Dr. George Hornberger: Energy and Environmental Decision-making

Dr. George Hornberger is the director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment (VIEE). www.vanderbilt.edu/viee. The Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and the Environment (VIEE) engages in research and education that directly link the social and behavioral sciences, physical sciences, engineering, law and policy, and that bear on energy and environmental decision making by individuals and by public and private institutions. Specifically, VIEE research elucidates the relationships among individual, institutional, and societal choices for energy production and use, and the impacts and benefits of these choices on the environment and health through links with climate, water quality, economics, social psychology, and natural resources.
A key aim of VIEE is to create a strong multi-disciplinary undergraduate and graduate research and education program, which will evolve into a center of national and international leadership in this field.
Understanding how hydrological processes affect the transport of dissolved and suspended constituents through catchments and aquifers is one of the main aims of studies of Earth surface processes. I have long-standing research interests in studying questions related to such processes, including current projects on the transport of dissolved organic carbon through catchments in collaboration with colleagues at Stroud Water Center. VIEE research is aimed at multidisciplinary assessments of the environmental impacts of individual, institutional, and societal choices related to energy, water, and climate. In this vein, I have current projects on nitrogen fertilizer use and fate as influenced by individual behavior, on life-cycle analyses of environmental footprints for an inland water transport company, and on the water-energy nexus in collaboration with a number of colleagues at Vanderbilt. I also am participating in collaborative research with colleagues at Vanderbilt and colleagues in Sri Lanka on studies of environmental impacts of energy and water use in a changing climate and on how household and farmer beliefs and behaviors affect and are affected by these responses.