Archive of Topic: National and Multinational Energy Policy

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.

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.

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.

She received a B.S in Mechan­i­cal and Aero­space Engi­neer­ing at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty. There she devel­oped a nanosatel­lite mis­sion that was suc­cess­ful­ly launched into orbit. Although fas­ci­nat­ed by aero­space appli­ca­tions, the time-crit­i­cal issue of glob­al warm­ing shift­ed her focus in grad­u­ate school to explore renew­able ener­gy. Spe­cial­iz­ing in com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ing of ther­mo-physics in mul­ti­phase sys­tems, she devel­oped a nov­el solar absorber tube and received her Ph.D. in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. The need for a glob­al envi­ron­men­tal solu­tion led her to do research abroad in both Japan and China.

Dr. Sunter is both a BIDS, Berke­ley Insti­tute for Data Sci­ences, Fel­low, and will begin as an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty in July 2018.

Cur­rent posi­tion:

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Civ­il and Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, Tufts University

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.

 

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