The answer, perhaps, is to deploy it in the Arctic, one of the world’s harshest environments, and that is exactly what a team of Russian researchers has done. The $27m Snowflake facility is a proving ground for renewable power generation, and could prove crucial in the world’s ongoing efforts to cut its carbon footprint, by demonstrating that industry, administration and workers can all function in the most extreme of environments.
Elsewhere, we look into recent power supply struggles in the UK and the US, and ask if widespread freezes or soaring energy prices are the result of temporary hardships, or signs of deeper issues within their respective power industries. With both countries eager to position themselves as leaders in the world’s fight against climate change, they face serious questions about fixing their own domestic energy supplies, before going on to tackle global challenges. We also ask what more decision-makers in the electric vehicle sector can do to spread clean cars to the US, and consider the potential, and challenges, associated with concentrated solar power.
A $27m clean energy-powered Russian research facility is being built in the Arctic to bring carbon-free technologies to the remote and climatically harsh region. Heidi well speaks to the project’s lead Yury Vasiliy at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology to find out more.
The peninsula located in the foothills of the Russian Polar Urals, a vast mountain range that runs north-to-south from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to north-western Kazakhstan, is set to become the unlikely home of a new state-of-the-art renewable energy-powered research center.
Called Snowflake – but also known by the less eloquent ‘Arctic Hydrogen Energy Applications and Demonstrations’ project – the facility will be a year-round scientific hub for the development, testing and maturation of carbon-free technologies robust enough to operate in extreme Arctic conditions. Its developers say it will also be the first in the world to be powered entirely by onsite wind power, full-cycle hydrogen, lithium batteries and thermal storage.
The $27m project is the brainchild of researchers at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (M IPT), including Yury Vasiliy, executive director of the Institute of Arctic Technologies at M IPT, and will mark Russia’s Chairmanship of the Arctic Council.
“The project has two main focuses,” explains Vasiliy. The first is to prove to engineer, the government, research companies and international partners that hydrogen and renewable energy is ready today and safe; we can use it right now.
'The second, which is more important, is that we are not just building a hotel for engineers, but a test bed for different technologies that can be tested and demonstrated at a real Arctic site and hopefully, eventually be mass-produced'.
Tackling complex climes
Consisting of seven dome-like structures, the Snowflake includes residential units for up to 80 people – 60 visitors and 20 personnel – as well as a gym, conference hall, labs, and maintenance rooms. The project is expected to open its doors in a testing capacity as early as 2024.
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