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 multi-disciplinary 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 will enter its 24th semester in spring 2023.
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.
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 will be recorded and posted on this page and on the Energy Institute YouTube channel following the event.
Instructor: Carey King
Unique Number (Spring 2023): 60400 (graduate students) / 60060 (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
February 7 |
Energy and the Impact of Incipient Shortages on Cities and Urbanization William Rees, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Applied Science, School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia |
February 14 |
Probing Electrochemical Phenomena in Electrochemical Hydrogen Technologies with Self-assembled Block Copolymer Templates Christopher Arges, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, Penn State |
February 21 |
Science and Engineering of Negative Emissions Technologies Roger Aines, Chief Scientist, Energy and Homeland Security Program, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory |
February 28 |
Coherent Implementation of Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies and Ongoing Implications for ESG Investing Michael Yamoah, Director of Engagement, Federated Hermes |
March 7 |
Storing Hydrogen in the Subsurface: Challenges and Opportunities for Low-carbon Energy Peter Eichhubl, Senior Research Scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG), The University of Texas at Austin |
March 14 |
Spring Break - No Speaker |
March 21 |
An Open Energy System Model Initiative for our Earth Stuart Daniel James, Research Associate at the Deggendorf Institute of Technology (DIT) |
March 28 |
Life Cycle Assessment of Energy Transitions: the Geospatial Context of Global Change Sarah Jordaan, Associate Professor, Life Cycle Assessment / Industrial Ecology, The Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design (TISED), Department of Civil Engineering at McGill University |
April 4 |
Energy and the Evolution of Human Economic Order Lisi Krall, Professor, Department of Economics at the State University of New York – Cortland |
April 11 |
To Be Determined (on the subject of macroeconomic modeling in context of finance and climate change) Gaël Giraud, Professor, McCourt School of Public Policy & Founder/Director of the Georgetown Environmental Justice Program, Georgetown University; Senior Researcher at CNRS (the French National Center for Scientific Research) |
April 18 |
Job Creation Dynamics of Electric Vehicle Adoption JR DeShazo, Dean, LBJ School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin |
UT Energy Symposium Talks
February 2, 2017
Climate Change, Methane, and the Global Oil and Gas system
Daniel Zavala, post-doctoral-scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund
January 26, 2017
Beyond the Texas Restructured Electric Markets Giving Power and Value to Consumer Energy Resources
Jon Wellinghoff, Chief Policy Officer at SolarCity and former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (2009 – 2013)
November 17, 2016
Dust to Dust, with a stop at the Stars: The NRG Story
George Schaefer, retired senior financial executive with over 30 years’ experience in the independent power industry
November 10, 2016
EPRI’s Integrated Grid
Barbara Tyran, Executive Director, Government & External Relations, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
November 3, 2016
Power Markets, Regulation, and Utility Scale Solar in the U.S.
Colin Meehan, Director, Regulatory & Public Affairs, First Solar
October 27, 2016
Reforming the Energy Vision: An Electric System for Stormy Times
Elizabeth Stein, Senior Manager – New York Clean Energy Law & Policy, Environmental Defense Fund
October 20, 2016
Fail Faster, Be Nimbler: Does the Oil & Gas Industry Have Anything to Learn from Silicon Valley?
Russell Gold, senior energy reporter at The Wall Street Journal
October 13, 2016
Cash is King! The Comparative Effectiveness of Solar Incentives
Dan Matisoff, Associate Professor, The School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Georgia Tech
October 6, 2016
New Utility Business Models for an Evolving Industry
Virginia Lacy, Principal, RMI Electricity Practice
September 29, 2016
ERCOT and the Evolving Grid: 2016 Perspectives
Paul Wattles, Senior Analyst, Market Design, ERCOT
September 22, 2016
Who is that Man Behind the Curtain? Philanthropy’s Role in the Transition to Clean Energy
Marilu Hastings, Vice President, Sustainability Program, The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation
September 15, 2016
What is the World Coming To: From Energy Systems to Global Crisis Analysis and Response
Yaneer Bar-Yam, President, New England Complex Systems Institute
September 8, 2016
Distributed Energy Resources – Driving Multi-Disciplined Innovation
Bert Haskell, Chief Technology Officer, Pecan Street Inc.
September 1, 2016
Global progress in Carbon Capture and Storage – field demonstrations with emphasis on the storage component
Dr. Susan Hovorka, Senior Research Scientist, Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin
April 28, 2016
Addressing Climate Change Among the Major Economies: The Case of India
Joshua Busby, Associate Professor, LBJ School, UT Austin and Sarang Shidore, Visiting Scholar at LBJ School, UT Austin
April 21, 2016
A century of peak oil predictions
Mason Inman, Author of The Oracle of Oil
April 14, 2016
Student Research Showcase
- Martha Gross, Texas Materials Lab: Hybrid Zinc Batteries for Grid-Level Storage
- Thomas Deetjen, Webber Energy Group: Challenges for grid-level solar integration: generator dispatch concerns and possible solutions
- Vivek Nath, LBJ School of Public Policy: Drivers of Plug-In Electric Vehicle Adoption in California
March 31, 2016
IoT, Analytics, Batteries, and PV: How Utilities Are Transforming Into the Utility of the Future
Raiford Smith, Vice President, Corporate Development and Planning, CPS Energy
March 24, 2016
Political Economy of Energy Policy in India
Nikit Abhyankar, Senior Scientific Engineering Associate, International Energy Studies Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
March 10, 2016
Energy Storage in California: From Innovation to Installation
Alex Luce, Program Manager, CalCharge
February 11, 2016
The Building of a $2.5b Cleantech Community in Central Texas
Mitch Jacobson, Co-Director, ATI Clean Energy Incubator
February 4, 2016
Averting Energy Catastrophe: Why I Bet the Farm on China and Innovation
Matthew Nordan, Managing Partner, MNL Partners
January 28, 2016
Economic Perspectives on Oil and Gas Royalties
Tim Fitzgerald, Professor, Texas Tech
November 19, 2015
Student Research Showcase
Sebastian Souyris, PhD candidate in UT’s McCombs School of Business: Peer Effects in the Diffusion of Solar panels – A Dynamic Discrete Choice Approach
Sean Wood, Chemical Engineering PhD student: Looking Towards Higher-Capacity Anode Materials for Lithium-ion Batteries.
November 12, 2015
The Road to Paris: Paved with Domestic Climate Policy
Kate Larsen, Director, Rhodium Group