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\n\u201cEmbedded in the mission of the institute is trying to make things better for the world by focusing on a problem we\u2019re all facing now, which is the need for transitioning our energy use,\u201d says ROSEI Director Ben Schafer<\/a>, who is the Willard and Lillian Hackerman Professor of Civil and Systems Engineering<\/a> at the Whiting School.<\/p>\n The urgency grows greater by the day. In August, the United Nations-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has convened since the late 1980s, issued a new report authored by hundreds of international climate scientists. In some of the starkest language ever to appear in IPCC reports, the scientists wrote that it is \u201cunequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.\u201d This warming is \u201calready affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe,\u201d observable \u201cin extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s new in the latest IPCC report is that [climate change\u2019s] warming impacts are worse and happening faster than we thought,\u201d says Johannes Urpelainen<\/a>, a ROSEI researcher and the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Professor of Energy, Resources and Environment at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. \u201cWe\u2019re already in a situation where we might blow past the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark in only 10 years, in the early 2030s. And that\u2019s scary. It means we need to urgently act.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ROSEI was made possible by a $20 million gift from the estate of trustee emeritus and alumnus Ralph S. O\u2019Connor \u201951, and will serve as the catalyst of a new $75 million, 10-year total investment by the Whiting School and the university in energy-related research and education.<\/p>\n An entrepreneur, civic leader, and philanthropist, O\u2019Connor gave generously to Johns Hopkins for decades, providing financial aid, endowed faculty chairs, athletics, art, awards for undergraduate entrepreneurs, and facilities. Tying in with ROSEI\u2019s mission, a Homewood campus recreation center named after O\u2019Connor is part of the largest solar installation on campus, boasting nearly 1,400 solar panels on its roof and that of the adjacent Newton White Athletic Center.<\/p>\n Besides the Leadership Council, an initial slate of 26 faculty members is affiliated with ROSEI, collectively bridging a rich array of disciplines. Expanding its expertise and influence, ROSEI will also partner with other Johns Hopkins divisions, including the Applied Physics Laboratory, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the School of Advanced International Studies, as well as government agencies in the Washington, D.C., area.<\/p>\n Schafer explains that ROSEI is organized so that roughly two-thirds of its resource allocation and activities will center on enabling technologies for renewable energy. Within that realm, wind and solar are the primary areas for ROSEI faculty members, along with transforming conventional fossil fuel use. The remaining one-third of ROSEI\u2019s overall efforts will center on equitable implementation, zeroing in on the energy policy, marketplace development, and education that will need to happen for sustainable energy to successfully turn the tide against climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to attack the full breadth of the problem,\u201d says Schafer.<\/p>\n \u201cROSEI is a unique way for Johns Hopkins to lead in addressing the challenges in sustainability in an interdisciplinary way,\u201d says Chao Wang<\/a>, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering<\/a>, and an affiliated researcher in ROSEI. \u201cWe want to be very synergistic, taking advantage of what people here on campus are good at.\u201d<\/p>\n Susanna Thon<\/a>, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering<\/a>, and a member of the ROSEI Leadership Council, adds, \u201cWe\u2019re reimagining renewable energy at Johns Hopkins by connecting all these researchers together and building something bigger than the sum of its parts.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That said, solar has significant room for improvement. For instance, conventional, photovoltaic solar power \u2014 provided by those rigid, blue-grayish panels arrayed in fields and on rooftops \u2014 has relied on the element silicon. As a semiconductor, silicon absorbs sunlight and transfers some of its energy to particles called electrons, the flow of which comprises electricity. The widely available commercial panels of today possess solar cells with about a 20% efficiency rate, meaning they convert 20% of the sunlight that strikes them into usable electricity, with much of the rest lost as heat. Even with anticipated advances, however, the theoretical maximum for conventional silicon cells tops out around 30% efficiency. \u201cWe\u2019re close, and that\u2019s it for silicon,\u201d says Thon. The efficiency of traditional solar panel also drops precipitously for light coming in at angles.<\/p>\n Thon\u2019s group at Johns Hopkins is looking to address both issues. A key approach is manipulating materials at the nanoscale level, at mere billionths of a meter, in order to produce novel properties. For instance, so-called quantum dots \u2014 nano-specs of semiconductor material \u2014 can be grown to differing sizes and arranged to capture more colors of sunlight than bulk silicon, thus reaping energy more efficiently.<\/p>\n Another approach along these lines is to devise solar cells that only absorb infrared light but let visible through. Panels made of this material would be nearly invisible and thus could go right over windows, greatly expanding places where solar generation can occur. One such place is glazing windows, especially of cars, trucks, and other transportation vehicles, which are still dominantly powered by fossil fuels and represent a tremendous source of global carbon emissions.<\/p>\n Thon and her close colleagues are collaborating with other engineers and chemists across the university to realize all this potential. \u201cI\u2019ve already met lots of people at other schools at Johns Hopkins through ROSEI,\u201d says Thon, \u201cand it\u2019s much easier when you have this entity that forms these natural connections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\tA Renewed Push for Renewables<\/h2>\n
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Schafer and Urpelainen are two of ROSEI’s seven Leadership Council members, each of whom has contributed to bringing the institute to fruition and continues to guide initial investments.<\/p>\nCapturing the Sun\u2019s Blaze<\/h2>\n
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For their part, Thon and her group at Johns Hopkins are looking to revolutionize today\u2019s solar power by expanding the range of light it can collect and where its energy-reaping cells could go. The solar story so far has been one of great success, surging from about 1 gigawatt of capacity worldwide in 2000 to knocking on the door of 1 terawatt (1,000 gigawatts) today. (One gigawatt is enough to power approximately 250,000 average homes.)<\/p>\n