Somehow thanks to the bizarre time warp that is 2020, college basketball matchups are set to tip-off once again this week. Part of the reason that feels so weird is because of the anticlimactic nature of last season, which was cut short without the traditional March Madness tournament thanks to COVID-19. This result was a disappointment to basketball fans everywhere, especially those schools like Dayton who had put themselves in position for an all-time season for their schools (I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, though, that because the tournament was canceled that means that my University of Virginia Cavaliers are still technically reigning champions!).

Before the 2019-20 season was cut short, though, the world of sports prognosticators was still predicting what the NCAA Tournament bracket would look like, so we can recognize those teams that would have likely been playing in March and what those potential matchups may have looked like. So, perhaps to wrap an overdue bow on that season and crown a champion so this new season can kick off correctly, it’s only appropriate to fill out those brackets at long last.

And because if you’re on my blog you’ve already seen my penchant for picking sports champions based on their credentials with Energy and climate (see: Gang Greenest: Assembling a Fantasy Football Roster of the NFL’s Biggest Advocates for Energy, the Environment, and the Planet and Filling the MLB All-Star Game with an All-Earth Roster: Recognizing Baseball’s Most Energy, Environment, and Climate Conscious Players) and generally marry the world of sports and the environment(see: Inaugural Fantasy Energy League: The Final Results! and How Cleaning Up a Nation’s Energy Mix Could Lead to Cleaning Up at the World Cup), you know I’ve got to fill out this bracket based on energy credentials of all teams involved. And in the tumultuous year that 2020 has been, there may be no better time to tip our hat and recognize the schools out there that are working to advance energy and sustainability. Just this year we’ve seen, among other ills, the following:

• Some of the worst seasons for wildfires and hurricanes on record, both exacerbated by a changing climate;
• Attacks by politicians on the established climate science and the need for clean energy;
• The economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis proving an unfortunate interruption for clean energy investment.

So given that backdrop, we will reward the cutting edge schools in the presumed March Madness field for their commitment to advancing the needed technologies and outcomes in clean energy. To do so, we’ll be scoring first based on the evaluation of these schools by American Energy Society‘s Top Energy Universities 2020 report.  Where there’s a tie between schools from these evaluations, we’ll then move to rankings based on the Sierra Club’s Cool Schools 2020 rankings.  Using the rankings from these two respected institutions and their methodologies scoring different aspects of a school’s energy cred (discussed later), we’ll identify the most well-rounded schools who are creating change towards the energy transition and thus deserving of this most unusual of NCAA Championships (only suitable to be unusual in 2020!).

Establishing the Tournament Field

For followers of college basketball, the weekly updates from ESPN’s Joe Lunardi in the form of ‘Bracketology‘ is the gold standard. Dismayed with the premature end of the 2019-20 season, Lunardi satisfied the curiosity of fans across the country to outline what he thought the bracket would have been if the tournament started that day, which you can see here:

Again, a historic year for Dayton and they’re the ones you feel the worst for that this tournament was canceled. But this is the field that’s set, so let’s hope they can keep their championship hopes alive by contributing to the future of the energy sector!

Criteria to Select Winners

As noted, we’ll be using a two-step system to identify the energy winner of each matchup.

First, we’re tapping into the 2020 Top Energy Universities Report from the American Energy Society. The American Energy Society is a highly-regarded professional organization built for energy professionals across the entire spectrum of the sector: industry professionals, utility leaders, policy advocates, think tanks, researchers, and– importantly– academics. They seek to bolster the energy industry through unbiased and fact-based dissemination of energy literacy, industry-important news, and recognition of and promotion for the leaders in this space. As a piece of those efforts, they put out this fall their ranking of the U.S. research universities and colleges that have notable energy initiatives, categorizing them into the following categories based on the prominence, esteem, and importance of those programs:

• The Ten Elites;
• The Influencers; and
• The Contributors.

This annual report that highlights the best and brightest universities for anyone looking to really make a splash in the energy industry is a critical tool, and for the sake of crowning an NCAA Champion in energy we will assume that in a direct matchup Contributors will beat colleges that didn’t make the list, Influencers will beat Contributors, and the Ten Elites will beat anyone else not in that elite category.

But this list from the American Energy Society isn’t an arbitrary ranking beyond those categorizations, so this process will naturally result in plenty of ties. As a first means to break that tie, this tournament will then move to the Sierra Club Cool Schools Ranking. The Sierra Club publishes an annual ranking called the Cool Schools Ranking to measure which schools are doing the most towards the Sierra Club’s broader sustainability priorities, using data mainly coming from schools voluntarily filling out input forms the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education‘s (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS). The Cool Schools rating gives a score calculated based on questions in this survey about sustainable operations, divestment in school endowment, community engagement on sustainability, and more Any schools that don’t show up on the Cool Schools Ranking will be given a zero for their lack of participation and transparency towards these important topics.

So, for any schools that find themselves on the same ‘tier’ of the Top Energy Universities Report, the tiebreaker will be who scored higher on the Cool School Ranking. If we see a matchup of two schools that don’t show up on the Top Energy Universities Report and also aren’t ranked on the Cool Schools ranking, we’ll deem that matchup a forfeit for both clubs and their next round opponent will automatically advance. These schools should reflect on why they aren’t doing more to promote a clean energy present and future and then maybe come back next year! And if there happens to be a tie using these two rankings, tie will go to the higher seed– see, basketball prowess does come into play!

