 Good afternoon. Oh sorry. Hi everybody. This is Elena Crete with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network here in New York and we have on the line here Michael Ginsburg who is currently working on a chapter of our white paper on the research and development priorities for deep decarbonization in the United States. Michael is a PhD candidate at the Environmental Engineering School at Columbia University and has been working on this topic for a couple of months now and so Michael is going to walk us through his research to date and where the chapter stands which we are hoping to publish in early 2020 and also just pose some questions along the way and some opportunities where he's looking for resources or collaborations with the SDSN USA Network. So without further ado Michael I'll turn it over to you and we can see your first slide so please advance as you wish. Great well thanks a lot for having me and I'm sorry can you hear that in the background? Okay yeah so thanks a lot for having me I'm really pleased to share my current the current state of my research on the research and development priorities for deep decarbonization. So this this chapter will examine enabling technologies for deep decarbonization it's going to include technological roadmaps by group as well as breakthroughs required and interactions and cost sensitivities between groups in particular it will look at the impact of research and development on timing and cost of deployment of technologies and show dependencies as well as a timeline by decade through 2050. In the first part of this chapter the guiding questions are what are the key technologies that will enable 100% decarbonization by 2050 and what are the R&D breakthroughs that are required. So this section will address the R&D implications by technology group highlighting current bottlenecks and interactions such as cost sensitivities, land use, sector coupling, and timing. This part will be primarily informed by expert elicitation as well as review of the research. So these are the technology groups broken down, electric vehicles, wind energy, solar photovoltaics, carbon capture utilization and storage, geologic sequestration, biofeedstock, industrial sector, fuel cell vehicles, as well as a potential ninth category which is behavior relating to demand response. So the primary data sources that are not expert elicitation come from the evolved energy energy pathways report as well as the 2014 DDPP. So for the first group, electric vehicles, the research I've been conducting so far is tied to primarily the cost of batteries. You can see here NREL's annual technology baseline is the primary data source. So the kinds of predictions that I'm looking for here are dollars per kilowatt and future projections based on both data as well as expert elicitation. For wind energy, I've collected some input from the expert elicitation. The current bottlenecks that I've observed are wind turbine component reliability, the need to increase the life of gearboxes and generators. And one of the ways that I want to demonstrate the technological phase and current relative market penetration of different technologies is through what's called an S-curve which shows the group, the group, the subcategories of technologies that are broken down by startup expansion and mature. So for wind turbine technologies, the mature technology is geared drive, expansion is direct drive, and startup is permanent magnet drive. And so the timeline so far that I've developed is in the 2020s wind turbines with capacity over 10 megawatts will be common. The 2030s rise of offshore wind farms and 2040s recycling and reuse of wind turbines will be especially critical. In addition, one of the results of the expert elicitation is a breakdown of the research needs by type of research. So the questions that I've been posing are based on the type of funding needed by research type, how would it best be divided? So currently the findings are that basic research is 10% whereas applied research, experiments and pilots and commercial demonstration comprise the remainder at 30% each. Another important graph that I want to include is the wind energy levelized cost of energy by level of investment. So these are predictions for what can we expect the price of wind energy to be considering differing levels of research and development investment. So business as usual, today's R&D, you can see has the highest LCOE whereas medium and high R&D results in a much lower levelized cost of energy. Similar for solar photovoltaics, I've broken down into this S-curve where we have crystalline silicon as the primary technology comprising over 90%, cadmium telluride and perhaps gallium arsenide are in the middle and then perovskite solar cells are the current startup tech. The bottlenecks currently are the need for a cost-efficient grid integration, efficiency, stability and the need to extend inverter life. And then the timeline so far is PV recycling in the U.S. will be required in the 2020s. This is particularly important as we see end of life PV modules near their end of life. 2030s, we can see an increase in efficiency above 30% especially with tandem solar cells. And then into the 2040s, renewable electrification of the chemical industry as well as PV powered reverse osmosis desalination systems. So my current research in CCUS as well as direct air capture has identified that direct transformation of CO2 to useful products has a high energy requirement which translates into a high cost. So it's difficult to capture CO2 from point sources like flue gas and ambient air as well as the need to better understand the life cycle emissions impacts of CO2 capture and conversion. And the timeline in the 2020s, direct air capture at hundreds of metric tons of CO2 per year is likely and then the costs in the 2030s should fall to below $150 per ton of CO2. And the 2040s currently is working on that. As well as the S-curve for the direct air capture, we're seeing this is a very new technology with a lot of interest but there's a couple of specific technologies that have been identified that I'm going to discuss in this section. Similarly, the levelized cost of energy translates into a direct air capture cost in dollars per tons of CO2 captured. So that has a similar relationship whereas you go higher in the dollars spent and lower in the tons of CO2 cost. I'll also mention one more thing. The CCUS, the other areas I'm looking at include not just direct air capture but also capture from the flue gas of power plants and and methanation through different materials. So geologic sequestration is an area where my research is still ongoing and I need input from collaborators as well as literature recommendations. Similar for biofeedstock, this is just a graph from NREL's ATB annual technology baseline and I'd like to create the same kind of metrics that I have for wind and solar for biofeedstock. So also welcoming input here. The industrial sector, here we have a graph of a PEM electrolyzer for water splitting electrolysis and this is actually an expert elicitation showing that increased R&D results in lower capital cost of the electrolyzer. So I have, I'm seeking additional input as well in the electrolyzer in this area and fuel cell vehicles as well. So welcoming collaboration here. So the behavior and demand side transformation is an area that that I would like to include but still thinking about how to effectively do so. So once I have those specific areas fleshed out completely what I want to ask in the second part is what is the cost of R&D and ROI for next-gen technologies above the baseline 350 ppm compatible trajectory. So basically this will build on part one by considering the reduction in cost of deployment of the technologies given these given breakthroughs have occurred. So the the cost of deploying currently available technologies is shown in the energy pathways report. In the next slide I'll show you but what I would like to do is to project the reduction in cost as a percentage of GDP given achievement of the breakthroughs discussed in part one. So this is the graph that's shown in the in the report and I like how it's displayed the specific net energy system costs as well as as a percentage of GDP and what I would like to show is the reduction in these costs given technological breakthroughs so that the invest so we can see the the the ROI on the investment. And then finally just I will succinctly end the chapter with the key findings from parts one and two as well as a overall timeline or critical path to deep decarbonization that shows the dependencies between technology groups by decade. So again I want to emphasize that these are the areas that I'm currently engaged in research on and I'm welcome I welcome in particular input from the research teams at various universities who would like to share either reports or their or their expert insights. And to that effect I have created a survey which you can see at the link here. You can also take a screenshot of the of this code and or you could also contact me via email or or at my number. So thank you very much and I'm looking forward to everyone's feedback. Thank you Michael. This is definitely taken a much clearer shape since the last time we talked and since the summer so congrats on that. I can see that you still have a lot of research to do but the progress on the wind and solar and other technology sections is impressive. I do have a few questions that maybe I'll just start out with just so that we have an answer on here and then Caroline or Lena if you have any feel free two of my colleagues are with me here Michael. So one thing I just noticed so throughout this chapter we're really focusing on the comparison of cost as an enabling factor to adoption and one piece of feedback we've gotten in a few of our other studies is how to incorporate other aspects of sustainability to you know promote or advocate for certain technologies. So I'm wondering if there are other ways to include issues of equity adoption and you know positive externalities from you know reduced emissions or greener energy sources in your analysis to kind of promote those a bit clearer. Yeah that's a great that's a great point and I think in my initial in my initial draft and thinking I intended to include more of a life cycle assessment type of description of the technologies and I think that it would be it would be prudent to include perhaps a small summary of the primary for each of those technological groups. I do think that's that's an important that's an important thing to include but one of the things of feedback I received from from the team with the evolved energy was the the life cycle assessment can be maybe I don't want to say murky but it could it could be perhaps not the best way to effectively communicate to the audience that we that we're reaching towards but I as an environmental engineer myself I agree with you that LCA is important to include. Absolutely and then another question just on your industrial sector part you focused a lot on the electrolyzer I'm wondering if there are specific industrial sectors you're covering there and I'm thinking specifically kind of the technologies involved with the process emissions from cement can be a very different technology than you know electrifying steel manufacturing per se so just wondering what you're yeah thank you for that question so in the initial the table here so electrolyte electrolysis I is one of the technologies but I certainly am including additional additional technologies and one of the key reports that I've well there's two actually the reports that I've been looking at are one by Julio Dr. Julio Friedman and as well as Colin McCormick so those are both on industrial sector decarbonization through and also high heat decarbonization of high heat applications so yes it won't be just electrolysis I'm looking at a lot a lot of other technologies there great yeah and I know that a lot of a lot of organizations have been mentioning hydrogen lately which we've talked about before which would also be really interesting to understand where that stands and what are some of the challenges with bringing that to scale as well beyond just cost mm-hmm yeah for part three I just have a thought or recommendation so I think summarizing your recommendations and having very clear takeaways is always super helpful and beneficial I would add to that as well and suggest potentially if it if it's clear and makes sense to mentioning specific stakeholders or leaders in these different spaces so if I was a researcher who's obviously reading this chapter to get a taste of what are the r&d gaps and what are you know the current state of these various technologies but now I'm very curious and I want to learn more understanding which groups at which institutions are really kind of the best in class for these beyond you know a generic google search is always really helpful so if that could also accompany your recommendations that would be great yeah that's a good idea and to clarify are you referring to the stakeholders who people could go to for more information or the ones that are looking into this given that all of this is really about the cutting edge currently right right yeah and one thing that one one thing that I was wondering for this section is in some in some papers there's specific there are recommendations that are specifically designed or directed at you know government agencies for instance like this government agency should invest x millions of dollars I don't know if we want it to be that prescriptive do you have any thoughts on that um I mean it could be interesting it's kind of a it's a moving target right um but even just a small half page on that could be very interesting and then my only other point that my last point I wanted to mention too was and I'm sure you're already doing this but given that we do have a few other chapters in the white paper that are ongoing I'm thinking specifically the geographic siting chapter by grace could be a really good opportunity to align with her at least thematically to make sure these big scale transformations that you're looking into and their projection down the line what does that mean in practical terms and what are the consequences for siting but that way your chapters can complement each other so if you haven't already done so definitely reach out to her because I know this month specifically she is working on that great yeah that's definitely um top of top of mind great ladies any other questions nothing all right I think we are good Michael so thank you so much um uh as a quick reminder we're going to be having another webinar in two weeks time on the 18th right before the Christmas holiday where we're going to hear about um from Erin on the employment in a low carbon transition discussion which also might be interesting for your topic Michael you have probably the most cross cutting um theme here for the white paper so it'd be really interesting to make sure we're tying in across those um uh so I welcome you to join it and anybody else that's listening to this webinar thank you thanks that's great I will definitely uh plan to attend that and I think it's important to um yeah especially where this chapter is at the at the end of the white paper I think it's important to tie in a lot of those um of those other points absolutely so Michael we'll follow up with an email to our network and make sure to copy you and then we'll make sure also to share the survey that you put together so that we can solicit some online um online input from our network great thank you all right thank you so much all right take care bye bye