Science Foundations for Energy Earthshots FOA Webinar

hi everyone thank you so much for joining I'm Natalie solden with the office of communications and public affairs for the office of science welcome to the office of Sciences informational webinar on science foundations for energy Earth shots before we begin I have a couple of logistics to go over this meeting is being recorded the recording of this meeting along with the slides are going to be posted on the office of science website which I will drop into the chat soon as you saw on the first Slide the slides being presented there on the website already there are closed captions available please click on the closed captions button to enable them after the presentation there will be a question and answer session you can use the Q a box at the bottom of your screen to ask your questions with that I'd like to have the panelists introduce themselves starting with Hal Finkle hello my name is Sal Finkel I'm the acting director for the research division in Oscar the advanced scientific Computing research program thank you thank you Hal Gail hello I am Gail McLean I am the acting division director for chemical sciences geosciences and biosciences in Basic Energy sciences and I am also the team lead for photochemistry and biochemistry thank you Andy welcome everyone my name is Andy Schwartz I am also in Basic Energy Sciences with Gail where I'm the division director for the Material Sciences and Engineering division and I'm Todd Anderson I am from the office of biological and Environmental Research I'm the division director for the biological systems Sciences division welcome thank you Don hey my name is Don Adeen and I am a program manager in the biological and environmental research program working in the biological systems Sciences division with Todd Natalia thanks welcome everyone I'm Natalia melzer I'm a senior technical advisor in the office of the deputy director for science programs Victoria hi everyone I'm Victoria DiStefano I'm a science and technology advisor and the deputy um the office of the deputy director for science programs as well thank you Mike hi I'm Mike sarkin I'm the director of the office of grandson contract support Cynthia hi hello everyone I'm Cindy Anderson director of the financial assistance division within the office of science welcome and talk welcome my name is Paul Thigpen I am the lead contract uh Contracting officer for the office of Branson Cooperative agreements welcome thank you with that we're ready to get started okay thank you all let me see my slides are okay okay great um so we are starting today um we're covering the science foundations for energy urshots funding opportunity announcement or foa the opening slide here has a couple of key dates that we want to bring your attention to First a submission for date deadline for pre-applications is April 25th the response date which is the date by which you'll receive encourage or discourage decisions is May 23rd and then the final deadline for applications is June 21st um the office of science uh mission is to deliver the scientific discoveries and major tools to transform our understanding of Nature and Advance the energy economic and National Security of the US so those two pillars the scientific discoveries or the research and the tools are represented on this slide we are the largest Federal supporter of basic research in the physical sciences supporting nearly 29 000 people on the grants that we have each year at universities across the United States we also operate 28 user facilities that support nearly 34 000 users per year and those user facilities range from high performance Computing to X-ray and neutron sources all kinds of physics facilities the nanoscience centers as well as biocharacterization facilities so our user facilities really cover the office of science research space within our user facilities we also design and construct Next Generation facilities to support the needs of the research community the office of science research portfolio covers eight offices they're listed here however the funding opportunity for today is only focused on the first three so we have the advanced scientific Computing research Basic Energy sciences and biological Environmental Research programs and we'll start first by telling you a little bit more about the three offices that are supporting today's funding opportunity announcements so first I'll turn to hell to talk about the Oscar program uh thanks Dolly so Advanced scientific Computing research this is the first of the three program offices that are supporting this foa uh Oscar has a research program that invests in Applied Mathematics and computational Science foundations and computer science foundations that underlie a lot of the computational science it is critical for this in other programs this includes basic mathematics and computer science research that covers areas like machine learning on certain quantification and physical assistance modeling in addition to Advanced Computing topics such as Advanced Computer Technologies and microelectronics co-design we also have facilities through which we deploy some of the largest supercomputers in the world for open science we have the first exit scale supercomputer Frontier now in the top 500 that has surpassed the exascale barrier and we are looking forward to deploying other resources in the future as well and we engage in a number of partnership activities across the Spectrum with Academia with with companies and Industry large and small in order to fund Innovative research and deploy Leading Edge resources and finally we invest in research starting from sponsoring graduate fellowships all the way through a later stage career opportunities thank you so Basic Energy Sciences supports fundamental research to help us understand predict and ultimately control matter and energy and electronic Atomic and molecular levels this Discovery Science as youth inspired research is providing a foundation to help us solve challenges that are facing Advanced Technologies related to energy manufacturing and other natural priorities the science that Bes support involves a very Vibrant Community of academic and National Lab researchers who aim to understand materials in chemical Sciences at