Sustainable Energy Graduate Minor
Cornell University
Description
Meeting the energy needs of the present and future global population is a grand challenge for the 21st century. This will hasten an improvement in lifestyles of those from developing nations and should be achieved without further impairment of the natural environment and climate. Providing affordable, clean energy that is both secure and sustainable is the goal. Achievement of this goal requires the participation, ingenuity, and hard work of people from a great range of specialized activities working collaboratively. Accordingly, this minor is intended to integrate scientific and engineering principles that focus on the creation, analysis, and improvement of energy technologies, with knowledge of environmental systems potentially impacted by energy production, and with an understanding of human systems that are intertwined with energy-related decisions. An outcome of the minor should be an understanding of the ways in which those themes interact as a system, all of whose parts need to be understood and successfully integrated in order to progress toward meeting the world’s energy needs.