(328d) Sustainable Energy: Choosing among Options

Energy has been a key component of technological progress, but the burgeoning use of fossil fuels is impacting some of the values desired in a "sustainable" world. Many of our students are concerned about these issues; a group of MIT faculty over the past decade have developed a graduate level interdepartmental elective course that teaches not only about available energy resources and technologies, but provides assessment and evaluation tools that allow our students to make more informed choices about future energy portfolios (globally and locally), with due consideration of the broader environmental, economic, and societal impacts. We have just published a text for the course that we hope will facilitate the learning about these important issues. In addition, we will discuss our experiences with enhancing student participation through use of guest speakers, student-led recitations, long-distance videolinkage to a sister course at the University of Cambridge, and the use of term papers.