Carnegie Mellon brings energy policy, technology together
Earlier this year, we attended a greenhouse gas conference in Washington and had the chance to listen to Carnegie Mellon University Professor Ed Rubin’s panel on carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
Rubin, who teaches engineering and public policy, caught our attention. “Coal will not go away for many decades,” he said at the conference. “[CCS] would allow continued coal use as a bridge to a more sustainable future.”
Moreover, Rubin said that economic models show that including CCS in a portfolio of low-carbon energy options significantly reduces the costs of mitigating change.
Intrigued by his views on clean coal technology, we took a closer look at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), a unique program at Carnegie Mellon that concentrates on solving environmental policy issues with science and engineering.
With the Senate considering climate change legislation, the university’s valuable research has not been more important. The EPP department has more than 20 research programs focusing on hot topics such as energy in China, sustainable engineering and atmospheric particle studies.
Many environmental science academics hold the program in high esteem. According to Kai Lee, the director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College, the work that EPP is doing “to improve understanding of complex problems such as climate change is path-breaking and useful – a rare combination.”
Show your support for EPP by following Carnegie Mellon on Twitter and becoming a fan of Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering on Facebook.
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