“For me it was an inconvenience, but for some people it could be life-threatening,” said , now an assistant professor in the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. “If you had an uncle that had an electric heart pump, basically, his heart wouldn’t work without power. You could use a backup battery for eight hours, but after that, if you don’t have access to electricity, you have to go to the emergency room. This is a really dangerous situation.”

Years later, Casey has answers. April 29 in the journal Nature Communications analyzed three years of power outages across the U.S., finding that Americans already bearing the brunt of climate change and health inequities are clustered in four regions — Louisiana, Arkansas, central Alabama and northern Michigan — and that they are most at risk of impact by a lengthy blackout.

The findings could help shape the future of local energy infrastructure, especially as climate change intensifies and the American power grid continues to age. Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act included billions of dollars to revamp energy systems, and Casey hopes federal agencies will consult the newly published findings to target energy upgrades.��

The study is the first county-level analysis of power outages, which the federal government reports only at the state level. That poses a problem for researchers: a federally reported outage in Washington state could occur in Seattle, Spokane, or somewhere in between, making it difficult to understand specifically which population is affected.��

Casey and her team found that between 2018 and 2020, more than 231,000 power outages lasting more than an hour occurred nationwide. Of those, 17,484 stretched at least eight hours —��a duration widely viewed as medically relevant.

Most counties that experienced an electrical outage had at least one event lasting more than eight hours. These counties were most concentrated in the South, Northeast and Appalachia.

Next, researchers looked at how power outages overlapped with severe weather. They wanted to know which weather events are most likely to cause an outage, and which parts of the U.S. are most often hit with a blackout-causing storm.

They found that heavy precipitation in a given area makes a power outage five times more likely. Tropical cyclones, storms with high winds that originate over tropical oceans, make a power outage 14 times more likely. And a tropical cyclone with heavy precipitation on a hot day — like the hurricanes that each fall hit the Gulf Coast? They make power outages 52 times more likely.

“We look at weather reports and decide whether or not to bring an umbrella or stay home,” Casey said. “But thinking about being prepared for an outage when one of these events is rolling through is a new element to consider.”

Then came questions of equity. Incorporating a combination of socioeconomic and medical factors, Casey’s team identified communities that would likely be especially vulnerable during a long power outage. Using that data, the researchers were able to identify communities that experienced both high social vulnerability and frequent power outages.����

A map of those counties shows a bright cluster in Louisiana and Arkansas, with more clusters in central Alabama and northern Michigan. In those places especially, the country’s inevitable change in energy infrastructure provides the greatest opportunity to improve public health.

“Any time we can identify another factor that we can intervene on to get closer to health equity, it’s exciting,” Casey said. “I think we’re going to see tremendous change, especially in the way our energy systems are set up, in the next couple decades. It’s this huge opportunity to get equity into every conversation and talk about what we’re going to do to make two decades from now look different from where we are.”��

This study began while Casey was a professor in Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Other authors are Vivian Do (first author), Heather McBrien, Nina Flores, Alexander Northrop and Jeffrey Schlegelmilch at Columbia University and Mathew Kiang at Stanford University. The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. ��

For more information, contact Casey at jacasey@uw.edu.��

Working together with leading domestic solar companies, the and its , the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Toledo have formed the , or US-MAP. This research and development coalition aims to accelerate the domestic commercialization of perovskite technologies.

are an emerging class of materials that can be inexpensively made from abundant elements and engineered to convert light to electricity at high efficiencies — ideal for solar energy. The universities and National Renewable Energy Laboratory will offer the participating companies access to, and support in, their complementary cleantech fabrication, characterization and testing facilities. In turn, representatives from each of the member companies will form an industry advisory board that will guide the efforts performed at the research institutions.

“US-MAP harnesses the power of the best perovskite researchers and resources in the nation to help U.S. solar companies continue to innovate and bring this exciting technology to market,” said , UW materials science & engineering and mechanical engineering associate professor and Washington Clean Energy Testbeds technical director. “Indeed, UW’s Washington Clean Energy Testbeds, an open-access facility for developing and testing energy devices and systems, has been working with solar startups and we’re eager to help other U.S. companies tap into our staff scientists’ expertise and utilize our best-in-class instruments, including our multi-stage roll-to-roll printer for flexible electronics.”

