Fusion: Expensive and Taking Forever?

Energy technology development, adoption, and deployment are featured in the national economic development plans of all countries. The success of such economic development plans has manifestations that go beyond just the provision of goods and services to citizens who increasingly demand an enhanced standard of living. It extends to the survival of political establishments themselves. Furthermore, the international geopolitics of energy systems and its complex web of possibilities, opportunities, and jconstraints drive, and are driven, by technology implementation. Thus, the construction of oil platforms in the North Sea reformatted international alignments on energy issues, and advances in horizontal drilling technologies for oil recovery from continental shelves increased the number of oil-producing countries. Today, basically all countries that border on oceans and large seas are oil-producing. Technology is the link between opportunity/ potential and harvest of benefits along the path to sustainable development, a status that must be defined in terms of the optional mix of economic development, environmental quality, and social equity. Energy as a natural resource is as bountiful as its demands for operational civil/industrial systems. Unfortunately, it is not always available in readily usable forms at locations of high demand. Geospatial factors climate, terrain, vegetation, and geology , socio-economic factors, and political factors e.g., international alliances determine the overall implementability and sustainability of a specific energy technology. The first set of factors merely determines the technical potential along with some associated cost factors, while the second and third set of factors determine the possibility and ease of translation from an acceptable level of technical potential to implementation. On the basis of geospatial factors, high feasibility can be assigned to geothermal energy as the primary energy source in the northwestern United States, solar energy in the tropics, wind energy in the desert and high-altitude terrains, biomass energy in luxuriantly vegetated zones around the world and in regions that produce significant amounts of organic wastes, and nuclear energy in countries endowed with uranium/plutonium. Such perfect matches between energy demand and indigenous energy sources qualify as highly desirable cases of the much sought-after “distributed energy system.” They can also minimize intercontinental and international transfers of energy in terms of electricity and fuel that have caused some costly conflicts. Unfortunately, the potential for such development is currently overridden by socioeconomic and sociopolitical factors, as well as the lack of technological capacity of some regions and countries. About half the people in the world, mostly within the tropics, still cook their food over open fires that are fueled by firewood, coal, animal dung, and crop residues. These fuels cause a high toll in mortality due to indoor air pollution that causes many acute and chronic pulmonary diseases. As many as 14% of urban households and 49% of rural households in the developing world did not have access to electricity in 2000. Developments in solar energy systems have not reached the stage that could take advantage of the relatively isolated regions where most developing countries are located, in order to produce affordable and efficient solar cells that can meet energy demand. However, recent developments in nanotechnology and fabrication methods are likely to improve the efficiency and affordability of solar energy systems to make them implementable in circumstances beyond highprofile applications. A variety of photovoltaic solar cell devices are at the research stage, although scale-up systems that convert more than 30% of incident sunlight into electricity would still be expensive. Among the promising materials for solar cells are nanometer-sized semiconductor crystals, dye-sensitized solar cells, lead selenide PbSe nanocrystals, and cadmium selenide CdSe nanocrystals. As more activities and instruments are extended to extreme environments such as space, deep sea, deserts, forests, Arctic zones, Antarctic zones, caves, and deep mines, remoteaccess equipment needs more efficient power sources that need little or no network connections. Improvements in battery and fuel-cell systems are needed. For some functions, such as the use of numerous but isolated sensors to monitor many environmental parameters in remote environments, appropriatelysized and efficient battery and fuel-cell systems are needed. In a bidirectional advance, microsensors, some of which are based on enzymes, are used to develop fuel cells for small devices while larger fuel cells are being developed to support wind energy systems. An acceleration of technological advances in energy systems is needed to support many sustainable development projects. In order to be sustainable, it is important that policymakers and technology developers seek the optimization of the three pillars of sustainable development economic development, environmental equity, and social equity with specification of minimum acceptable levels of each factor rather than seeking to maximize any of the factors to the detriment of others. The principal categories of options that are available for promoting the implementation of promising systems and technologies are engineering, communication/education, regulation, enforcement, market incentives, environmental management systems, and international cooperation.

