Interchange Recharged25 Kesä 2021

Where Are the Gaps in Climate Tech?

We spend most of our time on this show talking about what's happening in climate tech. What technologies, business models, and markets are being developed? By whom? And how much impact will they ultimately have on decarbonization?

But there's an equally interesting topic. What isn't happening? In other words, where is the white space? What areas, technologies, or markets need more attention?

The mandate of a new non-profit called Actuate is to identify and fill gaps across multiple areas, including climate. They focus on R&D, using a model similar to the US federal government’s DARPA or ARPA-e programs.

Today, Shayle talks to Actuate’s Director of Climate Lara Pierpoint. Prior to actuate she led the Technology Strategy team at Exelon. She's also worked at the US Department of Energy and has a PhD from MIT in engineering systems.

Shayle and Lara talk about:

Demand response, an example of one type of gap where we have the technology but don’t know how to use it yet.
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs), a type of nuclear technology used to power spacecraft -- that could also be used planetside as low-density, always on-batteries.
The exorbitant costs of laying of wires, a potential cost saver for nuclear plants and other power projects.
High-temperature superconductors (HTS) that could act like high-capacity transmission built at distribution scale. For example: VEIR.
Sensors and the surprisingly high error bars of many country-level emissions measurements
Storage and competing against transmission, demand response and overbuilding renewables to solve renewable intermittency
Oh, and cows. They talk about burp-catching masks and improving the profitability of forests.

The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets at sgsderms.com/interchange.

The Interchange is brought to you by Enel X, a leader in energy storage, DER management software, and smart electric vehicle charging stations to increase project value. Learn what Enel X can do for your business.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(349)

Bigger turbines, bigger consequences: how wind is rethinking risk, insurance, and predictive maintenance

Wind remains fundamentally healthy: electricity demand is rising, decarbonised power is still needed, and both Europe and the US continue to pull new projects forward, albeit for different reasons. Bu...

14 Heinä 45min

As racks scale, power must change: The AC-to-DC rethink inside AI factories

As AI systems scale, the infrastructure challenge is no longer just about chips, models, and software performance. It is increasingly about the physical systems that allow computation to happen at all...

30 Kesä 33min

Handing back the mic: Six months of data center reality, from Bragawatts to behind-the-meter, and the questions still open

A year ago the data centre conversation was about scale. Increasingly it is about what happens when the announcements meet the physical grid. New capacity is being announced at roughly 435 megawatts a...

16 Kesä 43min

The grid's missing operating system: Why a $100,000 AI controller could defer trillions in hardware and why utilities won't buy it

The energy transition conversation focuses on what connects to the grid. Far less attention goes to whether anyone is coordinating what those assets do once connected. AI training runs swing hundreds ...

2 Kesä 43min

The grid's immune system is retiring: Synchronous condensers, AI data centers and the physics gap that software alone can't close

As coal and gas plants retire, the energy transition conversation focuses on replacing their generation capacity. What gets far less attention is the loss of the physical properties those machines pro...

19 Touko 1h 2min

Beyond combustion: Long Island's first hydrogen-powered linear generator and the fuel-flexible answer to the dispatchable emissions-free resource problem

Utilities are under pressure to deliver generation that is dispatchable, affordable, and clean enough to satisfy increasingly stringent environmental rules, notoriously hard to do in one asset. As ren...

5 Touko 39min

The electrolyzer reckoning: Can disciplined product development deliver on green hydrogen's promise before the survivors run out of runway?

Empty gigawatt factories, product recalls, participation rates that never materialised, and a policy environment that has now stripped the green premium entirely. The electrolyzer industry has had a b...

21 Huhti 1h

Flexibility as a service: Can Octopus's acquisition of Uplight finally make US residential VPPs work?

Millions of enrolled devices, 60 utilities, and the participation rate gap that's been embarrassing the US market for a decade. US residential virtual power plants have been a promising idea that's co...

7 Huhti 45min