- Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact - MIT News
Plus, generative AI models have an especially short shelf-life, driven by rising demand for new AI applications Companies release new models every few weeks, so the energy used to train prior versions goes to waste, Bashir adds New models often consume more energy for training, since they usually have more parameters than their predecessors
- Using liquid air for grid-scale energy storage - MIT News
The model then draws on state-of-the-art pricing data that’s released every year by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and is widely used by energy modelers worldwide The NREL dataset forecasts prices, construction and retirement of specific types of electricity generation and storage facilities, and more, assuming eight
- A new approach could fractionate crude oil using much less energy
“Roughly 1 percent of global energy use goes into separating crude oil into gasoline, diesel, and heating oil,” writes Aamir Khollam for Interesting Engineering This new membrane “excelled in lab tests…[and] effectively separated real industrial oil samples containing naphtha, kerosene, and diesel ”
- A nonflammable battery to power a safer, decarbonized future
Now Alsym Energy has developed a nonflammable, nontoxic alternative to lithium-ion batteries to help renewables like wind and solar bridge the gap in a broader range of sectors The company’s electrodes use relatively stable, abundant materials, and its electrolyte is primarily water with some nontoxic add-ons
- New facility to accelerate materials solutions for fusion energy
By utilizing this approach, the PSFC is executing a major public-private partnership in fusion energy, realizing a research model that the U S fusion community has only recently started to explore, and demonstrating the crucial role that universities can play in the acceleration of the materials and technology required for fusion energy
- Engineers develop an efficient process to make fuel from carbon dioxide
“The MIT process gets closer to an ambitious dream: turning captured CO2 into a feedstock for clean fuel that replaces conventional batteries and stores electricity for months or years,” writes Fialka “That could fill gaps in the nation's power grids as they transition from fossil fuels to intermittent solar and wind energy ”
- Solar-powered desalination system requires no extra batteries
In a direct-drive electrodialysis desalination system, using flow-commanded current control, solar panels take in energy from the sun and then optimally allocate energy (shown in yellow) to the pump and electrodialysis stack, without the need for energy storage, such as batteries
- Confronting the AI energy conundrum - MIT News
“The energy demands of AI are a significant challenge, but we also have an opportunity to harness these vast computational capabilities to contribute to climate change solutions,” said Evelyn Wang, MIT vice president for energy and climate and the former director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the U S
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