Catherine McKalip-Thompson, manager of sustainability for Bechtel Infrastructure, describes trends in sustainable building design, smart cities and the integration of engineering, architecture and planning.

As solar power grows as a percentage of energy produced in the U.S., the issue of intermittency has emerged as a hurdle to integration. To overcome this hurdle, solar energy must be stored for more efficient use.

Integrating solar power with the grid is a more difficult challenge than many might imagine. With home use of solar power increasing pressure on the grid, creative solutions will be needed to fully integrate this power source: battery storage is one.

Yoshinobu Shibata, president and CEO of Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Systems, discusses the challenges of nuclear power production competing against low-cost natural gas and how it can gain greater acceptance.

The solution with the greatest potential for solving the intermittency problem is battery storage. With the technology advancing at a rapid pace, batteries have the potential to store large amounts of power to distribute where and when needed.

Jose Reyes, the co-founder and chief technology officer for NuScale Power, talks about the design of small modular nuclear reactors and its future.