US Vice President Joe Biden, US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, several heads of state, and more than 20 energy or economy ministers joined leaders from across the globe to discuss the future of energy technologies, the economy and the environment as part of the recent Atlantic Council Energy and Economic Summit in Istanbul, Turkey.
The international event annually convenes opinion leaders from government, politics, media, academia, and the corporate world, and this year included a group of energy thought leaders from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), who shared their views on innovations in energy technology.
“Emerging technologies will drive energy innovation for the next decade and beyond,” shared Robert Armstrong, Director of MITEI, as he opened a moderated panel discussion titled Innovation in Energy Technologies. “Research and development, or R&D, is the perfect topic to tie discussions of environment, economy, and security together. Innovation lowers the cost of renewable energy, and thereby lowers the bar policy has to achieve to get us to a low-carbon future.”
MITEI panelists included Vladimir Bulović, MIT associate Dean of Engineering for Innovation and co-director of the newly created MIT Innovation Initiative; Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT; and Alex Slocum, MIT professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Speaking about the future of solar energy technology, Bulović noted that in just a few years, solar energy has experienced an almost tenfold increase in global electricity market share, going from producing less than .1% of the world’s electricity to approximately .8%.
Chiang discussed methods of improving energy storage, and Slocum expanded Chiang’s discussion to encompass larger-scale applications, exploring potential engineering solutions to some of the most pressing energy problems of today – from mitigating oil spills to increasing the efficiency of wind turbines.
Watch these MITEI presentations on innovation in technology in full, or visit the Atlantic Council YouTube playlist.
*Video courtesy of The Atlantic Council