News & Events
CUNY-Wide Conference on Energy & Environmental Sustainability
A major City University of New York conference will be held at The Graduate Center on Friday, December 8, 2006, to discuss the critical issues of energy and environmental sustainability. This conference recognizes CUNY's emerging role as a leader in addressing these issues and will deal with themes closely related to the scholarly interests and current or planned research of several members of City Tech faculty, including Physics Professor Reginald Blake’s work in the areas of satellite remote sensing and hydroclimatology and their implications for climate change.
The conference will place particular emphasis on issues of energy and environmental sustainability as they affect the nation, New York State and New York City, but all of these impacts will be discussed within the context of global concerns. These front-page issues include the impacts of rapidly rising global energy use and fossil fuel demand, the connection between fossil fuel-based energy production and potentially devastating climate change, and the social, political and economic effects of rapid urbanization and its influence on energy use.
The conference will address two major themes – the cutting-edge scientific and engineering innovations that will lead to breakthroughs in alternative energy sources, energy efficiency and increasing energy supply, and the policy questions to be defined and resolved to bring these innovations forward to the wider society.
“As CUNY’s college of technology,” says Dick Koral, director of the Division of Continuing Education’s Apartment House Institute (AHI) and the driving force behind the establishment of the AHI-affiliated Superintendents Technical Association, “City Tech is well positioned to play a key role in addressing the issue of global warming that most scientists now agree is an environmental reality. Advances in clean energy technologies and those involving energy efficiency will be critical components in global efforts to reverse this process and clean up Earth’s biosphere.”
Members of City Tech and other CUNY faculty from all disciplines have been invited to submit abstracts of their current research and scholarship responsive to the themes of the conference. In particular, faculty members have been encouraged to submit abstracts that include students and/or staff as co-authors. Of particular interest are abstracts on the following subjects:
- Emerging technologies in energy production, storage and distribution
- The hydrogen economy
- Solar energy conversion
- Hydrocarbon production via alternative technologies
- Gas hydrates
- Nuclear energy
- Global climate change and other environmental impacts of energy use
- Environmental justice and other social dimensions of energy use
- Energy economics and the design of effective incentives
- Energy efficient design and engineering
- Impacts on transportation
- Impacts on real estate and construction
- Domestic politics and public awareness
- Sustainable practices and energy efficiency opportunities at CUNY
- Training needs, educational development and technology transfer.
Abstracts of no longer than 250 words should be e-mailed by October 1 to karen.belin@mail.cuny.edu, CUNY Office of Environmental Health and Safety.
09/25/06