Atomic and molecular scales Bes also supports cutting-edge scientific facilities that include our Advanced x-ray light sources Neutron scattering sources and nanoscale science research centers and thousands of scientists from across many diverse Fields make use of these facilities the research and discoveries that Bes has supported are driving U.S leadership and science they help sustain Innovation across diverse Technologies and play a role in improving our economic and National Security this includes foundational scientific understanding of both chemical and materials processes starting actually at the level of electrons and this research provides a foundation to advance a range of different Technologies such as energy chemical manufacturing and microelectronics it's also Builds on the continuous progress on basic science which is critical for both advancing Technologies as well as sustaining our Innovation and competitiveness and we are seeing that some of the toughest challenges are being tackled by collaborative teams that bring in a diverse set of skills these include projects such as our energy innovation loans and our energy Frontier research centers and as this funding opportunity announcement has indicated this is an opportunity again to bring together collaborative teams to take on some tough challenges associated with the interviewer shots I'm thinking so for the office of biological Environmental Research we support transformative biological Earth and Environmental Research to achieve a predictive understanding of complex systems that are relevant to energy and environmental issues of national importance topics typically included in our portfolio are our biological uh science biogeochemical science and physical processes that span an incredible rage from from the molecular scale all the way up to Regional and even Global scales um the portfolio includes two major emphasis one in the area of genomics to understand and design biological systems so they can be leveraged for a variety of different purposes with a particular focus on sustainable bioenergy and bioproduct production from renewable plant biomass and a range of different genomic enabled methods of looking at ways that would help virgin help grow a burgeoning U.S bio-based economy our Earth and Environmental Research continues to combine scientific understanding of the atmosphere oceans land systems and cryosphere with Advanced analytics to accurately model your system at a variety of different observational scales and now includes an emphasis in urban uh and has has always had an interest in natural environments uh ber supports uh three office of science user facilities that feed back into the programs uh the DUI joint genome Institute is a primary source of genomic information for plants microbes and microbial communities that feedback into our genomics uh portion of the portfolio our atmospheric radiation measurement user facility uh supports our atmospheric research and the environmental molecular Sciences laboratory Pacific Northwest National Lab provides a variety of biological chemical and um and biogeochemical instrumentation instrumentation methods that support the entire ber portfolio access to the user facilities is available free of charge through a user proposal system um thanks for the introduction to the the three programs that are sponsoring this funding opportunity announcement will transition now into an overview of the energy Earth shots and the goal of this particular funding opportunity is to enhance cross-cutting fundamental research in support of the energy airshot goals so there are two points on the slide that we really want to emphasize the first is that priority will be given to applications that are relevant to multiple energy Earth shots so we've listed here the six energy Earth shots again we'll go into each one individually but priority will be given to applications that have relevance to more than one of those Earth shots and secondly applications are encouraged to address more than one of the research programs we just heard from the three research programs Oscar p-e-s and per and we do strongly encourage teams that include challenges or problems that cross multiple offices so the energy Earth shots were initiated 2021 was the first announcement for the hydrogen Earth shot and these are shots Target major breakthroughs that are needed in the next decade to solve the climate crisis and reach our 2050 Net Zero carbon goals the energy Earth shots do build on the sunshot initiative that was announced in 2011 and the Earth shots themselves aim to impact our emissions to reduce our emissions to address really difficult technology barriers to advancing the Technologies needed to reach our carbon goals they have highly ambitious decadal targets they're compelling bold and inspirational and they significantly engage stakeholders across the doe mission space so we'll move now into a description of each of the earth shots starting with hydrogen which was the first to be announced Gail thank you so as Talia mentioned the hydrogen energy Earth shot was the first one announced it was announced in 2021 as you see in the lower corner of this slide its Target is to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen to one dollar per one kilogram and one decade occasionally you hear that called one one one a number of fundamental breakthroughs will be needed related to hydrogen production as well as hydrogen sources sinks and quantification to help doe Reach This goal there are several possible Pathways related to hydrogen for this goal they include electrolysis uh reducing perhaps the electricity cost and improving efficiency in areas related to electrolysis another pathway that has some fundamental challenges include thermal conversion which would include reforming paralysis Pathways that have low life cycle emissions and as you think about conversion you can think about areas such as separation science catalysis carbon capture and other emissions and then on third pathway is what's called Advanced Pathways which could be higher risk but again High reward Pathways these could include things such as photoelectrochemical or Thermo chemical solar water splitting or perhaps microbial electrolysis of waste streams that help us