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

Sustainability at the CLEW Nexus in Latin America

Emerg­ing economies will account for more than 90 per­cent of new energy-​​generation capac­ity by 2035, and Latin Amer­ica is no excep­tion to this trend. In the last 40 years, the region’s pri­mary energy demand has more than dou­bled. In a global envi­ron­ment of increas­ingly volatile fuel prices, emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, and climate-​​change impacts, the con­tin­ued increase in demand presents chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties to Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean. To man­age the next phase of devel­op­ment, the region’s gov­ern­ments will need to develop new energy sources and pay more atten­tion to sustainability.

Kam­men and stu­dents (Juan Pablo Car­vallo, Diego Ponce de Leon Barido and Rebekah Shirley) dis­cussed strate­gies to design and eval­u­ate pro­grams for man­ag­ing energy and other resources in the region both as a speaker panel for the Cen­ter for Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies at UC Berke­ley and in a new pub­li­ca­tion on inte­grated tools for build­ing low-​​carbon economies in Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean.

Our researchers also delve into the spe­cific case study of Nicaragua along with Ful­bright Nexus Fel­lows 2012–2013. This group explored three case stud­ies at the national, regional and com­mu­nity lev­els in Nicaragua: bread­fruit and food inse­cu­rity; rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing on the Pacific coast; and, bio-​​energy pro­duc­tion from agri­cul­tural waste. This research shows the increas­ing need to see the cli­mate, land, energy, and water (CLEW) sec­tors as inter­re­lated, and to proac­tively plan pol­icy with these inter­con­nec­tions in mind. Nicaragua’s oppor­tu­ni­ties for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment within a CLEW nexus frame­work are suf­fi­ciently large that the coun­try could well become an exam­ple of wise nat­ural resource use for Latin Amer­ica and the world.

Press release on our work with bio­gas digesters in Mexico: 

Fusion, March 24, 2014. These stu­dents have bold ideas on how to make renew­able energy more acces­si­ble. 

Arti­cle, full video and pho­tos from our panel dis­cus­sion with CLAS:

Cen­ter for Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies. Feb­ru­ary 10, 2014. Sus­tain­able Energy Sys­tems in Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean. 

Read more about our involve­ment in the Ful­bright Regional Net­work for Applied Research (NEXUS) Pro­gram 2012–2013.

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.

Tiny House in My Backyard

Tiny House Competition

This event is open to all col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties in Cal­i­for­nia. Par­tic­i­pa­tion pro­motes an inter­est in energy con­ser­va­tion, energy effi­ciency and green build­ing and solar tech­nolo­gies. The Energy & Tech­nol­ogy Cen­ter and Com­mu­nity Solar are proud to spon­sor this event.

“The Tiny House Com­pe­ti­tion – Build Small and Win Big” is a new com­pe­ti­tion in the Sacra­mento region, chal­leng­ing col­le­giate teams to design and build net-​​zero, tiny solar houses. The event is antic­i­pated to be held in the fall of 2016 and is spear­headed by SMUD’s Energy & Tech­nol­ogy Cen­ter and Com­mu­nity Solar®program.

The Com­pe­ti­tion
This event is mod­eled after the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s Solar Decathlon. An edu­ca­tor or other school admin­is­tra­tor will men­tor each team. Dur­ing the two years lead­ing up to the event, stu­dents will design and build the energy-​​efficient houses. A stipend between $3,000 — $6,000 will be provided.

Awards
Dur­ing the week of com­pe­ti­tion, stu­dents will exhibit their houses to the pub­lic, judges and the media. The ten cat­e­gories of the decathlon include archi­tec­tural design, liv­abil­ity, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, afford­abil­ity, energy effi­ciency and bal­ance, appli­ance load, technology/​electrical and mechan­i­cal sys­tems, trans­porta­tion, sus­tain­abil­ity and doc­u­men­ta­tion. On the last day, teams will be awarded tro­phies and mon­e­tary prizes.

Dead­line to apply
The dead­line to apply for the 2015 com­pe­ti­tion has passed.

Work­shop date
A Tiny House Work­shop is sched­uled for Novem­ber 14 & 15, 2014

Con­tacts
Suzette Bien­v­enue, Energy & Tech­nol­ogy Cen­ter
Suzette.​Bienvenue@​smud.​org

Brent Sloan, Com­mu­nity Solar
Brent.​Sloan@​smud.​org

Down­loads

• Tiny House Com­pe­ti­tion flyer
• Tiny House Com­pe­ti­tion FAQs

Siegner, Alana (Laney)

