On a sweltering August afternoon, as the E-2D-equipped Reagan Carrier Strike Group plowed the waters not far from Taiwan while the Chinese military threatened aggressive action toward the breakaway republic, workers at Northrop Grumman’s St. Augustine Manufacturing Center, or SAMC, were busy adding mid-air refueling capabilities and several other modifications to two similar E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft.
They are the latest of several current and planned updates designed to elevate the potency of the latest version of the iconic twin-engined turboprop with a saucer-like radar dome and four-finned tail that first took flight 15 years ago. The original design that would become the E-2A first flew nearly 62 years ago. These enhancements also come as the audiences around the globe saw the Hawkeye in action Hollywood style via its cameo appearance in the hugely successful Top Gun: Maverick.
For the Navy, constant updating of the E-2D - currently patrolling the skies over Europe and in the Pacific and set to fly into the 2040s - is critical given what the ungainly-looking aircraft brings to the table. It is the carrier strike group's eyes in the sky, surveilling huge areas of air and sea, directing fighter aircraft on their missions, and working as an airborne networking node that is capable of exchanging vast amounts of data between aircraft, warships, and more. It is the definition of a high-value, low-density, force-multiplying asset and it has never been more important than it is today.
Read all about what it is like to be a radar operator on the E-2 Hawkeye in this past War Zone feature.
“The Air Boss [Navy Vice Adm. Kenneth Whitesell, Commander, Naval Air Forces/Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet] has stated that the E-2D is the BMC2 [battle management command and control] node within the air wing of the future,” Janice Zilch, Northop Grumman Vice President, multi-domain command and control programs, told a small group of reporters this week during a facility tour.
As noted, not only do they provide vital airborne early warning and battle management functions for Carrier Strike Groups, but the Advanced Hawkeyes have also become a central node in the Navy's cooperative engagement capability (CEC) efforts, which include the sea service's overarching Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter-Air (NIFC-CA) networking concept. In this role, E-2Ds can already significantly extend the reach and flexibility of both the carrier air wing and the surface combatants in the carrier strike group. The data fusion and relay functions the aircraft provides also allow those other assets to engage targets beyond the range of their own sensors, something you can read about in more detail here.
There was a reluctance during The War Zone's visit to Northrop Grumman's St. Augustine plant on Tuesday to say much about those systems, other than the E-2D is “the most critical node” in the system, which “would not exist without the E-2D.”
But Northrop Grumman was happy to talk about the total package of airborne warning and battle management capabilities that the Advanced Hawkeye delivers.
“You've also probably heard the E-2D referred to as the digital quarterback of the fleet,” Zilch said Tuesday. “Well, I'm going to elevate that today. And I'm going to say we're more than digital offensive-defensive coordinator of the fleet.”
With a crew of five, and an impressive assortment of sensors including the hugely-capable Lockheed Martin’s AN/APY-9 radar, the E-2D ensures that “from a battle management command and control perspective, we're moving those kill web timelines as much as possible to the left.”
“So I think it's more than just the quarterback perspective,” Zilch added. The carrier strike group relies “on our capability every day. Without an E-2 in the air, the strike packages don't go into harm's way. We drive that strike group lethality and that power projection for naval aviation.”
On any given day, there are Advanced Hawkeyes patrolling around the world, scanning for threats from enemy fighters to hard-to-spot targets flying over in dense littoral and overland environments, like cruise missiles and drones.
“Everyone's tracking stuff in Ukraine,” Navy CMDR Guillermo Carrillo, fielding deputy program manager for the E-2/C-2 airborne command and control systems program office, told reporters. “We have an E-2D flying right now in the Mediterranean Sea. I can't talk too much about what they're doing. It's classified. But what's important is they are serving a critical mission right now in real-world events.”
“And then on the other side of the world, in the Pacific Theater, E-2Ds are a critical part of the innovative kill chain. And you see, we're getting great reports from the West Coast squadrons for real-world stuff they're doing with a sensor that other E-2s and other platforms were unable to do. So what the E-2D is doing matters.”
As Carrillo speaks, hundreds of workers across this sprawling 151-acre facility with 31 buildings and 1.1 million square feet of office and manufacturing space are both putting together new Advanced Hawkeyes and updating old ones. It is one of the few plants where the entire construction process takes place in one location. To do so, 1,100 employees work in shifts around the clock every day of the week to turn 30,000 parts into one of the world’s most advanced airborne sensor platforms.
To date, Northrop Grumman has delivered 55 Advanced Hawkeyes to the Navy with at least another 23 on order under the program of record. The Navy is also seeking funding for eight more on top of that for a total of 86. In addition, the company is also building 13 E-2Ds for Japan - of which four have already been delivered with another two coming by the end of this year. There will also be three E-2Ds built for France, as well the modification of the older E-2Cs operated by Taiwan and Egypt.
The aircraft going to Japan and France won't be exactly the same, however. Because Japan won't be launching them from aircraft carriers, it has asked Northrop Grumman to build a so-called wet wing system, with fuel cells in the wings. And the French variants won't have updates that allow it to integrate with CEC and NIFC-CA.
As for the upgrades to the Taiwanese and Egyptian E-2Cs, Northop Grumman said it is up to those countries to provide details about how they are being upgraded.
“We're working through the U.S. government and administration controls, if you will, of what will be the trade space there for future E-2Ds” for those two countries, said Zilch.
And of course, the plant is also modifying 45 Advanced Hawkeyes for the U.S. Navy so they have aerial refueling capabilities. There are still two dozen E-2Ds needing those modifications. Moving forward, all new E-2Ds will have an aerial refueling probe. So far, 10 have been produced.
To assure the Navy maintains the ability to meet its goal of having 22 fully mission-capable Advanced Hawkeyes available at any given time while preparing for future needs requires a delicate balance between operations, maintenance, and modification.
That includes changes like adding the aerial refueling modification. Another update, which the Navy calls the Delta System/Software Configuration Build (DSSC) 3.1 modification, introduces major enhancements to the E-2D's Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) and Link 16 data link so that it can meet DoD-mandated cybersecurity standards in 2021.
There are three other planned DSSC modifications, all requiring E-2Ds to be pulled off the line to be updated, which can, in some ways, be even more challenging than the initial build given the amount of equipment packed into the airplane’s tight confines.
According to Northrop Grumman, they are:
It's all aimed at creating what Northrop Grumman calls "6th-generation command and control" capabilities, a broad initiative that includes multiple upgrade elements for the E-2D to allow integration with future 6th-generation combat aircraft and other systems. Among those are updates will be adopting an open systems architecture that will allow for rapid upgrades and iterative software integration, as well as 'Theatre Combat ID,' which helps deliver highly actionable data to the strike group.
To minimize downtown, Northrop Grumman and the Navy plan out maintenance work to coincide with those upgrades.
“So in order to maintain 22 fully mission capable aircraft, while at the same time having a fleet going through modifications to include aerial refueling, to include during the DSSC 3.1 mod, we have to take an aircraft out of the fleet, put it into a mod facility, and now that aircraft is no longer available for the fleet to fly,” Carrillo said. “So there's a delicate balance that has to happen and close integration with moving aircraft, from the fleet into the mod facility and back out so that we have the inventory in order to make this required 22 fully mission capable [available E-2Ds]."
In immediate response to Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, China's People's Liberation Army sent 16 Russian-made Su-30 Flanker fighter jets along with 6 J-11s, a Chinese-made Flanker derivative, across the so-called "median line" that bisects the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday. Another 5 J-16s, another Chinese Flanker-derived design, flew into the southwestern corner of the island's Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ. The next day, there were even more, enough to set a record.
The rapid growth of Chinese air combat capabilities showcased in these Chinese drills is just one real-world reminder of why the U.S. Navy is so invested in keeping the Advanced Hawkeye as advanced as possible.
Given its newer radar, upgraded communications, and ability to fly even longer, the E-2D would have a great ability to track Chinese aircraft, manned or unmanned, as well as missiles, so that they could be targeted should things turn kinetic.
In addition to adding aerial refueling capabilities, the two Advanced Hawkeyes being worked on Tuesday in Building 40 were undergoing several other modifications as well.
*Dual SATCOM (D/SATCOM), a second radio that can communicate with satellites for secure communication, allowing two people in the E-2D to have secure simultaneous communication.
*Automatic Information System (AIS), an automatic tracking system for commercial ships and is used by vessel traffic services.
“Information provided by AIS equipment, such as unique identification, position, course, and speed, can be displayed on a screen.
*An Embedded National Tactical Receiver (ENT), which provides one integrated tactical information picture by receiving Intelligence Broadcast System (IBS) SATCOM signals through direct to digital RF processing.
*A Link 16/Crypto Modulation/Hybrid Beyond Line of Sight (L16/HBLOS) that enables the exchange of tactical pictures between ships, aircraft, and other entities supporting the exchange of text, imagery, and voice communications.
*Navigation Warfare (NAVWAR) provides a new GPS antenna to provide continued access to information in a denied or impeded electronic environment.
Longer Legs For The Hawkeye
Among all the improvements currently being made to the E-2D, one of the biggest exact changes was creating the aforementioned ability to receive fuel mid-air by adding a probe device atop the cockpit.
Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 120 (VAW-120), the "Greyhawks," based at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, took delivery of the first non-developmental E-2Ds with that system on Sept. 9, 2019.
Advanced Hawkeyes now in the fleet with the DSCC 3.1 modifications that have “aerial refueling, as well as some state-of-the-art tracking improvements, and some classified upgrades” have “given us almost double time-on-station for combat persistence,” said Zilch.
Extending the ability of the E-2Ds to fly about nine hours “gives our operational commanders a lot more presence,” said Carrillo. “From the capability standpoint, to have that endurance on station is huge, right? It just gives us more freedom of maneuver, gives us more capability forward, allows us to track for longer and further out from the ship.”
Adding the capability is one thing. But for a pilot, being able to fly the aircraft behind an aerial refueling tanker, then maneuver it close enough so that the receptacle can link up with the tanker’s drogue takes a great deal of practice to learn.
That training starts on simulators and, later, at the Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) in Norfolk, Virginia, actually performing those maneuvers in the air.
“It adds a few more training flights,” said Carrillo. “But it's not usually adding time to the training pipeline for our pilots. And they continue once they step into the fleet, they continue to maintain currency.”
But the Navy is also looking to see how to Boost the process in the future.
“One of the things we look at with 6th-generation command and control, is how to make that a little bit easier,” said Carrillo. “How do we get behind the tanker more efficiently?”
The Navy is also looking at adding other modifications because it was already challenging enough to fly for four to five hours, then land on an aircraft carrier deck in the dark. Adding additional time on stations raises concerns about crew fatigue.
One of them is improved landing mode, or ILM, a semi-autonomous system to make it easier to land on carriers.
With the added time in the air, “there is a need for improved landing mode,” said Carrillo. “It's a full contact sport flying that aircraft.”
The ILM concept is similar to another system called Magic Carpet that helps reduce the workload on pilots landing on an aircraft carrier by suggesting appropriate course changes.
The Navy and Northrop Grumman are not just working toward ILM to assist pilots. In 2020, Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, Md, awarded Northrop Grumman a $34 million contract for the requirements phase of the engineering, manufacturing, and development of the E-2D Hawkeye Cockpit Technical Refresh (HECTR).
