Energy & Resources

About the Energy and Resources Group

The Energy and Resources Group is a collaborative community of graduate students, core faculty, 200 affiliated faculty and researchers across the campus, and more than 600 alumni across the globe. The Energy and Resources Group provides advanced training in interdisciplinary analysis and research with the goal of creating transformative knowledge for the planet and its people.

As one of the first interdisciplinary programs in the field, Energy and Resources faculty and students have established an impressive track record of undertaking engaged, cutting-edge research and turning these ideas into effective actions from local to global levels.

Courses cover current developments in the field and emphasize a variety of disciplinary perspectives and methodologies: core areas include economics, social sciences, engineering, humanities, and environmental sciences.

Ph.D. in Energy and Resources

The Energy and Resources Group admits highly qualified applicants into the Ph.D. program, designed to support and empower doctoral students to pursue rigorous, interdisciplinary, and original research in the fields of energy, resources, and the environment. The Ph.D. Degree in Energy and Resources is typically completed four years beyond the Masters Degree.

Masters Degrees in Energy and Resources (M.A. or M.S.)

The Energy and Resources Masters Degree is a two-year program designed to educate the next generation of interdisciplinary leaders. The curriculum is intended to serve those students for whom the Masters Degree will be the final formal education in support of a professional career. It also serves as an interdisciplinary foundation for doctoral students preparing for dissertation research.

Students are taught the range of methods and subjects that they should be able to understand, advance, and critique, in order to address critical challenges stemming from the interaction of humans and the environment. To that end, the requirements for the Energy and Resources Masters Degree are both broad and deep, stressing analytic, theoretical, and practical approaches to problems in energy, resources, and the environment.

The course requirements provide for a substantive introduction to the disciplinary approaches that are employed in studying energy and resource issues. These approaches are codified as the A-F Breadth Requirements. For more detail on the A-F requirements please go to https://erg.berkeley.edu/ (opens in a new tab)

The program also ensures experience in interdisciplinary analysis applied to key resource concerns. The curriculum provides an opportunity, through a topical course cluster and an independent capstone project, to extend and deepen the areas of investigation and understanding to satisfy the intellectual interests of each student.

Concurrent Master's Degree of Public Policy and Energy and Resources

The Energy and Resources Group and The Goldman School of Public Policy offer a three-year concurrent Master's Degree program that integrates the strengths of public policy analytical tools with the interdisciplinary knowledge and expertise in energy and resources.

Undergraduate Minor in Energy and Resources

The ERG Minor offers knowledge and skills to enable students to address the complex and interdependent issues associated with the interaction of social, economic, political, technical, and environmental factors. Students in any major may add the ERG minor, which is composed of two core and three elective upper division courses. Several of these courses have prerequisites in mathematics or science.

Undergraduate Summer Minor / Certificate in Sustainability

This summer program offers a practical and relevant interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of environmental, economic, social, political, and cultural issues. It is open to matriculated UC Berkeley undergraduates, students from other institutions, and the general public. Upon completion, UC Berkeley undergraduates receive a Minor in Sustainability, while other participants receive a Certificate in Sustainability from UC Berkeley.

1. A bachelor’s degree or recognized equivalent from an accredited institution;
2. A satisfactory scholastic average, usually a minimum grade-point average (GPA) of 3.0 (B) on a 4.0 scale; and
3. Enough undergraduate training to do graduate work in your chosen field.