Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

Local governments in Pennsylvania are faced with questions about solar development and what kind of local regulations should be in place. Solar ordinances in Pennsylvania can vary significantly depending on the municipality. However, there are some common themes and considerations that tend to arise in solar ordinances across the state. Join us to hear from a recent study looking at solar ordinances across Pennsylvania so far. Join this free one-hour webinar as we explore common themes and considerations in Pennsylvania's solar ordinances. Who is this for?

2024 Women Advancing River Research Seminar Series All seminars will be presented online live at 11:00 a.m. ET on the third Thursday of each month. Seminar recordings will be posted later. Please register in advance for all talks. "Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Inland Waters: Reach Through Global Scale" Amanda G. DelVecchia, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (U.S.) Taylor Maavara, University of Leeds, (United Kingdom)

The metal fabrication and manufacturing industry is one of the most diverse industrial sectors. The processes inherent to the industry can result in the generation of waste materials, hazardous air pollutants, and volatile organic compounds. In addition, plating and degreasing processes often require metal finishing facilities to treat wastewater prior to leaving the site. This webinar will highlight strategies that manufacturers can employ to reduce energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, the use of hazardous materials, and the pollution generated by their facility.

“What is the weather forecast?” … “Are we going to get a lot of snow?” … “What channel are you on?” … “Do you believe in climate change?” … “I love space!” These are the comments/questions that are all too familiar to a Meteorologist, when often have no relevance to a Meteorologist’s career.  I thought I would fit into one or more of these categories when I first began my career in Meteorology at Penn State, but my skillset and interests took me in many other directions. This talk will cover a smattering of topics on which I have focused over the past decade and a half.

Leveraging the SafeGraph cellphone foot traffic data on recreational visits to 130k sites nationwide, we quantify the extent of avoidance behavior in outdoor recreation in response to wildfire smokes from 2018-2019. By exploring the year-over-year variation in smoke exposure and compare the visits with smoke days to visits without smoke days, our results show that wildfire smoke exposure is negatively associated with recreational visits and dwell times: a one standard deviation increase in weekly smoke exposure results in a 5.52% decrease in weekly visits and total dwell times.

Join the Penn State Climate Consortium for a conversation on building community and unity in climate research at Penn State. The webinar is designed to introduce the Penn State Climate Consortium, including the mission, goals, and overview of the themes. We will also discuss current activities, including the Climate Solutions Symposium and Accelerator. The goal of the webinar is to provide Penn State faculty, staff, and students with a clear understanding of how the Climate Consortium looks to provide crucial support to Penn State climate research.

Grasslands can produce feedstock for biogas production, but how can they play a role in improving the ecosystem of a farm? C-CHANGE: Perennial Grass to Gas - Regenerative Farming Strategy will present recent findings on perennial grasses and their environmental performance. The one-hour webinar is free and will detail grassland ecosystem impacts and making perennial grass to gas a strategy for regenerative farms.   Who is this for? Farmers Developers Energy industry members What will you learn?

While most researchers are familiar with standard “macro” FTIR, Raman, and UV-Vis.  It is less known that the MCL currently maintains instrumentation capable of acquiring high spatial resolution data for all of the aforementioned molecular spectroscopy techniques.  This talk will discuss the applications of AFM-IR (Nano-IR), Micro-FT-IR and Micro-UV-Vis while highlighting the limitations of each techniques as it relates to sample preparation requirements and common artifacts.

According to the recent report of National Academies, among the global challenges that would drive the future of chemical engineering are the decarbonization of energy systems, finding sustainable solutions for water, food and air quality, reducing the cost of medicine and work on resource utilization towards circular economy.

The Center for Innovative Materials Processing through Direct Digital Deposition (CIMP-3D) is an interdisciplinary, intercollegiate research lab dedicated to cutting-edge additive manufacturing technologies (AM). The center houses advanced equipment to support AM research of metal, polymer, and ceramic materials, to include non-destructive evaluation techniques via x-ray tomography.

Humans have the ability to recognize patterns, and architects in particular have a tendency to see them everywhere. This can be useful for research and design. I will discuss how decoding the logic behind the tessellation of the first geodesic dome can help the eco-conscious revival of an ancient wooden-roof construction method. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how we can apply known patterns and define new ones to increase the use of reclaimed materials, particularly bricks.

The Center for Spiritual and Ethical Development (CSED) and the Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Student Farm, units of Student Affairs, will host a screening of John Chester’s The Biggest Little Farm. The film offers a vital blueprint for better living and a healthier planet in preparation for Earth Day. The Penn State community is invited to attend the film screening on Monday, April 15 at 7 p.m. in 127 Pasquerilla Center. Refreshments will be available throughout the film in room 124.

Outdoor aerosols experience environmental changes when transported indoors, including outdoor-to-indoor temperature and humidity gradients, which can reduce or enhance indoor concentrations due to repartitioning driven by thermodynamic changes. Traditional models often overlook these phenomena, which can lead to inaccurate predictions of indoor aerosol exposure. This talk explores how we simulated the impact of these effects in different climate zones across the U.S., highlighting important considerations.

Cross-border electricity interconnections are on the rise because they can be used to smooth out short-term grid stability issues caused by increasing amounts of intermittent power and improve the cost-efficient dispatching of electricity across large geographic areas. However, increased international electricity trade can also introduce geopolitical factors into electricity grids, including the threat of electricity coercion. Russia’s repeated attacks on the electricity system of Ukraine have raised the level of concern about this new geopolitical energy challenge.

In this talk, inkjet-/3D-printed antennas, interconnects, “smart” encapsulation and packages, RF electronics, RFIDs microfluidics and sensors fabricated on glass, PET, paper and other flexible substrates are introduced as a system-level solution for ultra-low-cost mass production of Millimeter-Wave Modules and Metasurfaces for Communication, Energy Harvesting and Sensing applications. Prof.

Join the PA Department of Environmental Protection, GreenGov Council, and Penn State in learning more about the Commonwealth’s new Sustainable Buildings Initiative to help reduce the impacts of construction and operations for new buildings for the Commonwealth government. As part of this initiative, a team from Penn State has created a series of educational modules that will be publicly available to educate any builder or planner in principles around sustainable building. Featuring Esther Obonyo and John Bechtel, Penn State; Heidi Kunsch, PA Department of Environmental Protection

Analyzing the aftermath of Europe's largest dam destruction in Ukraine, exploring impacts on ecosystems, post-war landscape recovery, and future river and fish management scenarios.

Dr. Lauren Esposito is the Curator and Schlinger Chair of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences. Lauren’s current research investigates the patterns and processes of evolution in spiders, scorpions, with a focus on tropical islands.

For almost 2 decades, plastic usage has grown with each passing year; as such, plastic waste has also grown substantially during that period.  Over the last 10-15 years, the calls to increase recycling rates of plastic have also grown, but virtually nothing has happened.  There is a confluence of events now taking place that will drive change, but the most important question to address is not “why” this will happen, but “how” it will occur.

Seth Cassell is State Forester/Director of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Bureau of Forestry.  In his role, he is responsible for overseeing management of the 2.2 million acre, third-party certified State Forest system and conserving and protecting the health of the Commonwealth’s forests and native wild plants.   Cassell has served the Bureau of Forestry in various roles since 2000, in field forestry, urban forestry, communications, land acquisitions and resource planning.