Direct air capture (DAC) is one of the most exciting and novel advancements in negative emissions science and technology. DAC systems remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere by flowing ambient air through a filter. Sorbent chemicals embedded in the filter bind to the atmospheric CO2, trapping it. The trapped CO2 is subsequently removed from the filter for capture, disposal, or reuse. Doing so, however, requires heating the filter, and thus typically requires proximity to an appropriate heat source. This requirement substantially limits where DAC systems can be sited and increases their carbon footprint, since energy must be expended to produce the needed heat. This grant funds exciting new work by a team led by University of California, Irving chemist Jenny Yang to address this core challenge by exploring new electrochemical processes that would facilitate the capture and concentration of CO2 at room temperature, without the need for added heat. This would allow DAC to take place at ambient temperatures, greatly increasing the range of conditions where DAC systems could be deployed. Yang and her team will identify and test various kinds of electrochemical CO2 capture materials using computational chemistry methods and then use chemistry modeling techniques to determine how well different materials might perform as ambient temperature DAC filter systems. Promising materials will be tested in laboratory-scale CO2 separation chambers to determine their performance under various conditions.

This grant supports an interdisciplinary project led by Laura Lindsey at Ohio State University to study how various agricultural practices might promote the uptake and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) in soils, plants, and crops. Lindsey and her team of soil scientists, biologists, and environmental scientists drawn from multiple institutions will focus on examining three practices that could be deployed in commercial agriculture. The first is the application of biochar into crop systems. Biochar is a charcoal-like material that is applied to soils to improve carbon uptake from the atmosphere. The second process is the use of cover crops, which are plants designed to help maintain carbon fixation in soils. The third process is the implementation of better nitrogen management practices that reduce nitrous oxide emissions. In addition to laboratory research, Lindsey and her team will conduct five field studies across Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan, testing different combinations of these three agricultural practices (biochar, cover crop, nitrogen management) to determine their relative impact, alone and in combination, on carbon sequestration in agriculture systems.

Weatherization and mineralization are natural processes by which rocks of certain chemical compositions react with carbon dioxide (CO2)Сeither from ambient air or from concentrated CO2 streams collected during industrial processesСand undergo reactions that lead to the CO2 binding to the rock. These processes thus represent a potential pathway for decarbonization, an opportunity to use natural processes to sequester large amounts of atmospheric carbon in mineralized form. This grant supports research by Christine McCarthy and Ah-Hyung Park that will investigate key questions about the basic physics and chemistry of rock weathering and mineralization, with an aim toward understanding how these processes can be enhanced and accelerated. For example, mineralization can result in an effect called Тreactive crackingУ in which pores or fissures in the rock open, creating more surface area that allows for additional mineralization. This generates a positive CO2 solidification feedback loop. Sometimes, however, mineralization does not result in reactive cracking. Instead, as a rock mineralizes, pores within the rock become clogged by carbonated minerals, leading the rock pores to become ТcloggedУ and hindering further mineralization. The team led by McCarthy and Park will study what factors lead to differences between these ТcrackingУ versus ТcloggingУ effects, and they will assess how these reactions might impact larger-scale efforts to mineralize CO2 in geologic systems. This study will include a series of laboratory experiments that will examine a range of different stress, temperature, and acidity conditions that might hinder or accelerate such cracking or clogging processes, with these lab-based results used to model how such findings might scale up in real-world field conditions.

Few rigorous studies have attempted to accurately measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from offshore oil and gas facilities or sites that flare natural gas. Similarly, it is also important to measure GHG emissions from onshore operations that flare natural gas, a common occurrence at shale fracking sites. Getting better estimates of GHG emissions from offshore oil and gas sites and natural gas flaring sites can have a marked effect on our understanding of actual emissions from these understudied domains of energy production. This grant funds a coordinated field campaign, led by Eric Kort at the University of Michigan, to rigorously measure emissions from offshore oil and gas production facilities and onshore natural gas flaring sites. The research team will estimate GHG emissions by combining and synthesizing remote sensing satellite data with direct observations collected from a series of aircraft flights over multiple oil and gas production sites. The study will target offshore production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico and off the California and Alaska coasts, and it will measure emissions at flaring sites in both west Texas and North DakotaХs Bakken Shale. Remote sensing data will be pulled from a recently launched environmental monitoring satellite called TROPOMI, and by a new satellite to be launched by the Environmental Defense Fund. If successful, the project will deploy sensor technologies in novel ways, collect and integrate data across multiple scales, and break new scientific ground by making more detailed measurements of GHG emitting sites than had previously taken place.

