Understanding of the new technologies and policies that will affect how we produce and consume energy and consideration of the commercialization potential of technologies.

L-to-r: Ty Zieman, Garrett Frank, Taylor Thompson and Aneal Tenjarla

Aneal Tenjarla, a senior majoring in finance at McCombs, won the Tulane Energy Trading Competition Nov. 14 in New Orleans, besting 28 students (including MBA students) from six universities in the competition’s final round.

Making it to the individual, finals competition was a result of the McCombs group team (which included Tenjarla, Ty Zieman, Taylor Thompson and Garrett Frank) winning the semifinals during a two-week remote trading competition. From there, the team advanced to the Tulane finals, where it became an individual competition.

Read the full story at McCombs TODAY.

The following article from the Las Vegas Review Journal hypothesizes that battery manufacture might become another source of U.S. foreign energy dependence in the coming years.

Photo by frcsyk. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Many of these vehicles will be manufactured in the United States. But what about the battery packs? Will the U.S. economy just be swapping dependence on imported crude oil for dependence on imported battery packs?

Although much of the advanced battery technology available in laptop computers, cell phones and portable electronics was invented and developed in the United States, almost none of it is manufactured here. This is particularly true of advanced battery cells that employ nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion chemistries.”

Read the full article at reviewjournal.com and let us know what you think.

Listen in as Matt Kistler, Walmart’s Vice President of Sustainability, moderates a panel discussion on global sustainability challenges within business and society with Lee Scott, Chairman of the Executive Board and former CEO of Walmart, and several top researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, including:

• Ty Henderson, Assistant Professor, Marketing, Red McCombs School of Business;
• Jay Banner, Professor, Geological Sciences and Director, Environmental Science Institute, Jackson School of Geosciences;
• Melinda Taylor, Senior Lecturer and Executive Director of Center for Global Energy, International Arbitration, and Environmental Law, School of Law;
• Sheridan Titman, Professor, Finance and Executive Director, Energy Management and Innnovation Center, Red McCombs School of Business;
• Robert Hebner, Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Center for Electromechanics, Cockrell School of Engineering;
• Eugene Gholz, Associate Professor, Public Affairs, LBJ School of Public Policy;
• Michael Webber, Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Director and Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, Cockrell School of Engineering;

Please note: transcript coming soon for this audio recording.

A few of the many great thoughts from the discussion, which covered such diverse topics as incentives, regulation, the ambiguity of societal sustainability goals, the importance of balanced approaches, the state of science education in the U.S. and the time of day when Texans should run the dishwasher or charge an electric car (answer: at night):

• “I know it’s difficult to believe, but in selling compact fluorescent light bulbs, we have eliminated the need for three power plants in this country. Just that one item, priced appropriately.” – Lee Scott

• “What we’re finding is that the supplier in China who is dumping their chemicals into the river and giving people cancer downstream, is the same one who is running a sloppy operation, not producing good quality and wasting energy in their own factory–and as we go in and help those people clean up what they’re doing, we’re finding that they can actually lower their overall cost because how they’re treating the environment is a reflection of how poorly they run their businesses. The two things are not separate.” – Lee Scott

• “Another perspective that’s taken on this is to calculate the cost of taking no action. There’s an interesting report out of the United Kingdom by Stern that’s actually made those calculations…Those are pretty sobering numbers.” - Jay Banner

• “At some point, we’re going to have to make a decision that we just can’t consume like we did in the past. I know that’s the kind of conversation that no one wants to have.” - Ty Henderson

“I think we should take into account the fact that probably the most important determinant of how much energy we use is really the way our cities are designed. American cities were designed in a period when energy was very, very cheap and water was very, very cheap.” - Sheridan Titman

A recent article from The New York Times hypothesizes that the move to alternative energies might hinge on water availability, quoting Assistant Professor Michael Webber of The University of Texas at Austin:

“When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at The University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water.

Read The NYT’s “Alternative Energy Projects Stumble on a Need for Water.” (May require login)

Water remains a key ingredient in energy production, whether it’s cooling power plants or used in smaller amounts in already water-limited areas (for example, solar power production in the SW). As water costs rise, will it turn out that the commercialization potential of new technologies depends on how water-efficient technologies are/become? What are your thoughts?

This is an interesting story from NPR’s morning edition that also includes an interactive map of shale basins and conventional drilling areas:

In recent years, natural gas producers in the United States have struggled, mostly in vain, to be taken more seriously in the energy world. Big oil companies like Exxon had concluded that natural gas reserves in the United States were not sufficiently abundant to warrant big investments in exploration and drilling. When small independent gas producers argued otherwise, they were often ridiculed.