find ways for hydrogen production more efficient and less costly and again there are a lot of fundamental opportunities in these Pathways and if you look at the photo you'll see resources noted and reports connected to hydrogen and hydrogen production and an example is the foundational science for carbon neutral hydrogen Technologies of Bes Roundtable that was held in August of 2021 in coordination with eere fecm and Ne and that report points out a number of priority research opportunities for fundamental science related to development of carbon neutral hydrogen Technologies again I encourage you to look at the description in the foa of the other resources and other reports related to the hydrogen energy earthshock thank you thanks Gail the next uh the next shot we'll talk about is the long duration storage or long duration energy storage shot our ldes also announced in the summer or early fall of 2021 and again in the lower right hand corner the target uh for that other shot is listed the reduction of storage costs by 90 from a 2020 lithium-ion Baseline in storage systems that deliver at least 10 hours of duration uh in and all of that done within a decade so this is this is not about batteries for vehicles this is about long duration storage primarily for applications on the grid to enable the inclusion uh and option of it of extensive renewable energy wind and solar onto the grid so we've defined some fundamental areas that require fundamental breakthroughs to meet this uh to meet this aggressive goal electrochemical mechanisms electrothermal mechanisms chemical energy storage via energy carriers and storing energy and chemical bonds and finally electromechanical energy storage and what we're looking for in this funding opportunity announcement is the basic science that underpins one or more of these Techni of these areas and again I think focusing on the fundamentals on the basic science is the most important particularly in some of these areas um uh that that are that where it's less obvious that there is basic science to be done a couple of references shown here but as Gail said we encourage you to read the funding opportunity announcement uh and the full descriptions and references there the report shown in the upper right is from a few years ago a workshop and Report entitled basic research needs for Next Generation electrical energy storage this was not focused specifically on long duration storage but a lot of the scientific directions identified there could have implications for these long duration storage systems and finally do you on the lower left Doe's energy storage Grand Challenge roadmap which was published a couple of years ago and really lays out a road map for energy storage across the department next thanks Andy for the uh the uh carbon negative shot here we're looking for a fundamental Advance fundamental science advances that would um result in prodigious amounts of CO2 being removed from the atmosphere and that can include a variety of different mechanisms including biological mechanisms looking at ways of uh sequestering uh carbon biologically converting it to a range of different long-lived materials for example uh could also be looking at uh using CO2 directly from the atmosphere in new and different ways that remove it again removing it from the atmosphere not only interested in biological mechanisms but also abiotic mechanisms of sequestration and this could be part of uh looking at the basic science challenges in direct air capture of CO2 right directly out of the atmosphere and putting it into a form for long-term stability or long-term storage um we also think that the research contributing to carbon the larger carbon negative shot would include coupled experimental and computational approaches that would include be included in or bio any biological or abiological research in this area uh that would help us better understand the fundamental kinetics of carbonization and CO2 reactivity how would we actually look at the kinetic parameters of pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and converting it to more stable forms also associated with this uh effort is a look at how we measure Monitor and validate removal processes how do we um actually measure the amount of CO2 that's being removed in the environment through a variety of different mechanisms we'll need a a definite need to validate um any of the prior any or new mechanisms to validate um the type of research and type of processes that we're investigating the goal uh listed there right um emphasize the bottom right is looking at removing a ton of CO2 for less than a hundred dollars or being able to hit that Target within a decade using a variety of these different techniques um so we're looking forward to uh seeing the proposals that come into this area we think there's a there's a lot of a lot of interest in this area and already a lot of um uh fundamental signs are going to be done in this area so moving on to the fourth energy earthshot that was announced in September of 2022 this is the enhanced geothermal earthshot as shown in the corner of the slide it aims to reduce the cost of enhanced geothermal systems or EGS by 90 by 2035 it consists of three interconnected activities of resource characterization well construction and Reservoir production and a number of fundamental breakthroughs are needed to help us reach the goals of this Earth shot which really intends to take advantage of the heat beneath our feet for electricity production so if you look at the fall you'll see that we're calling out needs for experimental and computational efforts to better understand mesoscale or Regional subsurface Institute in mechanics and fluid injection response and fluid flow and EGS environments we also need fundamental breakthroughs and Innovations for EDS data collection as well as its analysis and we need to better understand at a fundamental level materials Behavior and the geochemical and geomechanical processes that are in action in EGS real world war environments and again there are a number of resources in the foa that you can use to get better uh background information on the enhanced geothermal energy earthshot all right so next we're going to talk about the floating offshore wind Earth shot and the floating