SC Program Offices Supporting the Energy Earthshots
The Office of Science (SC) supports a diverse portfolio of research projects that advance the fundamental research and use-inspired science needed for revolutionary energy breakthroughs to accomplish the Energy Earthshot goals. Three programs support the Energy Earthshots: Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences, and Biological and Environmental Research.
Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) provides foundational investment in applied mathematics and computer science tools, methods, and algorithms needed to computationally describe realistic physical energy systems, including digital twins, storage models and simulations. Through the Exascale Computing Initiative, ASCR supported the cutting-edge, exascale computing resources coupled with the scientific codes to utilize these resources for next-generation energy technologies.
ASCR also operates three high performance computing (HPC) user facilities that can be leveraged for Energy Earthshot Research: the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), which provides high performance computing resources and large-scale storage to a broad range of SC researchers; and the two Leadership Computing Facilities (LCFs) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), which provide leading-edge high performance computing capability to the U.S. research and industrial communities. ASCR’s high performance network user facility, the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), operated by LBNL, delivers highly reliable data transport capabilities optimized for the requirements of large-scale science.
Basic Energy Sciences (BES) supports scientific discoveries and major scientific tools to transform the understanding of chemistry and biochemistry, separation science, materials design, and geosciences. From materials in extreme conditions to subsurface fluid flow and mechanics, BES is pioneering the understanding of fundamental behaviors that underlay energy science. In addition, BES supports energy research infrastructure for the research community at its scientific user facilities, including nanoscience centers, neutron scattering facilities, and the world's largest suite of X-ray light sources.
Biological and Environmental Research (BER) supports transformative biological, Earth, and environmental sciences and scientific user facilities to achieve a predictive understanding of complex systems for clean energy and climate innovation. Biological research focuses on fundamental systems biology to understand, predict, and design biological processes that underpin bioenergy and bioproducts innovation. Earth and environmental systems research aims to characterize, understand, and predict drivers and feedbacks among Earth and energy systems, using advanced atmospheric and environmental observational and modeling techniques.
