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Black Carbon Symposium

Sponsored by EPA's Regional Science Council

On November 14, 2012, EPA hosted the Black Carbon Symposium in San Francisco. The purpose of this meeting was to share the latest scientific advancements on black carbon public health, climate, and air quality impacts. The symposium featured several experts on black carbon to explain the basic science of black carbon and its effects on human health and global climate change.

In March 2012, EPA issued a Report to Congress on Black Carbon. This report, which had been requested by Congress, summarizes available scientific information on the climate and health impacts of black carbon.

Major Agenda Topics

• EPA’s recent Report to Congress on Black Carbon
• Short-lived climate forcers as a complementary strategy to greenhouse gas abatement
• Climate effects and modeling of black carbon
• Health impacts of black carbon
• Developing inventories of black carbon at the state and local level
• Climate and health benefits of historical mitigation of black carbon from diesel vehicles
• Prospective mitigation opportunities for black carbon
• Policy perspectives and paths forward for state and local action

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Speaker Biographies

Susan Anenberg
Senior Advisor in the State Department
On detail from the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation

Susan Anenberg is a Senior Advisor for U.S. Cookstove Initiatives in the State Department’s Office of the Secretary’s Global Partnership Initiative. Susan is on detail to the State Department from EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, where she leads evaluations of the health and climate benefits of air pollution mitigation, both within the U.S. and globally. She is a lead author on several major publications related to international transport of air pollution and emission control measures that achieve simultaneous benefits for climate change and air quality. She recently led the quantification of the global air quality and health co-benefits that could be achieved by mitigating near-term climate change through black carbon and methane emission control measures. Susan received her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a sub-focus in Environmental Policy. She also has an M.S. from UNC in the same field and a B.A. from Northwestern University.

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Dr. Susan Bauer
Research Scientist
The Earth Institute at Columbia University and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Susanne Bauer is a research scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York. She is an expert in atmospheric chemistry and climate modeling. Her research activities focus on improving the representation of aerosols in global climate models by incorporating process level understanding of aerosol microphysics and chemistry.

Climate change and air pollution have, to a large extent, a common cause emissions from fossil fuel burning. Up until now however, these two problems have been addressed by separate policies. Susanne’s research focuses on developing complex atmospheric models, combined with a strong link to field, laboratory and satellite measurements, in order to apply these models to answer socioeconomic questions to support more integrated and effective policies.

She received her Ph.D. from the Max-Planck Institute für Meteorologie in Hamburg, Germany, and has spend her post-doc years at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement in Paris, France, before she joint Columbia’s Earth Institute almost a decade ago.

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Dan Birkett
Environmental Scientist
U.S. EPA Region 2 Office in New York, NY

Dan Birkett is an environmental scientist with EPA's Region 2 office in New York. Dan has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a master’s degree in Environmental Science from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Since joining EPA in 2007, Dan has worked to promote EPA's diesel emission reduction partnership programs in New York, New Jersey and the Caribbean, specifically those related to bio-fuels and marine ports. He has also worked with EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality in Washington, DC to develop international rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from shipping.

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Jared Blumenfeld
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator
U.S. EPA Pacific Southwest

Jared Blumenfeld was appointed by President Barack Obama and Administrator Lisa P. Jackson to serve as EPA Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest in November 2009. Region 9 is home to more than 48 million people in California, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific Islands, and 147 tribal nations.

Mr. Blumenfeld has spent nearly two decades on the front-lines of protecting the environment both at home and internationally. His priorities at EPA include strong enforcement; environmental justice; protecting and restoring our air, land and waters; building strong federal, state, local and tribal partnerships; and taking action on climate change.
During his tenure at EPA Mr. Blumenfeld has taken a number of significant actions including: designating the Los Angeles River as a “protected” under the Clean Water Act; stewarding a comprehensive judicial settlement to improve the water quality for Honolulu; protecting over 5,000 square miles of California’s coastal waters by proposing to ban discharge of sewage from cargo vessels and cruise ships; bringing together diverse stakeholders throughout the San Joaquin Valley to develop solutions to some of the nation’s worst air quality problems; and leading innovative efforts and building partnerships to support the economy, environmental justice communities and air quality in the Goods Movement sectors (ports, rail, truck).

