Best, Dennis V.

Den­nis has focused his career on tech­nol­ogy and sus­tain­abil­ity pol­icy in emerg­ing and devel­op­ing economies. His research inter­ests include tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion pol­icy and impacts to resource and rural devel­op­ment, tech­nol­ogy trans­fer and the polit­i­cal econ­omy of land use man­age­ment. He has led pro­grams with the Paris based Inter­na­tional Energy Agency, as an offi­cial of the OECD, work­ing with emerg­ing economies on energy tech­nol­ogy pol­icy and con­tribut­ing to the Agency’s analy­sis of energy, envi­ron­ment and cli­mate poli­cies (specif­i­cally work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tively with China and other tran­si­tion economies in explor­ing long-​​term clean energy options, includ­ing advanced bioen­ergy, car­bon seques­tra­tion and neg­a­tive emis­sions sys­tems.) Prior to liv­ing in Berke­ley, he spent five years in France, and seven years in Bei­jing, China – advis­ing gov­ern­ment and indus­trial clients on sus­tain­abil­ity and tech­nol­ogy deploy­ment ini­tia­tives. He holds a BA in polit­i­cal sci­ence (inter­na­tional rela­tions) and a con­cen­tra­tion in East Asian stud­ies from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les (UCLA).

Ameli, Nadia

For my web­site, click here.

I am cur­rently work­ing as Senior Researcher Asso­ciate at UCL Insti­tute for Sus­tain­able Resources  where I lead the finance research area of the GREEN-​​WIN project. I focus on cli­mate and sus­tain­abil­ity finance poli­cies and gov­er­nance arrange­ments in order to con­tribute to over­com­ing finan­cial bar­ri­ers to mit­i­ga­tion and adaptation.

Before join­ing UCL, I worked for the OECD (Green Growth Unit, Eco­nom­ics Depart­ment) as Marie-​​Curie Fel­low, a two-​​year research grant funded by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. At the OECD I analysed the effec­tive­ness of energy poli­cies to boost energy invest­ments in Europe. Prior to that, I worked for research cen­ters (FEEM and ICCG) and insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Ital­ian Asso­ci­a­tion Energy Eco­nom­ics, where I was respon­si­ble for the Eco­nomic area (2009–2013).

Dur­ing my PhD, I was vis­it­ing scholar at the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab, UC Berke­ley under the super­vi­sion of Prof. Daniel Kam­men (2010–2011). I have worked on a range of novel ways to over­come the first-​​investment costs of energy effi­ciency and renew­able energy.

I got my PhD in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion at Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­sity of Marche and Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (co-​​tutorship of doc­toral the­sis) with a focus on energy financ­ing pol­icy. My research inter­ests include renew­able and energy effi­ciency deploy­ment, cli­mate finance and energy pol­icy.

Sustainable Housing in French Polynesia

A household carbon footprint calculator for islands: Case study of the United States Virgin Islands

Bolliger, Ian

Ian is a National Defense Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Grad­u­ate Fel­low in the Energy and Resources Group and a mem­ber of the inau­gural “Envi­ron­ment and Soci­ety: Data Sci­ence for the 21^st Cen­tury” National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Research Trainee­ship (NRT) cohort. His research inter­ests lie at the inter­sec­tion of energy sys­tems, cli­mate change adap­ta­tion, and global health. He is a mem­ber of the Next Gen­er­a­tion Ecosys­tem Exper­i­ments Arc­tic team, inves­ti­gat­ing bio­geo­chem­i­cal fac­tors gov­ern­ing energy fluxes in arc­tic tun­dra envi­ron­ments from the plant scale to the model grid-​​cell scale. He is also inter­ested in devel­op­ing bet­ter tools for char­ac­ter­iz­ing sea­sonal snow­pack vari­a­tion, in order to improve fore­casts of stream­flow, water avail­abil­ity, and hydropower pro­duc­tion. Ian serves as project man­ager for Tiny House in My Back­yard, a stu­dent project to design and build mobile, afford­able, and sus­tain­able net-​​zero energy hous­ing on the Berke­ley Global Cam­pus. Prior to arriv­ing at UC Berke­ley, he received his BA from Har­vard Uni­ver­sity in Applied Math­e­mat­ics and spent three years mod­el­ing trends in global injury rates at the Insti­tute for Health Met­rics and Eval­u­a­tion. Out­side of acad­e­mia, Ian is a mem­ber of the Tahoe Back­coun­try Ski Patrol, and he writes about moun­tain adven­tures and envi­ron­men­tal issues on his blog at TheIn​er​tia​.com.

