EEMDL Hosts Inaugural Conference
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October 17, 2023
The Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab (EEMDL) — a $50 million initiative specializing in improved greenhouse gas emissions accounting across energy supply chains — held its first-ever conference in October at The University of Texas at Austin’s J.J. Pickle Research Campus. Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering (UT PGE) Research Associate Professor Arvind Ravikumar co-directs EEMDL with Dave Allen, a professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering.
The highlight of the EEMDL conference was a keynote address by U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy Brad Crabtree, who spoke about the Department of Energy’s (DOE) vision for and progress toward greenhouse gas measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification (MMRV). Crabtree leads DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), which is made up of about 750 scientists, engineers, technicians, and administrative staff. FECM is responsible for research, development and demonstration efforts on advancing technologies to meet U.S. climate goals and minimize the environmental impacts of fossil fuel use, including low carbon power generation and low carbon supply chains; carbon capture and storage technologies; methane emissions reductions; critical mineral production; and carbon dioxide removal. After Crabtree’s presentation, Dr. Ravikumar moderated question from the audience.
In total, 200 professionals working on data-driven climate strategies in the private and public sectors attended EEMDL’s two-day event featuring 20+ panels, talks, case studies and poster presentations. More than 100 other participants joined the conference virtually.
Launched earlier this year, EEMDL is a partnership led by UT Austin with Colorado School of Mines and Colorado State University. Collectively, the three institutions have conducted methane emissions measurements at thousands of sites and published dozens of peer-reviewed studies.