Before becoming Regional Administrator, Mr. Blumenfeld was the Director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment where he spent eight years as the primary environmental decision-maker for the city. Jared helped to initiate many landmark environmental laws that became part of the municipal Environment Code. These included San Francisco’s ban of plastic bags, a 2020 zero waste goal, LEED Gold building standards, and an overarching precautionary principle framework.

Mr. Blumenfeld’s environmental leadership includes, chairing the first United Nations World Environment Day hosted by the United States - Green Cities: Where the Future Lives (2005), overseeing the Treasure Island Redevelopment Authority, directing international initiatives to protect eight million acres of wildlife habitat and editing an annual report on international environmental case law at Cambridge University. He is a founder of the Business Council on Climate Change, an organization that unites businesses around the challenge of climate change. Mr. Blumenfeld has worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

The Region 9 offices include a talented and diverse team of more than 850 lawyers, engineers, scientists, inspectors, environmental specialists, analysts, and administrative support working to protect human health and the environment across eight time zones.

Mr. Blumenfeld received his law degrees at the University of London and the University of California, Berkeley.

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Dr. Tami Bond
Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Dr. Tami Bond is Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research addresses how energy use affects atmospheric composition and global climate, which is an academic way of saying that she likes to burn things and watch other people doing so. Research activities include development of past, present and future global emission inventories, global simulations of aerosol transport and fate, and laboratory and field measurements of particle emission rates and properties from diesel engines, small industrial combustors, and cooking stoves. Most recently she has served as Associate Editor at the journal Aerosol Science and Technology and co-chair of the Standards and Testing Working Group for the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

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Dr. Ellen Burkhard
Senior Project Manager, Clean Energy Research and Market Development
NYSERDA

Dr. Ellen Burkhard is a Senior Project Manager with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s Clean Energy Research and Market Development group (NYSERDA). Ellen manages projects that evaluate air quality and health effects from energy production and use. These include projects that measure diesel and wood combustion emissions from various technology designs and fuel types, long-range transport of pollutants from upwind sources, localized air-quality effects of high-emitting sources, and cardiovascular and pulmonary effects from air pollution exposure. For the past five years Ellen has co-managed NYSERDA’s biomass heating program which: works with manufacturers to develop high-efficiency and low emitting heating systems; supports third-party performance evaluations of technologies and; demonstrates new technologies in representative applications to support market transformation. Ellen earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Health and Toxicology from the State University of New York at Albany’s

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Jack P. Broadbent
Executive Officer/APCO
Bay Area Air Quality Management District

Jack P. Broadbent serves as the Chief Executive Officer/Air Pollution Control Officer, for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (Air District). In this position, Mr. Broadbent is responsible for directing the Air District's programs to achieve and maintain healthy air quality for the 7 million people that reside in the nine county region of California's San Francisco Bay Area.

Mr. Broadbent joins the Air District after serving more than two and a half years as the Director of the Air Division at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region IX. In that position, Mr. Broadbent was responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Clean Air Act as well as indoor air quality and radiation programs for the Pacific Southwest region of the United States. Before serving at the EPA, Mr. Broadbent worked for the South Coast Air Quality Management District as a Deputy Executive Officer, Director of Planning and other senior management positions. While at the South Coast District, Mr. Broadbent directed the development of a number of landmark programs that contributed to significant improvements in air quality in the Los Angeles region.

Mr. Broadbent also has experience in private industry. In the 1980s, Mr. Broadbent served as Corporate Environmental Programs Manager for the largest private employer in California: Hughes Aircraft Company.

