Rate My Professor Haibo Zhai

Zhai's research focuses on carbon capture, utilization, and storage; hydrogen energy; bioenergy; nuclear energy; and the energy-water nexus under carbon constraints for climate change mitigation. His contributions to carbon capture and storage have informed U.S. national rulemaking on power sector carbon dioxide emissions and appear in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. He has reviewed for the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and agencies in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Poland. Zhai is a lead author for the 2027 IPCC Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, serves on the advisory board of iScience, and is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was an appointed member of the Transportation Research Board’s Standing Committee on Transportation and Air Quality from 2011 to 2020. Notable publications include "Comparative life cycle water use assessment of diverse hydrogen production pathways" (Environmental Science & Technology, 2025), "Unlocking potential for low-carbon hydrogen production from U.S. natural gas resources" (Environmental Science & Technology, 2024), "Technological evolution of large-scale blue hydrogen production toward the U.S. Hydrogen Energy Earthshot" (Nature Communications, 2024), and "Understanding the complexity of existing fossil-fuel power plant decarbonization" (iScience, 2022).