This project tackles a particularly pressing challenge with respect to sensor development and deployment: the ability to quickly identify damage to energy infrastructure and water pipelines following wildfires and other natural disasters. Wildfires, earthquakes, and other natural disasters have the potential to damage, degrade, or destroy wires, pipelines, and other vital parts of AmericaХs energy and water infrastructure. Yet public and private utilities have very limited ability to detect when and where such damage has occurred. This grant funds a project led by Erica Fisher of Oregon State University to develop, construct, and test new sensor technology that could be used to detect environmental damage to energy and water infrastructure. Over the next three years, Fischer and her team aim to develop low-cost, low-powered sensors capable of withstanding the high temperatures common in wildfires. The team plans to test these sensors in the laboratory on a number of representative materials used in energy and water pipeline infrastructure and in simulated real-world conditions in a buried pipeline network located on the Oregon State campus. They will also conduct two case studies in locations that recently experienced devastating fires (Santa Rosa and Paradise, California) that will allow them to test and integrate data across multiple scalesСremote sensing data, in situКsensor data, and crowdsourced social media informationСto develop a tool that stakeholders can use to better monitor potential pipeline damage more quickly and efficiently.

This grant supports a cohort of three postdoctoral fellows in data curation for energy social science, overseen by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). One fellow will be placed at each of the following three institutions, involving both their respective energy research centers and university libraries: Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan Energy Institute, and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to recruiting, selecting, and placing the postdoctoral fellows, CLIR organizes training programs and mentorship activities throughout the two-year fellowship program. This includes an initial introductory summer institute, regular mentoring calls with fellows and their institutional hosts, funding for travel to present at and attend conferences, and a pool of resources to help initiate collaborative projects developed by the fellows. This second phase of CLIR postdoctoral fellowships builds on a successful first round of fellowship support that is nearing conclusion. The program offers a unique opportunity to train the next generation of scholars and practitioners, while simultaneously providing core energy research institutions with expertise in cutting-edge data science analysis.

Funds from this grant will allow researchers from Resources for the Future and the University of Chicago to study how consumers respond to time-varying electricity pricing schemes. One component of this project is undertaking a unique field experiment in collaboration with a smart thermostat company called Ecobee. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) will look at how 4,000 households use a new product feature available on Ecobee thermostats that gives households the ability to program their thermostat to automatically adjust air conditioning schedules to take advantage of different time-of-use electricity rates. The second research component is a methodological project that will attempt to use machine learning techniques to replicate a previously conducted RCT that examined consumer energy use under different electricity pricing schemes. If successful, the developed methods are likely to be applicable in generating more accurate counterfactual comparative groups in the many situations where conducting an RCT of energy consumers is not feasible. Findings from both components of the project will be disseminated through a final workshop that will engage stakeholders from multiple sectors in discussing the potential impacts of increased adoption of time-varying electricity pricing programs.

This grant supports an effort by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to increase scholarly attention to how market and government forces impact innovation in the energy sector. NBER will hold two open calls for papers, one on what can be learned from recent successes and failures in energy technology, and a second on the forces that contribute to breakthroughs in energy technology innovation. Fourteen projects in total will be selected for support from those responding to the calls and NBER will organize a research conference for each call where supported papers will be presented and discussed. Finally, NBER will hold a third conference aimed at sharing research findings with energy decision-makers and other interested stakeholders.

Temoa (Tools for Energy Model Optimization and Analysis) is a modern, open source software platform for modeling energy systems. Developed by Joe DeCarolis at North Carolina State University, Temoa is a model modeling framework. It’s open source, well-documented, small enough to run without access to huge computing resources, and accompanied by guides and tutorials that make its features accessible for new and experienced modelers alike. Funds from this grant support a project led by DeCarolis and his collaborator, Paulina Jaramillo of Carnegie Mellon University, to utilize Temoa to create an Open Energy Outlook report for the United States. The report will lay out several scenarios for how the U.S. energy system might evolve over the coming decades, including detailed consideration of how sector specific developments in buildings, electricity, fuels, heavy industry, policy and economics, and transportation might contribute to that evolution. The report promises to be an important complement to the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook and other similar modeling efforts. Grant funds will support two iterations of the Open Energy Outlook Report, intra-team meetings and workshops, and development of the Temoa model to support the new analysis.