US-MAP founding member companies include: , Energy Materials Corporation, First Solar, Hunt Perovskites Technologies, Swift Solar and Tandem PV. As members of the industry advisory board, company representatives will shape R&D directions and priorities and will be engaged actively in selecting and evaluating projects. The founding organizers — the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Toledo — will serve on the executive board and oversee delivery of projects.

BlueDot Photonics is a Seattle-based startup building next-generation solar panels and other photonic devices.

“US-MAP will help startups like ours access critical expertise required to prove manufacturability and product reliability, while maintaining ownership of intellectual property,” said BlueDot Photonics CEO Jared Silvia. “This network and its facilities will assist us in de-risking key hurdles to commercialization that will benefit all perovskite-based technologies. This will allow companies like ours to��shorten the development cycle for products to satisfy��customers and our investors.”

In addition to solar energy, perovskites have shown tremendous promise in a range of other technologies, including solid-state lighting, advanced radiation detection, dynamic sensing and actuation, photo-catalysis and quantum information science. Early investments by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office and its Office of Science into perovskite research at the founding organizations have enabled the U.S. to engage at the forefront of many of these technology areas and fostered a vibrant community of industrial leaders.

“Washington state has long been a leader in clean energy innovation and institutions like UW continue to play a critical role in moving our nation’s vital energy research needs forward,”��said U.S. Senator Patty Murray, D-WA, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.��“I am encouraged by the work of UW’s Washington Clean Energy Testbeds and its potential for scaling up clean energy adoption — and perovskite technologies, in general — and will continue fighting in the Senate for strengthened investments in these research and technology developments that will help families and communities thrive.”

“UW has played an incredible role in renewable energy and is now bringing together some of the best researchers and innovators in the country to develop this next-generation technology to expand the use of solar to more homes and businesses across the country,” said U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, D-WA.

“This coalition represents what America does best: partnership for innovation and societal benefit,” said U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, whose district includes the UW. “The United States should and can lead in solar manufacturing, water power and wind energy — and I know Washington can play a role in getting us there through our outstanding public research institutions like the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý and our promising startups.”

Researchers and companies looking to access resources, capabilities, and expertise within the US-MAP Consortium should visit .

For more information, contact Suzanne Offen with the UW’s at soffen@uw.edu.

In order to understand where strain builds up within a solar cell and triggers the energy loss, scientists must visualize the underlying grain structure of perovskite crystals within the solar cell. But the best approach involves bombarding the solar cell with high-energy electrons, which essentially burns the solar cell and renders it useless.

Researchers from the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý and the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in the Netherlands have developed a way to illuminate strain in lead halide perovskite solar cells without harming them. Their approach, online Sept. 10 in Joule, succeeded in imaging the grain structure of a perovskite solar cell, showing that misorientation between microscopic perovskite crystals is the primary contributor to the buildup of strain within the solar cell. Crystal misorientation creates small-scale defects in the grain structure, which interrupt the transport of electrons within the solar cell and lead to heat loss through a process known as non-radiative recombination.

“By combining our optical imaging with the new electron detector developed at FOM, we can actually see how the individual crystals are oriented and put together within a perovskite solar cell,” said senior author , a UW professor of chemistry and chief scientist at the UW-based . “We can show that strain builds up due to the grain orientation, which is information researchers can use to improve perovskite synthesis and manufacturing processes to realize better solar cells with minimal strain — and therefore minimal heat loss due to non-radiative recombination.”

Lead halide perovskites are cheap, printable crystalline compounds that show promise as low-cost, adaptable and efficient alternatives to the silicon or gallium arsenide solar cells that are widely used today. But even the best perovskite solar cells lose some electricity as heat at microscopic locations scattered across the cell, which dampens the efficiency.

Scientists have long used fluorescence microscopy to identify the locations on perovskite solar cells’ surface that reduce efficiency. But to identify the locations of defects causing the heat loss, researchers need to image the true grain structure of the film, according to first author Sarthak Jariwala, a UW doctoral student in materials science and engineering and a Clean Energy Institute Graduate Fellow.

“Historically, imaging the solar cell’s underlying true grain structure has not been possible to do without damaging the solar cell,” said Jariwala.

Typical approaches to view the internal structure utilize a form of electron microscopy called electron backscatter diffraction, which would normally burn the solar cell. But scientists at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, led by co-authors and , developed an improved detector that can capture electron backscatter diffraction images at lower exposure times, preserving the solar cell structure.

