Expertise

Topics:  Transportation Systems, Autonomous Driving, Climate and Energy Decision Making, Engineering and Public Policy, Environmental Engineering

Industries: Energy, Cleantech, Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, Education/Learning, Research

Constantine (Costa) Samaras is the Director of the Carnegie Mellon University Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, the Trustee Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and an Affiliated Faculty Member in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy. His research focuses on the pathways to clean, climate-safe, equitable, and secure energy and infrastructure systems. Costa analyzes how technologies and policies affect energy use and national security, resilience to climate change impacts, economic and equity outcomes, and life cycle environmental emissions and other externalities. He is a Founder and Director of both the Center for Engineering and Resilience for Climate Adaptation and the Power Sector Carbon Index. He is by courtesy, a faculty member in CMU's H. John Heinz III College of Information Systems and Public Policy. From 2021-2024, he served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as the Principal Assistant Director for Energy, OSTP Chief Advisor for Energy Policy, and then OSTP Chief Advisor for the Clean Energy Transition, where he worked with the OSTP Director, Deputy Director for Industrial Innovation, and senior governmental leaders in coordinating Federal activities on U.S. energy policy, assessing energy technologies for meeting U.S. climate, resilience, equity, and security objectives, and aligning energy innovation systems to achieve U.S. climate commitments.

With more than two decades of experience in energy, transportation, and climate change, he has served on three National Academies Committees evaluating emerging energy technologies and earth systems research, served as the Chair of the ASCE Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, and served on the Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies Committee the Energy Committee of the Transportation Research Board. He has published numerous studies examining electric and automated vehicles, renewable electricity, life cycle assessment, clean energy transitions and decarbonization policy, AI ethics, and climate resilience, in journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, Nature Climate Change, Environmental Research Letters, Climatic Change, and others. He was also a contributor to the 4th National Climate Assessment, and was one of the Lead Author contributors to the Global Energy Assessment.

Media Experience

AI could keep us dependent on natural gas for decades to come  — MIT Technology Review
AI could keep us dependent on natural gas. "The most important climate policymakers in the country right now are not in Washington. They’re in state capitals, and these are public utility commissioners,” said Costa Samaras (Scott Institute for Energy Innovation).

‘It’s a huge loss’: Trump administration dismisses scientists preparing climate report  — LA Times
The Trump administration dismissed more than 400 experts who had started work on the latest National Climate Assessment report, saying the scope of the report was being reevaluated. "It’s a loss for taxpayers, it’s a loss for communities, it’s a loss for the environment. Not producing the report saves us basically nothing and costs us maybe everything,” said Costa Samaras (Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation).

CMU Energy Week Expands on Pittsburgh’s Expertise in AI and Energy  — Blue Sky News
“What is exciting about Energy Week this year is that we can, in true Carnegie Mellon fashion, say how do those two areas of the economy — which are very much the subject of people’s attention right now — intersect? And what does it mean for innovation and communities and society?” said Costa Samaras, director of the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation.

Wind and solar surpassed coal, but CO2 is still climbing. Here’s why.  — Politico
“If all we do is build more natural gas, our emissions are not going to go down. They might stay flat as they did last year,” said Costa Samaras, a professor who studies the energy industry at Carnegie Mellon University and served as a climate adviser in the Biden administration. “Sooner or later, we’re going to run out of coal to displace.”

Washington state could be a blueprint for climate action  — NPR
Costa Samaras is director of the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University. He says that cities, states and organizations all around the country will be looking to Washington as an example.

The 2024 Presidential Election Will Make or Break U.S. Climate Action  — Scientific American
Though Harris has not laid out specific climate and energy plans, Stokes and Costa Samaras, director of the Carnegie Mellon University Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, point to her proposed policy to incentivize building more affordable housing (particularly multifamily dwellings such as apartment buildings). “There’s a lot of the greenhouse gas emissions in the economy that are wrapped up into where people live,” Samaras says.

Drone deliveries, slow to take flight, come to Silicon Valley  — NBC News
“I think after what has been about a decade of a slow start, drone delivery seems to be accelerating both in its technological capabilities as well as the policy and regulatory environment in the United States,” Costa Samaras, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, told NBC News.

Two Scientific Groups Say They’ll Keep Working on U.S. Climate Assessment  — The New York Times
The Trump administration has significantly disrupted the production of two major U.S. environmental assessments—the National Climate Assessment and the National Nature Assessment—by dismissing nearly 400 scientists involved in their preparation. “I volunteered for this effort, and I’m ready to continue it. This is important work for the country,” says Costa Samaras (Scott Institute for Energy Innovation).