INTERFACING RENEWABLE ENERGY STUDIES WITH THE TRADITIONAL EARTH SCIENCE CURRICULUM AT EASTERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY

At Eastern Connecticut State University we are developing an interdisciplinary Sustainable Energy Studies program with broad support from the Environmental Earth Science department. This program addresses environmental impacts, such as air pollution and global climate change, associated with generating power using fossil fuels, and emphasizes social, economic, policy, and scientific issues associated with energy alternatives such as increased efficiency, carbon sequestration technologies, nuclear power, and renewable energy resources. Although this developing sustainable studies program has broad support within and beyond the sciences, the Environmental Earth Science department strongly supports it because the program provides significant new educational opportunities for its students. In this presentation, we will describe three of the courses in the Sustainable Energy Studies minor and relate the content of these courses to the aims of the traditional Earth Science curriculum. Global Climate Change serves as an introductory science gateway into the Sustainable Energy Studies program. This course presents the theory of recent anthropogenic global warming within the context of natural climate cycles and enables students to estimate the effectiveness of reducing the impact of climate change through carbon stabilization strategies. Sustainable Energy and the Environment is a general education “science and society” gateway course that deals with broad environmental issues through their connection with power generation and energy consumption. Large-Scale Sustainable Energy Systems is a study of the options that large-scale electric power generation and power distribution systems may use to address fossil fuel depletion, increasing power demand, global climate change, and other environmental impacts. Many of these options, including alternative fossil fuels, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, wind power, solar power, hydroelectricity, geothermal energy, tidal power, and ocean thermal power, are directly related to geological processes.