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.

A course in Climate Justice

For the UC Berke­ley Cli­mate Jus­tice course, syl­labus, click here.

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

Mozersky, Dave

David Moz­er­sky is the Found­ing Direc­tor of the Pro­gram on Con­flict, Cli­mate Change and Green Devel­op­ment. An expert on Sudan and South Sudan, he has been involved in con­flict pre­ven­tion efforts in Africa since 2001, with a spe­cific inter­est in medi­a­tion, nego­ti­a­tion and peace processes. He has worked with the Inter­na­tional Cri­sis Group, the African Union High-​​​​Level Panel on the Sudans, and Human­ity United, among oth­ers. He has writ­ten exten­sively about the con­flicts and peace­mak­ing efforts in the Horn of Africa, and has tes­ti­fied or pre­sented before the U.S. Sen­ate and House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the Cana­dian Par­lia­ment, and South Sudanese Par­lia­ment. David has authored and co-​​​​authored more than two dozen Inter­na­tional Cri­sis Group reports and brief­ing papers, and his writ­ing has appeared in the Har­vard Inter­na­tional Review, Inter­na­tional Herald-​​​​Tribune, Finan­cial Times-​​​​Europe, and other publications.

Dave now directs Energy Peace Part­ners to put many of the ideas devel­oped in this pro­gram in practice.

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.

Energy Policy and Sector Analysis in the Caribbean 2010 — 2011

Deborah Sunter

Before join­ing RAEL in Octo­ber 2015 Dr. Deb­o­rah A. Sunter was a AAAS Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy Pol­icy Fel­low at the Depart­ment of Energy: Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing Office.

Her inter­ests include renew­able energy sys­tems, advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­niques, and the inter­ac­tion of sci­ence and pol­icy in acad­e­mia, indus­try and government.

Shiraishi, Kenji

Kenji is a Ph.D. stu­dent with the Gold­man School of Pub­lic Pol­icy and a researcher in the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab­o­ra­tory. His cur­rent research inter­ests include empir­i­cal stud­ies and quan­ti­ta­tive mod­el­ing on the effec­tive­ness of renew­able energy poli­cies in devel­op­ing and devel­oped coun­tries for effec­tive deci­sion mak­ing. He is also inter­ested in devel­op­ing bet­ter tools for quan­ti­ta­tive assess­ment of the mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits of cli­mate poli­cies such as energy access, job cre­ation, and tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment and transfer.

Kenji has more than 10 years of pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences in the area of Japan’s and inter­na­tional envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies as a Deputy Direc­tor for Market-​​based Cli­mate Pol­icy of the Japan­ese Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Global Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre Foun­da­tion, etc. For exam­ple, he has spear­headed and man­aged var­i­ous gov­ern­ment energy incen­tive pro­grams for fund­ing energy effi­cient and renew­able energy projects in Japan as well as in South­east Asia and Africa under the Joint Cred­it­ing Mech­a­nism, bilat­eral coop­er­a­tion scheme between 14 coun­tries and Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment. He has also ini­ti­ated and led inter­na­tional coop­er­a­tion ini­tia­tives on envi­ron­men­tal pol­icy plan­ning, capac­ity build­ing, and tech­nol­ogy trans­fer focused on low-​​carbon city devel­op­ment with Japan­ese munic­i­pal­i­ties for Ho Chi Minh City (Viet­nam), Vien­tiane (Lao PDR), and other cities. He has nego­ti­ated at COP 18 and 19 of the UNFCCC as an inter­na­tional nego­tia­tor of the Japan­ese del­e­ga­tion on tech­nol­ogy trans­fer. Out­side of envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies, he is a cre­ator and a lead­ing trainer of pol­icy analy­sis train­ing courses for Japan­ese pol­icy professionals.

He holds an MPP with the Smolen­sky Prize (the Best Advanced Pol­icy Analy­sis (master’s the­sis)) from UC Berke­ley, for which Dan Kam­men was his APA advi­sor.  Kenji has a MEng and a BEng in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­sity of Tokyo.

Clean Energy Solutions for Borneo

Rapid eco­nomic growth sus­tained in South­east Asia through­out the new mil­len­nium has led to a surge in large-​​scale infra­struc­ture projects to facil­i­tate indus­trial pro­duc­tiv­ity and con­sump­tion. The state of Sarawak, located along the north­ern coast of the island of Bor­neo, is the poor­est and most rural state in Malaysia but has long been a focal point for the devel­op­ment of large-​​scale hydro­elec­tric power. At least six dams are sched­uled to be com­pleted in Sarawak by 2020 as part of a high hydro-​​potential cor­ri­dor in cen­tral Sarawak. These forests have undis­puted global and local sig­nif­i­cance eco­log­i­cally, bio­log­i­cally and culturally.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with local grass-​​roots renew­able project devel­op­ers and river pro­tec­tion groups we have explored the poten­tial for clean energy alter­na­tives in the state through an inte­gra­tion of mod­el­ing tools: (a) mod­el­ing long-​​term util­ity scale elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion alter­na­tives in East Malaysia to deter­mine trade-​​offs across dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies; (b) explor­ing the poten­tial for rural com­mu­ni­ties in dam-​​affected areas to sat­isfy energy access needs using local resources; © demon­strat­ing a rapid assess­ment method for esti­mat­ing the impact of mega-​​projects on bio­di­ver­sity. Each of these stud­ies pro­vides infor­ma­tion use­ful to the dis­cus­sion of alter­na­tives and fur­thers the analy­sis of green econ­omy costs and ben­e­fits. Our pub­lished find­ings have influ­enced pol­icy dis­cus­sions at the Min­is­te­r­ial level and a mora­to­rium against the Baram Dam was announced in 2015.