offshore wind aims to enable us to take advantage of the immense amount of energy that is available from wind and uh that a lot of that wind energy is really only accessible offshore and in places where the water is quite deep and so the idea is that you need to have uh infrastructure there that is floating so that you can get it out to places where the water is deep and then you can capture the energy from the wind and there are a lot of challenges that have been identified in this area and you know we're looking for basic research that underpins Innovations to address these challenges and so the first area says materials modeling and control for floating wind turbines right so that's looking for Innovative research that underpins Innovation leading to better materials better modeling and control techniques for individual turbines of course the turbo and sit in an environment and they interact with that environment and with each other through that environment and so we need work on modeling measuring the wind farm and surrounding environments basic research in that area and then once the electricity is generated you have to do something with it so you can either store it you can transform it into some other form or use it for some other useful purpose or you could transmit it back to Shore and given that these turbines are envisioned to be out in deep water all those things are very challenging and so there should be basic research challenges that underpin Innovations in those areas as well thanks okay thanks pal so I'm going to finish off the energy earthshot discussion after a shot on Earth and wind September was rounded out with a shot on fire with the launch of the industrial heat shot the focus of this shot is to support decarbonization of the really challenging diverse industrial manufacturing sector the process of heating to transform materials into useful products for your really accounts for nearly half of the emissions in all of the industrial sector because of the wide array of industrial processes operations and even the the broad range of temperatures that are necessary that are needed to construct the products that we use every day there are many fundamental basic research breakthroughs that are needed to achieve the shots Target of 85 percent lower greenhouse gases from industrial heating processes so this is just a subset of this potential topics that could be relevant for this shot the first being the research to reduce the amount of carbon that's released through these heating process processes developing new ways to create the same or very similar products by either developing low or no heat process Technologies or by potentially reducing the overall requirements for thermal energy with these processes and finally a research to advance heat recovery during the processes for reuse or for better using that heat in the first place like the other shots there are resources in the foa that I would strongly encourage you to take a look at for further information and I think I now hand it back to Talia thanks Don so we have uh covered essentially the scope of the funding opportunity announcement and now we'll we'll dig into a few of the details of this particular foa so as a reminder this foa will is focused on Concepts to address the foundational scientific challenges underlaying the Earth shots the basic research that's proposed in applications to this photo should be focused on creativity and innovation they should the topics should be cross-cutting and again as I mentioned priority will be given to applications that impact multiple Earth shots and that are of relevance to multiple office of science programs there are a number of examples in the foa that are illustrative only of this idea of what we mean by cross-cutting and I've I have a few examples here I pulled these two they're actually in the foa so you can review them later the First on measurement and sensing so if you need to measure the state of complex systems in real time it's imperative to make accurate and time sensitive it can be accurate to make accurate and time sensitive decisions and also when we are looking at systems we have to monitor them over time to improve performance to certain Trends and improve the understanding of the system so the events advances and measurement science are needed that can be tailored to these earshot applications for example hydrogen methane considering the different environments temperatures salinity levels Etc and these can be quite extreme environments the temperature extremes pressure streams extremes Etc so there's a number of areas in measurement in sensing that will cross cut the energy Earth shots that would be applicable for this funding opportunity announcement in the area of multi-scale processes and systems um some examples in this area include Atomic and molecular understanding of materials and chemical reactions to underpin new energy efficient processes and systems at larger scales but it's only not only at those smaller levels but at the regional and global scale studies can increase the knowledge of geomechanical or geochemical processes and we can also address challenges and impacts of the earth system variability and change so these studies of processes and systems across temporal and spatial scales could Advance multiple energy or shot goals so there are a number of examples in the funding opportunity announcement that you can review again these are just illustrative there these are not prioritized these are not areas of particular interest but just to give you an idea of the kinds of things that we're interested in specifically for this foa that lead institutions can be universities or colleges and non-profit or for-profit organizations so this is limited to those institutions we are strongly encouraged minority serving institutions including historically black colleges and universities to participate either as the lead or participating in as a team member and as sub-recipients doe Labs as well as other university colleges non-profit for-profits or non-doe federally funded r d centers as and other federal agencies are eligible um to have BSF recipients a few limitations we wanted to highlight um again these are all in the foa so applicant institutions are limited to no more than