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 |
|---|---|---|
| 11/4/2025 | Michael Howland | Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Powering Decarbonization With Modeling and Optimization of Renewables in the Changing Environment |
| 11/11/2025 | Chris Kennedy | Professor, Institute for Integrated Energy Systems, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada | Energy and Economic Regimes |
| 11/18/2025 | Leah Ellis | CEO and Co-founder, Sublime Systems | Energy-Efficient Cement Manufacturing |
| 12/2/2025 | Andrew Fix | Assistant Professor, Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin | Moisture Matters: Leveraging Water Vapor-Selective Membranes in the Built Environment |
UT Energy Symposium Talks
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
April 28, 2020
Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States
Leah Stokes, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara
April 21, 2020
Distributed Energy Resources in Texas
Suzanne Bertin, Managing Director of the Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance
April 14, 2020
Energy Gain and Complexity
Joseph A. Tainter, Professor of Sustainability in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University
April 7, 2020
The Potential of Geothermal in Our Clean Energy Future
Timothy Latimer, Co-Founder and CEO of Fervo Energy
March 10, 2020
Will Electric And Driverless Cars Decarbonize Transportation?
Costa Samaras, Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University
March 3, 2020
Leveraging the Power of Small towards Energy Resources Recovery
Dr. Wen Song, Assistant Professor of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin
February 11, 2020
Ask UT Anything
David Spence (Professor, Baker Botts Chair in Law, Professor of Business, Govt. & Society)
Larry Lake (Professor, Shahid and Sharon Ullah Endowed Chair in Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering)
David Adelman (Professor, Harry Reasoner Regents Chair in Law)
Sheila Olmstead (Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs)
Susan Hovorka (Senior Research Scientist, Bureau of Economic Geology)
Carey King (Research Scientist & Assistant Director, Energy Institute)
February 4, 2020
Collaborative Conservation in the Energy Industry
Joni Carswell, CEO and President of Texan by Nature (TxN)
January 28, 2020
Engaging the Public on Renewable Energy and Carbon Dioxide Removal
Dr. Sol Hart, Associate Professor in Communication and Media and the Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan
November 21, 2019
Will China Save the Planet?
Barbara Finamore, Natural Resources Defense Council; Senior Attorney and Senior Strategic Director for Asia
November 14, 2019
Political Permit Allocations and the Feasibility of Federal Climate Policy
Dr. Joel Landry, Assistant Professor of Environmental and Energy Economics at Penn State University