you
[Music]
the 3 R’s some of you have heard this
phrase before reading writing arithmetic
that’s what people used to say Wikipedia
tells me that that started in 1800 that
phrase and hopefully some of you out
there are saying wait a minute
writing doesn’t start with an R rythmic
do arithmetic doesn’t start with an hour
and you’re right it was about fie gnomes
and sounds back then then some of my
tree-hugging sustainability people that
I know my friends they decided to coin
the phrase reduce reuse and recycle
there we go
there’s some tree huggers don’t don’t
embarrass yourselves now in the audience
today we’re going to talk a little bit
more about risk research and reward
maybe I’ll be able to update the
Wikipedia page after today and we’re
also going to talk about energy because
I direct an energy Research Center at
North Carolina A&T just a little bit
down the road from here so energy is
something we all need I’ve been a serial
researcher or serial entrepreneur all of
my career and that’s led me to take lots
of risk take do lots and lots of
research and always reach for that
reward and I love taking risk it
energizes me hopefully you understand
it’s a small joke energy small joke it’s
sad I had to say something like that but
but I remember the very first time I
took a big risk it was when I left
Purdue University I had a guaranteed PhD
scholarship offered to me and I decided
to go to MIT that was what I thought was
the my ultimate vision for graduate
research opportunity so I left in
January in the middle of the year with
absolutely no funding
in my pocket and I went to MIT I spent a
few days I ran around campus I
introduced myself to people I landed a
research opportunity on the third day so
this gave me my reward I was now on my
path to an MIT PhD and I even did a
little jig that night I remember dancing
and I can’t sing very well but I
but I sang the Mickey Mouse song MIT PhD
mo ne Y so this is what I’ve been doing
ever since my energy Research Center is
working on energy research trying to
solve energy problems I’m doing this
along with my collaborators at the
University and across the globe and
we’re trying to address the risks and
there really are real risks because as
you generate electricity
you also generate waste as you generate
food you generate waste so our Center is
trying to address those things we need
the energy we need the earth and our
centers are trying to figure out how to
have both it’s one and the other not one
or the other so let’s talk a little bit
about how we got to where we are today
we started with an electric grid
not much of a grid mind you a battery
and a light bulb back in 1870 and then
100 years later let’s say 1970 we’re in
the middle of a centralized energy power
system that you see here we’re
generating huge amounts of electricity
from hydroelectric power from coal from
from natural gas and from nuclear and
that centralized energy started to be
looked at by other researchers and they
started to say hey wait a minute we’re
polluting our earth and our planets at
risk we’re seeing lots of carbon
building up in the atmosphere we’re
seeing a correlation to the temperature
of the earth rising and then then we
said maybe we need to do something
different
and those researchers drove us to think
about renewable energy and how do we
change and transform our system into
something else and you have to think
about what happened in 1970 I was a
semiconductor guy coming out of school
and it turns out that we didn’t have
very good semiconductors in 1970 this
transistor was just invented in 1953 so
we couldn’t generate the kind of
electricity from photovoltaic panels
that we wanted we couldn’t build those
enormous wind turbines that we see today
dotting the earth so we were facing some
real issues in it and it took time but
we transformed ourselves and we started
to think about what kind of what kind of
a earth do we want what kind of an
energy generating system do we need in
the future and we started what I would
refer to as the distributed energy
revolution and that involves lots of
photovoltaic arrays lots of wind farms
lots of bioenergy and doing that more
and more efficiently doing more and more
energy generation along the way and this
has allowed us to make a transition and
at the same time we also realize that
food production that had been come
centralized was was also crop with
causing problems we were producing huge
amounts of waste particularly in North
Carolina we’re talking about pig manure
no pig manure but we generated a lot of
manure we have to deal with that as a as
a problem now for the last 50 years
we’ve been in this distributed energy
revolution and this distributed energy
revolution is going to go into the
future we still face risks we still have
to do the research and we still have to
reach for those rewards so what’s it
going to look like in the next 50 years
well it’s going to continue and I want
to paint a little picture of that for
you
renewable energy is going to continue
we’re going to have more and more solar
wind and bioenergy generated and as that
takes place we have another big research
project that’s going on in the world
today and that’s an energy storage
we need lithium ion batteries we need
hydroelectric battery storage we need
compressed gas storage because renewal
don’t work all day long when the wind
stops the turbines stop no energy when
