Based on an article by Varun Sivaram, Colin Cunliff, Julio Friedmann for MIT Technology Review
America has successfully launched national innovation missions time and again. These missions have delivered life-saving drugs, sparked the computer and internet revolutions, and put humans on the moon. Most recently, the US government has poured billions of dollars into a national innovation campaign to help pharmaceutical companies develop vaccines and therapeutics for covid-19.
Yet the United States has not launched such a mission to counter the gravest threat of our time: climate change. Although a few clean-energy technologies, such as wind and solar power, have reached cost competitiveness with fossil fuels, many more urgently need advances if the world is to achieve net-zero carbon emissions—a herculean feat known as “deep decarbonization.”
Now is the time for the United States to launch a National Energy Innovation Mission to speed such energy transitions around the world—and build competitive, job-creating industries at home. Today, we and our coauthors published “Energizing America,” a detailed road map for the federal government to triple funding for clean-energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D).
Even though the politics of climate change are polarized, there is broad bipartisan agreement behind a strong push for energy innovation. In Congress, Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, has proposed a “New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy,” exactly in line with the recommendation (pdf, page 216) from the Democratic members of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis to “significantly increase clean energy RD&D funding.” Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to make “the largest-ever investment in clean energy research and innovation” if he is elected. And though President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly asked to cut funding for energy innovation, Republican lawmakers have rebuffed him and increased it in each of the last four years.
This groundswell of bipartisan support has opened a rare window of opportunity for the next administration and Congress. Launching a National Energy Innovation Mission represents a climate policy that is both highly ambitious and politically achievable.
A modest sum
Improving the performance and lowering the cost of clean-energy technologies are the most important contributions that the US can make to advance the world’s fight against climate change.
Today’s technologies aren’t up to the task of deep decarbonization. The International Energy Agency warns that of 46 technologies needed to address the climate crisis, only six are advancing on track for mass deployment to enable net-zero emissions by 2070 and restrain global warming below 2 °C; the remaining 40 won’t fall in cost or achieve commercial scale without additional innovation. Critical for a global clean-energy transition, these include technologies that will help us capture and store carbon emissions from the atmosphere and fossil-fuel plants; produce and use clean fuels such as hydrogen; store variable wind and solar power for long durations; manage complex systems such as smart electricity grids; and more. Roughly half the reductions required to swiftly reach global net-zero emissions must come from technologies that aren’t yet commercially available.
Government funding can speed commercialization by supporting research at universities, federal laboratories, and private companies. Current private investment into these technologies is anemic. In 2019, venture capitalists invested just $1 billion in US energy companies, compared with $20 billion for biotechnology deals and $70 billion for information technology firms. The American Energy Innovation Council, led by Bill Gates and industry leaders, calls for (pdf) urgently tripling the federal energy RD&D budget, which would in turn stimulate much higher levels of private investment.
Under our plan, the annual federal budget for clean-energy innovation would reach $25 billion by 2025. That is not an unreasonable sum—it’s a fraction of the funding the US spends on health and defense innovation and just over 1% of the discretionary federal budget. That modest sum would have dramatic impact, both growing our economy and shrinking our greenhouse-gas emissions.
Our road map lays out detailed line-item recommendations for Congress to fund 10 “technology pillars,” each representing a critical decarbonization need. We focus our suggestions on pillars that are underfunded today and can underpin globally competitive US industries.
Carbon-capture technologies are a good example. Even if solar and wind power continue to grow rapidly, they simply can’t displace the vast quantities of fossil fuels used to run industrial processes or generate electricity. To slash emissions affordably, countries around the world—particularly emerging economies with fast-growing energy demand, such as India—will need to make fossil-fuel use cleaner in addition to expanding use of renewables. The United States already has more carbon-capture facilities than any other country in the world and could seize global market leadership with a concerted innovation push from the government.
In other technologies, including next-generation batteries, electric vehicles, and smart-grid products and services, US firms are already developing advanced technologies. Government funding can expand those industries. It can also boost ongoing research to address often-overlooked sources of emissions. For example, precision agriculture can reduce fertilizer use, in turn sparing emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas.
Time to lead
Global markets for new clean-energy technologies will be worth trillions of dollars in the coming decades. Other countries, including China, Germany, South Korea, and Japan, have formulated national strategies to capture shares of those growing markets and are investing much larger fractions of their GDP than the United States. America, too, should invest in its own competitiveness.
