The Schatz Center hosts two lecture programs: the Sustainable Futures Speaker Series (SFSS) and the Schatz Research Webinars. Our team also participates in a broad range of events related to clean and renewable energy access, development, and resilience.
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Sustainable Futures

Air pollution in California
Upcoming in the speaker series
View the full SFSS season schedule…
April 8 at 4 pm
Quantifying systemic racial and ethnic disparities in air pollution in California
Despite decades of effort to improve air quality in California, large and systemic racial and ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure still persist. In particular, people of color and members of disadvantaged communities are exposed to higher-than-average concentrations of many health-relevant air pollutants, including particulate matter and nitrogen oxides. Recent advances in measurement and modeling technology — as well as new conceptual frameworks for evaluating environmental injustice — can help us better understand the contours of and possible solutions to this problem.
This seminar will present quantitative evidence on environmental inequity in California and the Bay Area using a combination of statewide modeling and intensive measurements using a fleet of Google Street View cars specially equipped to measure air quality. The findings point to possible air pollution control approaches that may be especially impactful in addressing these disparities.
Joshua Apte is an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley, jointly appointed in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in the School of Public Health. His research focuses on the intersection of air quality, sustainability, and environmental justice, with an emphasis on the development of new methods for quantifying air pollution exposures. His group uses field measurements, air quality models, and satellite remote sensing to to quantify air pollutant emissions and concentrations, and their resulting spatial patterns, human exposures, and public health consequences in US communities and around the world.
Before coming to UC Berkeley, he was previously on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, the inaugural ITRI-Rosenfeld Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He holds MS and PhD degrees from the Energy and Resource Group at UC Berkeley and a ScB in Environmental Science from Brown University.
Schatz Research Webinars

Trinidad Head from the stern of the Coral Sea
Offshore wind webinar series
In the fall of 2020, our team hosted a series of five webinar workshops on the feasibility of offshore wind energy for California’s north coast. In each webinar, we shared findings from our recently conducted studies, followed by a moderated panel discussion and a community Q&A.
- View recordings and download agendas and slide decks for this series on our wind studies page.
- Download related reports on our publications page.
- If you’re interested in receiving updates on our offshore wind research, please email us at windstudies@schatzcenter.org.
Recent Recordings

Orcas in Monterey Bay – photo by Scott Terrill
Sustainable Futures
- Energy transitions in a time of intersecting precarities: from reductive environmentalism to antiracist praxis – Myles Lennon (October 29, 2020)
- Redwood Coast telecommunications resilience – Karen Eckersley and Jana Ganion (October 22, 2020)
- Safer breathing: reducing the risk of airborne COVID 19 infection – Mark Nicas (September 3, 2020)
- Thwaites Glacier Research: On board the Nathaniel B Palmer -Julia Wellner, Al Hickey, and Tim McGovern (July 29, 2020)
Schatz Research Webinars
California north coast offshore wind feasibility studies
- Energy Production and Delivery, and Economic Development (September 2020)
- Ecological and Geological Environment (September 2020)
- Port and Coastal Infrastructure (September 2020)
- Community Perspectives on Regional Impacts and Opportunities (October 2020)
- Reflections and Next Steps
(October 2020)
External Events
MICROGRIDS
- Local Governments Leading the Way through Resilient Microgrids (Statewide Energy Efficient Collaborative, September 2020)
- Redwood Coast Airport Microgrid: Advancing a resilient and clean energy future (Clean Coalition, September 2020)
- Innovations of the Redwood Coast Airport microgrid (Cal CCA, April 2020)
OFF-GRID ENERGY ACCESS
- IEC quality standards for pico-solar products & SHS kits (VeraSol, May 2020)