BERC Department Spotlight: The Energy and Resources Group

21 February 2012 | BERC News

By Daniel Sanchez: VP, Energy and Resources Group

Editor's note: Welcome to our first Department Spotlight! Each month, a different BERC VP will introduce his or her home department and highlight the unique purpose it serves. First up is the Energy and Resources Group. Enjoy!

UC Berkeley has vast offerings in the fields of energy and climate—from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Energy Biosciences Institute to the Energy Institute and CITRIS. Natural scientists, engineers, economists, and social scientists at Berkeley all contribute much to the fields of energy science, entrepreneurship, and policy. Yet many students at Berkeley are frustrated by the lack of coordination between these schools, departments, laboratories, and institutes.

The Energy and Resources Group (ERG) was founded in 1973 to span these divisions. ERG’s mission is “education and research for a sustainable environment and a just society.” ERG has become a unique interdisciplinary community of graduate students, core faculty, and over 100 affiliates and researchers from across the campus.

ERG’s flagship course is ER100/200 Energy and Society, typically taught by Professor Daniel Kammen. Energy and Society helps students develop an understanding – and a technically and socially deep working knowledge – of our energy technologies, policies, and options. Like many ERG courses, it promotes an interdisciplinary understanding that explores the scientific, technical, economic, social, political, and environmental opportunities and impacts of our energy system.

Like its coursework, ERG’s core faculty span several disciplinary fields. ERG’s home on the 3^rd floor of Barrows hall houses experts in development, policy, ecological economics, water systems, engineering, and public health. ERG has traditionally been an independent graduate group at UC Berkeley, but joined the College of Natural Resources (CNR) last year.

Equally diverse is the research that ERG students undertake, either as part of a M.S. degree or as a terminal Ph.D. You can find ERG students applying fields as diverse as behavioral psychology, civil engineering, ecological economics, or biogeochemistry to advance energy and resource scholarship.

You can learn more about ERG by visiting http://erg.berkeley.edu/, or stopping by our home in 310 Barrows Hall.