the Sun Goes Down the photovoltaic
panels stop making energy so you’re
dealing with issues that are of
intermittency and the only way to deal
with that was with storage okay so now
we’ve got all these renewable energy
sources on our roofs in our backyards in
our communities in solar farms wind
farms onshore offshore big prop big
energy generation but it’s dotting the
entire nation so how do we deal with
that we need a smart grid we need
something and what is this market it’s
pretty simple it’s a computer with a lot
of data and a lot of algorithms telling
us exactly how to move the energy around
to each of our homes to each of our
businesses and to deliver the energy we
need when we need it and get it to our
front door nice okay so now we’ve done
that we’ve built ourselves a nice smart
crew we’ve got a great computer then we
open ourselves up to the hackers because
everybody in the world wants to hack
into something it’s just fun to do so so
now we have a whole other Research
Center in the energy environment called
cyber security just like we have cyber
security in the financial industry we
have a cyber security research effort
going on in the energy industry all
right so now we’ve talked about the
energy generation side of the business
but there’s also a lot of research going
on at our universities and elsewhere
that that are dealing with the energy
use side we have to say we have to find
ways of using less energy and primarily
that falls into two areas buildings and
transportation so in buildings we’re
looking for those ways to reduce the
amount of energy that’s required from
heating and air conditioning systems
we’re looking for ways to insulate our
buildings better to use the natural
light of the sunshine to produce energy
for on the inside of our buildings
without having to generate electricity
to do so and a transportation we all see
it coming electric vehicles and the
electrification our transportation
sector is happening today and we’re
going to see that happen in the next
decade or two I expect to see lots and
lots of electric vehicles on the road
and then no drivers either we’re going
to have autonomous vehicles and that’s
going to help us save it enormous
amount of energy we won’t have to
produce as much energy if we have
electrification on the transportation
sector and I would be remiss if I didn’t
mention one more big research area
that’s going to be very important and
it’s getting a lot of attention today
and that’s the Nexus of food energy and
water you see food energy and water are
interrelated they depend upon each other
energy energy uses one quarter of all
the surface water just to cool those
plants today it’s a lot of it’s a lot of
and in California it takes 25% of their
entire energy bill just to move water
around the state it’s enormous
and food we want to grow more food with
less water so we have to figure out ways
to study that relationship between those
three so you see we’re going to do the
research we’re going to address the risk
so we can continue to reap the rewards
from energy sources like electricity and
food now let’s take a look at a few of
these a little with a little bit more
detail environmental risk from coal
exists you can tell it’s risky because
the guys wearing a gas mask he’s taking
samples from the Dan River here in North
Carolina after a coal spill nasty right
very nasty so we’re trying to figure out
how do we do this how do we how do we
take care of this risk what do we do
well one of the best thing that’s being
done right now is calls being used less
in 1985 57% of our electricity came from
coal today it’s just barely above 30% in
fact in the last couple of years natural
gas surpassed call electricity
production that’s a good thing because
it produces less carbon emissions but we
also have to deal with it with the
actual coal ash that’s produced and one
way that’s done is with cement it turns
out that half of the weight of cement is
coal ash and it’s good because you mix
this coal ash which is filled with
horrible things heavy metals and
hazardous substances you put it in
cement and locks it up and prevents it
from getting into the environment it
prevents it from being spilled into the
water systems and when it spills in our
water systems
it gets a damages the water people drink
the water
people get sick people file suit the
judge’s order clean up to take place the
electric companies go out there and
clean up the mess and that costs a
fortune and who pays for that you and me
okay so we all understand that problem
this is what we’re doing in our research
center we’re looking at ways to make
coal ash composites we’re mixing the
coal ash up to as much as 85 percent by
weight with polyurethane and making
these coal ash composites it locks up
the material just like some cement does
and prevents it from getting into the
into the environment we’ve tested these
we put them in water streams and we
tested them over time and we know that
the amount of leaching that comes out of
these blocks these polyurethane blocks
is very very low much lower than the EPA
standards and it doesn’t pollute the
environment other ways we can use these
same materials is add a little bit more
air make them into lighter foam like
materials their fire resistant after you
burn coal and you’re left with coal ash
there is absolutely nothing left to burn
it doesn’t doesn’t have any energy in it
