Profile II: Professor Brian Korgel, Director of The Energy Institute, University of Texas at Austin

In this issue, The Daily Dynamo met with Rashid Engineering Chair Regents Professor at the University of Texas and Director of the University’s Energy Institute, Dr. Brian Korgel. Through his decades-long tenure as a professor and researcher, he’s gained invaluable insight and skills that prepared him for being the fifth director of The Energy Institute, which was created in 2009, functioning as the University’s pre-eminent center of energy research and development. In his third year in the position, he supervises over 450 faculty/staff researchers, and has worked tirelessly to build new relationships with industry leaders as well as revitalize the connection between the Institute and the university’s student body. 

Reflecting upon why he was chosen as the director of the Energy Institute, a position he was appointed to by the University’s Vice President of Research, Dr. Korgel reflected on his time as Director of the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) and Founder of the Center for a Solar Powered Future, which he’s led for almost fourteen years, creating partnerships with nineteen industry partners and many leading academic institutions. It is his prowess in forging such partnerships that he speculates led him to be tapped for such a position. 

“I think the university looked at my experience in terms of bringing companies to do research at UT, and thinking about that research in energy”, he said, also speculating that the duality he brings to the table, as both a skilled researcher and experienced administrative professional, made him qualified to lead the Institute. 

Since he was appointed to the directorship, he has positioned himself as a lead actor in forging connections between the institute and important stakeholders in a plethora of sectors. 

“The triple helix… a collaboration between government, academic institutions, and the industry collaborating in these partnerships” was the tenet of his approach, he explained. Reflecting again on his journey with the Center for a Solar Powered Center, Korgel said it has heavily influenced how he approaches his role at The Energy Institute. With the expectations of managing an increasingly larger portfolio of public-private partnerships and research capital, he was “constantly out talking to companies and understanding what their research needs are”. 

“One of our main jobs at the Energy Institute is to create strategic partnerships with companies in the energy industry”, explaining the connection between his two roles, and how his role in the solar industry easily translated to work in the broader energy sector. Transitioning from working in solar energy to dealing with a portfolio of many more renewables, he created a foundation grounded in two key ideas: meeting rising demand for energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

“Global energy use is continuing to go up, so we need more energy production, but we also need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So you have to address climate change while addressing accessibility, affordability, reliability [of energy]”, Korgel said, framing a dilemma of sorts. 

“Every research program we’ve created at the Energy Institute focus on those things together”, which he noted was another lesson that he’s learned during his time in solar energy – “obviously solar is focused on reducing emissions, but making solar panels has emissions, there are issues with circularity, recycling, land use, materials [from] mining”, he explained, emphasizing “a lot of the same issues in the solar industry are in the energy industry overall”.

Beyond his extensive background in solar energy, he’s now tasked with overseeing a myriad of research projects across almost every issue in energy. While he believes there is no ‘one particular energy that is most important’, he stressed the diversity of the seed research programs at the Institute, noting that geothermal and nuclear energy are gaining steam in the state, as well as hydrogen. Overall, he sees a process called ‘industrial decarbonization’ as central to efforts in a clean energy transition.

“Thirty to thirty-five percent of greenhouse gas emissions are from industrial processes: [making] steel, paper, chemicals, and all that”, Korgel noted, adding there are two broad strategies to reduce industrial emissions – “electrification of process heating, [with renewables] instead of burning gas… another strategy is hydrogen”, a broad resource with methods for use in energy from simply burning it to the creation of hydrogen fuel cells. Pointing to supplementary strategies such as carbon-capture and removals, or even the recycling of atmospheric carbon dioxide through a “chemical process to convert CO2 to plastic”, he further lamented the ever-growing technologies in the energy industry. 

“A revolutionary phase of energy technologies because… of all the different types of technologies”, pointing to seasonal energy storage, a process which prevents solar energy from being wasted, rather stored until it can be utilized as part of the grid’s energy infrastructure; the creation of such a diverse energy portfolio excites Korgel.

“Taking all these emerging technologies, integrating them into one more complicated system [from] solar … to CO2 and direct air capture… to carbon-negative oil and gas”, the latter a method of enhanced oil and gas recovery where carbon dioxide is pumped into oil and gas deposits to extract the resource.

An apparent enthusiasm for a diverse array of energy technologies is one of the reasons why Dr. Korgel, as the director of the Energy Institute, has taken on a new role, helping lay the foundation for the HyVelocity Hub, a massive hydrogen energy infrastructure collaborative in the Gulf Coast. Funded by a spectrum of corporations from traditional oil & gas giants like Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and ConocoPhillips to solely hydrogen energy corporations like Air Liquide, the project is one of the first of its kind. 

“It’s a 10 year, $2.4-2.5 billion dollar project – we at UT Austin were able to help create the hub [here] because of some of the initial work that was funded by the Energy Institute”, Korgel asserted, touting the Institute’s role in helping the university, the lead academic institution in the initiative, function as one of the epicenters of hydrogen research and investment in the coming decade.

While Korgel emphasized the Institute’s importance in serving as such an epicenter for large scale energy initiatives, he also stressed its role in being a linkage institution between groups interested in working with the University on energy and more specialized centers, from the Bureau of Economic Geology to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy Center. 

“The Energy Institute’s real function is to support the researchers and student programming, but also help the centers do what they need to do”, he said, discussing the Institute’s on-campus role, “The Energy Institute can be a front door to the university [regarding energy]”. Korgel underscored the importance of collaboration between the various energy institutions, pointing to his work in making ‘Energy Week at UT’, the university’s marquee energy event, a multi-center event. 

It was this discussion regarding the Institute’s duties as the University’s epicenter of energy where Dr. Korgel’s passion for empowering its student body became most apparent. 

“The Energy Institute is here for the students… one of the primary things we have been working on at the Energy Institute is creating a community of energy scholars who can transform the world”, he mused, emphasizing his role at the University is bigger than research projects and technological investment – it is about training a generation that will one day become the best and brightest energy minds the world has to offer.