Research Initiatives
To achieve its ambitious mission, the Andlinger Center is advancing strategic research initiatives that leverage the unique interdisciplinary expertise of Princeton faculty to address the most pressing energy and environmental challenges of our time.
Convergent research on these complex problems will leverage our community’s broad expertise and be advanced through three complementary, cross-cutting themes: Enabling Technologies, Systems Modeling, and Policy and Decision Making.
Renewable Energy Systems
Renewable sources of electricity can help reduce pollutant emissions from the power sector and increase energy security by diversifying power generation types, eliminating dependence on fuel shipments, and decreasing reliance on fossil resources whose supply and cost is subject to geopolitical forces. In addition, renewables can provide new avenues for economic growth associated with their production and deployment. Research requirements vary widely depending on the specific technology and scale of application. Therefore, this initiative supports fundamental and engineering innovations to improve the efficiency, longevity, and economics of power generation by renewables, technological and systems advances to enhance their value to the grid, as well as policies to incentivize their deployment that skillfully balance social, technological, and economic factors.
Industrial Decarbonization
Heavy industry produces significant amounts of hard-to-abate CO2 associated with both fuel combustion for high-temperature applications and inherent process emissions. . Given the unique characteristics of industrial processes, innovation is clearly needed in several areas to lower their carbon intensity and improve overall economic competitiveness in a decarbonizing world. Examples include advances in process electrification, developing practicable routes to low carbon fuel sources, identification and exploration of sustainable and circular feedstocks, and further novel approaches to improve energy and resource efficiencies for diverse processes across steel, cement, chemicals, manufacturing, and other industries (e.g., food and beverage, pulp and paper). These thrusts and others are supported under this initiative, which aims at reducing industrial carbon emissions via process innovation and enhanced resource efficiencies.
Decarbonizing Buildings and Transportation
The majority of global, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are closely linked with two aspects of daily life: shelter and mobility. In the US, carbon emissions from the transportation sector are roughly equivalent to the construction and operation of buildings. , which presents substantial opportunities for carbon reductions. Battery electrification has already enabled significant reductions in light-duty vehicle emissions, and improvements in battery energy densities and power management systems present clear R&D targets. In contrast, decarbonizing aviation and commercial transportation may require alternative approaches such as fuel cells and sustainable fuels. In the building sector, sustainable materials, design, and construction offer routes to reduce embodied carbon, and energy-efficiency and energy management improvements can be targeted to reduce operational emissions, particularly arising from the growth in artificial intelligence and data center demands. This initiative thus supports a breadth of research on technology and policy solutions that can reduce the carbon intensity associated with buildings and transportation.
Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage
Many challenges exist to reduce carbon emissions rapidly enough to meet global climate goals. These include hard-to-abate emissions in the industrial and transportation sectors and near-term barriers to expanding transmission for developing renewables at-scale. Meeting shared goals will require deployment of carbon capture and storage systems. Additionally, further gains towards net-zero can be realized by utilizing captured carbon to create products that would otherwise be based on fossil carbon. While deployment of large-scale systems is already underway, advances are required to make capture processes more cost-effective and robust, to improve the efficiency and scope of practicable utilization schemes, and to ensure that storage methods are safe and reliable. To help overcome these challenges, this initiative supports efforts to develop and implement technologies, models, and policies with the potential to lower the barriers for widespread adoption of carbon capture, utilization, and storage.
The Water-Energy-Resource Nexus
The planet faces increased water stress due to a combination of rising temperatures and societal transformations. Energy production, resource extraction, and municipal needs impose competing demands on this critical resource, and balancing them requires careful stewardship along with innovative approaches to avoid waste and impairment. Concurrently , providing clean drinking water can be energy-intensive due to production of disinfectant chemicals, desalinization, and distribution. This initiative recognizes the intertwined nature of these problems and seeks innovations that reduce the energy and resource intensity of water and wastewater treatment, improve circularity in water management, and advance efforts to recover energy and valuable resources from process waste streams while mitigating water, soil, and atmospheric pollution.
Climate Resilience Engineering
As knowledge of the societal risks posed by climate change has become increasingly detailed, several climate hazards have risen to prominence. These include drought, sea level rise and flooding, extreme heat, and coastal storm damage, with concomitant concerns about the vulnerability of infrastructure systems and the potential for cascading effects. Practical approaches are thus needed to enhance the climate resilience of infrastructure, transportation, human health, and agriculture. Accordingly, this initiative supports efforts to develop and implement technologies, models, and policies for mitigating and managing climate risks to critical systems (e.g., civil infrastructure for energy, water, and transportation; food and agriculture) and human health.