What new technologies will be available to us for energy in the future?
Martin Vetterli: Especially in these troubled times, when climate change is raging and wars are affecting the energy supply, the question of where new energy technologies will come from is of great importance.
According to the principles of thermodynamics, energy must come from somewhere, because new energy cannot be produced, only transformed. Quite often today it is extracted from oil. However, more and more alternative technologies are emerging, such as wind, wave or solar energy, as well as biomass or geothermal energy.
All of these energy sources are being studied and marketed at Swiss universities. As president of the university, I can offer a good overview of our approaches, from basic research to applied innovation. Let’s start with fundamental research.
Not everyone is well aware that the main element of almost all low-cost solar cells is the so-called Grätzel element. This is a very thin semiconductor cell that is now on the market all over the world. But the invention was once pure basic research and now dates back to 1988, when Professor Michael Gretzel and colleagues first proposed the idea.
By the way, shortly after that, Michael Gretzel came to Switzerland, to EPFL, where he is still working on optimizing these cells. He is one of the most highly cited scientists in the world and has already received many important awards.
But this is just one example of fundamental research. The latest of these is to reduce the need for oil by freeing it from other uses. Crude oil is also the basis for many plastics, perfumes and other biofuels. This is exactly what young professor Jeremy Lutherbacher is doing at EPFL. And recently, he actually found a way to turn plants into plastic, creating a viable alternative to oil.
Jeremy Lutherbacher’s work is fundamental and at the same time applied. He has already founded a startup called Bloom Biorenewables, which was recently funded by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures consortium. His visionary startup was one of the few in Europe to receive money from this fund.
On the other hand, other startups in EPFL are trying to reduce energy consumption instead of using new sources. Kando Bus is a good example of this. The company develops IT components that increase the speed of communication between electronic devices, thereby reducing energy consumption to a minimum.
Therefore, researchers from EPFL and many universities around the world are working hard to explore new possibilities for alternative energy sources. As well as methods that guarantee efficient conversion and storage. However, which of these energies will be the most important in the future is also a political issue and a decision made by society.