Dr. Jennifer Clemons Coauthors Energy Textbook

February 28, 2024

Dr. Jennifer Clemons, energy technologies department chair, has coauthored an energy textbook after being presented the opportunity through an outreach effort to secure more authoritative and knowledgeable female authors in the energy field.

The sixth edition of Energy: Its Use and the Environment, published by Cengage, was originally developed for a one-semester general education physics class, before being updated for use in physics, physical science, and environmental courses. The update expands the areas of energy mechanics and physics into two separate chapters, both authored by Clemons.

She also wrote a new chapter on energy storage, fuel cells, and electric vehicles. Energy trends and usages have changed significantly since the last edition was published in 2013, which presented a challenge for the first-time author.

“I revised the ‘Energy from Fossil Fuels’ chapter as a test chapter, and I wasn’t prepared for the number of edits required, particularly regarding coal usage in the United States,” said Clemons. “Since the last edition, we have seen major shifts in energy usage in the U.S. switching from coal to increased reliance on natural gas and renewables. Because of that change, all of the numbers and trends needed to be updated.”

In all, Clemons authored and edited seven chapters in the new edition of the textbook, which took her about six months to complete. To her surprise, writing was not the most difficult part of the process.

“The most challenging part was the formatting, creating, and updating the figures and images,” Clemons said. “The earlier editions were in black and white, so this new edition has all new color images and figures.”

Despite the challenges and the time commitment, Clemons has already agreed to work on the next update.

“It was pretty cool when they sent me a box of books with my name listed inside,” she said.