The Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE) and How to Effectively Communicate Energy Use and Carbon Emissions to Experts and the Public

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Burce Logan is the Director of the Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE) and an Evan Pugh University Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Penn State.  His research is focused on renewable energy production, energy sustainability of the water infrastructure, hydrogen gas production using water electrolysis, and climate and energy education.  He is the author or co-author of several books and over 550 refereed publications (>119,000 citations, h-index=167).  He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and a fellow of AAAS and several other organizations.

ABSTRACT

The mission of the IEE at Penn State is to facilitate interdisciplinary research and to enable collaborations across the university.  The IEE has ~1000 affiliated faculty that collaborate and work across our five research themes that include energy and climate.  One challenge in developing climate change solutions is effective communication of the amounts of energy we use.  I will explore an approach developed at Penn State based on daily energy use that avoids the use of large numbers and different energy units that enables us to better quantify how our activities are coupled to carbon emissions.