Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment 2023–2024 Annual Report

annual report for the academic year 2023-2024

Iain McCulloch Director Gerhard R. Andlinger ‘52 Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Since joining the Andlinger Center as its director in January of this year, I am pleased to say that it has been a rapid start. In the short time that I have been here, I have had the privilege of seeing our faculty, researchers, and educators in action, and have come to understand what makes our community so special.

have been gratified to observe the depth of the conversations that take place at these events, as well as the positive feedback we receive from our industry partners who attend them. I look forward to building upon our partnerships with industry leaders and thinking creatively about how we can work together to generate maximum impact.

I welcome the opportunity to build upon the Andlinger Center’s reputation as a global leader in developing durable energy solutions. ”

–Iain McCulloch

I have been immensely impressed by the work that our faculty are carrying out across many aspects of the clean energy transition. At the Andlinger Center, we have researchers harnessing the power of artificial intelligence for applications from controlling fusion reactions in real time to increasing the stability of grid operations. Another group of researchers is developing elegant approaches for separating and extracting the needed materials for energy storage and electric vehicles. Still other faculty members are providing timely, policy-oriented energy systems analyses that have had considerable impact in shaping the way climate policy gets written and implemented. And these are only a few of the many areas in which our faculty have made great strides over the past year. Moving forward, we are thinking strategically about how to engage and unite faculty from across disciplines to form cohesive research initiatives that amplify the impact of the Andlinger Center’s work.

Equally exciting to witness has been the number of quality events that the Andlinger Center hosts to convene high-level experts around timely energy and environmental topics. At our E-ffiliates Retreat in June, for example, I was struck by the ideas shared by panelists and speakers for spearheading decarbonization efforts in the industrial sector. We also hosted a summit dedicated to technology and policy solutions for PFAS contamination, providing an open forum for discussion amongst regulators, policy experts, and engineers in the wake of a new national drinking water standard for the pollutants. With my background in industry, I

As we focus and grow our research programs and strengthen our collaborations with industry, I want to ensure that we continue to foster a sense of community and belonging amongst all of us at the Andlinger Center.

Since my arrival, we have launched an Early Career Leadership Forum to provide members of research groups from across the Andlinger Center with an opportunity to come together and have their voices heard. This fall also marked the launch of our new Minor Program in Sustainable Energy. The minor is a fantastic opportunity for undergraduate students from all backgrounds and interests to gain a wellrounded understanding of some of today’s most important energy and environmental challenges, and it offers a chance for our students to deepen their engagement with the work that we do at the center, thus enhancing our visibility across campus and beyond.

As we venture forward on our journey, I am grateful to have been entrusted with the Andlinger Center’s mission and the task of increasing our impact. I look forward to developing a portfolio of research initiatives to unite the skills and expertise we need to tackle the world’s energy and environmental challenges. Every day, I am inspired by the work that our faculty, students, researchers, and industry partners are doing to secure a sustainable energy future, and I welcome the opportunity to build upon the Andlinger Center’s reputation as a global leader in developing durable energy solutions.

our mission is to develop solutions for our energy and environmental future

+ accelerate innovation through funding, infrastructure, and intellectual discourse

+ foster a vibrant and interdisciplinary community

+ partner with industry, not-for-profit, government, and peer institutions

+ train the next generation of leaders

+ be the leading center for information and guidance

seven interacting research areas

form the heart of the center’s focus.

built environment, transportation, and infrastructure

Smart infrastructure, resilient cities, building efficiency systems and retrofits involving faculty from the School of Architecture, microgrids and networks, green cements, cleaner burning combustion engines, electric vehicles, and water desalination technologies

electricity production, transmission, and storage

Emerging technologies to harvest wind and solar power, nuclear fusion, power electronics and superconducting materials that enable more power transmission, grid-scale electricity storage, and modeling of power grids with high renewables penetration

fuels and chemicals

Advanced fuels and chemicals from engineered microorganisms and artificial photosynthesis, development of catalysts with abundant elements, and techno-economic and lifecycle assessments of advanced biofuel production systems

environmental sensing and remediation

Sensors to detect emissions of carbon and nitrogen cycle gases to the atmosphere from the energy, water and food sectors, carbon capture and storage, and wastewater treatment and soil remediation technologies using nanoparticles and microorganisms

energy and environmental systems analysis

Optimization-based modeling of national, regional and sectoral decarbonization strategies, energy, economic and environmental assessments of innovative energy and industrial technologies, public policy and private investment decision support, modeling energy-related air quality and employment

decision and behavioral science, policy, and economics

In partnership with faculty and researchers at the School of Public and International Affairs, individual and collective decision-making, and economic analysis related to energy and environmental policy

environmental and climate science

In partnership with faculty and researchers at the High Meadows Environmental Institute, environmental monitoring and modeling of Arctic sea ice, carbon dioxide absorption by oceans, extreme weather, and coastal impacts

The Andlinger Center drives impact in three key areas: research, external partnerships, and education.

July

Nathaniel Wei and Nusrat Molla join the Andlinger Center as Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellows to study atmospheric dynamics and their applications to wind energy and to understand community-level responses to clean energy transitions, respectively.

January

Iain McCulloch joins the Andlinger Center as its director. He also joins the Princeton faculty as the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and a professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.

September

Experts from across sectors convene at the From Ambition to Reality Summit, hosted in collaboration with E-ffiliates member Worley

October

October

The first nine projects supported by the Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners kick off in collaboration with industry leaders.

The Andlinger Center holds the 2023 Annual Meeting to discuss the challenges and opportunities of nextdecade technologies for the energy transition, including fusion; hydrogen; and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS).

January

Princeton E-ffiliates Partnership welcomes RainIons, an early-stage climate tech firm focused on developing an innovation for the reduction of both noxious and greenhouse gas emissions.

March

The Andlinger Center awards a Grant for Innovative Research in Energy and the Environment to an interdisciplinary team seeking to develop a new way to separate and extract lithium and other critical minerals for the energy transition.

April

In the wake of a new national drinking standard to regulate PFAS pollution, leaders from academia, industry, and the public sector gather on Princeton’s campus for the PFAS Summit to brainstorm impactful solutions for addressing the contaminants.

June

The eleventh annual E-ffiliates Retreat, hosted by Princeton E-ffiliates Partnership, dives into the cement, steel, and iron industries and spotlights new technologies and processes for cutting emissions from heavy industry.

May

Emily A. Carter is elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society

January

Wintersession immerses students and participants in a series of talks, activites, and site tours involving sustainabilty and energy.

May

The Andlinger Center celebrates 18 graduating seniors and awards the senior thesis prize to Reese Knopp for her work on microplastics.

June

Elke Weber receives BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Spain for her work to understand and inform environmental decision-making processes and human responses to climate change.

Researchers Yaguang Zhu and Austin Booth in Kelsey Hatzell’s lab work on an innovative, moisture-driven approach to direct air capture.

research

Researchers at the Andlinger Center are at the vanguard of global solutions for a sustainable energy future.

The Andlinger Center supports creative and bold research that tackles some of today’s most pressing energy and environmental challenges. From energy systems modeling to materials development, our researchers take an interdisciplinary approach to developing comprehensive solutions for the global energy transition. Our research is centered around providing practical and actionable innovation that can accelerate decarbonization efforts worldwide.

Uniting brilliant minds, the center unlocks new insights on the pathway to net-zero. Research is carried out with an eye for real-world impact and incorporates a diverse range of perspectives and expertise to ensure a robust pathway to a clean energy future.

“The Andlinger Center fosters research collaborations that cut across disciplines in order to tackle the interwoven energy and environmental challenges facing the world today.”

– Z. Jason Ren, Associate Director for Research at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Sponsored research funding by research area:

 Built environment, transportation, and infrastructure

 Electricity production, transmission, and storage

 Fuels and chemicals

 Environmental sensing and remediation

 Energy and environmental systems analysis



$16.6 million

received through sponsored research funding (2023–2024)

$1.45 million

and

Andlinger Center funding awarded to Princeton researchers (2023–2024)

center updates

Net-Zero Expands

In October 2021, Princeton researchers released the final results for the widely influential Net-Zero America report, which outlined at a state-by-state level five distinct pathways for the U.S. to decarbonize its economy using existing technologies.

Following Net-Zero America, co-PI Chris Greig, the Theodora D. ’78 & William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, spearheaded efforts at Princeton to collaborate with scientists from The University of Queensland, the University of Melbourne, and the Nous Group on a Net Zero Australia report. Inspired by Net-Zero America, the report charted a pathway to not only decarbonize Australia’s domestic economy but also to transition from being one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquified natural gas to instead focusing on the export of clean energy carriers.

Now, the Net-Zero initiative continues to expand across the world. During summer 2024, the Princeton team launched a partnership with researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and the non-government organization Prayas (Energy Group) to chart development-compatible pathways for India by which it could meet its climate targets while ensuring energy security and economic prosperity for its growing population through a Net-Zero India study. Eric Larson, co-PI on Net-Zero America and senior research engineer at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, is spearheading Princeton’s involvement with colleagues at Tsinghua University, who are leading a Net-Zero China study. Six members of the Tsinghua team visited Princeton during the summer to advance the project. Larson is also collaborating with colleagues at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro on a Net-Zero Brazil study.

The researchers said their vision is to create a network of local partners to develop net-zero studies in countries that are currently or are anticipated to become major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions. As the initiative expands, engineers led by Net-Zero America co-PI Jesse Jenkins, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, in collaboration with researchers at MIT and NYU are developing open-source software for modeling energy-system transitions that researchers in any country will be able to use to help them execute their own net-zero studies.

Funding for this project was provided by the Gerhard R. Andlinger Innovation Fund, Clean Air Task Force, Linden Trust for Conservation, Frontier, Breakthrough Energy, the Theodora D. ‘78 and William H. Walton, III ‘74 Research Scientist Fund, the Schmidt Futures award, and an anonymous gift.

Faculty Promotions

Minjie Chen, a power electronics researcher, was promoted to associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, effective July 1, 2024. Chen is an expert in developing smaller, smarter, and more energy-efficient power electronics for converting and controlling electrical power in robotics and electric vehicles, information systems, and the grid edge. He joined the Princeton faculty in 2017.

Kelsey Hatzell, an expert on energy materials, was promoted to associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, effective July 1, 2024. Hatzell’s group develops new materials and technologies for energy storage and climate applications. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2021.

