Futures in Clean Energy

Since 2019 only 20% of the energy consumption in the US consisted of clean renewable (11%) and nuclear (9%) energy sources. The remaining 80% comes from “dirty energy” sources like burning fossil fuels, coal, and petroleum. These energy sources make up 93% of the US’s CO2 emissions and quite literally fuel the impending climate crisis. Our initiative intends to educate and introduce young students to develop an interest in the fields of clean energy and climate change prevention and create a generation of bright minds to tackle these issues. There is currently a severe lack of interest in and understanding of clean energy methods of climate change prevention and we intend to remedy this issue. The lack of understanding and education about clean energy has caused many misconceptions about renewable and nuclear energy, making progress difficult, and even has caused some countries, like Germany, to regress and phase-out of nuclear energy initiatives. Better education on clean and renewable energy sources would help introduce new people to tackle the barriers to widespread renewable energy adoption. For example, unlike fossil fuel power plants, renewable energy sources vary in power output while not serving as energy storage. This results in the need for large batteries to keep the electricity grid saturated. However, by promoting the clean energy industry and educating students on the importance of clean energy, we hope to create a future of bright engineers and scientists to address our energy issues and work towards our common goal of creating affordable and abundant clean energy