anymore so you mix it with something
else and it’s going to be naturally fire
resistant so we could turn these blocks
into walls retaining walls there also
sound absorbent so they can do some
sound insulation at the same time the
big winner in in our research could be
in the area of lumber we can make
materials that look just like lumber
just like wood anything you can make
with wood you can make with these coal
ash composites you can mold it cut it
form it connect it to each other you can
make things like molding railroad ties
decks for your pool or your backyard
telephone pole crossbars anything you
want it’s possible with these materials
so let’s take another look at some other
issues with the environmental risk this
is a picture of the shipping port
Pennsylvania coal ash plants the largest
in the United States and I just put this
picture up to show you the stuff that
comes out of the stacks which contains
some carbon so the carbon emissions is a
big issue in North Carolina we have the
same problems we generate lots and lots
of carbon and we put it into the air and
as I said this is an
environmental risk for our planet so
part of the research we’re doing is to
model some of these things and try to
understand how their scenarios or ways
to get around these kinds of risks in
the environment that we live in today
and there are it turns out we collect
the data from 700 energy generating
plants across this state we have
electric we have we have PV excuse me
visit the photovoltaics we have
hydroelectric power we have wind power
we have nuclear power we have coal oil
and natural gas power so we collect the
information that gets reported to the
Energy Information Administration that’s
the EIA on an hourly basis 365 for all
700 plants and we put them into a
computer program this is tens of
millions of pieces of data and we model
and simulate what happens if you change
some of the makeup of that system take
away a little coal add some natural gas
add a whole bunch of photovoltaics
add as much as you can of wind power
like our Amazon wind station out in the
North East part of North Carolina and it
turns out that we can reach the kinds of
goals that have been set by the Paris
Accord in late 2015
30% reductions in emissions by the year
2030 are possible in this state and
probably most every other state in the
nation and the way we do that is we just
introduce natural gas solar and wind
while still producing the amount of
energy that all of us need is even a
projected 20% growth for the state of
North Carolina but it appears possible
from our scenarios and our modeling that
we can do all of that we can have all
the energy we want and we can reduce the
carbon emissions at the same time now
let’s switch the food production every
good talk should have pictures of pigs I
meant every talk I give from now on I’m
going to put a picture of a pig up there
they’re really cute everybody loves the
look at pigs but behind all those pigs
there’s an issue and that’s poop and pig
manure or pig poop is it comes a lot
there’s a lot of pig poop it comes out
almost a ton of pig manure
per year and in the state and in the
United States it’s 40 million tons of
pig manure being produced fortunately
we’re not first
that’s Iowa oh it has three to four
times the number of pigs as we do we’re
second right
but being second in pig production means
we’re second in pig poop production as
well but don’t feel bad
China’s even worse they have 400 million
tons of pig manure that they have to
deal with each year ten times what the
United States faces but we need to find
ways to deal with this well pig manure
is not the greatest thing for making you
know it’s not it’s not the same as the
kinds of manure you get from chicken
manure for instance you can’t use it as
a composting material it has a very low
level of phosphorus and nitrogen it’s
not a very good composting material so
we needed to find something different
and that’s something that the difference
is in the transportation sector it turns
out that the oils in pig manure are very
similar to the oils in petroleum and can
be used to make that black gooey asphalt
type material that we see on our roads
it’s not good for making gasoline either
like petroleum is so we’ve focused on
the transportation sector and making tar
like asphalt materials to make roads and
it turns out that it passes all the
tests from the Department of
Transportation it doesn’t crack it
stands up to the cold the wind the rain
the sleet and it and it doesn’t deform
too much so it’s very much equivalent to
what we get out of petroleum production
and that’s where we are today and now
we’re looking at how do we ramp up that
research work to turn that into a
production environment and start making
roads right here in North Carolina and
there’s our reward
some of you may have had an Easter ham
this past Sunday and some of you might
have bacon I’m going to this weekend at
my favorite breakfast restaurant here in
town so the point here is that we face
risks and there are rewards at the end
and the way to get there is through
really hard research work and the
distributed energy revolution is going
to continue for the next 50 years it’s
going to take decades change is
inevitable research will address the
risks and I promise the rewards will
astound us all thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
