Moving to clean energy is key to combating climate change, yet in the past five years, the energy transition has stagnated. What’s the World Economic Forum doing about the transition to clean energy? Modelling the impact of fusion power — which has been compared to the discovery of fire and called “the last energy source humanity will ever need” — is challenging. DeepMind is also developing an AI pilot to control magnetic configurations, optimize fusion power and manage heat load for CFS’s SPARC reactor outside Boston. Early power-purchase agreements from end users such as Google, global energy company Eni and Microsoft signal rising industry confidence.
SDG 07: Affordable and Clean Energy
Can we get to fusion temperatures in a compact device? So instead of building ever larger tokamak devices, with huge costs and long timescales, we can see a way forward by increasing the magnetic field in more compact devices. The second tackled one of the toughest of the engineering challenges of a compact spherical tokamak – the shielding of the centre. Start-ups are also rising to the challenge – each with new, smaller solutions to the fusion problem. Lockheed Martin aims to build a compact fusion reactor in 10 years using a cylindrical design with magnets at each end.
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Read this piece to explore the industry’s potential. Meanwhile, the space economy is expected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035 as space-enabled technologies advance. For over half a century, microchips have paved the way for increasingly powerful electronic devices. Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles increased by 12% in March compared to the same month in 2023, data from Rho Motion shows. The easing of inflation is expected to drive demand recovery in emerging markets, while increasing integration of AI technology is likely to attract buyers to premium devices. The global smartphone market is set to rebound 3% in 2024, according to a new report from Counterpoint Research.
The long-due rebirth of the stellarator
That’s what the MIT Energy Initiative did using New England’s electrical grid as its case study. Benchmarking progress is essential to a successful transition. In 2018 energy intensity improved by 1.2%, the slowest rate since 2010. Commonwealth Fusion Systems will turn on a demonstration power plant, called SPARC, in 2027. More than 40 fusion startups are speeding towards this goal. Inside a doughnut-shaped machine called a ‘tokamak,’ hydrogen isotopes will collide at enormous speed, fusing into helium.
While nuclear fusion power offers the prospect of an almost inexhaustible energy source for future generations, it has also presented many so-far-insurmountable scientific and engineering challenges. In May 2023, Microsoft announced a deal with private US nuclear fusion company Helion to buy electricity made using fusion technology in 2028. A concerted effort towards fusion energy is the best way to solve the pressing need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure the supply of safe, clean energy long into the future. But fusion power can make the prospect of electric heating via heat pumps a zero-emission future.
‘Make or break’ moment for renewables targets, and other top energy stories
One day in the early 2030s, an engineer at a newly constructed power plant near Richmond, Virginia, in the United States, will press a button. What will it take to achieve net-positive AI energy by 2030? Bringing you weekly curated insights and analysis on the global issues that matter. Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses. CFS aims to bring its first grid-scale fusion plant online in the early 2030s and has already secured off-take agreements from Google and Eni, the latter valued at more than $1 billion. Combining TORAX with reinforcement learning or evolutionary search methods such as AlphaEvolve, AI agents can explore vast numbers of operating scenarios, identifying the most efficient pathways to net-energy production.
Tech and Innovation
The world’s mindset will shift from energy as a constraint to limitless energy, reshaping the geopolitics of energy in its wake. From the United States to the UAE, governments are investing serious resources — in fusion R&D and commercialization. Extending this 7% price reduction across all energy consumption in the United States could save consumers $119 billion per year and help curb inflation, as energy costs are a significant driver of consumer prices. But these energy sources are inherently variable; the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine.
Stellarators to return as key fusion energy research concept after tokamak focus. The global race for commercial fusion is on while the fusion-powered future is just beginning. As fusion power transforms the economics and geopolitics of energy, it will reshape industries and regions that need it most. Effective policies, private-sector action and public-private cooperation are needed to create fusion markets review a more inclusive, sustainable, affordable and secure global energy system.