“HECTR is a critical redesign of hardware and software components of the current E-2D Integration Navigation, Controls and Displays System (INCDS) as well as an integration of the cockpit solution into the weapon system,” according to the Navy. “HECTR will use an E-2D Mission Computer Alternative, currently under development…as part of its design. The cockpit redesign will allow the platform to achieve Communication Navigation Surveillance/Air Traffic Management Required Navigation Performance Area Navigation capability.”
“For decades, we have improved the weapon system of the Advanced Hawkeye, but the cockpit has remained largely unchanged,” said Capt. Michael France, Commodore, Airborne Command & Control and Logistics Wing, at the time. “HECTR solves some of our obsolescence issues and brings new navigation and communication capability."
That includes dealing with pilot fatigue.
"With the [aerial refueling] variant of the E-2D as our new baseline, HECTR makes it safer for our crews who must land on the aircraft carrier after many hours of being on station. HECTR is an essential upgrade that brings the E-2D Hawkeye Cockpit into the 21st Century.”
One problem is that the Advanced Hawkeye’s current INCDS cockpit includes “many of the platform’s top readiness degraders as well as obsolete components,” the Navy said.
Another problem is that the current cockpit architecture will not support the E-2D mission in the so-called 6th-generation command and control system, or Delta System Software Configuration (DSSC) 6 timeframe.
That’s why the Navy in Fiscal Year 2020 began to pursue a cockpit redesign, securing the ability to “reallocate Multi-Year Procurement II (MYPII) savings to the critical cockpit upgrade through the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) cycle.”
The HECTR program goals “will substantially change the pilot and co-pilot experience in the cockpit” as aircrews face greater fatigue from extended flying times, the Navy said.
“HECTR will bring increased safety, decreased pilot workload and increased sustainability to the world’s only carrier-based airborne command & control platform,” said France. “It is a welcome addition to the Advanced Hawkeye and one that will Boost our combat readiness and flexibility.”
Once the C-2 Greyhound, the E-2's close cargo and personnel-hauling cousin, is fully replaced by the CMV-22 Osprey, the E-2D will be the last fixed-wing carrier-based aircraft that lands on the aircraft carrier without a Head-Up Display (HUD).
“Landing can be a difficult task for pilots due to nearly imperceptible wing dips that occur as a result of the lack of a readily available horizon reference and the slow ‘inside-outside’ scan pattern required by the legacy cockpit design,” the Navy said.
HECTR “will integrate a HUD capability to reduce the E-2D pilot workload as well as Boost situational awareness and correct current INCDS Human Machine Interface (HMI) deficiencies. The HUD will increase safety and decrease pilot workload for generations of Hawkeye pilots by providing horizon reference and increased visual scan speed for carrier landings, which will be especially beneficial at night and during adverse weather conditions.” This will be done via a helmet-mounted display that will superimpose HUD symbology in front of the pilot's eye.
HECTR will also replace the existing Avionics Flight Management Computer software with an open, modular, application-based software architecture.
“This architecture redesign will enable the program to sustain mission readiness and execution in DSSC-6 and beyond,” the Navy said. “The program design will also include exportable variants for potential foreign military sales partners.”
The upgrade was scheduled to be fielded with DSSC-6, which Northrop Grumman now says is scheduled for some time in Fiscal Year 2028.
Zilch said she is “excited” about the 6th-generation command and control capabilities of the future.
“That's going to be key for laying out what the [concept of operations] are for distributed maritime operations. How do you have that open architecture that gives you that app? It's that app perspective, right? How do you put in AI? How do you put in machine learning? What are the things that you can do going forward to continue this long legacy of capability?”
The “signal from the Navy is very strong,” she said. The capability upgrades will continue. And having that open architecture allows that to be faster, which is what DoD is looking for - how do we get that capability out faster? So I think that gives us a really good strong tenant to do that. And then that allows us to take that capability and port it to whatever will come next.”
In March of 2021, the Navy announced plans to modify the Advanced Hawkeye’s mission computer so it can also serve as a drone controller, as part of a manned-unmanned teaming experiment. That would allow off-ship command-and-control of the future MQ-25 Stingray, and potentially future drones, too. It’s part of the Navy’s larger effort to build out its drone fleet.
When asked Tuesday by The War Zone about how the Advanced Hawkeye will work with the Stingray, Carrillo said “right now, we are figuring that out.”
The MQ-25 and other unmanned aircraft of the future are “a critical part of the sixth-generation command and control, as we look at the capabilities and the ability to put systems on the aircraft rapidly to address those opportunities for that capability,” he said. “So we're still working through that.”
In May, Northrop Grumman, together with Boeing, which makes the MQ-25, conducted a demonstration to “show that the E-2D has command and control utilizing Link 16 with the MQ-25,” said Zilch. “So we can make sure that that can still perform its mission, whatever the comms may be. So we've been able to show in multiple simulated demonstrations that we have that command and control ability to message to the MQ-25 and control that.”
The E-2D will also take part in additional demonstrations of distributed maritime operations and joint, all-domain command and control constructs that the U.S. military is trying to build.
The company is “definitely looking at manned-unmanned teaming, crewed and uncrewed teaming, and how that works,” said Scott Villiard, a company spokesman. “And some of those demonstrations are actually intra-Northrop Grumman platforms as well.”
Villiard declined to offer specifics.
Northrop Grumman was also hesitant to offer many details when we asked about the role Advanced Hawkeyes will play with other uncrewed systems deployed to carriers in the future, particularly whether the E-2D will have command and control over them once airborne.
“I don't want to get too much into that because some of that is...highly classified,” Carrillo said. “But it would be reasonable to think that it's gonna be a manned-unmanned teaming going forward And the E-2D is a critical part of the command and control part of the battlespace. So it’s reasonable to think that they're going to be tied together.”
As for whether the E-2D might work with the Protector drone in the future, Carrillo said while it might be a future capability to consider, there are no plans to fund it at this point.
Efforts have been underway to make the Advanced Hawkeyes more comfortable for the three crew members who have to work in tight spaces tracking objects and the two pilots who have to fly for hours, and also help in the early warning mission, and then land on aircraft carriers, often in the dark. Aerial refueling extends the E-2's endurance but also asks for more of its crews, too.
“You know, it's not an airliner, right?” said Carrillo. “We're not gonna pretend to say that it's an airliner. It's not a Lear jet, right? It's a combat aircraft that flies on and off an aircraft carrier day or night. So there's a lot of things that are just generally uncomfortable about the aircraft.”
But there has been a constant effort “to make sure that the systems we have, the seats we have, are comfortable for long periods. It's evolving. We are continually growing and learning, building and making improvements.”
Northrop Grumman, however, will add even more creature comforts, if asked.
Unlike the U.S. Navy, Japan has required that its E-2Ds have a toilet and microwave. It is unclear why the U.S. Navy hasn't asked for those amenities or if it will in the future.
Neither Carrillo nor anyone else at Northrop Grumman wanted to talk about whether the E-2D could track stealthy objects at long distances or how it works with surface search tracking radar systems and passive sensor capabilities. But they were able to talk about the Advanced Hawkeye’s cameo appearance in Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to the original Top Gun 1986 Tom Cruise cult sensation.
We asked if Northrop Grumman cooperated with Paramount Studios or whether the studio asked the company about it.
“No, that was Navy driven,” said Zilch. “We had Admiral Whitesell here for a tour right after the premiere. And he was very involved with that. But we were not involved in that. He enjoyed the movie.”
The Navy, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin were extensively involved in the production of Top Gun: Maverick.
The last Advanced Hawkeye is set to be completed in 2027, but Northrop Grumman was reluctant to offer too many specifics about what comes next.
“It would be silly to think that the E-2D is going to be the Navy’s last command and control platform,” said Carrillo. “We are in the process. It's still very early into figuring out what's next. As we look at E-2D going into the 2040s and the capabilities moving forward, we need to be working on what's next. And there's interest from the Navy. There's interest from industry. And so the short answer is yes, we are looking out. We are not going to talk about what that capability is or what we're thinking. But the Navy's Command and Control Program Office is starting to work through that. And then obviously, we're going to leverage 60 years of experience.”
But one thing is certain.
There is plenty of room for continued growth, something the company obviously thought of when purchasing and later upgrading the St. Augustine facility.
About a decade ago, Northrop Grumman invested about $120 million into the St. Augustine line. That includes the massive, 364,000-square-foot Building 100, where upwards of a dozen Advanced Hawkeyes can be built in a year, if that capacity were needed. Considering the state of world affairs, that is a possibility.
While only about seven or eight a year are being built now, the facility’s modular layout and key electrical and HVAC components under the floor mean that it can also accommodate the construction of a wide range of aircraft types and sizes.
And while the process for building E-2Ds for the U.S. Navy is too far along to make robot-augmented construction cost-effective, Northrop Grumman is using an ElectroImpact robot it dubbed “MOBI” (though another name choice was “E2D2”) to help drill and inspect holes in the wings sections for the Japanese models.
That’s because the Japanese versions allow Northrop Grumman to use MOBI without reconfiguring the entire production process.
But moving forward, having that technology will come in very handy on systems that are designed with robot-augmented construction in mind.
So, while the Advanced Hawkeye’s future may not be indefinite, the St. Augustine plant could become the birthplace of new designs.
Still, the Hawkeye has a lot of years ahead of it, and after six decades, the Navy still hasn't found a better solution for all that it offers its fleet. This is an incredible testament to the design and all those who worked to keep the venerable platform relevant over all these years and into the future.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
On Thursday, Apple released iOS 16 public beta 2, which includes a set of new actions for the Shortcuts app that work with Safari, Mail, and Reminders. These actions include Find Tabs, Find Tab Groups, Find Bookmarks, Open Bookmarks, Find reading Lists, Open reading List Items, Search Mail, Open Mailbox, Open Smart List, Create Reminders List, and Search Reminders.
These 11 actions come in addition to the 46 actions added in the first public beta, bringing the total up to 67 new actions coming to iOS 16.
Here’s a little more about what each of these new actions does.
The new actions for Safari in iOS 16 are extremely powerful, and perhaps the most significant actions that Shortcuts has gotten in some time.
For the first time, Shortcuts can interact with all of the open tabs in the Safari app using the Find Tabs action. This action pulls all of the currently open tabs in the active tab group and brings them into the Shortcuts app, letting users extract the title and URLs from each and use them in their workflows.
With an action like this, Shortcuts users can create flows to save all of their open tabs into notes for later from their favorite iPads, for example.
In the current implementation, the Find Tabs action is a bit confusing because it seems to be missing some filter options, like picking from a tab group. I expect Apple will update this action in future releases with more parameters.
Shortcuts also now has actions for Find Bookmarks and Open Bookmarks, as well as Find reading Lists and Opening reading List Items.
In the current beta, however, these actions also seem to be missing filter options that would make them more functional. Users can only retrieve all items or filter by title or URL, but these are missing options to filter by bookmark folder or by date, for example.
Also, for reference, Safari is receiving substantial updates for Shortcuts users in iOS 16, so these actions will all be great additions to the set of Safari actions added in the first public beta.
The Mail app received two new actions in the second public beta: Search Mail and Open Mailbox.
Search Mail enables Shortcuts users to fill out a query in the Shortcuts app and have it passed into the Mail search field, taking advantage of the much-improved search capabilities coming to Mail in iOS 16.
Open Mailbox is also super useful because it enables users to jump directly to a specific inbox, section of a mailbox, or folder in the app. Users can make shortcuts to jump to places like their VIP or Flagged inboxes, a specific account folder, or places like Gmail tags that are synced over as folders when using Mail.