The images of perovskite solar cells from Ginger’s lab reveal a grain structure that resembles a dry lakebed, with “cracks” representing the boundaries among thousands of individual perovskite grains. Using this imaging data, the researchers could for the first time map the 3D orientation of crystals within a functioning perovskite solar cell. They could also determine where misalignment among crystals created strain.

When the researchers overlaid images of the perovskite’s grain structure with centers of non-radiative recombination, which Jariwala imaged using fluorescence microscopy, they discovered that non-radiative recombination could also occur away from visible boundaries.

“We think that strain locally deforms the perovskite structure and causes defects,” said Ginger. “These defects can then disrupt the transport of electrical current within the solar cell, causing non-radiative recombination — even elsewhere on the surface.”

While Ginger’s team has previously developed methods to “heal” some of these defects that serve as centers of non-radiative recombination in perovskite solar cells, ideally researchers would like to develop perovskite synthesis methods that would reduce or eliminate non-radiative recombination altogether.

“Now we can explore strategies like controlling grain size and orientation spread during the perovskite synthesis process,” said Ginger. “Those might be routes to reduce misorientation and strain — and prevent defects from forming in the first place.”

Co-authors on the paper are Hongyu Sun, Gede Adhyaksa, Adries Lof and Loreta Muscarella with the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics. The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. National Science Foundation, the UW Clean Energy Institute, , the European Research Council and the Dutch Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Ginger at 206-685-2231 or dginger@uw.edu.

Ginger’s project, which will receive $1.25 million, focuses on developing new methods to alleviate the impact of defects in perovskite solar cells. Perovskites are printable crystalline compounds that can harvest sunlight and convert it to electricity at efficiencies comparable to silicon-based semiconductors used in today’s solar cells. Perovskite solar cells could be printed on roll-to-roll printers like newspapers, reducing manufacturing costs. They are a rapidly growing branch of solar cell research and development, and , operated by the CEI, includes facilities for developing and testing these technologies, including a 30-foot-long multistage roll-to-roll printer.

Atomic-scale defects at perovskite surfaces can reduce their performance. Previous research by Ginger’s group has shown that surface “passivation” — treating perovskites with different chemical compounds — can “heal” these defects and improve the efficiency of perovskite solar cells. But when these perovskites are assembled into solar cells, the current-collecting electrodes can create new defects, sapping efficiency. With this new funding, Ginger and his collaborators, Seth Marder and Carlos Silva at Georgia Tech, will develop new chemical passivation strategies, and new charge-collecting materials, that allow perovskites to reach their full potential while still remaining compatible with low-cost manufacturing.

Gamelin’s project, which will receive $200,000, aims to modify solar cells so they can collect high-energy photons more efficiently. Today’s solar cells can convert low-energy photons to electrical power efficiently, but the high-energy variety is converted at very low efficiency — a major source of energy loss. Gamelin’s team has developed materials that can absorb high-energy photons and emit twice as many low-energy photons, a process termed “quantum cutting.” Their SETO project seeks to integrate these materials as thin layers on the surfaces of solar cells. These surface coatings would essentially “convert” high-energy photons to low-energy photons, allowing their absorption by the solar cell and potentially doubling the current generated by the solar cell. With the new funding, Gamelin’s team will work to develop scalable deposition techniques and prototype large-area solar cells.

The funds from the Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office are part of $28 million in awards for 25 projects in photovoltaics and related fields to boost efficiency and reduce costs in solar energy, according to a March 22 from the office. The first set of selections from this program, announced late last year, included more than $2.3 million awarded to UW projects.

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The ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý and its ��named Kevin Klustner executive director of the . When complete, CAMCET will be a 340,000-square-foot building that will bring together UW scientists and engineers with industry, civic and nonprofit partners to accelerate clean energy solutions for a healthy planet.

The building will house space for research, learning and cleantech prototyping, testing and validating. It will also offer space for organizations aligned with the UW’s clean energy innovation mission. CAMCET is the first building under consideration for a location in the UW West Campus — an area designated in the for 3 million square-feet of new development that will foster a thriving collaboration ecosystem for the UW and partners.

