Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. California’s forest health crisis is an emergency of unprecedented scope and scale, with disastrous implications for the state’s environment, economy, energy systems, and human life. Unlike essentially all other technologies and solutions proposed to respond to the crisis, gasification has the potential to process forest waste in a way that extracts value and sequesters a large portion of its carbon. Before the recipient’s development of the pre- commercial Powertainer technology, no one had developed gasification technology that could economically respond to the problem. As a result, there have not yet been any large-scale deployments of distributed, commercial-scale gasification technology. The acceleration of tree mortality and persistent drought conditions make finding solutions to this problem more critical with each passing day.
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. Climate change poses an urgent and significant threat to California and the nation. California has taken a leadership position in supporting cutting edge science to understand the nature of the threat and possible actions to mitigate that impact. However, California cannot solve this threat alone and does not have all of the solutions.
1 Please see subtask 1.3 in Part III of the Scope of Work (General Project Tasks) for a description of Critical Project Review (CPR) Meetings. SB 379 (Xxxxxxx, 2015) requires local governments to address climate adaptation and resiliency strategies applicable to city or county local hazard mitigation plans or other climate adaptation plans or documents. Information sharing among federal, state, regional, and local agencies forms a critical part of preparation of these documents. The California Energy Commission is sponsoring a set of studies in coordination with the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA), jointly referred to as the “Fourth California Climate Change Assessment” or the “Assessment”) to assess the impacts and implications of climate change for California. The Energy Commission is funding studies of the state’s energy sector and the CNRA is funding non-energy sector studies. In addition, a number of externally funded research projects have aligned with the Assessment’s timeline and underlying climate scenarios to substantially expand the overall effort at no cost to the state. Results of these new peer-reviewed scientific studies will be available in 2018. A number of public events are planned in California to discuss the results. However, an additional public workshop in Washington, D.C. is needed to discuss the scientific results with federal, state, and local resilience planning leaders and experts outside of California. In addition, the Assessment must be put into the context of an overall strategy to foresee and manage weather-related extreme events at local to national geographical scales.
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. Future offshore wind development in California will create a risk to seabirds for collision or displacement. Existing seabird models, which describe the density and species composition in the California Current, can be used to identify hot spots for seabird activity, but these models do not delineate the presence of seabirds at different heights above the sea surface. Without incorporating flight height and how flight behavior changes with wind speed, it is difficult to accurately estimate the potential impact to seabirds from offshore wind farms. As different size turbines are being designed for use in an offshore environment, the existing two-dimensional spatial models of seabird populations will be unable to estimate the difference in potential impacts
1 Please see subtask 1.3 in Part III of the Scope of Work (General Project Tasks) for a description of from shorter turbines compared to taller turbines because seabird flight height and behavior is not described in the current spatial information.
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. The Recipient has experienced significant increase in Solar Photovoltaic (PV) interconnection requests in recent years, and this trend is expected to continue. This high level of Solar PV adoption requires a host of grid modernization efforts to manage the substantial progress the Recipient envisions in decarbonizing the electricity provided on the electrical system. The existing paradigm for integration of renewables is based around legacy enterprise control solutions (i.e. existing functions such as state estimation and optimization) and a relatively static distribution planning approach. Dynamic visualization of capacity, automation of the interconnection process, and self-discovery of new devices into distributed control subsystems as part of a hierarchical control paradigm are required to achieve scalable integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) in excess of 50% of peak load. These distributed control capabilities will enable distributed intelligence and control capability to support fast, automated decisions and improve overall resiliency of the distribution grid system.
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. The size of wind turbine towers is constrained by transportation size and weight making conventional towers prohibitively expensive for larger next-generation turbines in California. Overhead traffic signals, road width and weight regulations limit conventional steel tubular towers to sub-optimal diameters of 4.3 meters (14 feet.). As a result, the tallest wind turbine towers installed in California are 100-meter (m) tall with turbine capacity of 3.3-megawatts (MW).
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. To achieve robust zero emissions targets, cities and load-serving entities require advanced energy solutions that enable the cost-effective deployment and integration of distributed and renewable energy resources, and the cost-efficient rehabilitation of homes to a near Zero Net Carbon standard.3 Achieving these outcomes in disadvantaged communities requires a combination of innovative technology, scaled finance, and the inclusive engagement of cities, NGOs, and community residents.
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. Mechanical steam traps are one of the leading causes for steam loss within a steam system. While methods exist to monitor the performance of the steam traps, this is labor intensive and requires knowledge on how to accurately assess performance. Often steam traps will fail and cause a substantial amount of steam loss, which increases natural gas use and GHG emissions, and causes process and production issues. With natural gas prices being at an all-time low, there is a cost barrier to implementing new energy efficient technologies to reduce natural gas use and GHG emissions.
1 Please see subtask 1.3 in Part III of the Scope of Work (General Project Tasks) for a description of Critical Project Review (CPR) Meetings.
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. 1 Please see subtask 1.3 in Part III of the Scope of Work (Project Administration) for a description of Critical Project Review (CPR) Meetings. One hundred million trees in California’s forests have died, causing severe fire danger and the potential for significant release of carbon. Several major wood-fired power plants have shut down, creating a glut of wood biomass. This forestry, agricultural, and urban wood biomass has the potential to become low carbon add-in fuel for diesel and jet fuel, but a cost effective, efficient bio-oil processing and production technology has not been perfected. Fast pyrolysis bio-oil production has struggled in the marketplace because a) the facilities require large-scale deployment and commensurate budgets, b) supply chain costs are too high to compete, and c) supply/demand balance is undetermined due to the early stage of technology deployment: do the refineries invest first and hope for the bio-oil? Or do the pyrolysis projects build themselves before the refineries are ready for them? Without a proven, efficient, scalable-up-or-down solution, wood biomass will not become the in-state, low carbon fuel it should rightly be.
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. A series of structural barriers exacerbate the uptake of efficiency improvements in multifamily properties and subsequently diminish the potential for quality of life improvements for many low- income families. The Energy Commission’s 2016, “Low Income Barriers Report” highlights structural barriers. They include low homeownership rates, complex financial arrangements for low-income multifamily housing owners, insufficient access to capital, substantial building stock with high levels of deferred maintenance, and under-served or remote locations of residents.2 While these structural barriers are persistent, there are additional operational and perceptual barriers identified by affordable housing owners. These include an unclear value proposition, lack of confidence in achieving savings, and project technical complexity even with technical assistance that requires unique building owners and property manager champions that are not always present or able to tackle more complex projects.
Problem/ Solution Statement Problem. Ability of perovskite-based photovoltaic (PV) cells to demonstrate industry-required durability and low-cost, high-throughput (area approximately 6’ x 6’) processing are the major barriers for commercialization of this technology. Recent academic studies showed that durability of perovskite cells can reach industry minimums set for infant module failure of established technologies. There are similarly demonstrations of large-area processing largely by academic laboratories that hint at the possibility of a manufacturable technology. However, there is no study which simultaneously develops large area processing and demonstrates high performance, durability, yield and throughput, and a path to low-cost manufacturing. And while the requirements for bankability of an unproven technology like perovskites are much more stringent, it is crucial that these disparate qualities must be demonstrated together by the company manufacturing them.