Sustainable cements researcher Claire White was promoted to professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, effective July 1, 2024. White is an expert in the characterization and optimization of energy and environmental materials, with a particular emphasis on the development of low-carbon cements. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2013.

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Language Models to Inform Fusion Research

It could take more than a lifetime to read through the thousands of documents that have been published about fusion research, but researchers performing experiments at facilities like the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego have only around 10 minutes between trials to locate and incorporate the information they need to make adjustments for the next run.

At a graduate student-led hackathon hosted by Egemen Kolemen, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and staff research physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), fusion scientists developed a system capable of leveraging the power of large language models — the driving forces behind tools such as ChatGPT — to enhance fusion research. By augmenting the raw language model with a database of information about fusion, including notes from previous experiments at DIII-D, the researchers have enabled fusion researchers to quickly sift through staggering amounts of data to make more informed decisions. The team is working with operators at DIII-D to implement the framework at the facility so every research group performing experiments there has swift access to information that will help them design better fusion experiments.

Wrangling Fusion Energy with AI

During a fusion reaction, every millisecond matters. In the blink of an eye, the unruly, superheated plasma that drives nuclear fusion can escape from its magnetic confinement within the donut-shaped device, or tokamak, designed to contain it. These getaways frequently spell the end of the reaction, posing a core challenge to developing fusion as a non-polluting, virtually limitless energy source.

Top: Azarakhsh Jalalvand, Egemen Kolemen, and Ricardo Shousha at the Andlinger Center. (Photo by Adena Stevens) Inset: A figure shows the formation of a tearing instability (left), which could quickly result in plasma disruption and the termination of the fusion reaction. (Courtesy of the researchers)

But a team led by Egemen Kolemen has trained an AI controller to predict and then avoid a type of plasma instability in real time. Publishing their findings in Nature, the researchers showed their model could forecast potential plasma instabilities known as tearing mode instabilities up to 300 milliseconds in advance. While that leaves no more than enough time for a slow blink in humans, it was plenty of time for the AI controller to change certain operating parameters to avoid what would have developed into a tear within the plasma’s magnetic field lines, upsetting its equilibrium and opening the door for a reactionending escape. The research allows for more dynamic control of a fusion reaction than current approaches, and it provides a foundation for using artificial intelligence to solve a broad range of plasma instabilities, which have long been obstacles to achieving a sustained fusion reaction.

Better Lithium Production on a String

While lithium is a critical catalyst for the clean energy transition due to its important role in energy storage devices, conventional approaches for extracting lithium are time- and energy-intensive, with large operations spanning dozens of square miles and often requiring over a year to begin production. But researchers led by Z. Jason Ren have developed a new extraction technique that could slash the land required for lithium production by up to 90% and yield initial lithium harvests over 20 times faster than existing approaches.

The breakthrough approach, featured on the cover of Nature Water, involves a carefully engineered set of porous fibers twisted into strings that have a water-loving core and waterrepelling surface. When the ends are dipped in a salt-water solution, the water travels up the strings through capillary action — similar to the process trees use to draw water from roots to leaves. As the water quickly evaporates from each string’s surface, it leaves behind salt ions such as sodium and lithium that become increasingly concentrated over time until they form crystals. Due to the strings’ unique properties, the sodium and lithium ions naturally crystallize at different locations on the string, making them easy to separate and harvest.

Because the strings are compact, low-cost, and fast-acting, they could unlock access to new sources of lithium, such as disused oil and gas wells and geothermal brines, that are currently too small or too dilute for lithium extraction. Former Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow Sunxiang (Sean) Zheng is also working with Ren to commercialize the technology through the launch of a startup, PureLi Inc. The team participated in the HAX Accelerator Program to develop their startup and prepare it for fundraising, prototyping, and commercialization.

Tandem Solar Cells Combine Stability with Performance

changes that occur when the devices receive unequal levels of sunlight — a problem that typically spells doom for perovskite-only solar modules. “Our results make a strong case that tandem devices should be an all-hands-on-deck area for future solar research,” said Rand.

While conventional silicon solar cells are important players in the clean energy transition, researchers have struggled to continue improving their performance as the devices approach their practical efficiency limits. Now, researchers from Princeton University and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) led by Barry Rand, professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, highlighted how tandem solar cells — made by combining conventional silicon solar cells with ones made from minerals known as perovskites — could unlock continued performance gains for solar technologies without compromising overall stability. The team’s findings, published in Joule, revealed that tandem solar modules were equally resilient as silicon-only modules to the voltage-induced

Retroreflectors to Beat Urban Heat

Elie Bou-Zeid, professor of civil and environmental engineering, led a research team to quantify the cooling benefits of outfitting building walls and roadways in dense urban centers with retroreflective materials, which reflect most incoming sunlight directly back to the sky. The researchers found that optimally installing retroreflectors could reduce surface temperatures by up to 36°F, lower surrounding air temperatures by almost 5°F, and cool human skin temperatures by almost a degree Fahrenheit. The researchers said their work, published in Nature Cities, is among the first to evaluate the potential cooling benefits of the technology at a global scale.

Above: September 2023 cover of Nature Water (Cover photo by Bumper DeJesus)

Modeling the Future of Next-gen Biofuels

Using high-quality data at fine spatial scales, researchers at Princeton University and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have modeled what a supply chain for second-generation biofuels might look like in the midwestern United States. The team, led by Christos Maravelias, the Anderson Family Professor in Energy and the Environment and professor of chemical and biological engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, developed the model to explore optimal supply chain configurations across an eight-state region under different scenarios, such as the best configuration for producing biofuels with the lowest economic costs or the supply chain with the greatest emissions reductions.

The research, published in Nature Energy, also demonstrates the role of policy incentives in shaping the emissions impacts and preferred technologies for biofuel production. Such insights could inform policymakers about how varying incentives can shape the future of biofuel supply chains. “The model we developed allows us to make sure we’re designing these systems properly,” Maravelias said. “It’s important to have as much information as possible before we lock ourselves into less-than-ideal technologies and system configurations.”

Preparing for an Ammonia Economy

Ammonia, a main component of many fertilizers, could play a key role in a carbon-free fuel system as a convenient way to transport and store clean hydrogen. The chemical, made of hydrogen and nitrogen, can also itself be burned as a zero-carbon fuel. However, Princeton researchers have demonstrated that without proper management, the widespread use of ammonia could ramp up greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution and disturb the global nitrogen cycle.

In a paper published in PNAS, the team, led by Amilcare Porporato, the Thomas J. Wu ’94 Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the High

Meadows Environmental Institute, outlined the proactive engineering practices that could minimize the potential negative impacts of an ammonia economy, such as developing alternative combustion strategies that minimize unwanted NO x and N2O emissions or splitting ammonia back into hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen to regenerate hydrogen fuel at the desired point of use.

“With the ammonia economy, we have the chance to learn from our carbon-emitting past,” Porporato said. “We have the opportunity to solve the challenges we’ve identified before they become an issue in the real world.”

Federal Subsidies Shape the Future of Fuels

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 established unprecedented subsidies to promote clean energy production, and an analysis from Andlinger Center researchers found that the landmark legislation has helped to put several clean fuels on the path to cost-competitiveness with fossil fuel-derived equivalents. In work featured on the cover of Environmental Science & Technology (pictured), Eric Larson and researchers from the Energy Systems Analysis Group analyzed the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on the economics of six different hydrogen production pathways and nine different pathways for producing synthetic liquid fuels.

The analysis revealed that the subsidies for low-carbon hydrogen production and carbon capture and sequestration enable green (electrolysis) and blue (methane reformation with carbon capture) hydrogen to be cost competitive with or even cheaper than gray (conventional fossil fuel-derived) hydrogen. However, for clean synthetic liquid fuels, the researchers found that stronger incentives would be needed than those in the Inflation Reduction Act for them to be competitive. The paper earned first-author Fangwei Cheng, who completed the work as an associate research scholar at Princeton, the Robert H. Socolow CMI Best Paper Award for Postdoctoral Researchers at the annual meeting of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative.

Right inset: Cover of the October 17 issue of Environmental Science & Technology

An Innovative Approach to Direct Air Capture

Researchers led by Kelsey Hatzell are exploring new materials capable of capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air based on changes in the surrounding humidity. Such a moisturedriven approach to regenerating carbon capture materials could yield energy efficiency improvements over five times above current technologies, which typically rely on energyintensive temperature or pressure swings for regeneration.

For their work, published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, the Princeton team modified an existing type of ion-exchange resin, a material that can trade charged particles with the surrounding environment. The surfaces of these resins are dotted with countless tiny pores in which the carbon capture process takes place. At low humidity, a series of chemical reactions occurs in the pores that allows them to capture carbon dioxide from a stream of incoming air. At high humidity, the opposite occurs: the material releases its bound carbon and is prepared for another round of capture.

The researchers are continuing to investigate the fundamental science behind the material’s ability to capture and release in response to humidity swings. They noted that the technology’s low energy costs combined with its inexpensive materials make it a promising candidate for future scale-up.

Engineering Better Ion-selective Membranes

Ion-selective membranes, which act as filters that separate charged particles such as minerals out of water mixtures, underpin a range of energy and environmental separations, from water desalination to energy storage. Yet research from Ryan Kingsbury, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, has yielded findings that challenge long-standing assumptions about the design of these important membranes. While traditional ideas held that the limiting step in ion-selective membranes occurred as dissolved ions travel through the membrane itself, Kingsbury’s work demonstrated that in many cases, the bottleneck actually occurs at the interface between the solution and the filter. The findings, published in Matter, will help pave the way for future efforts to engineer and optimize ion-selective membranes.

Informing Sustainable Cements

Claire White and former graduate student Kai Gong have developed a set of parameters that predict the reactivity of amorphous aluminosilicates in alkaline environments based on their chemical compositions. Aluminosilicates play important roles in the formation of blended Portland cements and alkali-activated materials, which are two alternatives for lowering the carbon intensity of cement and concrete production. The parameters, described in research published in Cement and Concrete Research, outperform existing metrics and will help researchers accurately understand how the chemical composition of aluminosilicates will influence their activity in novel cement materials.

Researchers Yaguang Zhu and Austin Booth in Kelsey Hatzell’s lab. Inset: A close-up of the material capable of capturing and releasing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in response to moisture swings.