“UW and its Clean Energy Institute have helped establish Washington as a leader in clean energy innovation and the CAMCET building will catapult Washington to even greater heights,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. “With this center, our students will get the best education and prepare for jobs of the future, while our cleantech companies will grow and create good jobs for our economy.”

“UW is a powerhouse in advanced materials and clean energy research and development,” said Klustner. “CAMCET will connect these UW researchers with local and global industry and nonprofit partners to bring critical clean technologies to the world. CAMCET, and West Campus at large, represents a new model for buildings on campus that will greatly benefit our students, faculty, and region and I’m proud to help lead this effort.”

Klustner has held a variety of executive roles in technology and cleantech companies. Most recently, he was the CEO of Powerit Solutions, a cloud-based industrial energy efficiency platform, which was acquired by Customized Energy Solutions. Prior to Powerit, he was the CEO of Verdiem, a venture-backed software company in the energy efficiency space. Klustner was also the chief operating officer of WRQ, a privately held enterprise networking company. While there, he helped grow the company from $15 million to $200 million in revenues.

“Kevin brings a wealth of cleantech industry experience that will help ensure CAMCET builds on UW’s strengths to create a hub for clean energy research and technology in the Pacific Northwest,” said , UW CEI Director and Boeing-Sutter Professor of Chemical Engineering. “External partners that join UW in CAMCET will have access to a fantastic talent pool and the instruments and technology testbeds needed to advance their ventures. With CAMCET, UW will chart an exciting course for how we educate future clean energy leaders and build a community dedicated to getting clean energy technologies to market faster to combat climate change.”

In January 2018, the Washington State Legislature allocated $20 million to the UW to establish CAMCET. The building will house:

• Research
  • : The CEI supports the advancement of next-generation solar energy and battery materials and devices, as well as their integration with systems and the grid.
  • : A joint research collaboration of the U.S. Department of Energy’s�� and the UW.
  • Wet, dry, and computational lab space for advanced materials and clean energy research and training.
  • Market-rate leasable research spaces.
• Industry/ Government/ NGOs
  • : The CEI’s open-access, fee-for-use facility for prototyping, testing, and validating clean technologies. The facility takes no intellectual property from external users. It also hosts Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Investor-in-Residence programs available to cleantech innovators across the region.
  • Startup lab modules and hot desks.
  • Market-rate leasable spaces.
• Learning
  • Active learning spaces for students.
  • Seminar and meeting rooms.
  • Collaboration Spaces.
• Public
  • Venues for events, conferences, and K-12 and public outreach.

UW’s West Campus is located just south of the forthcoming U District Link Light Rail Station and within short walking distance of greenspace and the Portage Bay waterfront.

Subject to UW Regents’ approval, UW will seek a developer for CAMCET in 2019, with construction currently slated to begin in fall 2020.

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For more information, contact Suzanne Offen��with the Clean Energy Institute at +1 206-685-6410 or��soffen@uw.edu.

Three teams led by ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý researchers have received competitive awards totaling more than $2.3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office for projects that will advance research and development in photovoltaic materials, which are an essential component of solar cells and impact the amount of sunlight that is converted into electricity.

The UW teams are led by , a professor of electrical and computer engineering; , a professor of chemical engineering; and , an associate professor of both mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering. All are also researchers with the UW-based , and MacKenzie serves as director of the institute’s . Dunham and Hillhouse are also members of the UW .

Hillhouse and MacKenzie are leading projects to explore the properties and manufacturing potential of thin-film perovskites. These are printable crystalline compounds that are able to harvest photons at power conversion efficiencies almost equal to silicon-based semiconductors used in today’s solar cells, but at lower costs. But before perovskites can have a global impact on solar energy, researchers need to improve their stability and develop improved, scalable manufacturing methods.

Hillhouse’s project, awarded $1.5 million, will focus on understanding how the composition, structure, and environmental exposure of pervoskites can affect their stability and performance. This project will apply new photoluminescence imaging and video methods to combinatorial material libraries, which were fabricated at a facility built by Hillhouse with funding from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. His team will use machine learning methods to extract new information from these extremely large datasets, which could reveal the fundamental connections between nanoscopic and microscopic material features and macroscopic solar cell performance and stability. UW partners in this work are , professor of statistics, and , director of research at the UW’s eScience Institute and research associate professor of chemical engineering.

