Lab4energy Telescope

The Project

Lab4energy is an educational project promoted by eni and Eni Enrico Mattei Foundation, that was launched in 2013 targeting the best Italian high school students to give them awareness on energy related topics and to prepare them to a potential employment in the field.

They attended an online training course of about 50 hours (from January to May 2013) which offered them an in depth training on several topics concerning energy and the environment. The lessons have been carried out by internationally renowned lecturers (among the professors, the project boasts a Nobel Prize laureate and Paolo Scaroni, the CEO of eni) in virtual format, through a special platform that allowed the students to interact and ask questions in real time.

At the end of May in Milan it was held the final event in which all the 22 students, divided in 7 groups, produced a 10 minutes long presentation that highlighted one of the topics they learned in front of an audience of 200 people. A Scientific Committee composed of representatives of eni, Eniscuola, Legambiente, Accademia dei Lincei and Ministry of Instruction and about 100 young peers declared the winners. Their prize consisted of a week in Boston, where they visited Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) and met professors and students.

Given the huge success of the project, in 2021 it will be extended to a selected group of students from the following Countries where eni operates: China, Croatia, Ghana, Italy, Mozambique, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States

The students will attend again via web a series of lessons and lectures as follows:

-15 introductory lessons carried out by MIT professors from January 2021 to March 2021 on energy related topics such as demand, supplies, transformation, costs and process, resources and reserves, petrochemical, growth and development, impact and scenarios;

-11 lectures carried out by leading experts from the Countries involved and international opinion leaders on topics such as: achat telescope, climate change, geopolitics, international energy markets.

The interaction between the students and the lecturers will again be possible thanks to a dedicated web platform structured as a “social network”. Given all the different time zones of the involved Countries, all the lesson and lectures will be recorded and later uploaded on the platform instead of being live streamed. The recording will be supervised by Lab4enery staff members from Eni Enrico Mattei Foundation who are very experienced in producing scientific web contents for high school students.

The final event will take place once again in Italy.

Countries

Calendar

01/27/2021 - Sergio Carrà - Full Professor at the Department of Physical Chemistry and Chemical Thermodynamics of the Polytecnico of Milan
Energy: what is it ? The Ability To Do Work. Different Forms of Energy and Their Conversion

01/30/2021 - Ahmed F Ghoniem - Professor of Mechanical Engineering MIT
Introduction to Energy Sources and Energy Balances. Taxonomy of Primary and Secondary Energy Sources. Energy Transformations. Structure, Comprehension and Use of National Simplified Energy Balances

02/03/2021 - John M Reilly - Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Energy Demand: What Energy Sources and How Much of Them Does the World Consume? Total Primary and Final Energy Consumption by Fuel, by Sector and by Region

02/10/2021 - Ruben Juanes - ARCO Associate Professor in Energy Studies MIT
Energy Supply: oil Upstream & Downstream Industry; New Technologies (Conventional & Unconventional Oil)

02/13/2021 - Francis Martin O'Sullivan - Director of Research, MIT Energy Initiative
Energy Supply: gas & coal
Upstream & Downstream Industry; New Technologies (focus on conventional & unconventional gas)

02/17/2021 - Michael W Golay - Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering MIT
Energy Transformation: electricity generation & transmission. Energy Supply: renewables.
The Production Chain in the Present Day Situation and the Future Technological Development (focus on R&D in renewables)

02/24/2021 - Jacopo Buongiorno - Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering MIT
Energy Supply: nuclear.
The Production Chain in the Present Day Situation and the Future Technological Development (focus on R&D in nuclear)

02/27/2021 - Francis Martin O'Sullivan - Director of Research, MIT Energy Initiative
Energy costs and prices: fossil fuels. Structure of different energy markets, supply costs, energy price mechanism

03/03/2021 - Richard Schmalensee - Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, Emeritus. Professor of Economics, Emeritus. Dean Emeritus
Energy costs and prices: renewables and electricity generation. Supply costs (different investment and O&M generation costs) , energy price mechanisms, Renewables subsidies

03/10/2021 - M. Nafi Toksoz - Professor Emeritus MIT
Resources and Reserves: how long will fossil fuels last? From resources to reserves (taxonomy); resources and reserves by areas and countries; the oil peak theory; energy and geopolitics

03/13/2021 - William H Green - Texaco-Mangelsdorf Assistant Professor MIT
Energy as feedstock in chemical industries: from petrol to green chemistry. Oil & gas use in chemistry industries. The present and the future of green chemistry.

03/17/2021 - Matthew Zaragoza
Energy, Growth and Development. Energy as fuel of economic and social development; the historical perspective of fossil fuels use and the reasons of their success; understanding energy poverty : statistical and geographical analysis; international policies and goals to fight energy poverty.

03/24/2021 - Ronald G Prinn - TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science,Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS);Director, Center for Global Change Science (CGCS);Co-Director, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change (JPSPGC);
Local and Global Impacts of Fossil Fuels Use. Local Pollution and Climate Change: issues and open questions

03/27/2021 - Henry D Jacoby - William F. Pounds Professor of Management, Emeritus in the MIT Sloan School of Management
Energy Scenarios (part one). The Dynamic Between Environment, Economy, Population, Energy Consumption and Technology: Kaya Equation & Kuznet’s Curves.

03/31/2021 - Henry D Jacoby - William F. Pounds Professor of Management, Emeritus in the MIT Sloan School of Management
Energy Scenarios (part two). Energy Demand and Climate Change: Future Scenarios

In the spotlight

Welcome to the Lab4energy social Platform.
Please find below the demos of some video lessons. Just click on each one and it will start automatically.
These are brief excerpts of the presentations related to each video lesson : https://www.pleine-lune.org/telescope

Edition 2021

Robert C. Armstrong - Director, MIT Energy Initiative
Lucia Nardi - Eni Responsible cultural initiatives
Nicola De Blasio - Eni Boston

Edition 2020

Sir Harold W. Kroto - Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996
Nadia winner of the first edition of Lab4energy
Stefano winner of the first edition of Lab4energy
Nicola winner of the first edition of Lab4energy