Reilly-​​Moman, Jessica

Jes­sica Reilly who is cur­rently sup­ported by a Ful­bright Fel­low­ship to study coastal cli­mate change in Mex­ico, has now also been awarded the Insti­tute of Cur­rent World Affairs Fel­low­ship.  Over the next two years, Jes­sica and her part­ner Josh Moman will sail the Pacific coast of Cen­tral Amer­ica, cross through the Panama canal, and move into the Caribbean to explore the region by way of the ocean, look­ing at cli­mate change. She will use her map­ping expe­ri­ence to gather data and build maps show­ing vul­ner­a­bil­ity to sea level rise for each coun­try. By sus­tain­ably har­ness­ing wind and sun to travel, Jes­sica hopes to access remote loca­tions, share the ocean-​​bound expe­ri­ence of local com­mu­ni­ties, and lis­ten to and doc­u­ment sto­ries of cli­mate adap­ta­tion at the shores of Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean with words, images, and video.

Kunkel, Cathy

Kunkel is the co-​​author of Moun­tain State Maneu­ver: AEP and FirstEn­ergy try to stick ratepay­ers with risky coal plants and tes­ti­fied for the West Vir­ginia Cit­i­zen Action Group in recent AEP and FirstEn­ergy cases. She has pub­lished arti­cles regard­ing the design and imple­men­ta­tion of car­bon cap and div­i­dend poli­cies and cre­ated guides for local gov­ern­ments regard­ing energy efficiency.

Kunkel grad­u­ated summa cum laude from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity and received her B.A. in physics in 2006. As a Churchill Scholar, Kunkel com­pleted her Mas­ter of Advanced Study from the Depart­ment of Applied Math­e­mat­ics and The­o­ret­i­cal Physics from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity. Cathy was a Ph.D. stu­dent at the Energy and Resource Group at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berkeley.

The Eco-​​Block Project

Research Moti­va­tion

1. How to make mil­lions of old, inef­fi­cient homes part of a clean-​​air, low-​​carbon & low resource-​​use future?
2. How can block-​​scale solu­tions enable bet­ter climate-​​change adap­ta­tion & response strate­gies than indi­vid­ual, home solutions?
3. How do you get block-​​scale inhab­i­tant buy-​​in, and sup­port from util­i­ties, stage agen­cies and the clean­tech sector?

Hypoth­e­sis:

• The block-​​scale is con­sid­er­ably more effi­cient & cost-​​effective than the indi­vid­ual house-​​scale in achiev­ing resource effi­cien­cies, and takes advan­tage of emerg­ing energy gen­er­a­tion leg­is­la­tion and infor­ma­tion systems.

Pre­sump­tion:

• The block-​​scale aggre­gates the flows across mul­ti­ple units, enabling greater effi­cien­cies and economies of scale

EcoBlock Project:

• Test & bench­mark results in real-​​time, with true case-​​control capac­ity via a sister-​​block.

Urban Block Re-​​Purposing

Design Objec­tive: Social & Tech­no­log­i­cal POV

1. peo­ple + energy + water + waste­water ==>       low­er­ing resource end-​​use in the built environment

1. design & imple­ment a pilot around neigh­bor­hood engagement
2. demon­strate effi­cient, func­tion­ing block-​​scale energy, water & waste­water treatment-​​and-​​reuse plat­form & retro­fit process
3. pro­to­type & blue­print to repli­cate, improve & scale-​​up.

Design ele­ments for resource-​​use efficiencies:

1. Block-​​scale retro­fit: opti­mized inte­gra­tion & operation
2. com­mu­nal solar & smart grid è elec­tric­ity, stor­age & EVs
3. com­mu­nal waste re-​​use è bio-​​methane for cook­ing load, irri­ga­tion & com­post for local, sus­tain­able food systems
4. Home-​​scale retro­fit: whole-​​house energy + water solutions
5. weath­er­iza­tion, EE appli­ances + light­ing, smart controls
6. grey-​​water re-​​use + water-​​conserving fixtures
7. Insti­tu­tional path­ways: reg­u­la­tory maneu­ver­ing & financing