A Sustainable Seaweed Biorefinery

José Avalos, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering and the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, is leading a team of researchers from eight institutions and an industry partner to explore technologies for transforming a troublesome seaweed known as Sargassum into a feedstock of the future, capable of producing valuable materials including fuels, chemicals, fertilizers, and other products. While the seaweed currently threatens the livelihoods of many across the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea who depend on the surrounding ecosystems for tourism, fishing, or other uses, the researchers believe their biorefinery process could ultimately support a new type of sustainable economic growth across the region. The project is one of five supported by Schmidt Sciences and the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research through the Virtual Institute on Feedstocks of the Future initiative, which has committed up to $47.3 million over five years to support science and research towards the use of currently underutilized sources of biomass as alternative feedstocks for biomanufacturing.

Toward Low-carbon Concrete

Claire White received an award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office to develop a more sustainable type of concrete. With $3 million in support, White will lead a consortium of researchers from Princeton University, Cornell University, and the University of Texas at Austin, as well as industrial partner Ash Grove Cement Company, to explore ways to form alkali-activated materials, which can be lower carbon alternatives to traditional Portland cement. Specifically, the team seeks to inter-grind waste activators such as waste glass, cement kiln dust, and synthetic alkalis with calcined low-grade kaolin clay to develop a low-cost, low-CO2 one-part alkali-activated sustainable concrete.

Harnessing Plasma to Produce Clean Hydrogen

Yiguang Ju, a PPPL managing principal research physicist and the Robert Porter Patterson Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was selected to head up a DOE Energy Earthshot Research Center. The center is part of the Hydrogen Shot, which aims to reduce the cost of hydrogen by 80%. The award provides $5 million over four years to study the use of plasma to produce hydrogen, with experiments being conducted at both PPPL and Princeton University.

Top: Floating Sargassum in Puerto Rico

(Photo courtesy of Loretta Roberson of Marine Biological Laboratory).

Right: Samples are transferred into tubes in Claire White’s Sustainable Cements Lab. Opposite page: Vials of recovered minerals in Z. Jason Ren’s Water and Energy Technologies Lab.

Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners

In its second year, the Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners is supporting innovative research projects that seek to tackle a diverse array of energy challenges, from optimizing fusion reactors to modeling climate-resilient energy transition pathways. Each of the projects is led by a Princeton faculty member in close collaboration with one or more industrial partners to promote the development of real-world energy and environmental solutions. Projects are either funded via Research Awards, which provide support for up to three years, or via Seed Awards, which provide one year of support to jumpstart collaborations.

Research Award

Stellarator optimization software suite for commercial reactor design

Lead PI: Egemen Kolemen

Corporate Partners: NT-Tao, Thea Energy, Stellarex, Type One Energy

Seed Awards

Quantum cascade lasers designed using machine learning tools

Lead PI: Claire Gmachl, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering

Corporate Partner: ADTech Photonics

Current collectors for reservoir-free solid state batteries

Lead PI: Kelsey Hatzell

Co-PI: Bruce Koel, professor emeritus of chemical and biological engineering

Corporate Partner: Mercedes-Benz

Integrated CO2 capture and photoconversion to valuable platform chemicals in bifunctional zeotypes

Lead PI: Marcella Lusardi, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute

Corporate Partner: BASF

Climate resilience of the energy transition in Puerto Rico

Lead PI: Ning Lin, professor of civil and environmental engineering

Co-PI: H. Vincent Poor, the Michael Henry Strater University Professor

Corporate Partner: LUMA Energy

Durability prediction of nascent alkali-activated metakaolin cements from rapid non-destructive tests

Lead PI: Claire White

Corporate Partner: Modern Habitat Tech

Grant for Innovative Research in Energy and the Environment

Separating Critical Minerals for the Energy Transition

Howard Stone, the Donald R. Dixon ’69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is leading a collaborative effort to develop an evaporation-driven, continuous flow process for concentrating and separating valuable minerals needed for the clean energy transition. The project takes its inspiration from a process developed in the lab of co-investigator Z. Jason Ren, who demonstrated a string-based approach for concentrating and separating sodium and lithium salts from a simulated brine solution. The researchers will explore alternative configurations for separating critical minerals from an aqueous solution, as well as methods for converting the process from batch-based to continuous flow to increase its relevance to industrial applications. The team also includes Ryan Kingsbury, who will contribute his expertise in water chemistry to explore ways to better control and steer the separation process toward the desired products. While the team’s nearterm target is to develop a proof-of-concept process that can continuously separate and concentrate lithium from a solution of mixed salts, the researchers said that a successful lithium system could pave the way for rapid customization to other minerals. Since receiving the award in early 2024, civil and environmental engineering undergraduate student Kelvin Green ’24 performed his senior thesis exploring the topic and researchers from the three groups, including postdoctoral researcher Fernando Temprano-Coleto of Stone’s group, graduate student Meiqi Yang of Ren’s group, and postdoctoral researcher Arpit Bhardwaj of Kingsbury’s group, have made significant progress on the design and development of the system.

Funding for the Grant for Innovative Research in Energy and the Environment was provided by the de Carvalho-Heineken Family Fund for Environmental Studies and the Renee and Mark F. Rockefeller ‘89 Fund for the Environment.

Distinguished

Postdoctoral Fellows Develop Stabler Polymers and Origami-inspired Robots

Amy Honnig Bassett and Yifan Rao joined the Andlinger Center as Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellows in summer 2024, working to advance the design and optimization of green polymers and sustainable robots, respectively.

Honnig Bassett will collaborate with Emily Davidson, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, and Rodney Priestley, the Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, to design and optimize polymers for energy storage applications, with a focus on improving their thermal stability and capacity to withstand high electric fields. Such durability improvements could allow these polymers to enhance the lifespan and functionality of technologies such as inverters for electric vehicles and wind turbine generators.

Rao will work with Glaucio Paulino, the Margareta Engman Augustine Professor of Engineering, and Minjie Chen to develop modular, origami-inspired robots for applications ranging from environmental-scale monitoring to micro-robotics. Soft robots based on origami structures benefit from extreme reconfigurability and deployability, leading to modular assemblies with enhanced storage capacity, which can, for example, enable easier repairs that generate less waste. During the fellowship, Rao will work to integrate Paulino’s specialty in the mechanics of materials and structures with Chen’s expertise in power electronics to create state-of-the-art, multifunctional robots with improved energy efficiency.

Funding was provided by the Gerhard R. Andlinger Innovation Fund, the Nicholas and Kathleen Nomicos Class of 1984 Fund, the Lewis W. van Amerongen ‘62 Fund for Energy Research, and the Gregory H. Olsen Postdoctoral Fellowship Fund.

Public and Policymaker Preferences for Energy Projects in Pennsylvania

A Princeton-led research team uncovered bipartisan support among Pennsylvanians for solar energy and other types of renewables when compared to a reference case of natural gas with carbon capture and storage, especially when co-owned by the local community. But when their local elected officials were asked about the types of energy projects they thought their constituents would support, the officials did not believe they would prefer other types of energy projects to natural gas. This gap between actual and perceived support for clean energy projects suggests a need for clear and honest communication between the public and their locally elected representatives, said first author Holly Caggiano, (pictured) who was a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow from 2021 to 2023 and is now an assistant professor of climate justice and environmental planning at the University of British Columbia. The research, published in Nature Energy, was also carried out alongside Elke Weber, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and professor of psychology and public affairs, and Chris Greig

Launch Pad

The Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellows program at the Andlinger Center propels early-career researchers into meaningful careers:

Nathaniel Wei (2023-2024)

Assistant professor of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics at University of Pennsylvania

Amy Honnig Bassett and Yifan Rao at the Andlinger Center.

recognizing excellence

And the Honor Goes to...

Elke Weber

Elke Weber was awarded the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in humanities and social sciences for her research on environmental decision-making and the factors that motivate action against climate change. Weber was commended for her role as an influential policy adviser and for “her ability to draw on insights from a wide range of disciplines, and to use them to put her ideas into consequential action that will be of benefit to the whole world.”

Emily A. Carter

Emily A. Carter, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director for applied materials and sustainability sciences at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society. She also received the William H. Nichols Medal from the American Chemical Society for her “groundbreaking quantum insights in sustainable catalysis.”

Z. Jason Ren

Z. Jason Ren received the Walter J. Weber, Jr. AEESP Frontier in Research Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. Ren was praised for his demonstrated research leadership and his pioneering efforts in new and innovative research areas, which have helped to broaden the scope of the environmental engineering discipline. Ren was also elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and was recognized as an INNOVATE100 honoree for his work to develop a new approach to direct lithium extraction.

Barry Rand

Barry Rand won a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative award for his work to advance the scientific frontier in experimental physics. With the award, Rand will pursue research that could progress the study of quantum particles, catalysis, separations, and new generations of electronic devices.

Robert Socolow

Robert Socolow, professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering and a senior scholar at Princeton University, received the 2023 John Scott Award, which is the oldest science award in the United States. Socolow was honored for his pioneering research on climate change solutions, which has proven profoundly impactful for informing global efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Kelsey Hatzell

Kelsey Hatzell received a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award for her work to develop next-generation materials for energy and climate applications. She was recognized for demonstrating an “outstanding independent body of scholarship” as well as a deep commitment to education.

Egemen Kolemen

Egemen Kolemen won the 2024 Technical Accomplishment Award from the American Nuclear Society for his research on machine learning for fusion reactor control. The award is given to a researcher and ANS member who exemplifies professional excellence and high-caliber leadership in fusion science and engineering.

Elke Weber accepts her BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award during an internationally broadcasted ceremony in Spain. (Photo courtesy of the BBVA Foundation)

Gerhard R. Andlinger Visiting Fellows in Energy and the Environment

Cooling Coatings for Solar Devices

strengthening the andlinger center community (stock.adobe.com)

Klaus Jäger, an expert on optical simulations for solar energy devices, joined the Andlinger Center in August 2024 as a Gerhard R. Andlinger Visiting Fellow. Jäger is a senior scientist at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB) and is the vice director of the Berlin Joint Lab for Optical Simulations for Energy Research.

At Princeton, Jäger will work with Jyortimoy Mandal, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, Barry Rand, and Forrest Meggers, associate professor of architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Together, they will work to develop radiative cooling coatings for solar devices. Solar cells become less efficient as temperatures increase, so the researchers believe that applying a cooling coating to the solar cell could increase the overall energy yield and potentially extend its lifespan. Jäger said the fellowship will expand the scope of his work to include radiative cooling while allowing him to contribute his own expertise in photovoltaics to the Andlinger Center’s research program.

