Most energy consumed in the U.S. and in the world is produced using thermal-to-mechanical energy conversion. In this course, students will learn the engineering principles that govern how heat is converted to mechanical power in electric power plants, jet aircraft, and internal combustion engines. Topics covered include a review of thermodynamics and basic power cycles, supercritical, combined, and hybrid cycles, cogeneration, jet propulsion, and reciprocating internal combustion engines. A brief introduction to desalination and combustion is also included. The material in this course will provide students a foundation important for industrial and research employment in energy engineering.

The objective of this course is to provide students with detailed knowledge of corporate structures, valuation methods, project finance, risk management practices, corporate governance issues, and geo-political risks in the energy industry. In general, this course seeks to provide students with an overall context for understanding energy issues and risks, and how these might affect financing and investment decisions for both providers of energy and end-users of energy. FNCE 2030 or FNCE 2070 are recommended but not required.

“Energy issues are among some of the most important and complex issues facing the modern world. Energypractices are related intimately to climate change, national security, air and water pollution, economic stability of nations, social inequality, and poverty. This seminar-style course takes an in-depth view at the issues surrounding energy, and both the policy approaches used across the world to address such issues and the justice and equity dimensions of energy systems. Of importance to the discussions in this course is not simply a consideration of which policies have been adopted and to what ends, but rather a comprehensive evaluation of the political environment in which policies are designed and implemented, the manner in which governments can redesign their approaches to energy, and how an energy justice approach has the potential to fundamentally redesign our energy systems. This year, we will also focus quite a bit on the intersections between energy inequalities and racial inequalities, with an objective to elucidate such intersections for the energy-curious public.”

This course provides an introduction to U.S. energy law and examines policy initiatives to address the challenges of climate change, focusing on electric generation. The course begins with study of the legal framework of regulation of the U.S. electric utility industry and the evolving power and responsibilities of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, state public utility commissions, and other administrative agencies. The course then examines the emergence of climate change as an energy policy issue in this regulatory context and analyzes key federal and state initiatives (and alternatives) designed to achieve a reduction in carbon emissions, including expanded use of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and distributed generation. Class is limited to 16 students. Grading will be based on a seminar paper and class participation.

This is a survey course that will examine the current U.S. energy industry, from production to consumption, and its impacts on local, regional, and the global environment. The course will seek to provide a fuller understanding of existing energy systems, ranging from technical overviews of each, a review of industry organization, and an exploration of the well-established policy framework each operates within. Near-term demands upon each energy supply system will be discussed, with particular focus on environmental constraints. Policy options facing each energy industry will be reviewed.

The course will present a comprehensive overview of the global demand for energy, and the resource availability and technology used in its current and future supply. Through a personal energy audit, students will be made aware of the extensive role that energy plays in modern life, both directly, through electricity and transportation fuel, and indirectly in the manufacturing of goods they use. The course will cover how that energy is supplied, the anticipated global growth in energy demand, the resource availability and the role of science and technology in meeting that demand in a world concerned about climate change. The roles of conservation, improved efficiency and renewable energy in meeting future demand in a sustainable, environmentally benign way will be covered. Prerequisite: Basic understanding of chemisrty and physics

The course will examine major sources of energy on earth: sunlight, mechanical, chemical and biological, and how this energy is transformed into useful energy for humans - typically electrical energy or food. Considerable emphasis will be on forms of regenerative energy that can be used when living off-the-grid. As a case study, we will examine some approaches taken by the US military to provide energy capability for dismounted Marines operating on foot in austere environments. Faculty lectures will be supplemented by guest lectures from leaders in government and industry. No scientific knowledge is assumed beyond high school biology, chemistry and physics. Energy is necessarily a quantitative subject so students should be comfortable with quantitative approaches. A major goal of this course is for students to develop an awareness for the amounts of energy they use in their daily lives, and how they might reduce them. As an exercise, students will measure how much energy their smart phones and laptops use in a day and try to generate a comparable amount of energy through physical effort.

The aim of this course is to provide an incentive to use geochemical and mineralogical principles to address and solve major environmental problems. The students identify the problems that are associated with different types of waste. This course covers a wide range of problems associated with the waste arising from the generation of electricity. The main topics will be the uranium cycle, characterization of nuclear waste, and the containment and disposal of nuclear waste. Based on insights from the nuclear fuel cycle, solutions are presented that diminish the environmental impacts of coal and biomass combustion products, incineration of municipal solid waste, toxic waste due to refuse incineration, and landfills and landfill gases.

The developed world's dependence on fossil fuels for energy production has extremely undesirable economic, environmental, and political consequences, and is likely to be mankind's greatest challenge in the 21st century. We describe the physical principles of energy, its production and consumption, and environmental consequences, including the greenhouse effect. We will examine a number of alternative modes of energy generation - fossil fuels, biomass, wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear - and study the physical and technological aspects of each, and their societal, environmental and economic impacts over the construction and operational lifetimes. No previous study of physics is assumed.

The course will introduce emerging environmental issues, relevant engineering solutions, and problem-solving techniques to students. The case study approach will be used to assist students to develop and apply the fundamental engineering skills and scientific insights needed to recognize a variety of environmental problems that have profound impacts on all aspects of modern society

While conventional wisdom is that the world is running out of fossil fuels, technical advances such as deep water production, directional drilling, hydrofracturing, and the refining of non-conventional crude oil sources has increased the resource base significantly and there are well over 100 years of reserves of oil, natural gas and coal. The effect of technology advances has been most profound in the United States, where net energy imports are projected to fall to 12% of consumption by 2020. Excellent, highly technical careers are available in these industries, with opportunities to reduce their impact on the environment and in particular on climate change. The course will cover engineering technology in oil, natural gas and coal from production through end use. It will equip graduating students with the knowledge to contribute in these industries and to participate in informed debate about them.

