Brian Von Herzen, Ph.D will be speaking on the topic of needing affordable energy storage globally to allow for greater penetration of renewables, particularly photovoltaic, and then describe underwater compressed energy storage (UWCAES) and pumped thermal energy storage (PTES), how it relates to the 50% renewable energy usage commitment Queensland has committed to by 2030. Even 100% renewables will not be enough to restore a healthy climate. We will need to accelerate the removal and sequestering of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Marine permaculture (MP) enables ecosystems to scale such sequestration enormously. Both wave and solar powered versions of MP are possible, facilitating international food security, kelp forest and other ecosystem regeneration and measurement of associated carbon export to the ocean deep.
This set of methods enable an affordable energy transition and low cost of storage as well as high energy efficiency. Von Herzen will provide a brief overview of these topics and open the conversation for questions and further discussion.
Speaker:
Brian Von Herzen, PhD obtained his A.B. in Physics, Magna Cum Laude, from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Computer and Planetary Science from Caltech where he was the recipient of the prestigious Hertz Fellowship (http://www.hertzfoundation.org). While at Princeton, Brian spent four years working closely with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. At Princeton, his dissertation on global climate models demonstrated how changes in the Earth's orbit affects climate. During his Caltech years Brian worked on models of the overabundance of carbon in Jupiter's atmosphere. Little did he know that a decade later we would have to address this problem for the Earth's atmosphere. From these experiences, he acquired a detailed understanding of the Earth’s carbon cycle and has envisioned sustainable approaches to restoring carbon balance in our atmosphere. Nature does a great job of fixing carbon. Primary production on the Earth has been fixing carbon for billions of years. By filling nutrient value-chain gaps and restoring natural carbon cycles, we can restore food productivity of Earth while concurrently balancing carbon. Once we reduce the carbon intensity of our own lifestyles, natural biogeochemical processes can take our civilization carbon negative using technologies comprising marine permaculture to withdraw gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere for millennia.
The Climate Foundation is dedicated to educating and empowering people to balance carbon on land and sea on a global basis. We have developed several sustainable approaches to balancing carbon in the environment. Once society adopts sustainable practices and substantially reduces carbon emissions in our lifetimes, we believe it is still possible to reverse the man-made factors leading to climate disruption.