“I once had to tell the Exxon people in front of a congressional committee that I respectfully disagreed with every single thing they had presented,” recalls Robert Hefner, 74, a veteran gas producer from Oklahoma.

But the natural gas folks now have numbers on their side due to new successes in getting gas out of shale rock. Geologists have always known that shale rock, often found in combination with coal and oil deposits, holds substantial amounts of natural gas. If a piece of shale rock is broken and lit with a match, it will actually burn for a few moments with a small flame.

The shale gas was previously considered unreachable, but advances in drilling techniques have changed that assessment. The result is a dramatic increase in estimated natural gas reserves.

Read more…

From The University of Texas at Austin news:

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have received about $2.5 million to identify new materials that will efficiently absorb sunlight and split water (H2O) into clean hydrogen fuel, which could power cars and be used to generate electricity.

For the next three years, chemical engineering Professor Charles Mullins, chemistry Professor Allen Bard and mathematics Professor Irene M. Gamba will collaborate on the endeavor, which encompasses two grants from the National Science Foundation ($1.4 million) and the U.S. Department of Energy (about $1.1 million). Bard and Mullins are affiliated with the Center for Electrochemistry at the university.

The center is a multi-faculty collaboration devoted to research on fundamental and applied aspects of electrochemistry, which has already received research support for work on electrochemical energy sources such as batteries and fuel cells, solar energy research and new materials.

Read more.

From The University of Texas at Austin news:

Researchers apply the nanoparticle "inks" as a spray on the solar cells.

Solar cells could soon be produced more cheaply using nanoparticle “inks” that allow them to be printed like newspaper or painted onto the sides of buildings or rooftops to absorb electricity-producing sunlight.

Brian Korgel, a University of Texas at Austin chemical engineer, is hoping to cut costs to one-tenth of their current price by replacing the standard manufacturing process for solar cells—gas-phase deposition in a vacuum chamber, which requires high temperatures and is relatively expensive.

“That’s essentially what’s needed to make solar-cell technology and photovoltaics widely adopted,” Korgel said. “The sun provides a nearly unlimited energy resource, but existing solar energy harvesting technologies are prohibitively expensive and cannot compete with fossil fuels.”

Read more…

From The NY Times Green Inc. blog:

The Department of Energy announced$27.6 million in research grants on Monday, for projects intended to simulate the underground storage of carbon dioxide.

The 19 awards, to be distributed over four years, will be supplemented by $8.2 million paid by the recipients, which are predominantly universities.

Carbon capture and storage technology — or C.C.S. — is especially important for coal-fired power plants, which account for close to half of the country’s electricity use and a substantial portion of its carbon emissions.

“People think the elephant in the room is coal and what we’re going to do with coal,” said Michael Webber, an energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Basically,” Mr. Webber said, “this deals with the elephant in the room.” He also said that the government outlays appeared generous by research grant standards.”

We are pleased that UT Austin was selected for two projects:

Monitoring, Verification, and Accounting (MVA)

University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology, Austin, Texas—In this project, investigators will use new technology to acquire three-dimensional multi-component seismic data across brine-filled strata that can be used for CO2 storage. The data will be processed and interpreted using rock physics principles to show that the combination of compressional and shear seismic attributes provides more rock, fluid, and geologic information to use in MVA tasks than does the use of compressional seismic data alone. (DOE share: $1,354,253; recipient share: $270,850; duration: 36 months).

Risk Assessment

University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology, Austin, Texas—The risks associated with CO2 storage in brine reservoirs will be quantified by (1) employing Bayesian inference techniques, (2) learning from the safety record of the CO2-EOR industry, (3) using expert panels drawn from industry and non-governmental organizations to evaluate programmatic risks, (4) examining the risks produced by CO2 dissolution and pressure fields associated with injection into brine reservoirs, and (5) assessing the consequences of potential CO2 leakage on water ecology and energy resources. (DOE share: $1,996,126; recipient share: $634,450; duration: 48 months).

The Center for Sustainable Development at The University of Texas at Austin held a half-day symposium where faculty and partners discussed how their work responds to the question:

How can communities be designed to maximize the quality of life, while reducing the impact on the environment to zero?

Check the out conference site soon for post-event videos of the presentations.  In the mean time, you can read more about the event on the student-run The Daily Texan.