The Reminders app also got new actions for Open Smart List, Search Reminders, and Create Reminders List.
The ability to open smart lists is great because it works with filters like the Today View or the All Reminders view. However, this action is missing the ability to open to your own smart lists, so you can't currently open to them to take advantage of any advanced tagging features. Like many of these actions, I expect this to get updated in future betas.
Reminders can also now accept a query, then filter the results based on what you searched for using Shortcuts. With Create List, you can also pre-program in a title for a new list in Reminders.
These reactions also build off of the set that became available in iOS 15, which added functionality like creating tags or adding them to Reminders.
The second public beta continues to pack in functionality to Shortcuts for the iOS 16 release. The expanded capabilities in Safari are extremely useful and very welcome, and the sets for Mail and Reminders round out the basic capabilities that should be available in each of those apps.
Currently, the new Books app actions that were present in the earlier developer betas are still not available in the public betas — perhaps we’ll see those in the next few releases. Plus, as I mentioned above, there are some areas in this current set of actions that appear incomplete or could use more functionality. Hopefully, we see those changes before iOS 16 launches.
Despite some flaws, it feels like Safari's deeper functionality is another signal for more powerful actions that could come to other apps as well. Adding the ability to Find Mail Messages would be extremely useful too, for example.
Stay tuned for more coverage of new actions in future releases of Shortcuts, and if you’re not on the beta train, check out our latest story on how to get started with Shortcuts for Apple Watch.
The a-ha moment came around 2014. At the time I was leading GE’s advanced technology team, a group of technical engineers whose sole role is to test the boundaries of what’s possible. We were probing the possibilities of improving fuel efficiency with the goal to see how far we could push.
GE had designed and tested open fan designs dating back to the 1980s and we had advanced significantly on that work, but a counter-rotating fan was essentially a given to us at that point. That’s when one of the engineers asked, “Why does it have to counter-rotate? What if it’s single stage?”
It was like a lightbulb went off. One of those moments when you’ve worked on something for so long that you can’t see it any other way, and then someone did. It wasn’t just a breakthrough, it was radical. A single stage fan that wasn’t simply a propeller, but rather one set of rotating fan blades with the same speed and performance of a counter-rotating fan.
As chief engineer of GE and a GE engineer for the last 27 years, I’ve watched how we’ve incrementally improved fuel efficiency with each successive new commercial aircraft engine design. The LEAP engine*, introduced in 2016, is 15 percent more efficient than CFM56-5B and -7B engines. The GEnx engine is up to 15 percent more efficient than the CF6-80C2, and the GE9X engine has been designed to be up to 10% more efficient than the GE90-115B.
But the push for 20 percent greater fuel efficiency in one generation? That is something different. Engineers like big challenges, and this is certainly one of them.
To address this challenge, CFM International, our 50-50 joint company with Safran, announced the CFM RISE* (Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines) technology demonstration program back in June 2021, targeting reduced fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by more than 20 percent compared to today’s most efficient engines.
Central to the program is state-of-the-art propulsive efficiency for the engine, including advancing the open fan architecture.
In the past, when we’ve broached the open fan, it’s been in response to rising fuel prices. The technology foundation from our work in the 1970s with NASA’s Quiet Clean Short-Haul Experimental Engine (also known as QCSEE) and in the 1980s with the GE36 open fan is what we are building on today.
With the CFM RISE Program, our engineers are again pushing the limits to develop even more advanced technologies than we have before. What’s different this time is why. We are now at a point in the dialogue where fuel prices aren’t driving the discussion. Instead, we are putting all of our best technology on the table toward an even bigger, more impactful goal — reducing CO2 emissions to achieve a more sustainable aviation industry.
Last year, I joined other Chief Technology Officers prior to COP26, the United Nation’s climate conference, to issue a joint statement reaffirming our industry’s commitment to achieve industry-wide Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) targets, including the goal of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. This supports the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5ºC compared to pre-industrial levels.
The CTO statement is four pages long but, in essence, it reflects our promise to relentlessly pursue efficiency. And, quite simply, the open fan architecture is an essential component in GE’s plan to lead in the march toward net zero.
Over the last 50 years, we’ve learned how to make the open fan engine design simpler and lighter. Stationary outlet guide vanes replace previous two-stage, counter-rotating fan blades in our latest designs. This change is significant because we can direct air flow and fly at speeds consistent with conventional turbofan engine architectures.
More recently, we’ve made significant improvements in acoustics, which had been an inhibiting factor. Open fan acoustics are where we need them to be for commercial service and we are actually on the lower end for noise certification.
Add to that our fourth generation - and the industry’s only - carbon fiber composite fan blades, which are well suited to move to an open fan engine. No one else in the industry has the depth of expertise or composite fan experience that GE has.
The challenge when you work in advanced technology is coming up with something that is revolutionary, rather than evolutionary. To achieve the bold goals that we and the industry are driving toward, revolutionary design is the only solution. And like my colleague pointed out in 2014, when you go from counter-rotating to single-stage, your mind expands. You think, ‘Wow, this is truly revolutionary.’
While ducts (or fan cases/nacelles) perform some aerodynamic function, their primary function is structural. But they weigh a ton. Literally. And when you take most of that weight away with the open fan design, you also remove propulsion drag.
We joke that removing the nacelle lets a fan blade be a fan blade. When there is a nacelle, you have to decide how big you want the fan to be. But when you remove the nacelle, the fan is able to be as big as it needs to be from an aerodynamic standpoint. Even with larger blades, the open fan is not much bigger than the nacelle we have around the CFM LEAP engine today. In fact, the blades for the RISE Program’s open fan are not much bigger than the GE9X fan blades.
As the GE team rises to the aviation industry’s challenge to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050, open fan architecture also awakens our collective excitement because it’s an obvious change from the traditional turbofan aircraft engine. This is the most exciting—and the most challenging—time to be an engineer. I tell people just starting their careers in our Edison Engineering Development Program that if they aren’t excited about this program, then they are probably in the wrong place. It takes everything we thought we could do with jet engines previously and says, ‘Nah, we can do better.’
And the time is now. While global aviation produced just 2 percent of human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2019, passenger air traffic is expected to grow in coming years, and it is incumbent upon us to act quickly.
Safety is our top priority. As chief engineer for GE, I am primarily responsible for product safety. My team and I will ensure that safety supersedes all else during our ground and flight tests for the open fan, and as always, we will work closely with our regulators before it enters into service.
Air transport plays a key role in reaching climate targets. Open fan architecture is the radical change aviation needs to achieve its goals; we cannot reach them without it.
Hot off the Press: July 19, 2022 it was announced at the Farnborough Air Show, that the Airbus A380 would test open-fan architecture in flight
*RISE, CFM56, and LEAP are all registered trademarks and programs of CFM International, a 50-50 joint company between GE and Safran Aircraft Engines.
CLIMATEWIRE | The Senate budget reconciliation deal could open the door to a green power grid, a key ingredient in slashing emissions enough to meet the country’s near-term climate ambitions.
The electricity provisions in the deal — announced this week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — largely mirror the proposal laid out in last year’s failed “Build Back Better Act.” They would extend tax credits for renewables; provide new subsidies to technologies like energy storage and hydrogen; and offer bonuses to clean energy developers that pay the prevailing wage, use domestically manufactured materials and build projects in fossil fuel-reliant communities.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” also contemplates a long-term shift in how clean electricity subsidies are doled out, moving from a technology-specific standard for wind and solar to one that provides tax credits for any technology that can generate electricity without pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The electricity provisions are particularly important to the country’s climate ambitions because most deep decarbonization studies show the power sector contributing the bulk of emissions reductions prior to 2030 (Climatewire, April 22, 2021).
“This is the thing that allows us to potentially surge forward and get on a path to our NDC targets,” said Conrad Schneider, advocacy director at Clean Air Task Force, referring to the United States’ nationally determined contribution for cutting emissions under the Paris climate accord.
The United States committed to a 50-52 percent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. When talks between Manchin and Schumer appeared to break down earlier this month, experts said the U.S. was in danger of missing its target by a wide margin. The Rhodium Group, a research firm, predicted that without congressional action, emissions would fall 25-34 percent over that time. American emissions are currently 17 percent below 2005 levels (Climatewire, July 14).
In a preliminary analysis released Tuesday evening, Rhodium said the bill would put America on track to cut emissions to 31 to 44 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The research firm said the range reflected uncertainty over fossil fuel prices, economic growth and technology costs.
“Put simply, the IRA has the potential to be the biggest climate action ever taken by Congress,” the group wrote in a research note. “However, 2030 is not too far off on the horizon. Swift action in the Senate to enact the package, along with additional accelerated action across all levels of government, can help put the US that much closer to the 2030 target.”
The “Inflation Reduction Act,” which includes $369 billion in energy and climate spending, aims to slash emissions by 40 percent. The electricity provisions in the bill would put the U.S. in good shape to hit that threshold and potentially exceed it, Schneider said.
“What it is doing is reorienting the priorities of the U.S. toward building the clean energy economy and transforming the energy economy on a rapid scale not seen before,” he said.
Technologies like wind and solar are readily available and commercially competitive to fossil fuels. This makes transitioning electricity to clean energy an achievable goal — and the target of policies to reach near-term climate ambitions.
Some other sectors of the economy, like industry, lack commercially viable green alternatives. Others, like transportation, have alternatives in the form of electric vehicles but face a stock turnover challenge. People tend to drive their cars for years before buying a new one.
Clean electricity can further aid the decarbonization of the economy by providing a way to green transportation and space heating. That is why climate efforts at the state and federal level have long focused on curbing emissions from power plants, the second largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S. after transportation.
Power-sector emissions declined by roughly a third between 2005 and 2021, according to EPA data, driven by a combination of federal tax credits for wind and solar, state action, cheap natural gas, falling renewable costs, and coal retirements.
But efforts to rein in power-sector emissions further have a tortured history in Washington.
A cap-and-trade bill died in 2009. A plan to pay utilities to adopt clean technology, and penalize those who didn’t, was stripped from “Build Back Better” last year in the face of opposition from Manchin. That left clean electricity tax credits as the primary vehicle for deep near-term emissions reduction.
The tax credits for zero-emitting electricity sources in the “Inflation Reduction Act” largely follow the model laid out in “Build Back Better.”
The new bill would essentially extend the existing clean energy tax credits through 2025. Like “Build Back Better,” it would provide a base payment for the production tax credit (PTC) historically used by wind facilities and the investment tax credit (ITC) available to solar and other renewable sources.
The base payment for the PTC — adjusted for inflation — is about 0.6 cent per kilowatt-hour, rising to around 2.6 cents per kWh for developers that pay a prevailing wage and offer apprenticeship programs. Two additional bonuses are available to developers that use domestically built materials and site their facilities in communities where a sizable percent of the population is employed by the fossil fuel industry. The maximum PTC would be roughly 3.1 cents per kWh when factoring in all the bonuses. The bill would also offer production tax credits to nuclear and hydrogen generators.
The base ITC rate is 6 percent of a project’s cost, rising to 30 percent for developers that pay a prevailing wage. Two additional 10 percent bonuses are available to projects that use domestically made materials and are located in low-income or fossil fuel-reliant communities. The maximum ITC would be 50 percent.
There is another important detail: Solar projects would be able to qualify for the PTC starting next year. The industry has long advocated that move, arguing that solar developers should be able to choose which credit best fits their needs.
