3D Printing Is Key to the New Energy Space
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While it’s difficult to observe from the standpoint of a subjective individual, human society is currently undergoing a fundamental transformation. Driven primarily by resource depletion and lack of deeper economic growth, nations and corporations are embarking on shift away from fossil fuels at the same time as they are driving the development and adoption of more efficient means of making and distributing energy and goods.
At the nexus to this is a sector that is increasingly being referred to as “new energy.” This category is broader than renewables and encompasses such areas as hydrogen, nuclear, geothermal, biofuels, and energy storage. As such, it allows room for other energy options serve as a more practical bridge from fossil fuels to something more sustainable, both in terms of energy infrastructure and the underlying global economy that is essentially pinned to the fossil fuel sector.
Because the energy shift is occurring at the same time that as a manufacturing renaissance, there is a crucial role for digital production and associated technologies, such as 3D printing, in this transformation. Rather than a mere economic opportunity, the role for additive manufacturing (AM) is crucial because not only will it enable the creation and roll out of some of these new energy processes, but because it will reduce the resource burden on them and society at large.
For this reason, it’s important to examine this role in greater detail, which is what we will be doing here.
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