Urban Block Re-​​Purposing

Elec­tric­ity

Water

Fund­ing Needs

• $8M over two/​three years, from mul­ti­ple fund­ing sources (cor­po­rate, phil­an­thropic, etc.):

- Micro­grid + stor­age $1.5 mil­lion /​ Waste-​​water $.9 mil­lion /​ Water $.3 mil­lion /​ Contingency$.3 million

Con­clu­sions

• Rad­i­cally improve build­ing per­for­mance (energy+water) as urban adap­tive response to cli­mate change
• Social response & inte­gra­tion of community’s wishes
• Legal & reg­u­la­tory path­ways & advocacy
• Finan­cial inno­va­tions based on ‘avoided costs’
• New ways to com­mer­cial­ize green water sys­tems, clean energy tech­nolo­gies, microgrid–storage, DR, sys­tems con­trols, FDD, behav­ior ana­lyt­ics, etc.

Fingerman, Kevin

http://​www2​.hum​boldt​.edu/​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​/​f​a​c​u​l​t​y​-​a​n​d​-​s​t​a​f​f​/​d​r​.​-​k​e​v​i​n​-​f​i​n​g​e​r​man

My research is dri­ven by an inter­est in the broad-​​based envi­ron­men­tal and social impacts of energy tech­nolo­gies and poli­cies. This work seeks to make explicit the trade-​​offs that are often present between energy secu­rity, cli­mate, and other impor­tant social and envi­ron­men­tal objec­tives. In par­tic­u­lar, I have worked on issues at the water/​energy nexus, eval­u­at­ing the “water foot­prints” of a range of energy tech­nolo­gies. Water and energy are inex­tri­ca­bly linked, with elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion sec­ond only to agri­cul­ture in total global water with­drawals. This con­nec­tion is par­tic­u­larly acute for bioen­ergy, as it is by far the most water-​​intensive of all energy types. My research has employed life cycle assess­ment (LCA), agro-​​climatic mod­el­ing, and GIS tools to show that bio­fu­els rou­tinely require sev­eral orders of mag­ni­tude more water than petro­leum fuels while often pro­vid­ing only mod­est cli­mate benefit.

I approach my research with an eye toward imple­men­ta­tion. This has led me to work with Cal­i­for­nia reg­u­la­tory agen­cies on fuel pol­icy for­mu­la­tion and to serve as vice-​​chair of the Geneva-​​based Round­table on Sus­tain­able Bio­fu­els. Prior to com­ing to HSU, I worked in Rome for the United Nations Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion. While there, I pro­vided sup­port to the gov­ern­ments of Indone­sia and Colom­bia in eval­u­at­ing the envi­ron­men­tal and social impacts of their bio­fuel indus­tries, and in for­mu­lat­ing poli­cies to address those impacts.

Cruetzig , Felix

Dr. Felix Creutzig is head of the work­ing group Land Use, Infra­struc­tures and Trans­port. He is lead author of the IPCC’s Fifth Assess­ment Report and was lead ana­lyst of the Global Energy Assess­ment. Felix Creutzig teaches courses about cli­mate change and infra­struc­tures at Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­sität Berlin. His research focuses on:

•    Con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing and quan­ti­fy­ing GHG emis­sions of cities world-​​wide
•    Assess­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for GHG mit­i­ga­tion of cities world-​​wide
•    Build­ing mod­els of sus­tain­able urban form and trans­port
•    Land rents as a com­ple­ment for financ­ing sus­tain­able infra­struc­tures
•    Ana­lyz­ing the role of cap­i­tal stocks and infra­struc­tures for cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion
•    Land use-​​mediated uncer­tainty in inte­grated assess­ments, par­tic­u­larly those related to bioenergy

Since 2009 Felix Creutzig is also group leader at the Depart­ment of the Eco­nom­ics of Cli­mate Change at Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­sität Berlin.  He was a post­doc fel­low at the Energy and Resources Group at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, col­lab­o­rat­ing with Dan Kam­men, Lee Schip­per and Eliz­a­beth Deakin, and the Energy Foun­da­tion China in Bei­jing. Felix Creutzig received his PhD in Com­pu­ta­tional Neu­ro­science from Humboldt-​​Universität zu Berlin, and holds a Mas­ter of Advanced Stud­ies (Path III in Math­e­mat­ics) from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity, UK.