A recent article in Bloomberg News, titled “The Electrical Power Crash Is Just Like a Stock Market Crash,” features ERG associate professor Duncan Callaway. The article discusses the state-wide electrical grid failure in Texas, and how the record cold snap caused plants to fail all at once.

Callaway suggests that building more connections between the electricity grid of Texas and the two other man grids that cover the rest of the contiguous 48 states could pose as a potential solution. “If Texas were interconnected with other parts of the U.S., this certainly would not have been as bad,” he states.

ERG assistant professor David Anthoff in a team of researchers recently published new analysis in the journal Nature, listing a series of measures the Biden administration should consider in recalculating the social cost of carbon (SCC).

“Economic analysis is at the heart of the regulatory process in the U.S. and will therefore play a major role in shaping and informing the ambitious climate goals from the new administration,” Anthoff stated. “Our recommendations offer a roadmap for how this can be done in a way that is both scientifically rigorous and transparent.”

ERG adjunct professor Margaret Torn was recently featured in Earthweek for her leading research in how the U.S can reach zero net emissions of carbon dioxide in 2050 by shifting energy infrastructure to operate mainly on renewable energy.

“It means that by 2050 we need to build many gigawatts of wind and solar power plants, new transmission lines, a fleet of electric cars and light trucks, millions of heat pumps to replace conventional furnaces and water heaters, and more energy-efficient buildings,” Torn states.

ERG PhD student Julia Szinai and assistant adjunct professor Andrew Jones were recently featured in AGU news for their research on evaluating cross-sectoral impacts of climate change and adaptations on the energy-water nexus. 

“How we adapt to climate change in the water sector can exacerbate or offset impacts on the grid,” Szinai states. “And so those interactions shouldn’t be ignored in planning.”

A new article, “Carbon-neutral pathways for the United States,” published in the open-access journal AGU Advances by ERG alums Jim Williams, Jamil Farbes, ERG alum and adjunct professor Margaret Torn, and others found that “reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from energy and industry by 2050 can be accomplished.

Congratulations to ERG alumna Kripa Jagannathan for receiving the Early Career Development Grant from Earth & Environmental Sciences (EEPS)! Kripa specializes in the field of climate change adaptation and climate-resilient planning. EEPS describes her most recent research being focused on “improving the ‘usability’ of climate science, and enabling science-based adaptation decision-making for water resources management and agricultural planning.”

Congratulations to ERG PhD student Valeri Vasquez upon becoming a 2021 Microsoft Research PhD Fellow! This two-year fellowship is for PhD students at North American universities pursuing research aligned to the research areas carried out by Microsoft Research. Vasquez’s research entails studying the “environmental drivers, economic impacts of infectious disease… and the use of genetic-based interventions, including CRISPR-Cas9 systems, to control mosquito-borne illness.”

ERG adjunct professor Margaret Torn was featured in EurekAlert for her contributed work on a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) primer. The article cites the research as a valuable resource on CDR technologies and policies, and how such strategies can help create a serious plan to address climate change.

“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are already 50% over historic natural levels – 270 ppm (parts per million) in pre-industrial times vs 414 ppm today,” Torn stated. “To slow climate change and avoid its worst impacts, climate scientists tell us that we need to restore atmospheric CO2 concentrations to about 350 ppm or less. To do that, we need CDR technologies and policies to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere.”

ERG professor Dan Kammen calls for a worldwide end to the subsidization of oil and gas companies, explaining how such subsidies halters our progress of living, working, and producing goods in a CO-2 neutral way.

“The amount of subsidies available for these industries is much higher than the annual investment in the development of sustainable energies,” Kammen states.

Current ERG PhD student Julia Szinai, alumnus Ranjit Deshmukh, ERG professor Dan Kammen, and assistant adjunct professor Andrew Jones were recently featured by UCSB for their leading research in “Power, Water and Climate”. Working with researchers from UC Santa Barbara and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, they developed “a framework evaluating the impacts of climate change on California’s water and energy systems”.