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

DateSpeakerTalk Title
1/20/2026Jean-François Mercure | Professor of Climate Policy, University of Exeter Business School (UK), Director of the unit Exeter Climate PolicyGlobal scenarios for Ministries of Finance to Inform Resilient Economic Transformation to Zero-Carbon
1/27/2026Tom Murphy | Emeritus Professor of Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California at San DiegoQuestioning Modernity: What does Energy Do?
2/3/2026Andrejka Bertanova | Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Dynamix CorporationTBD
2/10/2026Jake Jordan | Chief Science Officer, Mati CarbonTBD
2/17/2026Michael Craig | Associate Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability and the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of MichiganDecarbonizing the Electric Power Sector in a Warming World 
2/24/2026Aditya Ramji | Director, Global South Centre on Clean Transportation, University of California, DavisShaping Industrial Policy with Vehicle Electrification - Analysing Global EV supply chains and implications
3/3/2026Kelly Sims Gallagher | Dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts UniversityShifting Priorities in U.S. Energy Innovation Policy
3/10/2026Joe DeCarolis | Head and Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon UniversityLeveraging Energy Data and Analysis to Navigate a Rapidly Changing Energy Landscape
3/24/2026Sara Eftekharnejad | Associate Professor, SyracuseCoE Faculty Fellow, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse UniversityTBD
3/31/2026Kyle Chan | Fellow – Foreign Policy, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings InstitutionChina’s Clean Tech Industrial Strategy
4/7/2026Michael Baldea | Professor, Chemical Engineering, UT AustinElectrification of Industry for lower-carbon emissions, the EPIX project
4/14/2026Sindhu Nathan | U.S. House Committe on Science and TechnologyTBD
4/21/2026Erica Belmont | Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of WyomingTBD

UT Energy Symposium Talks

Displaying 226 - 250 of 351

November 17, 2016

Dust to Dust, with a stop at the Stars: The NRG Story

George Schaefer, retired senior financial executive with over 30 years’ experience in the independent power industry

November 10, 2016

EPRI’s Integrated Grid

Barbara Tyran, Executive Director, Government & External Relations, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

November 3, 2016

Power Markets, Regulation, and Utility Scale Solar in the U.S.

Colin Meehan, Director, Regulatory & Public Affairs, First Solar

October 27, 2016

Reforming the Energy Vision: An Electric System for Stormy Times

Elizabeth Stein, Senior Manager – New York Clean Energy Law & Policy, Environmental Defense Fund

October 20, 2016

Fail Faster, Be Nimbler: Does the Oil & Gas Industry Have Anything to Learn from Silicon Valley?

Russell Gold, senior energy reporter at The Wall Street Journal

October 13, 2016

Cash is King! The Comparative Effectiveness of Solar Incentives

Dan Matisoff, Associate Professor, The School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Georgia Tech

October 6, 2016

New Utility Business Models for an Evolving Industry

Virginia Lacy, Principal, RMI Electricity Practice

September 29, 2016

ERCOT and the Evolving Grid: 2016 Perspectives

Paul Wattles, Senior Analyst, Market Design, ERCOT

September 22, 2016

Who is that Man Behind the Curtain? Philanthropy’s Role in the Transition to Clean Energy

Marilu Hastings, Vice President, Sustainability Program, The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation

September 15, 2016

What is the World Coming To: From Energy Systems to Global Crisis Analysis and Response

Yaneer Bar-Yam, President, New England Complex Systems Institute

September 8, 2016

Distributed Energy Resources – Driving Multi-Disciplined Innovation

Bert Haskell, Chief Technology Officer, Pecan Street Inc.

September 1, 2016

Global progress in Carbon Capture and Storage – field demonstrations with emphasis on the storage component

Dr. Susan Hovorka, Senior Research Scientist, Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin

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