“We are thrilled with the size and scope and the significant predictability this provides our companies to plot the path forward to meet our climate goals,” said Erin Duncan, vice president of congressional affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. “This is going to transform the American economy.”
The extension of the existing credits is only one element of the deal.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” contemplates a massive shift in the way clean electricity tax credits are paid out beginning in 2025. Starting that year, any electricity source that does not emit carbon dioxide will be able to choose between the PTC and ITC.
The change toward a technologically neutral standard focused on emissions reductions has long been championed by Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who leads the Senate Finance Committee. “Build Back Better” also adopted Wyden’s proposal, but the “Inflation Reduction Act” would implement it sooner.
Under Wyden’s plan, the credits would begin to phase out when power-sector emissions fall by 75 percent. If they remain above 75 percent in 2032, they would remain in effect until the emissions reach that threshold.
In an interview, Wyden estimated the package of clean energy tax credits would cost around $260 billion.
“This is a fundamental change in terms of clean energy policy. No longer we’re picking winners and losers. It’s tech neutral,” Wyden said. “So it’s agnostic because you’re not going to be able to predict the clean energy possibilities because there may be completely new emission reducers 15 years from now.”
But one of the most consequential provisions concerns how the subsidy is actually paid. Renewable interests lobbied to turn the tax credit into a direct payment, saying it would free them of the need to go to the tax equity markets and speed development. But the provision was opposed by Manchin.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” adopts something of a compromise. Tax-exempt entities like tribes and municipal utilities would be able to receive direct payments, enabling them to access the ITC for the first time. Other entities would be able to transfer the credit to a third party for the first time.
The change would effectively widen the pool of lenders from big banks to other entities with large amounts of tax liability.
“It is kind of a game changer,” said Lauren Collins, a partner at Vinson and Elkins LLP.
Previously, developers needed to own a project to receive a credit. But that made it difficult for developers with limited tax liability to fully access the credit. Under the “Inflation Reduction Act,” an entity without tax liability could transfer the credit to a third party that can use it.
“You no longer need a tax equity investor or your own tax capacity to monetize the credit,” Collins said.
Challenges to decarbonizing the power sector remain, even if the bill does become law. Money is important, but it takes time to site, permit and build projects, analysts noted. The bill attempts to anticipate some of those challenges.
Renewable and fossil fuel developers have long argued it takes too long to permit new projects in the United States. The bill would provide money for the federal government to hire new staff to work on permitting issues. The Department of Energy would receive $125 million to work on permitting, while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would get $100 million and the Interior Department would receive $150 million.
The bill would also provide $2 billion in DOE loans for transmission projects and nearly $1 billion in grants to states to help site the projects.
And as concerns about global supply chains are on the rise, the bill would offer companies incentives to build factories to supply the clean energy industry, said Harry Godfrey, who oversees domestic manufacturing policy at Advanced Energy Economy, a green trade group.
“I would argue this is the most significant industrial policy of this era bar none,” he said.
Reporter Nick Sobczyk contributed.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2022. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
Although Lotus just had its best sales year in a decade, selling 1710 units worldwide in 2021, that's still a small batch of vehicles. But that isn't stopping the company from getting even more exclusive. Lotus has now created a new division called Lotus Advanced Performance (LAP) aimed at creating bespoke cars and experiences for its customers.
We sat down for a chat with Simon Lane, the new director of Lotus Advanced Performance and visionary for the group. Lane comes to Lotus fresh from heading up Aston Martin's similar Q division.
When Lotus announced the new division in February, it released an enticing photo displaying what looks like the rear end of an open-wheel race car with a large wing. Notably, two exhaust pipes can be seen sticking out the back of the teaser car. We think it looks a bit like the Lotus 72, or perhaps the Type 49, but all Lane would give was “It’s clearly a very significant car for Lotus.” Excitingly, Lane also told us that, as the rest of Lotus moves toward full electrification, this division is retaining the right to “play” with internal combustion engines, albeit in very low volumes.
LAP isn’t waiting around to get the ball rolling on production. Lane described the division as having four main “product streams,” with motorsport being one. Earlier this spring, it launched its first car, the Emira GT4 as a dedicated track machine based on the Emira mid-engine sports car. Lane told us that talks have started on what the team wants its next motorsport-focused car to look like, but there are no concrete decisions yet. He did explain that the proposed Electric GT series from the FIA is something his team is looking at, though offered no additional clues on that particular front.
The second “product stream” or “model line” would develop cars built on existing platforms. That means something on the Emira platform other than the aforementioned GT4, something on the Evija platform, or perhaps a performance version of the upcoming Eletre to compete with other performance SUVs. Bespoke options like unique paint jobs or liveries would also fall into this category.
Here's where things get exciting. The third stream for LAP is set to consist of historic vehicles, both period-correct continuation cars and restomod-style cars with old designs and newer mechanical components.
“I’ve discovered that there are a number of original drawings for cars that were completed in the Colin Chapman era, that never made it off the drawing board,” said Lane. “That’s really exciting, there were some amazing cars that were designed back then. And I think using a blend of original beautiful designs for cars that were designed by Colin, and modern technology offer us the opportunity to develop some really cool cars.”
Looking ahead, Lane also told us that LAP is hoping to launch its second car by the end of the year. “I would like to think that you will see something from us by the end of the year,” said Lane. The target for the first bespoke vehicle in the restomod line is later in 2023.
It’s important to note that these will all be incredibly limited in number. We were told that most cars from Lotus Advanced Performance would have less than 100 made, and some would be as low as single digits.
The fourth stream for LAP is in the experiential world with things like track days or tours of the company’s factory at Hethel. This page shows a great example of the sort of experience Lane put on with Aston Martin and works as a marker for what customers can expect Lotus to put on in the coming months and years.
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The USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) aircraft carrier is seen during a port visit in Hong Kong on October 2, 2017.
Anthony Wallace | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will keep a U.S. naval aircraft carrier strike group in the South China Sea longer than originally planned, in response to Chinese missile tests and heightened aggression around Taiwan, the White House announced Thursday.
At the same time, Biden will postpone a previously scheduled intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, test, said a White House spokesman.
The twin announcements signal an approach that seeks to raise American military vigilance in the region while simultaneously limiting opportunities for Beijing to point to any U.S. action as a provocation for increased aggression toward Taiwan and neighboring countries.
The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and her escort ships will remain in the South China Sea "for a little bit longer than they were originally planned to be there," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at the White House on Thursday.
The goal of the strike group's prolonged stay in the region will be "to monitor the situation," he said. He added that "the president believed that it was the prudent thing to do, to leave her and her escort ships there for just a little bit longer."
The Ronald Reagan carrier strike group has been operating in the South China Sea since the middle of July, according to the U.S. military.
Kirby said the postponement of the Minuteman 3 ballistic missile test aims to demonstrate "the behavior of a responsible nuclear power by reducing the risks of miscalculation" while China "engages in destabilizing military exercises around Taiwan."
Still, the United States does not expect China to scale back its aggressive actions any time soon.
"We're expecting more exercises, more bellicosity and rhetoric, and we're expecting more incursions" into non-Chinese territories, he said.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing have increased significantly in the past week, driven in part by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to visit Taiwan with a delegation of congressional Democrats.
The White House and Pentagon reportedly cautioned the powerful California lawmaker not to make the trip when she did, due to the potential for increased bilateral tensions.
Pelosi wrote in an op-ed that she believes China poses a grave threat to the independence of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a Chinese province. She said her trip was necessary to show American support for democracy in Taiwan and around the world.
But as Biden tries to balance a desire to flex American muscle in the South China Sea and not provoke further actions from Beijing, experts say the distinction could be lost on the Chinese government.
"China doesn't want or need to convince itself that we're serious. And parsing between 'serious' and 'provocative' is like angels dancing on a pin," said Andrew Mertha, director of the China Global Research Center at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
"This 'splitting the difference' exhibits precisely the confusion and incoherence that Beijing likely sees as some sort of deliberate, aggressively opaque strategy," he said in an interview with CNBC.
"If cooler heads are prevailing behind the scenes — in both Beijing and Washington — this will be a prelude to a shift to a more sustained, substantive diplomatic engagement," said Mertha.
Kirby emphasized Thursday that key lines of communication between the U.S. and China are open, despite the heightened tensions.
"We're using those lines of communication, and I think you'll see that in days to come as well," he said, somewhat cryptically.
The White House did not immediately respond to an email asking for further details on what Kirby meant.
The Tour de France stage to Megève came to a stop with 35km to go as the route was blocked by a group of protestors demanding action against climate change.
Alberto Bettiol (EF Education-EasyPost) had attacked the 25-rider breakaway that had gained over seven minutes on the group of race leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and had a lead of 32 seconds when the race motorbike drew alongside to warn him the race would have to stop.
After a brief discussion regarding how his gap would be re-established when the race resumed, Bettiol stopped, as did the rest of the breakaway. The peloton rolled toward where the riders were stopped and were assured the same gaps would be maintained.
Bettiol shook his head in disbelief as he waited for the route to clear as protestors with flares sat in the middle of the road.
A similar protest occurred during the French Open in June when a woman with a t-shirt reading "We have 1028 days left" tied herself to the net during the men's semi-final round. A group called 'Derniere Renovation’ claimed responsibility for that incident and the protest that stopped today's Tour de France stage.
On their website, Derniere Renovation (opens in new tab) stated the protest was not their preferred course of action, stating "It is urgent, we must act and make our government react, starting with the energy renovation of buildings."
The group's countdown is believed to refer to the United Nations Climate report that says time is running out to slow climate change.
A quote attributed to "Alice, 32", stated, "I would rather be with my grandfather, be quiet on my sofa watching the Tour de France, while the government does its job. But this is not the reality.
"The reality is that the world to which the politicians are sending us is a world in which the Tour de France will no longer be able to exist. In this world, we will be busy fighting to feed ourselves and to save our families. Under these conditions we will face mass wars and famines. We must act and enter into civil resistance today to save what remains to be saved.
"What do you expect from me? That I stay on the roadside watching my life go by like I watch cyclists go by? No, I decided to act and interfere to avoid the worst episode of suffering and create a new world. Because everything can still change."
Other protests have stopped the Tour de France in the past, with farmers halting the race in 2018. The riders themselves staged a go-slow in 2021 to protest against dangerous conditions after a crash-filled stage 3.
On a stage where riders repeatedly had to douse themselves with cool water to fight the heat, gendarmes forcibly removed two women who had chained themselves together by the neck, one of whom wore a shirt reading "We have 989 days left" and other protestors from the route and the race resumed.
Metaverse Standards Forum working on interoperability standards for the Metaverse virtual world
Credit: DepositPhotos Author: photonphoto ID: 544697448In this compelling interview, Neil Trevett, provides his deep insights into the new Metaverse Standards Forum which in under one month has more than 1000 organizations, standards groups, corporations and more engaged. And more signing up daily. There is interest from the UN ITU #AIForGood as well.
Standards drive interoperability which is the foundation of global acceptance through seamless usage. Think electricity, mobile phones, browsing websites, the internet itself are all founded on standards.
The metaverse is the 3D evolution of immersive digital representations of the world around us. Estimated to be in US Trillions of dollars in market activity.
In the extensive interview, we discuss:
This article is based upon insights from my daily pro bono work, across more than 100 global projects and communities, with more than 400,000 CEOs, investors, scientists, and notable experts.
