Energy and Sustainability

World population growth and rising living standards will increase energy demands over the next 40 years, making affordable energy a big challenge. Cornell University is leading the sustainable development field by coordinating research and education efforts through centers like the Olin Hall Energy Lab and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability ↗.

The Smith School contributes to these efforts through a framework that includes physical, chemical, and biological energy transformations, transport of heat and mass in fluids and solids, materials for energy capture and storage, process analysis, design, and simulation, and full life cycle analysis of energy and mass flows. We provide the ideal skill set for tackling a wide range of energy problems. Energy-related research has direct applications in:

• Chemical engineering processing for renewable and cleaner conventional energy extraction, upgrading, and conversion.
• Fabrication of next-generation solar cells and photochemical converters and batteries and other storage devices from nanoscale building blocks.
• Production of energetic materials, fuels, and bioproducts from a wide range of biomass feedstocks ranging from energy crops and algae to agricultural and food wastes, as well as energy production from Earth energy systems including engineered geothermal systems.