Expertise

Topics:  Quantitative Policy Analysis, Risk Analysis, Environmental Systems, Climate Change, Adoption of New Technologies

Industries: Energy, Public Policy

Granger Morgan's research addresses problems in science, technology and public policy, with a particular focus on energy, electric power, environmental systems, climate change, the adoption of new technologies and risk analysis. Much of his work has involved the development and demonstration of methods to characterize and treat uncertainty in quantitative policy analysis. At CMU, Morgan co-directs the NSF Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making and (with Jay Apt) the university's Electricity Industry Center. Morgan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Media Experience

Power Shift: How CMU Is Leading America’s Energy Evolution  — CMU News
From reimagining AI data centers to modernizing and securing the electric grid, CMU researchers are working on practical solutions to pressing challenges in how the U.S. produces, moves and secures energy. “Transmission moves power from the locations where it is produced to the locations where it is needed, and the U.S. urgently needs more capacity,” said M. Granger Morgan, the Hamerschlag University Professor of Engineering at CMU. “The Department of Energy predicts the country will need to more than double high-voltage transmission capacity over the next several decades.

M. Granger Morgan: Foreign students have made American science, technology great  — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
M. Granger Morgan (College of Engineering) argues foreign students have made American science and technology great. Adding that restrictive immigration policies risk driving this talent elsewhere, threatening the U.S.'s long-held dominance in innovation and research.

North Carolina attacks highlight the vulnerability of power grids  — Houston Public Media
Substations are soft targets, because the main components in them, huge voltage transformers, cool themselves with circulating oil. High-powered rifle rounds can easily pierce transformers, spring leaks, make them overheat and shut down. The bigger transformers are about the size of railroad boxcars. Carnegie Mellon University professor M.Granger Morgan says they aren't easy to replace.

Vulnerable U.S. electric grid facing threats from Russia and domestic terrorists  — CBS News
Dr. Granger Morgan: Anybody who knows about power systems knows that the, the grid is physically spread all over the countryside. There are a lot of places that are vulnerable. Dr. Granger Morgan is a Carnegie Mellon University professor of engineering who chaired three National Academy of Sciences reports on the power grid for the U.S. government – the most recent in 2021. An earlier report on terrorism was classified for five years.

Study: US Unlikely To See New Nuclear Power Anytime Soon  — WABE
The troubled outlook for nuclear is bad news to Granger Morgan, a professor in the department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, because he said once nuclear plants are up and running they don’t release carbon dioxide. “One of the things, of course, that are really important in the context of climate change is figuring out how to decarbonize the energy system,” he said, “that is how to produce electricity and the other things we need without producing a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”