Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

Emerging technologies capable of producing fuels and chemicals are often touted as environmental panaceas. However, systems-level modeling and analysis of such technologies using life cycle oriented approaches is essential for guiding their sustainable development and avoid unintended consequences. This presentation will discuss our recent work on systems-level modeling and analysis of two emerging technologies.

This interactive webinar presented by Sanford “Sandy” Smith features a new and novel teaching method that anyone can use. Last year, another webinar entitled, “Heard in the Woods…,” showcased this method for forest landowner education, and this new webinar will present how to use the same method more broadly to cover topics such as trees, forests and forestry for the public, teachers, and forest landowners. Involving peer-to-peer learning, the method is adaptable to a variety of audiences and settings.

Department of Geosciences Colloquium: Plant water resources and their importance for vegetation carbon uptake with Cynthia Gerlein-Safdi, Junior Fellow, Michigan Society of Fellows, Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan

Microbial-Host Co-development in Cnidarian Holobionts from Jellyfish to Corals

Biofuels are being pursued as an alternative to fossil fuels to mitigate the climate impacts of energy consumption. However, the complex issue of “food versus fuel”, which implies that biofuel production may further require additional cropland to substitute for the food diverted to biofuels, continues to spark a controversial debate. To avoid displacing food crops production, we targeted the north central and western U.S. wheat-growing states for integration of oilseeds that fits well into rotations with existing grain crops for renewable jet fuel production.

Department of Geosciences Colloquium: Controls on carbonate platform architecture and the recovery of tropical marine ecosystems across the Paleozoic to Mesozoic transition with Brian Kelly, Assistant Professor, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wyoming

Carolee Bull, Ph.D., Department Head, Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology; Professor of Plant Pathology and Systematic Bacteriology; Director, Microbiome Center, Penn State

Food, water and energy security remains a pressing challenge for Africa.The Nexus is a framework for integrative modelling of tradeoffs with the objective of advancing synergies in decision making of water-energy-food interactions, which may then have implications other factors such as health and poverty reduction.

The NCSE 2020 Annual Conference engages more than 800 leaders from the sciences, education, government, policy, business, and civil society to foster a dialogue across these sectors on environmental policy- and decision-making with the use of science. The Annual Conference program includes presentations by leading experts and sessions that spotlights new research, innovation, and the power of collaboration through partnering. Attendees will join meaningful conversations, network with peers, and make vital connections. NCSE 2020 will take place at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, D.C.

Do you understand the public access requirements for your DOE-funded research? Under DOE's public access policy, publications based on DOE-supported research must be deposited in the DOE Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (PAGES). Join Ana Enriquez, Scholarly Communications Outreach Librarian, for a brief overview of grant recipients' obligations, with time for questions. This session will take place via Zoom.

Yang Yu, Ph.D. candidate, Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Economics, Penn State

Dr. Erdal Ozkan, Professor, Petroleum Engineering,Colorado School of Mines; Director, Unconventional Reservoir Engineering Project (UREP); Co-Director, Marathon Center of Excellence for Reservor Studies (MCERS)

Join us for a special symposium, which brings together three world leaders in the field to share their vision of solar energy development and discuss the opportunity areas for university research and education that they see in the future. Featuring Barry Rand, Princeton University; Tony Buonassisi, MIT; and Sarah Kurtz, UC Merced.

Felicia Keesing, Bard College

The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough ice to raise sea level by close to a meter if it melts… and it is melting fast. Sridhar will talk about the state of the ice sheet, a little bit about the communities that live there, and show pictures of the beautiful mountains, glaciers, valleys, and rivers.

Tropical cyclone (TC) size is an important factor directly and indirectly influencing track, intensity, and related hazards, such as storm surge. Using the operational Hurricane WRF (HWRF) and an axisymmetric model, we show that enabling cloud-radiative forcing (CRF) and enhancing planetary boundary layer (PBL) vertical mixing can both encourage wider storms by enhancing TC outer core convective activity. While CRF acts primarily above the PBL, eddy mixing moistens the boundary layer from below, both making peripheral convection more likely.

How should policy regulate air pollution from vehicles? Theoretically, optimal policy would apply a Pigouvian tax on emissions. In part because such a tax is technologically infeasible, most countries rely heavily on exhaust standards. These standards regulate air pollutants like nitrogen oxides and have very different properties than fuel economy regulations. This paper studies the effectiveness and efficiency of these exhaust standards and counterfactual policies. We show that the emissions rate of new U.S.

As sea level rise drives saltwater farther inland, drinking water supplies of many coastal cities will be contaminated. This talk evaluates the shifting the location of “salt lines,” the zone where coastal freshwater meets the ocean, and the implications for drinking water management. It tells the story of changing salt lines in the Delaware River, located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, and the drinking water in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Photovoltaic cells using efficient and cheap photoactive materials such as halide perovskite represents as a clean technology for future energy deployment. We found some natural existing biomolecules can be actively involved in the perovskite photovoltaic cells, triggering various effects in either improving the solar cell performance or leading to other opportunities such as efficient solar-thermal conversion. I will show some examples and discuss the potential in this direction.

Where do abiotic and biotic stress overlap? Eva J. Pell, Former Undersecretary for Science, Smithsonian Institution Sr. VP for Research, Dean of the Graduate School, & Professor Plant Pathology Emerita, Penn State University Julia Bailey-Serres, Director, Center for Plant Cell Biology Distinguished Professor of Genetics, University of California, Riverside Participating Panelists: