Published: Oct. 20, 2008

The University of Colorado at Boulder's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Initiative and the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research are co-sponsoring free, campus panel discussions and lectures this fall on climate change and global energy to coincide with the 2008 presidential election.

A panel titled "Do We Need a 'Manhattan/Apollo Project' to Solve the Energy/Climate Problem?" will take place on Oct. 30 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Eaton Humanities Building room 150 on the CU-Boulder campus.

The panel will address whether greater use of renewable energy technologies will lead to climate stabilization, or whether the nation needs a large-scale investment in new energy research and development like the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb and NASA's Apollo Project that sent a man to the moon. Pay parking for the event is available in the Euclid Avenue Autopark, located on Euclid Avenue off of Broadway east of CU-Boulder's University Memorial Center.

Panelists will include Rad Byerly Jr. of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research; Craig Cox of the Interwest Energy Alliance; Chuck Kutscher of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Gregory F. Nemet of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin; and Pete Geddes of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. Paul Komor of the CU-Boulder Renewable and Sustainable Energy Initiative will moderate the discussion.

On Nov. 17 Professor Daniel Kammen, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley will give a keynote address titled "Policy Advice for the New President." The address will take place from 8:45 to 10:30 a.m. in UMC room 235. The event will be followed by a panel discussion, which will include Tom Weimer, Republican chief of staff for the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and other Washington, D.C., political veterans.

The Nov. 17 keynote address and panel discussion, which is free and open to the public, opens an all-day research symposium on energy and climate that requires registration. For more information about the research symposium visit . For more information about the fall lecture series visit .

CIRES is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.