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 (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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Sanjay Bishnoi CEO, Entropy Inc. | Producing Low Carbon Power From Natural Gas and Carbon Capture Note: this talk will be held in San Jacinto Hall as part of UT Energy Week. |
| 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
September 14, 2021
Changing World Oil Markets and the Texas Economy
Brett Perlman, CEO, Center for Houston’s Future
September 7, 2021
BaSKET: Building a Strategy for Key Energy Transitions
Mik Carbajales-Dale, Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences, Clemson University
May 4, 2021
Accelerating the Energy Transition
Robert Kleinbaum, Technical Fellow, General Motors
April 27, 2021
Energy and Economic Development: Understanding the Role of Hierarchy
Blair Fix, Political Economist, University of Toronto
April 20, 2021
An Oxford-style Debate on the Role of Carbon Pricing to Foster a Low-Carbon Transition
Suzi Kerr, Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund
Marc Hafstead, Fellow and Director, Resources for the Future
Matto Mildenberger, Assistant Professor, UC Santa Barbara
William Boyd, Professor, UCLA
April 6, 2021
Pathways to a Net-Zero Economy
Lesley Jantarasami, Associate Director for Energy and Climate, Bipartisan Policy Center
March 30, 2021
March 23, 2021
Land/Energy Nexus in Texas
Michael Young, Senior Research Scientist, Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin
March 9, 2021
Energy: The Key to Understanding Economic Growth
Tiago Domingos, Associate Professor in Environment and Energy, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa
March 2, 2021
China's Decarbonization Challenge
Michael Davidson, Assistant Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of the Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California San Diego
February 9, 2021
Spatio-Temporal Learning for Enhancing the Situational Awareness of Power Grids
Hao Zhu, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
February 2, 2021
Our Illusory Faith in Efficiency to Decouple Energy-GDP
Dr. Paul Brockway, University Academic Fellow, Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), University of Leeds, UK
January 26, 2021
Electricity and the Wealth of Nations
Robert Bryce, Journalist, Podcaster, and Documentary Producer
December 1, 2020
Congressional Priorities for U.S. Energy Policy
The Honorable Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, U.S. House of Representatives (TX-7), Chair of the House Subcommittee on Energy & Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
November 24, 2020
U.S. Climate Policy in the Biden Administration
Noah Kaufman, Research Scholar, SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University
November 17, 2020
How to Make Power Converters Small and Efficient - and Why
Alex Hanson, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin
November 10, 2020
Climate, Complexity and the Politics of Major Regulatory Legislation
David Spence, Professor of Law, School of Law and McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
October 27, 2020
The Green New Deal & The Role of Public Investment in an Energy Transition: A Conversation with Demond Drummer of New Consensus
Demond Drummer, Co-Founder and Executive Director, New Consensus
October 20, 2020
The Impact of the Global Pandemic on the Energy Industry
Vincent Kaminski, Professor in the Practice of Energy Management, The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University
October 13, 2020
Designing Intelligent Environments Using Reinforcement Learning
Zoltan Nagy, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Architectural and Environmental Engineering and Director, Intelligent Environments Lab, The University of Texas at Austin
October 6, 2020
CO2CRC’s Otway Facility: An Enabler for Effective CO2 Storage
Matthias Raab, Chief Operating Officer, CO2CRC Ltd.; Max Watson, Senior Manager - Technology Development, CO2CRC Ltd.
September 29, 2020
Natural Gas Leaks: Automating Visualization to Drastically Reduce Leak Detection Costs
Adam Brandt, Associate Professor, Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University
September 22, 2020
EVs: How Fast is the EVolution Coming, and What Should Texas Do About It?
Tom "Smitty" Smith, Executive Director, Texas Electric Transportation Resources Alliance
September 15, 2020
How Many Hats Needed for a Low-Carbon Energy Transition?
Ellen B. Stechel, Co-Director ASU-LightWorks® and Professor of Practice, School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University
September 8, 2020
Digitization: Revolutionize Equipment Fleet Management
Bill Hicks, Global Technology Sponsor, Energy & Profitability Solutions, ExxonMobil Research & Engineering and Keen Seng Cheah, Energy Asset Support Lead & Americas DTL, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering