Summary: The electric power system is currently composed of generators with large spinning masses whose speeds are tightly coupled together. These masses offer a store of rotational kinetic energy that naturally gives inertia to the average speed of the system. This inertia offers a first line of defense that is tapped during sudden power imbalances. Installing a large fleet of wind farms will result in hours of the year when many traditional generators are turned off. The result may be a...

Wind energy is recognized worldwide as cost-effective and environmentally friendly and is among the world's fastest-growing sources of electrical energy. Despite the amazing growth in global wind power installations in recent years, science and engineering challenges still exist. Megawatt wind turbines are large, flexible structures that operate in uncertain, time-varying wind and weather conditions and lend themselves nicely to advanced control solutions. Advanced controllers can help...

Dustin Smith, Solar Technology Acceleration Center, Aurora, CO

Summary: The sun is a boundless source of clean energy, but it goes down every night. We and many others are trying to design solar-driven molecular machines that could be used on a global scale to store solar energy by splitting water into its elemental components, hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is a clean fuel that could be used directly or combined with carbon dioxide to produce methanol, a liquid fuel. We are working on rugged light absorbers and catalysts made from Earth abundant...

Summary: Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) can make significant cuts in Greenhouse Gas emissions and will need to be part of the forward planning for developing future global energy resources. CCS technology comprises a number of steps: 1) CO2 is captured at the source (e.g., a power plant or gas production facility); 2) the captured CO2 is compressed to a supercritical state and transported, typically via pipeline, from the source to the geologic storage site; 3) the CO2 is injected via...

Summary: Energy storage is the enabling technology for renewable energy, such as wind and solar, and particularly for the next generation of hybrid electric vehicles, the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). If long-lived, low cost and safe batteries are to be developed, the materials limitations must be overcome. Intercalation is the predominant reaction mechanism in rechargeable batteries in use today. Intercalation processes, unlike conversion reactions, allow for fast ionic motion...

Summary: As the coal-reliant countries of the world have been increasingly forced to consider reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to mitigate climate change, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has emerged as a technology with critically important political influence. Visions of so-called "clean" coal-fired power plants that will not emit CO2 into the atmosphere have provided powerful motivation for large public and private investments in CCS. The scale of CO2 emission reductions deemed...

Summary: This talk looks at how energy politics change over time and the factors that influence how struggles over energy play out. I start out by building on two competing theories from environmental sociology that provide political economic explanations of environmental degradation and improvement: ecological modernization (EMT) and treadmill of production (TOP). Ecological modernization theory predicts that as capitalist nations develop the environment will improve. Treadmill of...

Summary: Through the development and analysis of in-depth case studies of the emergence of wind power industries in industrialized and emerging economies, a model of sustainable energy industry development is proposed. The model demonstrates that fundamental economic indicators are insufficient for explaining new industry development. Environmental, institutional and cultural factors idiosyncratic to individual jurisdictions play important roles in the emergence of renewable energy...

Robert Gramlich is Senior Vice President of Public Policy for the American Wind Energy Association, the national trade association of approximately 2,500 entities involved in all aspects of wind energy production, based in Washington D.C. Rob joined AWEA in 2005 and now leads the association’s strategic initiatives related to federal and state legislation, industry information and analysis, and regulatory policy. He has published articles on wind integration, carbon taxes, market power...