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 30th semester in fall 2026.

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 2026): 66045 (graduate students) / 65750 (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	Job Title	Talk Title
September 29	Martín Esteban González López	Professor, Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Guadalajara	From Waste to Energy in Mexico: Technical and Policy Challenges for Scaling Resource Recovery in the Water-Energy Nexus
October 6	Eleftheria Kontou	Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Harrington Faculty Fellow, Energy Institute, The University of Texas at Austin	Charging Infrastructure Planning for Intercity Multimodal Electric Mobility in Rwanda
October 13	Shuo Ji	Director of Acquisition Processing and Geology, Viridien Group	Advancing Subsalt Imaging in the US Gulf: Operational and Technical Innovations in Seismic Data Acquisition From the Laconia Sparse OBN Program
October 20	Tom Murphy	Professor Emeritus of the Departments of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego	Questioning Modernity: What Does Energy Do?
October 27	Erica Belmont	Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wyoming	TBA
November 3	Thomas J Pierpoint	VP, Operations, Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative	TBA
November 10	Charlotte De Cannière	Assistant Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics	Two Wrongs Can Sometimes Make a Right: The Environmental Benefits of Market Power in Oil
November 17	Jamie Nieto	Professor of Applied Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universidad de Valladolid	Exploring the Biophysical Limits of the Energy Transition: An Integrated Assessment Model Analysis Using MEDEAS
December 1	Rich Powell	CEO, Clean Energy Buyers Association	TBA