Stanford Global Carbon Management Workshop #2 - Speakers and Panelists
Inês Azevedo is an associate professor in the department of Energy Resources Engineering in the School of Earth and a Senior Fellow both at the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. She is passionate about solving problems that include environmental, technical, economic, and policy issues, where traditional engineering approaches play an important role but cannot provide a complete answer. In particular, she is interested in assessing how energy systems are likely to evolve, which requires comprehensive knowledge of the technologies that can address future energy needs and the decision-making process followed by various agents in the economy. In 2017, she was honored with the C3E Women in Clean Energy, Research Award. Azevedo received her M.Sc. in Innovation and Management of Technology from IST Technical University of Lisbon and her Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
Ejeong Baik is a PhD student in the Department of Energy Resource Engineering at Stanford University. Her research interests are modeling large scale energy systems to determine optimal pathways for achieving economy-wide deep decarbonization. Throughout her work, she has assessed a wide range of technologies including renewable resources, CCS, short and long duration energy storage, hydrogen, and negative emissions technologies. She aspires to bring together insights from technical modeling and economic analysis to inform policy decisions regarding deep decarbonization. Baik has been a part of several interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects including the Net Zero America Project, the SB100 Pathways Project, and the Action Plan for Carbon Capture and Storage in California project. She holds a BSE in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University.
Sally M. Benson, who joined Stanford University in 2007, is the Precourt Family Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences; she studies technologies and pathways to reducing greenhouse gas emissions including geologic storage of CO2 in deep underground formations and energy systems analysis for a low-carbon future. She is the Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage and the Stanford Carbon Removal Initiative. She served at the Director and Co-Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy from 2013 to 2020 and was also the Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project from 2009 to 2019. Prior to joining Stanford, Benson was Division Director for Earth Sciences, Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences and Deputy Director at LBNL. She serves on the Board of Directors for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Climate Central.
Yi Cui is the director of the Precourt Institute for Energy, co-director of the StorageX Initiative, and professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and professor of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1998 from the University of Science & Technology of China and his PhD in chemistry from Harvard University in 2002. Cui was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 2002 to 2005 before joining the Stanford faculty. He has founded four companies to commercialize technologies from his lab: Amprius Inc., 4C Air Inc., EEnotech Inc. and EnerVenue Inc. A preeminent researcher of nanotechnologies for better batteries and other sustainability technologies, Cui has published more than 500 studies and is one of the world’s most cited scientists. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Materials Research Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Ganesh Dasari is a Senior Technical Advisor at ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company in Houston, TX. Over his 16-year career at ExxonMobil, he has led many research projects including Reservoir Geomechanics, Geologic Structural Dynamics, Unconventional Shale Gas and Tight Oil Characterization, and Well Operability. For the past three years, Dr. Dasari has been leading ExxonMobil's research efforts in CO2 sequestration and transportation. In this role, he is also actively working with UT-Austin, MIT, Stanford, and NUS to develop next generation CO2 sequestration technologies. Dr. Dasari received a BTech in Civil Engineering Andhra University in India and a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from Cambridge University. Prior to joining ExxonMobil in 2003, he was an Assistant Professor at NUS from 2000 to 2003.
Don DePaolo received his Ph.D. in Geology from Caltech in 1978, and has been a professor of geochemistry and geology at UCLA (1978-1988) and UC Berkeley (1988-2016). He is currently Graduate Professor of Geochemistry and Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley. He served as Chair of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at UC Berkeley from 1990-1993, and was Director of the LBNL Earth Sciences Division from 2007-2012. From 2010-2016 he was Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences at LBNL. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served on numerous advisory and study committees for federal agencies, universities, and the National Research Council. His research involves the use of isotopic measurements as tracers and chronometers of Earth processes. From 2009 through 2018 he was the director of the Center for Nanoscale Controls of Geologic CO2, a US DOE Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) led by LBNL.
Greg Dipple is a professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He studies the processes of and driving forces for mineral reactions with a focus on fluid-rock interactions. His research publications span environments from the upper mantle to the near surface. Over 20 years, his primary research interests have migrated from deep crustal metamorphic processes to shallower magmatic-hydrothermal systems and associated mineral deposits to, most recently, carbon sequestration at and near the surface of the Earth. The commonality between these projects is the integration of field data and forward models for heat-mass transport and reaction, and the conscription of appropriate geochemical tracers as monitors of fluid-rock interactions. His research activities in crustal fluid flow, including metamorphism and magmatic-hydrothermal systems, are directed towards answering two questions: What do alteration patterns tell us about fluid flow? and What controls fluid flow?