MacKenzie’s project, awarded nearly $200,000, focuses on perovskite manufacturing using roll-to-roll processing techniques. In the solar energy field, roll-to-roll processing involves additively printing and coating ultra-thin solar-cell components — including thin-film perovskites — directly onto rolls of flexible material, much like applying paint to a wall or printing out a document. MacKenzie’s team will analyze the effectiveness of different techniques for depositing perovskite onto the rolls by rapidly analyzing the films as they are being printed. They will use optical probes and photoluminescence techniques to gather data on how well various roll-to-roll-produced perovskites interact with light. They can use this data to change the ways perovskites are deposited in roll-to-roll processing to manufacture higher-quality, flexible solar cells more efficiently, as well as at the production scales needed to make an economic and environmental impact. His team’s work will make use of the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds near the UW campus, which include world-class roll-to-roll manufacturing facilities supported by the state of Washington and the Washington Research Foundation.

Dunham’s project, awarded $681,000, will investigate another promising material in photovoltaics research, known by its acronym CIGS — or copper indium gallium selenide. Like perovskites, CIGS is another strong and efficient absorber of photons from sunlight — a necessity for any material used in photovoltaic applications. CIGS can also be deposited onto flexible materials for incorporation into thin-film solar cells. Dunham’s research centers on understanding how variations in CIGS crystalline structure and composition affects how carriers move within the crystal and impact its sunlight-to-energy conversion rate. They plan to use this information to create models for CIGS manufacturing processes and their impact on performance efficiency, which they’ll test and refine in partnership with , a California-based solar energy company.

The awards to UW teams are part of from the Solar Energy Technologies Office to develop new technologies and solutions that both reduce solar electricity costs and support growing employment in the solar field. These include projects to boost the performance and reliability of photovoltaic cells, modules and systems — as well as to reduce materials and processing costs.

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Solar cells are devices that absorb photons from sunlight and convert their energy to move electrons — enabling the production of clean energy and providing a dependable route to help combat climate change. But most solar cells used widely today are thick, fragile and stiff, which limits their application to flat surfaces and increases the cost to make the solar cell.

“Thin-film solar cells” could be 1/100^th the thickness of a piece of paper and flexible enough to festoon surfaces ranging from an aerodynamically sleek car to clothing. To make thin-film solar cells, scientists are moving beyond the “classic” semiconductor compounds, such as gallium arsenide or silicon, and working instead with other light-harvesting compounds that have the potential to be cheaper and easier to mass produce. The compounds could be widely adopted if they could perform as well as today’s technology.

In a published online this spring in the journal , scientists at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý report that a prototype semiconductor thin-film has performed even better than today’s best solar cell materials at emitting light.

“It may sound odd since solar cells absorb light and turn it into electricity, but the best solar cell materials are also great at emitting light,” said co-author and UW chemical engineering professor , who is also a faculty member with both the UW’s and .�� “In fact, typically the more efficiently they emit light, the more voltage they generate.”

The UW team achieved a record performance in this material, known as a lead-halide perovskite, by chemically treating it through a process known as “surface passivation,” which treats imperfections and reduces the likelihood that the absorbed photons will end up wasted rather than converted to useful energy.

“One large problem with perovskite solar cells is that too much absorbed sunlight was ending up as wasted heat, not useful electricity,” said co-author , a UW professor of chemistry and chief scientist at the CEI. “We are hopeful that surface passivation strategies like this will help improve the performance and stability of perovskite solar cells.”

Ginger’s and Hillhouse’s teams worked together to demonstrate that surface passivation of perovskites sharply boosted performance to levels that would make this material among the best for thin-film solar cells. They experimented with a variety of chemicals for surface passivation before finding one, an organic compound known by its acronym TOPO, that boosted perovskite performance to levels approaching the best gallium arsenide semiconductors.

“Our team at the UW was one of the first to identify performance-limiting defects at the surfaces of perovskite materials, and now we are excited to have discovered an effective way to chemically engineer these surfaces with TOPO molecules,” said co-lead author , a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who conducted this research as a UW chemistry doctoral student. “At first, we were really surprised to find that the passivated materials seemed to be just as good as gallium arsenide, which holds the solar cell efficiency record. So to double-check our results, we devised a few different approaches to confirm the improvements in perovskite material quality.”

