Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 1:30 - 2:20
126 Quigley Hall

Professor Michael Maniates

I. Energy Patterns, Fundamentals, and Projections: National and International (January 13th --> February 2nd)

Class Meetings

Class Meeting #1 -- Orientation (Wed., Jan 14th): syllabus; calculations and unit conversions; energy reference numbers; ppt
Class Meeting #2 -- Three's are Wild (Fri., Jan 16th): US energy flow 2007; US primary energy consumption; "contraction and convergence;" ppt
Class Meeting #3 -- Talking about Friedman (Mon., January 19th): Friedman; checking the numbers, energy and power
Class Meeting #4 -- Energy, Power, quality vs. quantity of energy (setting paper aflame), thinking about how to think about
                                        how much coal twenty 500 MW power plants need (Wed., January 21st): 2007 US electricity flow;
                                        first and second law of thermodynamics; Problem Set #1 distributed; ppt.
Class Meeting #5 -- Some Global Data, and Lots of Questions From You All (Friday, January 23rd): The Trinity of Despair, A Tiger by the Tail; ppt
Class Meeting #6 -- Number Crunching and Sustainability (Monday, January 26th): Finishing up Friedman's Example:
                                        WOW!...one 60 watt lightbulb x 4 hrs/day = 7% of your own carbon budget!
Class Meeting #7 -- Lessons Learned from Energy Transitions (Wednesday, January 28th); ppt
Class Meeting #8 -- Bioenergy I: The Poor World (Friday, January 30th); ppt
Class Meeting #9 -- A Framework for Visioning The Future (Monday, February 2nd); Amory Lovin's profile

Readings and Assignments

• Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Part I AND chapter three for Class #7 AND chapters 5 and 7 for Class #8
• Energy for Sustainability: Chapters 1-5
• Pulitzer Prize (Nonfiction) winner Richard Rhodes: Energy Transitions -- A Curious History (Class #7)
• Energy Information Agency: History of US Energy Use (Class #7)
• Energy Information Agency: Annual Energy Outlook 2008 (Overview) (Class #7)
• Energy Information Agency: World Energy Use Projected to Grow by 50% by 2030
• Energy Information Agency: US Energy Use Projected to 2030
• Socolow and Pacala, "A Plan to Keep Carbon in Check" (begins on page 50 of the 9/2006 issue of Scientific American ("Beyond Carbon")) (Class #9)
• Sagar and Kartha, "Bioenergy and Sustainable Development?" (just parts 1 and 2 for now) (Class #8)
• International Energy Agency (2002), “Energy and Poverty,” in World Energy Outlook 2002. Skim for useful summary information. (Class #8)
• Andrew Revkin, "As China Goes, So Does Global Warming," NYTimes, 12/16/2008 (Class #9)
• Andrew Revkin, "Can US, China Team Up on Climate, Energy?," NYTimes, 01/09/2009 (Class #9)
• Amory Lovins, 1976, Foreign Affairs, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken" (Class #9)
• MacArthur Fellow and Past President of the AAAS John Holdren: The Energy Innovation Imperative (Class #9)

II. Fossil Fuels: Drivers, Barriers, Politics and Transition (February 4th -->20th)

Class Meeting #10 -- More on the Four Visions: Soft Energy, the Transitions Handbook, and "Resilience" (Wed, February 4th); ppt
Class Meeting # 11 -- Fossil Fuel formation and stocks/Carboniferous period (Friday, February 6th); ppt; Problem Set #2 distributed
Class Meeting #s 12 and 13 -- More on Oil: Friedman's Petrodictators, Peak Oil Chart (what was surprising?) (Monday and Wednesday, February 9th and 11th)
Class Meeting #14 -- First In-Class Exam (Friday, February 13th)

Readings and Assignments

• Transition Handbook, up through and including Chapter One (For Class #11, Friday, February 6)
• Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Chapter Four (For Class # 11, Friday, February 6)
• BBC: How Much Oil Do We Really Have?
• Exxon Says No Peak Oil
• Shell Games at Royal Dutch Shell
• Shareholders Want to Know...
• Two Sides to Peak Oil ("The End of Oil," March 1, 2006, NYTimes)
  
• John Holdren: Climate Change Deniers

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• Heinberg: Peak Everything
• On Oil Supply, Opinions Aren't Scarce (Business, NYTimes, Sept 10, 2005)
• Think Again: Oil (Foreign Policy, Nov/Dec 2007)
• Shell Oil: Bendy Straws and Other Technical Marvels (or, if this link is giving you trouble, go here)
• NRDC's "Gasoline Price" Elixir

III. Electricity: Sustainable and Otherwise (February 23rd -->

Class Meeting #15 -- Coal Politics as an introduction to "Sustainable Electricity" (Friday, February 20th); ppt
Class Meeting # 16 -- Carbon Sequestration and the case of TXU (Monday, February 23rd); three important NYTimes articles listed below under "Readings and Assignments"
Class Meeting #17 -- Coal-Fired Electricity, concluded (Wednesday, February 25th). Dept. of Energy Carbon Energy Sequestration Video. Problem Set #3. Quantitative Example, another ThisisReality.org video
Class Meeting #18 and #19 (Friday, February 27th and Monday, March 2nd)-- Electricity and Electricity-Efficiency Concepts; Nuclear. Three energy-efficiency assessment tools, Power-Plant design and costs, base- and peak-load at Allegheny, nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear fuel resource, how many nuclear plants in the U.S.?, Global Numbers and Outlook, nuclear cost numbers, But's What Being Left Out? Yucca Mountain Repository Website;  ppt.
Class Meetings# 20 (Wednesday, March 4th) -- Five Questions (Waste, How Does it Work, Economics, Proliferation, and Safety/Risk) : How Nuclear Works, Tour, NEI Safety Video, Progressive Magazine Case, NPT
Class Meeting # 21 (Friday, March 6th) -- Marcellus Shale in PA (Doug Mehan)
Class Meeting # 22 and #23 (Monday, March 9th and Wednesday March 11th) -- Reviewing Natural Gas; Finishing up the Five Nuclear Questions from Class Meeting #20; ppt
Class Meeting #24 (Friday, March 13th) -- Why is it Windy? Three kinds of Solar; ppt
Class Meeting #25 (Monday, March 23rd) -- Where Are We, Where are We Going, and Problem Set #4
Class Meeting #26 (Wednesday, March 25th) -- Wind Energy --> Hydrogen and Transportation. How much renewable energy do we use in the United States? See last time's handout; 100% in 10 years?; $80 Billion for Transmission?

Additional Readings and Assignments

• EFS, Section 5.4.3 and Chapter Nine
• NYTimes: Is American Ready to Quit Coal?
• NY Times: A Buyout Deal That Has Many Shades of Green
• NY Times: With Coal Plans Cut Back, Texas Faces Energy Gap
• Science News: Carbon Sequestration Frustration
• What to Do About Coal
• The Nuclear Option
• The Rise of Renewable Energy
• US Department of Energy: Yucca Mountain Brochure
• Natural Resources Defense Council: "Nuclear Facts"
• 20% Wind Energy by 2030
• Hydrogen Reading (begins on page 193)

V. Transportation and Land Use

VI. Green Buildings: Theory and Practice

VI. Transitions, Policy, Resilience: National and International, Individual and Collective

Updated 25 March 2009 by Michael Maniates