Francois-Xavier Rongere admits he was skeptical when he joined forces with the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative. Would the return on investment be worth it?
“You have to take a risk first and then check what you get,” said PG&E’s research & development and innovation manager for gas operations. “What we got was a model that works very well for us. It’s a great way to leverage the different resources the university has, and it has been very positive in terms of the technologies it has identified.”
The Stanford Natural Gas Initiative is one of a growing number of college- or university-associated collaborations generating some of the brightest ideas—and the next generation of pioneers—for our nation’s energy future.
Along with the millions of students headed back to class this fall, natural gas is going to college, both as a research topic and as a fuel of choice for campuses across the nation looking to efficiently and economically serve their energy needs.
The NGI pairs more than 40 engineering, science, policy, economics and business research groups at Stanford University with industry and external stakeholder partners, including PG&E and Southern California Gas Company.
“NGI was set up in 2015 in recognition of how important natural gas was going to become in a decarbonizing world,” said Naomi Boness, Stanford NGI’s managing director. “Our framework brings together a diverse set of research groups in a collaborative manner to generate the knowledge needed to use natural gas to its greatest social, economic and environmental benefit.”
Leveraging membership funding, NGI provides grants to faculty members in each of its project areas, which include unconventional gas reservoirs, energy access, methane conversion to liquid fuels and chemicals, global markets and governance, and natural gas emissions and leakage. Data science and the hydrogen economy are new project areas that have been added after overwhelming requests from industry partners, Boness said.
One project now in the advanced development stage is a low-cost methane detection sensor placed on pipeline infrastructure, Boness said. “The benefit of having industry partners is to ensure that the research being conducted at Stanford is aligned with practical issues and problems that need solving out in the real world,” she said.
“[As a natural gas utility,] we give them the vision of the industry, and we help them understand the needs,” PG&E’s Rongere said. “They are eager to work with us on how the technology can be used.”
Across the country at Stony Brook University in New York, National Grid is playing a key role in the newly created Institute of Gas Innovation and Technology, or I-GIT, which convenes a consortium of academic and industry leaders to serve as an independent source of information and analysis on gas technology and related policies.
A collaboration between Stony Brook University’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center and the natural gas utility, I-GIT has identified five pillars of focus: a transition to low-carbon technologies through the introduction of various renewable sources, such as gas, hydrogen, fuel cell, geothermal and thermal heat; gas technology gap analysis; workforce training; development into an international consortium; and a focus on leveraging industry funding.
“We were ecstatic with National Grid as a founding member,” said Devinder Mahajan, I-GIT director, professor and graduate program director of the chemical and molecular engineering program at Stony Brook. “We are looking from the perspective of gas technology’s role as the bridge to zero carbon hydrogen in the near future. Moving forward, we need to have a very clear vision of what sets us apart from what other groups are doing. Our niche role nationally and globally is identifying gaps and finding solutions.”
Two of those gaps are the expansion of renewables at the end of the pipeline from a variety of different feedstocks and non-pipe alternatives, said Chris Cavanagh, principal program manager, customer innovation and development, National Grid.
What National Grid brings to the table is its direct contact with 3.5 million gas customers and its success in supporting the development of advanced energy technologies, Cavanagh said. “These include renewable fuels, fuel cells, heat pumps and alternative fuel transportation technology deployed through new and innovative customer programs, especially energy efficiency,” he said. “National Grid’s states are consistently in the top six for energy efficiency, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.”
One of I-GIT’s biggest accomplishments has been supporting the idea of dairy farmers as a producer of renewable natural gas for direct use and renewable electricity and bringing private and governmental stakeholders together to hear independent analysis of that potential, Cavanagh said. The first success is the availability of new cost sharing by the state through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
In addition, through a new partnership with the San Diego-based Center for Sustainable Energy to support, foster and accelerate development of clean and sustainable energy research, I-GIT is embarking on a project that feeds off the current high interest in hydrogen.
That project will explore a power-to-gas concept that stores excess wind and solar power as hydrogen, which would power a fuel cell or react with captured carbon dioxide to produce biomethane for distribution in existing natural gas networks to decarbonize fossil gas, Mahajan said.
Another project involves a biomass thermal conversion process that can produce off-grid electrical power from wood waste using a 30-kilowatt smokeless gasifier. In addition to producing renewable power, the concept answers the problem of beetle infestation in wood waste, he said.
Turning attention to research is long overdue, natural gas utility spokespeople agree.
“It’s a big challenge to be part of the conversation and bring solutions,” PG&E’s Rongere said. “We don’t have the resources in research and development to explore all the issues. We can’t do it without the university; they bring structure and innovation beyond the engineering we know well.”
As a member of the Stanford NGI, PG&E gains something that historically has been a challenge for the utility—access.
The Stanford NGI has a useful role to play as “a global convener,” as Boness describes it, to hold energy conversations in an inclusive and holistic way. To that end, it sponsored a conference last winter on the future of decarbonization in California that gathered traditional oil and gas industry representatives, utility companies and Silicon Valley renewables companies for collaborative discussion.
“We have access to organized workshops sponsored by NGI, which brings perspective not limited to California,” Rongere said. “We think the world is a copy/paste of ourselves, but this gives us a more global perspective to understand the context beyond the limits of our territory.”