three applications and three applications so so they're not unlike the Energy earthshot Research Center where we had each proposal focused on a single Earth shot these uh as I mentioned earlier are we strongly encourage applications that cross-cut multiple energy Earth shots so there were no limitations by urshot or by program like it is for the other call these are just three applications per Institution there is no limit on the number of applications on which an institution can be a sub-recipient I.E not the lead Institution and in addition the individual who is Elite the named as the lead investigator can do so on no more than one pre-application or application however the lead investigator may be listed as senior or key personnel on separate applications or submissions without limitation and any person who is particularly participating as senior keep Personnel can do so um with no restrictions across multiple applications so pre-applications are required we wanted to call your attention to a few specifics so the format is listed in the foa the cover page must identify which Earth shots are relevant to the application as well as which of the three programs are relevant with the most relevant listed first the along with the pre-application you have to include a list of individuals who should not serve as Merit viewers there are details on this in the funding opportunity announcement and we have a sample template if you'd like to use that this list preferably in Excel format can be added in pams this is new so for folks who are familiar with the office of science we often would go get this another way but starting with this funding opportunity announcement you can attach this in pams along with the pre-application it will be attached as a separate file in the area that is labeled additional attachment again there are instructions on in the photo on this as well a note for for applicants that the pre-application encouragement decisions may be informed by competitiveness review and the review criteria for that is listed in the foa applications that have not been occurred may be declined without Merit review and to be due to the limitations um by institution you know please be sure to work with your institutions sponsored research office to ensure that those submission limitations are satisfied we anticipating awarding up to 150 million dollars total in current and future fiscal year Awards each individual application should between be between 500 000 and 2 million per year for a total project period of three years and also starting at the beginning of this fiscal year we require promoting inclusive and Equitable research or a peer plan with every funding opportunity they are limited to three pages and should describe the activities and strategies uh that will be incorporated to promote diversity Equity inclusion and accessibility in the research project um these will be evaluated there is a merit review Criterion specifically on the peer plans and we have a lot of additional information on our website at the link provided authoritative source for this competition it's posted on our website if there's any discrepancies from what you've heard today the foa is the controlling document and if you have further questions after today's webinar you can reach us at sc.earshots at science.doe.gov

foreign thank you all for your presentation we'll hop into the question part of the this webinar right now um thank you all for submitting questions the first one is with hydrogen earthshot effort include underground hydrogen storage so I'm I'm making an assumption here that you're the question has to do with the hydrogen Earth shot as described in this foa and whether we are looking more specific approaches related to underground hydrated storage or hydrogen so if you read the description of the hydrogen shot you'll see it's primarily targeted towards hydrogen production um there is a hydrogen production hydrogen generation but there are complementary approaches that can be used to quantify or model hydrogen emissions such as those arising from geological hydrogen sources so it would depend on how you frame your project but it still needs to be driven by a fundamental scientific challenge that is relevant for hydrogen shot as well as preferably a cross-cutting challenge it's not simply related to hydrogen storage I don't know if that answered the question sounds complete to me but if we have any follow-ups please go ahead and drop them in the Q a box is geothermal energy storage also included in long duration storage shots well I'll take that one um I think that uh I think that any any viable forms of long duration storage uh are included I would also point out that as uh as Talia noted we're looking for basic research that crosses over uh between these different shots in and that's that that's the uh that's the prioritization that will be given and so for example this question uh there there may be if there are opportunities to do basic research that could Implement impact both the geothermal uh shot as well as the long duration storage shot that could be an opportunity to look uh for this for this kind of an OP this kind of a funding opportunity to have that cross-cutting basic science uh project thank you I'll also briefly say I think that um the question about hydrogen um hydrogen is potentially a chemical energy storage medium and so the previous question about hydrogen storage uh again uh echoing what uh what Gail said looking for the cross-cutting science could have implications for the storage shot if not directly for the for the production uh aspects of the hydrogen shunt okay uh Tully I think this is a question for you how or what would be the difference of this Science Foundation of energy Earth shots from Energy earthshot Research centers except the part which entities are eligible to lead right so I think this question is addressing the fact that we have two solicitations out related to the Earth shots right this year so the first solicitation that was issued was the energy Earth research centers which are led by the doe National Laboratories and then there's this funding opportunities on the science foundations for energy your shots so the the difference between the two of course other than which entities are