Energy & Civilization Student Project Showcase

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Fall 2023 homepage

Fall 2023

Welcome to the Energy & Civilization (UGBA 193B) student project showcase site!

In this course, students develop and present solutions for the most important - and challenging - problems that humanity faces today:

Extending the benefits of our modern energy system to all peoples, in developing and developed worlds, and
Transitioning in a truly sustainable and just way, without attendant environmental, societal, and potentially unmanageable climate harm of the current system.

In this showcase site, you will learn more about the course and its faculty and review some of our students' written and oral presentation group work.

Student Projects

In this course, we assign students a team project asking them to tackle an important energy problem that, at a minimum, incorporates systems and life cycle analysis, technology, issues of the developing world and its relationship to the developed world, as well as economic and public policy and, if possible, broader societal dimensions and challenges.

The group projects are designed to bring together students from different majors and perspectives to address the complexity of energy issues and potentially bring new ideas to the discussion of energy innovation and policy.

Course Overview

Energy is a major determinant for economic growth and societal wellbeing.

The course asks: “Are these much-needed energy transitions truly within our reach? Can we achieve both simultaneously despite the global pandemic, the war on Ukraine, and the extraordinary demand on resources? If yes, how?”

We use this systems approach to explore these questions.

We examine the technological, societal, cultural, economic, management, structural, and political drivers of energy development over time and the associated diverse constraints that make the challenge so complex but so fascinating.

Faculty Bios

Ahmed Badruzzaman

Headshot of Ahmed Badruzzaman

I went from having no electricity at home in my early years in Bangladesh and watching my grandmother cook on a smoky woodstove with tears streaming down her cheek, to looking for quarks as a high energy physicist, then transition to earn a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from America’s oldest engineering university. I then spent next decades at major US entities designing & deploying advanced energy technologies and teaching about them. I leveraged those experiences in advancing the energy discourse at a Diaspora environmental group. I have had a great run and much fun in this journey. In this course, jointly developed with two brilliant colleagues, first as a Campus Big Ideas course and now a Haas Elective, I strive to share that fun with my students. Many of them, I believe, will have major roles in transitioning to a world of unhindered access to modern energy sources with minimal adverse impacts.

But it’s more than energy technologies and their environmental impacts that fascinate me. As an R&D leader at a major energy company with key roles in professional societies, I had a unique perch as we addressed challenges of transferring technologies from an R&D lab to the field across the world, in countries with differing governance, economic needs, technological capabilities, and unique cultural norms. I believe these aspects, much more than a binary choice of clean vs. not-clean energy sources, will determine the outcome of our effort at a paradigm shift to a clean, sustainable, and just energy system; we owe it to our future generations.

A key driver that I have identified in my lectures would be our ability to objectively assess both upsides and downsides of each energy option we fancy, with an objective discourse even with those we disagree. Engaging with students on these monumentally important topics the past seven years has, perhaps, been the most rewarding experience of my career. I hope to continue this engagement.

Jamie Rector

Headshot of Jamie Rector I'm a Professor of Geophysics which means that my main expertise is in imaging subsurface oil and gas reservoirs with sound waves (seismic surveys). I also study the micro-earthquakes created by fracking and I’m an expert (for the plaintiffs) on several important fracking lawsuits. I've always had one foot in industry, having founded several startups. I've also advised Chevron, BP, Eni, Japex, and SinoPec. Recently I have recently been advising technical projects addressing emissions reduction in mining, underground CO2 sequestration, and nuclear waste disposal in deep boreholes. Technology has been and will be key in addressing emissions. I believe that working from the inside is far more effective than working from the outside with advocacy groups.

I believe man-made CO2 emissions has caused most of global warming, and my initial course goal (in 2016) for was to expose students to fossil fuels and their importance in an energy transition. Fossil fuels are a bad word at Berkeley, and in many courses, they are ignored even though they make up 83% of the world’s energy supply. Nearly every energy discussion of energy at Berkeley is either solar or wind focused (even though solar only produces 1-2% of the world’s energy). Maybe we all would like things to be different, but this is cold, hard reality, and something we are going to drill home in this class. There are certain fundamental laws of physics, chemistry, and socio economics that need to be understood.

As recently as three years ago, I believed that CO2 emissions needed to be aggressively reduced to avoid a climate crisis. My position has dramatically changed since then as I have read and studied the issues--largely due to incorporating the course systems approach in my thinking. I still believe CO2 emissions need to be reduced, but I am quite confident there is,and will be, no climate crisis. My work studying our energy system has convinced me that wholesale, aggressive conversion toward solar and wind (which are anything but ‘green’ or ‘clean’) is unneeded and often counter-productive. Instead, natural gas is the principal near-term solution to emissions reductions, and the transition is already underway. The transition from coal to cheaper natural gas (made possible by technology) has responsible for a lion's share of emissions reductions over the past 10 years and will continue to be in the next 10-30 years. This is especially true in the developing world, where the cheapest solution is needed. Solar has helped at the margin, and Solar and wind will come along later and at a slower pace, unless politics and ‘anti’-environmentalists have their way.

My positions have been developed based on science and data—not politics. My positions are ‘hypotheses’, and as new data comes forward, they will undoubtedly change. It is tragic that energy has become a political football and that there is so much misinformation running around the internet. If you are willing to challenge your assumptions and your understanding of our energy system (if conditioned by the media they are guaranteed to be wrong), I guarantee that you will learn a lot. Your viewpoints may even change, particularly when you start digging into your project and start really thinking holistically, critically, and rationally. Not politically. Ahmed, Chris, and I continually discuss (often argue!) these issues and we have varied opinions. I have learned a great deal from them. Had they always had the same viewpoints as me, things would be dull.

I don’t spend all my time thinking about energy. I advise the football and golf teams, I play jazz piano (sometimes gigging), and I dote on my Cane’ Corso, Brutus.

Christine Rosen

Headshot of Instructor Christine Rosen I am an historian with a PhD in American History from Harvard University. As such, I look forward to bringing my historical perspective as well as my background in the social sciences and humanities to bear on the subject of energy transitions. As a professor in the Haas School of Business - and as a woman - I am well aware of the difficulties of reaching across disciplinary and professional (and other) boundaries to work in collaboration with people in other disciplines and fields to develop solutions to complex problems. As a long time member of the Berkeley Faculty Association Board, I have also learned first hand how difficult it is to learn about emerging threats to public welfare (in this case faculty and student welfare in particular) and to develop successful strategies for working with the powers that be to solve them. As the former Faculty Director of the American Studies Interdisciplinary Major Program, I also learned how satisfying it is to work with faculty from a wide range of fields to develop and implement strategies for advancing the interests of interdisciplinary studies in our very disciplinarily siloized campus.

I grew up in Akron, Ohio, back when that city still called itself "the rubber capital of the world" (thanks to the large number of rubber manufacturers headquartered there). I remember the rubbery stench of the pollution the rubber factories generated. I also remember going camping with my family on the shores of Lake Erie and being grossed out by the pollution in the water. This imbued me with the desire to work for positive environmental change and protection. This sense of purpose has grown stronger over time as I have learned how deeply our modern industrial system is harming our natural environment and endangering human welfare and health.

Use the navbar at the top of the page to navigate directly to specific semesters, or click the next button below to begin browsing through all student work.

Browse Student Projects

Course contact: Ahmed Badruzzaman

Site designers: Fernando Corral and Keeley Takimoto