JANUARY 15, 2025

Good morning, our hearts are with the lives lost and upended by the Los Angeles wildfires, made worse by climate change.

In Cipher this week, we're focused on one potential game-changing solution to that problem — fusion:

• Cat Clifford profiles one of the leaders behind a major fusion breakthrough.
• She also explores how fusion and artificial intelligence are pushing each other forward.
• In other news, Anca Gurzu has a Data Dive about high electricity prices in Europe compared to the United States.

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Send your energy photos, story tips and more to news@ciphernews.com.

Richard Town, who leads the inertial confinement fusion program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, standing inside the National Ignition Facility at Livermore. Photo credit: Juliana Yamada.

Meet the unflappable physicist helping make fusion possible

BY: CAT CLIFFORD

LIVERMORE, California — Richard Town was sleeping when he and his team achieved a scientific breakthrough that could kick off a revolution in our energy systems and help combat climate change.

In the wee morning hours of December 5, 2022, science history was made and fusion “ignition” was achieved for the first time at a national lab here outside of San Francisco.

Later that morning, as Town and his team reviewed the data, they realized they had very likely reached ignition: The crucial, long-sought moment when the energy generated by a fusion reaction exceeded the energy that catalyzed the reaction. Their success indicated that fusion — the way the sun and stars make energy — could someday become an unlimited, clean energy source.

While the preliminary analysis looked promising, Town was careful not to jump to conclusions. He guided his team on that day with a careful demeanor that colleagues say reflects his approach as both a leader and scientist.

Town remembered his thought process on that day: “Now, let’s be calm, be methodical. This is a big result. It will have a big impact," Town told Cipher in one of a series of interviews, including a walk-through of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where ignition was achieved.

This kind of even-keeled patient pragmatism might not make for an exciting Hollywood scene, but this is often how scientific progress happens: Slowly, methodically and around the clock (even in the middle of the night while we are sleeping).

Town, a 60-year-old, mild-mannered British gentleman, leads the team of physicists studying fusion at the lab, including those who wrote the computer software code to design and direct this history-making breakthrough.

Fusion could, if scaled up, promise a virtually unlimited, low-carbon and reliable source of power. But achieving such ambitions is still years away (exactly how many is hotly debated) and will require bushwhacking through a lot more scientific and engineering challenges. Getting there will require more leadership from people like Town.

Standing on the edge of history with a level head is exactly who Town has always been as a scientist and a leader, according to his colleagues and peers.

“Richard’s strength is probably in his steadfastness,” Brian Spears, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Innovation Incubator at Livermore, told Cipher. “It’s super critical for what he has been able to do with our program.”

Town’s experience is also a window into how big, hard science problems get solved.

Read and share this article on Cipher’s website.

Lunchtime Reads and Hot Takes

Trump’s Cabinet picks for energy set for Senate hearings: What to watch — Axios

Amena’s take: The future of Inflation Reduction Act programs, the shape of the National Energy Council, AI power demands and L.A. fires will figure prominently in the discussions.

AI set to fuel surge in new US gas power plants — Financial Times (subscription) 

Bill’s take: While tech companies talk up deals to build nuclear reactors and fund renewable energy, much of near-term energy demand surge will be met with fossil fuels until longer-term clean sources are built.

Massive underground air battery project lands $1.76B DOE award — Canary Media

Cat’s take: Conditions and approvals remain before this loan gets disbursed, but the guarantee spotlights an innovative long-duration energy storage technique that involves pushing compressed air underground.

Supreme Court declines to hear from oil and gas companies trying to block climate change lawsuits — AP News

Amena’s take: This move means the oil and gas sector has no choice but to fight climate lawsuits on a state-by-state basis, unless Congress acts.

2024 was the hottest year on record, scientists say — Reuters

Anca’s take: The first year above 1.5C does not breach that target, which measures the longer-term average temperature. But let’s take a moment to let this sink in.

Five Energy Transition Lessons for 2025 — BloombergNEF

Bill’s take: The message is neither jubilant nor despondent. It’s just what it is, moving inexorably forward, even gaining steam in some areas. But not fast enough yet.

Power Companies Reach $16.4 Billion Deal as A.I. Drives Energy Use Up — The New York Times

Cat’s take: The massive tie-up is the latest in what has become a drumbeat of evidence that power producers are entering a new era of meeting rising electricity demand in the United States, largely driven by AI.

Catastrophes cost world $320bn in 2024, reinsurer reports — Financial Times (subscription)

Amena’s take: With two-thirds of the losses occurring in North America, this figure doesn't account for the billions in losses that California is estimated to sustain from the wildfires engulfing LA.

