1 Energy

What are some of the frontiers in serving humanity’s energy needs? Enabling humanity’s large urban centers to make large-scale use of renewable energy and vastly reduce their impact on the climate is key to the future well-being of all life on earth. Increasing the resilience and reliability of energy distribution through power grids and other methods keeps complex societies running even when natural and human-caused disruptions occur. Designing energy-efficient devices for lighting and cooking, capturing and controlling various sources of thermal energy to keep dwellings comfortable, and coupling renewable energy to water availability and food production ends starvation and lifts large populations out of poverty. Providing compact portable sources and storage of energy is key to communication, information, health maintenance, and flexible transportation and production. An advanced understanding of the metabolic processes and systems in our own bodies will create better strategies for nutrition. Detailed modeling and manipulation of photosynthesis in plants and varied types of energy exchanges in micro-organisms can open up new ways to maintain healthy and productive ecosystems. And, yes, developing vast new sources of energy like fusion can place civilization on a new trajectory of advancement.

General resources

American Physical Society organizational units

Topical Group on Energy Research and Applications (GERA)

Physicslabrefs bibliography

• environmental and energy systems physics