ABSTRACT
To further a just energy transition, jobs lost at retiring coal plants could be replaced by jobs at wind and solar plants. No research quantifies the feasibility and costs of such an undertaking across the United States. Complicating such an undertaking are workers' place-based preferences that could prevent them from moving long distances, e.g. to high renewable resource regions. We formulate a bottom-up optimization model to quantify the technical feasibility and costs of replacing coal plant jobs with local versus distant jobs in the renewables sector. For the contiguous United States, we find replacing coal generation and employment with local wind and solar investments is feasible. Siting renewables local to instead of distant from retiring coal plants increases replacement costs by 5%-33% across sub-national regions and by $83 billion, or 24%, across the United States. These costs are modest relative to overall energy transition costs.
ABSTRACT
Metabolism is a key process that makes life alive-the combination of anabolism and catabolism sustains life by a continuous flux of matter and energy. In other words, the materials comprising life are synthesized, assembled, dissipated, and decomposed autonomously in a controlled, hierarchical manner using biological processes. Although some biological approaches for creating dynamic materials have been reported, the construction of such materials by mimicking metabolism from scratch based on bioengineering has not yet been achieved. Various chemical approaches, especially dissipative assemblies, allow the construction of dynamic materials in a synthetic fashion, analogous to part of metabolism. Inspired by these approaches, here, we report a bottom-up construction of dynamic biomaterials powered by artificial metabolism, representing a combination of irreversible biosynthesis and dissipative assembly processes. An emergent locomotion behavior resembling a slime mold was programmed with this material by using an abstract design model similar to mechanical systems. Dynamic properties, such as autonomous pattern generation and continuous polarized regeneration, enabled locomotion along the designated tracks against a constant flow. Furthermore, an emergent racing behavior of two locomotive bodies was achieved by expanding the program. Other applications, including pathogen detection and hybrid nanomaterials, illustrated further potential use of this material. Dynamic biomaterials powered by artificial metabolism could provide a previously unexplored route to realize "artificial" biological systems with regenerating and self-sustaining characteristics.