Karen Fang is Managing Director, Head of Global Sustainable Finance at Bank of America. Formerly, she was the head of Global Fixed Income, Currencies & Commodities (FICC) Cross Asset Trading, and the head of Americas FICC Sales & Solutions prior to that. She is a member of the Bank of America Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) committee, the Sustainable Markets Committee, as well as the firm wide Asian Leadership Council. Karen is a founding member of the 1t.org US Steering Council which is a public private partnership to advance reforestation and carbon finance initiatives, as well as a National Board member of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), one of the largest Community Development Financial Institutions in the U.S. Karen was named one of Fortune’s “40 under 40”and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF). She is a member of the WEF Expert Network. Most recently, Karen was named one of Business Insider’s 100 People Transforming Business.
Chris Field is the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University. Prior to his 2016 appointment at the Stanford Woods Institute, Field was a staff member at the Carnegie Institution for Science (1984-2002) and founding director of the Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology (2002-2016). Field's research focuses on climate change, especially solutions that improve lives now, decrease the amount of future warming, and support vibrant economies. Recent projects emphasize decreasing risks from coastal flooding and wildfires. He has been deeply involved with national and international-efforts to advance understanding of global ecology and climate change. Field was co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2008-2015), where he led the effort on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” (2012), and “Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (2014).
Sabine Fuss leads the working group Sustainable Resource Management and Global Change at Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). Her current research interests include: natural resource management, energy and agricultural economics (bioenergy, land use implications); decision-making under uncertainty, with a focus on portfolio selection, real options theory, stochastic optimization and robustness; integrated assessment with a focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation (including the role of international trade, negative emission options and technologies); reconciling top-down and bottom-up assessments, science-policy nexus; and mechanisms for carbon management, climate-compatible development, architecture of climate agreements. Fuss studied international economics, receiving an MSc from the University of Maastricht, where she also completed a PhD on sustainable development in the energy sector. Before coming to MCC, she led a group working on the development of economic methods with emphasis on uncertainty and risk in the Ecosystems Services and Management Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Damien Gerard leads the Carbon Capture and Storage Business Unit at Schlumberger New Energy, a new division aimed at deploying low carbon solutions while leveraging the core competencies of the company as a premier technology provider. Prior to joining Schlumberger, he was a managing director at the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative. He also held several executive positions at BP Alternative Energy, including Chief of staff, head of strategy and CFO of BP Ventures. He has received an industrial engineering degree from the University of Liege, Belgium, and an MBA from Chicago Booth.
Tom Howes is the head of the Energy and Environment Division at the International Energy Agency (IEA). His current work involves leading the division promoting energy and climate issues with IEA countries and associate countries, liaising with COP26 and UN parties and the IEA's work on CCUS technology policy. Howes has worked on a range of resource management, energy and climate policies for the Australian government, the UK government, and the European Commission. From January 2014 – June 2020, he was Deputy Head of economic analysis and financial instruments unit, and from November 2010 – December 2013, he was Deputy Head of Renewable energy policy unit, both at the European Commission. He graduated from the University of York with a MSc in economics.
Rob Jackson is a professor in the department of Earth System Science at Stanford where he and his lab examine the many ways people affect the Earth. They seek basic scientific knowledge and use it to help shape policies and reduce the environmental footprint of global warming, energy extraction, and other issues. They're currently examining the effects of climate change and droughts on forest mortality and grassland ecosystems. They are also working to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the Global Carbon Project (globalcarbonproject.org), which Jackson chairs; examples of new research Jackson leads include establishing a global network of methane tower measurements at more than 80 sites worldwide and measuring and reducing methane emissions from oil and gas wells, city streets, and homes and buildings. He is a current Guggenheim Fellow and sabbatical visitor in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and received a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering from the National Science Foundation, awarded at the White House.
David Laird is a professor in the Department of Agronomy and Environmental Science Program at Iowa State University. Previously, David was a Lead Scientist with USDA-ARS National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames, IA. He has professional memberships with the American Society of Agronomy, Soil Science Society of America, Clay Minerals Society, American Chemical Society, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was named a Fellow in 2008 by Soil Science Society of America, a Fellow in 2007 by American Society of Agronomy, recipient of the Raymond and Mary Baker Agronomic Excellence Award in 2003, and the Marion L. and Christie M. Jackson Soil Science Award in 2000. Research interests include the use of pyrolysis to process biomass into bioenergy and biochar co-products, and the impact of biochar amendments on soil quality, the stability of biochar in soils, and the net impact of biochar on greenhouse gas emissions from soils.
Matthew Langholtz is a Natural Resource Economist in the Bioenergy Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is PI of the Supply Analysis Project at Oak Ridge National Lab. His research interests include biomass resource economics, short-rotation woody crops, bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) and bioenergy from forest resources. He has worked on valuation of non-market externalities, and developed biomass supply curves for commercial projects, the South, and the US. Dr. Langholtz received his PhD in Forest Economics from the University of Florida in 2005. His experience includes agroforestry extension in Latin America with the US Peace Corps, resource assessment for the Wood to Energy Outreach Program funded by the DOE and the USDA, and feedstock supply development with BioResource Management Inc. He brings experience in both economic modeling of bioenergy systems and real-world application of cellulosic biomass crops in the Gulf South.
