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 27th semester in fall 2024.
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 (Spring 2024): 60540 (graduate students) / 60245 (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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2/4/2025 | Melinda Taylor Senior Lecturer, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin | Reducing Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Operations in the Permian Basin: A Common Sense Approach |
| 2/11/2025 | Hector Pollitt Senior Economist, World Bank | The Real-World Economics of the Energy Transition: Finding Policy That Works |
| 2/18/2025 | Chris Lamb Cybersecurity Researcher, Energy Security, Sandia National Laboratory | TBD |
| 2/25/2025 | Daniel Roesler Founder & CIO, UtilityAPI | Utility Data and Connectivity - How Climate Changes Everything |
| 3/4/2025 | Matthew Heun and Paul Brockway Professor, Department of Engineering, Calvin University; Associate Professor, Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds | A Country-level Primary, Final, Useful Energy and Exergy Database to Improve Understanding of Energy and the Economy |
| 3/11/2025 | Kent Zheng Assistant Professor, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin | Reimagining Battery Chemistries for Sustainable Energy Storage |
| 3/25/2025 | Adam Birchfield Assistant Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University | Electric Grid Dynamic Simulation: Open Synthetic Datasets and Stability Assessment Frameworks |
| 4/1/2025 | TBD | TBD |
| 4/8/2025 | Yonghong Chen Chief Scientist, Grid Planning and Analysis Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory | Interregional Transmission Operational Coordination |
| 4/15/2025 | Lee Lynd Paul E. and Joan H. Queneau Distinguished Professor of Engineering & Adjunct Professor of Biology, Dartmouth University; Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Terragia Corporation | TBD |
| 4/22/2025 | Sam Porter Co-Founder & CEO, NeuVentus | Texas Reliability Underground: How Salt Cavern Storage Enables the Energy Expansion & Transition |
UT Energy Symposium Talks
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
October 2, 2014
China’s Role in Global Clean Energy Technology Development
Joanna Lewis, Associate Professor, Georgetown University
September 25, 2014
Feeding the Dragon: Energy in China
Fred Beach, Assistant Director, Energy Institute
September 18, 2014
Renewables in Texas: Costs, Project Development, and Policy Issues
Panel discussion with Clay Butler (The Butler Firm), Colin Meehan (First Solar), and Spivey Paup (E.ON Renewables)
September 11, 2014
Impacts of Adoption of a More Fuel Efficient Vehicle Fleet
Steve Puller, Associate Professor, Texas A&M University
September 4, 2014
The Importance of Fuel Diversity in the Energy Generation Mix
Cris Eugster, Executive Vice President, Chief Generation and Strategy Officer, CPS Energy
April 28, 2014
Energy and Urbanization
Arnulf Grubler, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Yale University
April 24, 2014
Student Research Showcase
- Brent Bennett, PhD student, Materials Science and Engineering: “Redox Flow Batteries: How Cutting-Edge Chemistry Will Transform the Electric Grid”
- Sean Wood, PhD student, Chemical Engineering: “Improved Lithium-ion Batteries using Lead Telluride (PbTe)”
April 17, 2014
Trade-offs in Climate Mitigation Strategies: Assessing the Regional Variations in the Health, Environmental, and Climate Benefits of Wind and Solar Generation Across the United States
Inês Azevedo, Assistant Professor and Co-director, Climate and Energy Decision Making, Carnegie Mellon University
March 27, 2014
Carbon Neutral Design: An Architectural Primer
James Wasley, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
March 20, 2014
Electricity Scarcity Pricing and Resource Adequacy
William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy, Harvard University
March 6, 2014
Stanford’s ARPA-E Sensors and Energy Behavior Initiative
Carrie Armel, Research Associate, Stanford University
February 27, 2014
Human Nature & the Grid
Craig Boice, President Boice Dunham Group
February 13, 2014
Emerging Legal and Political Issues in Shale Gas Production
David Spence, Associate Professor, McCombs School of Business, UT Austin
February 6, 2014
A Status Report on the U.S. Nuclear Energy Program
William C. Ostendorff, Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner
January 30, 2014
A Ringside Seat: What I learned from 10 years reporting on, and living through, the fracking revolution
Russell Gold, Senior Energy Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
January 23, 2014
Transforming America’s Grid through Technology, Competition & Green Power
J. Calvin Crowder, President, Electric Transmission Texas
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)