Its members combine tech savvy with business skills in pursuit of a “triple bottom line” of social change, environmental benefits, and profit.
Basically, you can bring about 1) social change, produce 2) environmental benefits, and make 3) profit while doing that.
Lawrence Berkeley National Labs director Steven Chu believes the top two solutions to the energy problem are 1) energy efficiency and 2) harnessing the power of the sun. There are a range of solutions that fall into the "harnessing the power of the sun" solution. Here are the excerpts:
LBNL director Steven Chu looked at controlling greenhouse gas emissions as a grand physics problem, the way he might calculate the potential output of a Carnot heat engine. The challenge, he felt, was to figure out which low-carbon energy sources had the greatest theoretical output and the fewest barriers to production. If we wanted to meet all of the world’s increasing electricity needs with nuclear fission, he calculated, we’d need to erect a reactor every ten days and we’d have a terrible nuclear waste problem. He searched for technologies that were in their infancy, where improvements might make a big difference. That eliminated wind turbines, which— according to Chu’s calculation of the “Betts limit”—are already close to their theoretical efficiency of 59 percent. “When you start with a problem like energy, you have to look at what are the ultimate limitations. And then you work back from those.”
By process of elimination, Chu arrived at two promising avenues for research: energy efficiency—a field pioneered by Berkeley physicist Art Rosenfeld—and harnessing the power of the sun. Sunlight can be captured by both technology and plants, which led him to identify the fields of photovoltaics, nanotechnology, electrochemistry, artificial photosynthesis, catalysis (producing hydrogen from water using sunlight), batteries (to hold energy produced by solar cells), and biofuels. Chu imagined a spectrum of biofuels, ranging from ethanol—which requires modest leaps in innovation—to more technically challenging fuels, such as butane and octane, that could be used by both airplane and conventional auto engines. Chu dubbed these sun-related projects Helios.
There were some interesting excerpts about the implications of the above solutions:
For all the hopes placed in the biofuels initiatives, most of us understand relatively little about the science behind biofuels—never mind the commercial relationships, or the impact of their innovations on farming communities far from the Bay Area. When Chris Somerville gave his presentation at LBNL, he described green plants as giant solar collectors, working doubletime to turn sunlight into chemical energy to power transportation while storing carbon. Somerville surmised that the world could meet its need for transportation fuels with 1 percent of the world’s land planted with miscanthus, a perennial that converts energy from the sun at 2 percent efficiency and doesn’t appear to require much water, fertilizer, or cultivation.
Although 1 percent sounds like a modest amount of land, in global terms it’s nearly three times the land area of Spain. In short order, land could replace oil as the world’s most valuable commodity, quickly sending the greatest impacts of Berkeley’s homegrown “disruptive technology” to the farthest, poorest corners of the earth. “I can’t tell you with certainty that we can afford 1 percent,” Somerville said. “It will be something we’ll look at deeply and broadly here at the Institute—is there enough water and enough land, and what are the consequences to the societies that are sitting on that land?”
And an interesting excerpt about the different number of disciplines involved at arriving at complete, holistic solutions:
The stress of dealing with climate change is even changing academic disciplines themselves. “There’s a breakdown happening, a disciplinary crisis about what our ‘knowledge’ is,” a chemical engineering student explained to me later. “The chemistry we grew up on was distillation columns, but now it’s Keasling and synthetic biology.” Students worry that the rigid criteria for academic success in a single discipline may be poor training for the kind of interdisciplinary studies they’ll need in order to understand the energy revolution that’s growing here.
And an interesting excerpt about putting the appropriate checks and balances in place to make sure that you find surprises early:
How do you find those surprises in advance? LaPorte’s work on aircraft carriers and nuclear power plants suggests that organizations that successfully manage mistakes have deliberately developed cultures encouraging self-criticism and rewarding employees for owning up to errors quickly. They also set up structures to preserve institutional memories from one generation to the next. Successful organizations institutionalize checks and balances and encourage rigorous debate, rather than relying on ad hoc groups to police themselves. “It doesn’t mean you don’t trust those who are doing the work,” he says. “But the institution needs early warning.”
And the article ends with an interesting challenge for Berkeley itself:
Borenstein’s caution underscores the fact that changes wrought by climate change now extend beyond melting glaciers and anxious polar bears to Berkeley itself. As it prepares to take on the greatest challenge of our time, the university will require not only new technologies and industries, but also new institutions, new disciplines, and new ways of communicating its expertise around the world. Although the science and policy of limiting greenhouse gasses have yet to be invented, the university already knows how to build upon its culture of debate and optimism. And as the university’s ideas attract more political and financial backers, Berkeley will have to invest in its own integrity with as much deliberation as any venture capitalist.
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