Challenges for nuclear fusion researchers
Nuclear energy’s role in achieving a net-zero future, amongst other clean energy sources, has been a contentious issue. If we as a society are going to electrify home heating and other residential appliances, we need affordable, carbon-free electricity to power them. The transition to nuclear fusion in the coming decade could provide just that. The US Department of Energy has announced a breakthrough on nuclear fusion, achieving a net energy gain for the first time, in a fusion experiment using lasers.
South Korean nuclear fusion reactor sets new record
With fusion, our oceans contain enough energy for billions of years. And it will be the cheapest reliable power, and incidentally, the cleanest power too. By the time their children retire, fusion may be the world’s dominant energy source, ushering in an era of energy abundance, not scarcity. 4 ways the private sector can empower utility resilience amid severe climate risks The heat and pressure cause expansion but any contact with the reactor walls instantly cools it and halts the fusion reaction.
Some claim they can reduce the time it takes for waste to decay from half a million years to less than 500 years. Only 5 grams of this is high-level waste – about the same weight as a sheet of paper. SMRs could also help decarbonize heavy industry due to their ability to be located very close to the source of demand.
Drought and floods are causing problems for hydropower production across Latin America. Iran is implementing power blackouts as it struggles with a shortage of natural gas ahead of the winter. Developers have submitted plans for what would be the world’s biggest renewable energy project in Australia. Fusion research is taking place across various projects around the world but its use as an energy supply is considered to be many years away.
- Unlocking Latin America and the Caribbean’s clean energy future
- Only 5 grams of this is high-level waste – about the same weight as a sheet of paper.
- If we as a society are going to electrify home heating and other residential appliances, we need affordable, carbon-free electricity to power them.
- Factories could, for example, be located closer to the raw materials they rely on — or to the retail markets that goods are destined for — cutting down on transportation costs and carbon emissions.
Energy-related emissions are poised for a prolonged period of decline for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. These critical pillars of economic growth account for around a third of the country’s total carbon emissions. As global concern about climate change intensifies, China is undertaking significant measures to move its industrial sectors, including chemicals, steel and cement, towards sustainable development. Norway’s government has reached a $1.6 billion deal with seven private investors to take over much of the country’s gas export network.
How AI will help get fusion from lab to grid by the 2030s
- The easing of inflation is expected to drive demand recovery in emerging markets, while increasing integration of AI technology is likely to attract buyers to premium devices.
- The stellarator concept was an elegant solution to a fundamental problem in fusion research but it was challenging to build such a device to the precision needed.
- US electric utilities are predicting a surge of new demand from data centres, with some companies forecasting electricity sales growth several times higher than just a few months ago, Reuters reports.
- In 2013, Lockheed Martin showed how compact fusion could meet global electricity consumption (44,000,000 GWh per year) by 2045.
Can we get sufficiently beyond breakeven to produce electricity for the first time? One showed for the first time that it is feasible to build a low power (~100MWe) tokamak with a high power gain. On Earth we need to create similar conditions and hold a hot electrically-charged plasma at high enough pressure for long enough for fusion reactions to occur. Controlled fusion is the ideal long-term energy source, complimentary to renewables. Fusion – with no CO2 emissions, no risk of meltdown and no long-lived radioactive waste – is the obvious solution and has been for decades, but it is so hard to achieve.
The World Economic Forum’s Centre for Energy and Materials is driving the transition to a “fit for 2050” energy system. Investors are pouring money into these advanced nuclear technologies, and they’re progressing quickly. Innovative start-ups are developing ways to shrink the volume and toxicity of nuclear waste. But even with its small footprint, waste remains a key concern for the public, as it can take thousands of years to decay.
Type 1 Diabetes patients in England are to be offered a new technology described as an artificial pancreas. KSTAR is the prototype of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) based in France. However, there are still many challenges to overcome before the technology is commercially viable.
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