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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Trade-offs in land-based carbon removal measures under 1.5 °C and 2 °C futures

Land-based carbon removals, specifically afforestation/reforestation and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), vary widely in 1.5 °C and 2 °C scenarios generated by integrated assessment models. Because underlying drivers are difficult to assess, we use a well-known integrated assessment model, GCAM, to demonstrate that land-based carbon removals are sensitive to the strength and scope of land-based mitigation policies. We find that while cumulative afforestation/reforestation and BECCS deployment are inversely related, they are both typically part of cost-effective mitigation pathways, with forestry options deployed earlier. While the CO 2 removal intensity (removal per unit land) of BECCS is typically higher than afforestation/reforestation over long time horizons, the BECCS removal intensity is sensitive to feedstock and technology choices whereas the afforestation/reforestation removal intensity is sensitive to land policy choices. Finally, we find a generally positive relationship between agricultural prices and removal effectiveness of land-based mitigation, suggesting that some trade-offs may be difficult to avoid.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Adversarial super-resolution of climatological wind and solar data

Accurate and high-resolution data reflecting different climate scenarios are vital for policy makers when deciding on the development of future energy resources, electrical infrastructure, transportation networks, agriculture, and many other societally important systems. However, state-of-the-art long-term global climate simulations are unable to resolve the spatiotemporal characteristics necessary for resource assessment or operational planning. We introduce an adversarial deep learning approach to super resolve wind velocity and solar irradiance outputs from global climate models to scales sufficient for renewable energy resource assessment. Using adversarial training to improve the physical and perceptual performance of our networks, we demonstrate up to a 50 × resolution enhancement of wind and solar data. In validation studies, the inferred fields are robust to input noise, possess the correct small-scale properties of atmospheric turbulent flow and solar irradiance, and retain consistency at large scales with coarse data. An additional advantage of our fully convolutional architecture is that it allows for training on small domains and evaluation on arbitrarily-sized inputs, including global scale. We conclude with a super-resolution study of renewable energy resources based on climate scenario data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Power sector impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022

Abstract The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is regarded as the most prominent piece of federal climate legislation in the U.S. thus far. This paper investigates potential impacts of IRA on the power sector, which is the focus of many core IRA provisions. We summarize a multi-model comparison of IRA to identify robust findings and variation in power sector investments, emissions, and costs across 11 models of the U.S. energy system and electricity sector. Our results project that IRA incentives accelerate the deployment of low-emitting capacity, increasing average annual additions by up to 3.2 times current levels through 2035. CO 2 emissions reductions from electricity generation across models range from 47%–83% below 2005 in 2030 (68% average) and 66%–87% in 2035 (78% average). Our higher clean electricity deployment and lower emissions under IRA, compared with earlier U.S. modeling, change the baseline for future policymaking and analysis. IRA helps to bring projected U.S. power sector and economy-wide emissions closer to near-term climate targets; however, no models indicate that these targets will be met with IRA alone, which suggests that additional policies, incentives, and private sector actions are needed.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

More high-impact atmospheric river-induced extreme precipitation events under warming in a high-resolution model

Extreme precipitation events, as occurred in Europe 2021, or western North America 2023, with an intensity of 75 mm/day or 100 mm/day, respectively, exert a catastrophic impact. Lower-resolution (~100 km) climate models cannot simulate the intensity, nor their response to greenhouse warming. Using a high-resolution (~25 km) model capable of simulating such events, here we show that frequency-weighted area of such events over western Europe and the west coast of North America likely expands by more than 80% under an approximately 4°C of global warming from the historical levels. Along the west coasts of Europe and North America, area impacted by atmospheric rivers-induced extreme precipitation events is projected to double, driven by intensified landfalling atmospheric rivers. Thermodynamic processes drive the increase, whereas dynamic processes reduce the intensity over western Europe but enhance it along the west coast of North America. Here our findings provide policy-relevant information for climate adaptation strategies.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

An agent-based approach to study the diffusion rate and the effect of policies on joint placement of photovoltaic panels and green roof under climate change uncertainty

As two of the highest trending green technologies, photovoltaic panels and green roofs are proven to be effective practices for energy generation and energy saving. The achievable impact from the widespread installation of such technologies is, however, not clearly established. This is mainly because the degree of this impact highly depends on the inherently uncertain environmental and climate factors, as well as the unknown adoption rates of these technologies, which in turn depend on different characteristics of decision makers and interactions among them. To that end, this study aims to investigate the diffusion rate of these green technologies under uncertainties caused by climate change, characteristics of adopters, and their interactions. An integrated framework is developed to capture the interplay between financial and attitudinal aspects, as well as the uncertainties due to both the stochastic nature of system parameters and the interactions among agents involving human beings. Specifically, this framework consists of a integer programming model to optimize the green roof and/or photovoltaic panel installation settings for a given building under climate change uncertainty, and an agent-based model to factor in the role of human behavior and interactions. A case study for the city of Knoxville, TN, is presented to evaluate the effects of different policies on the diffusion rate of the green technologies of interest. The results show that the affordability of green technologies and public awareness are the key drivers of the adoption of these technologies, which highlight the important role of the decision makers in impacting the diffusion rate.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Near-term transition and longer-term physical climate risks of greenhouse gas emissions pathways

