February 2009 Archives

Rep. Steve Israel took part in a summit yesterday trying to make the recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act a means of stimulating renewable energy development on Long Island. The summit is covered in NewsDay.

The 2009 AAAS/AAPT meeting was held in Chicago last week (Feb 12-16), and the theme was "Our Planet and Its Life: Origins and Futures."

Downtown Chicago, the Wrigley Building, and the Chicago River

Adding to that theme were a few presenters concerned with the direction of renewable energy research. Kicking things off on Friday morning, Nate Lewis from Caltech spoke about the immense potential of solar, proclaiming that "he that cannot store will not have power after 4," adding that Johnnie Cochran would be proud of this rhyming proclamation.

Lewis' efforts are guided by the intricacies of photosynthesis. In fact, his team has achieved the production of hydrogen (H₂) at an efficiency greater than any plant in nature has. The problem, Lewis notes, is that the production is too expensive—one needs to be able to use cheaper and more readily available materials to create a viable product. Lewis warned that despite the promising results, we still have a long way to go to match what nature does. Lewis ended his talk by saying "We need to change the paradigm by which we can use and exploit sunlight."

Next up at the same session, Paul Alivisatos gave a presentation. After Steven Chu left the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to become the 12th United States Secretary of Energy, he was replaced by Alivisatos, who is now the Deputy Director of the Laboratory. Alivisatos spoke briefly about the need for more renewable energy research at what he calls "an unprecedented scale of production.

Alivisatos went on to describe his own team's research using arrays of nanoparticles as solar materials. He showed that by reducing the size of the grain boundary to less than about 5 nanometers, electrons begin to travel in a more quantum fashion, that is, tunneling through these boundaries. This effectively creates an extremely "non-perfect" crystal, but because of how the electrons are now travelling through the crystal, conduction actually becomes more efficient.

Of all the lectures at AAAS focused on energy technology and research, Daniel Nocera's keynote lecture on "Harnessing the Sun and Oceans To Meet the World's Energy Demands" was a big highlight. Nocera, from MIT, made the case for solar energy, showing that only energy from the sun can come close to fulfilling our planet's energy needs, which Nocera estimates will approach 35 terawatts by 2050.

Nocera then showed video for the audience his team's breakthrough experiment from last summer, where he used a cobalt catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; and another platinum catalyst that produces valuable hydrogen gas. Combined, the system duplicates the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

Nocera's talk concluded with his design of "personalized energy," wherein each household would collect and store their own energy needs, theoretically doing away with the need for an energy grid.

The event's most well known speaker was without a doubt former vice president Al Gore.

If you've seen Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," then there wasn't much in the way of new information introduced. However, Gore remains passionate about his cause and pleaded to the scientists in the audience to communicate to non-scientists the immediacy of the problem and the need for action. He also encouraged scientists to become involved in politics, —adding the caveat "...but keep your day job."

One other notable speaker was Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist. Lovins insisted that America move away from foreign fuels, all the while brimming with optimism that we have good ideas and great opportunities in research—we only need to convince the public that we need to focus on creating a more efficient society. Lovins added, "We are plotting the nonviolent overthrow of bad engineering."

The 2009 AAAS meeting was jam-packed with meetings. In addition to the energy-related talks mentioned above, other speakers of interest included AAAS President James J. McCarthy, Astronomer and President of the Royal Society Lord Martin Rees, Physicist and occasional New York Times guest columnist Lawrence Krauss, and Nobel-prize winner Leon Lederman, among many others.

As a final note, here, from AIP is (L to R) Yvonne Reyes, Brandon Miller, and Catherine O'Riordan at the JRSE-branded booth at the AAPT/AAAS exhibition.

The news item on Obama's upcoming directive on energy-efficiency standards may be welcome news to many of us. I find it more inspiring that he seems to be addressing the "red tape" issue as much as the energy issue. As the directive seems to target appliances, it is not clear what impact this would have on the energy side of things as appliances are one place where energy-efficiency has increased and has been made visible to the consumer at the point of purchase.

On the down side, it would be much more beneficial to increase fuel efficiency in cars nationwide as opposed to allowing select states to do it.