In Class: Power Transformer

Energy systems program director Leon Liebenberg on African principles, infinite energy and living better

Energy systems program director Leon Liebenberg on African principles, infinite energy and living better

Leon Liebenberg in front of the Talbot Laboratory building

“I ask my students to write about an energy revolution,” says Teaching Professor Leon Liebenberg. (Image by Fred Zwicky)

Our engineering students are technically brilliant. They’re going to be fantastically successful in what they do. But can they reflect? I’m afraid that we’re getting them to think too much and do too much, but feel too little, imagine too little, intuit too little. Are we really giving the students what they deserve? What they need to thrive out there? Not just from an engineering point of view, but from a life point of view. Our thinking seems to be so short-term. What kind of a planet would we like to hand to our great, great, great grandchildren?

I grew up in South Africa. I felt like a tourist—a privileged white man in a country with a majority population of Black people. That’s one of the reasons I left. But certain things keep resonating with me. Like the African principles of “ubuntu” and “ukama.” “Ubuntu” means: “I am because of you. We’re social animals. We need each other.” “Ukama” means: “ubuntu happens on Earth. Let’s make life work on this planet.”

In my class on energy and security, I ask students to write about an energy revolution. What if there was an infinite supply of energy available next year? What would need to be done to get to that stage? What will the major energy source look like three decades from now?

In several of my courses—including energy and sustainability, fluid mechanics and thermodynamics—students frame creative presentations on an energy concept for a high school audience.

Sometimes I touch on really dark issues. I present students with the best science that I can find, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Climate change is here. But I also show them how people are doing the craziest, most imaginative things. As materials science advances, we’re discovering more about quantum mechanics. Things that seemed impossible 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, are now realities that we are testing on this campus, including technologies that may produce cheap, abundant power.

I tell the students: Ask questions. Listen to yourselves. Imagine more. Think crazy. Take two totally disparate ideas and bring them together. Be curious. Be creative. Make connections. How can we live better? Not just you and I together but also with the animals. With the rocks, the soil, the air, the water. That’s all we have. We live on this planet. We are not going to jet off on a rocket to Mars anytime soon. How can we think differently about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it? The ubuntu. The ukama.

Edited and condensed from an interview conducted on May 9