The United States is in the midst of an energy revolution, spurred by advancement of technology to produce unprecedented supplies of oil and natural gas. Simultaneously, there is an increasing concern for climate change attributed to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that, in large part, result from burning fossil fuels. An international consensus has concluded that the U.S. and other developed nations have an imperative to reduce GHG emissions to address these climate change concerns. The global desire to reduce GHG emissions has led to the development and deployment of clean energy resources and technologies, particularly renewable energy technologies, at a rapid rate. At the same time, each of the major energy sectors—the electric grid, industrial manufacturing, transportation, and the residential/commercial consumers— is increasingly becoming linked through information and communications technologies, advanced modeling and simulation, and controls. Coordination of clean energy generation technologies through integrated hybrid energy systems, as defined below, has the potential to further revolutionize energy services at the system level by coordinating the exchange of energy currency among the energy sectors in a manner that optimizes financial efficiency (including capital investments), maximizes thermodynamic efficiency (through best use of exergy, which is the potential to use the available energy in producing energy services), reduces environmental impacts when clean energy inputs are maximized, and provides resources for grid management. Rapid buildout of renewable technologies has been largely driven by local, state, and federal policies, such as renewable portfolio standards and production tax credits that incentivize investment in these generation sources. A foundational assumption within this program plan is that renewable technologies will continue to be major contributors to the future U.S. energy infrastructure. While increased use of clean renewable technologies will aid in achieving reduced GHG emissions, it also presents new challenges to grid management that must be addressed. These challenges primarily derive from the fundamental characteristics of variable renewable generators, such as wind and solar: non-dispatchability, variable production, and reduced electromechanical inertia. This document presents a preliminary research and development (R&D) plan for detailed dynamic simulation and analysis of nuclear-renewable hybrid energy systems (N-R HES), coupled with integrated energy system design, component development, and integrated systems testing. N-R HES are cooperatively-controlled systems that dynamically apportion thermal and/or electrical energy to provide responsive generation to the power grid.

Although research, development, and deployment of advanced energy technologies are essential for the clean energy transition, communication about these technologies is equally important to their success. Energy is part of everyday life; therefore, changes in energy systems should be accepted by communities and industries. Yet details about energy generation, transmission, and environmental impacts are complex. The combination of commonality and complexity requires communications to use visualization, localization, narrative, and understandable terminology to reach a range of stakeholders. Collaboration between technology experts and communications professionals builds integrity and accessibility of energy information that enables community‐based solutions for energy.

This paper focuses on the development of the ocean energy sector, identifying the necessary steps that are required in order to facilitate the development and deployment of ocean energy technologies towards the formation of a viable and successful industry. The paper presents recommendations, which represent a key opportunity to reinforce Europe's leadership in Research Development Innovation and Demonstration (RDI&D) as the ocean energy sector progresses from concept to commercialisation; highlighting mechanisms that are required to overcome existing challenges and barriers hindering the commercialisation of wave and tidal energy technologies.

The deployment of new energy technologies and the need for local learning

Comparing energy-technology alternatives from an environmental perspective

With China ’s rapid economic development, energy is consumed in a large amount at the same time. It is difficult to achieve sustainable development in the long-term extensive use of energy. Changing the use of energy and developing new energy technologies can not only ease the current energy supply problem in China, but also contribute to the development of circular economy in china. The best path for new energy development is an important guarantee for the development of circular economy, through the use of new energy technologies to achieve sustainable development goals and improve the quality of circular economy, This paper combines the research and application of new energy technologies in the development of China's circular economy to find the problems in the development and use of new energy technologies: insufficient government policy support, lack of talents in the development of new energy technologies, and lack of research and development and innovation capabilities in new energy technologies. Practical solutions are proposed: perfecting policies and regulations, cultivating new energy technology talents through multiple channels, improving independent research and development and innovation capabilities, finding the best path for China's new energy development, accelerating the upgrade of new energy technologies and thus promoting China's development of a circular economy.