Alana is a first-​​year Master’s stu­dent in the Energy and Resources Group. Prior to arriv­ing at ERG, she received her under­grad­u­ate degree from Tufts Uni­ver­sity (2012) in Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies and Inter­na­tional Rela­tions. She served as an Ameri­Corps National Teach­ing Fel­low for two years at the Dever-​​McCormack School in Dorch­ester, MA, teach­ing 8^th grade aca­d­e­mic enrich­ment classes as well as a high school prepa­ra­tion cur­ricu­lum that she devel­oped for pub­lic schools across the Cit­i­zen Schools net­work. At ERG, her research inter­ests focus on trans­lat­ing energy and resource issues into secondary-​​school-​​level sci­ence lessons in order to pro­mote eco­log­i­cal intel­li­gence and cli­mate lit­er­acy goals. In addi­tion to work­ing on envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion efforts locally, Alana is part of an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team of grad­u­ate stu­dents work­ing to design and build a net-​​zero-​​energy tiny house for the Sacra­mento Munic­i­pal Util­ity Dis­trict (SMUD) Tiny House Com­pe­ti­tion. Part of the tiny house project involves lead­ing a “DeCal” course for UC Berke­ley under­grad­u­ates, teach­ing stu­dents how to install solar pan­els and put into prac­tice green build­ing tech­niques in order to pro­mote fur­ther campus-​​wide car­bon neu­tral hous­ing projects. The tiny house is intended to pro­duce a por­tion of its own food and recycle/​treat grey­wa­ter onsite in addi­tion to meet­ing its own energy needs.  The award win­ning Tiny House web­site is: THIMBY.

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.

Bailis, Robert

Rob is inter­ested in sus­tain­abil­ity, resource use, and envi­ron­men­tal change in the devel­op­ing world. He explores these issues prin­ci­pally, though not exclu­sively, in the con­text of energy. He became inter­ested in the inter­sec­tion of energy, soci­ety, and envi­ron­ment while work­ing as a teacher in the US Peace Corps in a remote com­mu­nity in north­west­ern Kenya. He uses an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach that places equal empha­sis on qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive meth­ods across a range of scales, from local to regional and global. Fol­low this link for more infor­ma­tion about his past and cur­rent research.

https://​envi​ron​ment​.yale​.edu/​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​/​b​a​i​l​is/

Ezzati, Majid

My research focuses on expo­sure to, and health effects of, envi­ron­men­tal, behav­ioural, nutri­tional, and meta­bolic risk fac­tors and their inter­ven­tions at the pop­u­la­tion level.  The research activ­i­ties rou­tinely com­bine con­cepts, data, and meth­ods from a range of envi­ron­men­tal, health, and quan­ti­ta­tive sci­ences with a sys­tems per­spec­tive.  We col­lect and ana­lyze pri­mary field data on envi­ron­men­tal risk fac­tors (pri­mar­ily air pol­lu­tion).  We also develop and apply ana­lyt­i­cal mod­els to com­bi­na­tions of pri­mary and sec­ondary data to esti­mate health effects of risk fac­tor expo­sures and inter­ven­tions.  You can learn about our past and ongo­ing stud­ies, and see their results and pub­li­ca­tions, through the Envi­ron­ment and Global Health Research Group page.

Household Energy, Cookstoves and Health

Bio­mass fuels (wood, char­coal, dung, and agri­cul­tural residues) are vital to basic wel­fare and eco­nomic activ­ity in devel­op­ing nations, espe­cially in sub-​​Saharan Africa (SSA), where they meet more than 90% of house­hold energy needs in many nations. Com­bus­tion of bio­fu­els emit pol­lu­tants that cur­rently cause over 1.6 mil­lion annual deaths glob­ally (400,000 in SSA. Because most of these deaths are among chil­dren and women, bio­mass use is directly or indi­rectly related to mul­ti­ple Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals (MDGs), includ­ing envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity, reduc­ing child mor­tal­ity, and gen­der equity.

Tak­ing indoor air pol­lu­tion mea­sure­ments in rural Kenya

Mak­ing char­coal, Kenya

Women gath­er­ing fire­wood, Zombe, Kenya

Sustainable Energy for Kosovo and Southeast Europe

Energy effi­ciency, renew­able energy, and smart sys­tems inte­gra­tion pro­vides a rapid path away from local and glob­ally pol­lut­ing energy sys­tems.  This gen­eral assess­ment is par­tic­u­larly true for impov­er­ished areas or those impacted by con­flict.  This is the case because the mix­ture of energy effi­ciency and renew­able energy can gen­er­ally be deployed far more rapidly and in more dis­trib­uted a fash­ion than tra­di­tional, cen­tral­ized, energy systems.

Kosovo is par­tic­u­larly in need, and par­tic­u­larly amenable to this sort of “rapid and green” devel­op­ment plan.  This project, started to iden­tify and quan­tify oppor­tu­ni­ties to choose a clean path instead of an ongo­ing fix­a­tion on coal, has now spread to exam­ine both national and regional oppor­tu­ni­ties in South­east Europe.