Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Developing electricity-powered, low-emissions alternatives to carbon-intensive industrial processes”.
If you look at the way that policy develops around issues such as climate change, the thing that often holds it up is the absence of alternatives., And so what I see as a big part of our job is to provide those viable alternatives.. Our project aims to decarbonize industry., So there are numerous products, of course, that one can try to decarbonize and we have chosen to focus on four key products: cement, steel, ammonia and ethylene, which contribute about half the industrial emission.. This is a huge problem in the context of global warming. Right 33 % of CO2 emissions coming from industry. And half of that is associated with only four products is a big problem in the context of global warming..
Each of these industries were developed at a time when fossil fuels were the lowest cost form of energy. And the technologies to decarbonize that industry. Have not been developed and implemented at scale.. So there is a technology gap to address that motivates us towards an important problem..
We are proposing in the Center to use electricity to help decarbonize. The widespread availability of this very low cost. Electricity gives us a vector by which to reinvent these industries., I’m a material scientist. And as a material scientist, I always believe that materials properties can be improved..
You know I’ve been for several years now working on cement.. You know this is Tim. The Beaver made out of a decarbonized cement, and here we’ve, you know uh electrochemically processed the raw materials that go into this in such a way that we can easily capture the CO2 and decrease the carbon footprint of cement.. We are lucky to be at MIT because we can bring together multiple disciplines that are needed to address this very challenging problem.. We have the experts, but but what we need to do is build a broad based coalition, not only the students and postdocs and researchers, but also reaching out to external stakeholders.. These cannot be laboratory curiosities., It’s a fertile field for scientific innovation that could be guiding the engineering of technology.
That motivates me and my colleagues.. If there is any place on the planet that can achieve the kinds of goals that we’ve set out in the Climate. Grand Challenges it’s MIT .