Mr. Broadbent holds a Master's degree in Environmental Administration and a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science—both from the University of California at Riverside.

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Dr. Judith C. Chow
Chair (DAS)
Desert Research Institute (NSHE)

Dr. Judith C. Chow, Nazir and Mary Ansari Chair in Entrepreneurialism and Science and Research Professor in the Division of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) at the Desert Research Institute (DRI), part of the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), has over 37 years of experience in conducting air quality studies and performing statistical data analysis. 

She received her Doctor of Science degree in Environmental Health Science and Physiology from Harvard University in 1985.  As leader of DRI’s Environmental Analysis Facility (EAF), Dr. Chow supervises a group of 30 research scientists and technicians in developing and applying advanced analytical methods to characterize suspended atmospheric particles. 

Dr. Chow is the principal author or co-author of ~315 peer-reviewed articles and ~90 peer-reviewed book chapters and has been recognized by ISIHighlyCited.com in ecology and environment with more than 8,200 citations of her work.

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Thomas Christofk
Air Pollution Control Officer
Placer County Air Pollution Control District

Tom Christofk was appointed the Air Pollution Control Officer for the Placer County Air Pollution Control District in 2002 after having served as the District’s General Manager since December 1999. Prior to this he was a Senior Management Analyst with the Placer County Executive Office, responsible for emergency/incident management and special projects and served as a Planning Section Chief on an Incident Command Team for the California Division of Forestry and Fire Protection. From 1973 through 1981 he was an officer in the US Marine Corps, serving in a variety of command and staff positions, to include development testing of new systems in ship to shore movement and advanced munitions. From 1981 until 1990 he held a number of different positions with Ford Aerospace and Communications Corporation to include Training Section Supervisor, Program Manager, and Marketing Manager for both ordnance and advanced technology programs. Thereafter he was a general manager of a small manufacturing company and marketing consultant until moving into the public sector in 1995 with Placer County. Additionally, Tom is a past President of the Western States Trail Foundation, an association dedicated to preserving and maintaining the historic trail through the Sierra’s from Lake Tahoe to Auburn and has actively been involved both in competing and directing the annual 100 mile Western States Trail Ride (Tevis) endurance event since 1996. Tom is also on the Board of Directors for the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association (CAPCOA), and is a Past President of the Association. He is also a member of the Air and Waste Management Association. Tom has a BA in Political Science from Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles.

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Bart Croes
Research Division Chief
California Air Resources Board

With his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Santa Barbara, Bart Croes supervises staff of 100 engineers, scientists and other staff studying the effects, causes, and control of air pollutants in order to direct the California Air Resources Board toward effective strategies to combat California's air quality and climate change problems. As such, Bart Croes role is instrumental in:

• Setting California ambient air quality standards for particulate matter, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide in response to Senate Bill 25.
•  Assessing personal exposure and indoor air quality for homes, schools, and in vehicles for Assembly Bill 1173.
• Publicizing health and exposure findings to the California Air Resources Board, news media, schools groups, and the general public.
• Incorporating health impacts, cost/benefit analysis, and model of the California economy into the Diesel Risk Reduction Program and other major regulations.
• Supporting rule development for Assembly Bill 1493 (greenhouse gas emission reductions for light-duty cars and trucks) on non-CO2 climate forcers (i.e., HFCs, N2O, CH4, black carbon), economics, and environmental justice.
• Regulating high global warming potential gases, conducting scientific and economic assessments, evaluating emission inventory estimates, and developing tools to promote voluntary change for Assembly Bill 32 (greenhouse gas emission reductions).
• Managing a research portfolio with $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 million in new projects each year.
• Developed 10-year strategic research plan, annual research plans, and research plan for vulnerable populations. Raised over $5,000,000 from other organizations.
• Estimating the contribution of atmospheric pollutants to Lake Tahoe water clarity for the 2007 Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) planning process.
• He has also implemented Innovative Clean Air Technologies program ($1,000,000 per year) to commercialize air pollution control and monitoring technologies. He has raised over $1,000,000 from other organizations.

