Session E17: Invited Session: Extreme Energy Efficiency

Using a Clean Energy Version of Moore's Law to Plan for the Extreme Efficiency of the Future

In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted a decade of exponential growth in the transistor density growth (and hence computing power) for integrated circuits that---with some modification---has held to the present day. In this talk, we discuss to what extent clean energy technologies are subject to similar laws of long term exponential improvement and how these improvement rates may be accelerating due to recent developments. We review a range of long term energy efficiency and technology productivity improvement trends ranging from lighting, televisions, refrigerators, HVAC, batteries, motors, power electronics and solar PV. After reviewing historical and recent trends, we discuss several factors that may lead to an acceleration of improvement rates in the clean energy technology sector. Finally, we discuss the Baumol effect which predicts how differential trends in technology productivity may affect trends in relative prices in the economy. We conclude with a discussion of some of the implications that Baumol's theories may have for the development of extreme levels of energy efficiency in the coming decades.   

Driving Extreme Efficiency to Market

The rapid development of extremely energy efficient appliances and equipment is essential to curtail catastrophic climate disruption. This will require the on-going development of products that apply all best-practices and that take advantage of the synergies of hybridization and building integration. Beyond that, it requires the development of new disruptive technologies and concepts. To facilitate these goals, in 2011 the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy launched the \textit{Max Tech and Beyond Design Competition for Ultra-Low-Energy-Use Appliances and Equipment}. Now in its third year, the competition supports faculty-lead student design teams at U.S. universities to develop and test new technology prototypes. This talk describes what the competition and the Max Tech Program are doing to drive such rapid technology progress and to facilitate the entry to the market of successful Max Tech prototypes. The talk also initiates a discussion of physicists' unique role in driving that technology progress faster and farther.