A Global Vision

From community meetings in Tanzanian villages to hearing rooms in Washington, and from the California Public Utilities Commission to national governments offices in Nepal, ERGies are working towards creative and enduring transformations.

ERG is a col­lab­o­ra­tive com­mu­nity of grad­u­ate stu­dents, core fac­ulty, over 100 affil­i­ated fac­ulty and researchers across the cam­pus, and nearly 500 alumni across the globe. We award MA, MS, and PhD degrees to stu­dents work­ing across dis­ci­plines and depart­ments to cre­ate poten­tially trans­for­ma­tive knowl­edge for the planet. ERG is a world-renowned pro­gram with a […]

ERG has a small core faculty but a much larger group (100+) of affiliated faculty. Affiliated faculty are based in other departments on campus or at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and share ERG’s commitment to shared learning and interdisciplinary work.  They are advisors, mentors, or employers to ERG students, and serve on master’s project, […]

Please note: This is a full list of ERG course offerings; not all courses are offered each term. For current course offerings, please refer to the online Schedule of Classes. ENERES 39A – Freshman and Sophomore Seminar: Complex Systems, Information Theory, and “Big Data” John Harte A premise of this seminar is that science, evolving […]

Big Give was November 17, 2016. We thank you for giving big to ERG this year!   We ask you to consider pledges to the Energy and Resources Group Annual Discretionary Fund, which was established to provide program support to respond to ERG’s most urgent needs and to build on the excellence of our program. Make […]

The purpose of the ERG Master’s program is to educate the next generation of interdisciplinary leaders. Specifically, students are taught the range of methods and subjects they should be able to understand, advance, and critique to address critical issues stemming from the interaction of humans and the environment. To that end, the requirements for the […]

A Brief History of ERG For thirty years, the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at the University of California, Berkeley has provided its outstanding graduate students and exceptional faculty the scholarly conditions in which to:  study the environmental sciences, analyze the social causes of our energy and environmental problems, undertake field research in a variety […]

Kammen: UC Divestment is a “no-brainer”

UC faculty, alumni and student activists say it's time to take divestment seriously. Professor Kammen gives insight into why in the East Bay Express.

Brown Schwarzenegger

Kammen speaks at Schwarzenegger's climate pep rally where both parties agree that it's time to fight the dark side.

I grew up in the rural North Bay, in a small town called Monte Rio, along the Russian River. I moved to Providence, RI to study at Brown University, where I majored in Anthropology and Latin American Studies. After graduating, I spent the next seven years or so doing community and labor organizing work, first […]

Hilary Yu

Hilary received her B.A. in Government and Biological Sciences, with a concentration in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the latter, from Cornell University, where she graduated in 2015. At ERG, Hilary is interested in exploring the science-law nexus and the factors – political, economic, and social – that inform the translation of science into legislation. […]

Esther Shears

Esther is interested in integrated assessment models and the role of tropical forests and land cover in climate change mitigation. She also studies sustainable agroforestry and the environmental governance of global supply chains. Prior to beginning her graduate studies at UC Berkeley, she worked for the U.S. Department of Justice as a statistician in the […]

Rebecca Coates-Maldoon

Assessing Instream Flow Standards Under Climate Change Implications for State-Level Policy in the U.S. (MS/MPP ’17) Rebecca completed a Master’s degree in both the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy (MA/MPP). Her research interests focus on the sustainable use of water resources, integrating work in ecology, equity, and climate change […]

Seigi Karasaki

Seigi’s primary research interests include the political economy of drinking water access and distributive justice vis-a-vis natural resources. He holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from UCLA (2011) and an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Tokyo (2013). In the past, Seigi was: a TEDx organizer in Japan; a graduate intern in […]

Rachel Golden

Achieving Long-term Climate Goals in the US: Unlocking the Potential of High-Efficiency Electric Technology in Our Homes and Buildings (MS/MPP ’16) Rachel is interested in advancing policies that can help integrate large amounts of renewable energy and electric vehicles onto the grid. As such, she studies mechanisms that increase flexibility on the load and resource […]

Consolidation as a Solution for Central Valley Water Woes: An Exploratory Study in Tulare County (’13 MS)

Seeds of Change:  Making High School Climate Change Education Transformative (’05 MA)

Biomass Electricity in California (’06, MA)

Patenting the sacred: the opposing symbolic meaning of taro in Hawai’i (’07 MS)