Joule Bergerson

Associate Professor, Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary

Dr. Joule Bergerson is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Energy Technology Assessment and a member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Dr. Bergerson directs an interdisciplinary and collaborative research team and is a global leader in the development of new methods for energy technology assessment, contributing to the development and broader use of systems tools in the energy sector.

She has published more than 60 peer reviewed publications in the top journals in her field of energy systems analysis, including recent papers in Science, Nature Climate Change, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Bergerson has received recognition for her research, including best paper awards in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, Environmental Science and Technology, the CSChE Emerging Leaders in Chemical Engineering Award and the UCalgary Peak Scholar Award. The impact of her work includes the adoption of her research results directly into policies such as California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard and policy relevant tools (e.g., U.S. GREET model).

Researchers on her team work with scientists, engineers, governments and members of the business community who are developing new energy technologies, to develop and refine techniques for prospective assessment. These techniques help prioritize research and development activities, by identifying technologies – or optimal combinations of technologies – that could provide particularly large life cycle economic and environmental benefits.

Dr. Bergerson was a project manager and senior technical systems analyst at the Royal Bank of Canada between 1998 and 2001. She has been a faculty member at the University of Calgary since September 2008, and was a team leader at the Secretariat for the Canadian ecoEnergy Carbon Capture and Storage Task Force, Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environmental and Economy in 2007-2008. She has served as an expert panel member on the Canadian Council of Academies study titled “Potential for New and Emerging Technologies to Reduce the Environmental Impacts of Oil Sands Development” and an Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada’s project titled “Development of a Framework for Evaluation of Environmental Performance from all Electricity Sources”.

Dr. Bergerson received her Ph.D. in a joint program of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. The title of her dissertation was “Future Electricity Generation: An Economic and Environmental Life Cycle Perspective on Technology Options and Policy Implications”. She has a Master of Engineering Degree in Chemical Engineering with a collaborative program in Environmental Engineering from the University of Toronto and an Undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Environmental Science from the University of Western Ontario.