UT Energy Symposium

A weekly guest lecture series that is both free and open to the public and available for course credit.

In an effort to provide a multidisciplinary platform for UT faculty and students to interact on the most pressing energy issues facing our world, the Energy Institute sponsors the UT Energy Symposium (UTES), which entered its 28th semester in spring 2025. 

The UTES serves as a “convener” for the campus community, uniting students interested in energy issues with faculty and others working on sustainable energy security. Students who register for the symposium receive one credit hour for the 15-week seminar course, which is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. The course is taught in both the fall and spring semesters.

Ongoing themes for UTES include climate change policy, innovation and diffusion of energy technologies, low-carbon technology options and status, and behavioral aspects of energy consumption.

Each UTES talk is recorded and posted on this page and on the Energy Institute YouTube channel.

Instructor: Carey King
Unique Number (Fall 2025): 65605 (graduate students) / 65310 (undergraduates)
Day & Time: Tuesday, 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.

If you need an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Christa Hopkins, who can be reached at 512-475-8447 or christa@energy.utexas.edu, no later than five (5) business days prior to the event.


Upcoming UT Energy Symposium Talks

Date
Speaker
Talk Title
9/2/2025 Mark McClure | Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, ResFrac Transformative Improvements in Hydraulic Fracture Design – Applications for Oil, Gas, and Geothermal
9/9/2025 Sanya Carley | Mark Alan Hughes Faculty Director of the Kleinman Center, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Energy Policy and City Planning at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania The Energy Insecurity and Utility Disconnection Crisis in America
9/16/2025 Sheldon Landsberger | Robert B. Trull Chair in Engineering Professor, Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material in the Oil and Gas Exploration Field
9/23/2025 Adam Grosser | Chairman & Managing Partner, UP Partners TBD
9/30/2025 Wil Burns | Co-Director, Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal, American University, & Associate Director, Environmental Policy & Culture Program, Northwestern University The Role of Carbon Dioxide Removal in Combating Climate Change
10/7/2025 Santiago Grijalva | Georgia Power Distinguished Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Emerging Electricity Grids: Business-Cyber-Physical Integration, Decentralization and Intelligence
10/14/2025 Julia Black | Energy Development Program Manager-Resiliency as a Service, Austin Energy TBD
10/21/2025

James K. Galbraith | Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin

Jing Chen | Assistant Professor, Finance, University of Northern British Columbia

Book Talk – Entropy Economics: The Living Basis of Value and Production
10/28/2025 Xi Chen | Associate Professor CUNY Advanced Science Research Center Department of Chemical Engineering, The City College of New York Water-Responsive Materials for Evaporation Energy Harvesting
11/4/2025 Michael Howlan | Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Powering Decarbonization With Modeling and Optimization of Renewables in the Changing Environment
11/18/2025 Leah Ellis | CEO and Co-founder, Sublime Systems Energy-Efficient Cement Manufacturing
12/2/2025 Andrew Fix | Assistant Professor, Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin TBD

UT Energy Symposium Talks

Displaying 1 - 24 of 24

November 21, 2013

The impacts of shale gas development on surface water quality

Sheila Olmstead, Associate Professor at UT Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs

November 14, 2013

Valuation of plug-in vehicle life-cycle air emissions and oil displacement benefits

Paulina Jaramillo, Assistant Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University

November 7, 2013

Leveraging large data sets: demand side models and control in low carbon power systems

Duncan Callaway, Assistant Professor at the University of California Berkeley

October 31, 2013

Telling the U.S. Energy Story

Jim Malewitz, Energy Reporter at The Texas Tribune

October 24, 2013

The Future of Coal

Andrew Maxson, Program Manager at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

October 17, 2013

October 3, 2013

September 26, 2013

September 19, 2013

Modelling energy technology policy alternatives using expert elicitations

Greg Nemet, Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison

September 12, 2013

Student Research Showcase

  • Craig Andrew Milroy, PhD student, Chemical Engineering: “Lithium-sulfur batteries”
  • Daniel Urieli, PhD student, Computer Science: “A Learning Agent for Heat-Pump Thermostat Control”
  • Krystian Perez, PhD student, Chemical Engineering: “Smart Use of Smart Meters: Disaggregation of A/C Loads from Residential Homes”

September 5, 2013

Framing Energy Innovation Policy: Why We Fail to Learn from Experience

Jeffrey Alexander, Associate Director for Research & Analytics, SRI International

May 3, 2012

Americans’ Vehicle and Travel Choices: Opportunities for Plug- In Vehicles in the Nation’s Fleet Evolution

Dr. Kara Kockelman, Professor & William J. Murray Jr. Fellow, Department of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

See PDF slides in a new window

April 26, 2012

The Future of Water in Texas, and What It Means for Energy

Thomas Mason, Former General Manager of the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) and currently with the law firm Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody

April 12, 2012

Taking Green Technologies from Innovation to the Market: A VC’s Perspective

Ashmeet Sidana, General Partner, Foundation Capital

April 5, 2012

March 29, 2012

Simulating Complex Systems: Applications to Energy

Dr. Charles Macal, Senior Systems Engineer, Argonne National Laboratory

See PDF slides in a new window

March 22, 2012

The Energy Industry’s Media Triumphs and Disasters

Mark Fischetti, Energy and Environment Editor, Scientific American

See PDF slides in a new window

March 8, 2012

National Oil Companies: Fueling Anxiety

Mark Thurber, Associate Director for Research, Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, Stanford

See PDF slides in a new window

March 1, 2012

What the Characteristics of Wind and Solar Electric Power Production Mean for Their Future

Jay Apt, Professor of Technology, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

See PDF slides in a new window

February 23, 2012

February 16, 2012

Student Research Showcase

February 8, 2012

Geopolitical Implications of Shale Gas

Amy Jaffe, Fellow in Energy Studies and Director of the Energy Forum, Baker Institute, Rice University

See PDF slides in a new window

January 19, 2012

Utility of the Future

Roger Duncan, Research Analyst, Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy

See PDF slides in a new window

Semester