Ensuring Grid Stability in a Renewables-dominated Future

Philippe Jacquod, a theoretical physicist with over twenty years of experience in condensed matter physics and electric power systems, has been selected to join the Andlinger Center as a Gerhard R. Andlinger Visiting Fellow in January 2025. Jacquod is a professor at the University of Geneva and University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland.

At Princeton, Jacquod will collaborate with Minjie Chen to address the grid stability and energy supply challenges that will result from the wider deployment of new renewable energy sources. Together, they will conduct theoretical and experimental research using a downscaled electricity grid developed in Chen’s lab, which acts as a small-scale surrogate to explore alternative control paradigms for the actual power grid. The partnership will revolve around how to integrate inverter-connected renewable energy sources into the power system to ensure a stable and secure energy supply.

Non-resident Fellows

Promoting Career Development in Clean Energy

Tom Leyden ’77, a 30-year solar industry veteran, joined the Andlinger Center in June 2024 as a non-resident fellow, working to create opportunities for Princeton students to learn about and prepare for careers in clean energy. Leyden is the founder and manager of the 600+ member Princeton in Solar and Cleantech alumni group, designed to guide students to careers in cleantech by fostering connections between students and alumni working in clean energy. As a fellow, he also aims to collaborate with the Keller Center to teach students about pathways to clean energy entrepreneurship.

Convening Experts Around PFAS Solutions

In April 2024, the Andlinger Center hosted a summit dedicated to discussing impactful solutions for combating PFAS contamination from biosolids. PFAS (poly- and perfluoryl alkyl substances) are a group of over 12,000 long-lasting compounds commonly found in products such as non-stick cookware, water-resistant fabrics, and firefighting foams. Longterm exposure to PFAS, sometimes called ‘forever chemicals’ for their ability to persist for extended periods in the environment, has been linked to cancer and other illnesses in humans and poses a significant public health hazard.

The summit, organized by Gerhard R. Andlinger Visiting Fellow Angela Fasnacht, brought together over 80 leaders from academia, industry, and the public sector to discuss both technical and policy challenges associated with managing PFAS pollution in biosolids. One ongoing challenge is that currently, most available technologies for dealing with PFAS contamination center on the capture, concentration, and removal of PFAS from water systems. However, there are fewer and usually costlier options for breaking down the contaminants into more benign compounds.

During a keynote presentation, however, Peter Jaffé, the William L. Knapp ’47 Professor of Civil Engineering, described ongoing efforts in his research group to develop a new microbial approach for degrading PFAS contaminants. Originally found in soil samples taken from the Assunpink Wetlands in New Jersey, the bacteria have an innate ability to degrade PFAS compounds that, if refined and scaled, could one day become a solution for remediating contaminated environments by breaking PFAS into safer compounds.

Other sessions from the summit touched on the development and scale-up of PFAS destruction technologies, the efficacy and optimization of existing PFAS removal technologies, and the regulatory challenges of managing the contaminants, which do not fit neatly into existing categories.

The summit was one of many endeavors from Fasnacht to bridge the gap between policymakers, researchers, and practitioners in the water sector during her fellowship. Fasnacht also developed and taught a new graduate-level course in the fall semester that explored the challenges and opportunities of decarbonizing the water sector, incorporating perspectives from a wide range of stakeholders to provide students with a comprehensive survey of the current issues in water treatment.

“

“I refuse to let my team use the term ‘forever chemicals.’ That’s admitting defeat.”

– PFAS summit panelist

Left: Peter Jaffé describes research to develop a new microbial approach for degrading PFAS contaminants during his keynote address. Right: Angela Fasnacht joins a breakout group during the summit.

Technologies for Carbon

and Storage”

From left to right: Sarah Gasda, Noah McQueen, Erika La Plante, and Emily A. Carter took center stage during the panel entitled “Next-Generation

Capture, Utilization,

at the Andlinger Center’s 2023 Annual Meeting. (Photo by Lori M. Nichols)

external partnerships

The Andlinger Center strives to bring energy and environmental solutions out of the lab and into the real world.

With a vibrant and expanding corporate membership program, events that unite stakeholders around contemporary energy and environmental issues, and faculty who are routinely tapped to provide expert information to public sector officials, the Andlinger Center excels at translating breakthrough knowledge into actionable solutions and policy insights. Our researchers think creatively to bring together those with a stake in a sustainable energy future and work side-by-side with collaborators in industry, government, non-profits, and academia to identify and advance energy solutions in such a way to maximize impact.

The Andlinger Center works tirelessly to forge strategic partnerships far beyond Princeton’s campus because ultimately, the most robust energy solutions and policy proposals arise when individuals and organizations come together around a shared priority of ensuring a reliable and sustainable energy future.

“Our partnerships at the Andlinger Center are critical in helping us identify and address some of the most complex and pressing energy and environmental challenges of today and tomorrow.”

– Barry Rand, Associate Director for External Partnerships, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

external partnerships by the numbers

$6.8 million

Siemens Undergraduate Presentation Award

2023 Annual Meeting Poster Awards in support through external partnerships (2023–2024)

Edward Deleu / “A Compact Machine Learning Framework for Multi-Material Core Loss Modeling” –Advised by Minjie Chen, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Siemens Undergraduate Presentation Award

Clara Bloom / “Optimizing CO2 Capture, Transport, and Storage Hubs for Decarbonizing Industry” – Advised by Eric Larson, senior research engineer at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

NEC Undergraduate Presentation Award

Amélie Lemay / “Current Status and Future Potential of Rooftop Solar Adoption in the United States” – Advised by Barry Rand

NEC Undergraduate Presentation Award

Kelvin Green / “Towards Chlorine-Driven Diffusiophoresis for Membraneless Filtration” – Advised by Howard Stone, Donald R. Dixon ’69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

SCG Undergraduate Presentation Award

Sonia Ghoshal / “Density Functional Theory Modeling to Investigate Iron-Graphite Interfaces” – Advised by Claire White, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

SCG Undergraduate Presentation Award

Camila Cabrera Martinez / “Analyzing And Engineering

Cellulase and Hemicellulase Enzymes for Lignocellulosic Biofuels Applications” – Advised by Jonathan Conway, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering

American Water Graduate Presentation Award

M. Shaharyar Wani / “Super Hierarchical Carbon Aerogel: Unravelling Formation Mechanism and their Use for Water Purification Application” – Advised by Craig Arnold, Vice Dean for Innovation and the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Deloitte Postdoctoral Researcher Presentation Award

Nusrat Molla, Kristopher Nichols, Loïc De Weerdt / “Can Wind Energy Help West Virginia Off its Coal Mining Addiction?” – Advised by Elke Weber, Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and professor of psychology and public affairs, and Eric Larson

Worley Postdoctoral Researcher Presentation Award

Jisu Hong / “Mitigating Iodine Diffusion by an Organic-Inorganic Composite Hole Transport Layer for Stable Perovskite Photovoltaics” – Advised by Barry Rand

We need to start conversations about what it looks like to responsibly deploy these technologies.”

–Noah McQueen, co-founder and head of research at Heirloom

Annual Meeting Spotlights Next-Decade Technologies and Design Approaches

At the Andlinger Center’s 12th annual meeting, speakers and panelists from across academia and industry emphasized the technologies and design solutions that are either underappreciated or at low technology readiness levels but might play central roles in the next decade’s low-carbon energy system.

In his keynote address, co-founder and chairman emeritus of non-profit RMI Amory Lovins spotlighted energy efficiency as a critical yet overlooked lever to rapid decarbonization. He challenged the audience to consider technologies and design approaches that could reduce overall energy demand instead of concentrating only on increasing clean energy supply.

“What we need is not just deployment, but discernment about the [energy] supply that we will actually need,” said Lovins, who is also an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

Following Lovins’ address, each of the meeting’s panels explored a different technological solution for helping the world meet its climate targets, with experts from academia and industries discussing opportunities and challenges associated with carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS); hydrogen; and fusion. For example, experts on the hydrogen panel highlighted the variety of approaches for producing hydrogen fuel, emphasizing the importance of developing multiple technologies in parallel to ensure a robust pathway to decarbonization for countries with wide-ranging geopolitical challenges.

A common theme throughout each panel was the consensus that there is no one-size-fits-all technology or approach to decarbonization. “It’s not an ‘or’ problem. It’s an ‘and’ problem,” said Jeffrey Goldmeer (pictured), Director of Energy Transition Technology Strategy and Global Hydrogen Leader at GE Vernova, during the hydrogen panel. “We need each of these technologies, because each country is on its own decarbonization journey. There will not be a singular global energy solution.”

Amory Lovins delivered the keynote address titled “Disruptive Energy Futures.” (Photo by Lori M. Nichols)

2024 E-ffiliates Retreat Poster Awards

Deloitte Research Poster Award

Debra Keiser / “Application of a Structural Descriptor and Unsupervised Learning Algorithms to Analyze Molecular Models of Disordered Calcium Silicate Hydrate Gels” –Advised by Claire White

Worley Research Poster Award

Tubagus Aryandi Gunawan / “Towards Net-Zero Indonesia: Clean Nickel Production” – Advised by Chris Greig, the Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

2024 E-ffiliates Retreat: Tackling Industrial Decarbonization

At the eleventh annual Princeton E-ffiliates Partnership Retreat, leaders from academia, industry, non-profits, and government gathered to talk about solutions for heavy industry decarbonization. The industrial sector is responsible for almost one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, yet progress to decarbonize this ‘hard-to-abate’ sector has lagged behind efforts in the transportation and residential sectors.

In his keynote address, Paul Majsztrik, Program Manager for the Energy- and Emissions-Intensive Industries within the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office, emphasized the opportunities and challenges of low-carbon industry. While the wide range of manufacturing processes and complex supply chains inherent to the industrial sector makes a one-size-fits-all approach to decarbonization nearly impossible, Majsztrik said he sees industrial decarbonization as an opportunity for companies to transform their businesses in a way that provides a strategic advantage.

The day’s panels homed in on the barriers to decarbonization in specific industries, including cement and concrete and iron and steelmaking. For example, panelist Isabelle Rojas, who supports DOE as a senior principal scientist and program supervisor at Energetics, discussed how the use of alternative, sustainable building materials over tried-and-true technologies is a challenge with existing building codes and standards. Yet Rojas pointed to commitments like the U.S. government’s Buy Clean initiative that could be key to kickstarting markets and increasing acceptance of sustainable building materials.

Throughout the day, speakers and panelists emphasized the importance of sustained support for research and development and partnership-building on the pathway to low-carbon industry.

