A key focus of the Policy & Integration Group has been communicating information about the challenges of carbon mitigation and climate change to the widest possible audience. In 2013, Robert Socolow extended our outreach efforts on multiple fronts.
Communicating uncertainty
With Melissa Lane (Professor of Politics), Socolow is co-leading a university-wide project, “Communicating uncertainty: science, institutions, and ethics in the politics of global climate change.” The project supports resident fellows, lectures, and workshops and is leading to increased commitment to the study of climate change on the part of faculty in the social sciences and the humanities, as well as enabling interdisciplinary ventures.
Distilling technical information
Socolow has embarked on a new activity, the “distillate project,” which develops summaries of new technologies for non-specialists. The project, led by Socolow and funded primarily by the Princeton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, draws broadly on the expertise of the Princeton faculty. The first distillate, drafted in 2013, addresses electricity storage and its potential to provide cost-effective options for the electricity grid as it seeks to increase reliability and accepts an increasing share of intermittent renewable sources. Subsequent distillates will address geothermal energy and small modular nuclear reactors.
Grand Challenges for Engineering
From 2006 through 2009, Socolow was a member of the Grand Challenges for Engineering Committee of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). In 2013, this committee was revived to provide advice to the authors of the NAE 50th Anniversary Book, which will have five chapters, positioned in 1964, 1989, 2014, 2039, and 2064. In NAE’s words: “the goal of the project is to tell compelling stories about engineering innovations and advances that communicate the essential role of engineering in our daily lives and in the security and prosperity of the nation and society.”
Stabilization Wedges
With a guest lecture, for the second consecutive year, Socolow introduced an adaptation of the Wedges Game that is now played annually in May by an honors group of engineering undergraduate students from the Politecnico di Milano and the Politecnico di Torino. The game is the capstone of their week-long retreat, the Alta Scuola Politecnica (ASP), Belgirate, Italy