Setting the Stage for Transformation
By Dan Steingart
We are in the middle of a sprint to replace old technologies that burn fossil fuels with new ones that run on electricity.
Engineers across the world have spent decades perfecting technologies to produce electricity from renewable sources and put it to use. Those efforts have paid off. Today, solar energy is cheap, consumers are buying electric vehicles faster than expected, and we’re on a viable path to decarbonizing the energy system.
Realizing that vision lies in our ability to store and harness electrical energy at tremendously large scales. The basic concepts necessary to accomplish this — the fundamentals of electrochemistry — aren’t new, but we have been slow to put that knowledge into practice across our energy system.
One of the main reasons that electrochemistry has lagged behind combustion is also the technology’s fundamental advantage: circularity.
With combustion, you take fuel, blow it up, spit it out, and let that waste become someone else’s problem. Electrochemistry is much harder because we have to account for the entire circuit and manage the flow of energy and mass throughout the system.
In solving the problems of electrochemistry, we’re solving the most crucial challenges of sustainability.
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Dan Steingart |