Neil is Vice President of Developer Ecosystems at NVIDIA where he helps enable applications to take advantage of advanced GPU and silicon acceleration. Neil is also the elected President of The Khronos Group, where he initiated the OpenGL ES standard now used by billions worldwide every day, helped catalyze the WebGL project to bring interactive 3D graphics to the Web, fostered the creation of the glTF standard for 3D assets, chairs the OpenCL working group defining the open standard for heterogeneous parallel computation, and helped establish and launch the new-generation Vulkan API.
Before NVIDIA, Neil was at the forefront of the silicon revolution bringing interactive 3D to the PC, and he established the embedded graphics division of 3Dlabs to bring advanced visual processing to a wide range of non-PC platforms.
AI is employed to generate the transcript which is then edited for brevity, clarity while staying with the cadence of the chat. AI has an approximate 80% accuracy so going to the full video interview is recommended for full precision. Time stamps are provided however with the caveat that they are approximate. The interview is recommended for all audiences from students, business and technical professionals, to global leaders in government, industry, NGOs, United Nations, scientific and technical organizations, academia, education, media; professionals and readers interested in translational research and development, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work and much more.
The video interview is found with the non-profit ACM Education Center (interviews by Stephen Ibaraki). This is the direct link to the interview page with profile and video.
Stephen Ibaraki 00:00
Hey, Neil, thank you for coming in. It's just amazing. What you're doing is simply outstanding. There's so much excitement around the metaverse and things around the metaverse. I did an interview recently with Pattie Maes of the MIT Media Lab, Fluid Interfaces research group (see Forbes). They've been working on this for three (or more) decades. It's not a new concept.
Neil Trevett 00:27
Thank you for the invitation. That is great to talk to you. And you're right. Lots of us in the industry have been working on standards for the metaverse, we just never knew it at the time.
Stephen Ibaraki 00:35
Neil, your background, just remarkable. We are going to mine some of that background, because you've been at the forefront of all of the standards work leading up to where we are today. I'm looking forward to getting into more detail about that. But before we get into what you were doing right now; if you can describe, two or three inflection points in your life that made this outstanding career that you have.
Neil Trevett 01:06
Sure. It's an interesting question. I guess looking back, it is strange how small things that happen in your life completely affect the flow of everything that happens down downstream. I guess, if I were to look back, why I've ended up here now, but all the way back to college—was where I found my love for 3D graphics. And that has been a constant theme through much of what we do, both NVIDIA, which is my day job and at Kronos. And now the Metaverse Standards Forum. Just I've always wanted to be an artist, but never had the hand eye coordination. So I did photography, and I still do photography, but the visual aspect of 3D graphics has always been a fascination to me. That was something that soon as I found it, I just wanted to continue doing that. That was definitely something that affected the rest of my career. And kind of related and downstream. I think the other really important thing that happened was when OpenGL became an open standard. I was just working in a company and observing that happening at that point, but the power of open standards to really affect in a good way, in a positive way. How an industry organizes and builds good business for everyone involved was really an enlightening, and it was something that was making the world a better place. And so, again, I had a strong, compelling desire to get involved with the standards community. Perhaps the other kind of inflection point was back in the early days of trying to bring 3D on the web. The Web3D Consortium that was working on the … standard. They were looking for a precedent because they just had set up this consortium. I've never done anything like that before. For reasons that remain a mystery to me, even today, I put my name in the hat, to be elected as the president of that consortium, and got elected. That was really where I learned, how consortia work and how standards work, from the inside out. A big shout out to the Web3D community. They were very patient with me, as I learned how to do that. That consortium still goes today, and we keep in close touch.
Stephen Ibaraki 04:02
It's really interesting. I can hear this drive, and this passion that started early and the creativity elements. But, you had this interest in art, and yet you're enabling art, right? In essence, because so much of the computer graphics is around art and so on and driving (example: OpenAI, AI system that creates realistic images / art from a natural language description) DALL- E 2, I think is quite amazing, right?
Neil Trevett 04:27
Yeah, that's right. Content is king. It's the payoff for everyone working in standards is when you actually see the standards being used. A standard that isn't adopted and used throughout the industry isn't really adding value. But when it is used; when developers use programming interfaces, or when, as you say, artists use the final tools for creativity that is an amazing thing to see and that is the payoff for all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes.
Stephen Ibaraki 05:01
You have been part of this tremendous growth of GPUs. I've been in the industry for so long, I remember GPUs are there, like an outlier? NVIDIA larger in market cap than Intel? It's just amazing.
Neil Trevett 05:17
Yes, that's right. When I first started doing graphics, GPUs weren't a thing. Note that a single chip that could do 3D graphics wasn't a thing we had. I used to be an engineer, before I got into kind of more business development, and the first board I designed was a large board full of bit-slice processors, to do graphics. It has been amazing to see just how the GPU architecture has taken advantage of data parallelism. And then programmability. Now today's GPUs, of course are so flexible, but still taking advantage of parallelism. It's a wonderful way to deliver compute power to where it's needed. It's very interesting the way that GPUs have evolved. The GPUs are used in lots of different market areas now, but it was the gaming industry that gave it the initial impetus, and still is one of the major markets for GPUs. It's kind of cool that gaming builds the volume that GPUs need. So, they can be applied in many other market areas, too. And of course, those are market areas like machine learning and artificial intelligence. Like you were saying, that's been beginning to become such a major market too, for GPU processing. It's interesting that gaming was the start.
Stephen Ibaraki 06:39
You must have been overjoyed when Geoffrey Hinton did ImageNet. And people couldn't believe the leap. Right? That really instantiated this interest in machine learning and driven by GPUs, and just an explosion worldwide, and the adoption. You've been part of that entire journey. Your career must have touched Alain Chesnais; he used to be the president of ACM SIGGRAPH. I'm sure you've published at SIGGRAPH. Or you've been involved with SIGGRAPH, which is the special interest group in graphics, which is the world leader, but it's under the ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery.
Neil Trevett 07:24
Yes, that's right. The ACM is the umbrella organization, which does so much amazing work around the world, for the graphics community. SIGGRAPH is the spiritual home of everything to do with 3D and it has been for many years. I've been attending SIGGRAPH, I think, close to 30 years now. All of the breaking research and all of the community building that makes the 3D community is such a special place to be. It's quite a small community. It's getting larger, but it's surprising how small the community is. SIGGRAPH is the place where everyone goes to catch up every year and to get the latest 3D technologies and increasingly, the augmented and virtual reality, … XR technologies to begin to be well represented at SIGGRAPH. I wouldn't miss SIGGRAPH for anything. We had to for the last a year or two of course with COVID. But other than that, you wouldn't keep me away for anything.
Stephen Ibaraki 08:27
So that's been held in Vancouver the last few years?
Neil Trevett 08:32
Yeah. Everyone's really looking forward to getting back together again in person.
Stephen Ibaraki 08:37
How about IEEE, do you interface with them?
Neil Trevett 08:40
I am a member. I would like use it to keep in touch with lots of the latest technologies. Not so much attending events. But beginning to work quite closely with IEEE for interaction, both with Khronos, and increasingly, the Metaverse Forum. IEEE have been quite active in the metaverse domain, and they have various working groups under IEEE that are very relevant to what the metaverse is going to be.
Stephen Ibaraki 09:21
Okay, so let's now move on this journey. You talked about being inspired by art and you felt graphics was a way to do it. You went to Birmingham, and you had a double major, which is really difficult, with (First Class Joint) Honors, right?
Neil Trevett 09:37
Right. That was another inflection point. I was going around in the UK. You do the rounds around the universities, and you choose one. I was about to do electrical engineering, that was the thing. And then I was walking out of the lobby at Birmingham University and the receptionist said; Oh, before you go, have you heard of this new course we're doing which is a joint computer science and electronics? Oh, that's what I want to do. I often think if that receptionist hadn't offered that leaflet, at that precise moment, as I am literally walking out the door; my life would have been completely different. It was one of the first courses that combined Electronics and Computer Science. One of the very first to my knowledge in the world. We were very fortunate—microprocessors are just beginning to happen. We were very fortunate to be on that kind of leading edge.
Stephen Ibaraki 10:34
You mentioned, in your inflection points, you talk about OpenGL and then WebGL. And you're able to lead in these areas. You got used to this idea of standards, and then working together and communities, to bring stakeholders together, which is what you're doing now with this Metaverse Standards Forum. But before we get into that, I just want to ask a few more questions about your role as Vice President, Developer Ecosystems at NVIDIA. What does that work entail? NVIDIA become a magic company out there? Right, it's so popular today?
Neil Trevett 11:07
NVIDIA does good work. It's a unique company. The culture really encourages everyone to be a team player and to do the best. Both for the company and the industry. I really enjoy working there. It's a very interesting company. And being a graphics person. It's one of the companies, that are of course, most for progressing the field of graphics. It is exciting to be there amongst other people that share the same passion. Lots of people ask me; What does VP Developer Ecosystems actually mean? That's a good question. The bottom line, it's encouraging and enabling developers to use GPUs. But maybe it's kind of the bigger picture. Now, there's Developer Relations and Technical Support, and it's very hands on support for particular developers. But the Developer Ecosystems role is trying to take a wider view; what does the ecosystem need, in general, not necessarily for a particular developer. And of course, that very much is synergistic with my role at Khronos and Metaverse Forum. Because one of the things that developers need is open standards and open standard API's and asset formats, to enable them to do their work and develop applications that are portable across multiple platforms in a productive way. NVIDIA is very supportive; they let me spend a good chunk of my time helping the standards ecosystem evolve. I'm very grateful for that.
Stephen Ibaraki 12:59
You're so embedded in the graphics area. You're the president of the The Khronos Group. But a lot of people in the audience don't know about the work of Khronos. give us a little bit of history and its purpose and its objectives.
Neil Trevett 13:14
It's a question we often get; What's Khronos (The Khronos Group)? Khronos is a nonprofit, open standards Consortium. What we call a standards developing organization. There are many standards developing organizations throughout the industry, of course. Each (SDO) standards developing organization has a particular focus. Over time, the different SDOs in industry, find their patch, and their turf, where they can add value to the industry. Khronos’s expertise and value to the industry is in the field of acceleration API's. You'd like to say connecting software to silicon. If a library or an application needs to reach down into hardware acceleration, now that's where Khronos likes to provide open standards so that hardware access is portable across different vendors. Our starting point was 3D graphics. As I mentioned, now, we have standards for XR hardware. And more generally, we have API's for just parallel computation use; for things like machine vision and increasingly inferencing and machine learning. We've been going around 20 years and we've just passed our 20th birthday. Khronos was originally formed by Intel; actually to create the open ML standard, which was going to be OpenGL for graphics and open ML for video. But it was not the right standard at the right time. Despite the best efforts of everyone, it didn't really take off. But there was the opportunity to bring graphics to mobile and embedded devices. The OpenGL ARB, the architecture review board, was very focused on workstations. And so the ARB enabled Khronos to start up a new working group to do OpenGL ES, OpenGL embedded systems. OpenGL ES / Khronos became literally the most widely adopted 3D API in the history of the known universe. Because it was on every desktop system, and every mobile phone, it was literally everywhere. And then, when Silicon Graphics withdrew from the industry, a new home was needed for OpenGL. And so the mothership OpenGL itself and came to Khronos as well. That gave us the platform to build WebGL, bringing GL capability into the web. And then we expanded out into these other closely related API areas.