It also gives the utility access to faculty at Stanford as well as their breadth of knowledge, research and innovation for new solutions, he said.
For instance, Adam Brandt, associate professor of energy resources engineering, is leading research efforts that hold promise for quantifying that niggling question of just how much methane leakage there is and what to do about it.
“Our group works in multiple interrelated areas, including statistical analysis of the methane leakage problem, techno-economic analysis of new sensor technologies and development of vision-based detectors that use infrared cameras to automatically detect leaks,” Brandt said. “This work incorporates a number of ground studies of the leakage problem to better inform how to design detectors and model their effectiveness given realistic properties of leaks.”
For Rongere, that’s news PG&E can use. “We’re always looking for the best ways to measure and abate emissions,” he said.
Ultimately, the Stanford NGI would like to release study results that provide a true picture of methane emissions and leakage. “To have a baseline coming from an accredited source like Stanford would be quite beneficial,” Boness said.
National Grid’s Cavanagh agrees that more research from respected sources is needed.
“There’s no question that enough hasn’t been invested in research and development into gas technologies to benefit customers,” Cavanagh said. “The amount spent at the local and national level relative to the magnitude of the opportunities is pretty low compared to other customer-facing industries.”
A recent sea change in views about natural gas technology and infrastructure related to climate policy must be addressed by substantiated research, Cavanagh said.
National Grid is firmly committed to climate change goals in its territories and develops policies supportive of those goals, he said. Still—“cities are popping up with policies to do away with fossil fuels,” he said, referencing New York State Executive Order No. 24, which establishes the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in New York by 80 percent below the levels emitted in 1990 by the year 2050. “We believe the billions of dollars invested in natural gas technology have an important role to play in solving climate problems. We don’t see a future where we wouldn’t need gas—it’s a staple, and it’s renewable.”
As universities discover new applications for natural gas, more campuses are also enjoying the benefits of natural gas itself as a vital fuel source.
A 2016 U.S. Department of Energy report found enormous potential for natural gas on university campuses through combined heat and power, to the tune of 12,846 megawatts of CHP potential across 5,596 sites—estimated to equal the generation potential of more than two dozen conventional power plants.
According to the latest data, there exist 2,635 MW of CHP installations across 263 campuses. Although that number is likely higher today, it’s clear that potential—and the benefits of natural gas as a primary and backup fuel—remains.
For example, at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, students returning this fall have natural gas to thank for keeping tuition costs down with a combined cooling, heating and power, or CCHP, project installed in early 2017 after two years of planning.
A one-megawatt gas turbine power electricity-generating system provides power to two main buildings that comprise the college’s student center. The waste heat from the exhaust is used to make domestic hot water and hot water for heating in winter, while an absorption chiller makes chilled water for the airconditioning system.
“We had been talking to UGI for years about getting natural gas, but our load wasn’t large enough for it to be cost-effective to bring the pipeline to us,” said Brad Markley, director of facility services at Messiah College. When Pennsylvania deregulated electricity in 2010 and Messiah lost its money-saving off-peak rates, the campus converted to propane, which carried the worry that delivery might not be possible in bad weather or emergency conditions.
According to Markley, adding the CCHP system and producing electricity on-site through the gas turbines made bringing natural gas to campus viable, giving it a consistent gas load profile for all 12 months of the year. There were also wins for UGI. The 10,000 feet of pipe the utility installed to connect Messiah to its natural gas distribution system enabled UGI to make improvements to its local distribution system that ultimately increased capacity in the surrounding community, said Gary Fechter, general manager of UGI Performance Solutions.
With the CCHP system, Messiah now enjoys about $600,000 of annual savings in energy costs, Markley said.
The project, however, is about much more than savings, Fechter and Markley agreed. It brings the security of having on-site power generation to operate the student center complex—and house and feed students—in case of an emergency as well as the backup option to switch to grid power if necessary.
“The reliability of pipelines and ability for gas companies to provide redundancy and backup has passed the reliability of conventional diesel and liquid fuels,” Fechter said.
The project also meets the college’s “triple bottom line” mission of social, environmental and financial value, Markley said.
“The on-site generation and high-efficiency system allowed Messiah a 30 percent reduction in its carbon footprint,” Fechter said. “Natural gas really is the cleanest pathway to carbon neutrality.”
Messiah’s CCHP system serves as a model for colleges and businesses across the country that send their representatives to tour it when considering a similar project, Markley said.
“We also often give tours to prospective students and their families and to our own engineering and sustainability students,” he said. “It’s great to be able to showcase that we are a leader in energy and sustainability efforts.”
That’s where efforts at colleges and universities come full circle, back to the next generation of energy thinkers and doers who will carry what they learn forward.
“Since we are located in a university, we need to worry about the next generation of researchers and people taking those industry jobs,” I-GIT’s Mahajan said. “The institute advances STEM education. We had five interns this summer, three of whom are women through [the] Women in Science and Engineering program.”
Stanford offers more than 200 energy courses and numerous energy degrees with opportunities for students to participate in programs like NGI though guided research and internships.
“The energy innovations we see aren’t coming out of big companies; they are coming from little ‘proof of concept’ startups funded by universities,” said Cavanagh, who noted that National Grid was initially drawn to Stony Brook’s efforts because it is a pipeline to this incubator community that the utility likes to support.
“The gas industry has got to tap into the excitement of these young folks in these incubators,” he said.