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Tag: Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

  • Crucial Role of Society in Advancing Green Energy Transition

    Crucial Role of Society in Advancing Green Energy Transition

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    Newswise — As wind energy emerges as a linchpin in the global push towards a cleaner future, resistance to deploying renewable energy technologies has risen. This underscores the need for a collective socio-technical approach to designing and implementing renewable energy systems.

    A recent review paper in Nature Energy promotes an interdisciplinary research approach that bridges technical ‘grand challenges’ with societal dynamics, making renewable energy truly sustainable—technically and socially. Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, leading the study, emphasizes the risks societies face if they fail to consider local communities’ values and concerns:

    “Today, design decisions are often made without much debate. And when the public then raises concerns, the response is often not taken seriously, or it’s too late. Societies, therefore, risk losing public backing to the essential energy transition,” says Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, Associate Professor at DTU Wind and Energy Systems and lead author of the recent review article published in Nature Energy on socio-technical grand challenges in wind energy.

    Silo-mentality gets in the way

    Addressing the grand challenge of climate change is often done from the perspective of individual technical disciplines. However, this is at the risk of ignoring how technologies – and their design, development, and deployment – are always social. They are set into specific places and contexts and create certain social responses.

    With local opposition against renewables rising, the paper states there is an urgent need for interdisciplinary perspectives better to address the socio-technical nature of the energy transition. In other words, to meet global decarbonization goals, the technical sciences need to collaborate more with the social sciences and humanities to engage with – and create value for – local communities and broader society.

    The need for increased public participation concerns the planning and development phases and the design and end-of-life phases. In the design phase, in particular, important decisions are made that concern whose interests are considered – and whose aren’t. And recent research shows that these decisions even go back to the algorithms found in digital design tools.

    Case in point: Wind energy. There is little doubt that wind power will play a massive role in the future energy system to meet worldwide decarbonization goals. The level of effort that made wind an initial success got us to roughly a 9% share of electricity usage. That will not be sufficient, however, to make the transformative changes required to reach the expected one-third to one-half of total electricity, according to Julia Kirch Kirkegaard.

    “Denmark, for instance, is normally seen as a pioneer in wind energy, but only a handful of wind turbines were installed onshore in 2022. With an ambition to produce four times as much solar and wind energy on land and five times as much offshore by 2030, we need to find radically new approaches so that we do not see the controversies simply multiplied,” she says.

    “While wind turbines are getting larger, and less land is becoming available, local, societal opposition to deployments of new wind energy infrastructure has been growing. We need to understand better and acknowledge why that is so—otherwise, there is a real risk that societies’ ability to meet climate ambitions is jeopardized.”

    A new approach to socio-technical grand challenges

    Better recognition of how technical and natural sciences, on the one hand, and state-of-the-art in the social sciences, on the other, address the grand challenges facing wind power is needed since, according to Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, they often do not even agree on the most significant challenges.

    The authors warn that the socio-technical research gaps may become grand challenges in their own right if the wind energy sector cannot confront them in due time. Julia Kirch Kirkegaard explains that while it will be a challenge for research, industry and society as a whole to bridge these gaps, the timing for engaging the participants in the deployment of wind energy is obvious:

    “Major technological progress is facing growing resistance from the public. Since we’ll likely see similar conflicts in the future – as we address other aspects of the energy transition and climate mitigation technologies such as Power-to-X, energy islands and more – the time to explore how to bridge these manifold perspectives is now.”

    FACT BOX: Call to action:

    The Nature Energy paper Tackling grand challenges in wind energy through a socio-technical perspective promotes a lens founded in STS (Science & Technology Studies) to push the technical sciences and the state-of-the-art in social sciences and humanities on the issue (i.e., the social acceptance literature) forward and towards more interdisciplinary research:

    • Technical sciences need to move beyond their perspective on local opposition as a barrier to be tackled through technical or economic means to appreciate better their role in society and how their design and deployment decisions shape societal dynamics. It might even make it possible to look at public opposition not as something that must be done away with but as a potential for learning and value-creation.
    • The state-of-the-art in the social sciences (the social acceptance literature) has tended to focus on the planning and development phases, largely overlooking the technologies themselves, their design, and scientific reasons. With this, they lack an appreciation of how decisions about whose concerns should count (or not) are already made in the design phase. Sometimes making solutions to tackle local opposition in the planning and development phases are in vain and too late.

    The work on the Nature Energy paper is a collaborative effort between European and American scholars – at DTU Wind and Energy Systems (Technical University of Denmark), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Wageningen University & Research (WUR).

    The paper is part of ten papers on the grand challenges in wind energy science, published in Science and Wind Energy Science, encompassing topics like atmosphere, environmental concerns, digitalization, etc.

    The work on grand challenges in wind energy science is facilitated by the International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Programme, which has recently determined that for wind power to fulfil its expected role as a major global supplier of carbon-free energy, critical challenges around the design, development, and deployment of wind energy must be addressed.

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    Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

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  • First microbiome-targeting drug using CRISPR created by scientists

    First microbiome-targeting drug using CRISPR created by scientists

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    Newswise — Many people have experienced infections from E. coli, which are primarily seen as inconvenient and unpleasant. For some patients, like those with blood cancer, however, there is a risk that the bacteria will travel into the bloodstream. In those cases, an E. coli infection is too often fatal. The mortality rate is 15-20%.