the 3 R’s some of you have heard this
phrase before reading writing arithmetic
that’s what people used to say Wikipedia
tells me that that started in 1800 that
phrase and hopefully some of you out
there are saying wait a minute
writing doesn’t start with an R rythmic
do arithmetic doesn’t start with an hour
and you’re right it was about fie gnomes
and sounds back then then some of my
tree-hugging sustainability people that
I know my friends they decided to coin
the phrase reduce reuse and recycle
there we go
there’s some tree huggers don’t don’t
embarrass yourselves now in the audience
today we’re going to talk a little bit
more about risk research and reward
maybe I’ll be able to update the
Wikipedia page after today and we’re
also going to talk about energy because
I direct an energy Research Center at
North Carolina A&T just a little bit
down the road from here so energy is
something we all need I’ve been a serial
researcher or serial entrepreneur all of
my career and that’s led me to take lots
of risk take do lots and lots of
research and always reach for that
reward and I love taking risk it
energizes me hopefully you understand
it’s a small joke energy small joke it’s
sad I had to say something like that but
but I remember the very first time I
took a big risk it was when I left
Purdue University I had a guaranteed PhD
scholarship offered to me and I decided
to go to MIT that was what I thought was
the my ultimate vision for graduate
research opportunity so I left in
January in the middle of the year with
absolutely no funding
in my pocket and I went to MIT I spent a
few days I ran around campus I
introduced myself to people I landed a
research opportunity on the third day so
this gave me my reward I was now on my
path to an MIT PhD and I even did a
little jig that night I remember dancing
and I can’t sing very well but I
but I sang the Mickey Mouse song MIT PhD
mo ne Y so this is what I’ve been doing
ever since my energy Research Center is
working on energy research trying to
solve energy problems I’m doing this
along with my collaborators at the
University and across the globe and
we’re trying to address the risks and
there really are real risks because as
you generate electricity
you also generate waste as you generate
food you generate waste so our Center is
trying to address those things we need
the energy we need the earth and our
centers are trying to figure out how to
have both it’s one and the other not one
or the other so let’s talk a little bit
about how we got to where we are today
we started with an electric grid
not much of a grid mind you a battery
and a light bulb back in 1870 and then
100 years later let’s say 1970 we’re in
the middle of a centralized energy power
system that you see here we’re
generating huge amounts of electricity
from hydroelectric power from coal from
from natural gas and from nuclear and
that centralized energy started to be
looked at by other researchers and they
started to say hey wait a minute we’re
polluting our earth and our planets at
risk we’re seeing lots of carbon
building up in the atmosphere we’re
seeing a correlation to the temperature
of the earth rising and then then we
said maybe we need to do something
different
and those researchers drove us to think
about renewable energy and how do we
change and transform our system into
something else and you have to think
about what happened in 1970 I was a
semiconductor guy coming out of school
and it turns out that we didn’t have
very good semiconductors in 1970 this
transistor was just invented in 1953 so
we couldn’t generate the kind of
electricity from photovoltaic panels
that we wanted we couldn’t build those
enormous wind turbines that we see today
dotting the earth so we were facing some
real issues in it and it took time but
we transformed ourselves and we started
to think about what kind of what kind of
a earth do we want what kind of an
energy generating system do we need in
the future and we started what I would
refer to as the distributed energy
revolution and that involves lots of
photovoltaic arrays lots of wind farms
lots of bioenergy and doing that more
and more efficiently doing more and more
energy generation along the way and this
has allowed us to make a transition and
at the same time we also realize that
food production that had been come
centralized was was also crop with
causing problems we were producing huge
amounts of waste particularly in North
Carolina we’re talking about pig manure
no pig manure but we generated a lot of
manure we have to deal with that as a as
a problem now for the last 50 years
we’ve been in this distributed energy
revolution and this distributed energy
revolution is going to go into the
future we still face risks we still have
to do the research and we still have to
reach for those rewards so what’s it
going to look like in the next 50 years
well it’s going to continue and I want
to paint a little picture of that for
you
renewable energy is going to continue
we’re going to have more and more solar
wind and bioenergy generated and as that
takes place we have another big research
project that’s going on in the world
today and that’s an energy storage
we need lithium ion batteries we need
hydroelectric battery storage we need
compressed gas storage because renewal
don’t work all day long when the wind
stops the turbines stop no energy when
