Venkat Srinivasan, director of ACCESS, deputy director of JCESR, and leader of the decarbonization pillar of the climate and energy action initiative, invites all Argonne researchers to participate in the “Reimagining Energy Storage for Deep Decarbonization.” The town hall will focus on novel energy storage concepts for the deep decarbonization of transportation, grid, and heavy industry and include a number of 3-minute presentations contributed from across the laboratory, followed by a discussion session to identify broad themes. If you wish to make a presentation, please submit these slides to Neil Krueger no later than noon on Friday, May 28.
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Meeting ID: 1650322832
Context
Energy storage is a key technology that holds the potential to enable widespread decarbonization of transportation, grid, and heavy industry. The decarbonization pillar of the climate and energy action initiative is aimed at developing basic science approaches to enable new storage paradigms beyond the present-day research and development trajectory. Advances in Li-ion battery technology have revolutionized light-duty vehicle electrification, but significant improvements are needed for deep decarbonization.
A dramatic increase in energy density (i.e., 3-5X) is needed to electrify the heavy-duty, aviation, marine, and rail sectors, whereas significant cost reductions (i.e., 1/10th of Li-ion) are required for widespread decarbonization of the grid, especially for long-duration storage. Additional challenges include resiliency (e.g., to thermal, mechanical, and chemical abuse) and sustainability (e.g., materials availability and energy use during synthesis and manufacturing). Widespread decarbonization will also require alternative forms of energy storage, such as chemical (e.g., hydrogen) and thermal (e.g., phase change materials), as well as carbon-free liquid fuels (e.g., ammonia).
Identifying storage concepts with these compelling attributes will require material discovery using a hypothesis-driven approach rooted in basic science. A fundamental understanding of the scientific challenges related to directing reaction pathways (i.e., during both synthesis and operation), the interplay between ion transport and electrochemical reaction, the role of precipitated species in controlling lifetimes, and methods to enable rapid discovery of new materials are all needed. The initiative aims at establishing research approaches that will open new trajectory for energy storage beyond the success of Li-ion and related systems.