Shortly after the 2021 inauguration, the president should announce the National Energy Innovation Mission and convene a White House Task Force to speed its implementation. Congress should approve a budget that sharply ramps up next year’s funding for clean-energy RD&D by 30%, to nearly $12 billion, a first step toward tripling over five years. To help the next administration and Congress hit the ground running, we’ve compiled a detailed set of funding recommendations for agencies across the federal government, including the Departments of Energy, Defense, and Agriculture as well as the National Science Foundation, NASA, and others.
Finally, the United States should also reassert international leadership on energy innovation. In 2015, the Obama-Biden administration orchestrated Mission Innovation, a compact among 20 countries to double public funding for energy RD&D over five years. But the United States promptly abandoned its commitment, even as China has doubled its own funding. The next administration should recommit to Mission Innovation and spearhead international efforts to bring new technologies to market.
By redoubling its investments in clean-energy innovation at home and recommitting to its promises abroad, the United States can speed the development of technologies critical for deep decarbonization. Now is the time to launch a National Energy Innovation Mission to confront the climate crisis and lead the transition to clean energy.
Varun Sivaram, visiting senior fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, is the former CTO of ReNew Power, India’s largest renewable-energy company. Colin Cunliff is a senior policy analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Julio Friedmann, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, is a former senior official at the US Department of Energy. Along with David Sandalow and David Hart, they are coauthors of “Energizing America: A Roadmap to Launch a National Energy Innovation Mission.”
End of original article by Varun Sivaram, Colin Cunliff, Julio Friedmann for MIT Technology Review
Due to climate change, wildfires are set to become an increasing problem
Millions of acres burn every year in wildfires across the United States, with the worst seasons on record occurring in the past two years. Climate change is blamed for making these fires increasingly worse year-on-year, making things tough for power grid engineers in an increasingly volatile climate reality.
The average wildfire season today is three and a half months longer than it was as recently as the 1980s. The number of annual large fires in the US has tripled — burning six times as many acres as in wildfire seasons only decades ago.
Wildfires are occurring where they were rarely seen before
Temperature averages in Siberia were nearly 10°C above normal for the first five months of 2020. Temperatures in the Russian Arctic region and Siberia continue to break records, thawing the tundra and contributing to an increase of hundreds in wildfires, most in areas inaccessible by firefighters. Siberian wildfires today are breaking out over nearly 3 million acres (1.2m hectares). The smoke cloud is unprecedented, extending over the United States and Canada.
How power lines contribute to wildfires
There is growing evidence that power lines themselves trigger wildfires.
High winds are a key contributing factor, vegetation contact, where high winds blow trees and branches onto power lines, sparking fires. In other cases, wind can snap wooden distribution line poles, causing live wires to fall onto nearby dry grass, setting it on fire.
California is particularly at risk because of drought conditions that have turned its forests into tinderboxes from August to November, when high winds are common. The Redwood Fire burned more than 36,000 acres, destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, and lead to nine deaths.
Introducing VECTO System – real time notifications the moment problems arise
Developed in Cape Town, South Africa,VECTO System is an innovative grid management system developed to meet Africa’s steep energy challenges. It is a solution in two parts – a device installed across the network, and a software platform that visualises the data and provides real time notifications when network performance moves out of accepted safety thresholds.
Each VECTO 3 is a linux-based edge computer, which process data locally as it enters the device, while simultaneously streaming it onwards a central data store. With a built-in GPS clock that is time synchronised to within ±100ns from absolute time, the full fleet of devices work together in perfect harmony, delivering the full picture of network performance.
The VECTO 3 edge-computing measurement device records and reports on a comprehensive set of RMS, phasor, harmonic, environmental & synchrophasor data, encompassing over 9,000 parameters.
VECTO System’s data visualisation platform — VECTO Grid OS – reports and interprets the data for the end user. Available for all smart devices, VECTO Grid OS will notify the appropriate team members at the moment anomalies occur on the network. If storm clouds suddenly begin to form over the city and solar supply drops rapidly, VECTO Grid OS will send emergency push notifications and emails in real time to the people who matter.
Beyond emergency notifications, VECTO System’s unique capabilities can also:
- Provide interaction and control down to the mini-substation level, providing engineers and operators with unprecedented visibility and remote management of the entire enterprise.
- Predict, detect and prevent wildfires caused by high voltage power-lines.
- Provide detailed information and insights through an ongoing forensic record, enabling long-term decision making and informed capital investments.
Keen to know more?
VECTO System is set to change the way the power grid is managed. If you’d like to see more of what the system is capable of, speak to us.
