About the Course
ENERGY 11SC | CEE16SC | POLISCI 25SC
Prerequisites: None
We will examine the technical, social, and political issues surrounding energy management and use in the West, using California, Nevada, and Arizona as our field laboratory. Students will explore a number of energy narratives, such as:
- Who supplies our energy and from what sources?
- How is it transported?
- Who distributes to users and how do they do it?
- Water for energy and energy for water—two intertwined natural resources
- Meeting carbon emission goals by 2020 and
- Conflicts between desert ecosystems and renewable energy development.
We will place particular emphasis on renewable energy sources and the water-energy nexus, a critically important issue for the arid and semi-arid southwest.
Central to the course will be field exploration in northern and southern California, as well as neighboring areas in Arizona and Nevada, to tour sites such as wind and solar facilities, geothermal plants, hydropower pumped storage, desalination plants, water pumping stations, a liquid fuels distribution operations center, and California’s Independent System Operator. Students will have the opportunity to meet with community members and with national, state, and regional authorities to discuss Western energy challenges and viable solutions. We will also take advantage of Stanford’s own energy systems with site visits to the new energy facilities.
Woven throughout will be an introduction to the basics of energy and energy politics through discussions, lectures, and with the help of guest speakers. Over the summer, students will be responsible for assigned readings, online interactive materials, and relevant recent news articles.
Participants will return to Stanford by September 19. Travel expenses during the course will be provided (except incidentals) by the Bill Lane Center for the American West and Sophomore College.
INSTRUCTOR BIO
David L. Freyberg is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford, where his teaching and research center on water in the environment and the human use of water, especially in the North American West. He spends as much time as possible outdoors, for both teaching and research. Professor Freyberg was a 1985 recipient of a Presidential Young Investigator Award, and has received much recognition for excellence in undergraduate teaching, including the Stanford School of Engineering Tau Beta Pi Award twice and the School of Engineering's Eugene Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is Stanford's representative to the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI), and the past chair of the National Research Council's Water Science and Technology Board. He is a co-author of the widely-used text, Water-Resources Engineering.
Bruce E. Cain is a professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. He received a B.A. from Bowdoin College, a B.Phil. from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Professor Cain was Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley from 1990 to 2007 and Executive Director of the UC Washington Center from 2005 to 2012. He has won awards for his research (Richard F. Fenno Prize, 1988), teaching (Caltech 1988 and UC Berkeley 2003), and public service (Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service, 2000). His areas of expertise include political regulation, applied democratic theory, representation, and state politics.
Sally M. Benson is a professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering and the Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. from Barnard College in Geology and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California in the Material Science and Mineral Engineering Department. For the past seven years she has led GCEP, a campus-wide research project to develop new energy technologies that radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. She is also a leading expert on Carbon Capture and Storage technology—an approach for directly reducing greenhouse emissions by capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and pumping it into deep underground formations for permanent sequestration. In 2012 she awarded the Greenman Award by the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Programme.
