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 29th semester in fall 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 |
| 1/20/2026 | Jean-François Mercure | Professor of Climate Policy, University of Exeter Business School (UK), Director of the unit Exeter Climate Policy | Global scenarios for Ministries of Finance to Inform Resilient Economic Transformation to Zero-Carbon |
| 1/27/2026 | Tom Murphy | Emeritus Professor of Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California at San Diego | Questioning Modernity: What does Energy Do? |
| 2/3/2026 | Andrejka Bertanova | Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Dynamix Corporation | TBD |
| 2/10/2026 | Jake Jordan | Chief Science Officer, Mati Carbon | TBD |
| 2/17/2026 | Michael Craig | Associate Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability and the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan | Decarbonizing the Electric Power Sector in a Warming World |
| 2/24/2026 | Aditya Ramji | Director, Global South Centre on Clean Transportation, University of California, Davis | Shaping Industrial Policy with Vehicle Electrification - Analysing Global EV supply chains and implications |
| 3/3/2026 | Kelly Sims Gallagher | Dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts University | Shifting Priorities in U.S. Energy Innovation Policy |
| 3/10/2026 | Joe DeCarolis | Head and Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University | Leveraging Energy Data and Analysis to Navigate a Rapidly Changing Energy Landscape |
| 3/24/2026 | Sara Eftekharnejad | Associate Professor, SyracuseCoE Faculty Fellow, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University | TBD |
| 3/31/2026 | Kyle Chan | Fellow – Foreign Policy, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution | China’s Clean Tech Industrial Strategy |
| 4/7/2026 | Michael Baldea | Professor, Chemical Engineering, UT Austin | Electrification of Industry for lower-carbon emissions, the EPIX project |
| 4/14/2026 | Sindhu Nathan | U.S. House Committe on Science and Technology | TBD |
| 4/21/2026 | Erica Belmont | Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of Wyoming | TBD |
UT Energy Symposium Talks
October 15, 2015
ENGIE and the Energy Transition
Zin Smati, President & CEO, GDF Suez Energy North America
October 8, 2015
Financing the Clean Economy
Jonathan Silver, President & CEO, Greenbanc Global
September 24, 2015
The Low Slow Return Blues: Why the Venture Capitalists Have Difficulties with Clean Technology
Martin Kenney, Professor, University of California – Davis
September 17, 2015
Perceptions of Energy and Water Use
Shahzeen Attari, Assistant Professor, Indiana University
September 10, 2015
Energy Games: Gamification for Decision-Making and Behavior Change in Solar Adoption
Ariane Beck, Research Fellow, the University of Texas at Austin
September 3, 2015
An Economist’s Perspective on Public Energy R&D
David Popp, Professor, Syracuse University
April 30, 2015
The Future of Vehicle Transportation — The Better Battery
Nihar Patel, Former Vice President, North American Business Strategy Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
April 23, 2015
Rethinking Our Energy Future: Grand Challenges and Opportunities
Doug Arent, Executive Director, Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
April 16, 2015
2015 State of Electric Vehicles
Dave Tuttle, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
April 9, 2015
Student Research Showcase
- Margaret Cook (CAEE)
- Donna Chen (CAEE)
- Alex Headley (ME)
April 2, 2015
Energy Infrastructure with Architectural and Civil Engineers
CAEE team presentation by Richard Corsi, Lance Manuel, Atila Novoselac, Kara Kockelman, Charles Werth, Kevin Folliard
March 26, 2015
Past, Present, and Future Climate Change Impacts on Texas Water: Science and Policy
Jay Banner, Professor, Department of Geological Sciences, Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin
March 12, 2015
Oil-Climate Index: GHG Emissions Along the Oil Production Supply Chain
David Livingston, Associate, Energy and Climate Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
March 5, 2015
Energy and Development in Asia
Richie Ahuja, Regional Director for Asia, Environmental Defense Fund
February 26, 2015
Ten Strategies to Systematically Exploit All Options to Cope with Anthropogenic Climate Change
Kelly Klima, Research Scientist, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University
February 19, 2015
Energy and Climate Goals in Nordic Countries and Implications for the U.S.
Benjamin Sovacool, Director, Danish Center for Energy Technology at AU-Herning and Professor of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark
February 5, 2015
Next Generation Photovoltaic Technologies
Brian Korgel, Edward S. Hyman Endowed Chair in Engineering & T. Brockett Hudson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Director, Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Next Generation Photovoltaics, The University of Texas at Austin
January 29, 2015
Comparative Analysis of Regulations for Offshore Oil Drilling in U.S., U.K. and Norway
Lori Bennear, Associate Professor of Environmental Economics and Policy, Duke University
January 22, 2015
Engineering and Socio-economic Aspects of Sustainable Energy
Mehrdad Ehsani, Robert M. Kennedy Endowed Professor, Director, Sustainable Energy & Vehicle Engineering Program, Power Electronics & Motor Drives Laboratory, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University
November 20, 2014
Cybersecurity in the Electricity Grid
Gus Lott, Senior Engineer, YarCom Inc.
November 13, 2014
Methane Emissions in the Natural Gas Supply Chain
David Allen, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
November 6, 2014
Technological and Commercial Innovations in Distributed Energy Generation:
- Charlie Upshaw, PhD student with the Webber Energy Group: “Modeling Peak Load Reduction and Energy Consumption Enabled by an Integrated Thermal Energy and Water Storage System for Residential Air Conditioning Systems in Austin, Texas”
- Erik Funkhouser, researcher with the Energy Systems Transformation group at UT: “Commercial Innovations in Community-scale Distributed Generation”
October 30, 2014
Effective Approaches for Funding Cleantech: Are We There Yet?
Mike Jackson, Partner, The Westly Group
October 23, 2014
Disrupting the Power Sector: Overpowering Inertia and Incrementalism
Paul Hudson, Managing Partner, Stratus Energy Group, LLC
October 9, 2014
Energy Research at the Intersection of Computer Science, Decision Sciences, and Complex Systems
Kiran Lakkaraju, Senior Member of Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories