This new collaborative course — co-taught by faculty from the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, Weitzman School of Design and School of Engineering and Applied Science — uses societal grand challenges as scenarios for identifying repeatable, process-oriented best practices for solving complex, systemic problems in the energy transition. This course is intended for Graduateuate students with a background in either the social sciences (economics, political science, law, or policy) or who are in STEM programs (science and engineering). This course will complement the material covered in the Kleinman Center Introduction to Energy Policy course (ENMG 5020) taught in the fall. It will be an opportunity to learn from one another and build a holistic understanding of the technical and policy dimensions of the energy transition and the global response to climate change and environmental deGraduateation. The course will be broken into three chapters. For the first third of the semester, we will focus on basics of policy and engineering literacy, with each student bringing their own expertise to the table. The best way to truly understand a topic is to teach it, and this chapter of the course will focus on learning how to talk across disciplines and approach challenges in new and unfamiliar ways. The middle third of this course will be built around case studies of grand societal challenges; some of which have seen considerable progress towards being solved, others which are still the subject of great uncertainty and disagreement. Among other topics, this course will explore: The impact of sweeping standards on building and appliance efficiency; the rapid development and mutual reinforcement of renewable energy technologies and policy; the ability of policy to facilitate healthy competition between technologies (hydrogen vs batteries, for example); The allocation of scarce CCUS resources to abate difficult to decarbonize products like cement, steel, and plastics; the importance of grid regulation and market design in ensuring future energy reliability and affordability; and the need for transition-ready environmental policies that protect ecosystems and communities without hindering access to critical resources (metals, minerals, land, etc.) The final third of the semester will be structured largely around group projects for which students with diverse expertise will work together to identify a grand societal challenge and isolate the technical and policy barriers to solving this challenge. These groups will give regular updates to the rest of the class and will work towards making a meaningful contribution to solving their challenge through collaborative problem solving, design, and research. This course will deliver content learning outcomes about technical, societal, and policy aspects of focal grand challenges, while providing all participants (including instructors) experience and skills to address community-derived problems in teams composed of members from disciplines that rarely collaborate. Over time, this course will serve as a working, iterative “laboratory” on parameters that affect the success of convergence style research and problem solving.