Policy, business, finance and civil society stakeholders are increasingly looking to compare future emissions pathways across both their associated physical climate risks stemming from increasing temperatures and their transition climate risks stemming from the shift to a low-carbon economy. Herein, we present an integrated framework to explore near-term (to 2030) transition risks and longer-term (to 2050) physical risks, globally and in specific regions, for a range of plausible greenhouse gas emissions and associated temperature pathways, spanning 1.5–4 °C levels of long-term warming. By 2050, physical risks deriving from major heatwaves, agricultural drought, heat stress and crop duration reductions depend greatly on the temperature pathway. By 2030, transition risks most sensitive to temperature pathways stem from economy-wide mitigation costs, carbon price increases, fossil fuel demand reductions and coal plant capacity reductions. Considering several pathways with a 2 °C target demonstrates that transition risks also depend on technological, policy and socio-economic factors.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

CMIP7 data request: land and land ice priorities and opportunities

The Land and Land Ice Theme in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 7 (CMIP7) represents the current understanding of physical processes in land surface ecosystems, hydrology, cryosphere, and their physical interactions with other Earth system components. Simulations from Earth system models (ESMs) could provide crucial information for assessing planetary safety, such as critical tipping elements, and be used to inform climate risks for improving climate impact assessments and policy decisions. This paper presents a collaborative effort to identify scientific opportunities in the Land and Land Ice Theme of the CMIP7 Data Request. The proposed opportunities build upon advances in ESMs, including new freshwater system and land ice processes being included in CMIP7, as well as the scientific community's demand for high-frequency and sub-grid-scale land surface outputs. In total, 25 variable groups that contain 716 variables have been identified to be potentially available to the broad scientific audience for performing analysis in land–atmosphere coupling, hydrological processes and freshwater systems, glacier and ice sheet mass balance and their influence on the sea levels, land use, and plant phenology. Key reflections from this data request effort include advocacy for closer engagement between the user community and modeling groups, reduction in the technical barriers to tracking existing parameters and defining new variables, and more streamlined variable management. These will be essential to enhance the usability and reliability of CMIP7 outputs for climate and Earth system research and applications to a broad audience that relies on the CMIP7 endeavor.

Li, Yue [Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (Uni↗
DOE OSTI2021

Identifying management opportunities to combat climate, land, and marine threats across less climate exposed coral reefs

Conserving coral reefs is critical for maintaining marine biodiversity, protecting coastlines, and supporting livelihoods in many coastal communities. Climate change threatens coral reefs globally, but researchers have identified a portfolio of coral reefs (bioclimatic units [BCUs]) that are relatively less exposed to climate impacts and strongly connected to other coral reef systems. These reefs provide a proactive opportunity to secure a long-term future for coral reefs under climate change. To help guide local management efforts, we quantified marine cumulative human impact (CHI) from climate, marine, and land pressures (2013 and from 2008 to 2013) in BCUs and across countries tasked with BCU management. Additionally, we created a management index based on common management measures and policies for each pressure source (climate, marine, and land) to identify a country's intent and commitment to effectively manage these pressures. Twenty-two countries (79%) had increases in CHI from 2008 to 2013. Climate change pressures had the highest proportional contribution to CHI across all reefs and in all but one country (Singapore), but 18 BCUs (35%) and nine countries containing BCUs (32%) had relatively high land and marine impacts. There was a significant positive relationship between climate impact and the climate management index across countries (R 2 = 0.43, p = 0.02), potentially signifying that countries with greater climate impacts are more committed to managing them. However, this trend was driven by climate management intent in Fiji and Bangladesh. Our results can be used to guide future fine-scale analyses, national policies, and local management decisions, and our management indices reveal areas where management components can be improved. Cost-effectively managing local pressures (e.g., fishing and nutrients) in BCUs is essential for building a climate-ready future that benefits coral reefs and people.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Framework to select robust energy retrofit measures for residential communities