Claude Letourneau is President and CEO of Svante and an industrial projects veteran with a broad range of experience leading large world-class projects. His leadership style is underscored by effort, energy, and excitement – the 3Es of visionary thinkers. At ease bringing about change, he will leverage his 30 years’ experience in advanced technology development and commercialization to help steer the company to be a global leader in building a CO2 Marketplace. Claude held senior management roles with Canam Group Inc., SNC-Lavalin Inc., and Kontron Embedded Computers AG. He also founded two technology companies, Vaperma, Inc. (membrane-based gas separation) and Avestor Inc. (thin-film lithium polymer battery). These past experiences provide the necessary insight for the bilingual executive to forge new strategic alliances and partnerships with like-minded industry leaders and to guide the company’s scaling-up of the business with an aggressive time-to-market game plan. Claude received a Bachelor of Applied Science in Chemical Engineering and a Masters in Chemical Engineering from University Laval, Quebec.
Philip Llewellyn is the CCUS R&D Program Manager at Total. He and his team work to develop solutions through the CCUS chain and actively search for disruptive approaches for future CCUS solutions. Prior to this, he was a Research Director with the CNRS with a research group at Aix-Marseille University in Marseille – France. At CNRS, he and his team researched the Characterization of Porous Materials and their Evaluation for various gas related problems. Llewellyn’s research interests relate to adsorption in nanoporous solids with aims to understand the phenomena by which molecules interact with surfaces. Gas-solid interactions can be followed with increasing concentration using methods such as manometry and gravimetry. He developed the use of microcalorimetry to directly follow the energetic changes during the adsorption process. He received his Ph.D from Brunel University studying the physical adsorption of gases.
Kate Maher is a professor in the department of Earth System Science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Her research focuses on the rates of reactions in different environments using a combination of geochemical tools, including isotope geochemistry, geochemical and hydrologic modeling, and geochronology in order to address the following themes: (1) defining the controls on mineral-fluid reactions rates in the environment (2) finding new approaches to use mineral-fluid reactions to safely store carbon dioxide in the subsurface; and (3) development of isotopic approaches to study mineral-fluid reactions in the environments of Earth’s past. She received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in Environmental Earth Science in 1999, her M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from U.C. Berkeley in 2001 and her Ph.D in Earth and Planetary Sciences from U.C. Berkeley in 2005. Prior to coming to Stanford as an Assistant Professor in 2007, she was a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow with U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA.
Arun Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University, a faculty member of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering (by courtesy) and Senior Fellow and former Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy. He is also a faculty in Department of Photon Science at SLAC. In 2009, Majumdar was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate to become the Founding Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), where he served till 2012 and helped ARPA-E become a model of excellence and innovation for the government with bipartisan support from Congress and other stakeholders. He also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Energy, enabling the portfolio that reported to him: Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Electricity Delivery and Reliability, Office of Nuclear Energy and the Office of Fossil Energy, as well as multiple cross-cutting efforts such as Sunshot, Grid Tech Team and others that he had initiated.
Jennifer Milne is a Senior Research Program Officer for the Precourt Institute for Energy and the Strategic Energy Alliance at Stanford. She is a scientist with more than a decade's experience in identifying research needs in energy and shaping the Global Climate and Energy Project's (GCEP) research portfolio. She now leads the Advanced Research Projects at the Precourt Institute for Energy, working with the Director of Precourt and the Strategic Energy Alliance and other stakeholders to foster energy research at Stanford. Jennifer is a technical resource for energy-related projects across the University and advisor in the bioenergy area. Prior to joining GCEP in 2007, she was a post-doctoral scholar at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Plant Biology, and Stanford University, working on plant cell wall polysaccharides and biomass related projects. She holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of York, U.K.
Greg Nemet is a Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison's La Follette School of Public Affairs. His research analyzes the process of technological change in energy and its interactions with public policy. These projects fall in two areas: (1) empirical analysis identifying the influences on past technological change and (2) modeling of the effects of policy instruments on future technological outcomes. The first includes assessment of public policy, research and development, learning by doing, and knowledge spillovers. An example of the second is work informing allocation between research and development and demand-side policy instruments to address climate change. In his first book, How Solar Became Cheap: A Model for Low-Carbon Innovation, published in 2019, he makes the case that by understanding the drivers behind solar energy’s success, other low-carbon technologies with similar properties can benefit. He was awarded the inaugural World Citizen Prize in Environmental Performance by APPAM in 2019 and is currently a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report.