DeQuilettes and co-lead author , who conducted this research as a doctoral student in chemical engineering, showed that TOPO-treating a perovskite semiconductor significantly impacted both its internal and external photoluminescence quantum efficiencies — metrics used to determine how good a semiconducting material is at utilizing an absorbed photon’s energy rather than losing it as heat. TOPO-treating the perovskite increased the internal photoluminescence quantum efficiencies by tenfold — from 9.4 percent to nearly 92 percent.

“Our measurements observing the efficiency with which passivated hybrid perovskites absorb and emit light show that there are no inherent material flaws preventing further solar cell improvements,” said Braly. “Further, by fitting the emission spectra to a theoretical model, we showed that these materials could generate voltages 97 percent of the theoretical maximum, equal to the world record gallium arsenide solar cell and much higher than record silicon cells that only reach 84 percent.”

These improvements in material quality are theoretically predicted to enable the light-to-electricity power conversion efficiency to reach 27.9 percent under regular sunlight levels, which would push the perovskite-based photovoltaic record past the best silicon devices.

The next step for perovskites, the researchers said, is to demonstrate a similar chemical passivation that is compatible with easily manufactured electrodes — as well as to experiment with other types of surface passivation.

“Perovskites have already demonstrated unprecedented success in photovoltaic devices, but there is so much room for further improvement,” said deQuilettes. “Here we think we have provided a path forward for the community to better harness the sun’s energy.”

Other co-authors are , a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley; , who recently completed his UW undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering; and , who just completed his doctoral degree with the UW Department of Chemistry and the CEI. The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, the UW Clean Energy Institute, the UW Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute and the University of California, Berkeley.

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For more information, contact Ginger at 206-685-2231 or dginger@uw.edu and Hillhouse at 206-685-5257 or h2@uw.edu.

Grant numbers: DE-SC0013957, DGE-1256082, DE-EE0006710, ECC-1542101.

Halting the spread of disease involves a combination of health care and societal practices — from access to doctors and vaccines to clean water and adequate resources.

Many of those solutions rely on electricity and transport fuels, whether for refrigeration, diagnosis and treatment, or distribution. But with two of the major energy sources the world relies on now — coal and oil in the form of diesel fuel — global health stands little chance of major improvement, says a ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý researcher.

In a four-part series that launched April 6 in , , a geoscientist and affiliate in the UW’s Jackson School of International Studies, lays out the case for alternative energy within the context of better health. The diseases caused or worsened by air pollution and unsafe drinking water go hand in hand with rapidly growing economies around the world, Montgomery argues. But countries have an opportunity to choose a healthier future.

“Energy is the key to many things dealing with public health, and electricity is the most fundamental,” Montgomery said. “Discussions about this tend to focus on the developing world, but it’s not just happening ‘over there.’ These issues are happening everywhere; it’s just that in some places, it happens a lot more.”

Montgomery focuses the of his series on air pollution, the particulate matter generated mostly by coal and diesel, but also by wood, charcoal and animal dung. The latter fuels, in the developing world, tend to result from open-fire cooking. Fine particulates, which are less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, are easily inhaled and absorbed into the bloodstream. Pollution from open-fire sources affects as many as , Montgomery said, disproportionately harming people who traditionally spend more time near the stove: women, children and the elderly.

Montgomery cites a 2016 World Health Organization finding that nearly one in four deaths globally are due to “unhealthy environments,” namely, contaminated soil, unclean water and polluted air. Along with related WHO data concerning the with the most polluted air, he explains how the abundance and affordability of coal perpetuates high rates of conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and chronic respiratory disease. Globally, the existing technology in coal-fired plants includes effective controls on most forms of pollution, including particulate matter. But such controls add significant cost and, despite regulatory demands, are not always used, even when installed. Such has been a problem in China, for example, whose coal consumption is as large as the rest of the world combined. Particulate matter also is produced by atmospheric reactions with sulfur dioxide, whose controls are not implemented in many cases.

Diesel is just as pervasive and hazardous as coal, but is often overlooked in the energy debate, particularly regarding health impacts in developing countries, the researcher said. It is more common than gasoline, and fuels most heavy industrial and military vehicles around the world. It also contributes to fine particulate matter outdoors, where worldwide attributed to air pollution rose by some 700,000 between 1990 and 2015.

