Martha Hoffmann

In her doc­toral stud­ies in Ger­many, Martha is work­ing on the real­iza­tion of a socially just and accepted energy tran­si­tion. For this, she plans to add social and eco­log­i­cal aspects to the cur­rent tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­i­cal focus within energy tran­si­tion plan­ning processes. The devel­op­ment of an inte­grated energy sys­tem model will assess the impact of energy mar­ket reforms on com­mu­nity and house­hold level as well as their impli­ca­tions for dis­trib­u­tive jus­tice. Her inter­ests, broadly, encom­pass, energy jus­tice, the energy tran­si­tion, energy mod­el­ing, and Open Source meth­ods and strategies.

Her work is super­vised by Prof. Dr. Pao-​​Yu Oei from the Depart­ment of Energy and Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment at Europa-​​Universität Flens­burg (EUF).

Martha wrote her mas­ters degree the­sis  at the TU Berlin in the research group Off-​​Grid Sys­tems at the Reiner Lemoine Insti­tut and devel­oped the sim­u­la­tion tool Off­grid­ders, which sizes elec­tri­fi­ca­tion options. Fol­low­ing  this, from 2019 to 2021, she worked as a researcher at the Reiner Lemoine Insti­tut and was respon­si­ble for the project man­age­ment within the scope of the H2020 research project E-​​LAND, in which RLI devel­ops and applies a sim­u­la­tion tool for sec­tor cou­pled energy sys­tems (Multi-​​Vector Sim­u­la­tor).

Martha’s fel­low­ship is financed through the C-​​BEAR+ project (link: https://reiner-lemoine–insti​tut​.de/​e​n​/​c​-​b​e​ar/) , funded by the Fed­eral Min­istry for Eco­nomic Affairs and Cli­mate Action of Germany.

She will be a vis­it­ing scholar at RAEL for Spring 2023

Con­tact: martha.​hoffmann@​rl-​stiftung.​de

Qin, Guangyu

Guangyu joins us for a year from North China Elec­tric Power Uni­ver­sity, where he has already worked on clean energy mar­kets and wind energy forecasting.

At RAEL (and LBL) he will be work­ing on aggres­sive decar­boniza­tion path­ways for China, and the expan­sion of clean energy ser­vices in heavy industry.

His recent paper on day-​​ahead wind fore­cast­ing is avail­able on the RAEL pub­li­ca­tions pages.  To take a look, click here.

Send him note and wel­come & get to know Guangyu!

Jess Carney

Jess Car­ney is inter­ested in under­stand­ing how sus­tain­able energy inte­gra­tion impacts power grids and elec­tric­ity mar­kets. She received her under­grad­u­ate degree at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity in 2018, where she majored in Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and minored in Applied Math­e­mat­ics and Sta­tis­tics. She has held intern­ships at the Inde­pen­dent Sys­tem Oper­a­tor or New Eng­land (ISO-​​NE), study­ing envi­ron­men­tal pol­icy and its effect on car­bon emis­sions and energy prices, and at the Ver­mont Elec­tric Power Com­pany (VELCO), ana­lyz­ing the impact of high renew­able pen­e­tra­tion on sys­tem sta­bil­ity and inte­grat­ing state renew­able goals into trans­mis­sion plan­ning procedures.

She has wide-​​ranging inter­ests that include renew­able energy inte­gra­tion, grid sta­bil­ity, energy access, and energy lit­er­acy and education.

Nia Novella Jones

A recent grad­u­ate of North­east­ern Uni­ver­sity with a B.S. in Indus­trial Engi­neer­ing with minor in Law & Pub­lic Policy.

I intend to research the inter­sec­tion of renew­able energy tech­nol­ogy, edu­ca­tion, and specif­i­cally prison edu­ca­tion pro­grams focused on STEM. Ulti­mately, my goal is to work with for­mally incar­cer­ated cit­i­zens as they pre­pare for re-​​entry into soci­ety. I aspire to work with renew­able energy projects in Africa to ful­fill my goal as devel­op­ing into a World Class “Energy” Engineer.

Yin Hao

Hao is a post­doc­toral researcher in RAEL as well as in the Depart­ment of Earth Sys­tem Sci­ence at Tsinghua Uni­ver­sity. She holds a double-​​degree Ph.D. from Bei­jing Nor­mal Uni­ver­sity and Aal­borg Uni­ver­sity, spe­cial­iz­ing in envi­ron­men­tal eco­nom­ics and envi­ron­men­tal plan­ning respec­tively. Hao’s research applies inter­dis­ci­pli­nary meth­ods to ana­lyze the pol­lu­tion sources, health impacts and exter­nal cost of air pol­lu­tion in China.

