Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Beneficial Energy System Transformations for Climate Change, Adaptation, and Societal Equity (BEST-CCASE)

The benefits and impacts of energy are extensively intertwined with society and people’s lives, making the transformation of energy systems an important opportunity for positive, inclusive change. A new approach is proposed to co-develop energy systems with other societal, economic and natural systems so that they achieve multiple beneficial outcomes.

Applying this paradigm to photovoltaics (PV) systems, this project develops the concept of “solar surfaces,” in which it leverages the large surface area of PV to address the intertwined sustainability challenges for hot, arid, high-sunshine regions (e.g., the West and Southwest), including: (1) climate adaptation, focusing on mitigation of heat and water stress on urban and rural populations and increasing resiliency; (2) negative carbon energy systems; and (3) climate justice and social equity. BEST-CCASE’s vision – to develop multifunctional energy systems that address energy transitions, climate adaptation and negative carbon – is transformative goal that requires the deep integration of different fields in engineering, social science, ecology and biology and a broad range of stakeholders ranging from underrepresented communities, government and industry, from small-scale agriculture to some of the world’s largest businesses.

The goal of this planning grant is to (1) build a clear and well-articulated portfolio of research activities that are fully integrated across the three areas; (2) establish a set of integrated metrics and milestones against which to measure the success of the research portfolio for a large-scale interdisciplinary initiative; and (3) deepen and expand stakeholder interactions and prioritize different approaches and outcome, taking into account community and stakeholder needs.

BEST-CCASE will drive advances in three areas of human-centered energy engineering. The first is advances in modelling complex systems such as the energy system and its interaction with human and natural systems, enabling insights and tools for energy systems design and analysis. Proposed models expand the range of effects that can be analyzed, including new technical components (e.g., distributed generation and storage, electrification, demand response, systems resilience), impact of stochastic processes, interactions of humans with the energy system (e.g., new patterns of demand, societal impacts of energy systems), and emerging environmental impacts (e.g., wildfires).

The second is new, multi-functional energy technologies enabled by innovative materials and physical/chemical processes that allow simultaneous electrical, optical and thermal control. This control allows, for example, photovoltaics that also directly provide local cooling or selectively filter light for plant growth or into buildings or new CO2 capture materials and processes.

The third is new approaches to human-centered engagement and design and socio-technical systems analysis that deepen understanding and quantification of human-energy interactions (e.g., the energy-poverty nexus, value creation through multi-functional technology design and integration) and enable strategies for improving social justice through energy systems design and implementation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.