Energy and energy policy: chemistry’s role

摘要

This supplement to the Chemistry Central Journal (CCJ)is meant to serve at least two functions. One, consistentwith the long-term goal of this journal, is to bring to itsaudience the full span of topics and areas in whichchemistry plays a key role, even if it is not the only keycontributing subject. Obviously energy is very muchsuch a subject; chemistry plays an integral role in theacquisition, generation, distribution and efficient use ofenergy. But its role is only fully meaningful when chem-istry’s contributions are integrated with those of othersciences such as climatology, and, every bit as impor-tant, with economics, sociology and political decision-making. This brings us to the second function of thissupplement. It consists of a set of six papers developedin a course at the University of Chicago in the Fall termof 2010, and then later revised a bit for CCJ. Each paperwas the work of an interdisciplinary team, consisting ofthree to five students; each team had to include at leastone student in a natural science and at least one in asocial science such as economics or public policy. A pri-mary goal of the course was educating the students, allfourth-year undergraduates or graduate students, inworking together across interdisciplinary lines, learningto convey the relevant concepts of their own field toothers in very different fields and to integrate the con-cepts from very different areas to come to a coherentanalysis of their chosen topic.