Notre Dame Energy, an integration of both Notre Dame’s former Energy Center and Sustainable Energy Initiative, serves as the University’s hub for energy-focused research, education and outreach. As the newly appointed faculty director of ND Energy, chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Joule Bergerson leads the development and promotion of ND Energy’s initiatives on campus.
Bergerson initially became interested in leading ND Energy as she looked for a leadership role that could bring about positive change while fulfilling her passion for research. ND Energy fulfilled these goals for her, and further intrigued her with its mission-driven approach. She hopes to live out the organization’s mission through community-oriented ND Energy programming.
“[Our focus] is very much to facilitate, to spark, to catalyze new research projects to bring people across campus together, to have a community of people that are interested in energy questions, writ large,” Bergerson said. “I would love to see [ND Energy] be a place that can foster some of those really difficult conversations about where we're at with our energy system and how we are going to power the next set of demands, both in the local communities as well as writ large.”
One of the difficult questions Bergerson hopes to answer through her work is how Notre Dame as a community can develop its sustainability practices.
“Even beyond climate change is sustainability questions in general. It's not about just looking at the cost of different ways that we could produce electricity in Indiana, it's also about greenhouse gas impacts and the other factors that could affect a decision. Oftentimes, when we're making choices about energy, it's about complicated trade-offs, rather than one solution that's going to be the right economic choice and the right environmental choice,” Bergerson said.
She discussed how ND Energy works in parallel with the Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative, a University program tasked with responding to sustainability challenges to advance solutions to these problems by generating research projects and events that focus on energy development through the lens of sustainability. Their primary focus is on involving Notre Dame’s student body in tackling these challenges.
“[ND Energy] is very much engaged with the undergraduate population and helping to provide student experiences through the Energy Studies minor and lots of outreach activities. We'll definitely be continuing that, but also seeing where else we could go to have a bigger impact,” Bergerson said.
To determine what ND Energy will focus on, Bergerson aims to go directly to the community.
“[ND Energy] is at a place we can redefine as we see fit. My first six months, at least, will be going out to meet folks on campus to understand what they liked about activities that had been done in the past, and what they could see as being something that they would be excited to participate in,” Bergerson said.
Establishing ND Energy’s program will take time, but that doesn’t worry Bergerson; she believes the program should be a product of the people it represents.
“I plan to talk to the undergraduates, to graduate students, to faculty members. Stay tuned for opportunities to have some conversations, either one-on-one or in group settings, where I can hear from the community about what they're interested in. Really, it's about what this community wants to do and what they have the capability of doing,” Bergerson said. “I am fully confident that there's a lot of really exciting things to do, but it has to start with the community: from undergraduates, staff, faculty, everybody.”
