Fall ENE Courses 2026
Designing Sustainable Systems: Experiential Learning on Campus Energy
Forrest Meggers
ENE 202/ARC 208/EGR 208/ENV 206
The course presents human impacts on the environment and their relationship to sustainable design, and teaches students through experiential learning using labs, experiments, tours, and design projects. It focuses on understanding principles of applied sciences, and how simple contemporary computing tools like AI and IoT facilitate rapid and deployable sensors and systems to make and analyze designs of systems to better understand the environment and campus. The first part of the class focuses on building both a common technical framing of environmental systems and engineering as well as a practical awareness of how we engage with the world, and our campus around us. Themes of population, food, water, energy, climate, and pollution provide some fundamental material that is then translated into initial labs and open-ended assignments considering Princeton’s campus. Finally, students work in groups to create a sustainable design intervention addressing campus sustainability challenges.
Resource Recovery for a Circular Economy
Z. Jason Ren
The course will focus on emerging science and technologies that enable the transition from our traditional linear economy (take, make, waste) to a new circular economy (reduce, reuse, recycle). It will discuss the fundamental theories and applied technologies that are capable of converting traditional waste materials or environmental pollutants such as wastewater, food waste, plastics, e-waste, and CO2, etc. into value-added products including energy, fuels, chemicals, and food products.
Integrated Assessment Modeling for Climate Policy Making
Wei Peng
This course discusses the use of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) for climate policy and energy research. The course gives an overview of two types of IAMs: detailed process IAMs that evaluate how mitigation options and technology choices influence regional emissions and global climate; and benefit-cost IAMs that estimate the social cost of carbon or the optimal emission trajectory to maximize global welfare. The course then dives into one detailed process IAM, the Global Change Analysis Model, to demonstrate how IAMs have been applied to examine climate policy choice and impacts, air quality and health co-benefits, etc.
Human Factors 2.0-Psychology for Engineering, Energy, and Environmental Decisions
Elke Weber
The course will cover hydrogen value chain from production to utilization in the context of decarbonization of industry. Hydrogen properties will be introduced. Fundamentals of hydrogen production technologies will be covered such as fuel processing (hydrocarbon reforming) and non-reforming production including biomass gasification, biological methods. Biomass, algae, plastic and coal feedstocks will be considered. Hydrogen conversion to energy, chemicals and utilization, will be developed. Storage technologies will be discussed. Emphasis will be on understanding reaction mechanisms as well as performance indicators to compare technologies.
Membrane Separations for Energy and the Environment
Ryan Kingsbury
This course explores the fundamentals and applications of selective membrane technology to water purification, waste treatment, and clean energy processes. The course comprises three sections covering 1) low-pressure (ultrafiltration or microfiltration), 2) high-pressure (nanofiltration and reverse osmosis) and 3) ion exchange membranes. In each section, we will review one or more specific applications of that type of membrane to water, wastewater, or energy, and discuss the primary mechanisms by which the membranes accomplish filtration, connections between membrane chemistry, morphology, and performance, and basic process design principles.
Integrated Assessment Modeling for Climate Policy Making
Wei Peng
This course discusses the use of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) for climate policy and energy research. The course gives an overview of two types of IAMs: detailed process IAMs that evaluate how mitigation options and technology choices influence regional emissions and global climate; and benefit-cost IAMs that estimate the social cost of carbon or the optimal emission trajectory to maximize global welfare. The course then dives into one detailed process IAM, the Global Change Analysis Model, to demonstrate how IAMs have been applied to examine climate policy choice and impacts, air quality and health co-benefits, etc.
Special Topics in Energy and the Environment: Critical Assessment of Energy, Sustainability & Climate Change
David Cahen
Critical Assessment of Energy, Sustainability & Climate change is a flipped class-room course with a weekly task to learn using your training to distinguish facts from pseudo-facts and fables. The course’s aim is that you will have learned to separate the chaff from the wheat in the course topics. This includes verifying/assessing critically and independently statements & numbers on the topics, found in daily life, in the news and on social networks. Tools to achieve this are “sanity check” via order of magnitude, “Fermi problem”, or more accurate estimates, with uncertainty range, units check and/or logic (e.g., reductio ad absurdum).
