The Stanford Energy Seminar has been a mainstay of energy engagement at Stanford for nearly 20 years and is one of the flagship programs of the Precourt Institute for Energy. We aim to bring a wide variety of perspectives to the Stanford community – academics, entrepreneurs, utilities, non-profits, and more. 

About the talk

The United States needs to build generation, storage, and transmission infrastructure to meet growing electricity demand. However, there is a lack of decision tools and frameworks to inform investment decisions for energy technologies amid policy, technological, and other contextual uncertainties. Prof. Azevedo will present results from several ongoing analyses that quantify the costs, benefits, and technology investments needed across the country for a variety of policy and technology scenarios (such as the need for transmission expansion under different policy contexts; the effects of increased load from data centers; the opportunities for enhanced geothermal, small modular nuclear reactors, storage technologies, and offshore wind, just to name a few, as well as the effect of different climate futures on optimal investment decisions). Prof. Azevedo uses a new modeling and data tool that has been developed by her group, PyPSA-USA, that includes characteristics of generators, transmission, candidate new generation and transmission technologies, a representation of renewable generation potential, and state- and federal-level policies and incentives.

Inês Azevedo is professor of Energy Science & Engineering at Stanford University. Her work focuses on how to transition to sustainable, realistically feasible, and equitable energy systems. She is passionate about solving problems that include environmental, technical, economic, and policy issues, where traditional engineering approaches play an important role but cannot provide a complete answer. In particular, she is interested in assessing how energy systems are likely to evolve, which requires comprehensive knowledge of the technologies that can address future energy needs and the decision-making process followed by various agents in the economy.

Anyone with an interest in energy is welcome to join! You can enjoy seminars in the following ways:

• Attend live. The auditorium may change quarter by quarter, so check each seminar event to confirm the location. Explore the current quarter's schedule.
• Watch live in a browser livestream if available. Check each seminar event for its unique livestream URL.
• Watch recordings of past seminars 
  • Available on the Past Energy Seminars page and the Energy Seminars playlist of the Stanford Energy YouTube channel
• (For students) Take the seminar as a 1-unit class (CEE 301/ENERGY 301/MS&E 494)

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