(Note: from The Khronos Group website: The Khronos Group is an open, non-profit, member-driven consortium of over 150 industry-leading companies creating advanced, royalty-free interoperability standards for 3D graphics, augmented and virtual reality, parallel programming, vision acceleration and machine learning. Khronos standards include Vulkan®, Vulkan® SC, OpenGL®, OpenGL® ES, OpenGL® SC, WebGL™, SPIR-V™, OpenCL™, SYCL™, OpenVX™, NNEF™, OpenXR™, 3D Commerce™, ANARI™, and glTF™. Khronos members are enabled to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge accelerated platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.)
Stephen Ibaraki 16:13
I'm just thinking of the advent of smartphones, and that really would accelerate all of this too. And then adoption. There's this confluence of machine learning and what's happened there; and then the mobile universe, and then, of course, this whole attention to 3D, and it's just accelerating. So now let's move on and shift the conversation to the Metaverse Standards Forum. How did that come about? You're the chairman of this forum. I remember when your announcement came out; I saw a few companies like Microsoft, and few others that were supporting the Metaverse Standards Forum. I just looked at it the other day, and it's like, over 1000 companies or something like that are in the queue. So, continue to describe the genesis of the Metaverse Standards Forum.
Neil Trevett 17:06
Yes, it's getting close. I mean, we started; we made the launch with 35 companies. Which did include some leading companies such as Microsoft, Meta, and NVIDIA and Qualcomm from the hardware side; Autodesk and Adobe, from the tooling side; Sony from the platform side. We have a good launch quorum of founding members, but you're right; the Forum is only two and a half weeks old, since we did the launch. I think the latest count this morning was 850 companies have joined, which I think speaks to the level of interest in the metaverse. Although not many people know what the metaverse is. In fact, we don't know what the metaverse is going to be, either, but that's okay. We don't need to; we can talk about that. There's a lot of interest in the metaverse in general. I think the level of interest also shows that there's been a thirst and desire in the industry for companies to come together to discuss and cooperate. How they can best work now in the field of the metaverse. We are excited and thrilled that there's been so much industry interest. So now, we're working hard to make sure that even with so many diverse companies in the forum, joining so quickly; we can organize efficiently now to have productive cooperative discussions and actions being produced; work products being produced by the Forum.
Stephen Ibaraki 18:46
Neil, you're unique in that you've been involved with graphics for decades. This term, metaverse, has gotten really popular. As I mentioned earlier, I was talking to Pattie Maes of the Fluid Interfaces group at MIT Media Lab. They were saying, we've been working on this thing for decades. I'd like to get—because you've been involved at the foundation of so many of these standards and standards work—I'd like to hear your definition of the metaverse.
Neil Trevett 19:18
Well, that's a good question. I think, one thing I do know. It's not going to be like Ready Player One. If anyone who knows that story; the basic story is the metaverse suddenly bursts upon the world created by one company. In fact, one programmer really in that story. It's not going to happen that way. So many pieces of technology need to come together. It's going to be a very Darwinian process of experimentation, successes, and failures. As we gradually build the metaverse, whatever it ends up being. I think most people would agree that it's going to be some mix of the connectivity of today's web with the immersiveness of spatial computing, in all, its richness. 3D graphics, augmented virtual reality, ray tracing, machine learning or all of that stuff. It is going to be some combination of bringing those two domains together. But it's going to take a lot of technologies coming together in novel ways that we haven't done before. And the level of interest in the industry; I think everyone recognizes this is a real opportunity. It's driving the need, and the commercial desire to make these technologies work together. I think that's why there's been so much interest in the Metaverse Standards Forum. I think a lot of companies do honestly believe that, if the metaverse is to reach its full potential, we're going to need the right standards, at the right time. Not just from a pure engineering point of view of making things work. But making sure that the metaverse is open, and equitable for all. A good open standard can do a lot to make that so. We have found a lot of interest in interoperability standards. In many cases, and Khronos included and W3C ... and all these other standards organizations. We've been working on these things for years. But now, they have become relevant to more people because of the context of an interest in the larger concept of the metaverse. It's really raising the level of participation and interest in open standards. Which as an open standards kind of person, is really cool to see. That's why we needed the forum. Because no one standards organization can possibly create all of these different standards. It's going to take a constellation of standards being created by dozens of standards organizations. Although the standards organizations many times have one-on-one liaisons; to our knowledge, there has never been this attempt to provide this kind of coordination overlay over all of the different standards organizations. The metaverse has provided both the need and the opportunity to provide a Forum where all of the standards orgs can come together and the industry too; because we need the industry now to tell us what they need. The worst thing is a standard that is designed in an ivory tower disconnected from industry reality. We need industry and its community around one table. That's the basics; it is a simple idea. But the basic simple idea behind the Forum.
Stephen Ibaraki 23:07
Well, as you indicated, you launched with 30 plus companies two and a half weeks ago, now you get over 800, who are involved. And in fact, I got an email and it said there's over 1000 including in the queue or something like that.
Neil Trevett 23:25
More coming. Yeah, it has been great. It's a little bit scary actually. We've been handed this responsibility now by the industry. We're the Metaverse Forum. This is where Khronos and Metaverse Forum kind of intertwine. The Forum has been bootstrapped by Khronos. The Khronos Board has kindly offered to pay for getting the Forum up and running. In terms of the admin support and the online hosting of resources. The Khronos team, has been working super hard over the last two and a half weeks to get everyone onboarded. We didn't expect this much interest, to be to be honest. It has been great to see everyone's been doing a fantastic job. But once Khronos is participating in the forum; Khronos doesn't get any special rights; we are just one of the many standards organizations that we have. It's within our nonprofit mission to encourage the use of these kinds of technologies throughout the industry. So, we're happy and thrilled to be able to be in the right place at the right time to be able to play a role in helping this thing get off the ground.
Stephen Ibaraki 24:47
I'm going to give you, looking at your website and my view; but, it says something like this. I hope the audience doesn't quote me—The forum will focus on pragmatic action-based projects. That's really interesting, especially because I'm a person from the industry; I also sit across vendors work as well. So it's not just a talk shop. You're going to do stuff. Such as implementing prototyping; hackathons, plugfests, and open-source tooling to accelerate the testing and adoption of standards, while also developing consistent terminology and deployment guidelines. That's really attractive.
Neil Trevett 25:31
Yes, absolutely. You put your finger on the key thing, because many times, discussions around the metaverse do devolve into long term philosophical discussions about what things might be in 20 years time. We don't need to do that, again. We have Twitter for that. We want this, the Metaverse Standards Forum, to focus on standards. And exactly as you say, to be action based, to actually move the needle. Although we don't know what the metaverse is going to be in 20 years time. We have this Darwinian soup going on right now. With people trying different things and different market opportunities being explored. What one thing is clear. If we're careful, we can identify interoperability problems that are real problems right now today, and (standards) are definitely going to be needed down the line; regardless of where the final metaverse ends up ends up being. That's what we want to do. To be very thoughtful about finding the problems that we can move the needle on today and make a difference. Doing a hackathon; testing in PlugFests (PlugFests type testing), and guidelines. One of the first projects come up and it's like super obvious once you think about it. But 10 minutes into the first meeting, someone said, where's the list of all the standards then; that are relevant to the metaverse. We will go, Oh, we don't have one. That's probably going to be the first project that we kick off is, getting the standards community, in the wider industry, to crowdsource a useful resource of signposting to all of the various resources. That's going to be useful for the standards organizations. Let alone in anyone in industry trying to use the standards. Where are the gaps between the different standards organizations? What are we all working on, that are potentially related? There hasn't been a central resource that's been built by the community itself. Just the act of doing that; it's going to be a voyage of discovery. I think it will be really valuable. But yes, … going down the line. Now having plugfest type projects; actually not just talking about interoperability in theory, but trying it out, particularly if it goes across boundaries, between standards organizations. Now, this organization is normatively referencing this and using it; if you do it that way, does it work? What are the bugs? Or what are the gaps? Gives me goosebumps thinking of all the good things (data) we're going to get for the standards organizations involved. By doing that kind of hands-on project.
Stephen Ibaraki 28:31
The credibility is really your background (and the community with Open Standards, non-profit Khronos Group,...), because you've done so much work in this area. The fact that you're chairing; this will attract a lot of people. And then they drill into your background or think; oh, wow; this gentleman really knows what this is all about, because you've worked in every facet of this. I just want to add another contextual layer. Are you going to look at governance in any way or ethical frameworks work? We use a lot of it in the AI space. And some of that will be important in this space as well. And as some of these questions come up; are you going to leave that to be a separate discussion with other groups?
Neil Trevett 29:12
That's a very prospective question. And you mentioned the credibility. It's not me. It's Khronos and the other standards organizations that have been doing work; just fortunate to be a part of it. But, the higher order, answer to your question is, what are we going to focus on? Are we going to focus on things like governance and ethics and Web3 type stuff introduced; the blockchain, crypto, side of things. The answer is — it is going to be driven by the members. It goes back to what we're saying earlier. Khronos is happy to bootstrap logistically the Forum. But, we are not dictating and not should any one member dictate where the focus areas end up being. We want to be Darwinian…it's where the members demonstrate a passion and an interest. Now, that's where the forum should focus because that people care about the things that make a difference, right. It's a good dynamic; good, healthy, dynamic. As long as we stay in a broad scope, that's the way to let things happen. That is the way we're self-organizing, right now. Of course, it's early days. Literally a week or two in. But, with all these members, we are letting people online, collate this. The list of Topics that they would be interested in; the domains, and particular pain points from interoperability that they are interested in. And already, now just a few days in, we are seeing clumping. There are definite domains emerging a lot around 3D. Also a lot around ethics and, kind of, governance. And other domains, geospatial … in a few weeks, we're going to have the first list of domains, and we'll make that public. We want to be as open, of course, as we can. And then we'll begin to organize working groups. To address those domains in smaller groups that really care about that topic. It's going to be interesting to see how big those main working groups are, and whether we have to subdivide it further. It's going to be very incremental. How we build this organization around the interest of the members.
Stephen Ibaraki 31:51
You've been involved with some really seminal and pioneering standards work and also getting the stakeholders together. You mentioned, it's really a crowd sourced effort. Getting people involved and participating / volunteering and so on as well. Do you have some sense of the timeframe? Or is it just too early?
Neil Trevett 32:16
Good question. If the question is, when do you think the metaverse will appear? I don't think; we'll never have that one seminal moment. Where we say, Okay. Oh, the metaverse has been announced today. It's going to be this gradual process. And then suddenly, they will wake up and say, actually, what we have today is pretty much what we called the metaverse back in 2022. It's going to be incremental. That means that there's going to be, the journey is the opportunity, not the final destination. There's going to be commercial opportunity every step of the way. As we all work together to this longer-term goal. There's going to be opportunities for everyone involved. And just inside the Forum, we want to leverage that; as I mentioned, the projects that can make a difference today. We want to have some early successes make a difference in a real practical way early. We hope that we'll build the credibility of the Forum and build the momentum to do more work down the line. I don't know how long the Forum is going to last; we'll see. But the journey to the metaverse is multiple decades. But we don't have to wait. There's going to be good stuff along the way as we go.
Stephen Ibaraki 33:45
I work a lot with the UN. There's always this question of different parts of the world and they don't have access to the same resources. How do you see this building out? Is there is accessibility, equity, diversity, and inclusion?
