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 multi-disciplinary 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 will enter 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.

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 will be recorded and posted on this page and on the Energy Institute YouTube channel following the event.

Instructor: Carey King
Unique Number (Spring 2024): 60345 (graduate students) / 60030 (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
9/3/2024

Beth Garza

Senior Fellow, R Street Institute

Electric Paradigms
9/10/2024

Benji Backer

Founder and Executive Chairman, 
American Conservation Coalition Author, 
The Conservative Environmentalist  

Book Talk: The Conservative Environmentalist
9/17/2024

Fred Closmann

Research Associate, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering 

Lowering the Risk of Commercialization of Co2 Capture With Amine Solvents
9/24/2024

Tim Dixon

General Manager, Greenhouse Gas Program, 
International Energy Agency

Carbon Capture and Storage in the Global Climate Scene
10/1/2024

Swadesh Mitter Mahajan

Research Professor, Institute for Fusion Studies, 
Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin; 
Chief Scientific Advisor of ExoFusion

Fusion on Earth: a Quintessentially Scientific Pursuit With an Important Commercial Goal
10/8/2024

Frank Wolak

President and CEO, Fuel Cell and 
Hydrogen Energy Association

Hydrogen in the Energy Transition, Emergence From Research Interest to National Priority
10/15/2024

Alexandra Klass

James G. Degnan Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School

Utility Regulation as Social Policy
10/22/2024

Dan Dalton

Vice President, Global Partnerships, Wisk Aero, 
LLC Volunteer Chairman of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility
(AAM) Advisory Committee 

Sustainability and Autonomy - the Interconnected Future of Modern Flight
10/29/2024

Joseph Kiesecker

Lead Scientist, The Nature Conservancy

TBD
11/5/2024Ariel RamosThe State of Energy in Mexico
11/12/2024

Destenie Nock

Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, 
Carnegie Mellon University, 
CEO of Peoples Energy Analytics

Engineering and Social Justice: Using High-resolution Residential Data to Identify Energy Poverty in Households
11/19/2024

Clay Seigel

Director, Global Oil Service Rapidan Energy Group, LLC

Oil in the Crosshairs:  Energy as an Enabler and a Target in Modern Military Strategy
12/3/2024

Murtaza I. Gandhi

Manager, Qualitative Risk and Sustainability, BakerRisk

Influencing a Culture of Safety While Designing Energy Transition Solutions

UT Energy Symposium Talks

Displaying 201 - 225 of 314

April 28, 2016

Addressing Climate Change Among the Major Economies: The Case of India

Joshua Busby, Associate Professor, LBJ School, UT Austin and Sarang Shidore, Visiting Scholar at LBJ School, UT Austin

April 21, 2016

A century of peak oil predictions

Mason Inman, Author of The Oracle of Oil

April 14, 2016

Student Research Showcase

  • Martha Gross, Texas Materials Lab: Hybrid Zinc Batteries for Grid-Level Storage
  • Thomas Deetjen, Webber Energy Group: Challenges for grid-level solar integration: generator dispatch concerns and possible solutions
  • Vivek Nath, LBJ School of Public Policy: Drivers of Plug-In Electric Vehicle Adoption in California

March 31, 2016

IoT, Analytics, Batteries, and PV: How Utilities Are Transforming Into the Utility of the Future

Raiford Smith, Vice President, Corporate Development and Planning, CPS Energy

March 24, 2016

Political Economy of Energy Policy in India

Nikit Abhyankar, Senior Scientific Engineering Associate, International Energy Studies Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

March 10, 2016

February 11, 2016

The Building of a $2.5b Cleantech Community in Central Texas

Mitch Jacobson, Co-Director, ATI Clean Energy Incubator

February 4, 2016

January 28, 2016

Economic Perspectives on Oil and Gas Royalties

Tim Fitzgerald, Professor, Texas Tech

November 19, 2015

Student Research Showcase

Sebastian Souyris, PhD candidate in UT’s McCombs School of Business: Peer Effects in the Diffusion of Solar panels – A Dynamic Discrete Choice Approach

Sean Wood, Chemical Engineering PhD student: Looking Towards Higher-Capacity Anode Materials for Lithium-ion Batteries.

November 12, 2015

The Road to Paris: Paved with Domestic Climate Policy

Kate Larsen, Director, Rhodium Group

October 29, 2015

Solar Energy in the United States – Its Growth and the Challenges Ahead

Francis O’Sullivan, Director, Research and Analysis, MIT

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

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