The Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society's Interim Faculty Director, Geoffrey Parker and Executive Director April Salas, led a Dartmouth delegation of faculty, students, and staff to share their expertise at CERAWeek 2024, the energy sector's most significant annual convening of industry, academic, and policy leaders, to help shape priorities and solutions to the world's most pressing energy and climate challenges.
The theme of CERAWeek 2024, held March 18 to 24 in Houston, is "Multidimensional Energy Transition: Markets, Climate, Technology and Geopolitics" and comes amid the intensifying need to reduce global carbon emissions while ensuring energy security, access, and affordability across the world.
Geoff Parker, Irving Institute Interim Faculty Director and the Charles E. Hutchinson '68a Professor of Engineering Innovation will speak on several panels that address climate change solutions via design, governance and regulation of AI, and new applications for automation and digitization in mining.
Parker will also lead a session on a new data sharing competency center that Dartmouth is proposing to build with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Institute, a German academic organization that focuses on the use of data and how companies may benefit from participating.
"This is a pretty exciting endeavor: cross-border, how do you share data among the largest industrial firms with an eye toward improving efficiency?" said Parker, who is especially interested in the use of data to accelerate the transition to low or no carbon energy, which he said "is really the mission of the Irving Institute, to help accelerate the energy transition."
"CERAWeek brings together foremost leaders from across the technology, economic, and policy sectors to help catalyze solutions to the most urgent challenge of our time," said Alexis Abramson, Dean of Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. "The energy transition cannot happen without the convergence of this triad, and I'm thrilled that Dartmouth will be part of important conversations to create, facilitated, and implement truly human-centered solutions that serve people in every corner of our world."
Organized by S&P Global, CERAWeek is attended annually by more than 8,000 delegates from across 85 countries. This year's event features noteworthy speakers, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, author Walter Isaacson, and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, former Secretary of State John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate; and S&P Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin, CERAWeek's founder and Pulitzer-Prize winning expert on the intersection of energy, international politics, and economics who was awarded an honorary degree from Dartmouth in 2016.
Abramson is slated to speak on two panels — one that addresses sustainable spaces and building energy efficiency and the other about universities and early-stage, start-up support with Dartmouth's Director of Office of Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer Kim Rosenfield.
Other Dartmouth speakers include Professor of Earth Sciences Mukul Sharma, who will address two panels on climate change mitigation through geoengineering and oceans, and Julia Huddy, engineering PhD candidate and alumna of the Irving Institute's New Energy Summer Summit, who will address next generation social technologies.
The CERAWeek delegation also includes other Irving Institute staff, representatives from the Office of Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer, and the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations.
Varsha Shula, an engineering PhD student in Parker's lab, MEM candidate Siddhant Banyal Th'25, who will be doing market research in solar and hydrogen electrocatalysis at the conference, and Vidushi Sharma '27, who is working on a position piece on the role of corporations and climate action, will also join faculty and staff at the conference.
The Irving Institute will also be hosting an alumni and friends reception on Tuesday, March 19 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. in the Agora, near the Hydrogen Hub. Keep an eye out for the Dartmouth banner and be sure to stop by! Let us know you're coming here.