Amy Heintz
Technical Fellow, Battelle
The Role of Engineering in Addressing Climate Change
ERVA's inaugural visioning event convened over 100 interdisciplinary, cross-sector experts on December 7-8, 2021 to explore The Role of Engineering in Addressing Climate Change. As outlined in the recent White House priorities memo,
“the United States and the world face a profound climate crisis with a narrow moment to pursue action to avoid the most catastrophic impacts and to seize the opportunities that tackling climate change presents.”
Unsurprisingly, respondents to ERVA’s initial survey of the engineering community identified this theme as the highest priority for ERVA to explore.
Goal: The goal of this event was to identify specific areas that are nascent or require additional exploration with the potential for the greatest return on investment.
Thematic Task Force Role: An ad hoc group of cross sector experts guided content planning and are working with the event co-hosts to develop a resulting report that will incorporate supporting research intelligence, actionable findings, and identified research directions intended to catalyze action.
Learn more about the event: View the agenda, participants, and sessions archive.
Exploratory Domains
The Thematic Task Force developed a framework for exploring the content during the visioning event, including discussion prompts and breakout topics.
- GHG capture
- Resilient infrastructure, buildings, and transportation
- Climate justice
- Solar and renewable energy
- Energy storage
- Carbon sequestration
- Ecosystem and water management
- Health and climate change
- Decarbonizing industrial processes
- Geoengineering
Materials
Timeline
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October 2021Established
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December 2021Visioning Event
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August 2022View Final Report
Thematic Task Force
Co-Chairs
Bruce Logan
Evan Pugh University Professor in Engineering, the Stan & Flora Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, and Director of the Engineering Energy & Environmental Institute, Penn State University
David Allen
Professor, Melvin H. Gertz Regents Chair in Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin
Andrew Bochman
Senior Grid Strategist National & Homeland Security, Idaho National Laboratory
Eric Corey Freed
Senior Vice President, Director of Sustainability, CannonDesign
Elena Irwin
Professor of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences in Economics and Sustainability, Faculty Director of the Sustainability Institute, The Ohio State University
Kimberly Jones
Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, College of Engineering and Architecture Professor and Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Howard University
Serdar Tufekci
Vice President and Head of Major Partnerships, ENGIE North America
Event Co-hosts
