Costa Samaras
Trustee Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering | Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA, UNITED STATES
Costa Samaras's research focuses on the pathways to clean, climate-safe, equitable, and secure energy and infrastructure systems.
Biography
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.
Areas of Expertise (5)
Transportation Systems
Autonomous Driving
Climate and Energy Decision Making
Engineering and Public Policy
Environmental Engineering
Media Appearances (5)
CMU Energy Week Expands on Pittsburgh’s Expertise in AI and Energy
Blue Sky News online
2025-03-17
“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 online
2025-02-28
“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 radio
2024-11-28
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 online
2024-10-16
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 online
2024-10-03
“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.
Media
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Industry Expertise (5)
Energy
Cleantech
Transportation/Trucking/Railroad
Education/Learning
Research
Education (3)
Carnegie Mellon University: Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy 2008
New York University: MPA, Public Policy 2004
Bucknell University: B.S., Civil Engineering 1999
Affiliations (2)
- Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making
- Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation
Links (3)
Articles (5)
Climate change hazard index reveals combined risks to United States drinking water utilities
Environmental Research: Climate2025 Drinking water utilities are exposed to a range of climate change hazards that can affect their ability to deliver safe drinking water. We use climate change mid-century projections to assess seven hazards for 42 786 utility systems (serving 283 million people) across the contiguous United States and develop a combined climate hazard index that allows for risk comparisons. All utilities are exposed to climate hazards, and around half, serving 178 million people (53% of current population), could experience large changes in one or more climate hazards that could affect an aspect of system reliability, including water resources, infrastructure, or operations. While utilities located in Western regions and coastal areas have higher climate hazard index values, there are utilities serving different population sizes in all geographic regions with elevated climate risk.
Rebates and grid decarbonization from the Inflation Reduction Act promote equitable adoption of energy efficiency retrofits
Environmental Research Letters2025 Residential and commercial buildings account for 75% of electricity and 40% of the total energy consumption in the United States, costing over $400 billion annually. Electrification and energy efficiency retrofits offer a viable decarbonization pathway, especially since half of U.S. homes were built before modern building codes. These older homes are often occupied by low-to-moderate-income (LMI) families. Equitable electrification provides a unique opportunity to considerably reduce emissions in communities where energy bill savings have the most impact on household finances. This study evaluates how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) impacts the adoption potential of air source heat pumps, heat pump water heaters and clothes dryers, and electric cooking ranges across income groups in the United States.
Estimating the potential for optimized curb management to reduce delivery vehicle double parking, traffic congestion and energy consumption
Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review2024 We model an optimized curb parking reservation system and characterize conditions under which such a system can reduce delivery vehicle double parking, congestion and energy consumption. We implement an optimization model leveraging integer linear and mixed-integer linear programming parking slot assignment formulations to minimize double parking and build a queuing model to estimate lane obstruction congestion and energy effects. Using delivery data from Aspen, CO and Pittsburgh, PA, we find that, when arrival times are known at the start of the day, a single-space reservation system can eliminate 1–2 min of double parking per hour, on average, increasing 3–4 times when drivers have±5 minutes of arrival time flexibility.
Environmental Science & Technology
Environmental Science & Technology2024 The transportation sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in the United States. Increased use of public transit and electrification of public transit could help reduce these emissions. The electrification of public transit systems could also reduce air pollutant emissions in densely populated areas, where air pollution disproportionally burdens vulnerable communities with high health impacts and associated social costs. We analyze the life cycle emissions of transit buses powered by electricity, diesel, gasoline, and compressed natural gas and model GHGs and air pollutants mitigated for a transition to a fully electric U.S. public transit bus fleet using transit agency-level data.
Climate change impacts on future residential electricity consumption and energy burden: A case study in Phoenix, Arizona
Energy Policy2023 Transitioning to an equitable electricity sector requires a deep understanding of a warming climate's impacts on vulnerable populations. A vital climate adaptation measure is deploying air-conditioning (AC), but AC use can increase household energy costs. We evaluate how a warming climate will affect regional energy equity by tying temperature projections with household temperature response functions derived from smart-meter electricity data in Phoenix, Arizona. We simulate future consumption changes under two climate change scenarios from 2020 to 2070, with and without AC efficiency upgrades.
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