Topic 1: Climate Change Impacts on Energy and Environmental Systems :
In this presentation, Dr. Xu will address the key risks and opportunities in sustainable development, focusing on the pressing issues on climate change, including scientific observations in climate change, evolving activities in IPCC (i.e., Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), global impacts, and opportunities in mitigation and best practices. He will provide an overview of challenges and impacts on environmental systems and energy infrastructure, including built environments. Exemplar highlights include: Temperature impact on power demand is much higher than on supply infrastructure; impacts on hydropower supply may increase or decrease generation depending on water supply conditions; impacts of wildfires could potentially be high; impacts of climate change have to be understood on the local levels, in disaggregated fashion so that environmental planning and best practice can be defined. More work is needed to evaluate wildfire and sea level rise impacts on the power sector infrastructure and temperature impacts on electricity transmission and distribution.

Topic 2: Climate Change Mitigation-Sustainable Utility Incentive Program and Case Study in Hi-Tech Building Energy :
Global warming and Climate Change has led to extreme weather and in California years of drought and millions of dead trees feeding an unprecedented risk of wildfires. In 2017, wildfires engulfed nearly 170,000 acres of Northern California wine country and reinforced the importance and urgency of energy efficiency and energy mitigation from a utility perspective. This presentation provides an overview of utility sustainable incentive programs and an energy mitigation case study in Hi-Tech buildings. The methodology utilized in developing a practical and expeditious implementation strategy and program involves performing market research, benchmarking, and emerging technology case studies. The presentation summarizes findings of a submersion cooling technology case study for data centers.