Rethinking Power

ETHICS + POLICY

by ELIZABETH WALTER

Rethinking Power How can we power our 21stcentury world while leaving behind minimal waste and pollution? For too many years, humans have been following the same recipe – dig, burn, bury, repeat. For some time, policy makers and researchers have been considering methods to convert energy into useable forms without compromising our environment and national security. In recent years, unpredictable swings in energy prices and increased geopolitical uncertainty have drawn wider attention on the questions surrounding energy use.

50 www.stanfordscientific.org

Because energy systems are so inherently complex, however, individuals from myriad of areas of expertise must convene in order to efficiently pursue research and policy change. To encourage these collaborations, Stanford established the Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE), which will become the overarching organization dedicated to energy research at Stanford. Donations totaling over $100 million brought this institute to life, with the hopes that collecting a critical mass of interdisciplinary researchers will greatly

Credit: sxc.hu

Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy

ETHICS + POLICY

PIE’s mission is to foster the development of advanced energy technologies that will allow us to live our modern-day lives while still protecting the environment. Though Stanford already spends $30 million annually on research dedicated to sustainability and clean energy, this new initiative will serve as a parent institute tying together a number of related entities currently present on campus.

Credit: sxc.hu

Professor Franklin Orr, former project director of Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP), will head the newly formed PIE and will oversee the integration of existing energy research centers across campus. At GCEP, Orr helped cultivate projects investigating many aspects of sustainable energy production – from solar energy and biomass conversion technologies, to the study of new materials and design for batteries and fuel cells, to innovations in nanotechnology. Founded in 2002, GCEP sought ways to reduce the environmental impact of energy technologies, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions in cost-effective and sustainable ways. GCEP will now become part of PIE, as will another Stanford center created in 2006 – the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center (PEEC), which aims to increase energy efficiency by targeting buildings, transportation systems, energy policy, and people’s everyday behaviors. PIE as a whole will focus on all aspects of energy issues – from basic research to local and national policy suggestions. In short, Orr sees PIE as a way to “bring together the groups of faculty and students and research that are related to energy ... and to make it possible to do some things together that go beyond what we are all trying to do individually.”

People Power

A primary focus of the new Institute will be to attract top faculty, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students to tackle energy issues across a number of different disciplines. Given that energy conversion and use is an inherently interdisciplinary topic, PIE wants to ensure that top researchers from diverse scientific backgrounds continue to come together to

solve difficult problems. Orr’s list of Stanford faculty members already involved in energy research across campus includes over 130 faculty distributed across twenty-one departments. To complement these research groups, $25 million of the establishing PIE donation will be used to hire new faculty, “filling in gaps” by adding expertise in additional energy research areas. From the physics department to mechanical engineering and materials sciences, and even the medical school, many labs will have important roles to play in this endeavor. PIE is also committed to supporting student research and education, and the Institute hopes to expand the ways that the university teaches Stanford students about energy technology and use. “I love talking to the students,” says Orr. “They are so interested and excited and anxious to figure out a way to contribute.” To facilitate student research, another $20 million will be set aside for twenty Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowships, designed to support graduate students for up to three years of their career at Stanford. These fellowships will allow talented graduate students to work on projects of their choice, even if this research spans a number of traditional research boundaries or departments. For example, a student wanting to study fundamental materials science that might be associated with energy conversions could just as easily hail from engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, physics, applied physics or any number of other departments. Orr notes, “There are a lot of interesting problems sitting in the boundaries. We want to make it possible for people to work across those boundaries.” Orr’s role as director involves collaborating with department heads and the university administration in order to determine the best mix of faculty and graduate students to facilitate energy research at Stanford. As part of this process, he enjoys the opportunity to see what is going on in many different labs across campus. “A job like this one gives me a mandate to learn about all the talented people and the research areas that I didn’t know as well,” says Orr. “What I really hope to do is to unleash the talents of a bunch of people who are smarter than I am. So I’m just excited about working with a bunch of really great people.”

Credit: sxc.hu

facilitate basic energy research as well as the dissemination of innovative ideas.

”We need to take a sustained look at how we humans interact with the planetary systems, because humans are now a global force.” – Lynn Orr volume VIII 51

ETHICS + POLICY

”There are a lot of interesting problems sitting in the boundaries. We want to make it possible for people to work across those boundaries.” – Lynn Orr

This endeavor was made possible through generous donations by a number of individuals. In particular, Stanford alumnus Jay Precourt donated $50 million to establish the overarching PIE. In addition, a $40 million donation by the husband-and-wife team of Thomas Steyer and Kat Taylor made possible the creation of the new TomKat Institute for Sustainable Energy, which will also be housed within PIE. The TomKat Institute will focus on sustainable sources of energy, as well as the technologies, such as batteries and nanostructure materials, that need to be developed for these sources to become viable suppliers of energy on a national scale.

Research inspired by competition

A primary component of PIE is the establishment of a $20 million fund to support research project competitions. These awards will be up to $200,000 per year for up to two years in order to pursue innovative energy hypotheses that have not yet been tested. As Orr explains, the idea is that these grants will provide “seed funding,” allowing individuals to perform a proof-ofconcept experiment that would then allow them to write a full-scale proposal that might be funded by longer-term sources like the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE) or other agencies.

Credit: sxc.hu

Orr is confident that Stanford researchers are up to the task, noting that GCEP has run similar, though smaller, competitions in the past, with a recent round garnering seventeen proposals. The first PIE project competition was held during the spring 2009 term. These funding competitions, while not explicitly interdisciplinary in nature, often foster collaboration across labs. Many of the projects that were funded through GCEP included faculty from different departments, and PIE will also encourage ideas that reach across of traditional boundaries between academic disciplines.

A bright future

With all of these great minds poised to tackle difficult problems surrounding sustainable energy, how will they harness clean energy from natural sources? One

52 www.stanfordscientific.org

obvious, abundant source of energy is the sun. Unfortunately, the market price for converting solar energy into other forms that can be used to heat and light our houses, fuel our cars, and power our computers, is higher than more traditional ways of generating power (e.g. coal and fossil fuels). However, as Orr notes, “we now have this ability to create structures at very small scales – nanostructured materials – and that allows us to […] change the properties of those materials – to move light around, to convert it into electrons, to hook it up with electrochemistry in devices like batteries and fuel cells.” A significant number of Stanford faculty are already working on aspects of these problems – from solar energy conversion to battery and nanostructure technology. In addition, Orr notes that this is “an area where we’ll also work on the policy side of what it takes to use renewables in a big way.” Figuring out how to configure our national electric grids to handle a whole lot of small, distributed power sources that operate only part of the time (e.g. when the wind is blowing) is not trivial and requires clout at the national level in order to make it happen. PIE hopes to be part of the conversation that brings these ideas to fruition.

Thinking our way to a cleaner future

At the foundation of any transformational program are the people – the students, faculty and industry collaborators who flow through the institute. These individuals will contribute to energy research in many important ways throughout their lifetimes. Orr is enthusiastic about the role Stanford will play in shaping our future energy balance. “We hope that we will lay the fundamental basis for a transformed world energy system that has much lower emissions of greenhouse gasses, that supplies the energy we need at costs that are reasonable. We need to take a sustained look at how we humans interact with the planetary systems, because we humans are now a global force.”

To Learn More

For more information, visit the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency website at http://peec.stanford.edu