eligible to lead as the the um question highlighted is that the the Energy earthshot Research centers are focused on singular energy Earth shots and having tight um connections to the uh the drivers in the Applied Energy offices so in that case they should be strongly focused on scientific questions that are in asingular earthshot in this particular funding opportunity announcement we are looking for cross-cutting fundamental research that can and support the urshakal multiple energy Earth shots so we're looking again for cross-coding fundamental research of relevance to multiple Earth shots versus The Energy earthshot Research centers the lab call which focused on singular shots and strong connections to the applied activities in those areas thank you um to what extent is this funding opportunity announcement oriented at technological research as opposed to fundamental science um what are some of the proposed topics are regarded as major embassies of other federal agencies I'll I'll take that one so I think this is tied a little bit to the previous question but this is solely focused on fundamental science so there are we aren't looking for Applied r d for example under this funding opportunity is supported by the office of Science and there will be topics that overlap perhaps with other agencies but these should be focused on the energy or shot goals which make them clearly within the space of the office of Science and the department of energy great thank you um within the carbon negative Earth shots category are projects focused on open ocean carbon sequestration encouraged so I'll take that one um uh no generally we don't have a scope within the office science portfolio to look at Marine systems experimentally there is a strong modeling component within uh the ver portfolio but it's purely from a modeling perspective and part of a global climate modeling that's going on in the portfolio there are other agencies that are very much interested in Marine carbon dioxide removal mechanisms and um so we've we've stayed out of that area in anticipation that other agencies that have a history of working in open ocean systems would be um picking up on some of the carbon dioxide removal mechanisms that were not supporting under this foa thank you Todd for a hydrogen Earth shot will any basic research Downstream of hydrogen production be of interest either distribution or end use well I I'll give this my shot but my colleagues should jump in um or Downstream youth online distribution or in use again this needs to to address a fundamental research topic that could be cross-cutting across other Earth shots so if there is a fundamental Science question that may be related to Downstream hydrogen production that could impact another Earth shot um a cross-cutting topic then there's a potential yes and that this is in part from where the pre-application is very helpful for us to see exactly what you're looking for and exactly how you're framing your questions so when you submit your pre-application make sure you explain that fundamental research component and want Earth shots it's irrelevant too uh and and how that cross cuts preferably as probably said it's not required but preferably you cross-cut offices the the b-e-s-b-e-r and Oscar um you don't have to do all three but it would be good if you could do at least two uh and something that's that a fundamental question so if it's Downstream of hydrogen production yes it could potentially be of use but again it's how you phrase it and and how you justify that question as fundamental science relevant to multiple workshops great thank you uh if someone were proposing basic research on a biological process for converting CO2 into biofuels biochemicals could that fit both the industrial heat and carbon negative shots so I'll take this one so I think it would really depend upon the processes that you are focused on um so obviously for the industrial heat we're looking at processes that involve some sort of keep being given into it so if the process is something about let's say producing chemicals that use a lot of heat to do the distillation or something like that then potentially it would be responsible responsive to that for the carbon negative I would say that if it saves biological process to take carbon and convert to something that'd be long lasting long to store that carbon away than it potentially could be responsive as well but it really would depend on sort of what those processes are and what topic areas or what chemicals or products you're trying to produce thanks Ron hey the funding opportunity announcement nodes ber invests in extra scale Earth and climate system models is there a strong reference for these or preference for these uh system models or is it acceptable to use Standalone models um taking that the question to be uh in either or are we aligning with some of the ber efforts and exascale models models or are we using a different model I would say uh you'd want to propose research that would align with and mesh with some of the larger scale or system models that are being conducted within ber so you'd like to be able to develop a module or um a component that would contribute to that larger exascale effort in ber hopefully that's clear thanks Todd are solar cell materials within the scope of long during energy shot yeah during long duration um um I think the simple answer is uh is probably no so that as I as I said one of the one of the motivations for the long duration Energy Shot is to enable uh the inclusion of expanded renewable sources onto the energy grid but the solar cells solar cell materials themselves don't enable long duration energy storage they enable energy generation and what we're really focused here on is once the once the energy has been generated electricity produced by those solar cells uh when the sun is shining how can we store it over durations of hours or even longer for use at a later time hey uh Talia is there an expectation to have both computation modeling and experiments or could a purely computational slash modeling proposal be okay assuming it covers basic science and multiple Earth shots yes that would be acceptable to propose that great um Gail this is a question for you um for the geothermal shot when you mention understanding