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John Dawson
Physical Scientist
National Center for Environmental Research
EPA Research & Development

John Dawson is a Physical Scientist in the National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) in the US EPA's Office of Research and Development. John joined NCER in September 2010 after an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship in EPA's Office of Research and Development and Office of Air and Radiation.

John works in the EPA STAR grants program, where he manages grants related to air quality and climate change. John's own research has focused primarily on the impacts of climate change on air quality.

John received his bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Villanova University and his Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy and Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

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Philip Fine, PhD
Planning & Rules Manager
South Coast Air Quality Management District

Philip Fine, Ph.D. is currently a Planning and Rules Manager at the South Coast Air Quality Management District in Diamond Bar, CA.  His responsibilities include Air Quality Management Plan development, particulate matter control strategies, climate and energy, meteorology and forecasting, air quality evaluation, emissions reporting, and air toxics risk assessment. Prior to transferring to this position, he served for over five years as the Atmospheric Measurement Manager at AQMD overseeing the AQMD ambient network of over 35 air monitoring stations and all field activities for numerous special air monitoring research projects focusing on air toxics and the local impacts of air pollution.  Prior to joining the AQMD, he was a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles where he conducted extensive research on particulate pollution, its health effects, atmospheric science, and measurement methods resulting in over 45 peer-reviewed scientific publications. 

He received his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in Environmental Engineering Science, and his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Larry F. Green
Executive Director
Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District

Larry F. Greene is the Executive Director of the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District. Larry has a Bachelors Degree in Science Education from NC State University, and Masters Degrees in Logistics Management from Florida Institute of Technology and Human Resources Education from Boston University. He is a Past-President of the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association (CAPCOA) and serves as a permanent member on the CAPCOA Board of Directors. He serves on the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) Board of Directors as Co-Vice President and Co-Chair of the Global Warming Committee.

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Daniel S. Greenbaum
Executive Officer/APCO
Health Effects Institute

Dan Greenbaum joined the Health Effects Institute as its President and Chief Executive Officer on March 1, 1994. In that role, Greenbaum leads HEI’s efforts, supported jointly by US EPA and industry, with additional funding from US DOE, Federal Highway Administration, US AID, the Asian Development Bank, and foundations, to provide public and private decision makers – in the US, Asia, Europe, and Latin America - with high quality, impartial, relevant and credible science about the health effects of air pollution to inform air quality decisions in the developed and developing world.

Greenbaum has been a member of the U.S. National Research Council Board of Environmental Studies and Toxicology and vice chair of its Committee for Air Quality Management in the United States. He recently served on the NRC Committee on The Hidden Costs of Energy and serves currently on their Committee on Science for EPA’s Future. Greenbaum also chaired the EPA Blue Ribbon Panel on Oxygenates in Gasoline which issued the report Achieving Clean Air and Clean Water and EPA’s Clean Diesel Independent Review Panel, which reviewed technology progress in implementing the 2007 Highway Diesel Rule. In May 2010, Greenbaum received the Thomas W. Zosel Outstanding Individual Achievement Award from the U.S. EPA for his contributions to advancing clean air.

Greenbaum has over three decades of governmental and non-governmental experience in environmental health. Just prior to coming to HEI, he served as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection from 1988 to 1994, where he was responsible for the Commonwealth's response to the Clean Air Act, as well as its award-winning efforts on pollution prevention, water pollution and solid and hazardous waste. Greenbaum holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees from MIT in City Planning.

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Mark Z. Jacobson
Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Stanford University

Mark Z. Jacobson is Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment and Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy.  He received a B.S. in Civil Engineering with distinction, an A.B. in Economics with distinction, and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, in 1988.  He received an M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences in 1991 and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences in 1994 from UCLA. He has been on the faculty at Stanford since 1994.