ENE Cross Listed courses:
Green and Catalytic Chemistry
Michele Sarazen
This course will use green chemistry and engineering principles to assess the catalytic production of fuels and chemicals. Historical context for current processes will be given to contrast available routes for conversions using alternative, more sustainable feedstocks, and processes. These case studies will also serve as platforms for the fundamentals of heterogeneous acid and metal catalysis, including techniques of catalyst synthesis and characterization, as well as an understanding of how reactions occur on surfaces.
Special Topics in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources: Modeling Environmental Geochemistry
Catherine Peters
This course focuses on mathematical modeling of geochemical reactions, including aqueous phase and water-mineral reactions. We examine how the rates of reactions and fluid flow are interrelated and how to write numerical models that couple these processes. We start with reaction path modeling, and then move to reactive transport modeling. Relevant systems include 1D flow in porous media, 2D pore-network flow, and flow in fractures. Applications are drawn from a variety of problems relevant to environmental engineering, geosciences, and energy.
Special Topics in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources: Drinking Water Decarbonization
Angela Fasnacht
The course examines emerging strategies to decarbonize water and wastewater treatment systems and to transform how this essential infrastructure sector operates under climate constraints. Emphasis is placed on the technological, operational, and policy innovations required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while improving the sustainability and resilience of treatment processes.
Solid-State Physics I
Mansour Shayegan
An introduction to the properties of solids. Theory of free electrons–classical and quantum. Crystal structure and methods of determination. Electron energy levels in a crystal: weak potential and tight-binding limits. Classification of solids–metals, semiconductors and insulators. Types of bonding and cohesion in crystals. Lattice dynamics, phonon spectra and thermal properties of harmonic crystals.
Principles of Power Electronics
Minjie Chen
Power electronics circuits are critical building blocks in a wide range of applications, ranging from mW-scale portable devices, W-scale telecom servers, kW-scale motor drives, to MW-scale solar farms. This course is a design-oriented course and will present fundamental principles of power electronics. Topics include: 1) circuit elements; 2) circuit topology; 3) system modeling and control; 4) design methods and practical techniques. Numerous design examples will be presented in the class, such as solar inverters, data center power supplies, radio-frequency power amplifiers, and wireless power transfer systems.
The Habitable Planet
Elizabeth Niespolo
This course introduces solid Earth system science, quantifying underlying physical and chemical processes to study the formation and evolution of Earth through time. We discuss how these processes create and sustain habitable conditions on Earth, including feedbacks and tipping points as recorded in the geologic record. Topics include stellar and planetary formation, plate tectonics, seismology, minerals/rocks, the geologic timescale, natural resources, the hydrologic cycle and sedimentation, paleoclimatology, and the “Anthropocene.” Students will apply these topics to the recent past to assess human impact on the environment.
Thermodynamics
Daniel Nosenchuck
Heat and work in physical systems. Concepts of energy conversion and entropy, primarily from a macroscopic viewpoint. Efficiency of different thermodynamic cycles, with applications to everyday life including both renewable and classical energy sources. In the laboratory, students will carry out experiments in the fields of analog electronics and thermodynamics.
Optics and Lasers: Building and Understanding Optical Systems
Julia Mikhailova
The course introduces fundamentals of optics, lasers, and Fourier transforms through lectures and hands-on activities. The topics include ray and wave optics, imaging and image processing, optical Fourier transforms, principles of lasers, and applications in nuclear fusion for renewable energy, environmental sensing, space exploration, ultrafast metrology, chemistry, and physics.
Energy Conversion and the Environment: Transportation Applications
Alison Ferris
Overview of energy utilization in and environmental impacts of propulsion systems for ground and air transportation. Roughly half of the course will be devoted to reciprocating engines for ground transportation, and the other half of the course will be devoted to gas turbine engines for air transportation. The course will focus on device efficiency/performance and emissions with future outlooks for improvements in these areas including alternative fuels and alternative device concepts. Relevant thermodynamics, chemistry, fluid mechanics, and combustion fundamentals will be reviewed or introduced and will permeate the course material.
Energy and Commodities Markets
Ronnie Sircar
This course is an introduction to commodities markets (oil, gas, metals, electricity, etc.), and quantitative approaches to capturing uncertainties in their demand and supply. We start from a financial perspective, and traditional models of commodity spot prices and forward curves. Then we cover modern topics: game theoretic models of energy production (OPEC vs. fracking vs. renewables); quantifying the risk of intermittency of solar and wind output on the reliability of the electric grid (mitigating the duck curve); financialization of commodity markets; carbon emissions markets. We also discuss economic and policy implications.