GWU Environmental and Energy Management Institute

On September 16, 2024, members of our GW Environmental and Energy Management Institute (EEMI) met with colleagues from the International Fund for China’s Environment (IFCE) and the Chinese Electric Power Development Association to discuss approaches to low carbon development in China. Leading the Chinese delegation was Dr. Ping He, President of the IFCE, and Mr. Ying Guangwei, Chairman of the Low-Carbon Energy and Smart Power Professional Committee of the China Electric Power Development Association. ? Leading the GW delegation were Dr. Payman Dehghanian, Director of GW Engineering’s Smart Grid Lab and EEMI Director of Smart Grid Technologies; Professor Scott Sklar, EEMI Director of Sustainable Energy; and Dr. Jonathan Deason, EEMI Executive Director. ? During the meeting, the delegates discussed three topics related to low carbon development in China. The first topic involved overall global trends in decarbonizing electricity generation, followed by an overview of China's new low-carbon power system by Mr. Guangwei, and concluding with a discussion of innovation and the development of smart power systems. ? It is anticipated that the participating organizations will pursue partnership activities going?forward, particularity through GW Engineering’s Smart Grid Laboratory led by Dr. Dehghanian. ? In addition, the delegates discussed the possibility of another visit to GW Engineering by Mr. Mei Dewen, Secretary-General of the Beijing Emissions Trading Association and member of the China Low Carbon Development Research Center at Peking University. Such a visit would be a follow-up to a previous visit to GW Engineering in 2016 when Mr. Mei was the keynote speaker at an EEMI-conducted symposium on “China's National Carbon Trading System” that was held in the Lehman Auditorium of the Science and Engineering Hall.

On Monday, September 16, 2024, our GW Engineering-hosted Environmental Energy Management Institute conducted a web-based seminar on climate change featuring Dr. Chris Greig, a tenured professor at Princeton University. Dr. Greig holds the Theodora and William Walton endowed chair and serves as a senior leader of Princeton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. The title of his presentation was “Four Big Challenges Facing Ambitious Climate Goals That Models Overlook.” In his presentation, Dr. Greig discussed the landmark study “Net Zero America” which is focused on what it would take for the U.S. to achieve an economy-wide target of net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. That goal requires building an economy that emits no more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than are permanently removed and stored each year. Dr. Greig described five technological pathways, each of which could achieve the 2050 goal while spending only at levels consistent with historical spending on energy, between 4-6% of gross domestic product. The goal of the study was to provide confidence that the U.S. will have multiple genuine paths to net zero by 2050 and to provide a blueprint for priority actions for the next decade. These priorities include accelerating deployment at the scale of technologies and solutions that are mature and affordable today and will return value regardless of what path the nation takes to net zero in the long term. One distinguishing feature of the Net Zero America study is its comprehensive cataloging across all major sectors at high geospatial and temporal resolution of the energy infrastructure deployments and related capital expenditures required for a net-zero transition. That high-resolution analysis could help inform federal and state policy choices and private-sector decision-making in support of a transition to net zero by 2050, which is especially relevant in this Presidential election year. The George Washington University’s Environmental and Energy Management Institute (EEMI), hosted by GW Engineering, was chartered as a University-wide institute in 2015 to pursue multidisciplinary research, education, and the dissemination of knowledge relevant to the resolution of pressing national and international environmental, energy, and sustainability challenges, including the profound geopolitical, social, and environmental implications of the intertwined issues of climate and energy security.

