On October 1, 2019, Steven Griffiths, Member of the Global Energy Prize International Award Committee, Senior Vice President for Research and Development, Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KUST), will give an open lecture within the framework of the ‘The Future of Energy’ as a part of the elective course of Master’s programme ‘Governance of Science, Technology and Innovation’ at the Higher School of Economics.

About the lecturer:

Dr. Steven Griffiths is the Senior Vice President for Research and Development at Khalifa University of Science and Technology, which is the recently established university in the United Arab Emirates that resulted from the 2017 merger of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, the Petroleum Institute and the Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research. At Khalifa University, he has overall responsibility for research institutes and centres, research partnerships, research grants and contracts, technology management and transfer, research laboratories and research computing.

Among his activities external to Khalifa University, Steven Griffiths is advisor to the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, Governing Board member of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Center at the University of Manchester, member of the Zayed Future Energy Prize Selection Committee, Associate Editor and Editorial Board member of Elsevier’s international journal Energy Strategy Reviews and Associate Editor and Editorial Board member of Springer’s international journal Energy Transitions. He further serves as advisor to journals and magazines focused on energy systems and technology innovation while regularly providing insights on innovation, energy policy and energy strategy for international peer-reviewed journals and think tank publications.

Dr. Griffiths holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

About the lecture:

Our global energy system will look much different in the future relative to the recent past because of both political and technological factors. Among the most significant changes will be widespread deployment of renewable energy technologies, distribution of energy supply, sector coupling through electrification and the adoption of digital technologies. The opportunity for renewable energy is strongest in the electricity sector given the significant cost reductions observed for solar and wind energy technologies over the course of the past decade. Although solar and wind energy have experienced very strong growth in recent years, continued advancement will require technologies and operational practices that overcome the inherent limitations imposed by the intermittent nature of the electricity they supply. This is a systems level challenge that is context dependent and requires both temporal and spatial considerations to achieve adequate system flexibility. Here, flexibility refers to the ability of a power system to respond to variability of the net load, which is the load less variable energy sources like solar and wind.

Many technological and operational options can be leveraged for electricity system flexibility. These options, which relate to energy supply, energy demand, energy storage and grid infrastructure, must be assembled to ensure that electrical power grids are able to achieve balanced supply and demand at time scales ranging from seconds to years. The appropriate selection of measures requires intricate knowledge of the power system in which they will be utilized. In this talk, a model-based case study of power system transformation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) demonstrates the tailoring of power system flexibility to context. The results show that long-duration and seasonal energy storage can be play a key role in helping the UAE achieve more than 40% of electricity from intermittent sources by 2050. Further, the UAE case study demonstrates that context-specific load shifting, and potentially other modes of intelligent demand side management, are integral to developing an electricity system that is capable of cost-effectively incorporating a very-high share of intermittent renewables.

Time: 18:00–19:30

Venue: National Research University Higher School of Economics, Myasnitskaya Street, 11, room 429

All participants need to register following this link.