Climate Policy, Technology Choice, and Multiple Equilibria in a Developing Economy

This special issue on clean energy and environmental technologies aims at providing a forum for researchers who are working on relevant areas to exchange ideas driving innovation and report their latest research outcomes in developing clean energy and environmental technologies. A few years ago, Nobel Laureate Richard E. Smalley outlined Humanity’s Top Ten Problems for the next fifty years, in a talk given for the Enterprise Forum at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Energy was listed as the first of the top ten problems and the environment as the fourth. Actually energy is the most basic requirement for economic development and people’s livelihoods while this requirement is constantly increasing, particularly in economically rapidly developing countries like China. Supply of energy still mainly relies on fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas around the world. However reserves for fossil fuels are limited and producing energy from these fossil fuels with existing technologies has caused serious environmental problems, e.g., increasing greenhouse gases emission which exacerbates global warming. Resolutions to these global problems lie in the innovative technologies to produce energy in a clean and environmentally friendly manner. Both developing renewable energy and using energy more efficiently are major components of clean energy and environmental technologies. Development of clean energy and environmental technologies has been thought of as two of the most active research fields today. This special issue includes 12 papers consisting of research and review articles selected from different research institutions in Australia, China and Indonesia. They contain a wide range of the hottest research topics in clean energy and environmental technologies, including development of the innovative catalysts used for clean energy and environmental processes, studies on hydrogen production and storage, CO2 capture and syngas clean technology as well as other research in energy efficiency, coal seam gas recovery and environmental economics. These research and/or review articles, which although do not cover the full scope of studies in energy and environment due to page limitations , can still provide readers with brief track references to facilitate the development of new clean energy and environmental technologies. This special issue was organized as per instructions of the Editors Dr. Fei Yuan, Prof. Yaodong Huang, and Prof. Yanni Li. We have received invaluable help from colleagues working with or having worked with clean energy and environmental research, especially Prof. Edward White, Prof. Duong Do, Dr. Greg Birkett and Dr. Fu-Yang Wang in School of Chemical Engineering, the University of Queensland. They provided careful peer-reviews on the selected papers with many useful comments and suggestions for authors to enhance the quality of the papers. It would be impossible to publish this special issue without the help of these peer-reviewers. Finally, as the Guest Editor, I would like to thank all the people—all the authors and co-authors and reviewers for their contributions to this special issue, and editors of the Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering for their scientific input and consistent support.

Catalysis: The Technology Enabler for New, Low Carbon Energy Technologies

The future of energy depends directly on the direction and pace of technological development. The article is based on the analysis of priority areas of technological development and strategic orientations of Russia's main trading partners and competitors in the energy sector in order to assess the prospects for further cooperation. An analysis of the technology benchmarks shows that the priority areas - energy efficiency and renewable energy sources in general do not depend on the strength of countries with traditional energy resources. The differences in the perspective directions of development of energy technologies of Russia and partner countries are determined. It is proved that in recent years, the so-called. “New energy” has become one of the key national priorities of developed and developing countries, which led to huge investments in infrastructure, production, support of demand in order to ensure rapid growth of the relevant markets. At the same time, the main focus is on renewable energy sources, “new transport” and “smart networks”, which act as technologies capable of providing an energy revolution and a new cycle of sustainable economic growth. The work defines serious limitations in the development of the energy sector and energy technologies: not the optimal policy for supporting technology, unfavorable development conditions and high expectations. It is proved that the development of the “new energy” remains a significant task, including. since it reflects the objective need for technological renovation of the industry, reinforces the intersectoral potential of scientific and technological development and serves as a “testing ground” for developing new management tools for innovation processes.