“Industrial decarbonization is an incredibly complex problem that requires extensive collaboration, and I think it’s clear that we are standing at the beginning of the challenge, not the end,” said Claire White. “But I hope that the conversations we’ve begun are the start of some meaningful collaborations to push forward on the road to net-zero industry.”

Left: Debra Keiser, a graduate student in chemistry, receives the Deloitte Research poster award from Barry Rand and Robert Kumpf, a managing director with Deloitte Consulting.

Right: The retreat’s keynote speaker, Paul Majsztrik, who received a Ph.D. in chemistry and materials from Princeton University in 2008, speaks with Claire White (Photos by Lori M. Nichols)

A Focus on Industry Engagement

Princeton E-ffiliates Partnership was formed to foster collaboration between industry and academic experts to accelerate the development and implementation of innovative energy and environmental solutions. The program added two members during the 2023-2024 academic year. E-ffiliates members represent key enablers of the clean energy transition from across the value chain, from financial services and consulting companies to technological innovators and manufacturers.

CubicPV

CubicPV is a solar technology company focused on developing tandem solar modules. As a member of E-ffiliates, CubicPV will continue a collaboration with Barry Rand to improve the durability, performance, and manufacturability of tandem solar devices. The collaboration began as one of the inaugural projects supported through the Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners, for which the team is exploring ways to prevent or reduce corrosion in metal-halide perovskite solar modules.

RainIons

RainIons is an early-stage climate tech firm focused on developing an innovative technology for reducing noxious and greenhouse gas emissions. In early testing, the firm has demonstrated a proprietary technology capable of upcycling the heat, pressure, and moisture present in the exhaust stream of point-source carbon emitters to capture carbon dioxide, particulate matter, and nitrogen oxides. As an E-ffiliates member, RainIons will collaborate with researchers at Princeton to continue characterizing and refining the underlying mechanism behind the technology’s carbon and air pollutant capture abilities, with a goal of achieving a complex, functional prototype.

(stock.adobe.com)

Tech Talks

Through E-ffiliates, the Andlinger Center convenes member organizations, industry experts, Princeton faculty, and government entities to discuss emerging energy and environmental technologies and ideas, including:

Building Energy Management: May 2024

Water-Energy Nexus: Feb. 2024

Digital Carbon Footprint: Jul. 2023

Carbon Recycling and Valorization: Apr. 2023

Energy Systems Transition Materials: Jan. 2023

Direct Air Capture: Jul. 2022

Hydrogen: Jan. 2022

Charting the Future of Clean Energy

Deloitte, the world’s largest professional services firm, has continued its collaboration with the Andlinger Center. Center researchers Chris Greig and Eric Larson are engaged in multiple studies related to the planning and optimization of emerging energy technologies.

Hydrogen

Deloitte supported a study to understand how best to proceed with scaling a clean hydrogen market. The Andlinger Center had the support of non-resident fellow Anthony Ku. Over 50 semi-structured hour-long interviews and two workshops with senior-level individuals were conducted from organizations across the primary hydrogen value chain, supporting ecosystem, and investment community. The team concluded that in order to realize hydrogen’s potential as a clean fuel, governments must clarify how hydrogen fits into a future clean energy system, resolve ‘chicken-and-egg’ bottlenecks that arise when stakeholders take a wait-and-see approach to shared infrastructure and supply chain development, and find ways to harness the expertise and infrastructure of existing companies in the gray hydrogen value chain while avoiding institutional inertia and promoting innovation.

Carbon Capture, Transport, and Storage

Deloitte collaborated to investigate optimized carbon capture, transport, and storage infrastructure designs, with a case study for Louisiana. The team was led by Larson. In one paper, they estimated the cost of retrofitting existing industrial facilities with carbon capture systems based on the size and concentration of CO2 in emission streams. A second paper quantified the significant cost benefits and reduced land requirements when multiple industrial carbon capture facilities share transportation and storage infrastructure. The paper also examined implications for social and environmental justice communities of pipeline routings that would minimize transecting these communities.

Converting Clean Energy Ambitions to Reality

Worley, a global professional services company of energy, chemicals and resources experts continued and expanded its collaboration with Chris Greig, Elke Weber, and Jordana Composto, a graduate student in psychology.

From Ambition to Reality 4 and Summit

A cornerstone of the collaboration between Worley and the Andlinger Center has been From Ambition to Reality, a series of thought leadership papers that identify the paradigm shifts in infrastructure delivery practices that are necessary for bridging the gap between ambitious net-zero targets and current progress.

The fourth installment in the series, released in September 2024, investigates the role of trust/distrust in either catalyzing or obstructing the energy transition. The paper examines how trust can be built or destroyed between different stakeholder groups and puts forth initial ideas on how to create a framework for developing or restoring durable trust between energy transition actors. The importance of trust developed in From Ambition to Reality 4 was in part initiated through conversations between energy transition leaders at the From Ambition to Reality Summit held in September 2023, which was itself an outcome from the series’ third installment. The multi-day event convened experts from private, public, non-profit, government, and academic sectors to engage in candid conversations about the challenges of delivering energy infrastructure at the speed and scale required to reach net-zero climate goals. The participants identified an existing trust deficit between stakeholders involved in delivering projects as a major speed-limiting factor for achieving net-zero ambitions.

Net Zero at the Speed of Trust

Inspired by the discussions at the 2023 From Ambition to Reality Summit, a new research collaboration was conceived by PIs Weber, Greig, and David Miller, director of Princeton’s Faith & Work Initiative, to further develop the notion of an Infrastructure for Trust, which would explore the enabling conditions for a framework under which durable trust can be systematically established and maintained. The initial program started in the second half of 2024 and will run through 2025.

Net-Zero Stakeholder Survey

Ideas surrounding trust in From Ambition to Reality 4 were also informed by the results of the Net-Zero Stakeholder Survey (2023 and 2024), developed by Weber, Composto, and Greig to gauge stakeholder perceptions of the progress made on key paradigm shifts for net-zero energy infrastructure delivery. Results from the first year indicated that while stakeholders reported that positive progress was made to invest in a wider range of lower emissions energy technologies, they generally felt that little or no progress was being made on efforts to broaden the idea of value to include social and environmental outcomes in addition to economic ones. The team is continuing to administer the survey annually to track progress over time. For example, preliminary results from the 2024 survey suggest that respondents have seen modest progress on efforts to standardize approaches to net-zero infrastructure delivery but little progress on other shifts.

The Five Shifts as illustrated in the Net-Zero Stakeholder Survey.

Zero-Carbon Technology Consortium

In 2022, Jesse Jenkins, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, launched an industry-academic coalition to evaluate novel low-carbon energy technologies. Current members of the consortium, who are also members of E-ffiliates, include Google, GE Vernova, and Breakthrough Energy. Over the past year, researchers supported by the consortium have published high-impact research on a variety of topics related to climate policy and emerging clean energy technologies.

Rethinking Clean Energy Purchasing

Google and the Zero-Carbon Technology Consortium supported research about the emissions impacts of various strategies for buying clean energy. Publishing their findings in Joule, the researchers found that today’s most common approach to clean energy procurement, known as annual or volumetric matching, had little impact in reducing long-term, system-wide emissions in the U.S. Under the volumetric approach, companies can claim to be decarbonized by procuring enough clean energy to match their annual energy usage, effectively counting an excess of solar or wind power produced in some hours to cover deficits in other periods.

Of the strategies ZERO Lab studied, only hourly or 24/7 clean energy procurement was effective in lowering long-term emissions. Under an hourly matching approach, companies must procure clean energy each hour to match their real-time energy consumption. The researchers said the approach was effective because it requires companies to invest in either energy storage or clean, firm energy sources in order to reduce the emissions they cause by operating outside of the times when solar and wind resources are not generating electricity. As a result, hourly procurement not only ensures consumption is matched, hour-by-hour, by generation from clean resources, it also accelerates deployment of nascent clean energy technologies like long-duration energy storage or advanced geothermal energy. This early market demand helps nextgeneration technologies achieve commercial liftoff and come down in price, paving the way for wider adoption.

Flexible Enhanced Geothermal Systems

Supported by the Consortium and in collaboration with Fervo Energy, researchers studied the value that enhanced geothermal systems can provide to the grid by operating flexibly to meet dynamic energy demands. Enhanced geothermal systems involve drilling deep into impermeable rock and using hydraulic fracturing to create a network of fractures used to circulate and heat fluids. Because of the rocks’ impermeability, the subsurface network of fractures can function as a type of energy storage system if operators alter how fast they inject and extract fluid from the reservoir.

This inherent flexibility could greatly increase the value of enhanced geothermal energy to a decarbonized grid dominated by intermittent resources such as solar and wind. With flexible operations and continued cost declines, the researchers found that geothermal energy could provide up to 100 gigawatts of clean energy capacity to the western U.S., which is greater than the capacity of the country’s existing nuclear fleet.

Hydrogen Tax Credit: One Year Later

In December 2022, researchers supported by the Consortium published one of the first warnings that a tax credit for clean hydrogen production established by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 could actually increase carbon emissions without careful guidelines. As such, they proposed a “Three Pillars” framework to ensure that the tax credit would accomplish its aims of spurring low-carbon hydrogen production. One year later, in December 2023, the U.S. Treasury Department released a set of proposed regulations that largely align with the Three Pillars framework. Although the regulations have yet to be finalized, the criteria could ensure that the growing hydrogen economy is aligned with a clean energy future.

A diagram illustrating the enhanced geothermal approach employed by Fervo Energy. (Courtesy of Fervo Energy)

Jesse Jenkins speaks at an event in Maeder Hall Auditorium.

A

Ana Claus, right, a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering, looks up at her surroundings at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

group of students visited the facilty with Claire White in the fall of 2023. (Photo courtesy of Yiming Qiu / NIST)

education

At the Andlinger Center, we seek to motivate and empower current and future energy leaders with the knowledge, skills, and experiences they need to guide the world toward a sustainable energy future.

The Andlinger Center’s interdisciplinary education program unites students, researchers, and professionals from all backgrounds and interests around the shared mission of securing our planet’s energy and environmental future. Through the center’s varied and vibrant offerings, from challenging courses to meaningful research experiences, present and future generations of leaders can broaden their perspectives, expand their skill sets, and identify where they can have the greatest positive impact on the global energy transition.

Our educational program is rooted in the understanding that energy and environmental issues intersect with every discipline and impact nearly every aspect of today’s society. As such, we strive to impart relevant knowledge, training, and information to everyone with a stake in the planet’s continued well-being.

