proponents and detractors alike agree that methods must be devised to safely secure or dispose of highly radioactive waste from spent nuclear fuel. Part of Gaunt's research focuses on aiding one proposed solution, a process called partitioning and transmutation: partially recycling spent fuel by removing the radioactively long-lived actinide elements such as plutonium and "burning them up" in new fuel or inside a particle accelerator into much shorter-lived radioactive isotopes.
The hope, Gaunt says, is to drastically reduce both the volume of waste generated and the storage time required to guarantee the integrity of the waste from hundreds of thousands of years to just centuries. "Figuring out which actinide separations are most feasible and how to develop them will help decision-makers to decide which radioactive waste processing options will offer the best solution for safe, reliable, and cost-effective disposal," he says.
Obama's State of the Union: Pass the Energy Bill
Katie Fehrenbacher - Policy
Nice. President Obama used the State of the Union to call for the Senate to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill. During the early part of his speech he said “This year, I am eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate,” and:
“[P]roviding incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”
Obama specifically gave a nod to building a new generation of nuclear power plants, “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” (that will no doubt get boos from environmentalists), and more investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. Some will see the mentions of nuclear and offshore oil as “Republican talking points,” but I am heartened that Obama took the opportunity to back the energy bill, despite the recent disappointment in Copenhagen.
See the tag cloud of the speech below – clean and energy front and center:
Thursday in DC: DOE Chief to Deliver Green Car Loan Announcement
Josie Garthwaite - Automotive
This could go at least a couple of ways, with Chu either announcing the closure of one of the loans that the DOE agreed to last year on a conditional basis. A far more interesting option, of course, would be the announcement of a sixth loan recipient.
Between June and October of last year, the DOE announced conditional loan agreements with Tesla, Nissan, Ford, Fisker and parts maker Tenneco. No awards have been announced in the months since the program got a new director, a former venture capitalist brought on partly to help streamline the operations. So far, only Tesla and Ford’s loan agreements have been finalized.
Since the initial outpouring of awards, the dozens of projects seeking funding under the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program have been inching through the evaluation process.
Most recently, for example, the stealthy T. Boone Pickens and Kleiner Perkins-backed startup V-Vehicle entered the environmental assessment stage, according to local media reports yesterday. (Back in October 2009, the company said it expected an answer on the loan by November.)
Other companies vying for funds under the ATVM program include Ener1, which in March 2009 said it had progressed to the second stage — financial and technical viability — of a four-stage evaluation process. Last week a spokesperson for Ener1’s battery-making subsidiary, EnerDel, seemed confident that the company will receive funding under the program — just not the amount it originally requested.
Rather than a $480 million loan, spokesperson Rachel Caroll told us the company expects a total of $400 million in federal funds, including the still-pending loan and a $118.5 million stimulus grant awarded last year. We have not heard back from the company yet on our request today for an update.
Norwegian electric car maker Think, in which Ener1 holds a 31 percent stake, is also seeking ATVM funds to support set up of manufacturing for its electric Think City model in Elkhart, Indiana. Yesterday Think named Indiana-based EnerDel as its exclusive battery supplier for models sold in the U.S. through 2012 — a move that could check off one more box for Think’s ATVM application.
A Think spokesperson told us today the arrangement “provides EnerDel with an identified market customer and volume assurance for their lithium ion battery pack and helps us control manufacturing costs.” That could potentially help both company’s bids for government funds.
The raft of other companies hoping for funds under the ATVM program also includes Bright Automotive, Aptera and Chrysler. The latter and largest of those three told the Detroit News late yesterday that it expects the loan this year. But hey, we don’t have a crystal ball — we’ll let you know tomorrow what the Secretary has to say.
Daily Sprout
Josie Garthwaite - Misc
Climate, Energy Likely to Escape Axe in Budget Freeze: Climate change and green energy programs are expected to receive ample funding in the president’s fiscal 2011 budget request despite a plan announced yesterday to freeze non-military discretionary spending for the next three years. — Greenwire via NYT
East Coast “Hydrogen Highway”: Connecticut-based sunHydro wants to put the East Coast on the hydrogen fueling map with a quest to build 11 self-contained, solar-powered hydrogen fueling stations between Portland, Maine and southern Floriday. — Wired’s Autopia
Revenue on the Rise for CoaLogix: Acorn Energy subsidiary CoaLogix, which specializes in filters that remove certain pollutants from coal plant emissions saw an 80 percent increase in revenue between 2008 and 2009 — “indicating growing interest in clean coal initiatives other than carbon capture or sequestration.” — VentureBeat’s GreenBeat
Why Antivirius Vendors Belong in Green Computing: Antivirus specialists like Symantec and McAfee “seem born to manage energy consumption.” They already enjoy a trusted brand name with much of the computer-owning public. They also “contact consumers on a regular basis, and you need what they are pushing down the pipe.” — Greentech Media
Moment of Truth for High-Speed Rail Stimulus: “So it looks like tomorrow, after the State of the Union, President Obama is planning to announce how the $8 billion in stimulus money for high-speed rail projects will get spent.” Will the funds be spread too thinly, across 13 projects in 31 states? — TNR’s The Vine
The Apple iPad's Green Grade: B
Pedro Hernandez - Green IT
Here’s our take post-iPad launch. Recently, it has become custom for Apple to extol the eco-friendly virtues of their gadgets, and sure enough, Jobs took the time to discuss the now-familiar environmental checklist slide. As expected, the iPad is free of the toxic chemicals that have bedeviled the electronics industry. So say good-bye arsenic, BFRs, mercury and PVCs.
The Case:
We predicted glass and aluminum enclosure, and sure enough, Apple is sticking with its signature materials. That means that the little slab will likely have the same solid feel of the newest MacBook Pros. Glass and aluminum also happen to be easily recyclable, so Apple gets to keep the grade we awarded it last week.
Grade: A
The Screen:
Sorry, but for a device that starts at $499, OLED is simply a non-starter. As expected, an LED-backlit LCD drives the display. Apple points out that it’s a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 IPS screen, which stands for in-plane switching, a type of LCD screen technology that offers better viewing angles over common twisted nematic (TN) LCD displays. Mercury-free too, so it carries forward the same grade from last week.
Grade: B
The Battery:
The good news is that the 10-hour battery will last you from the moment the planes take off in San Francisco until the wheels touch down in Tokyo. The bad news is that you won’t be swapping in a battery if you happened to have played one-too-many graphically intensive games. During the reveal, the lack of telltale seams and hatches hinted at a non-user-replaceable battery. The iPad’s spec sheet confirms it with this bullet point: “built-in 25Whr rechargeable lithium-polymer battery.” Emphasis, of course, on “built-in.”
Grade: C
Our predictions were pretty good. You can also add other energy-efficient components like Apple’s own ARM-based A4 processor and internal flash storage to its green credentials. However, as an e-book reader, the iPad is far from the greenest device out there. While Apple’s iBooks store may one day help dematerialize an entire forest worth of books, battery life simply can’t match that of the Kindle, which can go several days without recharging thanks to its electronic ink display. Fortunately for Apple, it’s also marketing the iPad as a device built for the consumption of multimedia, games and rich Web content. E-books just happen to be a big, although not necessarily primary, part of its repertoire.
All things considered, and given the laundry list of things it can do, the iPad is a pretty green little machine. Maybe even green enough to impress Al Gore (who was in attendance at the launch today).
Grade: B
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