Social Research on the Energy Issue

As we described in the introduction and background session, the importance and urgency to work on the energy issue is obvious. The energy issue is neither just a regional nor national problems, but instead a global. In response to the urgent need, lots of scientific researches have devoted vast efforts and time to those relevant studies, however, only few of which are really able to be put into real usage. Therefore, the key issue for the energy issue is not only the technological advancements, but also the awareness to integrate the scientific results into industrial application to yield concrete social values. With this idea in mind that also accord with the requirements for iGEM Human Practice, this year our team conducted the social research on the energy issue, along with our biofilm based artificial photosynthesis platform.

The main objectives of this social research aim at socially figuring out the background information of the energy issue as well as getting prepared for the further industrialization of our project. To understand the situation more comprehensively, we want to hear various points of views from different aspects, the public, the academic, the industrial, and also the authority. Only when opinions from all these parties are heard, could we fully understand the issue in reality and then figure out a series of feasible solutions to contribute to our society.

This social research was performed briefly in two parts, public questionnaire and interviews. A public questionnaire was firstly implemented to collect general information from the public. Then, we carefully analyzed the data collected. And according to the main concerns and opinions we found through the questionnaire, experts from different walk of life were invited to participate in the interview. Our interviewees included scientists working at the cutting-edge in the field, industrial representatives dedicating to the energy conservation, as well as from the administrative government. With the participation of not only the public and the academic, but also the industrial and the authority, we deeply explored the social background to prepare to integrate and industrialize our project as well as built up necessary social connections for the future supports.

Questionnaire

A questionnaire about the energy issue was designed and then distributed through the internet. All 37 questions were asked, and here, we performed the core analysis of the questionnaire. We have finally in all collected 231 samples, 15 of which were canceled as invalid samples due to their short answering time (less than 180 seconds). The rest of 216 samples were regarded as valid responds that qualified for further analysis.

1.Respondents’ Backgrounds

Among all, the biggest two age groups participating in the questionnaire are 18-25 and 41-50. About 39% of the respondents were from 18 to 25. 13% aged from 31 to 40. More than 35% were aged from 41 to 50. The diagram shows an ideal age distribution aged from 18 to 50, while there were few respondents below 18 or over 50. Based on the survey on education background, over 77% of the participants were well-educated with at least bachelor degrees who surely share sufficient social experience and intellects. These statistics here demonstrate and ensure the statistical significance underlying this questionnaire.

2. Awareness of the Energy Issue

When investigated on public awareness the energy issue, most respondents as 78% laid strong emphasis on the problem. They considered the energy issue as an extremely urgent social problem that needed to be solved, which strongly illustrates the huge potential value and promise for our project.

3.Knowledge of Green Energy

Asked about whether people were familiar with the green energy, only 13% of the participants chose the most familiarity. Over 51% of the samples showed insufficient knowledge in green energy, which demonstrates the need for more public propagation. And this assumption were then proved by the following question that whether it is necessary to publicly enforce the idea of green energy, with about 95% participants showed positive attitude.

However, when talked about the possible influence from the studies on green energy, over half of the participants declared the strongest attitude. And plus, another 35% were with the second strongest attitude. From this, the promising prospects to apply green energy to deal with the energy issue are apparent. Besides, our team believes that with a wider spread of the background knowledge on the topic, more and more people would be likely to support the study on green energy to solve the energy issue.

We tested on the kinds of green energy well known by the public, where the solar energy ranked first with nearly 88%. Also, we asked about the important characteristics for a good form of green energy; less pollution, strong sustainability, reasonable costs ranked at the top three. Obviously, the application of solar energy perfectly can meet all these three requirements. Also, when asked about the opinion on the application of solar energy as the main energy source, near 88% demonstrated positiveness.

4.Attitude towards Hydrogen

Speaking of the overall attitude towards the present application of hydrogen production, more than half of the participants showed a negative attitude, which was understandable due to the high costs and immature means of industrial production. However, when asked about whether the hydrogen could be a sustainable energy source, a substantial increase in positive attitude could be seen, which showed the huge potential for the further development of hydrogen. Although there were still 45% held a negative attitude towards the application of hydrogen, our team believes that people may become more and more confident about it as long as the technology are more mature and they are more familiar with the hydrogen with their main concerns eliminated.

In terms of the concerns for the application of hydrogen as an energy source, the biggest two dominating concerns were laid in safety and costs. From a scientific point of view, as long as the transportation and storage of hydrogen is proper to avoid the explosion limits, the usage of hydrogen are relatively safe. (This point were verified by the field professor though the late interview.) Actually, this is pretty much similar to the usage of coal gas and nature gas. Since people can well deal with these two inflammable gases, with the further development of relevant technologies, we hold pretty positive prospects with regards of the safety problem. However, based on our background search, the way to maintain relatively low cost producing hydrogen are still not available; and this just demonstrates the huge potential value of our project.