Humans modify and control our environment, but are also subject to the whims of geologic forces. Earthquakes, landslides, floods and dust storms are natural hazards that, while unpredictable, may be understood from basic mechanical principles; and this understanding may be used to better prepare and adapt to a changing world. Human-induced climate change is triggering not only warming, but also "global weirding" as the climate system becomes increasingly unstable and unpredictable. This course will lead with applications related to the environment and climate change, and use simple scaling and dimensional analysis to develop physical intuition. Students will be introduced to topics such as mechanics (e.g., failure) and flow of soil and rock, river erosion, and transport and dispersion of contaminants in water and air, as well as basic phenomena of weather and climate. I will present an integrated approach to understanding these problems by applying elementary concepts of thermo-fluids and mechanics. Gravity currents make up the vast proportion of environmental flows; I will emphasize common principles, such as buoyancy and mixing. The primary objective for this course is that students discover how to apply basic engineering insight to non-engineered (i.e., natural), unconstrained systems. A secondary objective is to entice mechanical engineers to become interested in the environment.

This course provides an overview of topics related to corporate sustainability with a focus on how environmentally sustainable approaches can create value for the firm. The course explores trends in corporate practices and students consider specific examples of such practices to examine the interactions between the firm and the environment. This course has three objectives: to increase students' knowledge of sustainability practices and their impact on firm performance; to teach students to think strategically and act entrepreneurially on environmental issues; and to help students design business approaches to improve environmental outcomes, while simultaneously creating value.

This course examines contemporary environmental issues such as energy, waste, pollution, health, population, biodiversity and climate through a historical and critical lens. All of these issues have important material, natural and technical aspects; they are also inextricably entangled with human history and culture. To understand the nature of this entanglement, the course will introduce key concepts and theoretical frameworks from science and technology studies and the environmental humanities and social sciences.

This course explores how Japanese literature, cinema, and popular culture have engaged with questions of environment, ecology, pollution, and climate change from the wake of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 to the ongoing Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in the present. Environmental disasters and the slow violence of their aftermath have had an enormous impact on Japanese cultural production, and we examine how these cultural forms seek to negotiate and work through questions of representing the unrepresentable, victimhood and survival, trauma and national memory, uneven development and discrimination, the human and the nonhuman, and climate change's impact on imagining the future. Special attention is given to the possibilities and limitations of different forms--the novel, poetry, film, manga, anime--that Japanese writers and artists have to think about humans' relationship with the environment.

This course examines environmental and energy issues from an economist's perspective. Over the last several decades, energy markets have become some of the most dynamic markets of the world economy, as they experienced a shift from heavy regulation to market-driven incentives. First, we look at scarcity pricing and market power in electricity and gasoline markets. We then study oil and gas markets, with an emphasis on optimal extraction and pricing, and geopolitical risks that investors in hydrocarbon resources face. We then shift gears to the sources of environmental problems, and how policy makers can intervene to solve some of these problems. We talk about the economic rationale for a broad range of possible policies: environmental taxes, subsidies, performance standards and cap-and-trade. In doing so, we discuss fundamental concepts in environmental economics, such as externalities, valuation of the environment and the challenge of designing international agreements. At the end of the course, there will be special attention for the economics and finance of renewable energy and policies to foster its growth. Finally, we discuss the transportation sector, and analyze heavily debated policies such as fuel-economy standards and subsidies for green vehicles. Prerequisites: An introductory microeconomics course (ECON1, or another course approved by the instructor) will be sufficient in most cases; BEPP 250 or an equivalent intermediate microeconomics course is recommended.

This seminar focuses on the interrelations of equity, justice, and environmental crisis. Beginning with a discussion of the emergence of climate justice as a critical term in international negotiations, we will consider several dimensions of substantive and historical inequality and the framing of justice as an environmental right as they arise from these settings. Broadening the discussion to include a larger framework of environmental issues in relation to inequality, the course will draw on considerations of geographies of vulnerability, environments as inhabited risk, and ecological debt in relation to “natural disaster” or environmental crisis. Moving from an historical account of structural inequalities in socio-natural systems to contemporary environmental politics, we will then discuss the disjuncture in environmental movements and aspirations between the global south and north, and particularly, how justice and equity figure into environmentalism(s) on a global basis. Finally, we discuss emerging frameworks including Just Transition movements, ecological sovereignty and rights discourses, and flourishing and capabilities approaches.

From Rachel Carlson to Greta Thunberg – and whether via public blockades or behind-the-scenes boardroom votes – activism has been a driving force of change on environmental issues. This course will offer an overview of environmental activism, including players, strategies and tactics, and impacts. Students will explore various types of activists (e.g., grassroots, NGO, employee, investor) and the relationships between activism aimed at businesses vs. governments. The course will help students understand the historical roots of environmental activism, and what influence current demographics, public opinion, and technology have had, including on recent climate activism. Through case studies, news stories, academic readings, and class discussion, students will learn the various roles activists play, how activism impacts business practices and laws, and many of the ways companies relate to activists. Quizzes, case analyses, and other methods will be used to demonstrate mastery of the material.

A detailed, comprehensive investigation of selected environmental problems. Guest speakers from the government and industry will give their acccounts of various environmental cases. Students will then present information on a case study of their choosing.

The course aims to teach chemical content and principles in the context of significant environmental issues. Topics to be covered include: composition of the atmosphere; protecting the ozone layer; chemistry of global warming; traditional hydrocarbon fuels and energy utilization; water supply, its contaminants, and waste water treatment; acid rain; nuclear energy; and new energy sources. Students will develop critical thinking ability, competence to better assess risks and benefits, and skills that will lead them to be able to make informed decisions about technology-based matters.