Global Centers Track 2: US-Africa Research Center for Clean Energy

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

New energy technologies, including solar and wind energy, electric vehicles, hydrogen fuels are technologically viable and increasingly cost effective. Many governments and large multi-national companies are planning rapid deployment of these technologies to support economic development, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce pollution. Yet promising technologies do not always succeed as planned. Successful approaches must be both technically and societally effective, and solutions will differ across societies and regions. This Global Centers Track 2 Design award supports the planning phase of a US-Africa Research Center for Clean Energy (UARCCE) to foster collaboration between academia, communities, and the private sector, to develop energy solutions grounded in real-world experiences and needs. Exploratory research and coordination efforts for planning the UARCCE will leverage an existing partnership between the Georgia Institute of Technology and the African Center of Excellence in Energy for Sustainable Development (ACE-ESD) in the College of Science and Technology at the University of Rwanda, and with Rwanda Polytechnic (IPRC Kigali). The partnership will develop use-inspired research questions through collaboration with experts across Georgia Tech, particularly from the College of Engineering, the College of Design, the School of Public Policy, and the Strategic Energy Institute. The Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business (ACSB) in the Scheller College of Business will facilitate collaboration with over 55 companies committed to a net-zero business compact launched by the Drawdown Georgia research initiative. The two-year planning grant will support coordination efforts to (1) establish an energy solutions network that will co-develop approaches to interdisciplinary, convergent research and (2) leverage the network to identify use-inspired energy knowledge gaps. Specific clean energy research hypotheses will be developed based on barriers and opportunities for clean energy adoption in east and southern Africa. Opportunities for undergraduate and graduate internships are also envisioned. The research will focus on key knowledge gaps related to electrification, alternative fuels for transportation, and technologies for cooking without biomass. Electricity system reliability and resilience is already a major challenge in both Rwanda and the United States. The search for robust solutions faces technical and computational challenges, which have become even more pressing with the expected expansion of electricity systems and adoption of electric vehicles. Business models and community guided planning processes for improved electricity provision need to be identified and tested for both technical and societal viability. Research projects will be developed that address overarching convergent research themes related to the differences due to resource, economic, societal, and policy systems for clean energy adoption, the transition of knowledge into use, and effective knowledge co-production. The collaborative team will establish research-industry partnerships, engage communities and other stakeholders, and plan optimization and scenario modeling to frame options that can be applied in multiple contexts. The partnerships, engagement, and modeling approaches will be developed to test their effectiveness and potential for generalization. Student learning, workforce training, and mentoring activities of the Center will be designed to recruit underrepresented minorities and women, and to develop methods for culturally and contextually informed STEM learning opportunities. An international advisory board will be recruited, and a robust evaluation plan will be developed. This award is funded by the Global Centers program, an innovative program that supports use-inspired research addressing global challenges related to climate change and/or clean energy. Track 2 design awards support U.S.-based researchers to bring together international teams to develop research questions and partnerships, conduct landscape analyses, synthesize data, and/or build multi-stakeholder networks to advance their use-inspired research at larger scale in the future.   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.