DESCRIPTION
  The course provides a comprehensive treatment of the role of energy in society.  After reviewing the benefits and problems associated with today’s dependence on fossil fuels, attention is directed to the opportunities and challenges of transitioning to a sustainable energy future.  Course content is developed along two essential and interrelated tracks, one scientific/technical and the other socio/economic/political.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 

Upon completion of the course, students will

  • understand and be able to quantify the different forms of energy;
  • understand and be able to apply the fundamental laws governing conversion from one form of energy to another (the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics);
  • understand the roles and limitations of technologies currently used to sustain the three sectors of a modern economy (transportation, industrial and residential/commercial) and be able to quantify related performance parameters;
  • understand and be able to quantify the environmental consequences (pollution and climate change) of today’s energy technologies;
  • be able to critically assess the strengths and weaknesses and prospective impact of alternative energy technologies, such as wind and solar power and those related to a hydrogen economy;
  • understand the important influence of the following non-technical issues on the nation’s and the world’s energy future:
      • geopolitics,
      • economics, and
      • public policy;
  • understand the linkages between ethics and energy utilization.

Among the serious problems to be faced by this generation of college students throughout their lives, shaping a sustainable energy future ranks with, and is, in fact, coupled to those of war, hunger, poverty and disease.  This course is offered in recognition of the need to develop and implement thoughtful and comprehensive visions of humanity’s energy future.  Its over-arching objective is therefore one of providing students with the ability to synthesize diverse technical and non-technical issues in making informed decisions concerning this future.
LEARNING ACTIVITIES
 

Class time involves a mix of

  • lectures on scientific/technical matter,
  • group discussions of reading materials,
  • student presentations, and
invited speakers from the energy industry, academe, and/or government.
STUDENT EVALUATION
 

Grades will be based on

  • solutions to homework problems (10%),
  • a fifteen minute oral presentation (10%),
  • a mid-term examination (30%),
  • two short essays of five pages or less (20%), and
  • a final essay (in lieu of a final exam) assessing the world’s energy future (30%).
READINGS
 
  • Roberts, Paul, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World, Houghton-Mifflin, 2004.
  • Instructor Notes.
  • Selected articles from
    • Scientific American,
    • Science,
    • the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and
    • the U.S. Government