The Climate Innovation Collaboratory (CIC) was launched as a collaborative venture between CU Boulder and Deloitte, with the goal of translating cutting-edge climate research and data into meaningful climate solutions for businesses, organization, government agencies and communities.

This year three RASEI Fellows were recipients of awards to develop long-term engagements with Deloitte and expand access to critical climate data analytics, research and technology. These projects explore how the renewable energy grid can be built out to offer clean solutions for AI data centers and greater adoption of electric vehicles. 

RASEI Fellow Bri-Mathias Hodge is the principal investigator for a project titled “Interconnection Planning for Large Data Centers”. The goal is to develop a system planning tool to automate the initial processes needed for utilities to identify generation expansion, network reinforcement, and asset upgrades to meet the demands of new data centers. This work will help utilities, grid operators, and data center operators to deal with the expansion in the number and energy usage of data centers at the state, regional, and international levels. With the rise of AI, seen as the industrial revolution of the 21^st century, better understanding of how and where to place the data centers that are the engines driving this transformation will be critical.

RASEI Fellow Kyri Baker is the principal investigator for a project titled “Viability of long- and short-duration energy storage for AI Data Centers: Carbon, Cost, and Reliability”. This project combines the benefits of short and long duration energy storage to increase uptime, improve renewable energy utilization, and lower payback periods for AI data centers. By developing an optimization framework for data centers energy storage that leverages price and renewable energy forecasts to co-optimize cost, carbon, and resilience. Creation of a tool that optimizes data energy storage would have significant relevance to commercial and government clients seeking to lower data center consumption. 

RASEI Fellow Stephanie Weber is the principal investigator for a project titled “EV Infrastructure and local economic spillovers”. This project seeks to understand both how the construction of public electric vehicle charging infrastructure affects the surrounding areas as well as the tradeoffs associated with prioritizing equity in public charging locations. This will help inform state and national governments in the deployment of EV charging stations, to help incentivize EV adoption, and better understand the non-monetary impact of building EV chargers. 

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RASEI Graduate Jake Perez (Shaheen Group) and Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems Team Win 2024 Earthshot Prize to Transform Our Planet

Pioneering Energy Solution Converts Industrial waste Heat into Clean Electricity, Revolutionizing Global Energy Use

The Earthshot Prize, inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s “Moonshot” challenge in 1962 to land a man on the moon, was launched by Prince William in 2020 to search for, and scale, the most innovative solutions to the world’s greatest environmental needs. The aim is to unleash the urgent optimism required to accelerate and scale the environmental innovations that will repair and regenerate our planet. In 2024 there were over 5,000 nominations across five categories. One of the 20 winners was the Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS) team, including Jake Perez, a RASEI alum.

The ATS team was awarded the distinguished 2024 Earthshot “Fix Our Climate” prize for their transformative efforts against climate change. Chosen from 5,342 nominations across 141countries, this prestigious award was recently celebrated at the Earthshot Prize ceremony in Cape Town, that brought together global stakeholders in the fight to save the climate, including Prince William and Sir David Attenborough.

Waste heat is everywhere. Globally, of the energy used to power the industries that the world needs, such as cement and steel, approximately 60% is simply lost as waste. This wasted heat is the equivalent of the energy used by 4 billion homes, twice the number of homes that are on the planet. It is a huge economic and environmental cost. ATS’s revolutionary technology has the potential to redefine the energy sector by tackling the colossal challenge of industrial waste heat, by changing perspectives and considering this ‘waste heat’ as an untapped resource.

ATS has developed a solid-state approach to harness electricity from waste heat, eliminating the resilience on moving parts. This is a shift from traditional turbine-approaches that are complex, have a lot of moving parts and can often rely on hazardous chemicals. The ATS cartridge system is designed for seamless integration across a wide range of industrial applications. You can learn more about the team and the technology that they are developing on this short video.

Congratulations to Jake Perez, who is a RASEI alumni from the Shaheen Group, and the whole team at ATS! Excited to see what is next!

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Fourteen teams from across the University of Colorado competed for a combined total of $1.25M in startup funding grants as part of the 2024 Lab Venture Challenge (LVC). 

Judges from across the network heard Shark-Tank-Style pitches across two evenings, one for innovations in biosciences, and another for physical sciences and engineering. Two RASEI Fellows, Gregor Henze and Adam Holewinski were members of two of the successful teams, being awarded a total of $250k in startup funding ($125k each). 

Visit EcoValeric Innovation's website

RASEI Fellow Adam Holewinski was the lead for EcoValeric Innovations, built around an electrochemical process that converts biomass-based building blocks (levulinic acid) into commodity chemicals (4-hydroxyvaleric acid (HVA)), versatile intermediates for producing biodegradable plastics, biofuels and green solvents. This scalable, renewable process has the potential to significantly reduce the reliance on fossil fuels in a sustainable fashion. Also on the EcoValeric team were CEO and CTO . 

Visit Whisper Energy's website

RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze was the lead for Whisper Energy, built around the development of a wireless, battery-free sensor platform for smart buildings. Using machine learning to cut energy consumption by >30%, the platform can provide real-time data to optimize energy use, reduce emissions, and drive toward more energy efficient homes and commercial buildings. Developed through an initial $2M ARPA-E grant, it advances zero emissions in an economic and efficent manner. Gregor was supported by CEO and Technical lead . 

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