Neil Trevett 34:04
Definitely at the open standards, and almost all of these standards organizations that are involved in the forum are committed as part of their governance model to royalty free standards. The right standard at the right time can definitely help technology rollout across the whole world and make things more accessible to everyone then maybe you have otherwise been the case. That standards are, at the bottom line; that the standards are the tool by which we can make technology accessible to everyone out there. The example I like to use is just plugging a plug into your electrical wall socket. And … IEEE … that didn't happen by accident. That was the work of standardization heroes back in the day. That whole standards ecosystem has just become so ubiquitous that we don't even think of it as a standard anymore. What most of us don't anyway, think of it. There are billions of people that that use it. That's just use it all day, every day. And mobile phones too. OpenGL ES is used in every user interface on every mobile phone pretty much. But people don't think about it. That's good. That's the sign of a really successful standard that just seeps into everyday life to the degree that people don't need to think about it anymore. And the metaverse is going to need standards that become that ubiquitous. It may be a long journey. But the sooner you start, the sooner you'll get there.
Stephen Ibaraki 35:56
People are going to get more excited—more corporations; different groups; NGOs, and so on are going to get more excited as this builds out—including seeing you talk right now (in this interview). How do they (the community) get engaged? How do they say, I want to be part of this?
Neil Trevett 36:13
Well, hopefully, we've made that very straightforward. And to explain why it's so straightforward, it's not an accident. It's by design. The Forum itself is not another standards organization. I know we're called the Metaverse Standards Forum. We have 24 different standards organizations, you have to go talk to today, before the Forum, to understand what's going on. If the forum was another standards organization, you've just made the problem worse, because that was 25 people, you have to go talk to. So, the forum is this coordination layer, as we were saying, over the existing standards organizations. The Forum won't create standards. It will feed requirements and PlugFest results and the needs of the industry, we hope in a well-coordinated effective way, into the standards organizations, to help the standards organizations do their good work. This means that we don't need an IP framework, because the standards developing organizations, of course, need to be very careful about no patent licensing and IP frameworks, to make sure that their standards that they create now can be widely used without problems in the industry. Because the Forum is not creating standards; we don't need that heavy lift machinery, we can afford to be much lighter weight. And that's why any organization is welcome to join the forum. All of the information is on the website. But there's no money. There's no IP framework to sign. There's not even an NDA, because it's an open forum. Everything is public. If any organization is willing to sign up for a simple agreement, saying: if I help you write a blog, I'm going to let you publish it on the web on the website; and a one-page Charter, which is the rules of the road, how the Forum is going to make decisions. Anyone is welcome to click through that agreement and get engaged. There is no minimum commitment for people joining. And again, Darwinian mechanics rule. There's always a bell curve, and some people will be really engaged. And will take a leadership role in all the different working groups that we will have and will, I hope get repaid many fold for their investment in time and effort, which is great, and that there will be people, just on the edges, just lurk. And that's fine, too. Because even people that are just observing what's going on in the forum, are hopefully getting good, useful, actionable information and getting insights into how the industry is evolving. So everyone is welcome, regardless of their level of engagement in the activities that we're doing.
Stephen Ibaraki 39:25
I'm going to propose something. This idea that everything that's out there is going to be part of this in some way. Including across the spectrum of technologies, whether it's 5 and 6G, supercomputing, quantum computing as it matures, analog computing, sensors, internet of things. I mean, it is just the whole gamut, biomedical innovation, all of it somehow. And engineering is going to be part of this metaverse, in this sort of digital twin representation as we get more and more immersive from smartphones to more sophisticated devices to pods where you're totally encased like let's say in an autonomous vehicle. The (inside car) panels could be part of this metaverse journey because you're going to have so much time. So now I want to mine your prediction of treads, because you are at all parts of this; decades of the metaverse journey. Do you have some predictions of things that look really interesting to you? I mentioned some of that. Like, we have exascale supercomputers that are released already. And some people are talking about zeta scale possibilities. NVIDIA is doing amazing work with their Omniverse. All of the new processes are coming out. Do you want to predict some trends? Sort of the narratives here?
Neil Trevett 40:56
Well, that's a really good question. Very broad question. I am sitting inside NVIDIA. So, I see the good work in NVIDIA… I think there is going to be, as it goes back to what we're saying right at the beginning, content, content creation, and the creators; content is king. In the end, nothing else matters. If content doesn't get created; content and very diverse types, of course, I think there is going to be a revolution in content creation. At both ends of the spectrum. The kinds of stuff that Omniverse is doing at NVIDIA. Enabling close cooperation, in a much deeper sense, between multiple creators or designers, in a far more productive way than has ever been possible before. I think that is going to be a revolution. Designing in the metaverse is going to be a thing. And at the other end of the spectrum, just as importantly, enabling end users to be their own content creators too. And I think this is kind of the story behind glTF™ (royalty-free specification for the efficient transmission and loading of 3D scenes and models by engines and applications). But the photos and videos that have been enabled to be user created for many years, and it creates huge opportunities, YouTube and Facebook; come because people can create their own videos and photos. There hasn't happened quite yet. It's coming. And you can see the beginnings, but not for 3D. It hasn't happened. And if the metaverse is going to be spatial based—it is going to be 3D based, it's going to be immersive. So, enabling end users to create high quality 3D content is going to be a key thing. Content creation along that spectrum, I think is going to be a really important. I think machine learning. We've mentioned that too. It is a transformational technology, being able to teach machines to do stuff rather than them prescribing how machines should do something is such a transformational change. It's going to affect everything, including content creation, and that you can see, you mentioned DALL-E (DALL-E-2). We're going to learn to apply machine learning in all kinds of domains. It is inevitably going to be an important part of the metaverse as well. I think and the other thing, like a lot of people ask, why are you working on the metaverse? It's going to be dystopian nightmare. We're going to blame you. I really hope that the world is better informed than it was 15 years ago, 20 years ago, on the potential dangers of this kind of connectivity. For all the good of social media, there are downsides that we're all painfully aware of. I hope that everyone is learning how we can make this next generation more positive overall, for the communities as a whole. I believe we can do so; there's a real opportunity there. I think many end users are more attuned than they used to be about the potential downsides. But it's going to take the engineering and metaverse community building the metaverse to really bear that in mind. And so now the ethical and the governance side of it, I think is going to be really important.
Stephen Ibaraki 44:46
I guess really the catch phase of what you're trying to lead is: the metaverse is for the benefit of the Earth, its ecosystems; of humanity as well. And then all of the domains that exist out there. It's really for good purposes. Right?
Neil Trevett 45:06
I hope so. I think everyone in the metaverse community trying to build the metaverse, I think would share that same sentiment. And I think we are better informed and more cognizant than we were perhaps even just a few years ago. So yeah, I am a believer that the metaverse can be a force for good in the world. I certainly hope so.
Stephen Ibaraki 45:32
I have a couple of more questions. One is open ended. Any other trends that you want to surface and then we'll get your recommendations to the audience. So first, any other trends that you think are really interesting and you want to put out there, almost like a thought trigger for the audience or catalysts for deeper insights?
Neil Trevett 45:52
No, I think we covered it — the ethical one is important. The content creation. Well, we just come back full circle. It's going to take a lot of stuff working together. This is why I think it's the time the Metaverse Standards Forum has appeared. We haven't tried before, quite in this way, to integrate quite so many diverse technologies together. So, the time for cooperation; the need for cooperation is building. So, I hope we can find ways to work together. And maybe the Metaverse Standards Forum is a way. We'll soon find out. Yeah, cooperation and wider integration. Now, technology is no longer existing in isolation. They have to exist in a larger ecosystem is probably the mega trend.
Stephen Ibaraki 46:51
Well, definitely a mega trend. And I'm just thinking, Neil, you're part of a team, as you mentioned, is very collaborative. It's grassroots. But you've taken on a lot as well, because you are chair.
Neil Trevett 47:05
Ended up with three jobs now… getting paid for one too.
Stephen Ibaraki 47:15
This work is an inflection point as well. Right? I mean, it just coming together. It's just so much community, excitement over it, and passion and commitment. I think that's really attractive to people. So, one final question, and that is, do you have any general recommendations to the audience?
Neil Trevett 47:36
Wow. Well, I would say, Thinking back on my journey that you've helped me relive in this last 20 minutes. I mean, the first one is a cliche, but it is true. If you're fortunate, and you can find something you're passionate about, that you can make into your job. I know, it's a cliche, but it is true. And you are even luckier if the thing you're passionate about, can also be commercially interesting at the time; if you can ride the wave of a new technology as it arises. I was personally lucky 3D graphics has been one of those waves. And things like machine learning and lots of other domains in the metaverse are going to be similar waves. The people that are passionate about those technologies, and I know already throughout the industry, and particularly in the Forum; you meet so many awesome folks that are passionate about what they're doing. It really is an exciting and fulfilling thing to be involved with. It's, as you say, we hope it's going to change the world in a good way. And recounting the last three weeks. Lesson I would take from the last three weeks of launching the forum and is don't be afraid to go outside your comfort zone. Because Khronos Forum two and a half weeks old, and Khronos is 20 years old. And Khronos has kind of become awesome. Personally, that comfort zone; we're always trying to Boost but we've been doing it for a while. The Metaverse Forum is definitely outside the comfort zone, but it has been a very educational and interesting and rewarding experience. So, encourage people to don't be afraid to try new things.
Stephen Ibaraki 49:50
Thank you, Neil, for coming in and sharing your insights and your history of success but also leading these inflection point kind of programs that really make a difference to the world. This collaborative effort to do something that's very positive as well. So, thank you for sharing so much with our audience.
Neil Trevett 50:12
Thank you and it has been a pleasure
The Senate budget reconciliation deal could open the door to a green power grid, a key ingredient in slashing emissions enough to meet the country’s near-term climate ambitions.
The electricity provisions in the deal — announced this week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — largely mirror the proposal laid out in last year’s failed “Build Back Better Act.” They would extend tax credits for renewables; provide new subsidies to technologies like energy storage and hydrogen; and offer bonuses to clean energy developers that pay the prevailing wage, use domestically manufactured materials and build projects in fossil fuel-reliant communities.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” also contemplates a long-term shift in how clean electricity subsidies are doled out, moving from a technology-specific standard for wind and solar to one that provides tax credits for any technology that can generate electricity without pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The electricity provisions are particularly important to the country’s climate ambitions because most deep decarbonization studies show the power sector contributing the bulk of emissions reductions prior to 2030 (Climatewire, April 22, 2021).
“This is the thing that allows us to potentially surge forward and get on a path to our NDC targets,” said Conrad Schneider, advocacy director at Clean Air Task Force, referring to the United States’ nationally determined contribution for cutting emissions under the Paris climate accord.
The United States committed to a 50-52 percent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. When talks between Manchin and Schumer appeared to break down earlier this month, experts said the U.S. was in danger of missing its target by a wide margin. The Rhodium Group, a research firm, predicted that without congressional action, emissions would fall 25-34 percent over that time. American emissions are currently 17 percent below 2005 levels (Climatewire, July 14).
In a preliminary analysis released Tuesday evening, Rhodium said the bill would put America on track to cut emissions to 31 to 44 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The research firm said the range reflected uncertainty over fossil fuel prices, economic growth and technology costs.
