Associate Professor Jeremiah Johnson was named a 2023 Senior Faculty Fellow for the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science (KIETS) Climate Leaders Program.
KIETS provides opportunities for NC State faculty members and students to work on initiatives for potential solutions to societal challenges being caused by climate change throughout the world – to our air, soil, oceans, flora, fauna, and arctic regions. Scholars and faculty fellows provide an expanded focus on the specific steps that individuals, companies, academics, communities, countries, and world leaders can take to adapt to and mitigate these changes. Students participate in monthly group sessions, a supported internship, an off-site Climate Leadership Academy, and an annual Climate Leaders Symposium.
As a fellow, Johnson supports the program by attending meetings with the program director to advise on monthly programming, spring intensive academy and fall symposium; leading efforts for the annual symposium; identifying effective internship experiences and outreach programs; forging new collaborations and relationships that leverage the KIETS support with additional funding from federal, state, and international for-profit and nonprofit groups; and collaborating with the Climate Leaders Program Advisory Board, and KIETS leadership to identify areas of particular interest that enhance NC State’s research and scholarly activities and reputation related to climate and sustainability issues.
“I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve as the Senior Faculty Fellow for the KIETS Climate Leaders Program,” Johnson said. “Climate change is the biggest challenge that we face today, and it’s going to require resourcefulness, ingenuity and creativity to effectively mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to our changing climate. The Climate Leaders Program brings together student scholars and faculty mentors from across the university with different skill sets and perspectives under the common goal of addressing the climate challenge. It has been an honor to support the students’ progress and create opportunities for community engagement.”
Johnson joined CCEE in August 2017 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Sustainable Energy Systems and Policy. His research uses systems methods to evaluate the environmental impacts of changes to the power system, including those driven by technology (such as the integration of wind power, solar photovoltaics and energy storage) and policy. Currently, Johnson serves as the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study emissions impacts of distributed energy storage used in reliability applications. Additionally, he is co-PI of an NSF project examining the urban food-energy-water nexus, using Detroit and Beijing as case studies. He is currently conducting experiments on university building heating and cooling systems, in an effort to reduce energy losses when their demand is altered to provide power system services. Johnson teaches courses related to sustainable engineering, life cycle assessment, and energy systems analysis.
Johnson helped organize this year’s Climate Leaders Symposium, which took place Sept. 28-29 and included 200 industry experts, government officials, faculty, staff and students who participated in sessions exploring climate challenges and the pursuit of mitigation and adaptation strategies.
“This year’s Climate Leaders Symposium was a great success,” Johnson said. “The event was called ‘Think and Do: Climate Challenges and Solutions,” and the emphasis of ‘doing’ and ‘solutions’ is integral to the Climate Leaders Program. I love that our student scholars are squarely focused deploying their scholarship to enact real change addressing climate change. I greatly appreciate the support from the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science that has made this program possible.”