Announcing the 2023 JUMP Into STEM Final Competition Winners

Students and professors from across the country, an esteemed panel of judges, and program supporters from the U.S. Department of Energy converged in Golden, Colorado, for the 2023 JUMP into STEM Final Competition. The two-day event included networking sessions, professor collaboration opportunities, early-career support, tours of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) world-class facilities, and the main event: eight student-team presentations with unique solutions to the most pressing issues facing today's building industry.

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How Biden is wrong about the future of oil

Ten years. That’s how long President Biden gives the oil economy.

He’s only wrong by a few decades.

During his State of the Union speech earlier this month, Biden bashed oil companies for raking in huge profits while he also dramatically understated future demand for oil. “We’re going to need oil for at least another decade,” Biden said. “We’re going to need it. Production.”

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Bioplastics Could Solve a Major Pollution Problem

Our civilization is built on plastics. In 2014 alone, industry generated 311 million metric tons, an amount expected to triple by 2050, according to the World Economic Forum.* Yet less than 15 percent of it gets recycled. Much of the rest is incinerated, sits in landfills or is abandoned in the environment—where, being resistant to microbial digestion, it can persist for hundreds of years. Plastic debris accumulating in the ocean causes all kinds of problems, from killing wildlife when mistakenly ingested to releasing toxic compounds. It can even enter our bodies via contaminated fish.

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Bioplastics for a circular economy

Bioplastics — typically plastics manufactured from bio-based polymers — stand to contribute to more sustainable commercial plastic life cycles as part of a circular economy, in which virgin polymers are made from renewable or recycled raw materials. Carbon-neutral energy is used for production and products are reused or recycled at their end of life (EOL). In this Review, we assess the advantages and challenges of bioplastics in transitioning towards a circular economy. Compared with fossil-based plastics, bio-based plastics can have a lower carbon footprint and exhibit advantageous materials properties; moreover, they can be compatible with existing recycling streams and some offer biodegradation as an EOL scenario if performed in controlled or predictable environments.

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Demand for bioenergy production will increase, but must be achieved sustainably

Modern bioenergy is the largest source of renewable energy globally, accounting for 55% of renewable energy and over 6% of global energy supply. The Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario sees a rapid increase in the use of bioenergy to displace fossil fuels by 2030. Use of modern bioenergy has increased on average by about 7% per year between 2010 and 2021, and is on an upward trend. More efforts are needed to accelerate modern bioenergy deployment to get on track with the Net Zero Scenario, which sees deployment increase by 10% per year between 2021 and 2030, while simultaneously ensuring that bioenergy production does not incur negative social and environmental consequences.

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