Energy, Clean Innovation & Sustainability

Catalog description

This Writing in the Major (WIM) course for Public Policy will focus on identifying innovative solutions to address energy, environmental, and infrastructure challenges in North America and clearly communicating these strategies to decision-makers. Clean innovation through technological, business, policy and social innovation is needed to advance a carbon neutral future in the region. This transformative process, along with the energy, water, urban, transport and digital innovation cycle, is full of business opportunities. Our course will leverage Stanford's Silicon Valley ingenuity and California's policy leadership in advancing climate and sustainability policy as a source of inspiration to articulate pertinent and pragmatic solutions to the longstanding and emerging cross-country energy and environment policy issues present in North America. We will also analyze the challenges that electoral political cycles and constant evolution of the institutional context for energy and environmental cooperation present among the three members of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). In addition, this course will satisfy the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement for Public Policy. As such, this course focuses on crafting policy memos, reports, and presentations about one individual topic and one group topic. Students will craft a concise policy memo, a longer report, and both an elevator pitch and long-form presentation about a sustainability topic of their choice. Additionally, students will work in a small group to address a clean energy transition challenge for a real-world client: Lithium Valley and the California Energy Commission (CEC). Teams will write a one-pager and a policy report, in addition to delivering a mid-quarter and final presentation, on a chosen Lithium Valley policy challenge for the CEC.