5.About Our Project

We briefly described the idea and mechanism of our energy-conversion platform, gaining about 63% of the positive feedback. Therefore the real application of our platform in a big productive scale is relatively promising and deserves a try. However, we also noticed the 37% with a relatively negative feedback, which also reminded us of further improvements on our idea, especially with regards to the safety, cost, and efficiency based on the feedback from previous question. And we believe that as long as the technologies are more mature and their main concerns are eliminated, people would hold a more positive point of view.

To assist our further integration of our project into real social application, further questions on the necessity of collaborations with industrial partners, academic research groups, and the government were asked.p>

About 62% of the participants demonstrated the strongest necessity to cooperate with some green energy related enterprises. Near 87% supported to acquire more technological assistance from the academics. More than 62% of the participant thought the supportive policy from the authority was very important for the real application. In responses to these results, further interviews from these three aspects were then scheduled.

Interview

In response to the strong necessity to get connected with the industrial, the academics, and the authority, so as to better promote and prepare for the real application and integration of our energy conversion platform and sever the mankind, a series of interviews with the industrial community, academic scientists, and administration and supervision departments were carried out. Taking the chance here, our team would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those individuals and groups for their assistance and cooperation.

Industrial Community

Established in 1985, Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA) is a membership non-profitable organization that works on the sustainable energy development on behalf of the industrial firms. Most of the local industrial companies, including those very influential ones like Bao Steel, are the members of the association. The SECA is set for the potential industrial collaborations with regards of the energy issue, whose main duties include the industrialization of new energy technologies as well as the propagation of the idea of energy conservation. Most employees working at SECA, including the interviewee, previously worked in the real industry. With their sufficient experience in the field, and also benefits from their daily cooperation with industrial partners, the SECA is undoubtedly an excellent place for our team to seek more insights from the industrial point of view. Also, the comments from the SECA would be of great importance for the industrialization and scale application of our project to yield more social interests.

Our delegation visited the SECA in August, 2016, where we also organized an interview with Mr. Lan (Yujun Lan), director of the expert committee at SECA, and Ms. Chen (Meijuan Chen), vise director of the expert committee at SECA.

At the beginning of the meeting, team member Haolong delivered a brief introduction to our project first. Both Mr. Lan and Ms. Chen were deeply impressed by our dauntless but creative idea. As they commented, they had served for the energy industry for decades, but this was the very first time they heard about using biological platform to provide new energy source as hydrogen gas. From an industrial point of view, they could tell the great future potential and feasibility our project suggested to be further developed into real industrial application in a big scale, meanwhile they also point out that some modifications especially with regards of the working conditions as well as an adaptation to the flow line production would be necessary. Besides, as Mr. Lan further said, the mission of the SECA included the promotion and industrialization of new technology; with their abundant experience in the field, they were willing to assist our team to continuously modify the project and try to put it into industrial application.

Then, Mr. Lan and Ms. Chen briefly talked about the daily operation of the SECA. Additional to the modulation of the membership industrial companies that resulted in a series of collaborations, socially popularizing and promoting the idea of energy conservation was also one of their core objectives. Through their efforts, they were looking for a gradual improvement of social awareness of the energy issues, especially among the young age group. Annually, a variety of theme activities were held by the SECA to achieve the goal. Every year, there is an Energy Awareness Week took place in Shanghai where the representative industrial delegates were invited to introduce their cutting edge energy technologies to the public, in communities, schools, or exhibitions. Mr. Lan warmly welcomed and invited our team to participate in the next year’s theme week. We were so much sure that this special chance would be an awesome opportunity for our team to not only further socialize and industrialize the project, but also integrate our own efforts into real social needs.

Finally, Mr. Lan. And Ms. Chen again emphasized the creativity and huge potential of our project from an industrial aspect. They encouraged us to modulate in details and step further. They were willing to provide any necessary assistance from the industrial community.

Academic Scientists

On the 11st Oct., we met Professor Mi (Qixi Mi), assistant professor from the school of physical science and technology at ShanghaiTech University. Prof. Mi earned his B.S. degree from Peking University in applied chemistry in 2003 and his Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University in chemistry in 2009. Later he performed postdoctoral research on new souse energy at California Institute of Technology, taking advantage of a fellowship of the NSF Center for Chemical Innovation (CCI Solar), and then briefly at the Argonne–Northwestern Solar Energy Research (ANSER) Center.