materials behavior and geochemical and geochemical processes in EGS can these be new materials such as high tea self healing cements instead of typical commercially used cements so I would say the short answer is yes as long as you're you're what's driving the research is a fundamental research challenge of our concept great would modeling and Analysis of hydrogen and long duration energy storage at the power grid level be of interest uh I guess I'll take that one um short of more details it's hard to say but I think those are topics of Interest modeling uh as was answered a couple of questions ago about modeling and computation we are certainly uh encouraging not just experimental work but also the modeling work um to go along with it but again it has to be driven by fundamental science questions it's not just uh not just system level modeling but actually trying to model some fundamentals fundamental science questions and and use those to to drive forward our knowledge to enable uh to enable these uh aggressive or shock goals how is enhanced geothermal defined in the context of the earth shots and the funding opportunity announcement does it necessarily need to be about massive hydraulic fracturing which has its downsides or does it also include closed-loop systems or other Gale that's for you I think the the challenge here is what's the fundamental science that would be relevant for enhanced geothermal systems and we have defined enhanced geothermal systems in the foa as uh enhance your thermal systems can be created where there are hot rocks that where favorable amounts of permeability and or water do not exist reservoirs are created by drilling Wells and then pumping water to create permeability so that's our definition in the cola if what you're wanting to study and what your fundamental Science question is is relevant for that topic area then please submit a pre-application if you're using a different system to answer some of those questions but it's relevant to EGS you can make that argument the main thing is we want you to have a primary focus on the science related to settings tools or processes that could be relevant for enhanced geothermal systems oh yeah this is for you we are encouraged to address multiple Earth shots but do we need to select a single topic topics one through eight or can the proposal address more than one topic so um maybe if the person who answered this question can post a follow-up I think that the topics uh one three may be referencing the examples that are in the foe which are not meant to be an exclusive list they are purely examples so um you know we're not asking for applications in or in those example areas those are provided simply to give you an idea of what could be a cross-cutting research topic um that would be responsive to the foa so if if if I have that incorrect please post a follow-up question but again those those are not the topics of the photo those are simply examples thanks Talia uh how fundamental should the fundamental research be in terms of TRL okay I can try to take that on behalf so what I would say is that we don't even use the TRL scale here because it's not technology we're focused on science so if if one wants to say how fundamental um you would you would say that it's at the at the bottom of the TRL scale uh or maybe below uh that said there's basic science that can have implications at all levels of the TRL scale so if you you know if you know of a technology that's you know at a higher technology Readiness level but you feel is being impeded by a lack of fundamental scientific knowledge and you can build a proposal to do the research to fill those knowledge gaps uh with that scientific knowledge that would be totally uh irrelevant that totally relevant to us and interest and potentially of interest to us so we we tend not to talk about TRL levels uh in the type of science we fund because we're not doing technology readiness thanks Andy should there be any techno-economic analysis regarding the potential to reach the energy uh the Earth shots targets that seems beyond the basic research Focus again I can take that I agree that that is beyond their basic research Focus thanks uh will priority also give be given to the applications that focus on one Earth shot but with interdisciplinary study related to different aspects of one extra shot I'll take that one um so the language in the foe is that priority will be given to applications that address multiple energy or shots so not a question I believe just described uh different aspects within one Workshop that is not what's written it's applications that address multiple you know energy or shots thank you for carbon shot is soil carbon sequestration technology within the scope I think I would stress more the basic science challenges in uh facilitating or measuring uh carbon sequestration processes I wouldn't necessarily look at developing the tech developing or validating the technology I would uh prefer that it'd be mostly on the basic science challenges that would allow one to promote a soil carbon sequestration or understand it better when things start are topics such as digital twins are similar end-to-end holistic modeling potentially relevant I'll take that one so there are a number of cases where creating holistic models and systems are useful but uh for the basic science topics behind digital twins you have to think about are there underlying unknowns in the computational science in the Applied Mathematics and the computer science that would enable the creation of those systems and that would be the scope you need to focus on for basic science uh in in this area thanks Hal uh Talia is is uh is an application with only one topic first thing for a single Earth shot still eligible so so I think this question gets to the prior discussion so priority will be given to applications that address multiple earshots but you are you can have a proposal that only addresses one so that's not a requirement to address multiple but we will prioritize those that do uh how would the knowledge obtained from this foa be different from the goals of efrcs so I guess I'll take that and and make one point which is that there are a couple of acronyms here that are very similar so efrcs has written uh refers to uh