Energy Grand Challenges at the Interface of Technology and Policy

Catalog description

This collaborative course -- co-taught by instructors from the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, Weitzman School of Design and School of Engineering and Applied Science -- uses societal grand challenges as scenarios for identifying repeatable, process-oriented best practices for solving complex, systemic problems in the energy transition. This course is intended for graduate students with a background in either the social sciences (economics, political science, law, or policy) or who are in STEM programs (science and engineering). This course will complement the material covered in the Kleinman Center Introduction to Energy Policy course ( ENMG 5020 ) taught in the fall. It will be an opportunity to learn from one another and build a holistic understanding of the technical and policy dimensions of the energy transition and the global response to climate change and environmental degradation. The course will be broken into three chapters. For the first third of the semester, we will focus on basics of policy and engineering literacy, with each student bringing their own expertise to the table. The best way to truly understand a topic is to teach it, and this chapter of the course will focus on learning how to talk across disciplines and approach challenges in new and unfamiliar ways. The middle third of this course will be built around case studies of grand societal challenges; some of which have seen considerable progress towards being solved, others which are still the subject of great uncertainty and disagreement. Among other topics, this course will explore: The impact of sweeping standards on building and appliance efficiency; the rapid development and mutual reinforcement of renewable energy technologies and policy; the ability of policy to facilitate healthy competition between technologies (hydrogen vs batteries, for example); The allocation of scarce CCUS…