Residential building energy retrofits are essential for enhancing environmental sustainability and reducing energy costs. The selection of retrofit measures is influenced by factors such as building systems, occupant behavior, government policy, weather variability, and climate change, all of which can significantly impact energy performance. Compared to retrofitting individual homes, evaluating and selecting optimal retrofit solutions for an entire community is challenging due to diverse residential compositions and variability present. Therefore, engineering robustness is crucial for ensuring consistent energy performance and resilience across different conditions. In this context, robustness refers to the ability of a retrofit measure to maintain its functionality and remain an optimal choice despite external disturbances or changes in inputs and conditions. This study presents a framework for evaluating the robustness of multiple retrofit measures across various building systems, occupant behaviors, and environmental scenarios at the community level. The framework comprises five key steps: scenario model development, integration of the National Residential Efficiency Measures database, energy performance simulation, cost-benefit aggregation, and retrofit solution selection. Each step enhances the framework’s robustness by incorporating the diversity of building characteristics, occupant behaviors, environmental conditions, retrofit options, and evaluation criteria. The framework’s effectiveness is demonstrated through a case study in southern Michigan in the United States, which includes 63 one-story single-family houses, 121 two-story single-family houses, and 8 townhouses. The study identifies furnace retrofits as the most robust solution for the entire community, consistently achieving source energy reductions of 4.7 %–8.0 % and payback period of 10–20 years across various scenarios. These findings are consistent with previous research, indicating the framework’s potential for broader applications in optimizing community-scale residential energy retrofits.

Shu, Lei↗
DOE OSTI2020

Fusing subnational with national climate action is central to decarbonization: the case of the United States

Approaches that root national climate strategies in local actions will be essential for all countries as they develop new nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. The potential impact of climate action from non-national actors in delivering higher global ambition is significant. Sub-national action in the United States provides a test for how such actions can accelerate emissions reductions. We aggregated U.S. state, city, and business commitments within an integrated assessment model to assess how a national climate strategy can be built upon non-state actions. We find that existing commitments alone could reduce emissions 25% below 2005 levels by 2030, and that enhancing actions by these actors could reduce emissions up to 37%. We show how these actions can provide a stepped-up basis for additional federal action to reduce emissions by 49%—consistent with 1.5 °C. Our analysis demonstrates sub-national actions can lead to substantial reductions and support increased national action.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment

Although battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are climate-friendly alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), an important but often ignored fact is that the climate mitigation benefits of BEVs are usually delayed. The manufacture of BEVs is more carbon-intensive than that of ICEVs, leaving a greenhouse gas (GHG) debt to be paid back in the future use phase. Here we analyze millions of vehicle data from the Chinese market and show that the GHG break-even time (GBET) of China’s BEVs ranges from zero (i.e., the production year) to over 11 years, with an average of 4.5 years. 8% of China’s BEVs produced and sold between 2016 and 2018 cannot pay back their GHG debt within the eight-year battery warranty. We suggest enhancing the share of BEVs reaching the GBET by promoting the effective substitution of BEVs for ICEVs instead of the single-minded pursuit of speeding up the BEV deployment race.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Ratcheting of climate pledges needed to limit peak global warming

We report the new and updated emission reduction pledges submitted by countries ahead of the Twenty-Sixth Conference of Parties represent a meaningful strengthening of global ambition compared to the 2015 Paris pledges. Yet, limiting global warming below 1.5 °C this century will require countries to ratchet ambition for 2030 and beyond. Here, we explore a suite of emissions pathways to show that ratcheting near-term ambition through 2030 will be crucial to limiting peak temperature changes. Delaying ratcheting ambition to beyond 2030 could still deliver end-of-century temperature change of less than 1.5 °C but would result in higher temperature overshoot over many decades with the potential for adverse consequences. Ratcheting near-term ambition would also deliver benefits from enhanced non-CO2 mitigation and facilitate faster transitions to net-zero emissions systems in major economies.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

The path to 1.5 °C requires ratcheting of climate pledges

Using model simulations of high-ambition emissions pathways, we show that ratcheting—or increasing—climate ambition through 2030 will be crucial to limiting global peak temperature changes this century. Although updated pledges offered in advance of the Glasgow climate conference in 2021 meaningfully strengthened global ambition in 2030 compared to the 2015 Paris pledges, here, our study underscores the importance of countries ratcheting their 2030 pledges further to reduce the magnitude of temperature overshoot and consequently reduce the risks of irreversible and adverse consequences to natural and human systems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Global trend of methane abatement inventions and widening mismatch with methane emissions

Substantially reducing methane emissions is the fastest way to repress near-term warming and is an essential prerequisite for reaching the 1.5 °C target. However, knowledge about the global invention trend, sectoral and national distribution and international diffusion of methane-targeted abatement technologies (MTATs) remains limited. On the basis of patent data, we identify more than 175,000 MTAT inventions applied between 1990 and 2019 by 133 countries or dependent territories. Our results revealed that after sustained growth of more than fourfold, the number of global high-quality MTAT inventions declined by 3.5% annually from 2010 to 2019. The sectoral and national-level distributions of MTAT inventions and methane emissions are strongly mismatched. Additionally, the international diffusion of MTATs is 11.1% lower than that of overall climate change mitigation technologies and most transfers occur between developed countries or flow to China, South Korea and Brazil; however, other developing countries and the least developed countries are rarely involved.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

