The Global Energy Landscape and Materials Innovation
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LANDSCAPE • INTRODUCTION
Hydro 2.2%
Others 0.4%
30,000
Per Capita Electricity Consumption, 2005 (kWh)
The Global Energy Landscape and Materials Innovation
Combustible Renewables & Waste 10.6%
Coal 25.1%
Nuclear 6.5%
V.S. Arunachalam (Center for Study of Science, Technology & Policy, India) E.L. Fleischer (Materials Research Society, USA)
Availability of affordable energy has enabled spectacular growth of industrialization and human development in all parts of the world. With growth now accelerating in developing countries, demands on energy sources and infrastructure are being stretched to new limits. Additional energy issues include the push for renewable resources with reduced greenhouse gas emissions and energy security affected by the uneven distribution of energy resources around the globe. Together, these issues present a field of opportunity for innovations to address energy challenges throughout the world and all along the energy flow. These energy challenges form the backdrop for this special expanded issue of MRS Bulletin on Harnessing Materials for Energy. This article introduces the global landscape of materials issues associated with energy. It examines the complex web of energy availability, production, storage, transmission, distribution, use, and efficiency. It focuses on the materials challenges that lie at the core of these areas and discusses how revolutionary concepts can address them. Cross-cutting topics are introduced and interrelationships between topics explored. Article topics are set in the context of the grand energy challenges that face the world into the middle of this century.
Materials and Energy
Energy and materials have a continual and mutually enriching relationship. Materials produce energy or enable energy to be transferred into useful forms. Energy, in turn, has made possible the production of a broad range of materials for society. Materials for energy come in a near continuum: Naturally occurring materials release energy through chemical or nuclear reactions. These are the fuels we extract from the ground, often burned to release their energy in the form of heat. Then there are the engineered materials that tap externally available energy and transform it into useful forms. Photovoltaic silicon converts solar energy into electrical power. Wind turbine blades made out of fiber-reinforced plastic transform wind energy into mechanical or electrical power. Materials also store and deliver energy—the batteries, wires and switches, hydrogen, and biofuels that convert energy from other forms. Materials then work to realize the ultimate objective of producing energy—its use. This might be tungsten filaments in light bulbs illuminating a century of nights or high-temperature turbine blades rotating in a jet engine. Materials thus have a synergistic relationship with energy, all the way from its generation to its ultimate use. For the past few centuries, affordable energy, mainly from fossil fuels, has enabled industrialization and human development in all parts of the world. T
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