Hao is deeply inter­ested in envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies and their effec­tive­ness at bal­anc­ing eco­nomic growth with envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity. She is cur­rently col­lab­o­rat­ing with Pro­fes­sor Zhang Qiang, Pro­fes­sor Liu Zhu and Pro­fes­sor Daniel Kam­men. Her post­doc­toral research inves­ti­gates energy con­sump­tion in devel­op­ing coun­tries and its impacts on CO₂ emis­sions and human health.

She is lead researcher in the UC Berkeley-​​Tsinghua U-​​Duke Uni­ver­sity part­ner­ship on the health impacts of decar­boniza­tion of the power sec­tor in China, Cal­i­for­nia, and elsewhere.

For her pub­li­ca­tions: click here.

Cur­rent posi­tion:

Post­doc­toral Research Fel­low, Uni­ver­sity of British Columbia

Castellanos, Sergio

Ser­gio Castel­lanos is a Berke­ley Energy & Cli­mate Insti­tute – Tec­nológico de Mon­ter­rey (BECI–ITESM) Energy Fel­low work­ing at the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab with Prof. Dan Kam­men. His research focuses on expand­ing an opti­miza­tion model –SWITCH– to Mex­ico to deter­mine the opti­mal invest­ments in new gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion assets. Through his research, he also ana­lyzes the man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­ity of pho­to­voltaic solar tech­nolo­gies in Mex­ico. Pre­vi­ously, in his Ph.D. stud­ies (Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing ’15, MIT) he char­ac­ter­ized the elec­tri­cal impact of struc­tural defects in silicon-​​based solar cells. He enjoys read­ing, explor­ing new hob­bies, and learn­ing more about the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­ogy, busi­ness, and pol­icy in renew­able energy.

Cur­rent posi­tion:

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Civil, Archi­tec­tural and Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­sity of Texas, Austin

Actualizing the Encyclical Laudato Si

RAEL has part­nered with both the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­emy of Sci­ences and a num­ber of other groups world­wide that are engag­ing the Vat­i­can and inter­ested part­ners to uti­lize the dia­log around The Encycli­cal to pro­mote equity, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and cli­mate protection.

Events in this ini­tia­tive include:

RAEL and Vat­i­can pub­li­ca­tions such as:

Novem­ber 2, 2016 roundtable:

Actu­al­iz­ing the Vision of Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Com­mon Home

Kam­men, D. M., Alstone, P. and Ger­shen­son, D. (2014) “Energy for sus­tain­able and equi­table devel­op­ment,” Sus­tain­able Human­ity, Sus­tain­able Nature: Our Respon­si­bil­ity, Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­emy of Sci­ences, Extra Series 41, Vat­i­can City 2014 Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­emy of Social Sci­ences, Acta 20, Vat­i­can City 2014

Videos:

Cli­mate Change, Con­sumerism, and the Pope

Carrara, Samuel

Samuel Car­rara holds a Mas­ter Degree cum laude in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing (Major: Energy and Mechan­i­cal Plants) and a PhD in Energy and Envi­ron­men­tal Tech­nolo­gies, both from the Uni­ver­sity of Berg­amo.
After work­ing as an engi­neer in the gas tur­bine field, he is now junior researcher at FEEM. His main research inter­ests include renew­able ener­gies, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, energy poli­cies, cli­mate and energy eco­nom­ics, advanced energy systems.

Shaw, Brittany

Power system balancing for deep decarbonization of the electricity sector

We explore the oper­a­tions, bal­anc­ing require­ments, and costs of the West­ern Elec­tric­ity Coor­di­nat­ing Coun­cil power sys­tem under a strin­gent green­house gas emis­sion reduc­tion tar­get. We include sen­si­tiv­i­ties for tech­nol­ogy costs and avail­abil­ity, fuel prices and emis­sions, and demand pro­file. Meet­ing an emis­sions tar­get of 85% below 1990 lev­els is fea­si­ble across a range of assump­tions, but the cost of achiev­ing the goal and the tech­nol­ogy mix are uncer­tain. Deploy­ment of solar pho­to­voltaics is the main dri­ver of stor­age deploy­ment: the diur­nal peri­od­ic­ity of solar energy avail­abil­ity results in oppor­tu­ni­ties for daily arbi­trage that stor­age tech­nolo­gies with sev­eral hours of dura­tion are well suited to pro­vide. Wind out­put exhibits sea­sonal vari­a­tions and requires stor­age with a large energy sub­com­po­nent to avoid cur­tail­ment. The com­bi­na­tion of low-​​cost solar tech­nol­ogy and advanced bat­tery tech­nol­ogy can pro­vide sub­stan­tial sav­ings through 2050, greatly mit­i­gat­ing the cost of cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion. Pol­icy goals for stor­age deploy­ment should be based on the func­tion stor­age will play on the grid and there­fore incor­po­rate both the power rat­ing and dura­tion of the stor­age sys­tem. These goals should be set as part of over­all port­fo­lio devel­op­ment, as sys­tem flex­i­bil­ity needs will vary with the grid mix.