Firstly, team delegation asked about the reasons that guided Pro. Mi to devote himself to the energy research field. As Pro. Mi responded, without any doubt, the energy issue was one of the biggest global challenges we mankind were facing and urgently needed to be solved. The significance of the relevant researches and studies were emphasized in terms of the sustainable development for the whole industry, because the energy source was the very fundamental matters of all sorts of industrial productions. Then, speaking of the possible solutions to the energy issue, Pro. Mi emphasized the importance of the utilization of the solar energy for the sun was the ultimate way that we human beings could get sustainable source of energy. As he further stated, thanks to the development of the modern technologies, for now lots of simi-conductive materials people had discovered showed a relative high efficiency to collect sun light. However the central problems laid on how to efficiently utilize that solar energy we collected. Similar to what we applied in our project, Pro. Mi considered hydrogen gas as a good choice for the solar energy conversion. With its high molecular energy density as well as the simple chemical constituents, hydrogen demonstrated ideal characteristics to be an energy source. Also, without the participation of the carbon, the only product of the combustion of hydrogen was only water which had no side effect to the environment. This made hydrogen the complete clean energy source.

Then, in response to public concerns towards hydrogen application that we found in the previous questionnaire, Pro. Mi also gave some words to dispel the misgivings. For the very top concern, the safety problem, Pro.Mi said, actually for each of the efficient energy source, there would be a hidden danger. Since the matter could provide huge amount of energy supply, dangerous disaster happened when the source was out of control and huge amount of energy was released in an extreme shout period of time. However, this would never be the reason preventing people from using this high-density energy source. Academically speaking, hydrogen gas was similar to nature gas or coal gas that was widely used in every family; as long as people followed the safety instructions and properly used them, and then the usage of hydrogen was very safe. Due to its low density, hydrogen gas was more likely to self-flow away to higher space; therefore it was less like to reach its explosion limits. Moreover, since people could deal with the carbon monoxide which was even toxic besides its possible explosion, why could not people handle hydrogen gas? With regards of the transport and storage of hydrogen, modern technologies were pretty mature in the field. So people could just benefit from those advanced technologies, and there was no need to worry about this as well.

Finally, we discussed our project with Pro Mi in detail. Pro. Mi was very excited and showed a positive attitude about our project. As he commented, a good solar energy platform that could be put into mass production should meet all of the three criteria which were 1.high efficiency, 2.low cost, and 3.sustainable. Usually, most of the research results could only meet two of the requirements at most, which greatly limited the industrialization and further development of the research results. However, in our project, the application of bio-enzymes ensured the relative high efficiency to produce hydrogen; with the application of biofilm, the system became recyclable to maintain a reasonable cost; and finally for the same reason, the system could be used for a long time showing its sustainability. Speaking of the future application into real industrial production, Pro. Mi thought our project demonstrated a very promising application potential, but he still suggested us to further modify the system to ensure a steady product quality and to find the best reaction conditions to undergo a better efficiency. And our team will going to further work from these aspects in the near future.

Administrative Authority

In August, 2016, our team delegation paid a visit to the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD. On the interview day, we had a meeting with Ms. Yu Huang and Dr. Shengbo Chen from the department of Research & Development Center there. As one of the most important parts of implement by Chinese Authority, lots of policy are set and then implemented here, in response to the United Nations Climate Conference. Due to its special characteristics it possesses, the Energy Exchange Center is an ideal place for us to know more about the energy issue from a governmental aspect.

First of all, Dr. Wu carried out a brief introduction about the Energy Exchange Center. Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD is a platform directly built by the Shanghai Central Government, where carbon emission permit is allowed to be traded. Since people are still trying to figure out a sustainable solution to the energy issue, temporarily one of the feasible ideas is to use the power of the market where carbon emission is controlled by the invisible hand of the free market. Due to the reason, the energy exchange platform was established. However, to realize the ultimate goal to solve the energy issue as well as prevent the heavy pollution caused by the combustion of fossil fuel, Dr. Chen viewed the development of technology as the only way to achieve that. As he added, some of the policies were designed to encourage the industrial companies to conduct self-dependent technological innovation by increasing the cost of using those old polluting manufacture methods. In another words, Enterprises were encouraged to take actions to weed out outdated manufacturing techniques. Meanwhile, supportive policy to assist technological innovations was established as well, including some tax benefits.

Then, delegate from our iGEM team briefly introduced our energy conversion project. Ms. Huang and Dr. Chen were surprised by our newly-designed platform. They greatly praised our desire to contribute to the energy issue as well as the persistence in scientific research. Ms. Yu said, indeed our society as well as the government very much looked forward to the technology breakthroughs like ours to serve the energy issue. Lots of encouragement policies had been set up to encourage project both financially and politically. They suggested us to do a brief background search, and apply to some of the supportive programs to further develop and modify our system. From the authority aspect, they were pretty sure that we would get many privileges and supports in developing the project, when we step further.

Finally, a free discussion was held where our team members further exchanged ideas and thoughts with two guests. Future collaborations are very likely to occur when our technology become more mature and are put into real life use.

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