Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

March 20 (Thursday) at 10 am ET    Register

Electricity Without Greenhouse Gases: Essential to Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change

Abstract: Morgan will begin his talk by reviewing some basic ideas from climate science and the issue of climate change. Next, he will talk about the electricity system and note the two reasons why electric power is critical to the issue climate change: 1) the generation of electric power by burning, coal and natural gas is a leading source of emissions of carbon dioxide and other Greenhouse gases; and 2) electricity that is generated without releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is the most viable option to replace the use of fossil fuels across the economy. Morgan will argue that to decarbonize the energy system with emission-free electricity the country needs to be able to move electricity from the places where it is generated to the places where it is needed. To do that we face a critical need to expand the capacity of the electric power transmission system. Morgan will conclude by discussing several conventional and non-conventional strategies the U.S. could adopt to expand our transmission capacity.

M. Granger Morgan is the Hamerschlag University Professor of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University where he holds appointments in three academic units: the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (which he created); the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and the H. John Heinz III College. Morgan’s research addresses problems in science, technology, and public policy with a particular focus on energy, environmental systems, climate change, and risk analysis, perception and communication. He has directed the University’s Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making and is Associate Director of the Electricity Industry Center. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences where he has chaired three consensus studies on the electricity system. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Society for Risk Analysis. Morgan holds a BA from Harvard College (1963) where he concentrated in Physics, an MS in Astronomy and Space Science from Cornell (1965) and a Ph.D. from the Department of Applied Physics and Information Sciences at the University of California at San Diego (1969).

More information about M. Granger Morgan and his work is available here.