Armstrong-Japan-1.21.2021

Conference Video|Duration: 29:54
January 21, 2021
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    The world is confronted by a two-faceted energy challenge: on the one hand global energy demand is projected to grow significantly by mid-century and beyond, driven primarily by population growth and economic growth in developing countries. At the same time, meeting the threat of climate change requires dramatic, and rapid, reduction of CO2 emissions economy wide – particularly in the energy sector. In this presentation, I will focus on the four segments of the energy sector: power, transportation, industry, and buildings.

    Early successes in reducing CO2 emissions have focused largely on the power sector, where accelerating deployment of wind and solar have been leading successes. We are now beginning to make significant progress in other parts of the energy sector – transportation, industry, and residential and commercial buildings – by, for example, electrifying transportation. Hydrogen provides a particularly interesting example of a vehicle for minimizing CO2 emissions, because of its ability to contribute across all parts of the energy sector and to meet energy needs that are difficult to do in other ways.

    The cross-sectoral interactions within the energy sector provide a multitude of pathways for creating decarbonized energy systems. Because of variations in regional energy resources, different countries will no doubt select different pathways and energy systems to meet their needs for transportation, industry, and building energy needs. Here we illustrate the Sustainable Energy Systems Analysis and Modeling Environment (SESAME) for strategic planners and policy makers to use in evaluating and choosing among different possible future energy systems.

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Please login to view this video.
  • Video details
    The world is confronted by a two-faceted energy challenge: on the one hand global energy demand is projected to grow significantly by mid-century and beyond, driven primarily by population growth and economic growth in developing countries. At the same time, meeting the threat of climate change requires dramatic, and rapid, reduction of CO2 emissions economy wide – particularly in the energy sector. In this presentation, I will focus on the four segments of the energy sector: power, transportation, industry, and buildings.

    Early successes in reducing CO2 emissions have focused largely on the power sector, where accelerating deployment of wind and solar have been leading successes. We are now beginning to make significant progress in other parts of the energy sector – transportation, industry, and residential and commercial buildings – by, for example, electrifying transportation. Hydrogen provides a particularly interesting example of a vehicle for minimizing CO2 emissions, because of its ability to contribute across all parts of the energy sector and to meet energy needs that are difficult to do in other ways.

    The cross-sectoral interactions within the energy sector provide a multitude of pathways for creating decarbonized energy systems. Because of variations in regional energy resources, different countries will no doubt select different pathways and energy systems to meet their needs for transportation, industry, and building energy needs. Here we illustrate the Sustainable Energy Systems Analysis and Modeling Environment (SESAME) for strategic planners and policy makers to use in evaluating and choosing among different possible future energy systems.

Locked Interactive transcript