ER24 – FRESHMAN SEMINAR 
THE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, POLICY, AND POLITICS OF CALIFORNIA AIR POLLUTION                                                                                     

This seminar will meet six Tuesdays plus two field trip dates. The first Tuesday seminar meeting will be on January 25, 2011. The remaining five Tuesday meeting dates will be announced in class. The two field trip dates and arrangements will be discussed in class.

California experiences the nation’s worst air quality. Its innovative regulatory program is a model for the nation and the world. This seminar examines current California air pollution issues including health-based air quality standards and the problems of their attainment, the next generation of clean cars, California’s evolving role in addressing global warming, and more. This seminar is an unusual opportunity to explore air pollution and climate change issues with a professor who also led relevant California regulatory programs.

After forty years on the Berkeley faculty, Professor Sawyer, the Class of 1935 Professor of Energy Emeritus, accepted the appointment of Governor Schwarzenegger to head California's air quality and climate change programs as chair of the California Air Resources Board. While at Berkeley his teaching and research focused on air pollutant formation and control, motor vehicle emissions, energy and environment, and regulatory policy. His current activities include the Board of Directors of the American Lung Association of California; member of the International Council on Clean Transportation; the National Academy of Engineering's study of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill; and the International Civil Aviation Organization (UN) Independent Experts assessment of future technology to reduce aircraft fuel burn (CO2 emissions).     
Faculty web site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/sawyer/

ER102 - QUANTITATIVE ASPECTS OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT 

ER C180 - ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT (cross listed with EnvEcon C180 and Roomshare with ER280)

Economists through history have explored economic and environmental interactions, physical limits to growth, what constitutes the good life, and how economic justice can be assured. Yet economists continue to use measures and models that simplify these issues and promote bad outcomes. Ecological economics responds to this tension between the desire for simplicity and the multiple perspectives needed to understand complexity in order to move toward sustainable, fulfilling, just economies           

ER190-001 – CALIFORNIA WATER

California, technically a desert on average, provides extremely interesting examples of the politics of water, the social and environmental consequences of water development, and the relationships between water uses and energy. This course provides the historical, legal, environmental, and economic background needed to understand the current social and ecological challenges of providing water for a growing population and major economy, now also made more complex by climate change.

ER 198-002 – BEHAVIOR AND SUSTAINABILITY (ERG Doctoral Student Facilitated)

The aggregated effects of billions of individual decisions each day have large adverse effects on human and ecosystem health, natural resource stocks, and global climate change. While the causes of environmental degradation are anthropogenic, so too are the solutions. This course examines different perspectives on the motivations of human behavior, drawing on diverse disciplines, including psychology, economics, and sociology. Theories of behavior change and behavioral intervention case studies will inform student efforts to design viable programs that promote improved sustainability through behavior change.

This course will be co-facilitated by doctoral students Chris Jones and Joe Kantenbacher of the Energy and Resources Group under the direction of Professor Isha Ray.

ER C226 – PHOTOVOLTAIC MATERIALS; MODERN TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONTEXT OF A GROWING RENEWABLE ENERGY MARKET

Prerequisites: Material Science and Mineral Engineering 111 or 123 or equivalent. Should have a firm foundation in electronic and optical props of semiconductors and basic semiconductor device physics.
Description: This technical course focuses on the fundamentals of photovoltaic energy conversion with respect to the physical principals of operation and design of efficient semiconductor solar cell devices. This course aims to equip students with the concepts and analytical skills necessary to assess the utility and viability of various modern photovoltaic technologies in the context of a growing global renewable energy market. Also listed as Materials Science and Engineering C226.

ER 273 - RESEARCH METHODS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

This course aims to introduce graduate students to the rich diversity of research methods that social scientists have developed for the empirical aspects of their work. Its primary goal is to encourage critical thinking about the research process: how we "know," how we match research methods to research questions, how we design and conduct our information/data collection, what we assume explicitly and implicitly, and the ethical dilemmas raised by fieldwork-oriented studies. The course will be broad rather than deep; it is a step toward, and not a substitute for, in-depth courses on interviewing or regression analysis or the philosophy of knowledge.

ER280 – ENERGY ECONOMICS (Roomshare with ER C180 and EnvEconC180)

This course explores input-output and cost benefit analysis applied to energy; exhaustion theory and economics of energy supply; patterns of energy use; trade-offs in energy conservation; the effect of energy policy on supply and demand; projecting future energy and resource supply and use. Prerequisites: Economics 100A or equivalent; basic calculus or linear algebra.

ER C283 – Information and Communications Technology for Development (co-listed with School of Information, INFO 283)

This seminar reviews current literature and debates regarding Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD). This is an interdisciplinary and practice-oriented field that draws on insights from economics, sociology, engineering, computer science, management, public health, etc.

MBA 212 - ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETS (offered through Business and Engineering)

In the past 30 years, some of the largest industries have transitioned from regulated to market-based paradigms.  Managers in many transportation, information technology, and energy companies have had to devise strategies to cope with changes in economic and environmental regulations and the evolution of new markets and trading platforms.  The energy industries feature a complex mix of regulation and market-driven incentives.  Over the last decade, industries that had previously been viewed as staid and conservative have been rocked by deregulation initiatives, the California electricity crises, the Enron scandal, rising commodity prices, and now the challenge to reduce greenhouse gases.  Drawing on the tools of economics and finance, we study the business and public policy issues that these changes have raised in energy markets. Topics include the development and effect of organized spot, futures, and derivative markets in energy; the political economy of deregulation; climate change, environmental impacts and policies related to energy production and use; privatization of publicly owned energy assets; market power and antitrust; and the transportation and storage of energy commodities. We examine the economic determinants of industry structure and evolution of competition among firms in these industries; investigate successful and unsuccessful strategies for entering new markets and competing in existing markets; and analyze the rationale for and effects of public policies in energy markets.

ER 291-001 – SCIENCE AND REGULATORY POLICY (enrollment limited to ERG students only) Course is co-listed with Law 271.6. CANCELLED

This seminar will examine the use, misuse, and abuse of the scientific process and scientific information in regulatory decisions. Topics covered will include the role and limits of science, use of scientific information in the regulatory process, identifying and controlling improper political interference, and judicial review of science-laden agency decisions. Many examples will be drawn from environmental and natural resource regulation, but the course will range well beyond those topics.

ER 292C -  MASTER’S PROJECT SEMINAR (for ERG students only)

Required of second-year ERG Master's candidates. Topics include the adoption of a research project, research design, presentation of work, statistical analyses. Students will apply the interdisciplinary methods, approaches, and perspectives learned in the core curriculum. Sequence begins fall each year. Credit and grade to be awarded upon completion of the full sequence.

ER 295 - COLLOQUIUM 

Presentations of research in energy issues by faculty, students, and visiting lecturers. Master's degree students required to enroll for three semesters.

ER298N- Directed Group Study Sustainability in Action: Cal Climate Action Course (Student Facilitated)

This is an interdisciplinary course addressing both theoretical and practical aspects of campus sustainability; students will undertake individual or group projects to address particular sustainability issues on campus. Prerequisites: Graduate standing.

ER 301 – GRADUATE STUDENT INSTRUCTOR PRACTICUM

ERG students only - employed as Graduate Student Instructors.  Permission of instructor before enrolling.  This course does not meet the pedagogy requirement for first-time GSIs.  See http://gsi.berkeley.edu/faculty/300courses.html for open courses.

ER 602 – INDEPENDENT STUDY DOCTORAL STUDENTS – variable 1-8 units

To be used by ERG students only preparing for qualifying exams. 

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