Energy and Climate Change: Our New Future

Professor Trevor Letcher is an Emeritus Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and living in the United Kingdom. He was previously Professor of Chemistry, and Head of Department, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University, and Natal, in South Africa (1969-2004). He has published over 300 papers on areas such as chemical thermodynamic and waste from landfill in peer reviewed journals, and 100 papers in popular science and education journals. Prof. Letcher has edited and/or written 32 major books, of which 22 were published by Elsevier, on topics ranging from future energy, climate change, storing energy, waste, tyre waste and recycling, wind energy, solar energy, managing global warming, plastic waste, renewable energy, and environmental disasters. He has been awarded gold medals by the South African Institute of Chemistry and the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics honoured him with a Festschrift in 2018. He is a life member of both the Royal Society of Chemistry (London) and the South African Institute of Chemistry. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics, and is a Director of the Board of the International Association of Chemical Thermodynamics since 2002.

Vasilis Fthenakis is the Founding Director of the Center for Life Cycle Analysis (CLCA), Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University and Distinguished Scientist Emeritus at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Fthenakis is internationally recognized for his leading work in the energy-environment nexus and renewable energy grid integration. With a focus on developing methodologies, models, and tools to analyze cleaner energy alternatives, he has been a pioneer in studying the environmental impact, resource availability and recycling of photovoltaics (PVs), accelerating their commercial adoption around the world. More recently, he broadened the CLCA’s research to explore solar-enabled water desalination and “green hydrogen production. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and a recipient of several honors and awards including the 2022 Karl Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit for “distinguished contributions to quest for sustainable energy.