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The demand for energy is growing. Projections for total energy demand depend primarily on how the global economy grows. The world's gross domestic product (GDP) is increasing at around 3% each year, mostly in developing countries. As a country's GDP grows, the amount of energy it requires increases.

Meeting this rising demand requires a multi-faceted approach: expanding energy generation, increasing electrification, and reducing energy consumption through efficiency. This Impact Area encompasses advances in the latter two. Electrification, the transitioning of processes and devices to being powered by electricity, offers significant advantages in efficiency and flexibility. Meanwhile, by making devices and applications more efficient, we reduce the total energy that needs to be generated in the first place.

If we can reduce the amount of energy needed to light and heat our buildings, power our electric devices, drive our vehicles, and perform industrial processes, and transition more of these applications to run on electricity, then we can better satisfy growing global demands while minimizing resource consumption and costs.

Here are just some of the ways in which several of the Technology Domains are making advances in this Impact Area:

Buildings

• Developing building climate control systems that dynamically adjust energy demands throughout the day to drive down energy use and costs.
• Design of district level heating and cooling networks.
• Developing windows that are more insulating and can dynamically tint to better control internal building temperatures.
• Developing building materials that require less energy and less carbon to produce.

Carbon Utilization

• Developing chemical and bio-chemical approaches to covert carbon dioxide to fuels and high value chemical.

Catalysis and electrocatalysis

• Developing new, more efficient, chemical approaches for large-scale synthesis of commodity chemicals that require less energy and replace heat with electricity.

Nanoscience and Advanced Materials

• Development of new materials and semiconductors that require less energy to power lights, displays, and electronics devices.
• Characterization of materials at the atomistic level to better understand energy flow, to inform the design of future materials.

Polymers

• Development of new techniques to recycle plastics with lower energy demands.
• Design of polymers that have lower energy demands to produce and can be readily recycled in a effective manner.

Theory, Computational Modeling, and Simulation

• Using fundamental theory and calculations to better understand how energy is transported through materials at the atomistic level to guide the design of more efficient materials.