Montgomery said that in the immediate term, due to economic development and resource availability, the volume and type of energy consumption is unlikely to change. The task ahead, he argues, is to prepare to overhaul the sources of electricity and to re-evaluate what choices might be made for the long-term — a daunting challenge in this economic and regulatory climate.

“These infrastructure problems have been known, but they tend to not be emphasized because people view them as being so fraught and difficult. Governments need to be working well, and there needs to be private investment,” he said. “At the same time, some of the focus on renewable energy has been on getting technologies like wind and solar to developing countries, but those technologies just can’t deliver the amount of power that’s needed.”

Temporary, “frontier fixes” —�� a generator for a makeshift hospital here, a new well for a community there —�� certainly help for now, Montgomery said. In the long term, however, there needs to be a commitment to building the capacity for a variety of energy sources, and to encouraging countries to pursue their own fuel and health solutions. Bangladesh, for example, has made much progress against water-borne illnesses through and a related outreach campaign. Yet such improvements will need to be secured with actual water treatment, sewage systems and a piped water supply in order to be sustainable.

This can’t be done via external aid alone. “The attempts to just go in and build things for people have failed. You can’t just give things to people and walk away,” Montgomery said. “Private investment can work, if the people are involved in it at many levels, including leadership. This is especially true when it comes to energy choices.”

Increasing the use of alternative energy is one of the . Those alternatives —�� ��geothermal, nuclear, natural gas, solar and wind —�� will be addressed later in the series as means of achieving energy security and global health.

“You need a range of different sources to create a truly modern and healthy electricity supply system,” Montgomery said. “The world is now in the midst of an epochal transition in energy choices, trying to build a much healthier future. This comes at a crucial time for many nations, who are now breaking free or beginning to break free of longtime poverty and high levels of disease. It is essential, I think, to draw attention to the growing awareness of how immensely important energy choices are to global health in this era of massive change.”

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For more information, contact Montgomery at 206-897-1611 or scottlm@uw.edu.

.

Many innovations of 21st century life, from touch screens and electric cars to fiber-optics and implantable devices, grew out of research on new materials. This impact of materials science on today’s world has prompted two of the leading research institutions in the Pacific Northwest to join forces to research and develop new materials that will significantly influence tomorrow’s world.

With this eye toward the future, the Department of Energy’s and the announced the creation of the — or NW IMPACT — a joint research endeavor to power discoveries and advancements in materials that transform energy, telecommunications, medicine, information technology and other fields. UW President and PNNL Director formally launched NW IMPACT during a ceremony Jan. 31 at the PNNL campus in Richland, Washington.

“This partnership holds enormous potential for innovations in materials science that could lead to major changes in our lives and the world,” said Cauce. “We are excited to strengthen the ties between our two organizations, which bring complementary strengths and a shared passion for ground-breaking discovery.”

“The science of making new materials is vital to a wide range of advancements, many of which we have yet to imagine,” said Ashby. “By combining ideas, talent and resources, I have no doubt our two organizations will find new ways to improve lives and provide our next generation of materials scientists with valuable research opportunities.”

The institute builds on a history of successful partnerships between the UW and PNNL, including joint faculty appointments and past collaborations such as the , the PNNL-led and a new UW-based . But NW IMPACT is the beginning of a long-term partnership, forging deeper ties between the UW and PNNL.

The goal is to leverage these respective strengths to enable discoveries, innovations and educational opportunities that would not have been possible by either institution alone.

“By partnering the UW and PNNL together through NW IMPACT, the sum will truly be greater than the parts,” said David Ginger, a UW professor of chemistry and chief scientist at the UW . ��“We are joining together our expertise and experiences to create the next generation of leaders who will create the materials of the future.”

Ginger will co-lead the institution in its initial phase with Jim De Yoreo, chief scientist for materials synthesis and simulation across scales at PNNL and a joint appointee at the UW.

Over its first few years, NW IMPACT aims to hire a permanent institute director, who will be based at both PNNL and the UW; create at least 20 new joint UW-PNNL appointments among existing researchers; streamline access to research facilities at the UW’s Seattle campus and PNNL’s Richland campus for institute projects; involve at least 20 new UW graduate students in PNNL-UW collaborations; and provide seed grants to institute-affiliated researchers to tackle new scientific frontiers in a collaborative fashion.

