Jim­my Nel­son joined UCS in the fall of 2013 as the Cli­mate and Ener­gy Program’s new Kendall Sci­ence Fel­low and will be work­ing from our Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia office through Novem­ber 2014. Lau­ra Wis­land, senior ener­gy ana­lyst in the Cli­mate and Ener­gy Pro­gram, is his supervisor.

As a Kendall sci­ence fel­low, Jim­my will explore sce­nar­ios for the elec­tric pow­er sys­tem of Cal­i­for­nia and west­ern North Amer­i­ca that increase the amount of clean ener­gy deployed in the region while also reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions from the ener­gy sys­tem. Build­ing on his Ph.D. work, he will use a detailed long-term pow­er sys­tem capac­i­ty plan­ning mod­el called ‘SWITCH’ to base his analy­sis on the capa­bil­i­ties of renew­able elec­tric­i­ty sources to cost-effec­tive­ly meet demand, reli­a­bil­i­ty, clean ener­gy, and green­house gas targets.

Jim­my Nel­son will receive his Ph.D. from the Ener­gy and Resources Group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley in fall 2013. His grad­u­ate work was per­formed in the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (RAEL) under Pro­fes­sor Daniel Kam­men. Dur­ing his time at RAEL, he received a Link Ener­gy Fel­low­ship. Pri­or to join­ing RAEL, he received a M.S. in chem­istry in 2008 and a B.S. in chem­istry with high hon­ors from Haver­ford Col­lege in 2006.

http://​www​.ucsusa​.org/​a​b​o​u​t​/​s​t​a​f​f​/​s​t​a​f​f​/​j​a​m​e​s​-​n​e​l​s​o​n​.​h​t​m​l​#​.​V​P​s​t​d​C​n​t​WZo