    The predominant cure for such infections is the use of antibiotics that have detrimental effects on the patient’s microbiome, which play a key part in our physical and emotional well-being, and other side effects. Furthermore, growing problems with antibiotic resistance render such treatments less effective in treating infections.

    An international team of scientists has now engineered the first published CRISPR-based candidate (see fact box) for a drug that targets E. coli directly and leaves the microbiome intact. A new paper in Nature Biotechnology titled ‘Engineered phage with antibacterial CRISPR–Cas selectively reduce E. coli burden in mice’ describes the development of the drug candidate to a stage where it is ready for tests on humans.

    Through extensive use of synthetic biology, the team designed four bacterial viruses that use CRISPR technology to kill the unwanted bacteria precisely.

    “We believe that a narrow spectrum drug with these properties could be very useful to cancer patients, among others, who often get serious infections that are difficult to treat with current antibiotics,” says Morten Otto Alexander Sommer, a professor at DTU Biosustain, Co-founder of SNIPR Biome, and lead author of the paper.

    The work was carried out in collaboration with JAFRAL (Slovenia), JMI Laboratories (US), and Division of Infectuous Diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine (US).

    Engineering phages to target E. coli

    The team, primarily based at SNIPR Biome, screened a library of 162 naturally occurring phages (viruses that kill specific bacteria; see fact box). They found that eight of these phages showed promise in targeting E. coli. They then engineered the phages through gene editing to improve their ability to target E. coli.

    A cocktail of four of these phages, which they named SNIPR001, very effectively targeted bacteria in biofilms and reduced the number of E. coli in a manner that surpassed that of  naturally occurring phages. Further, they showed that the cocktail of phages was tolerated well in the gut of mice and mini pigs while reducing the emergence of E. coli. SNIPR001 is now in clinical development and has been granted a Fast-Track designation (expedited review) by the US Food and Drug Administration.

    FACT BOX: An overview of the SNIPR001 creation process:

    1. Naturally occurring phages are screened against a panel of E. coli strains.
    2. Phages with broad activity against E. coli are tail fibre engineered and/or armed with CRISPR–Cas systems containing sequences specific to E. coli, creating CAPs (Cas-armed phages).
    3. These CAPs are tested for host range, in vivo efficacy, and CMC specifications.

    SNIPR001 comprises four complementary CAPs and is a new precision antibiotic that selectively targets E.coli to prevent bacteremia in haematological cancer patients at risk of neutropenia (low levels of white blood cells).

    Blood cancer patients are first in line

    The reason this new development is exciting for blood cancer patients has to do with side effects stemming from their chemotherapy treatment. It causes the patient’s bone marrow to produce fewer blood cells and inflammation of the intestines. The latter increases the intestines’ permeability allowing bacteria from the gut to travel into the bloodstream. This combination of side effects leaves the patient vulnerable to infections from bacteria like E. coli. In such cases, the

    Today, patients at risk (i.e., with low levels of white blood cells) receive antibiotic treatments ahead of their chemotherapy, but in some cases, E. coli shows very high resistance to commonly used antibiotics. Also, the antibiotics themselves have several side effects that in some cases reduce the effect of the cancer treatments.

    “We need a wider variety of options available to treat these patients, preferably ones where we can specifically target the bacteria responsible to avoid side effects and that do not add to the problem of antibiotic resistance,” says Morten Otto Alexander Sommer.

    In recent years, researchers have been looking back towards using phages to treat infections because of the increase in antibiotic resistance. Before antibiotics were broadly available, phages were widely used and studied in countries that were then part of the Soviet Union. Still, there are few clinical trials, and the results haven’t been convincing, according to the paper.

    “Through emerging technologies like CRISPR, the use of phages in treating infections has become a viable pathway. As our results show, there is potential for enhancing naturally occurring phages through genetic engineering. It is my hope that this approach may also serve as a blueprint for new antimicrobials targeting resistant pathogens,” says Morten Otto Alexander Sommer.

    FACT BOX: CRISPR, phages, and phage therapy

    CRISPR technology is a way for scientists to edit DNA sequences in cells. It’s based on a defence mechanism bacteria naturally use to protect themselves. CRISPR technology uses a molecule called Cas9, which works like a pair of scissors to cut DNA at a specific spot.

    After the cut, the DNA can be fixed, or a new piece can be added. Scientists can use this tool to create genetically modified organisms, find new ways to treat genetic diseases, and learn more about how genes work.

    Phages are tiny viruses that can kill specific bacteria. They’re everywhere on Earth and help regulate bacterial populations and nutrient cycling. They infect and kill bacteria, and when the bacteria die, they release nutrients into the environment.

    Scientists use phages to treat bacterial infections, which is called phage therapy. They identify and isolate phages that can kill a specific bacterial strain and use them to fight infections caused by that strain.

    Phage therapy has some advantages to antibiotics, like targeting specific bacteria without side effects and potentially reducing antibiotic resistance.

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    Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

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