A Union College seminar series on “Sustainable Energy” will feature three North American experts covering a range of topics including wood burning boilers, fossil fuels and air quality.
The series, sponsored by the College's Environmental Studies program, is free and open to the public. All talks are at 7 p.m. in the Nott Memorial at Union College.
Speakers are:
Feb. 1 — Eugene Kelly, assistant state attorney general, will talk on “Coping With Rising Residential Energy Prices With Outdoor Wood Boilers: An Innovative Solution or a New Environmental Problem?” Rising energy costs have made residential outdoor wood boilers more popular than ever, but not with neighbors and officials concerned with their thick smoke and high particulate emissions.
March 9 — Mark Jaccard, director of the Energy and Materials Research Group and professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, will speak on “Fossil Fuels: Friend or Foe?” Jaccard and his colleagues at EMRG are known internationally for creating technology simulation models widely used for the development and testing of energy and sustainability policies.
March 29 — Gary Kleiman, senior scientist and science and technology program manager for the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM) will speak on “Sustainable Energy and Air Quality for the Northeast U.S.: A Policy and Planning Perspective.” Kleiman and his colleagues at NESCAUM specialize in air quality issues related to U.S. energy infrastructure including acid deposition, regional haze, fine particulate matter and climate change.
About the speakers:
Eugene Kelly (Feb. 1) is a co-author of a recent report from the state Office of the Attorney General Environmental Protection Bureau, “Smoke Gets in Your Lungs: Outdoor Wood Boilers in New York State.” The report begins: “State law enforcement, health and environmental agencies have received a growing number of complaints from people asserting that Outdoor Wood Boilers (OWBs) produce thick, acrid, foul smoke that permeates buildings and homes, causing not only a nuisance, but also environmental degradation and health problems … Even when operated using clean seasoned wood, OWBs can emit significant pollution because the basic design of the OWB causes fuel to burn incompletely … Governments … have enacted regulations or outright bans of OWBs in an effort to combat this rapidly growing phenomenon.”
Mark Jaccard (March 9) was chair and CEO of the British Columbia Utilities Commission and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He also chaired three major public inquiries into energy policy for the provincial government, the latest being the Task Force on Electricity Market Reform in 1998. He is one of six international experts serving alongside senior Chinese officials to advise the Chinese government as part of the Energy Strategies and Technologies Working Group of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. He has recently provided energy and sustainability policy advice to other developing countries, including Brazil and Bangladesh. He also served on a special committee to develop proposals for the Canadian Information System for the Environment.
Gary Kleiman (March 29) has worked with air quality and energy models and has been directly involved with air quality assessment efforts on behalf of the Northeast. He is leading the development of a multi-region MARKAL energy/economic model which serves as the centerpiece of an integrated assessment framework for energy and air quality issues at the regional level. He earned a B.A. in physics and mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder; his M.S. in physics and astronomy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and Ph.D. in atmospheric chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his doctoral studies involved the development of an inverse model to deduce regional emission levels of certain pollutants based on direct observations.