Nobel Prize Day: Reflections on the Advancement of Clean Energy

By Daniel Fahy

Last week, the prestigious Nobel Prizes were presented at a ceremony in Stockholm. They were established by Alfred Nobel (a chemist, engineer, and inventor) and first awarded in 1901. There are five categories: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. In his will, Alfred declared that the prizes should be awarded to the individuals who “have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”?[1] – a noble cause indeed.

While there is no direct prize for engineering, the wide-ranging scope of our discipline encompasses at least three of the five categories (literature and medicine may be a stretch!), and many previous Nobel Laureates have had a direct impact on the work that we do today at Qdot. For example, the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was jointly awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino "for the development of lithium-ion batteries."?[2]. This technology underpins components of our hybrid aerospace propulsion system.

While the link to physics and chemistry is apparent, the connection to the Nobel Peace prize may not be obvious upon first inspection. However, the award to Al Gore and the IPCC in 2007 for “their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” [3] was significant. Awareness of climate change is not new: Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius published about the ‘greenhouse effect’ in 1896 and scientists began studying the phenomenon in detail around the 1950’s?[4].

This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for "groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems" with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann "for the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming" and the other half to Giorgio Parisi "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales." [5]. This recognition of the importance of predicting the earth’s climate is another milestone in raising awareness of what is one the most difficult challenges facing humanity today: how can we transition to clean energy?

Prof. John Wettlaufer, member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, remarked about this year’s winners: “This work holds up a light for other scientists going forward”?[5]. The same holds true for all previous winners. Indeed, a monumental inter-disciplinary effort is needed in order to reduce emissions globally. With the predicted growth of aviation - 22% of all transport CO2 emissions by 2050 [6]- enabling clean flight is of paramount importance. This is our core philosophy at Qdot, and we believe that we have the potential to benefit humankind.

Bibliography

[1] NobelPrize.org, "Alfred Nobel’s will," Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2021, Fri. 3 Dec 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/prize-announcement/.

[2] NobelPrize.org, "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019," Fri. 3 Dec 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/.

[3] NobelPrize.org, "The Nobel Peace Prize 2007," Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2021, Fri. 3 Dec 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2007/summary/.

[4] [Online]. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15874560.

[5] NobelPrize.org, "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021," Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2021, Fro 3. Dec 2021. [Online]. Available: <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/summary/>.

[6] I. E. Agency, "Energy Technology Perspectives," 2020.

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