Robert Kostecki, a short-haired person poses for a headshot against a gray background.

Electrochemical energy storage

Chemical energy storage

Thermal energy storage

Mechanical energy storage

Systems, analysis, and markets

 A blue and grey building standing in a foggy forested landscape. The sun obscured behind smokey skies over a blue building. Exterior view of the Advanced Light Source against blue skies. Pink and orange clouds above a lithium brine landscape. Digitally generated image of various scientific graphs and charts hovering over a pair of outstretched hands. A full battery icon is centered in the image. Three scientists working together in a laboratory. Colorful scientific image A lab scientist wearing protective equipment holding out two glass viles. People looking at scientific instrumentation in a lab. Blurred car lights on a highway. Scientists holding a piece of machinery at a lab bench. Orange droplet of water and rippling pool. Blurred blue and orange lights in a tunnel. A flyover image of a salton sea lithium plant.

This StoryMap is an immersive multimedia backgrounder and summary of geothermal lithium extraction around the Salton Sea. The piece uses rich photos and illustrations to tell the story of how geothermal power works, why lithium is important and what makes extracting it possible there, and how a lithium extraction industry might fit in with the social and environmental context of the region.

Chemical engineer Peng Peng is helping develop a 100% renewable energy grid by investigating new materials for storing hydrogen gas, which can be used like a battery to stash power generated from solar and wind farms. Peng uses computer models to study how lab-scale material prototypes would perform at the industrial scale, and how much they would cost – accelerating the green hydrogen movement from discovery to deployment.

In this episode, we speak to a policy leader and a researcher about the history of piggy-banking power to spend it later, and how this field is evolving to help us prevent extreme weather-related blackouts, adopt more renewable energy, and build bigger, better, more environmentally responsible batteries.

 A flyover image of a salton sea lithium plant. A blue and orange electric vehicle lithium-ion battery pack. Dark-haired scientist in the center of the frame looks toward the camera. They are standing behind the clear glass of an encased automated lab. Two scientists pointing at a screen in the lab. Kristin Persson, a brown-haired person wearing a black dress, points at her electrolyte genome 3D visualizations. Colorful, abstract nebulous image.