The potential land requirements and related land use change emissions of solar energy

Although the transition to renewable energies will intensify the global competition for land, the potential impacts driven by solar energy remain unexplored. In this work, the potential solar land requirements and related land use change emissions are computed for the EU, India, Japan and South Korea. A novel method is developed within an integrated assessment model which links socioeconomic, energy, land and climate systems. At 25–80% penetration in the electricity mix of those regions by 2050, we find that solar energy may occupy 0.5–5% of total land. The resulting land cover changes, including indirect effects, will likely cause a net release of carbon ranging from 0 to 50 gCO 2 /kWh, depending on the region, scale of expansion, solar technology efficiency and land management practices in solar parks. Hence, a coordinated planning and regulation of new solar energy infrastructures should be enforced to avoid a significant increase in their life cycle emissions through terrestrial carbon losses.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

At Risk Population Estimates for Belarus, Poland and Slovakia with Machine Learning

High-resolution gridded population modeling is crucial for various applications, including disaster response planning, infectious disease spread modeling, climate change impact estimation, policy development, and more. Multiple gridded population datasets have been developed, each tailored to meet specific objectives. Among them, LandScan Global dataset is designed to represent ambient and unwarned population distributions. However, this dataset relies on a statistical approach that requires manual adjustments, making it time consuming and labour intensive. Existing machine learning (ML) methods often train and test at different spatial resolutions, potentially leading to inflated results, and they rely on Census population totals for disaggregation. To address these limitations, in this study we developed population estimates using ML models trained and tested at a consistent 30 arc-second resolution (≈1 square kilometer), specifically using Random Forest (RF) and XGBoost. These models were trained on 2020 datum to predict for 2021 for three countries: Belarus, Poland, and Slovakia. Our findings show that both RF (MAE varies from 5.75 to 13.25) and XGBoost (MAE varies from 8.15 to 23.44) model performance is close to LandScan Global estimates. Furthermore, neither of the models performed the best across all grid cells: the RF model was more effective in areas with lower populations, while XGBoost excelled in more densely populated regions. The proposed approach can be used for countries where the Census data is not available.

Lebakula, Viswadeep [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000152935914↗
DOE OSTI2021

Midwest Nuclear-based Net-Zero Carbon Steelmaking Demonstration

Globally, the iron and steel industry accounts for around a quarter of GHG emissions from the manufacturing sector , which is about 7% of the 33 gigatonnes (Gt) of global CO 2 emissions . Thus, globally, the steel industry is a 2-3 Gt CO 2 per year emissions challenge. The steel industry is important to the U.S. economy with output equal to $0.5 trillion and domestic production capacity is critical to national defense, infrastructure, energy production, and transportation. President Biden’s executive order on climate identifies actions and policies to put the Nation on a path to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050. To achieve this, deep carbon reductions in the power, transportation, buildings and capital-intensive industrial manufacturing segments such as steel, cement and chemicals need to be addressed. In its recent “Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System” report , the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) stated that, “while technology exists to decarbonize all parts of the energy system, some sectors remain at precommercial or first-of-a-kind demonstration stages and require significant improvement in cost and performance to become commercially viable.” The NAS goes on to state that these hard to decarbonize sectors include “aviation, shipping, and industrial subsectors such as steel, cement, and chemicals manufacturing .” The Administration has proposed a timeline to decarbonize energy, transportation and then industry and manufacturing. From a life-cycle approach, decarbonizing steel and other large industrial inputs are necessary to decarbonize transformations in energy and transportation. DOE’s TRI-Lab Consortium’s Integrated Energy Systems (IES) program is a collaboration amongst DOE’s three applied energy laboratories: the National Energy Technology Laboratory; National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory. The IES approach looks at more tightly integrating low-carbon nuclear energy, renewable electricity, energy storage, load/demand balancing, and biomass (including plastics and other wastes) with one or more industrial processes that utilize heat and/or power from these clean and waste energy sources to produce a low-carbon commodity-scale product.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2025

Manufacturing Valuable Coal-Derived Products in Southern Appalachia

This project’s objective is to develop and deploy new technologies for manufacturing rare earth elements (REE), critical minerals (CM), and valuable non-fuel, carbon-based products (CBP) from coal and/or coal waste in the SoApp Basin, thus revitalizing distressed SoApp coal communities and reducing reliance on foreign imports of REE and CM. Resource availability and technological advances alone will not ensure this objective is met. The right mix of business climate, market forces, and policy will also be needed. This report identifies the critical technologies, infrastructure, supply chains, human capital, and policy gaps that must be addressed to manufacture REE, CM, and CBP from coal resources and wastes in SoApp The primary goal of the project is to characterize the resource base in the SoApp Basin.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