energy Frontier research centers which are funded entirely in the office of Basic Energy Sciences um though we have had talk or in part of this webinar about the eercs I apologize for the very similar acronym the Energy earthshot Research Center so I will answer it as written for efrcs though if the questioner was really asking about eercs then we can answer that too the efrcs as I said are are only focus on Basic Energy Sciences so this the material science chemical Sciences geoviosciences supported by Bes this uh this foe is broader than that including our colleagues in Oscar and biological Environmental Research so that that's one distinction and then and as we noted earlier we are encouraging applications that span the the scientific scope of those offices um more than one of the offices um they are also um the the science targets of this call is specifically focused on the earth shots the efrc program is quite a bit broader than that covering a lots of topics some of which are aligned with your shots but others of which are not thanks I see in a few examples you mentioned proposals related to Earth's system models can be relevant to energy Earth Track goals however it might not be explicitly written in the subcategories like hydrogen shot or carbon shot Etc so my question is that if a proposal on Regional scale and global scale related to weather extreme can be relevant in this call we think we'll need a little bit more details about this question okay um yeah I mean I I think that they'll probably want to send a more detailed question there there certainly are places for instance in the floating offshore wind or shot where uh modeling of extreme conditions is relevant but I encourage a follow-up email so that we can get a more specific answer on the scope sounds good our new anchoring Technologies within the scope of the floating offshore windshot if if there's a basic science questions being addressed that is going to inform new anchoring Technologies then that can be in scope the office of science has a focus on molecular scale and Below research however safe geologic storage of CO2 and hydrogen is often controlled by poor scale processes are the those kinds of proposals in alignment with this funding opportunity announcement so if you're looking at some fundamental questions related to let's say Geo mechanical geochemical processes and that is relevant to core scale that would be an alignment because what you're trying to do is understand the fundamental science behind bgs and that's going to go beyond as you said uh beyond the molecular scale so it is going to go to the core scale but we're looking at the fundamental science underlying those processes or fluid flow or structure I agree great you just have time for like a couple more questions and we won't get to all of the questions today but we'll put up a slide um and I'll drop in the chat uh where you can email um and look for more information on the website uh our next question um our Innovative impile installation methods based on biological processes within the scope of floating options I think this answer is similar to the one I just mentioned so if there's a basic science question that that's applicable to that that could be in scope and if you'd like additional clarification please send us an email sounds good um for carbon negative shot is biochar enhanced weathering research encouraged so I I just I guess I'd Echo uh Hal's answer that uh you know where you have a basic science challenge involving or understanding those processes a little better you know I think that's within scope I know there's a lot of examples of biochar being used as a remedy already but if there's some basic science questions both in biochar and in Mineral weathering of the foa great thanks Alia it's back to you about the examples uh of um are the examples one to six given in the call are they some of the examples that you're looking for yes so we have six examples in the call of cross-cutting fundamental research that is of relevance to multiple Earth shots that's what those are they are examples only they are not meant to be a list of topics that we're requesting proposals but just to give you examples of what kinds of things might have relevance to multipleer shots to confirm [Music] there is no need to have both experimental and computer or is it required to have baking of the heads not required uh pumping anything into the ground results in earthquake activity is this a topic of interest if it applies to several of the reservoir systems so again you need to be addressing a fundamental research question or topic uh so if in your pre-application or or the project that you are thinking about for your pre-applications you need to be looking at this not from earthquake uh earthquake stimulation due to pumping but what are the fundamental science questions behind that process that would help inform EGS rates and Natalia this is a follow-up um about the examples given they said I didn't mean the specific examples given what I meant was that there are eight topics in the foa do we need to apply to only a single topic or can the proposal applied more than one topic okay so I think perhaps in this case they're referencing the Earth shots there are six Earth shots in the funding opportunity announcement and yes we do as I've stated encourage and will prioritize applications that address more than one Earth shot thank you and with that to a couple of questions we will ask that everybody who still has a question left to get answered uh email the energy earthshots mailbox um SC dot earthshots science.doe.gov we'll put it in the chat yep thank you to our panelists um Natalie there was a question will the Q a thread be available at the webinar after the webinar yeah they will not be available this recording will be available so I think I've dropped into the chat already you can find today's slides on the office of science website as well as the recording which we're hoping to put up by the end of the week maybe early next week but um I'm going to get that email address for you I got it Natalie okay perfect [Music] um and then this is where the photo is the PDF so thank you so much have a lovely rest of your day

2023-04-02 04:52

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