Interdisciplinary researcher explores the many facets of decarbonization

Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is Emily Grubert, who is a civil engineer and environmental sociologist at the University of Notre Dame in the US. In a wide ranging interview, she chats about her research, which focuses on justice and deep decarbonization.

Much of Gubert’s work explores how we will make the transition from our current carbon-intensive economy to a low-carbon future – and she points out that exactly how this will be done is far from settled. She talks about carbon capture and storage, a controversial (and mostly hypothetical) way of removing carbon dioxide from flue gases or even from the atmosphere.

Grubert also talks about how we can build climate-change resilience into buildings and how society can respond to climate-change driven migration by preparing communities in cooler regions for an influx of people who have had to move because of the effects of climate change.

Brand new journal

Grubert is editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Research: Energy, which has just opened for submissions. She talks about her plans for the journal and why there is an urgent need for an open access publication that brings together researchers across the many disciplines working on the transition to zero-carbon energy systems.

And if you are interested in a career in climate-change research, Grubert makes the argument for pursuing an interdisciplinary education.