Media cov­er­age of our research and the Baram Dam Moratorium: 

The Bor­neo Project, March 21, 2016 — Fan­tas­tic new video on “Devel­op­ment with­out destruc­tion” in Sarawak.

Mongabay, Octo­ber 20, 2015 — Indige­nous anti-​​dam activists con­verge in Sarawak from around the globe

Sarawak Report, Sep­tem­ber 25, 2015 — BMF Press State­ment: Vic­tory, Mora­to­rium on the Baram Dam in Malaysia

The Bor­neo Post, Sep­tem­ber 27, 2015 — Small is Beau­ti­ful: The Peo­ple Matter

Media cov­er­age of our June 28, 2015 press con­fer­ence in Kuch­ing, Sarawak:

The Bor­neo Post, August 11, 2015 - Ade­nan wants SEB to light up the rural areas

The Malaysian Insider, July 31, 2015 - Ade­nan puts Baram dam on hold, agrees to lis­ten to natives’ grouses

Radio Free Sarawak, July 15, 2015 - “Sjotveit should be out”, say Sarawakians

The Malaysian Insider, July 14, 2015 - Stop Baleh dam ten­der until envi­ron­men­tal study scru­ti­nised, says Sarawak PKR

Mongabay​.com, July 8, 2015 - Sarawak can meet energy needs with­out mega-​​dams: report

BFM 89.9 — The Busi­ness Sta­tion (www​.bfm​.my), Radio and online inter­view, July 3, 2015, Clean energy options in East Malaysia

The Daily Express — East Malaysia, June 30, 2015 - Sarawak Mega Dam Project Study

The Bor­neo Post, June 29, 2015 - Bor­neo May See the End of Mega-​​Dams

The Malaysian Insider, June 29, 2015 - Activists say Ade­nan rethink­ing mega dams pol­icy in Sarawak

Free Malaysia Today, June 29, 2015 - Ade­nan May Drop Mega Dam Projects

The May­lay Mail, June 29, 2015 - CM pulls the brakes on Baram dam until he goes through detailed stud­ies, group claims

Inter­na­tional Rivers (2014). Bet­ter Solu­tions Than Megadams for Pow­er­ing Sarawak, Study Finds. World Rivers Review Vol 29. No 2. Page 5.

Ear­lier media cov­er­age of this work on energy alter­na­tives to coal and mega-​​hydropower projects includes this report in TIME Mag­a­zine:

Feb­ru­ary 22, 2011 — Bor­neo says no to dirty energy

Recent dis­cus­sions of the rela­tion­ship between mega-​​dams and earth­quakes has also been receiv­ing local cov­er­age in Bor­neo: http://​www​.the​bor​neo​post​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​0​6​/​2​8​/​d​a​m​s​-​f​a​u​l​t​-​l​i​n​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​q​u​a​k​es/

Cheng (Andy) Zheng

Andy Zheng grad­u­ated from U.C. Berke­ley in Decem­ber 2014 with a Ph.D. in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing. Super­vised by Prof. Daniel Kam­men, his main research inter­est is energy pol­icy in the global solar pho­to­voltaic (PV) indus­try, with a focus on the role of R&D fund­ing, inno­va­tion, and deploy­ment incen­tives on cost reduc­tion of the PV tech­nol­ogy. In addi­tion, he also con­ducts exper­i­ment to explore novel plat­forms for con­trolled nucle­ation and crys­tal­liza­tion of sil­i­con nanos­truc­tures, to improve the bottom-​​up approach in pro­duc­ing thin sil­i­con film for PV applications.

Upon grad­u­a­tion from Berke­ley, Andy founded the Aspir­ing Cit­i­zens Clean­tech (ACC) in Sin­ga­pore, with the vision of push­ing the global effort of tran­si­tion­ing to a sus­tain­able energy future. ACC’s approach is to pro­vide a full set of tech­nol­ogy, busi­ness model, and pol­icy inno­va­tions to assist gov­ern­ments in accel­er­at­ing this tran­si­tion. Andy’s pas­sion and vision, trans­lated into entre­pre­neur­ial actions, have been strongly influ­enced by many inspir­ing thought lead­ers from Berkeley.