Early-Career Energy Researcher Talk Series Brings "New Energy" to the Scene

Inspired to shine a spotlight on up-and-coming young researchers in energy and society in a time of financial pressures in higher education and constraints on scholarly networking due to the global pandemic, on June 3 the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society at Dartmouth launched a new twice-monthly seminar series in partnership with more than a dozen colleges and universities in the United States and Europe.  

The first seminar featured Dr. Gabriel Chan, assistant professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.  In his talk, "Cooperative Electric Cooperative Research,"  Dr. Chan explained critical differences between traditional investor-owned utilities, on the one hand, which serve most urban and densely populated areas, and publicly- and member-owned "cooperative" electric utilities that serve electric customers across the vast majority of the US land mass.  Co-ops, which have their roots in the New Deal of the 1930's, are organizationally complex, and may hold keys to increasing energy democracy in the electric grid more broadly.

The series is the idea of Institute Director and Dartmouth Professor of Environmental Studies Elizabeth Wilson, who reached out to colleagues at energy centers to gauge their interest in providing a platform for graduate students, post-docs, and young faculty members to share their work broadly and in so doing, highlight emerging insights across a broad range of topics in energy and society. "Our mission is to transform the world's energy systems to foster more just, more sustainable, more equitable ways to serve society's needs.  Sharing the work of young scholars helps advance that mission by introducing novel ways of understanding and studying energy and society challenges and just importantly by energizing new collaborations," said Wilson.

The series continues on June 17 with Dr. Bjarne Steffen, Senior Researcher and Lecturer in the Energy Politics Group at ETH Zurich speaking on "The Role of Finance in the Low-Carbon Energy Transition." MIT's Sloan School of Management faculty member Valerie Karplus will moderate. 

Series Co-Sponsors

Arizona State University
Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Columbia University
Duke University
ETH Zurich
Indiana University's Paul H. O'Neill School of
 Public and Environmental Affairs
Northeastern University
Penn State University
Princeton University's Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment
Stanford University
Technical University of Denmark
Tufts University's Center for Environmental and Resource Policy
University of Cambridge
University of Michigan
University of Vermont's Gund Institute for Environment