2022 Energy Seminars

January 13 | COP26: The Outcomes 

Join Professor Tracy Bach and T'22s: Abigail Gary, Eva Greene, Kaitlin Horan, Rishab Bansal, Sam Gant, and Tabitha Bennett for a debriefing of COP26 outcomes and conclusions. Professor Tracy Bach, an annual attendee at the UNCOP, is an experienced climate change law and policy analyst, international negotiations advisor, professor, researcher, and social entrepreneur. This seminar will examine the outcomes of the COP26 negotiations that took place in Glasgow, Scotland in November. Students who were part of the Tuck delegation who attended COP will also share their perspective and experiences.

This event is sponsored by the Revers Center for Energy and the Center for Business, Government & Society and the Dartmouth Energy Collaborative. 

View a recording here. 

January 25 | The Road from COP26: Mobilizing for Action 

In the second session of our winter series, we'll hear from Scott Foster '79, Director of Sustainable Energy at United Nations Economic Commission for Europe; Jennie Stephens, of Northeastern University's School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs; and Victoria Holt, the Norman E. McCulloch Jr. Director of Dartmouth's John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, who will share their perspectives on the role of the UN member states and diverse voices in a more equitable energy future. Irving Institute Director Dr. Elizabeth Wilson will moderate. 

Scott Foster will review challenges and opportunities for action by UN member states in the context of COP26. Victoria Holt will discuss her experience mobilizing a major organization (UN peacekeeping) for climate action via the Powering Peace program. And Jennie Stephens will address the presence (or lack thereof) of diverse voices and implications of energy democracy for COP and climate action.

View a recording of this panel discussion.

February 22 | From Paris to Glasgow: Evolving Climate Conversations and the Voices of Youth 

View a recording of this discussion 

What has changed in the years between the Paris Climate Agreement and the most recent UN Climate Conference in Glasgow in 2021? How have these international agreements played out in terms of real progress on climate goals? How have the voices of young people shaped the direction of climate policy in the US and abroad? How can we maintain both a sense of optimism and urgency as we address the climate crisis? 

On Tuesday, February 22 at 12:15 p.m. Elan Strait, Senior Advisor at the US State Department and a negotiator at UN climate talks in Paris and Glasgow, will share his perspective on the evolution and impact of international agreements on climate progress in a dialogue with a Dartmouth student panel. 

Strait, who served in the Obama Administration and who worked on the Trump Administration transition team before leaving to found We Are Still In, a coalition of US organizations committed to the climate goals set forth in the Paris Agreement, will share highlights from the State Department perspective on the implications of COP26. He will also engage in dialogue on the youth perspective on COPs in general and COP26 in particular with Dartmouth student panelists Bridget McCarthy TU'22, Nathaniel Roe '23, and Abigail Wiseman '22 as well as with audience members. Dartmouth Sustainability Director Rosi Kerr '97 will moderate the conversation. 

Scientific consensus holds that to keep the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, humans must quickly transition to using carbon-free sources of energy such as solar and wind. These technologies rely heavily on minerals, metals, and rare earth elements, greatly accelerating demand for these materials as the pace and scope of the energy transition ramps up.

While a "clean" energy transition is technologically within our grasp, the reality of the extractive processes that provide the materials and minerals needed to create carbon-free energy is often anything but clean. 

In our spring Dartmouth Energy Collaborative Energy Seminar Series, we will learn more about the materials powering clean energy, explore the complex socio-political trade-offs involved in obtaining these materials, and look ahead to potential policies, practices, and alternative materials that can ensure a more sustainable, equitable energy future for all. 

Please note: spring term energy seminars will be a mix of in-person and online, so please consult each event description for location/delivery mode. 

April 5 | Critical Materials: Powering the New Energy Economy

View a recording of this talk.

About the talk: The new energy economy is driven by a revolution in how we store energy. With the advent of low-carbon and resilient storage comes rising demand for critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and graphite to make batteries; precious metals and rare-earths for electronic components; and base metals and industrial minerals to build out renewable infrastructure. Because energy delivery will depend more on efficiency and effectiveness than replacement of combustible hydro-carbon reserves, we will also see a focus on re-purposing, re-using, and recycling components. Renewable energy resources coupled with battery storage stand ready to deliver abundant and affordable energy to all.  Our challenge is to do this with the most sustainable material supply chain imaginable.

April 19 | Special Event: 50 Years of Energy Policy — Lessons for the Future 

John Deutch, Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and former Director of the CIA, will give a talk titled "50 Years of Energy Policy —Lessons for the Future" as part of the Dartmouth Energy Collaborative's Energy Seminar series and the Thayer School of Engineering's Great Issues in Energy series. This event will take place in room 080 of the Irving Institute building and will be livestreamed. 

At the request of the speaker, a recording of this lecture is not available. 

About the Lecture

Nine U.S. presidential administrations have dealt with energy issues. What lessons learned from this history might help dealing with today's climate issues? 
 
The driving force for past energy issues fall into five buckets: 
1.  Political Instability
2.   Changes in Energy Policy
3.   Changed Technical Priorities
4.   Unexpected geopolitical events
5.   Financial Considerations 
 
Professor Deutch will advance a theory about how these energy issues are resolved and will propose ten actions to effectively meet the future challenges of global climate change.  

April 22 | Metals and the Energy Transition: Challenges and Opportunities

On Friday, April 22 from 4-5 p.m. in Fairchild Room 101 and online, Kwasi Ampofo, head of metals and mining at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, will talk about metals, their role in the transition to renewable energy, and the challenges and opportunities they create. This talk will take place in the Sherman Fairchild Physical Sciences Center, Room 101, on the Dartmouth campus and will also be livestreamed.

At the request of the speaker,  a recording of this talk is not available.

May 17 | Industrial Ecology of the Green Energy Transition: Evaluating Material Options 

On Tuesday, May 17 from 12:15 - 1:15 p.m., Dr. Saleem Ali, Chair, Department of Geography & Spatial Sciences and Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware, will give a talk, "Industrial Ecology of the Green Energy Transition: Evaluating Material Options," as part of the Dartmouth Energy Collaborative Energy Seminar series. 

View a recording of this talk.

About the Talk
Transitioning away from fossil fuels to green energy options will necessitate new infrastructure investments which have become a source of intensely polarized policy debates. There are, however, ways of evaluating the net impacts of various transition technologies and their requisite infrastructure from a systems perspective. This presentation will present some of these methods and how they can be applied using recent research which has compared metal sourcing from terrestrial mining to deep sea mining deposits as well as a range of circular economy options. The recent executive orders by the Biden Administration related to critical metals sourcing domestically and the growing tensions with China's dominance in the sector will also be discussed. 

May 31 | Critical Minerals and Critical Thinking. What is the Problem? 

On Tuesday, May 31, from 12:15-1:15 p.m., Karen Hanhøj, Director of the British Geological Survey, will give a talk about the role of minerals in the energy transition titled, "Critical Minerals and Critical Thinking. What is the Problem?" Dartmouth Associate Professor of Earth Sciences Meredith Kelly will moderate a Q&A following the presentation. 

Due to technical difficulties, a recording of this talk is unavailable.