David Parker is the Manager BioDomain in New Energies Research & Technology at Shell, where he has worked for 12 years. He spent his first few years at Shell based at the Thornton Technology Center, UK, as a project lead, later relocating to the technology center in Houston, where he led the construction of a purpose-built laboratory to house Shell’s biological sciences center of excellence. Over the years, David has held several project, platform and team leadership roles across a range of bio-based programs at a variety of scales. He is a visiting Professor in Synthetic Biology at Exeter University, UK and directly oversees both Shell’s Bio-Sciences Long Range Research program and business direct near-term research, supporting R&D across Shell businesses. Throughout David’s career he has championed open innovation research which has given him the privilege of working with academic institutes around the world. David received his PhD in Bioanalytical Chemistry & Molecular Biology from University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Sarah Saltzer is the Managing Director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage (SCCS) and the new Stanford Carbon Removal Initiative (SCRI). SCCS uses a multidisciplinary approach to address critical questions related to flow physics, monitoring, geochemistry, and simulation of the transport and fate of CO2 stored in geologic media. SCRI’s mission is to create a community of Stanford faculty and industry partners with interest in carbon management to address climate change. Saltzer has 25 years of experience at Chevron Corporation where she held a series of scientific, managerial, and executive roles. She has a diversity of experience in geological research and teaching, petroleum engineering on massive offshore fields, leading exploration teams, competitor analysis and business planning, and executive responsibilities for all business operations for Chevron’s multi-national environmental remediation company. Saltzer holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University, M.S. and B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has published her work in peer-reviewed journals and corporate annual reports.
Pete Smith obtained his PhD in 1991 and worked as a Higher- then Senior-Scientific Officer at the MAFF Central Science Laboratory until 1994. He then worked as a Band 6 and Band 5 Senior Research Scientist at Rothamsted Research before joining the University of Aberdeen as a Senior Lecturer in 2001. He became a Reader in 2003, and Professor of Soils & Global Change in 2005. His main areas of expertise are in modelling greenhouse gas / carbon mitigation, bioenergy, biological carbon sequestration, global food systems modelling and greenhouse gas removal technologies. He is co-leader with Prof Jo Smith of the Environmental Modelling Group. He is also Science Director of Scotland's Climate Change Centre of Expertise (www.climatexchange.org.uk), and was Director of Food Systems of the Scottish Food Security Alliance-Crops (www.sfsa-crops.org), and Theme Leader of the University-wide theme, Environment and Food Security (www.abdn.ac.uk/environment-food-security/), until 2015. He is editor for Global Change Biology and Global Change Biology Bioenergy.
Eric Toone is the Technical Lead of the Investment Committee at Breakthrough Energy Ventures. He received his doctoral degree in Chemistry from the University of Toronto in 1988 and completed post-doctoral studies with Professor George Whitesides at Harvard University. He began his independent career at Duke in 1990 and retired from Duke in 2017 as Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry. During his academic career, Dr. Toone authored nearly 300 original papers, reviews, book chapters and abstracts in physical organic and biophysical chemistry. He is also listed as an inventor on more than 30 patents in a range of biomedical fields and is a scientific founder of three research-based pharmaceutical companies, including Aerie Pharmaceuticals, a publicly-traded ophthalmology (glaucoma) company. From 2009 to 2012, Dr. Toone was detailed to the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). During that time, he served as Program Director and Deputy Director for Technology before leading the Agency in 2012.
David Victor is a professor of innovation and public policy at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. He is the Center for Global Transformation Endowed Chair in Innovation and Public Policy. Victor is also the Co-director of the campus-wide Deep Decarbonization Initiative, which focuses on real world strategies for bringing the world to nearly zero emissions of warming gases. Victor is also an adjunct professor in Climate, Atmospheric Science & Physical Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Prior to joining the faculty at UC San Diego, Victor was a professor at Stanford Law School where he taught energy and environmental law. His research focuses on regulated industries and how regulation affects the operation of major energy markets. Much of his research is at the intersection of climate change science and policy. Victor authored "Global Warming Gridlock," which explains why the world hasn't made much diplomatic progress on the problem of climate change while also exploring new strategies that would be more effective.
Jim Williams is a global thought leader in the area of low-carbon energy systems. As an associate professor at the University of San Francisco, his focus is on developing a new generation of energy professionals with the skills and knowledge needed to have rewarding careers in sustainably meeting society’s energy needs. He was formerly chief scientist at Energy and Environmental Economics (E3), where he consulted on many aspects of energy technology, planning, and regulation for government, utility, and industry clients. His experience ranges from renewable integration to electric vehicles, retail rate-making to wholesale markets, environmental siting to the water-energy nexus. Williams led E3’s analysis of greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies for California’s government agencies, which helped to shape the state’s climate and energy policies. He directs the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, a consortium of research teams from the 16 highest-emitting countries, whose long-term blueprints for a low-carbon transition influenced the Paris Agreement. He taught at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where his research interests included the challenges of decarbonizing China’s power sector.