On April 23, 2024, members of the GW Engineering-hosted Environmental and Energy Management Institute met with delegates from the Sultanate of Oman to discuss collaborative research activities. Representing GW were Professor Scott Sklar, EEMI Director of Sustainable Energy, and Jonathan Deason, EEMI Executive Director. Attending from Oman were Dr. Mohammed Saif Al Kalbani, Director-General of the Oman Environment Authority; Counselor Eng. Nasr Khalaf Al Saidi from the Oman Foreign Ministry; and Dr. Saleh Nasser Al-Saadi, Director of the Sustainable Energy Research Center at the Sultan Qaboos University near Muscat. The discussion centered on establishing a framework for international collaboration providing?researchers access for collaboration between GW and the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in the environmental and energy area. The discussion included promotion of research and capacity building, as well as strengthening international networks, consistent with SQU’s strategic goal of improving the internationalization and global standing of SQU’s research endeavors. Specifics of the discussion included focus on the severe impacts that global climate change is having on the Sultanate of Oman and the use of relevant technologies, such as the latest developments in reflective coatings, that could improve adaptation activities in the hot climate of Oman. Prof. Sklar will serve as the GW point of contact for follow-up activities with Oman.

EEMI Executive Director Jonathan Deason served as the keynote speaker at the Spring 2024 American Society for Engineering Education’s Middle Atlantic Section Conference on April 20, 2024. Hosted by GW Engineering, the conference’s theme was “Engineering Education for a Better World.” EMSE Professors Eric Dano and Joost Santos served as general chairmen for the conference. ? Prof. Deason’s keynote, held in the Lehman Auditorium, was entitled “What I’ve Learned from 40 Years of Teaching Engineering.” In it, he described five categories that are keys to teaching success: facilitating student engagement, relating classroom discussions to the real world, teaching from the perspective of the students, employing a variety of teaching methods, and emphasizing preparation, organization, and structure. ? Prof. Deason, who won the 2024 GW Engineering Distinguished Teaching Award, shared many anecdotes from his 40 years of teaching at GW in both adjunct and regular faculty roles. He noted that GW Engineering students come from a wide variety of backgrounds including nationalities, undergraduate preparations, and professional disciplines, providing an extraordinarily fertile environment for effective learning at GW Engineering.

EEMI Executive Director Jonathan Deason is lined up to give the keynote address at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference on Saturday, April 20, 2024. The event, which is themed “Engineering Education for a Better World,” will be held in the main auditorium of the Science & Engineering Hall on GW’s Foggy Bottom campus. His topic will be “What I’ve Learned from 40 Years of Teaching Engineering,” which you can see more about at https://lnkd.in/eUsC6Sr7.

Here’s a new review of Prof. Deason's recent (co-edited) book HANBOOK OF MULTI-LEVEL CLIMATE ACTIONS: Sparking and Sustaining Transformative Approaches: https://lnkd.in/e47hTfWQ. Although it is in Italian, Chrome and other browsers will translate it automatically (using the English link).

EEMI Awarded Grant by UN Climate Technology Center ? In November 2023 the GW Environmental and Energy Management Institute (EEMI) was awarded a grant, in partnership with the Korean National Institute of Green Technology (NIGT), to undertake a project involving the development of a national digitalization readiness index to strengthen the capacities of developing countries to address technological challenges and opportunities for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The $225,000 grant was awarded by the United Nations Climate Technology Center Network (CTCN), which is the implementation arm of the technology mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). With the mandate to respond to country-driven requests to strengthen developing countries’ climate technology capacity, CTCN promotes the accelerated transfer of environmentally sound technologies for low carbon and climate resilient development at the request of developing countries by harnessing the expertise of a global network of technology companies and institutions (https://www.ctc-n.org/). The GW EEMI and the Korean NIGT will support CTCN in developing a national digitalization readiness index (NDRI) for the energy sector to support developing countries in promoting system transformation using digitalization as an enabler. The NDRI will further be used to evaluate the potential of selected developing countries in transforming their energy system by applying digital tools. Ultimately, the index will help CTCN in promoting access to digital public goods (such as freely available and open-source software, data, and standards) that will enable the design of policies that support climate risk assessments, planning for adaptation and resilience at country level, promotion of low emission pathways, and informing climate investment decisions. The GW team will be led by the Principal Investigator (PI) Dr. Mukes Kapilashrami (EEMI Director of Programs and Operations), with the support from co-PIs Dr. Edward Saltzberg (EEMI Director of Professional Education) and Dr. Jonathan Deason (EEMI Executive Director and Professor in the Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering).