Energy, Climate, and Sustainability: The Defining Issue of the 21st Century

The 20th century was marked by dramatic innovations in medical care, transportation, food production, communications, computing, aerospace technology, and the built environment. This has led to remarkable improvements in our quality of life, brought billions of people out of poverty, and supported a four-fold increase in global population and seven-fold increase in GDP per capita. The fundamental infrastructure to enable these historic changes was energy, but the use of fossil fuels and the associated greenhouse gas emissions have made last century's approach unsustainable.

We are now witnessing a global economy undergo a once-in-a-century shift to chart a sustainable course. Will this happen fast enough to address climate change? What are the innovations needed? Will it happen uniformly around the world? What are the roles of academic institutions, government, business, and non-profits? Do we have the domestic and global institutions to support this massive endeavor? And could the current economic and health crisis of COVID-19 play a role in this global transformation?

This talk will explore these issues and take stock of the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Presenter: Arun Majumdar

Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University, a faculty member of the department of mechanical engineering

From 2009 to 2012, Majumdar served as the founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, and from March 2011 to June 2012, he was the Acting Under Secretary of Energy. After leaving Washington, Majumdar was the vice president for energy at Google. Majumdar is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also served as the vice chairman of the advisory board to former US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, was a science envoy for the US Department of State, and serves on the advisory board of numerous energy businesses and non-profits.

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience (CESR).