His work relates to the development and application of numerical models to understand better the effects of human and natural emissions on climate and air pollution and the analysis of renewable energy resources. He has published two textbooks of two editions each and 130 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles.  He received the 2005 American Meteorological Society Henry G. Houghton Award for "significant contributions to modeling aerosol chemistry and to understanding the role of soot and other carbon particles on climate."  He co-authored a 2009 cover article in Scientific American with Dr. Mark DeLucchi of U.C. Davis on how to power the world with renewable energy. He has also served on the Energy Efficiency and Renewables Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy.

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Ray Minjares
The International Council on Clean Transportation
Program Lead, Climate and Health

Mr. Ray Minjares leads the Program on Climate and Health at the International Council on Clean Transportation where he distills policy-relevant science of non-CO2 pollutants into best practice policies for the transportation sector. In 2007 he earned a masters degree in public health with a concentration in health policy and management from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

He has previously worked in Washington, DC with the American Cancer Society to develop analytics for measuring mission delivery success, and the Environmental and Energy Study Institute where he managed the National Clean Bus Project. In 2002 Mr. Minjares earned his bachelor’s degree from UCLA with a focus on International Development and the Environment. He is a native of Los Angeles and is now based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan
University of California, San Diego
Chair, Project Surya

Dr. Ramanathan discovered the strong greenhouse effect of CFCs in 1975 and along with R. Madden, predicted in 1980 that global warming would be detected by 2000. In 1985, he led the first international NASA/WMO/UNEP assessment on the climate effects of non-CO2 greenhouse gases and concluded that they are as important as CO2 to global climate change.

He was among a team of four which developed the first version of the US community climate model in the 1980s. He led an international field experiment in the 1990s, with Paul Crutzen, that discovered the widespread Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs) over S. Asia, which have devastating health and climate impacts. He developed light weight unmanned aerial vehicles to track pollution plumes from S. Asia, E. Asia and N. America. His recent finding is that mitigation of short lived climate pollutants (black carbon, methane, ozone and HFCs) will slow down global warming significantly during this century. This proposal has now been adopted by UNEP and 12 countries including USA.

He now leads Project Surya which will mitigate black carbon emissions from solid biomass cooking in S. Asia and Kenya. His awards include the Tyler prize, the Volvo Prize, The Rossby and the Zayed prize. He has been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, the Pontifical Academy by Pope John Paul II and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2012, he was honored by Pope Benedict with an appointment to the Council of the Vatican Academy.

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Barry R. Wallerstein, D. Env.
Executive Officer
South Coast Air Quality Management District

Barry R. Wallerstein holds a doctorate in environmental science and engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles, and M.S. and B.S. degrees in biological science. He has over 30 years of experience in urban planning and environmental studies, with an emphasis in air pollution control and public policy development.

Barry has served AQMD in various positions since 1984, and was appointed Acting Executive Officer in August 1997.  The Governing Board unanimously elevated him to Executive Officer in November 1998.  Barry has also worked as an Environmental Control Administrator for Northrop, and was a member of the rule development staff in the Mobile Source Division of the California Air Resources Board.

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Dr. John G. Watson
Research Professor, DAS
Desert Research Institute (DRI)

Dr. John G. Watson, Research Professor in the Division of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) at the Desert Research Institute (DRI), part of the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), has over 41 years of experience in physics, environmental sciences, air quality network design and measurement, and source/receptor modeling.

He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from Oregon Graduate Institute (now Oregon Health and Science University) in 1979. Dr. Watson has conducted and managed  >100 air quality studies.  He is known for formulating conceptual models as well as organizing and planning large-scale, multi-year air quality studies in the U.S.  Dr. Watson established DRI’s Source Characterization Laboratory and developed an in-plume sampling system for real-time measurement of vehicle exhaust.

Dr. Watson is the principal author or co-author of ~270 peer-reviewed publications and  ~65 peer-reviewed book chapters and has been recognized by ISIHighlyCited.com in ecology and environment with more than 7,000 citations of his work.

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