“Seeing our students grow through their experiences at the Andlinger Center gives me confidence in the next generation’s ability to confront and solve the world’s energy and environmental challenges.”

– Elke Weber, Associate Director for Education at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment, and Professor of Psychology and the School of Public and International Affairs

 Built environment, transportation, and infrastructure

 Electricity production, transmission, and storage

 Fuels and chemicals

 Environmental sensing and remediation

 Energy and environmental systems analysis

 Decision and behavioral science, policy, and economics

 Environmental and climate science

132 certificate students have graduated from the Andlinger Center programs, focusing on these research areas (2014–2024) summer interns in 2024

awarded to graduate and undergraduate students (2023–2024)

Announcing the Minor in Sustainable Energy

In fall 2024, the Andlinger Center launched the new Minor in Sustainable Energy! The Minor offers undergraduates an in-depth understanding of current and future energy resources and the bi-directional relationship between energy technologies and society. With a great diversity of eligible courses, the Minor allows students to explore their unique interests, whether they be advanced studies into specific energy technologies or inquiries into energy policy, entrepreneurship, or climate science. At its core, the Minor is designed to equip future leaders with hands-on, multi- and interdisciplinary knowledge and tools that will allow them to solve current and future energy and environmental challenges.

With the launch of the Minor, the Andlinger Center will transition away from its current certificate program offerings. In the 2024-2025 academic year, students may enroll in the Minor in Sustainable Energy. Those who are currently in a certificate program have the option to remain in one of two existing programs: the Program in Sustainable Energy and the Program in Technology and Society: Energy Track.

Class Day Celebration and Senior Thesis Prize

progress in your careers,” said McCulloch, who is also the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment.

My classes helped me understand how wide-reaching environmental problems are.”

–Reese Knopp

The Andlinger Center celebrated 18 graduating seniors at its annual Class Day ceremony. Seventeen students received certificates from the Program in Sustainable Energy, and one student received a certificate from the Program in Technology and Society: Energy Track.

Iain McCulloch, director of the Andlinger Center, congratulated each of the students and thanked their families for supporting them during their time at Princeton. “We hope the knowledge and experience you’ve gained at Princeton will benefit you as you

At the ceremony, mechanical engineering student Reese Knopp was awarded the Senior Thesis Prize in Energy and the Environment. Advised by Luc Deike, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, Knopp’s thesis explored how air bubbles in water can pick up microplastics as they rise to the surface, and then eject those microplastics into the air when they burst.

Knopp, recipient of a certificate from the Program in Technology and Society: Energy Track, credited the courses she took for the certificate as a key motivator for pursuing a thesis that not only dove into the world of fluid dynamics but also articulated the implications of her work to a broad audience. “A lot of the classes I took looked at the intersection between society and the environment,” Knopp said. “They helped me understand that it’s not enough to just create a technological solution; you have to think about how that technology will impact people, as well as how people might impact the development of that technology.”

Above: (Illustration by Bumper DeJesus)

Right: Reese Knopp is congratulated by Elke Weber during the Class Day award ceremony held in Maeder Hall Auditorium.

(Photo by Lori M. Nichols)

Course Highlights

During the 2023-2024 academic year, 11 courses were offered through the Andlinger Center, while an additional 21 courses were cross-listed with the center. Courses covered a wide range of topics, including the scientific and technical challenges as well as policy and ethical implications of energy and environmental solutions.

New! - Membrane Separations for Energy and the Environment

Ryan Kingsbury, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, taught a new course on membrane technologies during the fall semester. Students in the course explored the fundamentals of selective membranes and their applications to water purification, waste treatment, and clean energy processes. Through field trips to treatment plants and a final project that required students to conduct market research on existing membrane technologies, students gained first-hand experience into the role of membranes in underpinning many sustainability solutions.

Engineering the Climate: Technical and Policy Challenges

In the spring, Egemen Kolemen, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and staff research physicist at PPPL, led a seminar on the science, engineering, policy, and ethics of climate engineering. Students explored the scientific basis of deliberate human interventions in the climate system, including carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management, as well as the policy and ethical implications of such strategies for combating the effects of climate change.

Informing the Future of Offshore Wind Energy

In 2023, Princeton University joined the New Jersey Wind Institute Fellowship Program. The year-long fellowship program, sponsored by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, offers opportunities for Princeton graduate and undergraduate students from across the STEM, social sciences, and humanities fields to undertake projects related to offshore wind. Four students were chosen to represent the first Princeton cohort:

Avery Barnett, graduate student in public and international affairs / “Resilience of Offshore Wind Technologies Under Extreme Weather Events in New Jersey and the PJM Interconnection”

Nicholas Conlin, graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering / “Coastal Boundary Layer Effects on Offshore Wind Production in New Jersey”

Mian Liao, graduate student in electrical and computer engineering / “Advanced Power Electronics for Impedance-based Stability Analysis of Offshore Wind Power Systems”

Hannah Hata Williams, graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering / “Relative Impacts of Environmental Factors on Finite Offshore Wind Farms”

Mian

and

,

presented their research at the annual Wind Institute Research Symposium held at Kean University. The 2024 Wind Institute Research Symposium provided the students an opportunity to showcase their projects and network with representatives of the offshore wind industry, government, and academia. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Liao

Hannah Hata Williams, Avery Barnett,

Nicholas Conlin

Students, along with Ryan Kingsbury, visited a historic water treatment facility in New Brunswick, NJ, as part of the new course.

Uniting the Next Generation of Energy Leaders

Vinay Konuru had not always planned to study the energy sector. But a chance encounter with a book — The Grid by Gretchen Bakke — following his freshman year at Princeton convinced him, a student in electrical and computer engineering, that solving climate change would be the defining challenge of his generation.

As a result, Konuru joined the Princeton University Energy Association (PUEA) during his sophomore year and spearheaded the organization’s Fall 2022 conference, titled Toward a Cleaner Future. After speaking with the clean energy leaders at the event, Konuru was encouraged to think critically about future energy and environmental challenges, such as the energy impacts of blockchain and the development of next-generation fuels.

Following his work on the conference, Konuru was elected president of PUEA, and he jumpstarted initiatives that put the learning and skill-building needs of its student members at the forefront. Under Konuru’s leadership, PUEA launched the inaugural issue of the Princeton Energy Journal, a student-led publication featuring deep dives into a range of energy topics such as the future of battery technologies and public discourse around nuclear fission.

He also forged a collaboration with the city government of New Orleans to help apply for a grant that would provide the city with electric vehicle charging stations in historically underserved areas. While the initial application was unsuccessful, Konuru said it taught him and the members of PUEA the skills and processes needed to make meaningful differences in the clean energy transition.

“One piece of advice I’d give to students is to not be afraid to take risks,” Konuru said. “Princeton is very good at supporting students who want to try new things. Some of the initiatives I’ve worked on that seemed like risks at the time have developed into some of the best communities I’ve ever been a part of.”

Modeling PFAS and Studying Rooftop Solar

Amélie Lemay, a civil and environmental engineering student, tackled two grand energy and environmental challenges during her undergraduate career. For her senior thesis, advised by Ian Bourg, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, Lemay developed computer simulations to investigate how PFAS contaminants behave at the boundary where water meets the air.

For her junior paper, Lemay worked with Barry Rand, professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and Sigurd Wagner, professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering, to understand the drivers of rooftop solar installations across the U.S. Supported by the Andlinger Center, Lemay presented her findings at the 2023 IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

In fall 2024, Lemay began a Ph.D. program in civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Amélie Lemay (Photo by Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy)

Vinay Konuru on the steps of Robertson Hall.

Andlinger Center Summer Internships

The Andlinger Center awarded internship funds to undergraduate students to support their work on 23 different energy- and environment-related research projects during summer 2024. Through the Andlinger Center’s internship program, undergraduates have the opportunity to work with Princeton faculty as well as non-profit and government organizations to gain firsthand knowledge on a diverse range of topics, from engineering microorganisms for energy applications to customizing large language models for environmental research.

The student internship program is supported by the Peter B. Lewis Fund for Student Innovation in Energy and the Environment and the Dede T. Bartlett P03 Fund for Student Research in Energy and the Environment. The program is also supported by Learning and Education in Service (LENS), a Princeton University commitment to ensure that all undergraduates have the opportunity to participate in a summer internship with service and social impact.

Built environment, transportation, and infrastructure

Ariane Adcroft (’26, MAE) / Associate Professor Forrest Meggers / Experimental Cooling Systems and Materials Research

Blake Brown (’27, COS) / Professor Claire Gmachl / Disordered Hyperuniform Meta-surfaces for Radiative Cooling

Electricity production, transmission, and storage

Rebecca Chleboski (’26, ECE) / Professor Barry Rand / Stacked Organic/Inorganic Hole Transport Layers for Halide Perovskite Solar Cells

Calvin Nguyen (’25, ECE) and Eric Chen (’25, ECE) / Associate Professor Minjie Chen / Power Electronics for Piezoelectric Soft Robots

Hennessy Soto (’27, MAE) / Associate Professor Kelsey Hatzell / Tailoring Materials for Electrochemical Separations

Fuels and chemicals

Maia Abiani (’26, MAE) / Professor Michael Mueller / Evaluating Ammonia Combustion Concepts

Anherutowa Calvo (’27, CBE) / Assistant Professor Jonathan Conway / Engineering Extremely Thermophilic Cellulolytic Organisms and Enzymes for Biofuel Production

Claire Deguzman (’27, CBE) / Associate Professor José Avalos / Microbial Engineering for Energy and the Environment

Luc Harbers (’25, MAE) and David Wang (’27, MAE) / Associate Professor Egemen Kolemen / Delve into Liquid Metal Research, Design, and Development

Eva Reed (’26, CBE) / Assistant Professor Emily Davidson / Characterization and Optimization of Sequence-defined Liquid Crystal Phase Behavior Towards Energy-efficient Elastocaloric Response

Carson Repins (’27, CBE) / Assistant Professor Michele Sarazen / Toward Efficient Bifunctional Catalysts for Sustainable Fuel Production

Arjun Shetty (’27, MAE) / Professor Yiguang Ju / Ammonia Combustion for Power Generation

Kaya Unalmis (’25, ECE) / Associate Professor Egemen Kolemen / Optimizing Fusion Reactors with a Data-based Approach

Left: Ariane Adcroft, a mechanical and aerospace engineering undergraduate, ensures water flows properly through hoses on a makeshift heat pump in Forrest Meggers lab. Right: Vibha Srinivasan, an electrical and computer engineering undergradate, conducts her summer work for Eric Larson’s group in the lobby of the Andlinger Center.

summer internships

Environmental sensing and remediation

Ashley Holmes (’26, CEE) / Moonshot Missions / Drinking Water and Wastewater Utilities

Jessica Wang (’27, CBE) / Professor A. James Link / Engineering of Thermostable Plastic Degrading Enzymes

Energy and environmental systems analysis

Chirayu Nimonkar (’26, COS) and Andrew Yang (’26, ORF) / Senior Research Scientist Chris Greig / Applying Data Science to Model Realistic Net-zero Infrastructure Deployment Pathways

Abigail (Abbie) Cheng (’27, CEE) / Assistant Professor Jesse Jenkins / Estimate Impacts of EPA Greenhouse Gas Standards on Power Plants on Retail Electricity Prices

Vibha Srinivasan (’26, ECE) / Senior Research Engineer Eric Larson / Speeding up the Energy Transition: What is the Capacity of Current Domestic and International Clean Energy Supply Chains, and How Do We Ramp Up?

