New Research Unit at UT Austin Cements Role as Leading Hub for Emissions & Energy Market Analysis
Austin, Texas, Jan. 23, 2025 – As demand grows for high-quality data and insights across the global energy sector, The University of Texas at Austin has launched a new Organized Research Unit (ORU): The Center for Energy and Environmental Systems Analysis (CEESA).
CEESA is already home to a series of existing multi-year research initiatives focused on major U.S. oil and natural gas production basins and global energy and liquified natural gas (LNG) markets. However, CEESA’s leadership role is set to further expand, following the recent announcement of two major research awards from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), totaling $40 million. Two teams of CEESA researchers will lead regional centers to measure and mitigate methane and other greenhouse gas emissions from oil and natural gas supply chains. The centers are each funded at a level of $20 million and will perform work in the South Central and Northeastern United States.
“Global natural gas buyers are increasingly demanding reduced greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chains that produce, process, and transport natural gas,” said Dr. Arvind Ravikumar, CEESA Co-Director and Assistant Professor in the Hildebrand Department Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at UT Austin. “For the first time, we’ll be able to develop an accurate national emissions picture, and reduce emissions at the same time,” said Dr. Ravikumar, who also serves as the principal investigator for the Northeastern U.S. regional center.
“Over the last decade, innovative measurement technologies have dramatically improved emission detection and the accuracy of estimates of greenhouse gas from oil and gas production, processing and transport, offering new insights and data,” said Dr. Erin Tullos, CEESA Senior Research Fellow and principal investigator for South Central U.S. regional center. “The regional centers led by UT Austin will provide operators, particularly small and independent ones, with the tools to streamline emissions reporting and minimize additional measurement burdens. By centralizing and standardizing emissions data collection, the regional centers streamline the production of high-quality emissions data.”
In addition to the regional centers, CEESA will serve as a sub-awardee for five recently announced DOE research awards, which are focused on monitoring, measuring, quantifying and reducing emissions from oil and gas supply chains.
Finally, under a separate DOE award, UT Austin’s Energy Institute will engage with industry partners to provide training and leak detection and repairs at oil and gas wells and pipelines in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico. This research will complement CEESA’s work, further underscoring UT Austin’s expertise and leadership in the field of energy production and emissions reduction.
CEESA provides data-driven, science-based research to inform global policy and support real-world emissions reductions across the energy sector. The new ORU tackles some of the most pressing challenges in emissions and energy research, including:
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Monitoring and Mitigation: Advanced methods to translate accurate, real-time emissions tracking across global supply chains into cost-effective mitigation solutions.
Low-Carbon Energy Supply Chains: Developing innovative approaches to measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification of greenhouse gas emissions across hydrogen and other low-carbon energy supply chains.
Lifecycle Analysis and Policy Guidance: Providing detailed measurement informed and near real-time assessments of emissions from energy supply chains to guide sustainable investments and global policy.
Energy Systems Modeling: Modeling of the short-term and long-term impacts of adding new energy supplies, including analysis of emissions trajectories.
Gas Market Analysis: Anticipating how concerns over emissions intensity will reshape natural gas markets, including new demands in Europe and Asia and implications for global gas exporters.
The creation of the new ORU builds on decades of scientific leadership at UT Austin, which has become a global data and analytics hub for accurate greenhouse gas emissions accounting across energy and product supply chains.
Existing research initiatives which will now be housed at CEESA include:
The Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab (EEMDL), a joint initiative of UT Austin, Colorado State University and the Colorado School of Mines to improve the accuracy of greenhouse gas emissions measurement and accounting across global energy supply chains.
The Appalachian Methane Initiative (AMI), a coalition addressing the methane challenge by deploying comprehensive multi-scale methane monitoring systems in the largest natural gas-producing region in the U.S.
Project Astra – Phase II, a four-year effort funded by the DOE to expand and improve the capabilities of a surface-based methane monitoring network in the Permian Basin, the largest oil-producing region in the nation.
ABOUT CEESA
The mission of the Center for Energy and Environmental Systems Analysis (CEESA) is to provide rigorous, measurement-informed insights that empower global decision-makers to drive meaningful emissions reductions and promote a sustainable energy future.
Media and stakeholder contact:
Simon Lomax, Policy and Outreach Advisor
+1 202-379-6971 (c)