With abundant resources and declining costs, both wind and solar technologies have the potential to significantly decarbonize our energy systems. Together with rapidly evolving battery storage and super-efficient end-use technologies, wind and solar now present an opportunity for both developed and developing economies to transition to a sustainable and low carbon future. However, their large-scale deployment introduces challenges in planning and operating future electricity systems and will require balancing trade-offs with social and environmental objectives.

Storage particles in lithium-ion batteries swell upon insertion of lithium, generating elastic stresses sufficient to crack them. This phenomenon is studied using a phase field method for fracture encompassing elasticity, lithium insertion and extraction and lithium diffusion within the particle. It is shown that high C-rates, large particles and large swelling strains motivate particle fracture and comminution.

The Institute for Energy Efficiency at the University of California, Santa Barbara invites you to attend the annual 2018 Emerging Technologies Review on Thursday, May 10th. This all-day review will feature seventeen speakers, covering new developments in areas of energy and energy efficiency.

Integrated electronic-photonic co-design can profoundly impact both fields resulting in advances in several areas such as energy efficient communication, signal processing, imaging, and sensing.

The climate science, technology, and policy landscape we face today are hugely out of alignment.  While the climate science community has highlighted the critical need for immediate action towards a 1.5 degree C (or lower) global climate warming target, and while energy and transportation technologies are moving rapidly to enable that tremendously challenging goal, the US nationally stands as the sole denier of a path that is both needed and potentially, although with delay increasingly unlikely.

To stave off the worst impacts of climate change, the world must limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures and this will require the US to cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by at least 80 percent by 2050, relative to 1990 emissions levels.  The Natural Resources Defense Council and its consultant completed a detailed analysis that showed that the US can indeed meet these targets through a combination of bold actions tied to energy efficiency, renewable energy, electrification of vehicles and buildings with clean power, and electric grid

Through the vast synthetic tool box of organic chemistry, chemists have the capability to tune the electronic, redox, and optical properties of π-conjugated molecules and polymers, which in turn can be used as the building blocks to develop materials for semiconducting applications, solar cells, and energy storage. In these materials, the nature of the molecular-scale solid-state packing arrangement dictates performance, rendering knowledge as to how materials processing impacts these arrangements critical.

Designing highly performant electrochemical devices, such as rechargeable batteries, requires an in-depth understanding of the electronic and structural processes at play during normal operation and potentially leading to performance degradation.

NextGen Climate Founder and President Tom Steyer will address both the urgency and the complexity of mitigating climate change, and his efforts to bring climate change to the forefront of America's political dialogue. In reports released last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) affirmed that we can no longer wait to address this very real threat. He will also discuss the importance of making climate change a priority for our politics and policies in order to pave the way for a clean energy economy.

Host: Materials Department & Materials Research Laboratory