Welcome to GEOG/EME 432: Energy Policy

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Quick Facts about GEOG/EME 432

• Instructor and Author
  • Brandi Robinson
    Associate Teaching Professor
    Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering
    College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
    The Pennsylvania State University
• Overview - This is a cross-listed course that provides students with an in-depth exploration of energy and climate policy development, implementation, and assessment at multiple governmental and corporate scales. The course utilizes contemporary real-world problems and actions to provide students context for the drivers, frameworks, and assumptions of energy and climate policy. Students will undertake a semester-long project to apply the concepts mastered in weekly lessons in a bigger picture setting. The course is structured in 3 units:
  1. Foundations - examining the historical context of energy policy helps us understand its current composition and the climate implications of our future decisions
  2. Immersion - understanding the intracacies of policy development, analysis, evaluation, and implementation through the lens of energy and climate 
  3. Exploration - expanding our thinking to the future with a specific focus on the globally daunting task of decarbonizing the economy to avoid climate crisis
• Learning Environment - This website provides the primary weekly instructional materials for the course. The Resources menu links to important supporting materials, while the Lessons menu links to the course lessons. Canvas, Penn State's course management system, is used to support the delivery of this course as well, as it provides the primary communications, calendaring, and submission tools for the course. For the participation component in this course, we'll be using the Discussion Forums in Canvas.