So,  you may be wondering, why this order of the rankings? Why should a school that is higher on the Top Energy Universities Report necessarily be ranked higher than a school that has a better Cool Schools Ranking from better divestment from fossil fuels, energy efficiency results, etc.? The way I see it, the schools that are listed highly on the Top Energy Universities Report have been determined by the energy industry itself, via the American Energy Society, to be contributing more to the clean energy future of the country and even the planet. By training the next generation of energy professionals, researching and developing the technology that will make the energy transition possible, and advancing all associated science, the ripple effect from these schools will be way more impactful than simply the (still important) energy-efficient activities on campus today. As such, these schools that are laying the foundation will be duly rewarded in this tournament that they’re surely reading about now and celebrating in their Deans’ Offices.

Playing out the Tournament

I’ve uploaded the scores for each team in the tournament and put in in this linked Google Spreadsheet.  Click there if you want to jump to see how the whole field plays out, keep reading to go region by region:

In the Midwest region, we see some Contributors in (1) Kansas, (8) Houston, (9) Marquette, (5) Auburn, (6) Iowa, and (10) Arizona State. Most of these schools take that ranking and advance to the second round, except in the Houston vs. Marquette matchup where Houston wins thanks to their 66.48 score on the Cool Schools Ranking while Marquette needs to get it together and participate in next year’s Cool Schools Ranking.

This region also has three Influencers in (4) Wisconsin, (3) Duke, and (10) Arizona State. Through the region, though, Arizona State takes both of them down thanks to their admirable 89.31 score on the Cool School Ranking–  the 4th highest ranking of any school in the 312 ranked schools! Way to go Arizona State, that’s admirable and worthy of their Final Four bid.

Next is the East Region:

We have a pretty stacked region here, with 5 Contributors, 4 Influencers, and 1 Elite, not to mention half of the field being ranked on the Cool Schools Ranking. In this murderer’s row, we see one Influencer (UCLA) losing in the first round along with 1 Contributor (Florida). But clearly, Penn State was underseeded in this tournament because no one stood a chance against the region’s only Elite school– paving their way to the Final Four.

In the West Region, the lineup only gets stronger:

In a matchup of two Contributors in BYU and Indiana, the Hoosiers’ participation in the Cool School ranking takes them through to the second round where they had a bye since Seton Hall and E. Washington both shamefully failed to show up to either of our rankings.  but then Indiana ran into Texas Tech who is an Influencer who advanced to the Elite Eight against Michigan. Michigan is also an Influencer who had taken down fellow Influencer Yale thanks to a Cool School rating of 66.85, Contributor Oregon, and another Influencer in LSU. When Michigan’s 66.85 was compared with Texas Tech’s 38.28 (#287 out of #312– ouch!), there was no doubt left. Michigan took its challenging path all the way to lock up the 3rd Final Four Spot.

Leaving us with the South region:

As a proud graduate of Virginia, I momentarily had to consider changing the methodology for this whole exercise when I saw the Hoos would be knocked out in the first round, but my dedication to the future of energy held strong, and I have to hold my alma mater accountable– why aren’t you participating in the Cool School Rankings, Virginia?!

So with the reigning National Champions out, the region was wide open, and it came down to the 3 influencers in Illinois, Michigan State, and Ohio State. Via an impressive 70.92 in the Cool School Ranking, Illinois advance to their 6th Final Four.

In fact, all of the teams that reached the Final Four via our Energy-focused criteria are teams that have made Final Fours in the past. Maybe that’s saying something– if you’re looking to get over the basketball hump, start investing in your energy R&D, teams!

So, let’s take a quick look at our Final Four:

Illinois: The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign was recognized by the American Energy Society for their Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment and their incubator network, which led to peer evaluation that deemed them “fast becoming a model program for sustainability.” That was good enough for their Influencer status.

Ohio State: Similarly, Ohio State University was recognized for its Sustainability Institute and Incubator Endeavor Center, calling for them to be reviewed as a school that “addresses the entire circular energy economy: land, water, and energy.” Influencer and Final Four team as well!

Michigan: Not to be outdone by their heated rival Ohio State, the University of Michigan boasts their Energy Institute, Graham Sustainability Institute, and Incubator Desai, and is known for specializing in research “that advances vehicle electrification, from transportation to batteries…and engages almost any topic on a path to zero.” Good enough for Influencer status as well.

But…

Penn State: No one else stood a chance against Penn State, deemed one of the Ten Elites by the American Energy Society’s report. Penn State earned this recognition for their Institute of Energy and the Environment, EMS Energy Institute, Incubator, and Invent Penn State. Peers in the field noted that Penn State does “great work from energy supply and systems to climate change, as well as water and biological systems.” They were the only Elite that made the tournament field, so it was theirs to win the whole time.

Congratulations Penn State! Drop the confetti!

And thanks so much to the American Energy Society and the Sierra Club for doing this important work to recognize the schools across the country that are prioritizing energy, climate, and the environment. It’s hard to imagine a more important and critical topic on which to be training the leaders, scientists, and citizens of tomorrow, and if this type of recognition motivates more university funding to go towards these critical programs, then we want to amplify those voices!

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To read more insights into the politics of energy, check out these previous articles: War on Coal, Ugly Wind Turbines, and Chinese Climate Hoaxes: The Sad! Story Conveyed Through Nine Years of Trump Tweeting About Energy, Tackling Climate Change: Individual Actions and Policy Priorities According to the Top Thought Leaders Across the Country, and Climate Change Policy Measures: Identifying Priorities, Particularly Outside of the Usual Suspects.

About the author: Matt Chester is an energy analyst in Orlando FL, studied engineering and science & technology policy at the University of Virginia, and operates this blog and website to share news, insights, and advice in the fields of energy policy, energy technology, and more. For more quick hits in addition to posts on this blog, follow him on Twitter @ChesterEnergy.