the Sun Goes Down the photovoltaic
panels stop making energy so you’re
dealing with issues that are of
intermittency and the only way to deal
with that was with storage okay so now
we’ve got all these renewable energy
sources on our roofs in our backyards in
our communities in solar farms wind
farms onshore offshore big prop big
energy generation but it’s dotting the
entire nation so how do we deal with
that we need a smart grid we need
something and what is this market it’s
pretty simple it’s a computer with a lot
of data and a lot of algorithms telling
us exactly how to move the energy around
to each of our homes to each of our
businesses and to deliver the energy we
need when we need it and get it to our
front door nice okay so now we’ve done
that we’ve built ourselves a nice smart
crew we’ve got a great computer then we
open ourselves up to the hackers because
everybody in the world wants to hack
into something it’s just fun to do so so
now we have a whole other Research
Center in the energy environment called
cyber security just like we have cyber
security in the financial industry we
have a cyber security research effort
going on in the energy industry all
right so now we’ve talked about the
energy generation side of the business
but there’s also a lot of research going
on at our universities and elsewhere
that that are dealing with the energy
use side we have to say we have to find
ways of using less energy and primarily
that falls into two areas buildings and
transportation so in buildings we’re
looking for those ways to reduce the
amount of energy that’s required from
heating and air conditioning systems
we’re looking for ways to insulate our
buildings better to use the natural
light of the sunshine to produce energy
for on the inside of our buildings
without having to generate electricity
to do so and a transportation we all see
it coming electric vehicles and the
electrification our transportation
sector is happening today and we’re
going to see that happen in the next
decade or two I expect to see lots and
lots of electric vehicles on the road
and then no drivers either we’re going
to have autonomous vehicles and that’s
going to help us save it enormous
amount of energy we won’t have to
produce as much energy if we have
electrification on the transportation
sector and I would be remiss if I didn’t
mention one more big research area
that’s going to be very important and
it’s getting a lot of attention today
and that’s the Nexus of food energy and
water you see food energy and water are
interrelated they depend upon each other
energy energy uses one quarter of all
the surface water just to cool those
plants today it’s a lot of it’s a lot of
and in California it takes 25% of their
entire energy bill just to move water
around the state it’s enormous
and food we want to grow more food with
less water so we have to figure out ways
to study that relationship between those
three so you see we’re going to do the
research we’re going to address the risk
so we can continue to reap the rewards
from energy sources like electricity and
food now let’s take a look at a few of
these a little with a little bit more
detail environmental risk from coal
exists you can tell it’s risky because
the guys wearing a gas mask he’s taking
samples from the Dan River here in North
Carolina after a coal spill nasty right
very nasty so we’re trying to figure out
how do we do this how do we how do we
take care of this risk what do we do
well one of the best thing that’s being
done right now is calls being used less
in 1985 57% of our electricity came from
coal today it’s just barely above 30% in
fact in the last couple of years natural
gas surpassed call electricity
production that’s a good thing because
it produces less carbon emissions but we
also have to deal with it with the
actual coal ash that’s produced and one
way that’s done is with cement it turns
out that half of the weight of cement is
coal ash and it’s good because you mix
this coal ash which is filled with
horrible things heavy metals and
hazardous substances you put it in
cement and locks it up and prevents it
from getting into the environment it
prevents it from being spilled into the
water systems and when it spills in our
water systems
it gets a damages the water people drink
the water
people get sick people file suit the
judge’s order clean up to take place the
electric companies go out there and
clean up the mess and that costs a
fortune and who pays for that you and me
okay so we all understand that problem
this is what we’re doing in our research
center we’re looking at ways to make
coal ash composites we’re mixing the
coal ash up to as much as 85 percent by
weight with polyurethane and making
these coal ash composites it locks up
the material just like some cement does
and prevents it from getting into the
into the environment we’ve tested these
we put them in water streams and we
tested them over time and we know that
the amount of leaching that comes out of
these blocks these polyurethane blocks
is very very low much lower than the EPA
standards and it doesn’t pollute the
environment other ways we can use these
same materials is add a little bit more
air make them into lighter foam like
materials their fire resistant after you
burn coal and you’re left with coal ash
there is absolutely nothing left to burn
it doesn’t doesn’t have any energy in it