How shall we craft an energy future that is less dependent on petroleum? And what role will oil and gas play in that scenario? In spite of an impressive 150 year track record of increasing hydrocarbon production to meet exponential growth in demand, constraints have emerged. There will be a pinch in production rates relative to growing demand, necessitating the development and deployment of alternative energy technologies from more sustainable resources. As of yet there is no consensus on how to transition to alternative fuels, despite a great deal of talk about the need to do so. Nor is adequate consideration being paid to the pivotal role that oil and gas will continue to play well into the transition. This paper addresses global energy planning at all organizational levels, as well as within energy producing corporations. Since future energy services will draw from an evolving mix of production sources and technologies, we propose a way for energy regulators and energy companies to optimize energy mixes, by evaluating the value added over time of each resource and applicable technology. This paper maintains that oil and gas will continue to be important components in any energy mix for the foreseeable future. Alternative fuels will be hard-pressed to provide comparable net values either in terms of work from energy produced or in terms of environmental impact. As petroleum engineers, it is imperative that we make clear the character of the coming petroleum peak and the necessary role that petroleum must play in the coming transition period. It is essential to characterize clearly the energy value provided by our current resources and the value that will be demanded from alternatives as they do take up larger market shares.

Currently, the growth in energy demand in all sectors and the excessive use of fossil fuels has generated negative environmental impacts on the environment. Countries in Latin America are committed to increasing their school coverage, with projects that use renewable energy. In the municipality of Lerida, Tolima, Colombia; there is a need to expand school infrastructure in order to provide access to technology and reduce school dropout with the construction of solar classrooms.
 Aims: This research aims to evaluate the technical, economic and environmental feasibility for the construction of a classroom with photovoltaic energy system and technology equipment in the municipality of Lérida, Tolima, Colombia.
 Study Design: Case study, with quantitative, descriptive and prospective approach.
 Place and Duration of the Study: The case study was conducted in the municipality of Lérida, Department of Tolima, 73 kilometers from Ibagué in Colombia; between 2022 and 2023.
 Methodology: The methodology consisted in determining the size of a photovoltaic system based on the consumption of the selected equipment, the design and construction of the solar classroom with recyclable materials. Subsequently, the project was financially evaluated based on the social benefits that the project would provide. Finally, the environmental impact was evaluated to determine if the construction of the classroom is technically, financially and environmentally viable.
 Results: First, the costs and material for the civil works of the classroom were evaluated and it was determined that it was built with Lego-type plastic wood. Subsequently, the energy demand was determined with the technological equipment, identifying a demand of 2587 kW/hour, at 110V and with 8 hours of daily operation. With these data, the design of the photovoltaic system was carried out to cover the estimated demand, adjusted to the theoretical consumption of the equipment to be installed. With the energy demand, the selection of the number of panels was made, which resulted in 10 panels of 330 W with 5 effective hours of sun, a 3000 W inverter, a 4000 W regulator and 3 batteries of 100 Ah to maintain the energy autonomy of the classroom for 1 day. The photovoltaic system is projected with a useful life of 20 years, with the exception of the batteries, which is only 7 years. The next step was to carry out the cost-benefit analysis that determined the economic viability of the project, with a rate of return on investment of 3.6 years. Likewise, the benefits that the classroom would bring to the community and that are related to the objectives of developing quality education, with affordable energy and modern infrastructure were determined. The economic and social impacts were analyzed, which were positively high by making available technology available to the young people of Lérida that allows reducing the technological gap that generates inequalities and finally the environmental impact was evaluated, which turned out to be of low impact.
 Conclusion: Based on the results, it is concluded that the construction of a solar classroom in Lérida, Tolima in Colombia is technically, economically and environmentally feasible.

In this paper, using the "bottom-up" energy-system optimisation ERIS model, we examine the effects of emission trading on technology deployment, emphasising the role of technology learning spillovers. That is, the possibility that the learning accumulated in a particular technology in a given region may spill to other regions as well, leading to cost reductions there also. The effects of different configurations of interregional spillovers of learning in ERIS and the impact of the emission trading mechanism under those different circumstances are analysed. Including spatial spillovers of learning allows capturing the possibility that the imposition of greenhouse gas emission constraints in a given region may induce technological change in other regions, such as developing countries, even if the latter regions do not face emission constraints. Our stylised results point out the potential benefits of sound international cooperation between industrialised and developing regions on research, development, demonstration and deployment (RD3) of clean energy technologies and on the implementation of emission trading schemes.

Renewable energy technology usage and environmental security: Public perception and governance's role in Hail, Saudi Arabia