Some of the areas in which NW IMPACT will initially focus include:

• Materials for energy conversion and storage, which can be applied to more efficient solar cells, batteries and industrial applications. These include innovative approaches to create flexible, ultrathin solar cells for buildings or fabrics, long-lasting batteries for implantable medical devices, catalysts to enable high efficiency energy conversion and industrial processes, and manufacturing methods to synthesize these materials efficiently for commercial applications.
• Quantum materials, such as ultrathin semiconductors or other materials that can harness the rules of quantum mechanics at subatomic-level precision for applications in quantum computing, telecommunications and beyond.
• Materials for water separation and utilization, which include processes to make water purification and ocean desalination methods faster, cheaper and more energy-efficient.
• Biomimetic materials, which are synthetic materials inspired by the structures and design principles of biological molecules and materials within our cells — including proteins and DNA. These materials could be applicable in medical settings for implantable devices or tissue engineering, and for self-assembled protein-like scaffolds in industrial settings.

“The science of making materials involves understanding where the atoms must be placed in order to obtain the properties needed for specific applications, and then understanding how to get the atoms where they need to be,” said De Yoreo.

NW IMPACT will draw on the unique strengths and talents of each institution for innovative collaborations in these areas. For example, PNNL has broad expertise in materials for improved batteries. The lab also offers best-in-class imaging, NMR and mass spectrometry capabilities at , a DOE Office of Science user facility. DOE supports fundamental research at PNNL in chemistry, physics and materials sciences that are key to materials development. The UW brings complementary facilities and equipment to the partnership, such as the and a cryo-electron microscopy facility, as well as expertise in a variety of “big data” research and training endeavors, highly rated research and education programs, and ongoing materials research projects through the National Science Foundation-funded .

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For more information, contact James Urton with the UW News Office at 206-543-2580 or jurton@uw.edu and Susan Bauer with the PNNL News & Media Relations Office at 509-372-6083 or susan.bauer@pnnl.gov.

The award on Nov. 8 at the annual meeting and 10^th anniversary of the CleanTech Alliance, a Seattle-based consortium of more than 300 businesses and interest groups across six U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The organization cited the UW’s support for “the region’s cleantech talent pipeline, R&D base, infrastructure and connectivity to the world.”

“We’re honored to receive this recognition from regional business leaders for UW’s energy science and engineering scholarship and work to accelerate cleantech in the Pacific Northwest,” said , director of the UW-based Clean Energy Institute and professor of chemical engineering. “The Clean Energy Institute has been purposeful in sending UW students out to engage regional industry and government — and we have proactively sought industry input in the development of our vision for clean energy innovation and open-access facilities.”

The CleanTech Alliance has presented two Achievement Awards annually since 2007, one to an organization and the other to an individual. In this year’s organization award, the Alliance cited the UW’s ongoing contributions to clean energy research and discovery across campus; pipelines for commercial development and opportunities for industry partnerships through the and ; and programs such the , now in its��10^th��year, through the Foster School of Business’s .

“The ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý’s impact on our cleantech sector is both significant and vast,” said CleanTech Alliance President and CEO J. Thomas Ranken. “Each year, the University sparks clean technology innovation through both its research and curriculum and then fans the flames by encouraging entrepreneurship and startup growth.”

In the UW’s nomination for the award, supporters and industry partners noted groundbreaking discoveries in cleantech and alternative energy that have come from UW faculty, staff and students in the College of Engineering, the College of Arts & Sciences, the CEI and the Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute. UW research in these fields ranges from smart grids and innovative energy storage technologies to solar cell materials and ultrathin semiconductors.

Achievements in these areas have made the UW a lead recipient of grants and funding for research and innovation. For example, UW is regularly a��top 10 university recipient of Science Office��funding from the��U.S. Department of Energy. The National Science Foundation also recently awarded the university $15.6 million for a and $3.8 million to the CEI for , a cleantech data science training program.

The CleanTech Alliance also lauded the university’s partnerships, innovations and pipeline-building endeavors to move discoveries from the bench to the production line. The CEI, for example, the to provide researchers and industry partners with much-needed proving grounds and scale-up facilities for clean technology manufacturing and research. UW-based research has also led to startups for cleantech enterprises that were launched through CoMotion, the CEI and UW colleges.

“The technologies and startups spinning out from the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý get stronger every year and will clearly continue to do so for years to come,” said Ranken.

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