On April 23, 2015, the Environmental and Energy Management Institute (EEMI) was approved as a new University-wide institute by a unanimous vote by the University’s 40-member Advisory Council on Research. That result culminated almost two years of work by a team of faculty and graduate students under the guidance of EEMI co-Directors Joe Casio and Jonathan Deason.
During the approval process, the Advisory Council on Research noted that the EEMI already has been awarded two research grants, one from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the other by the Potomac Electric Power Company.
EEMI personnel also recently conducted a series of meetings with the United Water Corporation and worked on a series of documents interactively with the United Water research team that resulted in submission of a conceptual proposal for a project entitled “Pollution Control and New Financing Models” in April 2015.
The new Institute also has conducted a series of discussions with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment and the Director of the Energy Systems Division at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory to facilitate a research proposal in support of DOD’s electrical grid resiliency initiative. That work resulted in an invitation to prepare a proposal and a preliminary commitment of funding for research work to support that initiative. The first draft of that proposal, entitled “Investment Risk Mitigation and Cost-Benefit Analysis of DOD's Energy Technology Deployments,” was developed by Prof. Ekundayo Shittu and submitted to the Lincoln Laboratory in May 201
In other actions, EEMI faculty have been working with the Partnership on Technology Innovation and the Environment (PTIE) leading to a proposal entitled “Sensor Network Design for Low-Cost Non-Point Source Nitrate and Phosphate Nutrient Monitoring via Simulation and Statistical Methods” under which Prof. Royce Francis will serve as the principal investigator.
The proposal was submitted to the PTIE in March 2015. Subsequent meetings and interactions with the PTIE members indicate that the probability of funding is very high. A PTIE workshop on our proposal, at which Professors Francis and Deason chaired sessions, was conducted on June 24, 2015.
EEMI Professor Rachael Jonassen recently developed three courses that will become the backbone of a new graduate certification program on greenhouse gas management and accounting, along with the existing course EMSE 6290 (Climate Change: Policy, Impacts, and Response).. These courses are EMSE 6291 (Greenhouse Gas Measurement and Reporting), EMSE 6292 (Greenhouse Gas Mitigation) and EMSE 6293 (Information Systems and Assurance for Greenhouse Gas Management).
EEMI personnel also are working extensively with the with the Council on Environmental Quality, Office of Personnel Management and Institute for Water Resources to design a new educational program for Federal government executives and managers pursuant to Section 11(b) of Executive Order 13693 (“Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade”). The intent of the Federal agencies is to institutionalize climate change and other aspects of sustainability within the senior career leadership of the Federal government.