Champions of Change Blog

American Hydropower: Leading the Way Toward a Job-Creating and Clean-Energy Future

Kevin Frank is being recognized as a Champion of Change for his work advancing new ideas that are leading the way to a clean energy future and an economy that’s built to last.

As President and CEO of U.S. operations for one of the world’s leading supplier of hydropower turbines, I understand renewable energy is about more than the electricity that powers homes and businesses; it’s about creating and sustaining American jobs. At Voith Hydro, we are proud to craft the turbines that produce the clean energy our country needs and ignite the creation of thousands of jobs in an environmentally-friendly and sustainable way.

Our facility in York, PA has manufactured hydropower turbines for 135 years. Though hydropower is part of America's power-generation heritage, it is also one of the most innovative industries in today's energy economy.  Recently, the industry has focused on powering the approximately 80,000 dams in the United States that do not have power. It may surprise you to learn that only 3% of the dams in the country actually produce electricity. These dams represent a tremendous opportunity to provide more clean affordable energy across the United States, especially for an industry that prides itself on maximum efficiency.

There is good reason to focus on powering these existing dams. A 2009 study concluded that with the right policies in place, hydropower could provide the country with an additional 60,000 megawatts of electricity while creating an additional 1.4 million cumulative jobs in the U.S. This can be achieved by powering non-powered dams, expanding generation at existing hydroelectric facilities, and increased pumped-storage power plants -- which will contribute increasing renewable energy use across America.

Fueling the Future: Problem Solving for a Renewable Energy World

James Liao is being recognized as a Champion of Change for his work advancing new ideas that are leading the way to a clean energy future and an economy that’s built to last.

After a century of unprecedented growth in science, technology, and the economy, we now face tremendous challenges to our ability to fuel the future: a fluctuating oil price, a changing climate, and continued dependence on unreliable energy sources. These problems are increasingly personal, and the demand for solutions becomes increasingly urgent. There are many changes that we must make to address these challenges, but the ultimate solution(s) will only come from fundamental innovations in science and technology.

Our laboratory at UCLA has been focusing on developing long-term energy solutions that are sustainable and not limited by current practice. These approaches aim to capture our ultimate energy source: the sun. The amount of energy in the sunlight that hits the earth totals 1,000 times more energy than we currently use in all applications, from household electricity to transportation to heavy industry. Solar power is abundant, but converting sunlight into a form of energy that can be easily used and stored is difficult. Even with the ability to convert sunlight into electricity with high efficiency using photovoltaic solar cells, many challenges prevent us from being able to power all our energy needs with solar panels. The biggest challenges for using solar power for energy are clouds and sunset—the electricity produced by photovoltaics needs to be efficiently stored to provide power on overcast days and overnight. Our ability to store electricity in batteries is improving, but current low energy density makes batteries an inefficient choice for large-scale storage. Instead of being stored in batteries, the electricity made by solar panels can be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen molecules, the latter of which can be used as a fuel with high energy density. However, our current transportation infrastructure is unable to use hydrogen as replacement for gasoline.