“Put simply, the IRA has the potential to be the biggest climate action ever taken by Congress,” the group wrote in a research note. “However, 2030 is not too far off on the horizon. Swift action in the Senate to enact the package, along with additional accelerated action across all levels of government, can help put the US that much closer to the 2030 target.”
The “Inflation Reduction Act,” which includes $369 billion in energy and climate spending, aims to slash emissions by 40 percent. The electricity provisions in the bill would put the U.S. in good shape to hit that threshold and potentially exceed it, Schneider said.
“What it is doing is reorienting the priorities of the U.S. toward building the clean energy economy and transforming the energy economy on a rapid scale not seen before,” he said.
Technologies like wind and solar are readily available and commercially competitive to fossil fuels. This makes transitioning electricity to clean energy an achievable goal — and the target of policies to reach near-term climate ambitions.
Some other sectors of the economy, like industry, lack commercially viable green alternatives. Others, like transportation, have alternatives in the form of electric vehicles but face a stock turnover challenge. People tend to drive their cars for years before buying a new one.
Clean electricity can further aid the decarbonization of the economy by providing a way to green transportation and space heating. That is why climate efforts at the state and federal level have long focused on curbing emissions from power plants, the second largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S. after transportation.
Power-sector emissions declined by roughly a third between 2005 and 2021, according to EPA data, driven by a combination of federal tax credits for wind and solar, state action, cheap natural gas, falling renewable costs, and coal retirements.
But efforts to rein in power-sector emissions further have a tortured history in Washington.
A cap-and-trade bill died in 2009. A plan to pay utilities to adopt clean technology, and penalize those who didn’t, was stripped from “Build Back Better” last year in the face of opposition from Manchin. That left clean electricity tax credits as the primary vehicle for deep near-term emissions reduction.
The tax credits for zero-emitting electricity sources in the “Inflation Reduction Act” largely follow the model laid out in “Build Back Better.”
The new bill would essentially extend the existing clean energy tax credits through 2025. Like “Build Back Better,” it would provide a base payment for the production tax credit (PTC) historically used by wind facilities and the investment tax credit (ITC) available to solar and other renewable sources.
The base payment for the PTC — adjusted for inflation — is about 0.6 cent per kilowatt-hour, rising to around 2.6 cents per kWh for developers that pay a prevailing wage and offer apprenticeship programs. Two additional bonuses are available to developers that use domestically built materials and site their facilities in communities where a sizable percent of the population is employed by the fossil fuel industry. The maximum PTC would be roughly 3.1 cents per kWh when factoring in all the bonuses. The bill would also offer production tax credits to nuclear and hydrogen generators.
The base ITC rate is 6 percent of a project’s cost, rising to 30 percent for developers that pay a prevailing wage. Two additional 10 percent bonuses are available to projects that use domestically made materials and are located in low-income or fossil fuel-reliant communities. The maximum ITC would be 50 percent.
There is another important detail: Solar projects would be able to qualify for the PTC starting next year. The industry has long advocated that move, arguing that solar developers should be able to choose which credit best fits their needs.
“We are thrilled with the size and scope and the significant predictability this provides our companies to plot the path forward to meet our climate goals,” said Erin Duncan, vice president of congressional affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. “This is going to transform the American economy.”
The extension of the existing credits is only one element of the deal.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” contemplates a massive shift in the way clean electricity tax credits are paid out beginning in 2025. Starting that year, any electricity source that does not emit carbon dioxide will be able to choose between the PTC and ITC.
The change toward a technologically neutral standard focused on emissions reductions has long been championed by Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who leads the Senate Finance Committee. “Build Back Better” also adopted Wyden’s proposal, but the “Inflation Reduction Act” would implement it sooner.
Under Wyden’s plan, the credits would begin to phase out when power-sector emissions fall by 75 percent. If they remain above 75 percent in 2032, they would remain in effect until the emissions reach that threshold.
In an interview, Wyden estimated the package of clean energy tax credits would cost around $260 billion.
“This is a fundamental change in terms of clean energy policy. No longer we’re picking winners and losers. It’s tech neutral,” Wyden said. “So it’s agnostic because you’re not going to be able to predict the clean energy possibilities because there may be completely new emission reducers 15 years from now.”
But one of the most consequential provisions concerns how the subsidy is actually paid. Renewable interests lobbied to turn the tax credit into a direct payment, saying it would free them of the need to go to the tax equity markets and speed development. But the provision was opposed by Manchin.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” adopts something of a compromise. Tax-exempt entities like tribes and municipal utilities would be able to receive direct payments, enabling them to access the ITC for the first time. Other entities would be able to transfer the credit to a third party for the first time.
The change would effectively widen the pool of lenders from big banks to other entities with large amounts of tax liability.
“It is kind of a game changer,” said Lauren Collins, a partner at Vinson and Elkins LLP.
Previously, developers needed to own a project to receive a credit. But that made it difficult for developers with limited tax liability to fully access the credit. Under the “Inflation Reduction Act,” an entity without tax liability could transfer the credit to a third party that can use it.
“You no longer need a tax equity investor or your own tax capacity to monetize the credit,” Collins said.
Challenges to decarbonizing the power sector remain, even if the bill does become law. Money is important, but it takes time to site, permit and build projects, analysts noted. The bill attempts to anticipate some of those challenges.
Renewable and fossil fuel developers have long argued it takes too long to permit new projects in the United States. The bill would provide money for the federal government to hire new staff to work on permitting issues. The Department of Energy would receive $125 million to work on permitting, while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would get $100 million and the Interior Department would receive $150 million.
The bill would also provide $2 billion in DOE loans for transmission projects and nearly $1 billion in grants to states to help site the projects.
And as concerns about global supply chains are on the rise, the bill would offer companies incentives to build factories to supply the clean energy industry, said Harry Godfrey, who oversees domestic manufacturing policy at Advanced Energy Economy, a green trade group.
“I would argue this is the most significant industrial policy of this era bar none,” he said.
Reporter Nick Sobczyk contributed.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed the amount available for DOE transmission loans. It is $2 billion.
The sweeping climate and energy package negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin would funnel billions of dollars to decarbonize heavy industries like steel and cement, a development that is being called both a potential watershed moment for emissions and a barrier to addressing climate change.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” includes a $5.8 billion program of grants, rebates and loans for manufacturers that install equipment capable of slashing greenhouse gas emissions from some of the largest industrial emitters in the energy sector. Along with steel and cement makers, eligible industries would include producers of glass, pulp, ceramics and chemicals, among others.
Under the plan, the initiative — the Advanced Industrial Facilities Deployment Program — would be housed in the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which was created by last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law.
The fate of the bill’s passage is uncertain. As of yesterday afternoon, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a key Democratic swing vote, had not indicated whether she would support the package due to concerns about provisions that would raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy (Climatewire, Aug. 2).
But if the deal between Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Schumer (D-N.Y.) deal were to be enacted, advocates of the Advanced Industrial Facilities program say it would be a transformative step in cutting emissions from heavy industry, a sector that has often gotten scant attention from climate policymakers. Almost a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from the industrial sector, according to EPA, and many companies currently have few cost-effective alternatives to using fossil fuels for production.
“The industrial sector is a big chunk of the [emissions] story,” said Ed Rightor, industrial program director at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). “This program is the first step out of the door towards developing” lower-carbon methods for industries’ production, he added.
Under the program, DOE could help manufacturers with half of the cost of installing new “advanced industrial” equipment, a definition outlined in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.
In awarding financial assistance under the program, DOE would give priority to companies that provide an estimate of a project’s greenhouse gas emissions reductions and lay out a project’s possible benefits for nearby residents, while stating whether the company was part of a partnership with buyers of a plant’s output.
To cut emissions, companies could choose from a wide range of technologies and strategies, ranging from electric technologies, carbon capture and hydrogen to newly developed net-zero fuels and high-efficiency designs for products, according to the text of the 2007 law.
Some of those technologies could also get extra support from tax credits in the package, which could further subsidize decarbonization over the next decade, said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which supports the bill’s provisions.
Companies might also find an important buyer for their “clean” products: the federal government itself, he said. In an executive action late last year, President Joe Biden created a “Buy Clean” task force to lay out how the federal government will steer its purchases toward low-carbon materials – something that supporters say will stoke the market for cleaner steel, cement and other commodities bought with infrastructure funds (Energywire, Feb. 15).
“There’s going to be greater and greater demand for goods that are produced in lower-and-lower-carbon ways. And this [program] will position those sectors very well for that shift in demand,” said Walsh.
Some industries, like aluminum, might be able to lean on clean electricity for decarbonization, he said. Others, like cement, might continue to burn fuel for their processes. “For some, we just don’t have a viable pathway via electrification at this point,” Walsh said.
The Portland Cement Association, a national trade association, welcomed the $5.8 billion that would be dealt out through the program, while emphasizing carbon capture’s usefulness for decarbonizing cement production.
“This funding would provide additional resources for the industry to advance CCUS and other decarbonization projects across the entire industry,” said the group’s senior vice president of government affairs, Sean O’Neill, in a statement.
He also welcomed the additional funding for carbon capture included in other provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Steel Manufacturers Association, the largest trade group for steel in the United States, did not respond to request for comment by publication time.
A new advanced-industry program could also open up questions similar to those facing other DOE programs hosted in the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. That office is already endowed with over $20 billion that will flow out to large-scale demonstrations of lower-carbon hydrogen, carbon capture and direct air capture.
Some environmentalists have criticized the funding, saying that emissions — including CO2 as well as criteria pollutants — could actually increase in some scenarios with use of those emerging technologies (Energywire, Feb. 16).
If hydrogen were being burned in power plants instead of natural gas, for instance, it could cause nitrogen oxide levels to spike, although it would not involve carbon dioxide emissions, said Abbe Ramanan, project director at Clean Energy Group, an environmental nonprofit.
That might be true equally for industrial manufacturers, she said. “You get all the same concerns there as you would if you’re using hydrogen for the power sector.”
Ramanan noted that the legislation leaves many of the new program’s details to be decided later by the Energy Department.
“The vagueness of it really concerns me. Because with industrial heat processes, there’s things with decarbonization that are pretty good and unlikely to do a ton of harm, and there are things you really need to watch out for,” she said. “The fact that there aren’t any of those guardrails in the text is definitely a little concerning.”
Ramanan said electrification and energy efficiency should get special priority under the program, if it is enacted. But other methods of decarbonization could raise issues of their own.
Jim Walsh, policy director at the group Food & Water Watch, said the proposed program will result in “subsidies” to industrial and chemical facilities to support the build-out of CO2 capture equipment, a technology he said has “questionable results.”
Critics of carbon capture, which traps CO2 emissions from sources like ethanol or power plants before they can enter the atmosphere, often note it doesn’t address emissions of methane, another greenhouse gas. They say it also can be very expensive to implement. Proponents of the technology say it will be critical to meeting global climate targets, particularly for industrial sectors that are difficult to decarbonize.
Representatives from the think tank Third Way said the need to address industrial emissions will only grow as economies worldwide continue to develop.
“It’s a problem that if we don’t address it now, it’s going to get much, much bigger,” said Ryan Fitzpatrick, director of Third Way’s climate and energy program.
“It also presents an opportunity: If the U.S. can help in developing newer technologies, bringing down the cost by demonstrating them, not only can we provide better, more effective solutions to countries that are really going to need them — as we are — we can also help our industries and our workers build and grow economically in the process,” Fitzpatrick said.