FEWtures Project

This article suggests that the world produced 30% of its energy with renewables in 2023 and that fossil fuels production may have hit its peak that year. We will see! I also saw an article that the fossil fuel industry is focusing on production of plastics as a way forward. The fact that they were looking for alternatives was interesting.

The US is propping up gas while the world moves to renewable energy 2024 is a pivotal year for renewable energy, but the US is holding the world back with gas.

Podcast! FEWtures Chemical Engineer Peter Pfromm, from Washington State University, talked with KUOW Southside folks for 6 minutes at the start of the Podcast at the link below. Check it out and hear that when you look at the food on your dinner table tonight 40% of it would disappear in the absence of synthetic fertilizer. Yikes! And that fertilizer currently contributes a lot of carbon to the atmosphere. At FEWtures we are finding that low-carbon green fertilizer is a viable option with much more stable economics.

The Abstract: A song of fire and ice cores Can fertilizer be sustainably made without fossil fuels? How have volcanos changed our atmosphere? We look at two recent studies about emissions today and throughout the past.

Lack of transmission capability is known to be a problem for renewable energy development in the US and elsewhere. This article reports movement on five efforts that have faced many hurdles. Small steps to a game changer??

Billion-Dollar Power Lines Finally Inching Ahead to Help US Grids Suddenly several big power-line projects in the US are moving ahead, bringing with them a flood of potential wind and solar power.

Being a water resources person, Mary Hill wanted to give a shout out to Reed Maxwell, Lisa Gallagher, Laura Condon, and CUAHSI for the PARFLOW Sand Tank (PFST) tutorial. To my mind it defines a new level of educational materials in groundwater hydrology. Check it out at the link below and on that page click the question mark at the top right to get to a link for a really fun online tutorial. Will you rank as a Water Wizard?????

ParFlow - Sandtank

DOE clean energy jobs. From Washington DC to Golden CO, DOE is hiring into clean energy jobs!

Clean Energy Jobs Ready to start building our clean energy future with a new career at EERE?

$750M from DOE for clean hydrogen energy!

Biden-Harris Administration Announces $750 Million To Accelerate Clean Hydrogen Technologies Funding Will Advance Electrolysis Technology, Drive Down Clean Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Costs, Provide Long-term Support for Hydrogen Hubs and Other Industry Deployments

2022 American Geophysical Union and FEWtures Project: PI Mary Hill had two presentations: One economic, one educational.

The economic analysis showed the good economic potential of local green ammonia production for local communities when (1) the modern SOEC method of making ammonia is used and (2) advantageous financing options are chosen. Results suggest that returns can be competitive with long-range stock market returns, and this vital agricultural input can then be controlled by the farmer and local farming community.

The FEWtures graduate level course helps scientists understand how their work is used by policy makers, and helps policy makers understand scientific and engineering perspectives.

The FEWtures energy team is working to define how to manage the different electric loads we conceptualize. That is, local energy powered electrical loads, including ammonia production and water treatment. Here is a slide from our graduate student Xuebo Liu, who is being advised by Hongyu Wu, about how to approach this problem.

FEWtures explores low carbon technologies that could benefit rural communities. Of course, the economics has to pencil out. Here is some penciling....

Integration of ammonia and water treatment into the rural Food-Energy-Water system -- a conceptual rendering

At our Advisory Group meeting we also discussed FEWtures advances in how to take advantage of variable renewable energy