How would the world’s biggest plane advance wind energy? Ernest Moniz told Jennifer Hiller and Brian McGill from The Wall Street Journal that utilities are increasing their demand forecasts due to electrification of various industries. “They also want clean electricity,” Moniz said.
EFI Foundation CEO Ernest Moniz and executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Jerry Brown wrote an opinion piece for Los Angeles Times about how Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film “Oppenheimer” serves as a poignant reminder of the danger nuclear weapons pose to civilization. They discuss how the possession of thousands of nuclear weapons, some of which are 80 times more powerful than the bomb shown in the film, presents unprecedented risks to the world given current global conflicts. Moniz and Brown emphasize the need to take steps towards a world without nuclear weapons “with speed and deliberation.”
EFI Foundation CEO Ernest Moniz and Clean Air Task Force Executive Director Armond Cohen wrote an opinion piece for The Boston Globe about the pledge made at COP28, the United Nations climate change conference, to triple nuclear energy by 2050 to help mitigate climate change. “To succeed,” they said, “nations must rethink how to build, regulate, and finance nuclear technology.” Moniz and Cohen emphasized the need to focus on standardized products over singular projects.
This article reports on a pledge made ahead of COP28 by fossil fuel producers to reduce methane emissions by more than 80% by 2030. EFI Foundation CEO Ernest J. Moniz commented on society’s need for large international coalitions to address climate change, noting that getting oil and gas companies involved in these coalitions is important for scale. Speaking of the need for a coalition-building approach, Moniz said, “I expect that COP28 will deliver.”
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This CNBC article quotes EFI Foundation Senior Vice President of Research Alex Kizer multiple times, first on the need for hydrogen hubs to demonstrate their feasibility across different stages of development to receive funding awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy: “At each phase, you’re going to need to meet certain technical, economic, and community benefits requirements in order to receive that funding,” he said.
Kizer also underscored the value of the hubs for testing various options for producing clean hydrogen: “It’s so important that hubs be available to evaluate and demonstrate all of these different options,” he said. “[Not] all pathways are created equal, but having the hubs with these regional components with these different technologies, exploring these various configurations is so important for us to move up the learning curve on what our clean hydrogen future is.”
EFI Foundation Senior Vice President of Research Alex Kizer addressed the opportunities and challenges that hydrogen presents, following the U.S. Department of Energy’s hydrogen hub funding awards announcement. Kizer said “there are no greenhouse gas emissions released” when hydrogen is used, and “the challenge is how to produce hydrogen in low-carbon ways.”
The U.S. Department of Energy named seven regions to receive up to $7 billion in funding to create clean hydrogen hubs across the nation. EFI Foundation Senior Vice President of Research Alex Kizer explained some of the issues around the demand and infrastructure challenges to developing a hydrogen market in the United States, saying that regional hubs are “a huge opportunity to sort through some of the demand-side challenges.” The article also quotes the Energy Futures Initiative’s Hydrogen Demand Action Plan, which states that the hydrogen hub program is “one of the only active programs targeting demand-side market activators.”
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This article quotes EFI Foundation Senior Vice President of Research Alex Kizer regarding the U.S. Department of Energy’s announcement of seven regions selected to receive up to $7billion in grants for hydrogen hub development projects. “Think of these hubs as laboratories of sorts to experiment with potential business models for hydrogen and to try to figure out some of the technological and infrastructure hurdles,” said Kizer.
EFI Foundation Distinguished Associate David Foster led research that found that worker protections could create up to 50,000 manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, while forgoing those protections could cost workers their jobs during the electric vehicle transition. Foster told The Hill that, “[those findings] show very clearly that having the right kind of industrial policy to support energy transition is a very effective way of rebuilding the manufacturing base in the United States.”
In an interview on Channel NewsAsia at ADIPEC 2023, EFI Foundation CEO Ernest Moniz explained some of the challenges and complications of decarbonization. Moniz said carbon capture and storage technology will be necessary to meet climate goals, and the pacing of energy infrastructure in the United States needs to increase. He also said extreme weather will likely be the tipping point to accelerate decarbonization.
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