Decision and behavioral science, policy, and economics

Aaron Dantzler (’25, ORF) / Professor Ronnie Sircar / Impact on Daily Electricity Grid Operations of Carbon Pricing

Ava Fonss (’27, ORF) / American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy / Residential Electrification

Christina Li (’26, ORF) / Office of Energy Market Regulation / Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Joe Wahba (’26, SPI) / Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) / Western Electricity Markets

Environmental and climate science

Vishva Ilavelan (’26, COS) / Professor Z. Jason Ren / Large Language Model Applications for Environment, Sustainability, and Energy

Optimizing Energy Systems

While Lilianna Gittoes came to Princeton without a specific intention to study sustainability, coursework during her first year not only piqued her interest in the subject but also kicked off an undergraduate career dedicated to solving energy challenges.

Gittoes, an operations research and financial engineering student, participated in two internships through the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment advised by Eric Larson, senior research engineer at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. In the first, Gittoes collaborated with Larson’s Energy Systems Analysis Group to plan carbon transportation infrastructure in southeastern Louisiana. Working with specialized software programs, she sought an optimal configuration for infrastructure development in the region, which could serve as a tool to guide investments from the public and private sectors.

Gittoes returned the following summer, this time investigating the potential for forestbased bioenergy in the southern U.S. to contribute to net-zero emissions targets. While bioenergy with accompanying carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is often touted as a negative emissions technology in which carbon emissions are actually removed from the atmosphere, Gittoes was surprised to find that was not always the case. Instead, a variety of environmental factors, such as future land use changes, upstream emissions, and even regional compositions of tree species, led to dramatically different lifecycle carbon footprints for BECCS facilities.

Gittoes appreciated how both projects allowed her to apply what she had learned through her coursework to real-world scenarios. “It was nice to know that the work I did went beyond our office in the Andlinger Center building,” Gittoes said. “I was not just being handed a project to work on for a summer. I was encouraged to be creative in my problem-solving, and I had the space I needed to think critically about the problems I was working on.”

Gittoes’ internships were supported by the Peter B. Lewis Fund for Student Innovation in Energy and the Environment, as well as Learning and Education in Service (LENS) funds.

Lilianna Gittoes on the rooftop balcony of Sherrerd Hall.

2024 Maeder Graduate Fellows Study Social Norms and

the Water-Energy

Nexus

Two students, Jordana Composto and Jinyue (Jerry) Jiang, were awarded the 2024–2025 Maeder Graduate Fellowship in Energy and the Environment. Composto and Jiang received the fellowship for their work, respectively, to understand how individuals and organizations respond to climate change and to analyze the role of water and wastewater treatment in catalyzing the energy transition.

Composto, advised by Elke Weber, studies how people perceive and interact with social norms, the collectively endorsed rules and expectations that guide attitudes and behaviors, particularly related to the role of organizations. She also examines how trust can influence the direction and speed of the energy transition. She investigates the level of trust that exists between stakeholders in the energy sector, where there are significant trust gaps, and how behavioral science interventions can help to build trust for emerging technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

Jiang, advised by Z. Jason Ren, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, is investigating the costs, opportunities, and feasibility of utilizing treated wastewater as a water source for the emerging hydrogen economy. Since many ideal locations for hydrogen production also correspond with areas of high water stress, Jiang said that integrating treated wastewater effluent into hydrogen production technologies could be an efficient and widely available way to deploy clean energy without significantly worsening water shortages.

The Maeder Graduate Fellowship is supported by the Paul A. Maeder ‘75 Fund for Innovation in Energy and the Environment.

Biofuels Specialist Earns Top Awards

José de Jesús Montaño López, a graduate student in chemical and biological engineering, was awarded the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, Princeton University’s top honor for graduate students. Montaño López, advised by José Avalos, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering and the OmennDarling Bioengineering Institute, studies methods for bioengineering yeast to produce isobutanol, a biofuel with the potential to replace fossil fuel-derived gasoline and jet fuel. For example, by integrating biosensors into yeast cells, Montaño López has been able to accelerate trait evolution and select strains with superior production of biofuels and other chemicals, a process that would take years in natural yeast but takes mere days in synthetic versions.

In addition to the Jacobus Fellowship, Montaño López received a top prize at the research convention Prototypes for Humanity, which was part of the COP28 climate conference held in Dubai. Montaño López and his team, including collaborators from Princeton and New York University Langone Health, won in the Energy, Efficiency, and Waste category for their work to optimize engineered microorganisms for biofuels production.

Jordana Composto and Jinyue (Jerry) Jiang at the Andlinger Center gardens. (Photo by Adena Stevens)

José de Jesús Montaño López receives the Jacobus Fellowship from Rodney Priestley, the Dean of the Graduate School. (Photo by Tori Repp/Fotobuddy)

Tackling Grand Energy and Environmental Challenges

At Princeton University’s Reunions celebration, Andlinger Center Director Iain McCulloch highlighted research underway at the center to secure a sustainable energy future for all. McCulloch emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of the center’s work, with faculty tackling challenges spanning materials science, chemical engineering, psychology, public policy, and more. He spotlighted Andlinger Center projects that exemplified the breadth of the center’s expertise in guiding the global clean energy transition, such as the Net-Zero America project, ongoing work related to heavy industry decarbonization, and new technologies for energy storage.

“These problems are important to solve for the future of humanity,” said McCulloch. “And they’re exactly the types of grand problems that we want to work on at the Andlinger Center — the ones that capture our imagination and the imaginations of our best students and researchers.”

Geo-exchange Systems for a Net-zero Campus

During Reunions, Forrest Meggers, associate professor of architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and Edward (Ted) Borer, director of Princeton’s energy plants, unveiled an exhibit at the Stadium Drive Garage that overviews Princeton’s newly installed geo-exchange system, which operates like a ‘thermal piggy bank’ to efficiently heat and cool buildings on campus. The geo-exchange system is a key component of Princeton’s plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2046.

Highlight Seminar Series

Monica Contestabile (October 2023), Nature Sustainability, “Collaborative Sustainability Research for Enhanced Societal Impact”

Gaurav Sant (November 2023), UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering, “Equatic: The Development of a Seawater-based Atmospheric Carbon Removal and Hydrogen Co-production Platform”

Sanat K. Kumar (February 2024), Columbia University, “Fragmentation Concepts Explain Nanoplastic Formation and Temporal Persistence”

Vijay Modi (March 2024), Columbia University, “How Will We Manage Future Load Peaks from Electric Heating in New York State?”

Gail Brager (April 2024), UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, “Experiential Design Schemas: Connecting People and Nature Through Architecture and Building Science”

Wintersession 2024

During Wintersession, a winter break program at Princeton created to teach students, faculty, and staff new skills and spark their passions, the Andlinger Center sponsored two events. In the first, Forrest Meggers led a tour of the Andlinger Center building, highlighting several of its innovative energy-savings features. The second, spearheaded by non-resident fellow Harry Warren, was a series of panels, site tours, and activities that presented to students a wide array of careers in clean energy technologies.

Forrest Meggers addresses Princeton alumni and families at a waiting area at Stadium Drive Garage during the Geo-exchange Reunions tour. Bottom right: Harry Warren looks up at wind turbines during a Wintersession tour at a facility in Atlantic City, N.J. (Photo by Lori M. Nichols)

andlinger center for energy and the environment 2023-24

Leadership and Staff

Iain McCulloch

Director, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Gerhard R. Andlinger ‘52 Professor in Energy and the Environment; Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Barry P. Rand

Associate Director for External Partnerships, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Z. Jason Ren

Associate Director for Research, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Elke U. Weber

Associate Director for Education at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment, and Professor of Psychology and the School of Public and International Affairs

Diane Carlino

Executive Director for Administration

Victoria Cleave

Assistant Director, BioLEC

Bumper DeJesus

Visual Communications Specialist

Diana Dudash

Program Administrator for E-ffiliates and Events

Robert Eich

Program Administrator for Research

Vivian Fuhrman

Assistant Director for External Partnerships

Sarah Jackson

Administrative Assistant

Lori Kinney

Financial Assistant

Brenda Mikeo

Business Manager

Colton Poore

Communications Specialist

Ashlee Prewitt-Crosby

Grants and Finance Manager

Moira Selinka

Program Manager, Education and Outreach

Charlie Sharpless

Assistant Director for Research

Faculty and Researchers

José Avalos

Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Emily A. Carter

Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director for applied materials and sustainability sciences at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)

Minjie Chen

Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

David Gates

Senior Research Scholar, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Managing Research Physicist, Advanced Projects Department Head, PPPL (on leave)

Chris Greig

Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Kelsey B. Hatzell

Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Jesse Jenkins

Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Ryan Kingsbury

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Egemen Kolemen

Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Staff Research Physicist, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)

Eric Larson

Senior Research Engineer, Energy Systems Analysis Group, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Christos Maravelias

Anderson Family Professor in Energy and the Environment; Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Chair, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Iain McCulloch

Director, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Gerhard R. Andlinger ‘52 Professor in Energy and the Environment; Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Forrest Meggers

Associate Professor of Architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Wei Peng

Assistant Professor of Public and International Affairs and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Barry P. Rand

Associate Director for External Partnerships, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Z. Jason Ren

Associate Director for Research, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Elke U. Weber

Associate Director for Education at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment, and Professor of Psychology and the School of Public and International Affairs

Claire E. White

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

External Advisory Council

Merrick G. Andlinger ’80 President Andlinger & Company, Inc.