anymore so you mix it with something
else and it’s going to be naturally fire
resistant so we could turn these blocks
into walls retaining walls there also
sound absorbent so they can do some
sound insulation at the same time the
big winner in in our research could be
in the area of lumber we can make
materials that look just like lumber
just like wood anything you can make
with wood you can make with these coal
ash composites you can mold it cut it
form it connect it to each other you can
make things like molding railroad ties
decks for your pool or your backyard
telephone pole crossbars anything you
want it’s possible with these materials
so let’s take another look at some other
issues with the environmental risk this
is a picture of the shipping port
Pennsylvania coal ash plants the largest
in the United States and I just put this
picture up to show you the stuff that
comes out of the stacks which contains
some carbon so the carbon emissions is a
big issue in North Carolina we have the
same problems we generate lots and lots
of carbon and we put it into the air and
as I said this is an
environmental risk for our planet so
part of the research we’re doing is to
model some of these things and try to
understand how their scenarios or ways
to get around these kinds of risks in
the environment that we live in today
and there are it turns out we collect
the data from 700 energy generating
plants across this state we have
electric we have we have PV excuse me
visit the photovoltaics we have
hydroelectric power we have wind power
we have nuclear power we have coal oil
and natural gas power so we collect the
information that gets reported to the
Energy Information Administration that’s
the EIA on an hourly basis 365 for all
700 plants and we put them into a
computer program this is tens of
millions of pieces of data and we model
and simulate what happens if you change
some of the makeup of that system take
away a little coal add some natural gas
add a whole bunch of photovoltaics
add as much as you can of wind power
like our Amazon wind station out in the
North East part of North Carolina and it
turns out that we can reach the kinds of
goals that have been set by the Paris
Accord in late 2015
30% reductions in emissions by the year
2030 are possible in this state and
probably most every other state in the
nation and the way we do that is we just
introduce natural gas solar and wind
while still producing the amount of
energy that all of us need is even a
projected 20% growth for the state of
North Carolina but it appears possible
from our scenarios and our modeling that
we can do all of that we can have all
the energy we want and we can reduce the
carbon emissions at the same time now
let’s switch the food production every
good talk should have pictures of pigs I
meant every talk I give from now on I’m
going to put a picture of a pig up there
they’re really cute everybody loves the
look at pigs but behind all those pigs
there’s an issue and that’s poop and pig
manure or pig poop is it comes a lot
there’s a lot of pig poop it comes out
almost a ton of pig manure
per year and in the state and in the
United States it’s 40 million tons of
pig manure being produced fortunately
we’re not first
that’s Iowa oh it has three to four
times the number of pigs as we do we’re
second right
but being second in pig production means
we’re second in pig poop production as
well but don’t feel bad
China’s even worse they have 400 million
tons of pig manure that they have to
deal with each year ten times what the
United States faces but we need to find
ways to deal with this well pig manure
is not the greatest thing for making you
know it’s not it’s not the same as the
kinds of manure you get from chicken
manure for instance you can’t use it as
a composting material it has a very low
level of phosphorus and nitrogen it’s
not a very good composting material so
we needed to find something different
and that’s something that the difference
is in the transportation sector it turns
out that the oils in pig manure are very
similar to the oils in petroleum and can
be used to make that black gooey asphalt
type material that we see on our roads
it’s not good for making gasoline either
like petroleum is so we’ve focused on
the transportation sector and making tar
like asphalt materials to make roads and
it turns out that it passes all the
tests from the Department of
Transportation it doesn’t crack it
stands up to the cold the wind the rain
the sleet and it and it doesn’t deform
too much so it’s very much equivalent to
what we get out of petroleum production
and that’s where we are today and now
we’re looking at how do we ramp up that
research work to turn that into a
production environment and start making
roads right here in North Carolina and
there’s our reward
some of you may have had an Easter ham
this past Sunday and some of you might
have bacon I’m going to this weekend at
my favorite breakfast restaurant here in
town so the point here is that we face
risks and there are rewards at the end
and the way to get there is through
really hard research work and the
distributed energy revolution is going
to continue for the next 50 years it’s
going to take decades change is
inevitable research will address the
risks and I promise the rewards will
astound us all thank you
[Applause]
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