More of what we're reading:

• Trump's energy department pick to call for more LNG and nuclear power — Reuters

• Why Greenland? Remote but resource-rich island occupies a key position in a warming world — AP News

We denote ‘(subscription)’ when publications don’t provide any complimentary articles, but many others may ultimately allow you to read only a limited number each month before subscribing. We encourage those who can afford it to support the journalism you love most!

The world’s fastest supercomputer is accelerating efforts to bring star power to Earth

Inside the National Ignition Facility target chamber at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Photo credit: Juliana Yamada.

BY: CAT CLIFFORD

LIVERMORE, California — It makes sense that a technical achievement straight out of science fiction took place in a facility so futuristic that it was once used as a backdrop in a Star Trek movie.

On December 5, 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) reached a groundbreaking milestone in fusion research when they aimed 192 laser beams at a pellet of hydrogen fuel about the size of a peppercorn.

The result of the historic shot was the first-ever achievement of “ignition,” a critical point when more energy was produced by the reaction than went into the lasers that drove it.

As huge as the lab’s accomplishment was, however, it was just the beginning of a new set of challenges. The researchers turned their focus to replicating the achievement and getting ever more energy out of the fusion reaction. To help with those efforts, they now have the benefit of another technological marvel: the world’s fastest supercomputer just a stone’s throw away.

Named “El Capitan” after the towering Yosemite rock formation, the world’s fastest supercomputer is underwhelming at first glance, with hardware tidily tucked away behind black metal cabinets. Opening those doors, however, reveals 32 miles (!) of interconnecting wires running between the 44,544 computer processors and associated hardware. All in, the racks, computing hardware and supporting infrastructure weighs 1.3 million pounds.

Officially unveiled in November, El Capitan brings an unprecedented amount of computational muscle to the already industry-leading fusion research at Livermore.

Having access to more computing power will turbocharge the pace of progress on all types of research at the lab, including fusion, said Brian Spears, the director of Livermore’s AI Innovation Incubator.

“We’re going to go faster, because we’re going to do a better experiment, get an answer to the better question and then that will let us pose a still better question,” said Spears. “So, there’s a sort of virtuous feedback.”

Across the fusion industry, advances in artificial intelligence are helping unlock new frontiers. “We are able to do things now that before, when I started to do research on fusion, was unbelievable,” Sehila González de Vicente, global director of fusion at Clean Air Task Force, a non-profit advocating for climate policies, told Cipher.

AI is also, perhaps ironically, driving up demand for the kind of electricity fusion could provide. Vicente describes this dynamic as a “symbiotic relationship.” The two are driving each other forward.

“AI is actually another source of demand for this fusion reality to come to bear. So, lots of the private AI companies who are very heavily capitalized at this point are making investments in the fusion space,” said Spears.

Read and share this article on Cipher’s website.

This one chart shows Europe’s struggle with high energy prices

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero of the United Kingdom, Marko Jukic, senior analyst at Bismarck Analysis • The price comparison is based on data from Eurostat and the International Energy Agency.

BY: ANCA GURZU

High energy prices are holding back Europe’s manufacturing industry, and recently compiled data highlights why the bloc is worried more business will flee the Continent.

Europe’s industrial electricity prices skyrocketed in recent years, accentuating its competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis the United States at a crucial time in the energy transition, when both regions are trying to carve out a place for themselves in the nascent cleantech manufacturing market otherwise dominated by China.

Between 2019 and 2023, the United Kingdom’s industrial power prices grew by 124%, Hungary’s by 171%, Poland’s by 137% and France’s by 93%, according to data from the U.K. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which combines data from Eurostat and the International Energy Agency.

During the same period, U.S. industrial power prices grew only 21%. A partial analysis of this data was initially published by Marko Jukic, an analyst at Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm based in San Francisco.

Boosting competitiveness is top of Europe’s agenda as the bloc experiences a gradual deindustrialization.

In 2023, industrial prices in the European Union (which does not include the U.K.) were 158% higher than in the U.S., think tank Bruegel found, a result of the 2022 energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The EU, a major energy importer, had to scramble to substitute cheap piped Russian gas for more expensive liquefied natural gas from around the world. Higher electricity prices followed the higher gas prices. Higher network costs and energy taxes also contributed.

Prices declined a little in 2024, according to a recent analysis from Brussels-based power lobby group Eurelectric, because industrial consumption remained low.

AND FINALLY...
Site Visit

In this picture, Cipher News reporter Cat Clifford and Richard Town, the lead of the laser fusion program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, give a sense of the scale of the innermost chamber of the National Ignition Facility. It takes hulking, delicate equipment and some of the world’s best scientific minds to recreate, even for a fraction of a second, what the sun and the stars do naturally all day every day.

Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.


Editor’s note: In addition to supporting Cipher, Breakthrough Energy also supports and partners with a range of entities working to tackle climate change, including nonprofits, corporations, startups and research firms. For more information on Cipher’s editorial policy, click here.