{"id":31090,"date":"2021-06-22T11:18:54","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T15:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/case\/?page_id=31090"},"modified":"2025-08-11T12:14:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:14:46","slug":"future-energy-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/case\/research\/grand-societal-challenges\/future-energy-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"Future Energy Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Affordable, clean, and secure energy is essential for improving economic productivity, enhancing the quality of life, and protecting the environment. How to expand renewable energy, efficiently store, convert, and transport energy and ensure the reliability and efficacy of an aging distribution infrastructure are among the myriad engineering challenges here. Advanced structural engineering with expertise on new materials and geometries is needed to develop taller wind turbine towers capable of accessing more stable winds, offshore structures that are subject to evolving loadings under climate change, and hazard-resilient energy distribution infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>The mechanics of energy materials require complex multi-physics models that can capture the performance of energy conversion, storage and harvesting applications in consumer electronics, automotive, aerospace and defense applications. With the United States becoming the world\u2019s leading producer of oil and natural gas, policy discussions have shifted away from worries about rising prices to concerns about the safety of energy infrastructure, debates about the ideal energy production mix, and the overriding question of what changes in patterns of energy supply and demand will be needed to meet the global climate change challenge.<\/p>\n<p>Systems engineers recognize that energy infrastructure \u2013 including infrastructure for energy production, transmission, storage, and distribution \u2013 is challenged by transformations in energy supply, markets, and patterns of end use; issues of aging and capacity; and natural and human-made threats.<\/p>\n<p>Departmental research activities contribute to improving energy systems and technologies at all of these scales, in order to contribute to an efficient, reliable, and sustainable future energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RESEARCH EXAMPLES<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/faculty\/lauren-gardner\/\">Lauren Gardner<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/faculty\/takeru-igusa\/\">Tak Igusa<\/a>\u2019s research on autonomous (self-driving) vehicles is focused on safety and other public health impacts, including the reduction of pollutants due to electrification, shared mobility, and efficient integration with public transportation.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/faculty\/benjamin-schafer\/\">Ben Schafer<\/a>\u2019s research emphasizes the role of efficient large-scale structures in energy systems and infrastructure. Most recently, he has supported the development of higher hub height wind turbine towers, which can more efficiently harness wind and bring large-scale wind energy production closer to North American urban centers.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/faculty\/michael-shields\/\">Michael Shields<\/a>\u2019 research has long focused on the modeling, and recently focused on the experimental observation, of fluctuating stochastic wind and wave fields. These models\/experiments are used to characterize loads and excitations on structures such as wind turbines and off-shore energy harvesters.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Affordable, clean, and secure energy is essential for improving economic productivity, enhancing the quality of life, and protecting the environment. How to expand renewable energy, efficiently store, convert, and transport&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"parent":31065,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31090","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Future Energy Infrastructure - Department of Civil &amp; Systems Engineering<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/case\/research\/grand-societal-challenges\/future-energy-infrastructure\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Future Energy Infrastructure - Department of Civil &amp; Systems Engineering\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Affordable, clean, and secure energy is essential for improving economic productivity, enhancing the quality of life, and protecting the environment. 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