GeoengineeringTackling Climate Change by Storing up the Sun
“This is the key, the linchpin that will set a lot of things in the right direction,” says Asegun Henry, an MIT mechanical engineering professor.
Asegun Henry has a bold idea to save the world. He believes the key to reducing carbon emissions, and mitigating further climate change, lies in our ability to box up the sun.
Today, much of the renewable energy that’s captured from the wind and sun is delivered in a use-it-or-lose-it capacity. To store such energy, Henry envisions a completely sustainable, zero-carbon grid with the potential to supply all our electrical needs, even on overcast and windless days. And he has a blueprint for how to get there.
Imagine, alongside solar plants and wind turbines, a heavily insulated, warehouse-sized container filled with white-hot liquid metal. Any excess energy captured during low-use times would be diverted into this container, where it would be converted into heat. When energy demand goes up, the liquid metal could be pumped through a converter to turn heat back into electricity.
Henry says this “sun-in-a-box” system would serve as a rechargeable battery, albeit one that takes up half a football field. He has shown that key parts of the system work, and is bringing those parts together to demonstrate a lab-scale system. If that proves successful, he will push ahead to versions with increasing storage capacity, and ultimately, to a commercial-scale, grid-integrated system.
It’s an ambitious road, and one that has not been without hurdles, much like Henry’s own path to MIT. In 2020, he was granted a faculty tenure position in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and is funneling much of his energy into storing up the sun.
“In my view, the choice to go to MIT was a path toward saving the human race,” Henry says. “I believe in this technology, and that this is the key, the linchpin that will set a lot of things in the right direction.”
Thinking Big
Henry grew up in Sarasota, Florida, then in Tallahassee, where he became a drummer. His parents, both professors at Florida A&M University, made every effort to instill in him an appreciation of his family’s West African roots. When he was 10, his mother brought him to an African dance class at the university.
“I had been taught to revere African culture, but never had really seen or heard it, and I totally fell in love with the drums that day,” Henry says.