Sally Benson

Professor, Energy Resources Engineering Stanford University (on leave)

Yet-Ming Chiang

Kyocera Professor of Ceramics Massachusetts Institute of Technology

David Eaglesham

Founder and Chief Technology Officer Electric Hydrogen

Menachem Elimelech

Roberto Goizueta Professor of Environmental and Chemical Engineering; Director, Environmental Engineering Program Yale University

Peter Green

Deputy Laboratory Director, Science and Technology; Chief Research Officer National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Jennifer Holmgren

Chief Executive Officer LanzaTech

Catherine McVay Hughes ‘82 President’s Council Ceres

Ralph Izzo

Former Chairman, President, and CEO PSEG

Paul A. Maeder ’75

Managing General Partner & Founder Highland Capital Partners

Linda F. Nazar, FRS, FRSC, Order of Canada

Waterloo Distinguished Research Professor, Senior Canada Research Chair in Solid State Energy Materials; Department of Chemistry and the Waterloo Institute of Nanotechnology University of Waterloo

Gregory H. Olsen

President GHO Ventures, LLC

Geeta Thakorlal

Executive Group Director, Information & Digital Delivery Worley

Matthew Tirrell

Dean and Founding Pritzker Director, Institute for Molecular Engineering University of Chicago Deputy Laboratory Director for Science Argonne National Laboratory

William H. Walton III ’74 P21

Managing Member and Co-Founder Rockpoint Group, LLC

Elizabeth Wilson

Professor of Environmental Studies; Director, Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society Dartmouth College

Executive Committee

Craig B. Arnold

Vice Dean for Innovation; Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

René A. Carmona

Paul M. Wythes ’55 Professor of Engineering and Finance; Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Emily A. Carter

Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director for applied materials and sustainability sciences at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)

Sir Steven C. Cowley

Director, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL); Professor of Astrophysical Sciences

Claire F. Gmachl

Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering; Head, Whitman College

Chris Greig

Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Peter R. Jaffé

William L. Knapp ’47 Professor of Civil Engineering; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Egemen Kolemen

Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Staff Research Physicist, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)

Christos Maravelias

Anderson Family Professor in Energy and the Environment, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Chair, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Denise Mauzerall

William S. Tod Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Public and International Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department

Iain McCulloch

Director, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Gerhard R. Andlinger ‘52 Professor in Energy and the Environment; Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Forrest Meggers

Associate Professor of Architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Anu Ramaswami

Sanjay Swani ’87 Professor of India Studies; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute; Director, M.S. Chadha Center for Global India

Barry P. Rand

Associate Director for External Partnerships, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Richard Register

Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Director, Princeton Materials Institute (PMI)

Z. Jason Ren

Associate Director for Research, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Gregory Scholes

William S.Tod Professor of Chemistry; Chair, Department of Chemistry

Sankaran Sundaresan

Norman John Sollenberger Professor in Engineering; Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Gabriel A. Vecchi

Professor, Geosciences and High Meadows Environmental Institute; Director, High Meadows Environmental Institute

Elke U. Weber

Associate Director for Education at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment, and Professor of Psychology and the School of Public and International Affairs

Claire E. White

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Mark A. Zondlo

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

andlinger center for energy and the environment 2023-24

Supporters

The Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University is grateful to the following supporters whose gifts help to realize the vision of the center. 20232024 donors are denoted with asterisks.

Gerhard R. Andlinger ’52 Founding Gift

James W. and Dede T. Bartlett to the Dede T. Bartlett P03 Fund for Student Research in Energy and the Environment*

John E. Bartlett ’03 to the Dede T. Bartlett P03 Fund for Student Research in Energy and the Environment*

Charles A. Bernheim ’57 to further the center’s mission*

John E. Cross ’72 and Mary Tiffany Cross to further the center’s mission*

Lydia B. and William M. Addy ’82 to establish the Addy/ISN North American Low Carbon Emission Energy Self-Sufficiency Fund to support innovative research, equipment, policy development, and teaching

Dwight W. Anderson ’89 to establish the Anderson Family Professorship in Energy and the Environment

Tia S. Barancik ’83 to establish the Class of 1983 Fund for Energy and the Environment

Solomon D. Barnett ’05 to further the center’s mission

Peter J. Bartlett ’77 and Erin T. Bartlett to further the center’s mission

Erik C. Blachford ’89 to further the center’s mission

Patricia A. and Dante G. Bonardi to the David P. Simons Fund for Energy and the Environment

Howard E. Cox, Jr. ’64 to the WEF/Young Global Leaders Executive Education Module

Nancy A. Curtin ’79 and John Stafford to establish the Nancy A. Curtin ’79 and John Stafford Research Innovation Fund

John O. Dabiri ’01 to establish the John O. Dabiri ’01 Family Fund for Excellence in Energy and Environmental Research

The de Carvalho-Heineken Family to establish the de Carvalho-Heineken Family Fund for Environmental Studies for faculty and student research

F. Clement Dinsmore, J.D. ’65 to further the center’s mission

John P. Drzik ’83 and Ann L. Thorsell ’83 to establish the John Drzik and Ann Thorsell Fund for Innovation

A. Donald Grosset, Jr. ’54 in memory of John E. Stauffer ’54

High Meadows Foundation to establish the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment Director’s Fund

Kerry L. and William F. Holekamp for equipment

Thomas W. Horton Family for equipment

Gerald P. Kaminsky to the David P. Simons Fund for Energy and the Environment

Fred W. Kittler, Jr. ’70 to further the center’s mission

Peter C. Klosowicz ’76 to establish the Peter C. Klosowicz ’76 Fund for Energy and the Environment for research and teaching

David T. Liu ’99 *04 to further the center’s mission

Sally Liu ’87 and Bay-Wei W. Chang ’87 to establish the Sally Liu ’87 and Bay Chang ’87 Fund for Energy and the Environment

David R. Loevner ‘76 and Catherine P. Loevner to support the Rapid Switch Initiative

Paul A. Maeder ’75 for construction of Maeder Hall and to establish the Paul A. Maeder ’75 Fund for Innovation in Energy and the Environment for graduate fellowships

Jay P. Mandelbaum ’84 to establish the Laurie and Jay P. Mandelbaum ’84 Fund for Energy and the Environment

Lisa Lee Morgan ’76 *79 for research in renewable energy

William N. Neidig ’70 and Christy E. Neidig to further the center’s mission

Nicholas J. Nicholas, Jr. ’62 to establish the Nicholas Family Fund for the Environment to advance public understanding of important issues related to energy and the environment

Nicholas G. Nomicos ’84 and Kathleen Connor Nomicos ’84 to establish the Nicholas and Kathleen Nomicos Class of 1984 Fund for the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment to advance public understanding of important issues related to energy and the environment

Gregory H. Olsen to establish the Gregory H. Olsen Postdoctoral Fellowship Fund

Sarah Finnie Robinson ’78 and Jackson W. Robinson to further the center’s mission

Mark F. Rockefeller ’89 to establish the Renee and Mark F. Rockefeller ’89 Fund for the Environment for faculty and student research

Ernest H. Ruehl, Jr. ’85 to establish the Ruehl Family Fund for the Environment for faculty and student research

Elchin A. Safarov and Dilyara Allakhverdova to further the center’s mission

Patrick and Mary Scanlan to further the center’s mission

Gloria G. and Karl F. Schlaepfer ’49 to further the center’s mission and to establish the Schlaepfer Family Fund for equipment

Richard and Enika Schulze Foundation for research

Erika Simons to the David P. Simons Fund for Energy and the Environment

Kent C. Simons ’57 to establish the David P. Simons Fund for Energy and the Environment

Alexander L. Smorczewski ’07 to further the center’s mission

Valerie Brown Stauffer to establish the John E. Stauffer ’54 Teaching Laboratories in the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Lewis W. van Amerongen ’62 to establish the Lewis W. van Amerongen ’62 Fund for Energy Research for equipment

Alex L. Volckhausen ’93, Sharon Volckhausen ’91, and Mrs. William A. Volckhausen to support the Rapid Switch Initiative

William H. Walton, III ’74 and Theodora D. Walton ’78 to establish the Theodora D. ‘78 and William H. Walton, III ‘74 Research Scientist Fund

Leigh Walzer ’81 to further the center’s mission

Ari I. Weinberg ’99 to further the center’s mission

Maura Wong ’88 and Kenneth Chen ’87 to further the center’s mission

Anonymous gifts for construction of the Andlinger Center building

Anonymous gift for environmental policy research

Anonymous gift for the highest priorities of the center, including research, equipment, and a visitors program

Anonymous gift for research

Anonymous gift to establish the Peter B. Lewis Fund for Student Innovation in Energy and the Environment for student projects, particularly field work and laboratory research

Anonymous gift to establish the Sustainability Fund for student research

Anonymous gift for research in carbon sequestration, solar energy, and fusion energy

Anonymous gift to establish the Parallax Fund for Energy and the Environment for faculty and student research

Anonymous gift to support the Rapid Switch Initiative

Where to Find Us

Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

86 Olden Street Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544

Email acee@princeton.edu

Phone 609-258-4899

Web https://acee.princeton.edu

LinkedIn @andlingercenter

Instagram @andlingercenter

X @andlingercenter

Facebook @andlingercenter

YouTube @andlingercenter

Front inside cover

Editor and Writer

Colton Poore

Designer and Photographer Bumper DeJesus

Contributing Editors

Diane Carlino, Vivian Fuhrman, Moira Selinka, and Charlie Sharpless

Contributing Writers

Liz Fuller-Wright, Scott Lyon

Contributing Photographers

Sameer A. Khan, Lori M. Nichols, Yiming Qiu, Tori Repp, Adena Stevens, and Frank Wojciechowski

Project Manager

Robert Eich

A look inside the clean rooms at the Andlinger Center.

Back inside cover

An upwards view of the Andlinger Center’s stairwell tower.

Back cover

Top: MAE undergraduates David Fu ‘25, Calvin Pham ‘26, Giovanna Nucci ‘25, Mikey Graham ‘25, and Sullivan Meyer ’24 work together in the Stauffer Teaching Lab at the Andlinger Center.

Left: During the PUEA 2024 Spring Conference, Jesse

as the

Right: Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow

Copyright © 2024 by The Trustees of Princeton University

In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity

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Non-Discrimination Statement

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Jenkins chats with Phil Giudice, who served

Special Assistant to the President for Climate Policy during the start of the Biden-Harris administration.

Yifan Rao holds one of her origami-inspired robots. (Photos by Bumper DeJesus)