Dr. Bill Dinklage Ph.D., SSBC, will be presenting:
Padre Associates was established in 1996 in Ventura, California.
We have additional offices located in San Luis Obispo, Sacramento, and Bakersfield.
Padre Associates is a multidisciplinary consulting firm serving a diverse clientele including energy, oil and gas, public works, regulatory agencies, architectural and engineering firms, school districts, commercial entities and private property owners in the fields of environmental sciences and geo-environmental services. We pride ourselves in providing our clients with high-quality, timely and cost effective consulting services that always meet or exceed their requirements.
Last year I took a sabbatical traveling around the world mainly to study how different countries are decarbonizing their energy systems. According to the IPCC, to meet a target of no more than +1.5°C post-Industrial Revolution global warming, we need to reduce our net GHG emissions to zero by about 2050. The world currently supplies about 80% of its energy needs from fossil fuels. Decarbonizing our energy systems means moving away from fossil fuels to carbon-free sources of energy, which include solar, wind, most new geothermal energy, and nuclear (both fission and fusion). While in the past the energy transition has been motivated by concerns about the climate, in many parts of the world, especially Asia, it is just good economics.
Countries differ vastly in their commitment to the energy transition and their progress. China astounded me in its electrification of transportation; the transition from oil & gas to offshore wind in the North Sea is welcomed in Scotland because the North Sea is running out of oil; Amsterdam is championing the circular economy; and a tour of a fusion research facility in Japan convinced me that the prospect for nuclear fusion in our lifetimes is real. Barriers exist because of slow-to-change historically entrenched policies, government disinterest and corruption, dis- and misinformation, and because people worldwide are consumed by moving up out of poverty and social issues, such as immigration. In this talk I’ll give a whirlwind tour of how it’s happening in over fifteen countries I visited.
Bill Dinklage became interested in climate change as an oceanography TA at UCSB in the 1990’s, where he saw paleoclimate graphs presented in Jim Kennett’s oceanography lectures. Teaching introductory classes in physical geology further impressed him that geologists have a unique perspective on climate change and that what is happening is not natural and should probably be checked. In his first tenure-track academic position, at Utah Valley University, Bill and colleagues in physics and chemistry co-created a class called “Energy Use on Earth,” which examined current and alternative energy systems and their environmental impacts. Now at Santa Barbara City College, Bill teaches the “Energy and Natural Resources” course, has advised the Energy Club at SBCC for many of the past dozen years, and chaired the Energy Task Force on the Sustainability Committee.
Bill is originally from South Burlington, Vermont, now home of one of the three largest U.S. companies developing electric aircraft. He earned a BA in physics from Carleton College in 1989, worked for six months in the Geophysics branch of the USGS in Menlo Park, and then earned a PhD in Geoscience at UCSB in 1998 studying the structural evolution of the Schist Belt in the Brooks Range, Alaska. He has worked summer jobs in tight gas for Amoco Production Co. and gold exploration in Alaska. He taught at Wittenberg University, Carleton College, and UVU before joining the faculty at SBCC in 2012. He has two children, now out of college and finding their way in the world, and an amazing wife, Betsy, who fell so in love with Nepal during their sabbatical travels in 2024-2025 that she is back trekking there now.
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