The First 300 Days: An Assessment of Obama's Energy and Climate Policy
Panel Discussion

September 3, 2009
7:00 PM
University of Colorado School of Law,
Wolf Law Building, Wittemyer Courtroom
Directions | View Flyer

Participants:

Lisa Dilling, CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado
Joe Feller, College of Law, Arizona State University; senior counsel to the National Wildlife Federation 2008-09
Paul Komor, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, University of Colorado
Jana Milford, Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado
Roger Pielke, Jr., CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado
Mark Squillace, University of Colorado School of Law

Moderator: Carl Koval, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute Faculty Director

Sponsor: Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (formerly the CU Boulder Energy Initiative)

Biographies:

Lisa Dilling is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and a member of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her career has spanned both research and practice arenas of the science-policy interface, including program leadership for NOAA and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Her current research focuses on the use of information in decision making and science policies related to climate change, adaptation, and the carbon cycle.  She is a co-editor of the book “Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating climate change and facilitating social change” from Cambridge University Press.

Joe Feller is a Professor of Law at Arizona State University, where he has taught Water Law, Natural Resources Law, Environmental Law, and Property since 1988. Before undertaking the study of law, Professor Feller earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley and taught physics at Columbia University. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1984, Professor Feller served as a law clerk to Judge Joseph Sneed on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and as an attorney for the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Since June, 2008, Professor Feller has been on leave from Arizona State and serving as Senior Counsel for the National Wildlife Federation in Boulder, Colorado, and an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Law School, where he teaches the Natural Resources Litigation Clinic.  Professor Feller's work focuses on public land management and water use in the western United States. He has represented environmental interests in litigation before administrative boards, federal district courts and courts of appeal, and the United States Supreme Court. Professor Feller is also an avid runner, hiker, photographer, and cross-country skier, and he served as a coach for the Brazilian national cross-country ski team in 2008.

Paul Komor currently teaches in CU's Environmental Studies program and directs the Energy Institute's education programs.  Paul spent 2006 as the MAP/Ming Professor of Energy and the Environment at Stanford University, and was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize due to his work with the IPCC.  Prior to joining CU, Paul was a Project Director with the U.S. Congress' Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).  His book, Renewable Energy Policy, is used in numerous Universities as a text for graduate energy courses.  Paul holds a BS from Cornell University, and an MS and PhD from Stanford University.

Jana Milford is a professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at the University of Colorado. Her research addresses technical, legal and policy aspects of air pollution. Jana's primary technical focus is modeling the chemistry and transport of ozone, secondary organic aerosols and other photochemical air pollutants. Her research includes application of formal sensitivity and uncertainty analysis and optimization techniques to chemistry and transport models, and use of these models in making decisions. Jana was a Congressional Fellow at the Office of Technology Assessment from 1987 - 1988 and Senior Scientist and Staff Attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund from 2004 - 2006.

Roger Pielke, Jr. has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado since 2001 and is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). At CIRES, Roger served as the Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research from 2001-2007. Roger's research focuses on the intersection of science and technology and decision making. In 2006 Roger received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich, Germany for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. Before joining the University of Colorado, from 1993-2001 Roger was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Roger is an Associate Fellow of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford University's Said Business School. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute. He is also author, co-author or co-editor of five books. His most recent book is titled: The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.

Mark Squillace is the Director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School. Before coming to Colorado, Professor Squillace taught at the University of Toledo College of Law where he was the Charles Fornoff Professor of Law and Values. Prior to Toledo, Mark taught at the University of Wyoming College of Law where he served a three-year term as the Winston S. Howard Professor of Law. He is a former Fulbright scholar and the author or co-author of numerous articles and books on natural resources and environmental law. In 2000, Professor Squillace took a leave from law teaching to serve as Special Assistant to the Solicitor at the U.S. Department of the Interior. In that capacity he worked directly with the Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, on variety of legal and policy issues.

RASEI Faculty Director, Dr. Carl A. Koval, has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (CHEM) at CU-Boulder since 1980.  His research has resulted in over one hundred and ten peer-reviewed publications and ten patents, and has been supported by forty-seven separate research contracts and grants. He has collaborated closely with faculty in the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering and with scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Most of Prof. Koval's research throughout his scientific career has been related to renewable or sustainable energy. His areas of research have included catalysts for the reduction of oxygen to water, fundamental issues related to electron transfer processes at the semiconductor-solution interface, photoelectrochemical process for the treatment of both gaseous and liquid waste streams, selective and energy-efficient membrane separation processes, electrochemical pumping of fluids against pressure, and electrochemically modulated complexation (EMC), an energy-efficient process that allows specific components of a mixture to be separated and concentrated. Recently, his research group showed that an EMC process could be used to selectively remove carbon dioxide from gas mixtures, an essential aspect of carbon capture and storage strategies. Prof. Koval served as CHEM Department Chair from 1998-2001.  Beginning in 2006, he has played several key roles in the development of the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory, including serving as Institutional Coordinator for the Boulder Campus and on the Project Management Team for the Center for Revolutionary Solar Photoconversion (CRSP).  In 2006 through a Campus-wide search process, he was chosen to be the first Faculty Director of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Initiative (EI) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In June 2009 he accomplished the key objective of the EI when the CU Regents approved the creation of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI).