Meet 3 researchers looking to transform energy

The world's leading nations — and some of its richest business leaders — propose investing billions of dollars to find technology that can transform how we power our countries.

"Energy drives the economy. But the world has been relying on — with the exclusion of nuclear — a series of technologies that we were using in the late 19th and early 20th century," said Josh Freed, vice president for clean energy at Third Way, a political think tank based in Washington, D.C.

"There are any number of big, even seemingly small ideas, that could have dramatic impact on our energy system," Freed said. "We need to put money into them to determine which one works and which ones fail."

Here's a look at three researchers who are seeking to find what might be the next-generation resource of energy for the world:

Seeing a power source in nuclear waste

Sam Brinton, a 27-year-old bisexual who sports a bright red mohawk, is hard to miss walking the halls of Congress in stilettos, talking about what the nation should do with its nuclear waste.

Openness about his personal life has set a standard for his professional life. Brinton focuses on nuclear waste's challenges and opportunities, including whether it should be tapped to create new energy. "People know I bring my whole self," said the senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank. "I share the good and the bad. I have nothing to hide."

Brinton, a nuclear engineer, wants to answer hard questions and address people's fears around nuclear energy. "Let's talk about what could be scary and not ignore it or sweep it under a rug," he said.

Brinton sees energy as one of his generation's greatest challenges: the world's power needs are growing, and so is its need for clean energy.

"I don't believe this can be solved with one energy type," said Brinton, who received his nuclear engineering graduate degree at MIT. "It won't be 100 percent nuclear. It won't be 100 percent renewable. It won't be 100 percent coal or natural gas. It will take a mix."

America needs to meet the technology and policy challenges that lie within each of those energy pieces, he said.

For example, researchers are developing technology to use nuclear waste — considered a public health and environmental hazard — to power advanced nuclear reactors. But they run into regulations that were built around older technology. And scientists who want to demonstrate the technology works have no place to ramp it up.

"You can't build a reactor in the back yard," Brinton said.

"We're looking for a test bed or an innovation center or somewhere where these amazing startups can all get together, collaborate, be on their own when they need to, but develop these advanced reactors in real time and in real space," he said.

"We're redesigning how we do reactors so they can do more than just meet nuclear waste challenges," Brinton said. "They can meet safety challenges. They can be more economical. They can be smaller so they can fit in more locations. ... A lot of amazing people are working on this."

Transforming the sun's power into fuel

Sometimes, Sonja Francis sits under a tree at Caltech's campus, feeling the cool breeze float across her face and wonders about a day when climate change might erase that simple pleasure.

"One day, the breeze might be too hot," said the 30-year-old electrochemist. "Or certain plants or wildlife won’t make it."

Francis is part of a team at the California Institute of Technology that's trying to transform carbon dioxide, water and sunlight into a solar fuel, mimicking what plants do to create their own fuel through photosynthesis.

​Francis' interest in energy began in her home of Trinidad and Tobago, an oil-rich country in the Caribbean.

"We get very dependable sunshine," she said. "We know the sun is going to rise at 6, and it’s going to set at 6. But we never really capitalized on that."

The problem is storing the sun's energy. That's where Francis and the scientists at Caltech's Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis come in.

Francis, a post-doctorate scholar, is searching for the right catalyst to transform carbon, hydrogen and other atoms into a fuel using the sun's power.

Francis said it's hard to put a deadline on making the discovery. "I don’t tell science what to do," she said. "I make a hypothesis, and I test it. And the results will tell me if I need to change my hypothesis."

Until the next generation of transformational energy is available, Francis tries to do simple things that reduce her personal carbon footprint.

She walks or rides her bike to her Caltech lab. She recycles. She tries to avoid waste, especially food.

A lot of energy goes into raising, transporting and processing food, Francis said. "You have fertilizers, you have use of land, a lot of water," she said. And "there are a lot of people who don't get three meals a day."

Finding a calling in translating science

Christophe Jospe wanted to tackle a big problem, and he found a project that fits the bill: working with an Arizona State University research team that seeks to remove carbon from the air that's warming the planet.

Jospe, 29, said he acts as a bridge helping to explain the science being developed at Arizona's Center for Negative Carbon Emissions.

"There's so much science out there that needs to be translated," said Jospe, the center's chief strategist who has a master's degree from Columbia University in environmental science and policy.

Jospe works for Klaus Lackner, the center's director and an Arizona State professor. His researchers are working to develop technologies to capture carbon that's in the atmosphere and find ways to reuse it or permanently dispose of it.

"CO2 is a waste that just accumulates in the atmosphere. The more we have, the warmer the climate is going to get," said Jospe, who lives in New York City working remotely with the center.

Lackner, he said, seeks to "treat the root of the problem. There's too much CO2 in the atmosphere. Let's pull it back."

For example, the center envisions its technology would enable a company like Coca-Cola to capture carbon from the air near its plants and recycle it to give soda its fizz. Or feed captured CO2 to algae that's used to make fuel for cars and trucks.

If the world has a limited amount of carbon that can be released, "we're spending our children's carbon budget," Jospe said.

"We need to invest in technology to give our children a way to deal with it — at a relatively low investment," he said.

Not only is the Arizona team developing technology it believes will be a low-cost carbon removal system, but five startup companies are working on similar but different approaches.

Jospe is working to pull together a consortium of industry leaders to push the research forward. He advocates for more government funding.

"The focus is getting good at removing carbon from the atmosphere," he said. "We’re trying to get investment so that we can do more."

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