On 12 September 1962, US President John F Kennedy famously announced “We choose to go the Moon in this decade…not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” Indeed the goal was achieved in July 1969, when the Apollo 11 crew successfully landed on the Moon.
That audacious goal and the reasoning for a moonshot has now been borrowed by the US Biden Administration to define initiatives that can help mitigate climate change. The Department of Energy (DoE) has labelled these initiatives the “Energy Earthshots”. There are six Earthshots, each focused on a specific sector of the energy complex.
The Hydrogen Shot aims to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per kilogram in one decade. By achieving this goal the DoE believes it can unlock new markets for hydrogen, including steel manufacturing, clean ammonia, energy storage, and heavy-duty trucks. (See my post on the applications for hydrogen)
The Long Duration Storage Shot establishes a target to reduce the cost of grid-scale energy storage by 90% (from a 2020 Li-ion battery baseline) for systems that deliver 10+ hours of duration within the decade. Longer duration storage technologies are needed as more renewables are deployed on the grid. Cheaper and more efficient storage will make it easier to capture and store renewable clean energy for use when energy generation is unavailable or lower than demand. (See my post on Long Duration Storage in the Australian grid)
The Carbon Negative Shot aims to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it at gigaton scales for less than $100/net metric ton of CO2-equivalent within a decade. Doing so will help achieve a net-zero carbon economy and eventually remove legacy carbon pollution.
The Enhanced Geothermal Shot seeks to dramatically reduce the cost of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS)—by 90%, to $45 per megawatt hour by 2035. Only a fraction of the geothermal energy that exists in the United States is accessible with current technology. However EGS, which creates human-made reservoirs to access energy that is below ground, can put new, clean, dispatchable electricity on the grid.
The Floating Offshore Wind Shot seeks to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind energy by more than 70%, to $45 per megawatt-hour by 2035 for deep water sites far from shore. About two-thirds of U.S. offshore wind energy potential exists over waters too deep for today’s fixed-bottom wind turbine foundations secured directly to the sea floor, and instead would require floating platforms to access.
The Industrial Heat Shot aims to develop cost-competitive industrial heat decarbonization technologies with at least 85% lower greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. Industrial heating refers to the many methods by which heat is used to transform materials into useful products. Heat is used to remove moisture, initiate and maintain chemical reactions, create steam, treat metals, melt plastics, etc. The focus is on electrification, low emissions heat sources and innovative process technologies.
To meet these targets, DoE will provide support and funding to leverage diverse expertise and talent at American universities, businesses, and national laboratories to accelerate research and development in top linchpin technologies.
It remains to be seen how successful these programs are, but the goals are ambitious and bold, as they should be to achieve the major innovation breakthroughs required to achieve the stated targets and have a meaningful impact.
These sorts of initiatives provide signs that speedy progress could be made in transforming our energy systems to the low carbon ones compatible with a sustainable planet. Using JFK’s inspirational words from his very same moonshot speech, our battle against climate change is a challenge that… we are willing to accept, one we are not willing to postpone, one we intend to win.
The writer is a co-author of Court of the Grandchildren, a novel set in 2050s America.
